Saturday 15th March 2008

As Hué is quite a large place, we booked ourselves onto a city tour to give us a good chance of seeing most of it. After breakfast, we ran round to the tourist office and caught our bus.

Hué used to be two separate cities - the South was where the 'people' lived and the North was where the Emperors stayed. Our first stop was at the Citadel - which was the Emperor's city, all inside a huge brick wall. Most of it was bombed during the war, but the buildings that are still standing are still pretty spectacular. When we left the Citadel, we were driven around the corner to the Garden Houses, which is where the Mandarin lived - these were much more humble. As Hué has been home to 13 Emperors, there are quite a few tombs dotted around and we visited Tu Duc Tomb and the Minh Mang Tomb. The Minh Mang one was set in the most beautiful gardens, with huge lakes and was very very peaceful. On our way back to the centre this afternoon we stopped at the Thien Mu Pagoda, where the Buddhist Monks live and then caught Dragon Boats back along the Perfume River (which is what divides the city).

When we got back to our hotel, we decided to try and find the travel agents for our bus ticket, so that we could book our seats on the bus to Hanoi. We got our ticket and asked some people for directions, they sent us to the other side of the city. After about an hours walking we arrived at the correct street - but we couldn't find 'Camel Travel' for love-nor-money. It was getting really frustrating, because we couldn't find anyone that understood us. Eventually, when we did find someone, he pointed out that the street address we were looking for was actually back in Hoi An... d'oh! Being smarter than us, he found the right address on the bottom of the ticket and sent us on our way. It turned out Camel Travel was actually just around the corner from our hotel... d'oh! d'oh!

This evening we went to a small café just outside our hotel and had the most amazing Vietnamese food for our tea. The walls of the café were absolutely covered in messages that other visitors had left - so we spent ages reading them long after we'd finished eating. Afterwards, we came back to the hotel and watched the footie on TV.

Only WE could be looking for an address in the wrong city - at the least the walking did us good!