Hue 2

Sunday morning I awoke to another "You reek" from a Patti. Nice big garlic cloves in my dinner on Saturday night! Yeah! At breakfast we were greeted with a very large fruit spread and were able to sample many of the local product.

We decided to get a guide for today to get a little deeper into the local and national history and culture. Bang was his name and he did a great job. He is a freelance tour guide and says it's really paying off because he did not have to buy his job. The best jobs are with the government but you have to buy your way in.

He took us to the tombs of three kings from the Nguyen Dynasty. The first and most impressive was from the 12th of 13 kings. The last king abdicated the throne and essentially self exiled to France for the rest of his years. The 12th king was stripped of power and relegated to the position of a puppet and decided he was going to build a grand legacy in the form of a tomb modeled after the Palace of Versailles. To finance this he gained permission from the French to tax his people at 30% for which they loved him...not.

I was not going to have any pictures of this because the signs said no pictures, but my guide said to take them, those signs were for professionals who would sell the images. So, I took a few. Them someone approached me and said that my camera will be taken, stop taking pictures. Maybe I misunderstood my guide??

We saw a bride and groom outside having their wedding pictures taken. The red symbolizes happiness, the yellow is for power.

The girls dressed up at one of the tomb-sites in the traditional gowns of the princess at sat on the imperial throne. They had a ton of fun as you might expect.

Our guide today also had two daughters and he had fun with ours along the way. At the end of the day he posed them for this picture and then was coaching them for a better shot. At one point he said "Smile now, look really sexy." He definitely lost a little in translation. He said that he really appreciates when Western tourists bring their kids, especially two girls, because it shows that just having healthy children is the most important even if you have no boys.

As we neared the end of our touring for the day, Riley said that this is the hottest day of her whole life. Normally, 99.9999% of the time when kids say something to that effect it is an exaggeration, we have now found the 00.0001%.

We headed out again at about 4:30 when the temp dropped to a nice cool 90 and hit the Dong Bu Market. It was strangely similar to one of the markets we visited in Hanoi. Here the girls are looking out over the corrugated steel tent city that is this markets version of the super dome.

As far as I can tell, the Vietnamese are a very enterprising bunch. You cannot go 100 meters without running into a small business, or maybe more appropriately, a micro business.

Here is a woman selling gas to those who happen to putter out at this light.

How about this guy. Ready to fix a flat, twist the wrench in his hand and sell a little re-bottled water if he can.

Our 'wear it for two days in a row program' is not holding up under the heat and humidity. Sticky and not really smelly for some reason, except for my garlic breathe, is our new status quo. I am heading out soon, a little after 9:00 pm, to see if our laundry is done.

All images in the 2014 Hue album linked at the right.