Hue

We arrived to Hue after a 4 hours  bus journey.  This city was the ancient capital during the period from 1744-1945.  The city has a grand palace and a forbidden city similar and smaller to the one in Beijing. Such was the influence from China during this period the Vietnamese language was based on the Chinese dialect.  In the 1940's Ho Chi Minh changed the written language to the western alphabet which he learned during his studies in a Paris University. The spoken dialect still has its routes in the Chinese language with four different ways to pronounce each word. 

In the afternoon we embarked on a motor cycle tour of the countryside and the ancient monuments including the Kings burial sites.  The tour lasted four hours and was amazing battle through the traffic in the city to the stark contrast of silence of the countryside. Vietnam is the worlds largest producer of rice for export and in the modern era 70% is still produced by hand with no machinery used.  All the rice is dried and ground by hand and the water is pumped into the paddies field manually too. After bringing us to the rice museum we whizzed along empty streets passing fishermen and water buffalo before we reached the city again where we were brought through winding back alleys to the home of a famous woman who despite having only one arm from the war has gone on to produce very skilfully made conical straw hats each one taking six hours to make. We watched how she made them as we heard her story. We were then brought us a mountain in the dark to visit a famous pagoda and buddah before returning to town, there's nothing quite like sitting on the back of a motorbike in Vietnam, not for the feint of heart!!

The evening we all went for a quiet meal and a few beers to chill after a long day preparing ourselves for a 16 hour train trip the next day to Hanoi!!     

Hope you're all well at home 

Roy