Hue (pronounced Whey)

Last night went out with one of the other passengers into the town and had an amazing Vietnamese meal. Starter of park satay with rice paper rolls followed by chicken stir fry in lemon and chilli. Very spicy but excellent. I need to find a local cook book whilst I am here as well as some local Vietnamese tea to bring home. I can see James and Dan dreading a new cook book if spicy dishes, they have still not forgiven me for all the spicy Sri Lankan meals they had to eat in the months that followed that trip!

Yesterday rained all day and was quite depressing, went to bed hoping it would stop through the night.

Ps. I should say now, I apologise that my spelling is wrong sometimes, this iPad keyboard is difficult to use and it predicts words without me realising and then I do not know how to edit my blogs.

Anyhow, today I woke up after the first decent nights sleep I have had so far, and the rain had stopped. It actually turned out to be a nice sunny day and I have got a bit of sunburn.

We started at a reasonable time today of 9am and started our busy day with a boat ride on the river perfume. It was lovely and relaxing and scenic.




























The boat took us to the Thien Mu Pagdoga used to worship Buddhism and is a Buddhist working shrine. I touched the bell for happiness and the turtle for long life. Behind the pagoda was the monastery where we saw got to see the monks praying and taking their meal. That was amazing. The grounds were absolutely amazing and this was well worth a visit.




































Following this we went to the Citadel, the Imperial City, designated a world heritage site in 1993, the Citadel was established by the Emperor Gia Long in 1805. The huge fortress is divided into three sections, the civic centre, the Imperial city and the Forbidden City. The structure is amazing but was badly bombed in the Indochina Wars although a lot of restoration has occur and continues. The forbidden City was occupied by the monarchy before they were abolished and only the king and his concubines could enter, unless you wanted you head chopped off. We could have done with longer here to view the whole of the site, this is definitely worth a visit, absolutely stunning.






































After lunch the tour continued to the Emperor Tu Ducs's mausoleum. Again, is was absolutely stunning and the place and places of worship have been restored and are just magnificent. The grounds are also beautiful and we also saw his final tomb (although actually, he is not buried here and no one knows where he is, after his burial everyone involved was killed to keep the secret).





























All in all a brilliant day understanding and exploring the history of the Nguyen Dynasty's Kings from 1802 to 1945.

Tomorrow we are off to Saigon, another early start!

Ps. I was crowned Queen! (loving the shoes!)















- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Lương Thế Vinh,Hue,Vietnam