Wednesday 24th June 2009 Hue

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Wednesday 24th June 2009 Hue
The day tour picked us up at 8.30 and we headed out on our bus to one of the tomb of Minh Mang. This was built in about 1841 so isn’t that old really but had some interesting oriental architecture all in pretty good condition and was set in about 20 acres of parkland and lakes. These guys really fancied themselves by building such grand grave yards just for themselves. They mainly designed their own and often lived in the ground for a few years before they died hunting and fishing in the lakes. The weather was already starting to get super hot but we had our conical hats which actually are very effective, the locals know what they are at with these things.

The next mausoleum was for the Emperor Khai Dinh which was about 20 minutes drive away. This one was very impressive. It is a fusion of Baroque and eastern design and was only built in 1920 so is still in near perfect condition as hue stayed pretty neutral during the Vietnam War and wasn’t overly bombed by the yanks. It was a lot smaller and lacked the parkland of the previous one but the main tomb room is as ornate a room as I have ever seen, like an oriental Sistine Chapel. The detail and extravagance of decoration is amazing. We didn’t bother going to see the third tomb as it was supposed to be a less impressive version of the first and they were each costing about $2 each to visit so we saved our princely sum and stayed in a café outside where I bought my much craved fresh coconut milk. The women just Mache tied off the top and rammed a straw into the husk. Looked more impressive than it tasted but was worth it.

Had a very good buffet lunch and then we headed back into the old town where the next stop was the citadel which we had visited yesterday so we decided to sit this one out too. We instead walked around for a bit a stopped for a beer. Luckily just as we sat down we read about the place in our book and realized it was run by deaf people so weren’t too freaked out when it came to placing our orders. The Thien Mu pagoda was next stop, on the way though we stopped at a sweet shop where they gave free samples of gorgeous sesame and peanut butter sweets and free tea. It was brill, and then we stopped in some fruit farm which had every fruit possible growing in its orchard. The pagoda itself was nice enough and then we headed home on our “dragon boat” back to town. A pretty good day
For $8.

Dinner didn’t prove too adventurous again though, there probably would have been some more ok places but we headed for our Indian again, mine wasn’t as good as the previous night but Mary’s was lovely. That’s enough Indian for another few weeks though. We stayed off the alcohol for a night and headed home and watched some horrible movie with Mandy Moore on HBO.

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