Ancient capital and a carrot&pineapple peacock
Trip Start
Jan 16, 2008
1
36
49
Trip End
Jun 30, 2008
Hue,
Hue,
Vietnam
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
So Becky decided to start Hue off in an exciting fashion by puking 3times (fortunately into the 3 aeroplane sick bags we've collected, although the 2nd did leak on Luke's blanket yum) on the overnight bus there. So we decided to take it easy by walking to the Citadel and then walking the WHOLE of the way around it that afternoon, Becky felt very rested.
Next day we got a cyclo man to take us to a few pagodas (we felt sorry for him when he had to push up uphill in the heat), they were pretty and it was nice to ride around the town and have a good oggle at it. After a Vietnamese lunch on stilts we went to the Imperial Enclosure. We were a little disappointed by this as there was lots of renovation work going on and most of the places we could look at were overgrown (obviously hence the renovation). However that evening we had a better experience of Imperial luxury when we sat down for a 9-course Imperial set menu. Our treat included a carrot&pineapple peacock with spring rolls stuck in it's back, Hoi An pancakes, big shrimp, veggie soup, beef&rice, big prawn crackers with papaya salad and green bean cake in the shape of fruit
A building in the Imperial Enclosure
. The whole meal was delicious except the latter which we were sceptical about. We left the restaurant just in time for the heavy downpour, our cyclo man first pulled us over to pull over the roof-cover and for a second time to cover us with big blue tarpaulin leaving us a slit to peer out of. Even with all this effort Luke's feet stuck out so he got to moan about it. (For those of you who are a little unclear a cyclo is a seat with 2wheels stuck on the front of a bicycle). We felt rather sorry for our cyclo man cycling all that way without even a raincoat so we paid him extra.On Thursday we commandeered two motorbike-taxi men to drive us to five tombs of the rulers of the Nguyen Dynasty (Hue was once the capital of Vietnam). It was great fun whizzing around except Becky kept thinking her flip flops were going to fall off. The two guys were very friendly and stopped at great photo ops along the way. We also visited bunkers on a hill used first by the French and later by the Americans, it overlooked the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Friday morning we hopped on a bus to Hoi An xxxxxx
