Vietnam Day Seven: Hue

We said goodbye to the Hyatt Regency in Danang as well as several members of the medical team, including the Dihn family. They did such a great job planning out this trip. They had thought of everything and it made our work week very enjoyable. After checking out of the Hyatt, 9 others from our group joined with us for a day trip to Hue.  We were the only ones taking our luggage along and staying in Hue.  The others were all headed back late this afternoon to Danang to either fly home on continue touring the country for a few days. The drive from Danang to Hue took about 3 hours but that was because the tour guide made us do our mandatory stop at the marble factory at the base of Marble Mountains.  Scott got a little Happy Buddha to add to his souvenir collection for his bookshelf. Our first stop in Hue was the Tomb of Khai Dinh. This tomb took 11 years to build and was completed in 1931. King Dinh was a very unpopular king.  The main reasons for this were that he was merely a puppet for the French government and raised taxes by 30% to build his lavish mausoleum. Our next stop was the citadel. This was the royal capital for the Nguyen Dynasty from 1802 to 1945.  Within the citadel is the Purple Forbidden City which was the area reserved for the royal family. The Citadel was once full of lavish pagodas and gardens but the Vietnam war was not kind to the Imperial City. Most of the buildings are now nothing more than rubble. There once was about 160 buildings and today there are less than a dozen. After touring the citadel and about passing out from heat exhaustion, we stopped for lunch.  It was one of those tour lunches where they are expecting you and have a set meal ready for you.  It was pretty good but I was feeling ready to have a break from Vietnamese food for dinner tonight.  We really like the food (well, Layton is at least trying most of it) but it seems like they eat pretty much the same things for breakfast, lunch and dinner. After lunch we made one more stop to the Thien Mu Pagoda. This pagoda has seven stories and is the tallest religious building in Vietnam. It was built in 1601 and is regarded as the unofficial sympbol of the former imperial capital. We saw a young Vietnamese woman all dressed up lip synching a song while they were making a music video there.  Then I filmed Layton lip synching to it as well and then one of the directors wanted his picture with Layton.  He must have thought we too had a famous star and were filming something there!  Then our tour van dropped us off at our hotel (Serene Palace) and we said good bye to our group. After resting for about an hour and bringing our body temperatures down to a healthy level, we went back out to see the town and the countryside by rickashaw.  Each of us had our own single rickashaw and personal driver for two hours. This was a definite highlight of the day!  We got to go down a bunch of back roads where we could see the homes where people live, see them all outside, kids playing in the streets, women washing clothes in the river, dogs everywhere and more.  It really gave us a better feel for what life is like for the everday Vietnamese family here. They also took us through the countryside where we had nothing but rice paddies as far as we could see as well as a duck farm with thousands of white ducks covering the hill and water. We also stopped at the Thanh Toan Bridge to get pictures. This is the sister bridge to the Japenese Bridge in Hoi An but this one is more distinct. It has both Chinese and Japanese features.  We met a couple cute young Vietnamese girls at the bridge that wanted their picture with us (Layton really).  Then they continued to follow us around a bit trying to give us additional information about the town.  When it was time to get back on our rickashaws, the girls yelled, "Good bye handsome boy!"  So Layton has gone from "boy" to "handsome boy" and being mistaken for a movie star today!  Scott and I ran over to our sister hotel which has a spa and got massages while Layton rested before dinner.  It was 90 minutes of pure heaven!  We had the Vietnamese massage which added cupping and tapotement.  Best $20 we ever spent! Then we off to find something besides Vietnamese food for dinner.  The hotel recommended an italian place near the hotel and it was just what we needed.  That was Layton's 90 minutes of heaven since he didn't get (or want) a massage!