Day 168 (Fri 22 Dec) - Hue
This morning Sarb woke up with a serious crick in his neck. The kind where when you want to look at something you have to turn your whole upper body!
Had brekky at a small coffee house nearby and then tried to find where the place was we had to book our tickets to Hoi An.
Walked to the Citadel. The walled city was crammed with beautiful buildings, gardens, ponds and walkways. Absolutely beautiful place ( [1], [2], [3], [4] ); must have looked quite something in its heyday. As it is there were quite a few gangs of people working on restoring the buildings.
The tanks of water just by the entrance were full of shiny orange carp. For a small amount of money you could buy some feed for them. Some tourists did so and when they threw the feed in the surface of the water simply churned with orange fish.
Also saw some sad looking elephants tethered in a grassy square.
Had a coke outside the Citadel walls and then wandered down to the harbour area of Hoi An. Here we managed to hire a boat from a woman for a few hours to take us up the Perfume river to the pagoda.
The boat was quite large and we sat in the airy cabin while the family that owned the boat sat at the front. Clearly a real house boat being used to earn a little extra money. At the front mum was rocking a baby swinging in a hammock whilst a small cute dog, tethered, tried to catch the hammock with its mouth as it swung past. We chugged up the river to the pagoda where we got out and had a walk round. The sun was beginning to set and the views from the Pagoda out over the river were excellent.
Headed back to our boat and chugged back to the harbour. The woman with whom we had arranged the boat seemed very put out that during the whole of the trip, while she constantly pestered us to buy something 'A postcard...a shirt...a picture' we bought nothing.
Back at the harbour we wandered back to our hotel, changed and then went to the Mandarin for dinner.
En route we passed Hue's best hotel all decked out with Christmas decorations and carol singers out front. Really weird to think that here we were in Vietnam listening to carol singers giving 'Jingle Bells' their best effort.
Had brekky at a small coffee house nearby and then tried to find where the place was we had to book our tickets to Hoi An.
Walked to the Citadel. The walled city was crammed with beautiful buildings, gardens, ponds and walkways. Absolutely beautiful place ( [1], [2], [3], [4] ); must have looked quite something in its heyday. As it is there were quite a few gangs of people working on restoring the buildings.
The tanks of water just by the entrance were full of shiny orange carp. For a small amount of money you could buy some feed for them. Some tourists did so and when they threw the feed in the surface of the water simply churned with orange fish.
Also saw some sad looking elephants tethered in a grassy square.
Had a coke outside the Citadel walls and then wandered down to the harbour area of Hoi An. Here we managed to hire a boat from a woman for a few hours to take us up the Perfume river to the pagoda.
The boat was quite large and we sat in the airy cabin while the family that owned the boat sat at the front. Clearly a real house boat being used to earn a little extra money. At the front mum was rocking a baby swinging in a hammock whilst a small cute dog, tethered, tried to catch the hammock with its mouth as it swung past. We chugged up the river to the pagoda where we got out and had a walk round. The sun was beginning to set and the views from the Pagoda out over the river were excellent.
Headed back to our boat and chugged back to the harbour. The woman with whom we had arranged the boat seemed very put out that during the whole of the trip, while she constantly pestered us to buy something 'A postcard...a shirt...a picture' we bought nothing.
Back at the harbour we wandered back to our hotel, changed and then went to the Mandarin for dinner.
En route we passed Hue's best hotel all decked out with Christmas decorations and carol singers out front. Really weird to think that here we were in Vietnam listening to carol singers giving 'Jingle Bells' their best effort.
posted by Jo and Sarb at
12/22/2006 07:05:00 am
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