No Hue jose! Why do they fight so much?!
We travelled by car from Da Nang to Hue (pronounced Hway), it took us about 2.5hours and was unfortunately pretty forgettable as it rained the whole way there. We arrived at Garden Villa Hotel which was a lovely looking villa with a small swimming pool located down a little lane off the main road. We had a booked a family room with a balcony (2 double beds), breakfast included and cost us 73GBP for 2 nights.
We decided to skip naps (very stupidly in hindsight) and head straight out explore. Our hotel was on the other side of the bridge from the Imperial City over the Perfume River but only about a 10minute walk, thankfully through lots of greenery so they let off lots of steam running around playing tag. The bridge crossing the river has a pedestrian lane as well which is vital for avoiding motorbikes.
If you’re staying this side of the river – jump in a rickshaw or taxi, hindsight is a marvellous thing and a lot of energy was spent on the walk over to the imperial city.
Hue was built to unite northern and southern Vietnam in 1802 and was a prosperous city. However, a lot of it was destroyed in 1968 by the south Vietnam and USA when they invaded and approximately 10,000 people died.
We approached the imperial city on a gloomy, rainy, overcast day. As we were approaching the citadel we came across some tanks and helicopters and wandered inside the Historical and Revolutionary Museum. The boys loved looking around at the tanks, planes and helicopters and we were also there at the same time as group of Vietnamese veterans who loved seeing the boys and wanted lots of pictures with them.
Upon entering the citadel we crossed a bridge with hundreds of fish, it was a welcome break watching them for a few minutes – our boys are always impressed by any animals so it was a good time for me and Phil to take stock and make a rough itinerary of the main sites we wanted to see inside the citadel walls.
The buildings are very impressive on first sight, huge, colourful, ancient buildings with lots of garden and greenery. It is very dramatic and grand when you walk in and there is so much to take in and look at. Me and Phil did a ‘tag-team’ (what we say to each other when one wants to go and read and investigate and the other is in-charge of looking after the boys) and wandered round the buildings reading information. Various games of hide and seek were played in the grounds, butterflies found, dragonflies hunted and flowers smelt. Unfortunately the boys couldn’t be less bothered by the dramatic, historical buildings in front of them.
We managed to view most of the main monuments, the Ngo Mon Gateway, Thai hoa Palace, Halls of Mandarins, Dien Tho Residences and the Nine Dynastic Urns. I say we saw them but realistically, we walked through had a quick glimpse, were carrying a boy on each shoulder in the humidity and found it pretty tricky.
We managed to get a few games of hide and seek going in the grounds but our boys were overtired, grumpy and miserable which is when they really start to fight. So after about 1.5hours we cut our losses and jumped in a taxi back to the hotel.
Yes we would have liked to spend more time really learning and appreciating what we were seeing, but in all honesty we’re much more interested in the modern history (Phil being a history teacher) and probably enjoyed our time in the Historical and Revolutionary Museum a little more.
But if you don’t have sleep-deprived, travel-tired, fighting monsters then go – tackle it, take drinks and snacks as there’s only a few places around the grounds, invent some games, climb some buildings, smell some flowers and learn some history and you won’t be disappointed.
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