Exploring Hue

Hue is the ancient capital of Vietnam, the king lived here in the forbidden city, which was modeled after China's forbidden city. Not far from the city center (an hour and a half boat ride for us) is Tu Duc's tomb, the king's summer home and final testing place. Apparently a group of men were volunteered to bury the king and then were killed so no one would know exactly where the king's body lay. (Another factoid I found interesting was that though Tu Duc had 20 wives, he had zero children. You don't have to work in infertility to put 2 and 2 together!)

Because of Hue's history, there are a lot more foreigners walking around than I expected, but people still are amused by our group of 14, and I can't blame them! We definitely stand out, especially in our bright orange matching shirts and scrubs.

The view from our hotel:

Mopeds... the family station wagon, and they are everywhere!. Top number of people I've seen on one so far is 5 - 2 parents and 3 kids.

LaRelle pointed this tree out to us. One day a year people appease the kitchen god by filling bowls and other kitchen items with their sins and throwing them at the tree, so all around this tree are the remnants.

We took a ride on this exciting dragon boat up the river to King Tu Duc's tomb. There are tons of these boats up and down the river that runs through Hue, and the families that own these and give tours on them also live on them. (You can see laundry hanging up in the back of many of them!)

The grounds at Tu Duc's tombsite and summer palace.