Hue's Imperial City

Today we had a lie in, sort of. I got up at half 8 and Lauren got up at 9:15. We got ready and went down for breakfast, same as yesterday. Then we walked over to Hue's Imperial City/citadel. It was so hot. It wasn't even that sunny, but we were sweating just standing in the sun.

During the Nguyen Dynasty, which ended in 1945, Hue was the capital city, ad the citadel was where the emperors lived. The citadel is on the UNESCO world heritage list. Construction started in 1804 and was completed in 1833. It was badly damaged in the war and has undergone major reconstruction. It's surrounded by moats and split into different quarters. One section was for royal ceremonies. There was a worshipping compound that contained 5 temples, a compound for the mother and grandmother of the emperor to live, an eastern internal affairs compound, the royal gardens for entertaining and relaxing, and the forbidden purple city where the emperor lived. Although the citadel looked quite large in the map we saw, when we wandered around I didn't think it was. Maybe we missed a large section out but we seemed to make it from one side to the other no trouble. We sat on a bench next to a pond for a while in the shade and wandered in and out of some nicely decorated and some not so well kept building. It was quite nice but I did get the impression that it needed a lot of a work doing. There were some particularly nice red and gold buildings, which are also the colours on the Vietnam flag, seen in the pictures, flying outside the citadel.

After having a good look round and getting very hot we headed back to the hostel where we sat with a drink for a while. Around 4pm we went to get our toe nails painted. It cost 20,000 dong. That's 72p. I bought a new pair of sunglasses for 70,000 dong, my third pair of sunglasses this trip. 

Then we went to the mandarin cafe next to our hostel for dinner. We had been buying drinks from there to takeaway and the old man was really nice, letting me off 1000 dong earlier as I didn't have the right change when I bought a drink. We had also seen it recommended in some reviews. I had sweet and sour chicken which was nice, but not anything like English sweet and sour. Lauren had chicken wings and chips.

After dinner we went and got head, shoulder, neck and back massages. They were about £11 each for 45 minutes. They were pretty good. Then we went back to the hostel, via the mandarin cafe for a drink, to sort ourselves out for moving on tomorrow.