Hot Days in Hue

Our time in Hue has been absolutely amazing! We are a little sad to be leaving here tommorow to head to Hanoi but we are excited for the new adventures that await us. If it is anything like what we experienced in Hue then I am sure that we will not be disappointed.

We are headed there by train which is the same way that we arrived here in Hue and a 18 hour train ride is an adventure in and of itself. We arrived at the station in Ho Chi Minh at around 11am and had a coffee while we waited to board the train. Once onboard coach 10 we headed to our cabin and found our soft sleeper bunks. I had top bunk which I later came to regret because the air conditioning vent was right above me making the bunk very cold. As well, the overhead light stayed on all night. No worries though, I still had a decent sleep considering the swaying from the train that ensued all night as well as the jarring stops when we arrived at stations along the way.

It was about 6am when we got to the train station in Hue. The boss of the hotel that we are staying at was there with a sign to pick us up. Since he came on a scooter he arranged a taxi for us and then paid the tab when we got to the hotel. We were then treated to a surprise. Since the hotel was booked up we had been upgraded to the family suite. We had a living room, 2 beds and a flat screen television that swivels between the two areas. It is a gorgeous room!

We headed out to find a close restaurant and realized that we were no where near the tourist area of town and the eating options with English menus or staff are pretty much non-existant. There is a supermarket close by so we headed there and stocked up on snacks, drinks and got a few slices of pizza. The lack of English on menus didn't stop us when we went to have a coffee at the Violet cafe. Ryan figured out where the section of coffees was on the menu but there were many options to choose from. He picked one at random and we were pleasantly suprised when we got Vietnamese coffee with milk. This wasn't ordinary milk but condensed sweet milk. This is a treat that we will be taking back with us for sure, it was so tasty!

A couple days later we went on a whirlwind tour of the sights in and around Hue. The tour started with a trip to the Imperial Citadel. Next was the garden house where the grandfather of the emperor once lived. Afterwards we were off to the Thien Mu pagoda which sits on the top of a hill and has amazing views of the perfume river and the surrounding area. We flew through these sites very quickly so it was a welcome treat to relax for a little while and have lunch. The meal was done buffet style with many yummy options and we ate our fill before hopping back on the bus and head to the tomb of emperor Minh Mang.

The tomb was on expansive and beautifully treed grounds. Our tour guide gave us a little information about the emperor, he had 400 wives and supposedly got 4 of them pregnant in one night! Our guide joked that the reason this emperor died so early at the age of 50 was due to the fact that he had so many wives (and concubines) and about 160 children.

Tu Duc was the next emperor's tomb that we visited. He was the emperor that was in power when the French took control of Vietnam. He felt that he was not a good emperor because of that as well as the fact that he was not able to have any children due to getting smallpox when he was a child. The stele where the emperor's record their autobiography was self critical and the pond near his tomb that is normally full of water was left empty at his request to show his remorse for what he felt was a poor rule by him. The area that this emperor was buried on was even larger than the last tomb that we visited and we took some time to wander around before getting back on the bus with the rest of the tour group.

On the way back to the city we ditched the bus and instead travelled by dragonboat down the perfume river. It was a very calming way to end a whirlwind trip around Hue.

Check out more photos of our time in Hue here