Day 59 – Hue

Woke up today around 6 am as the bus started to honk it’s horn at all the traffic. The bus ride was so strange and bumpy. I was awakened many times during the night because of the pot holes in the road caused me to bounce around in my seat/bed.

The bus arrived late 2 ½ hours late around 10:30 am and checked into the hotel the bus dropped us off at. I started to travel with 2 other girls, one from Toronto and one from New Zealand. The rain is relentless and won’t stop. We ended up paying 100 000D to be driven around on a motorcycle to a bunch of sites in Hue. I was glad to pay for the transportation. My motorcycle guide ended up being the owner of the hotel I was staying at. We went to visit 6 places in total: the citadel, Thien Mu Pagoda, Tu Hieu Pagoda, incensce and straw hat making and the Tu Duc Tomb.

The tourist sites in Hue have quite expensive entrance fees as Hue used to be the old capital of Vietnam and most sites are World Cultural Heritage sites at around 55000D for each site.

The Citadel was absolutely enormous. Upon my visit they were in the middle of rebuilding it. Not much of it was left, mainly the platforms the structures were built on. A few floor tiles were still stuck to the ground but everything else was covered in moss. This place must have been incredible when it was fully built and functional.

Thien Mu Pagoda was quite nice, but it really looked like every other pagoda I’ve seen on this trip. Tu Hieu Pagoda though was way cooler. This pagoda was located out of the city in a small village and it was populated by monks.

The incense and hat making were really just tourist traps to get you to buy what they made along with other overpriced goods.

But the most impressive thing was the Tu Duc Tomb. It was enormous. It would probably have been better if it wasn’t torrentially raining all day long but there is only so much you can do. There is really not much else to see in this city. I’m planning on going to Hoi An tomorrow to get a newly tailored wardrobe :)