Chuc Mung Nam Moi!

(Vietnamese for happy new year - tonight is the lunar new years eve in Hoi An! Fireworks and dancing for us.)

Since our last entry we spent 2 days in Hue, in central Vietnam. Three highlights here. The first was the Imperial City & Forbidden Palace, from which various emperors ruled Vietnam when Hue was the capital city. It was built in 1805 or something like that.

That night we had a Royal Banquet at a special restaurant where they dressed us up in the clothes of the king/queen/court officals, played traditional music and gave us a meal fit for kings. Bek and I, as the only couple in our tour group of 12, got to be king and queen for the night. I tried giving some orders but nobody took me seriously. Great food and a fun but cheesy night, for the princely sum (for Vietnam) of $US11.

The next day we saw some countryside around Hue in the best way possible - on the back of a motorbike. We saw the oldest bridge in Hue next to a market; some old French and American bunkers on top of a strategic hill; learnt how to make incense and the iconic conical hats; had an amazing vegetarian lunch made by female monks at a pagoda in a small rural village; and mediated (i.e. had an after-lunch nap on bamboo mats) in their pagoda. At one point we had to jump off the motorbikes so that we could cross a dangerous-looking bamboo bridge with a seemingly random construction technique. We also went to one of seven emperor's tombs - an impressive but dilapitated site where one of the 13 emperors who ruled Vietnam about 150 years ago is buried, along with his top "mandarins" (court officials). They have the honour of being able to kill themselves and be buried alonside him when he dies, so that they can serve him in the afterlife (and also keep the secret of where he is buried). Some people get all the luck.

Then we had some down time, an Indian dinner, and karaoke. The less said about that the better.