Walked around town all day seeing the various sights
Breakfast at a very narrow french patisserie supporting children from poor families to get a trade and a future job
Citadel of Hué (Imperial City) – smaller version of Forbidden City in Beijing. A large number of compounds within a 2km x 2km walled complex. Only about 150-200 years old, but fascinating to see the old architecture, and grandiose buildings (even though more than 3/4 don’t exist any more – the result of the American War in 1968 where this was the scene of major fighting – see among others the film “Full Metal Jacket”).
We had lunch in an upscale french/vietnamese restaurant (Les Jardins de la Carambole) – lovely food, and great G+Ts (for lunch).
Found a taxi to drive us to Chùa Thiên Mụ (Thien Mu Pagoda) – this is part of a Buddhist monastery on the west end of town – the pagoda is the largest of its type in Vietnam, and the gardens particularly peaceful (with lots of Bonzai trees and blooming flowers to no end). This is also the monastery where Thich Quang Duc left from who in the summer of 1963 set himself on fire in Saigon as protest to persecution of the Buddhist clergy by then then regime (the pictures of this made worldwide news).
Given the pagoda was 5+km out of town center, we had ourselves cycled back in a cyclo (rickshaw) – it was a pleasant 5km though we did have a guilty conscious about the poor man cycling (with cigarette in hand)….
We went to the train station to reserve train tickets from DaNang to HCMC in a week – after much discussion with the lady (who spoke fairly good english), we ended up with a train ticket with “soft sleeper” on Sunday 4th March – leaving at 8am in Danang and arriving in Saigon at 2:30 in the morning – all other trains were pretty much booked out already….
The evening was spent in the “tourist” part of town again where we met Dan (a young brit who started in October 2016 from Portsmouth (England) cycling and wants to get to Singapore – Australia – NZ) and Benedikt (?) a young radio announcer from Quebec traveling alone through Vietnam for a month.
Other pictures
