We arrived in Hue at around 4pm on Saturday, and headed off to our hostel.
We got showered, and headed out for a couple of drinks at a bar, called Brown Eyes (Robin was giggling), near our hostel. They had the friendliest bar staff I have ever met, and soon we were playing Jenga with our Vietnamese waitress. After a few games, our new friend had decided she liked us, and asked if we would like to join her at the market. We jumped at the opportunity, and made a date with her on Monday morning. We went for dinner and headed home for a bit of sleep before the next day's activities.
On Sunday morning, we got picked up, and taken around Hue. We went inside the citadel and saw where the royals used to live. We also stopped off at the ceramics museum (snore fest). Then we headed out to the tombs of previous emporers.
The first tomb we went to was for the 2nd emporer. There are massive grounds, with buildings statues and temples. There are statues of elephants, soldiers, tigers and horses, who are supposed to accompany and protect the emporer in the after-life. After the rows of statues, the rest of the buildings are laid out like a body. The head was a big pagoda, which has his obituary carved on a giant rock. The heart was a carved sun in the ground. The arms, two rivers on either side, and walkways over the lake as legs. Interestingly, they built a network of tunnels under the tomb, so when the emporer's body was brought in, they brought it through the main gates, which were then sealed, and have not been open since, and took his coffin into the tunnel network, before sealing all of the tunnels. To this day, no-one knows where his body is. It was quite interesting!
The second tomb we went to was for the 12th emporer. It was really impressive. It's built on the mountainside, overlooking the river, in a beautiful location. There are huge stone steps, and statues as with the previous tomb. In the top building though, the walls, floors and ceilings are covered in mosaics and mother of pearl, with a huge golden statue of the emporer on his throne, under which he was buried (we think? haha). It was amazing!
After the tombs, we were taken to a real tourist trap, where they make incence and conical hats. We got a demonstration, before having people shoving stuff in our faces and trying to get us to buy ANYTHING!
We then went down to the river for a dragon-boat cruise back into Hue city. It was relaxing, and nice, but also funny, since the "dragon boat" was just a normal boat with a dragon on the front!
On Monday morning, we woke up and went to meet our waitress friend. She met us, and we went for coffee on the side of the river, in a really pretty spot. Vietnamese coffee is really delicious, but it's like espresso, rather than a coffee. It is really strong. We then crossed the Hue bridge (famous because it was built by the same people that made the Eiffel Tower, apparently) and got to the market. My Hong, our new friend, took us to a little stall and ordered us a whole bunch of traditional food, and showed us the proper way to eat it. It was really nice. We then walked around the markets and checked out what was on offer, before heading back to our hotel. We just wandered around for the rest of the afternoon, until we got on the night train for the 12 hour journey to Hanoi. I really enjoyed the train ride, and slept almost the entire way. Robin wasn't as lucky. We arrived in Hanoi at 5:30am on Tuesday, groggy and exhausted!
