Saturday November 3, 2012
Gorgeous Afternoon at the Beach
Da Nang, Vietnam
Dat, our guide, took us to a long but wonderful day tour of the majical city of Hue. One of the highlights of the tour was a rickshaw ride to the Forbidden City or Citadel. Hue was for a very long time the capital of Vietnam and where the Emperor resided. The first Emperor seemed to be a great guy but his ancestors gradually became weak, culminating in the last Emperor who fled to France after the Viet Cong took over the country.
But before they became "weak" they built a Citadel which is a replica (albiet smaller) of the Forbidden City in China. But unlike the Forbidden City in Beijing which faces south, the forbidden city in Hue faces East. It's quite beautiful albeit many of the buildings were destroyed during the Vietnam War. It's my understanding that the American forces were first told not to bomb the Citadel but during the Tet offensive when casualties started to mount, many of those restrictions were lifted.
Our tour to the Citadel started with a Rickshaw ride through Hue and into the Citadel. What was very cool is that we found out that Dat lived in the Citadel. It was pretty cool to get on the rickshaw and get dropped off in front of the main entrance to the Citadel
We started our rickshaw ride on a quite street in Hue. Dat is in the rickshaw in front of us.
Soon we were in the hustle and bustle of the city (ps. those are my shoes)
And then we crossed a bridge
And got stuck in traffice
Before we knew it we were crossing the first moat into the Citadel
Where folks were fishing at the first moat.
Once in the Citadel, the atmosphere was lively.
And we saw the aftermath of an accident
Then when we turned a corner the atmosphere changed
We passed an army museum which the rickshaw driver did not want to talk about.
And all of a sudden we were in a quiet and serene neighborhood which was beautiful
We then got off the rickshaw and entered the Citadel for our tour. This is one of the few buildings that survived the Tet offensive.
Bullet holes from the Tet offensive.
Grasslands where buildings used to stand
But what was left was beautiful
It must have been an amazing place when all the buildings were in tact. The citadel was very well organized where concubines lived in one section, mandarins in another and in the old days they even had eunuchs!
Next stop (via car) on our agenda was the famous pagoda of Hue. It is called the Heavenly Lady Pagoda that resides between a forest and the Perfume River. It is one of the prettiest Pagoda's I've ever seen. The grounds are quite beautiful also. The monks that live there practice Mahayana Buddhism and were very active against the South Vietnamese government when Buddhists were persecuted. The grounds also house the Austin Martin, which a monk drove to Saigon and conducted self-immolation. This act drew attention to the world about the plight of Buddhists in Vietnam during the corrupt South Vietnamese govt rule.
The Austin Martin
Mauseleum to the founder of the Temple
More to come on Hue, a very special city.