Hue (Not Lewis)

For the last four days we've been exploring Hue (pronounced Hweigh). Actually for two of those days we explored the lovely delights of Sam's 4 star birthday hotel 'La Residence', so for two days we had a small look around Hue. As I'm sure you can see from your map of Vietnam, Hue is situated about half way down the coast on the eastern side. It has a population just short of 300,000 and is by all accounts the cultural heart of Vietnam. There is a massive river running through the middle of Hue called the Perfume river which is like all Nam rivers we've seen so far, brown. And, no, it didn't particularly smell one way or the other. Across the river from our hotel is where the citadel is located and this is the primary tourist attraction. It was built in 1804 for Emperor Gia Long, however it looks like it was built in 1004 by the state of the place. Various wars and alot of neglect over the years have taken their toll on this place, but it looks like the vietnamese are now doing their best to sort it out a bit. It's about 10k square, so quite a bit of it to walk around and there were some very nice bits of it to look at. Lots of temples (have got temple fatigue quite badly now), a nice moat, some plesant ponds with the usual asortment of ropey fish in and best of all, a couple of real elephants. They were there to give tourists rides, but they looked happy enough, well fed and it was nice to see them.
It was very peaceful in the citadel and we spent quite a while in there, if nothing else, it was time away from the constant cries of 'Hello cyclo' and 'Hello motorbike' that pursued us around the outside of the citadel. Our hotel in Hue was very good. Very clean, satelite, fridge, ac, all for only 2.70 each :) At our other hotel, the posh one (50 quid a night), we literally laid about on our Queen sized bed with metre squared sized pillows and watched trash films and the odd bit of footy :) Played pool, read the papers with our 007 cocktails and had 2 hot, full, baths a day.
On our last day in Hue, we spent the morning lying in and then moving between hotels and in the afternoon we got ourselves some drivers and sped off on mopeds to see a couple of pagodas and a tomb. The tomb belonged to Emperor Tu Doc who died in 1883 and is a collection of tombs and yes, temples, situated amongst a very lovely forest. There was a nice river and lake, not too many tourists and it made for a very relaxing walk. The pagodas were good to, one especially was set in a wood and there were alot of very happy looking monks about, alot of them were playing football actually and I did start to wonder whether we'd strolled in to a young offenders camp at one point. The best bit of that afternoon for me though, was riding around on the back of a moped. No hastle from anyone and you felt part of things, cause, well, everyone else is on a moped.
I think you're meant to go for a boat cruise in Hue, but for one reason or another, we didn't get round to it and Lucy, on your recommendation, we did go to the market and it was fairly rubbish :) Picture the scene. The market is on the banks of the river, 2 floors of the biggest load of crap you've ever seen. As you walk past each 'shop' (shop read cupboard), you gawp in at what is basically the worst stuff you've ever seen for sale in a Pound shop. Then if you imagine that stuff and take it back to the 80's and spray everthing with odeur de fish and then in each tiny hovel of a shop put a crone who's only English is 'Buy me', you're getting close to the horror of Hue market. Thats the inside of the market to, the outside it slightly worse as you have to contend with alot of mud, cyclo's and worse smells!
Today we took the bus to Hoi An. Its about 140k south of Hue and is easily the nicest place we've been in Vietnam :) Even the the sun decided to come out today and we saw some blue sky which we've not seen for about 2 weeks. Whoohoo!! Hoi An blog to follow soon.