Hue, Hoi An and Merry Christmas

The last week we've spent in the above mention cities. Hue, the old capital of Vietnam. This where the last emperors (mostly puppets of the French) stayed. Accordingly it boasts a huge Citadel, which is still being rebuilt to its original splendour after being mostly destroyed during the war. It has the typical "forbidden city" structure with only higher ranked officials allowed into inner parts. There were separate gates for the king, then members of the army and bureaucracy, then elephants and horses and far away for women. Even the Queen had a separate entrance.

There were also two royal tombs we visited: The ones of Tu Duc and Khai Dinh. The former with a huge garden a campus of buildings, where no one knows where the actual grave is. The latter is a mix of French and Vietnamese style with a lovely view. It is also the only one in the region where the precise spot of the empreror's resting place is known.



Last but not least we visited the 400 year old Thien Mu Pagoda and the surrounding buddhist monastery. The most interesting aspect of which was the car that carried Thich Quang Duc to Saigon in 1963, where he burned himself alive in protest of the governments religious policies. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c)



We left for Hoi an by car on the 22nd after touring the former Demilitarized Zone, where the VietCong tunnels were of the attraction of note. The trip to Hoi an took us through a quite scenic pass and to better weather. On the way we witnessed huge hotel and golf course development sites for kilometeres on the beaches south of Danang (a city Vietnam is trying to make into a regional hub). It made for a pretty impressive viewing. Hoi an itself is a nice little city with few landmarks like the "Japanese bridge" but something I wasn't able to enjoy to the fullest as I fell sick on our arrival. Had high fever so stayed in the hotel for 1 and half days after which we left for Saigon...