Hue Day 2: Perfume River tour then HaNoi

[16/02/14]

Today was an early start as we were bing picked up at 8am for the boat tour as well as checking out of the hotel. They were lovely and store out bags and allowed us access to restrooms to shower if we wanted to, our flight was at 9:15pm so we had some time to spare. Once everything was sorted we headed out and followed our guide to the boat and then waited for the rest of the people to be collected and then loaded onto the boat. Once it was eventually full we headed down the river to go to the first stop An Hiên Garden house. This was just a Brit stop to show and explain the common architecture and reasoning behind the house layouts according to the 5 element theory (we call it Feng Shui, which technically isn't correct but meh). It did make some of the layouts make sense from the day before but the house was nothing special, there were some nice carvings though.

We then headed to the Thien Mu Pagoda, this is a Buddhist pagoda with about 70 resident monks. Not many locals come here to pray/meditate as with the culture change Buddhism became a very personal spirituality. The pagoda was nice, after some tall steps there was a large frontal courtyard with a tall engraved tower and some smaller towers with carvings, bells and tablets inside. From there you headed into the main complex from one of three doorways, the temple itself was really nice with the happy Buddha actually looking happy and the three Buddha statues behind him. There were some lovely gardens behind with more stone towers. We didn't have much time but what I did get to explore was nice.

We then headed to the Hon Chen temple, this is a small temple dedicated to the 'sacred mother of Vietnam'. It's a psychological nationalistic thing, strength in unity lessons. Granted it worked against genghis khan, so it can't be too bad. The temple was small but nice, the amount of insence was headache inducing though, there was a small Confucian temple next to it that was free if you didn't want to see the other temple. We then had a very basic lunch on the boat, rice, vege and a curried tofu as protein; they offered you extra food at a higher price if you wanted. From what I saw of the extra food, not worth it. Didn't get it.

We then headed to the tombs where we left the boat and changed to a bus. Minh Mang tomb was nice but not very spectacular, there were some lovely carvings and some nice mosaics but nothing amazing and eye catching. The size of the place though was the key, you go through multiple gates over multiple staircases to end up at the burial area. Yeah area, no one actually knows where the body is buried, everyone who dealt with it when it was interned was killed, ancient egyptian style. The radius of the area is roughly 43km so the area to look for it is huge and it was brought in underground so it'd be hard to find even if you got access to survey the site. 

Khai Dinh tomb was spectacular, it's got 127 steps to the very top and amazing carvings of dragons all over the stairs and pillars. The main tomb building is just covered in carvings my photos just don't do it justice. Inside the building is even more spectacular; the entire building is just covered in mosaics and the ceiling is painted with dragons writhing in clouds. In the middle of all of that is the tomb with a life size golden statue of the Emperor, I took a photo then realised that there was a 'no photo' sign; infront of where about 5 people were taking both flash photography (which was a terrible idea) and using various tablets. There was a small museum aspect with some household bits and bobs from the royal palace along with photographs. 

Tu Duc tomb was more recent and plainer, minimal carvings and mosaics. It's also called the tomb of philosophy as he used it as an escape (they tended to live in the complexes if finished before they died) from court happenings. I did notice some graffiti on the tomb itself at this site, it wasn't in a very good state of repair/restoration. There were however monkeys on the man made island as well as small steps and possibly a shrine, we weren't able to go over so it was from afar that I guessed. We got back pretty late so we rested and freshened up at the hotel, they gave us water and tea before we went to a local place and tried the local specials (which all include prawns, if you're vego and you don't eat seafood you're kinda screwed for many if the signature dishes) of Banh Beo (rice paste with dried prawn, shallots and a crisp piece of crackling served with soy sauce and Banh Khoai which is similar but steamed with pork in banana leaves. The lady who served us did us a deal with giving us half of each full meal so we could try them all. It wasn't very filling so we ducked into a corner store and grabbed a snack while we finished waiting for the transfer to arrive. We then flew to HaNoi and was met by a driver to check in at our hostel, same place we were when I started.