Hue

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We arrived in Hue at about 1pm, found somewhere to stay & went for lunch in a restaurant recommended in our footprints guidebook. It was run by a deaf & mute family & the food proofed to be delicious. One of the daughters of the owner, (who could speak perfect English), got talking to us & handed me her niece & just disappeared so I was sat with this cute little Vietnamese baby on lap wondering when they were coming back to get it! They said it was a girl called Mickey, they said named after Mickey Mouse?! But the baby was dressed in blue like a boy so we think they may have got confused between he & she as a lot of people often call Claire & I 'Sir' much to Claire's annoyance!

We then headed to the Imperial City for the afternoon, which was very nice but I think I was starting to get a bit bored of Pagoda's & temples so we decided to start taking random photos to make it more fun! We arranged a night train to Hanoi for Friday night & a day trip down the Perfume River on a dragon boat, visiting lots of tombs, pagodas & temples, (I just can't get enough of them!)

Friday was rainy & cold but we still had a good day on the river & met people from the UK & Australia, it was a bit strange as both Claire & I didn't recognise their English accent, (they were from Dorset), has it really been that long that I have forgotten what English people sound like!?

Our first stop on our trip was Thien Mu Pagoda, where I learnt that there were seven levels on the pagoda to reflect the Buddhists belief that there are seven steps to enlightenment & it is therefore their lucky number.

We got back on the boat & went to Tu Duc's tomb, along with his empresses’ tomb & adopted son, apparently he had 104 wives, greedy man! We then went to Hon Chen Temple which did not impress us & we didn't even take a single photo, (now that serious means there is something wrong as Claire takes photos of EVERYTHING!)

We had lunch on the boat & went to Minh Mang's tomb; Claire was particularly excited about this one as she had seen a nice photo in the guidebook. You can imagine how excited she was when she actually found the spot where the photo had been taken & got an even better one, I couldn't help but laugh! The weather had brightened up after lunch so that also helped the photos although the floor was very slippery & I nearly fell over several times, one guy fell over & cut his hand, luckily he was ok.

Our last stop of the day was Khai Dinh's tomb, where the weather decided to rain again & made all the black stone & marble look really spooky.

We went back & had some beef Pho, (pronounced 'F' as in the sound the letter makes). We had a taxi booked to take us to the train station for our night train to Hanoi & met an Australian guy who had so many bags, more than Claire & I put together!

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Photos

Me feeding a stone horse
Well ater 3 tombs you start to get bored!