CATCHING UP WITH FRIENDS, VISITING THE IMPERIAL CITY, WAR RELICS AND POORLY TREATED GEESE
JOURNEYING TO HUÉ
We left Danang, having had a good night’s sleep, after the intense jungle trek the day before. We got a cab to the train station and took a 2.5 hour train journey up North to the town of Hué.
Another incredibly comfortable train ride.
We arrived in Hué by mid afternoon and checked into our hotel – the Hong Thien Ruby hotel. Another really plush room, for a very reasonable price; roughly £15 a night.
CATCHING UP WITH FRIENDS
One of my friends that I knew from home, was, at that time, travelling Vietnam with his wife and they were journeying North to South, so we’d planned to try and meet halfway. Hué was the place!
We met up for drinks by the river and went for an amazing meal at a restaurant in the centre of town.
It was great to catch up with some familiar faces!
It was clear that it was quiet time, from a tourist point of view, in Vietnam. Everywhere we went was near enough empty, but it was actually quite cool to visit during a time when there is no hustle and bustle. This photo of a deserted, darkened street that I took on the walk back to the hotel that first night sums it up for me:
HUÉ’S IMPERIAL CITY
Within the city of Hué, is the old Imperial City. A huge walled palace, surrounded by moats, which was built in the 1300s and later used as the palace for Vietnamese emperors.
Tickets are easily purchased outside for around £5 and it’s certainly worth the price to have a walk through the building and the grounds.
Here’s a selection of some of the photos I took while wandering around the city:
The palace grounds in some places were quite dilapidated, due to bombing during the Vietnam war and there had been reconstruction work to try and bring it back to its former glory, but this was still an ongoing task. It would never return to its original state, however, as so many of the buildings were destroyed during the war.
Overall, it was a really inspiring sight, to walk around the Imperial City. It held an incredible sense of history and you could really get a sense of how important this building and its grounds would have been to the Vietnamese people; even within the last century, when the last emperor reigned until 1945.
HUÉ’S OLD TOWN
Beyond the walls of the Imperial City, was the old town area of Hué. As we left the walls of the Imperial City we took a walk through some of these streets:
RELICS OF THE VIETNAM WAR
As we walked back from the old town and back along the outskirts of the Imperial City, we came across a museum exhibiting relics from the Vietnam war.
These were all vehicles from the US Air Force, that were abandoned and left behind when the US pulled out of Vietnam.
It seemed that they were being kept on display as trophies of some sort, in support of Vietnam’s resolve, during the war.
An interesting sight! Here’s a few pics:
LEAVING HUÉ
It was a lovely couple of days in Hué. Really great to have caught up with some familiar faces and to explore some of the history of the city as well as expanding my understanding of Vietnamese culture.
One part of Vietnamese culture that I did wish to forget though was this barbaric treatment of live geese:
Horrendous
Time to move on again. We were heading further North to the town of Phong Nha, to see some of the amazing caves that we’d heard about.
