Hue 13th

Hue 13th
Today we get on the tourist trail, albeit a little postponed due to the inevitable hang over. We wrangle with one of the locals to hire his bike, which is beat up and knackered but fortunately lasts the day. We enjoy a ride around the town and visit the citadel, although we don’t go inside as we hear it takes a couple of hours to explore and this is time we don’t have. We do however have time to go out to the famous pagoda on the outskirts of the city and also to the temple of tu’oc on the outskirts.
The pagoda is a stereotypical Vietnamese structure with many towers and oriental motifs, compared to many it is mediocre – the view though is magnificent, due to the location just on the river and overlooking misty mountains and lush valleys, add to this the tranquil gardens within and it is well worth a visit.
The ride to the temple is a good distance and on the way we work up quite an appetite, there aren’t many food places on route so we end up getting some ladies with an art gallery to cook us up some beef noodle soup for 30,000. They start at 50, but some good haggling gets us a decent price, another skulky aussie couple aren’t so successful and subsequently go hungry! In the end the soup is pretty decent and worth the dough.
The tomb/temple complex is very impressive particular due to the beautiful setting within well maintained gardens complete with a series of streams and lakes. The monuments here are not quite as impressive a in India, perhaps due to the moist and windy weather, but still they are nothing to be sniffed at by all means. The crowning glory is the tomb itself which stands at least 30 feet high in the middle of the arena, but throughout the ornate oriental arches and typical dragons and deities create an authentic oriental experience that is well appreciated by us both. There are many such complexes in this region but we chose only the one, although impressive sometimes you get sightseeing overload and simply can’t be arsed traipsing round sites all day long.
Given this, and the beasting hangover, we opt to stay in for the night and stock up with munchies from the supermarket which is inappropriately named the “big C” (which I’m sure was synonymous with cancer) - we watch documentaries on Vietnam and relax, once again not coping well with the after effects of the cheap booze.