Ladyboy Emperor

We aren't staying long in Hue, which means that we have to see all the sites today. In order to do this efficiently and hassle-free, we booked ourselves on a city tour. It starts at 8AM, just after breakfast. We're last on the bus, which is nicely air-conditioned and there is a tour guide whose english we can understand most of. The morning of our tour involves visiting three tombs of Vietnamese emperors. Our guide gave us a handy way of differentiating them: One emperor had smallpox, so couldn't bear any children; one emperor was very popular, so had 500 wives; one emperor liked the colour pink, so he was a ladyboy.

Two of the tombs are in grounds with lots of water and trees and statues. They are really beautiful places and you can see why the emperors would want to live in and roam around them. The areas are quite large and despite still being fairly early in the day, we are recognising the difference in temperature between Lao and Vietnam. It's much hotter here. The last tomb we visit (popular emperor) is in a large building, but you have to go up lots and lots of steps to get to it. In the blistering heat, it wasn't easy. Luckily, lunch came after this tomb to replenish our energy levels. We sit opposite two young Vietnamese girls who are learning English at school. One of them is confident enough to try out her what she's learnt.

After the buffet, the tour continues. We go to the Citadel, which is an old city built by the first emperor of the last dynasty. It's an important place despite being almost completely destroyed by the war. Some buildings from the old city still stand and we walk around the place, exhausting ourselves in the heat. We see lots of other Westerners who seem to be suffering worse than we are, sweating and having to sit down for a break. We have had to go around the tombs and Citadel at a fast pace, because with so many stops on the city tour, we can't spend too long at each. You could easily spend half a day at any of them. The tour gives you enough time to see everything, but not quite enough time to really admire it fully. That's travelling.

Next on the tour is a Mandarin house and garden. It's where some Mandarins used to live I think. Maybe they advised the King. I'm not sure. I couldn't understand what our guide said at this point. The garden wasn't very good though. Everything was brown and dead.

The last site is a Pagoda. A Pagoda is a temple for monks in Vietnam. The Pagoda has levels, in each of which there is a Buddha statue, and the monks have to worship every one of them every day. It's a tall, thin building and has decoration on it. I liked the Pagoda. After we're done, everyone from the tour gets on a Dragon Boat and we go down the Perfume River (so named because of the nice-smelling grass that once grew there) back to the city. It was a fast-paced, but interesting, tour.

In the evening we go to a rated restaurant and order loads of food, then go back to the room to make use of the television.