We left on Monday, Oct 28 to Hue from Hoi An. The ride to Hanoi was only 5 hours, but it was filled with some of the best scenery that we had seen so far in Vietnam. We drove along the coastline up and down through the mountains. At some points, the bus was actually in the clouds. The bus stopped a couple of times along the way to allow us to take some tourist pictures and take in the extraordinary view.

We arrived in Hue in the afternoon and found a cheap hotel in the heart of the city. Our visit in Hue was going to be short (only 1 1/2 days) so we set out to see what we could as quickly as possible. We walked to the Forbidden Purple City in the centre of town, which was the former political capital of Vietnam before it was moved to Hanoi. The Purple city had been badly damaged by bombings during the war and unfortunately there was not that much left to see. That night we had dinner with a few British girls that we had met on the bus.

The next day we went on a river tour of some of the famous pagodas and temples. A dragon boat picked us up at the dock near our hotel and leisurely headed down the Perfume river. We first stopped at the Tien Mu Pagoda which was nice, but nothing special. We then stopped at tomb of the emporer Tu Duc. Unfortunately no one knows where within the grounds he is buried, since the 200 people that buried him were beheaded. Nevertheless the grounds were beautiful and we spent some time taking in the scenery.

Our next 2 stops were a small temple and another tomb. Both had a high entrance fee, so we decided to pass on them and head down to our final stop, the tomb of Minh Manh. This tomb also had large grounds, although not as large as Tu Duc's tomb. We spent 1 hour walking the grounds and taking some great pictures. In the afternoon we returned to our hotel and bumped into Jaime on the street. We ate dinner together and made plans to meet up again in Hanoi. We then grabbed our bags and said goodbye to Hue. We jumped on the overnight bus that was going to take us to Hanoi.