We were met this morning by Minh and his friend Sinh outside our hotel at 9am, it was supposed to be 8 but we asked if we could have a lie in!
We hopped on the back of the bikes and headed off to begin our 5 hour tour of some of the cities historic sites. We did the city 1 tour but the order was slightly different, we did
The hill (bunker)
Tu Hieu Pagoda
Tu Ducs Tomb
Thien mu pagoda
Japanese Bridge
We didn't do the citadel as we asked for a lie in and it was raining quite heavily in the afternoon so wouldn't have been much fun anyway.
So we made our way to the Hill first which was a key strategic location in both the French war and American war (brief history lesson..Vietnam was colonised by the French for a while, and it was the French who built the bunkers in this hill, the Americans then had to come up the river and take this Hill from the Vietcong before they could control Hue which is a major key location in Vietnam for transportation etc)
It was a fairly somber place, the beauty of the countryside and the incredible view of Hamburger Hill and the sweeping valley in front of us was starkly juxtaposed by the concrete and barb wire bunkers that were pockmarked with gun shot and mortar rounds, there was also a young Vietnamese woman, late teens early 20's, crying her heart out uncontrollably as she sat looking out across the river, she was very clearly someone educated in the true history of the place and it was a very moving soundtrack to this experience.
This is the only war related thing we have experienced here and I'm glad of it, neither of us are ignorant to what took place we just wanted to come here and experience Vietnamese culture and life today, not spend time reflecting on something that the Vietnamese want to move past. The American war is barely taught at school and many of the under 10's have no real awareness of what happened... The Vietnamese have a saying "we built a bridge and we got over it"
All of the trees were planted by the government in the late 90's as all of the natural woodland was incinerated by Napalm.
We then headed off to the Tu Hieu Pagoda which was an exhilarating 20 minute bike ride away.
Tu Hieu is a pagoda and Buddhist monastery that was the home of an emperor called Tu Hieu, he was a recluse and never left the pagoda once he had completed it, he never married or had any children and was a vegetarian.....bit boring if you ask me!
A house of Buddhist monks now live here and we were lucky enough to be here at a time when they were chanting
Minh is an excellent tour guide and his English is brilliant so he was able to explain things really well and answer questions clearly and thoughtfully, not bad for someone who has never been to school!
After some time spent wandering around this really beautiful place we got back on mthe bikes and headed for Tu Ducs tomb, this guy was a bit more rock n roll!
Location:Hue
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