Hue: 15 - 16 June

Our next stop was the historical city of Hue. Located along the Perfume River (which unfortunately does not smell like Perfume), Hue was the national capital, and base for the Nguyen dynasty, which ruled from 1802 until 1945, when emperor Bao Dai abdicated in favour of Ho Chi Minh’s revolutionary government (thanks wikitravel).

During the Vietnam War, Hue’s location very close to the border between North and South Vietnam, resulted in some tough times and damage to some parts of the city, although we didn’t find this noticeable today.  

Interestingly, we were told that given the relative isolation of the centre of Vietnam during the War, the Vietnamese spoken here is very different and pretty much incomprehensible to Vietnamese from the North or South.

From Hue you can trek out to the Demilitarized Zone and the Vinh Moc tunnels, the former supposedly created as a buffer between the North and South, but which suffered intense fighting.  We decided to give this a miss and instead focused on the sights of Hue itself.

Throughout Hue, relics of the Nguyen dynasty are numerous, and include the Imperial Citadel, several pagodas, and the various tombs of the Emperors. The grounds of the Citadel were quite vast, but we found the Tombs to be the most beautiful – particularly that of Tu Duc, which is situated on a lake filled with beautiful lily pads.

There really is a lot to see in Hue, and we could have spent longer exploring the various tombs and pagodas.

As ever, we’re always keen to try the local specialties, and in this case, it was the Bun Bo Hue – a delicious noodle dish.

From Hue we took the sleeper train north to Hanoi. Arriving at Hue station, we ran into Ylan and Jerry, who were headed on the same train. The carriage Kylie and I were in contained two other beds, one occupied by a rather annoying Vietnamese woman. In the middle of the night, this woman suddenly decided it would be a good idea to watch home movies on her video camera, at full volume of course. She also carried on a number of lengthy, loud, phone calls. All this meant that by the time we pulled into Hanoi at 6am, we were pretty shattered.