Windy wet Wednesday…

But still fairly delightful. Walked to a pagoda, lunched, postcarded, napped, read, dinnered. Not too exciting.

Broke down and took my first taxi today. Just couldn’t face the rain right then.

Also I ordered something with absolutely no idea what it might be. Crab soup with pork, it turns out. Not awful but not my favorite either.

Off to Da Nang tomorrow. There’s a giant Buddha so that’ll be cool.

Here’s todays pictures

Froggy liked that durian candy. Also it was gone today so at least someone enjoyed it!

The lime green poncho was a big hit today with the locals

I was lucky to see the flag raising. I can’t imagine how much it must weigh wet

I had wandered in here a while until a vicious little dog chased me out

I was intrigued to find a Carmelite order. The gate was closed of course, but here’s a link with a short blurb about it…

http://globalsistersreport.org/news/spirituality/vietnamese-women-follow-st-teresa-avila%E2%80%99s-spirituality-29886

It only looked neglected. The gate that the locals used was in good repair

And just a few feet away, this place. Linh Mu temple. Very busy, very clean, lots of monks

The pagoda had no admission so the place was crawling with tourists in buses

The Perfume River was full. A gal that works at the hostel said that her street was flooded

After just 3 days of rain the grass was so green

The Thien Mu pagoda is also called the Linh Mu pagoda. It actually belongs to the Temple I saw down the street

I bought some postcards here. The gal had to go get change so she left me in charge for 5 minutes. I felt very important

Thats all for today, folks

Super, rainy day…

It was both an adventure, and rainy, and super. Wait, What?

Anyway, I rented a bike again. LOL will I ever learn? Probably not.

The mission today was a tomb of one of the Nguyen emperors, Tu Duc. The bike was great, a cruiser this time. The site, not far at all. The weather, no problem. A little rain wont hurt me, right?

hahahahahaha

It didn’t. I was worried about my 700 dollar personal computer in my pocket. so that make my rainy bike rides a little more stressful. Also, I decided to go back a different way. I can trust Google maps, right?

hahahahahaha

I got so rained on my underwear was wet. After lunch, I needed to find shoes, bc mine were now basically garbage.

Apparently, I have no ability to learn any lesson, bc after drying out and changing clothes I went right back out in the rain on the bike again. No shoes found.

So now I’m in my last dry outfit. What do you imagine happened next? Yes, friends, I went out in the rain again. wtf. This time, walking, mission accomplished.

I felt a snack attack, so off I headed to the Big C. Foreign snack tasting party!! And beer.

Here’s hoping I have dry pants tomorrow.

How about some pictures?

I don’t know why people pay to go to pagodas. There’s some on the way somewhere else, for goodness sake

With the rain and the wind in the pines, it was peaceful and private feeling

So when I rolled in to the street outside the tourist attraction, this gal saw me coming. She got me for bike parking, a coffee, and rented me her personal umbrella.

This is the empress’s tomb. Note the Phoenix

He never had kids, so most of his listed accomplishments were scholastic in nature

This is the road back to town, according to my dumb ass and Google maps

This is made by the Heineken company. Still good

All the snacks worth eating are gone, and so are 3 beers. Goodnight.

Hue is Amazing…

Oh man what a day. First of all, I sweated my balls off today. And that’s saying something.

Breakfast at the hostel was great. Not free, but as always the portion size was perfect. Eggs, toast, fruit, and coffee.

I had a nice chat with a hostel employee about her dream of becoming a teacher. She wants to teach English, literature not the language. In California. That’s a big dream.

I wandered down to the waterfront on the way to pre-buy my next train ticket. Lots of sculpture in the park.

Some old guy asked me to buy him a coffee lol so I did. We talked for a while. He said that because he was in the army in the war his kids had a hard time getting jobs. He had some negative comments about the Communist Party. That really surprised me. I’m guessing that he wasn’t a north Vietnamese soldier or a party member, ever.

Food and coffee are cheaper here than in Hanoi, if that’s possible. A coffee is only 10,000 dong, not 20 or more.

The Citadel neighborhood surrounds The Hue Imperial Palace. I spent a few hours there. We bombed the hell out of that place in the late 60’s and they are still rebuilding. It’ll take a while; we did a thorough job of it.

Lunch was the local specialty Bun Bo Hue. Pretty good!

Next was a short walk to an art gallery. Not really a gallery, bc nothing was for sale. But interesting still. No pics of the art of course.

More riverfront walking until the boat-trip sellers chased me away. I found a thoroughly disreputable street and strolled for a while. This little stand in an interesting alley was selling battered deep-fried banana slices. For 2000 dong I was served this magical treat on an old calendar page as a napkin. Fantastic! Just a little later I found bubble tea, but not just bubble tea. Popping Tea. I can’t describe it.

Ok I’ll try.

Milk tea with ice, white tapioca balls, a shot of espresso, 8 different kinds of jellies, some chunks of soft stuff that taste kinda like strawberry&vanilla&banana&chocolate…it was nothing more or less than a banana split flavored iced bubble tea espresso shake.

UNBELIEVABLE for only one buck.

So at this point I’m full of snacks, and it’s awesome.

On the way back, I finally see what passes for the Walmart and buy toothpaste and a dragonfruit, and conditioner for my rat’s nest, and by that I mean hair. Why are other countries mega-marts so cool?

I return to find clean clothes and the dragonfruit makes a tasty dinner.

Life is good.

Here’s todays pictures

The tiny banana had seeds and was very banana-ey flavored. Does that make sense?

Off season is construction season, or reconstruction season in this case

All around the Imperial Palace are these nice grounds

Here’s the entrance to the palace. The middle passage was bigger, because that’s the one that the elephants used. No I didn’t make that up.

I think the rain kept a lot of people away today

There was a little display of replica imperial seals. A lot of them ( the real ones) are in France now of course. why? they were made of solid gold

The grounds are very muddy so I’m glad these corridors have been rebuilt

You can see here where they stabilized this doorway

All along both sides are photos of the compound before 1945. That’s the end of this particular empire.

These ducks cracked me up for some reason

This is further back in the complex, the emperor’s quarters

A lot of the queen mother’s area survived

This was a woman’s compound bc the Phoenix motif was everywhere

The five-clawed dragon specifically is the symbol of the Nguyen empire

The adult in me didn’t let the child in me climb on this

Big C is the name of the chain, cheap shit for cheap. Just what I needed

These grocery stores have escalators. Why does this please me?

Long Train Ride…

And…no problemo. The ability to get up and wander back and forth made 11 hours fly by. Also, a little tv played a bunch of random content. Also, I read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, and Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein. Also, I got up and took pics regularly.

Here they are..