When is your first day in Hoi An not your first day in Hoi An? When you decide to book a full day tour to Hue! This was a deliberate decision to keep the pace up before allowing myself to settle into the more relaxed rhythm of my beachside hotel, but after a late arrival due to a delayed flight (thought that wasn’t a thing having chosen the pricier internal flight option of Vietnam Airlines), the thought of a 7 a.m. start was somewhat less appealing!
Nevertheless after an early breakfast, I met my driver and we headed off. I decided to book this as a private tour. It was little more in terms of cost than a group tour by minibus, and offered me the opportunities of a comfortable car and control over the timings of the day.
The journey time was over 3 hours, but we were going via the Hai Van pass, which was something I’d been looking forward to. Ranked as one of the most beautiful roads in the world to drive, it winds up over the mountains between Da Nang and Hue and was once an important strategic location. The views are stunning. Well, they are if it’s not 8 a.m. and cloudy 😂 We stopped at the top at Hai Van Gate a defensive outpost of the Nguyen dynasty, which sits at 490m above sea level. Then we descended the other side to Lang Co Bay, where we stopped for an iced coffee next to a beautiful lagoon where they fish for oysters.
After almost 2 hours more on very busy roads, we arrived in Hue, driving through the modern city and in through the gates of the walled Imperial City. My driver bought my entrance pass and left me to explore for a couple of hours. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but what I saw definitely surpassed that! It’s incredible how much time and money the Vietnamese government have invested (and continue to invest) in the restoration of important historical monuments – they are part way through this one, but what they have done is awe-inspiring. Not usually one for massive sites of buildings, ruins and gardens, I found myself totally immersed and ended up messaging the driver that I needed more time. It was baking hot, and a huge site, which I wove from side-to-side and front-to-back of, and snapped a gazillion pictures, of which just a small selection below.
I met up with the my driver and we headed for some well-deserved lunch – a bowl of Bun Bo … another regional variation on beef noodle soup. Quick stop, and then onward to the Thien Mu pagoda. This is a Buddhist site, founded in 1601, featuring a 7 storey pagoda added in the 1840’s, each tier representing one of Buddha’s incarnations on earth. One of the reasons this site is famous is that it was one of the monks from here who in 1963 drove to Saigon (HCMC) and set fire to himself in protest at the government of the time. I visited the memorial site in HCMC, and saw a film of the event… quite horrible! Anyway, the site is now very peaceful and beautiful with lovely views of the Perfume River.
Our final stop of the day was the Mausoleum of Khai Dinh. Apparently mausoleums were quite a popular thing as there are seven of them in Hue. This one lies slightly out of town, on a hill… at this point in the day, facing a climb of 130 steps to view some old tomb did not fill me with joy… but I took a deep breath and off I went. It was worth it. Khai Dinh was the penultimate Nguyen emperor, highly influenced by French culture and apparently very vain! He reined for 9 years, and the mausoleum he commissioned took 11 to complete and relied on additional taxes on the Vietnamese people for funding. It’s incredibly lavish, and the centrepiece is a life size bronze statue of Khai Dinh under a mosaic canopy (so clever that although it is in stone, it looks as if it’s canvas) in the principal temple. The buildings and statues were really interesting, and the views were lovely.
After an iced salt coffee in the cafe (tourist prices, but still less than £2), we started the long journey back to Hoi An. No mountain pass this time – we came through one of the longest tunnels I’ve been through instead. I was dropped off in Hoi An old town at about 6:30, where I got some dinner and had a brief meander through the lantern-lit streets before heading back to the hotel for a cocktail and bed. More on Hoi An in my next post.
50shadesofbrave 