Hue

Despite many of us being exhausted on arriving in Hue, we still had a full day. As it was once the capital of the kingdoms of Vietnam, there was an imperial city with a palace we got to visit. Our local guide gave us lots of information about both the feudal history of Hue and the modern wars. Hue was badly damaged by the French while fighting China over the area, as well it was very close to the DMZ separating the north and the south. Most of the historical building have been destroyed, though they are rebuilding. 

The citadel with the imperial palace was our first stop.  The palace was based on the design of Bejing’s Forbidden City. It’s a beautiful location and unesco supported reconstruction means it’s all original materials. 

Next we stopped at a Buddhist monastery. It had a “relic” from the protests against the puppet president set up by the Americans.  The president was a Catholic so came down very hard on the majority Buddhist population. A monk drove down to Saigon and self immolated in protest. The photo taken of him sitting in front of his car is famous, and was used by Rage Against the Machine as album art.  His car is now at the monastery we visited. 

Our final stop that day was the tomb of the 9th king. He had it built away from the city in the country side. It’s a large cluster of buildings. Mostly rebuilt after being damaged but the stone work still exists as it was just forgotten out in the country side. 

I spent the afternoon wandering around Hue near the hotel. A few of us found a nice restaurant for lunch with a local sampler plate that was a lot of fun. Then I had a foot massage before the group met up for drinks.  We had an early start in the morning to drive to our next stop- Hoi An.