Hue, Vietnam 历史名城“顺化"

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On Feb 27, we left Hoi An to go to Hue in the morning. We passed by some nice scenery and a tunnel of more than 6.8 km long. Somehow we didn't have a good rest the night before and snooze off most of the time during the bus trip. We walked almost a km to a guesthouse in the backpacker alley mentioned by "lonely planet". It was a cloudy day and we are not in mood to start sightseeing so we just rested for the rest of the day.

On Feb 28, it rained lightly, and we followed a "walking tour" in our guidebook, but we missed most of the sites. However, the day is not wasted as we found a nice noodle place for lunch. We did not have much luck in finding good Vietnamese noodle in Vietnam. The best we had is still in Toronto/Edmonton, Canada (but 10 times in price). Later, we visited Ho Chi Minh Museum and learned a bit more about Vietnam.

As Vietnam was occupied by Chinese for about 1000 years, the officials have to learn Chinese (the four books, the 1000 word book, 2000 word book, etc). They have village examinations, town examinations, city examinations, country wide examinations, similarly to the Chinese system. Across from the Ho Chi Minh Museum, there is a beautiful "Quoc Hoc" center (University), which is now the center for Foreign Languages.

On Mar 1, the rain continued. It rained for the most of the morning. We visited the "Imperial City", which is like the Forbidden City in China, but on a much smaller scale. Many of its buildings were destroyed in the Vietnam wars. It was a lovely visit, with not too many people (unlike China's Forbidden City).

On March 2, we joined a tour to go to see the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) that divided North and South Vietnam. One of the highlights is the "Vin Moc Tunnels". It was a real tunnel. Out of 140 tunnels in the area, only this one is intact. During the war, 300 people lived in the tunnels, mainly to shelter from the bombs. The people lived here for 4 years and 17 babies were born.

On March 3, we joined a boat tour to tour the Perfume River and also some of the tombs.

Like China, Vietnam had emperors. Like the Chinese emperors, they built tombs during their lifetime.

The boat trip is insanely cheap. For $1.25, one gets a boat trip for the day, and a light lunch is included. The lady on the boat keeps pushing the softdrinks, beer, extra food, postcards, silk drawings, at inflated prices.

The boat trip made 5 stops, two temples (one with free admission) and three tombs (admission of 55,000 Dong each, about $3.5)

Most of us just visited the free temple and one of the tombs (Minh Mang).

The Minh Mang tomb is quite nice, with many ponds. There are a few temples inside to honour the ancestors and also emperor Minh Mang.

After visiting Minh Mang tomb, we returned to Hue.

In the evening, we took the overnight bus to Ninh Binh, which is 90 km south of Hanoi, to visit the "Halong of the Land".

Tidbits ---
Everywhere we visited, we were first thought of as locals, e.g. a Thai in Thailand, a Lao in Laos, a Vietnamese in Vietnam. However, whenever we visit a place that requires admission, we were NEVER mistaken as a local. We always had to pay foreigner price, which is sometimes ten times the local price.

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