Hue
Hue was our next destination in Vietnam. The main attraction of this town is the citadel.
It was constructed as a fortress complete with a outer wall, a moat, and an inner courtyard with its own wall to prevent those who are not the king's concubines from getting into his private quarters. The citadel was all but leveled during the Vietnam war, and even though they've been working on restoring it since the 80's, they still have a long way to go. For example king's private quarters are still missing, as well as most other buildings. What is restored in a lot of places are the various walls that separated multiple areas within the citadel. They make it harder to navigate; we must have passed through a couple of dozens of gates. Another interesting feature of this place is mother-in-law's quarters. She had her own palace, a garden, and 22 smaller houses. Either Americans did not bomb it, or it got restored first. Either way, mother-in-law gets respect.
On the second day we joined a boat trip to other local attractions: an old pagoda, and various kings' tombs.
We had a choice to pay, and go into any of the 3 tombs we were going to visit. We figured they'd all be similar, and ended up skipping the only one that was different. It also started raining cats and dogs right when we were in the first tomb complex, but Julie kept warm by carrying around a kitten that lived on our boat.
The rain later subsided, and we were able to complete our tour without any other issues, except Julie had to give up the kitten because the last of the tombs had to be visited by bus, and the kitten had to stay on the boat.
Next morning we were off to Hoi An for some required shopping...
![]() |
| 2011.11.24 Hue |
