Our Day in Hue.

We arrived in Hue in the late afternoon, and it was hot. Too hot to consider going anywhere that didn't have air-conditioning. So we holed up in our hotel room and caught up on email and bloggery.

The first sunset we've seen in many months. Hanoi is either
overcast or there are too many buildings in the way for us to enjoy
sunsets, moon, or stars. We've missed them.

In the morning, our guide met us at the hotel and took us on a tour
of the city, starting with the most important Buddhist temple.
Hue was the old imperial capital of Vietnam until 1945, and is still
considered the major intellectual and artistic center. Everyone also
told us that the food was the best in the country.
Alas, we did not find this to be true.

The temple and monastery is built on a beautiful stretch of the Perfume River.

It's still very much in use as a center of worship.

We were able to meet some of the novices training to become monks.

And to visit their kitchen.

The monk who burned himself to death in 1965
in protest of the Diem regime came from this monastery.
He drove to Saigon in this car.
We tend to forget that 16 Americans also burned themselves
to death to protest U.S. policy in Vietnam, beginning with
Norman Morrison, a Quaker, also in 1965.

The grounds are lovely and tranquil.

The roof decorations are particularly vivid on the temples here,
usually using colorful ceramic tiles.

Bats are a symbol of good luck, as they should be.

Next, we visited the famous Citadel, site of some of the
most vicious fighting of the Tet Offensive, which is
known here as the Mau Than (Year of the Monkey) Victory.

This is also the site of the palace of the emperors of Vietnam. The huge area,
bounded by a moat and a formidable wall, housed about 40,000 people,
and included the Forbidden Purple City, where only the Emperor,
his wives and concubines and their female servants, and a corps of eunuchs
were allowed. There were 15 emperors in the imperial dynasty.
The last one relinquished power to Ho Chi Minh in 1945.

In France, we had a guide on a tour of the Loire valley who pronounced "nobles" as "nobbles." This has been a running joke for O. and I ever since: Barnes and Nobble, etc. Our guide in Hue had excellent English, but pronounced "dynasty" to rhyme with "the nasty," leading to many bad jokes.

Much of the Citadel and the Forbidden City was destroyed during the war,
but the South Gate and the palace survived intact.

There are great roof decorations.

You can don silk robes and have your photo taken in one of the palace's
anterooms. Very popular with the Vietnamese tourists.

And then there are the Ten Judicious Kings of Hell.

Next we visited the tomb of Emperor Tu Duc, who reigned until 1883.
In Vietnamese culture, it is the duty of the emperor's children to build
a tomb for their parents. Tu Duc had over 100 wives,but no children, due to a
childhood bout of smallpox. Therefore, he had to build his own tomb.

Having completed what is much more like a second palace than a tomb,
complete with gardens and a lake, a good 15 years before his death,
he used the tomb as a retreat and hunting lodge, enclosing birds and deer
in a small area for some Cheney-style shooting.
No word if he ever shot anyone in the face, but after his death,
all those involved in his burial were executed, so no one is sure
to this day where he is actually interred!

Tu Duc was a melancholic aesthete and spared no expense (or forced labor)
to make his tomb a beautiful work of art. Later he felt bad about things like this
and about handing the country to the French and declared that he would
remain in his tomb for only 10,000 years instead of for eternity in penance.

The rich truly are different than you and I.

P.