This morning we departed on our bike ride to the countryside of Hue. We stopped at an incense shop where we took turns in constructing our own incense stick.
After a quick break we headed off to where the fourth Emperor Tu Duc went to admire the view of the Perfume River with his wife. The views were spectacular. Emperor Tu Duc was king of Vietnam from 1847 to 1883. On the way we saw a bunker used to protect the area from the Americans during the Vietnam War.
Another short bike ride and we ended up at King Tu Duc’s tomb where we saw the burial site of him and his Queen. Although he had only one queen, the Emperor had 136 wives! The king ordered the construction of his tomb and surrounds, an area of 12 hectares, in preparation for his death and it was constructed from 1864 to 1867. We all had some free time to walk around and take in the history and beautiful sites. We were all starting to feel hungry and luckily a vegetarian lunch at a local Buddhist pagoda had been arranged. Most people were a bit ‘iffy’ about the food at first but ended up thoroughly enjoying it. After a fifteen minute ride back to the hotel, we had some free time to get snacks for the train ride to Hanoi.
We hopped on the bus for a short journey to the train station. Our 15 hour train trip left at 3.30pm.
When we got on the train, I think we all agreed that the rooms were a lot smaller than we expected for them to be. After an hour on the train, we passed the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) which was the border between North and South Vietnam during the war. We were split into rooms of four people and we spent some time mingling and went to bed at 8:30 ready for the 4:30 am wake up.
Sophie B and Darcy N