Hue

Saigon has a lot of history around the War, Hoi An has it’s history with trading at it’s port, and Hue is where you come for true Vietnamese history. Hue was the capital of the Nguyen dynasty, which ruled most of southern Vietnam from the 17^th century until 1802 when they took control of the entire country. Hue remained Vietnam’s capital until 1945 when the country was split in two. It was bombed pretty heavily during the war, but it’s historical monuments have slowly been restored to their former glory, or close to it. The main attraction is the Citadel. Similar to the forbidden city in Beijing, the Citadel was the imperial seat of the government and is a huge complex of temples, pavilions, moats, and now shops, museums and galleries. There was even a “forbidden” Purple Palace where only the emperor and his servants were allowed, but there’s very little left of that today. Instead you can just wander around, admire some of the buildings, read a little of the history, and try not to pass out from the heat.

The other main attractions in Hue are the burial grounds of former emperors. There’s a bunch of them dotting the country side within a 10 mile radius of the city, but we decided to only visit a couple of them. Pretty nice to look at, but I'm glad we don’t build huge complexes like that for dead people anymore.

Just two days in Hue, so that’s all the sightseeing we did. Honestly, it wasn't all that interesting to us but at least we saw it. What was interesting, however, was some of the local Hue food specialities. There’s quite a few options, but they all seem to be just variations of ways to cook a rice cake (more like a slimy dense pudding) with some shrimp. They were pretty strange for us westerners, but I could see how people would like it (and the locals seem to LOVE it).

This is their favorite - kinda hard to tell what it is from a picture

These were my favorite, and not just because the menu was hilarious

This restaurant had the funniest menus

One other funny story to pass on from our time in Hue. So you know how earlier I talked about how they love to copy things here? Restaurants, shops, hotels, whatever. Well there is a restaurant in Hue that made it into Lonely Planet and all the popular guide books, partly due to it's deaf and mute owner who apparently is a bit of a character. We decided to check this place out because the food is actually supposed to be decent. Turns out there are two of these restaurants now - both with deaf and mute owners! Now, what are the odds of two deaf AND mute guys having restaurants right next to each other? One of these guys is faking. After a small investigation of our own, we've worked out that the restaurant we ate at must have the real deaf and mute guy, because I said the name of the dish I wanted and pointed to it at the same time. He brought the wrong thing out, so he couldn't have heard me order it and must have just thought I pointed at something different. I don't think my Vietnamese is that bad. Or... it could all be part of his ruse - intentionally get people's orders wrong to make them think he is really deaf. The long con indeed. There wasn't any time left to solve this great mystery - we needed to catch our bus to Hanoi!