Hue - Emperial City

Dragon Boats on the Perfume River, the old Emperial City, the inner Citadel with all it's tempels and Royal Buildings, tombs and pagodas - Hue has a lot of stunning sights.

The Noontime Gate of the inner Citadel with Vietnam's highest national flag behind it - more of that later. Inside the Royal Enclosure I felt like at the movie sets of "The last Emperor"! And not without reason: the Hue citadel was built after the example of Peking's Forbidden City (where also the movie was set), so it must resemble it quite a bit.










Today the Hue Festival 2012 starts! A week's event of music and dance, show and - lots of decoration!

More lanterns waiting to be hung up behind some door.

We're still getting some heavy rain clouds of the taifoon that passed Vietnam's shore towards South.

At 37 m height this flag is the highest one of the country. The flagstone builds the middle of the southern front of the Citadel with its 10 km circumference.

(Just a word of notice at this point: Of course all of my photographs are taken at at least 5 MP, so they are about 3 MB in size. Because the internet here is not extremely reliable at times though (and also for copy right reasons), I size them down to this size, that's why especially the dark parts suffer extremely. If you are interested in the originals, let me know under lisarababa@yahoo.de)

Unfortunately we couldn't get tickets for tonight's Opening Ceremony any more. But last night we could steal a glimpse on the rehearsal at the majestic Noontime Gate.

The outer citadel walls.

Typical food of Hue!

And of course it wouldn't be us if we didn't try something new again. We strolled past this restaurant and saw a lot of old men with these flaming bowls in front of them! Of course we immediately sat down and ordered the same. And this is what it was: Soup that gets put on a plate with alcohol, put a flame to it, let it burn down, and inside is: vegetable soup! But the -- haha!! EASTER - surprise is a bit further to the bottom: The infamous Vietnamese specialty of HALFBRED EGGS or fertilized duck embryo ("Balut"). I tried a bit of mine (o wonder, it tastes like egg and chicken - at the same time! ;-), but when I discovered a tiny head, I couldn't eat on. Holger finished his - including some feathery extra crisp!

Yes, that on the right side on the plate, that's the egg. Or embryo. Or whatever.

Some fruit?

Yesterday we had wonderful sunshine and hired a scooter!


Everything is decorated for the festival - here the Nam Giao Esplenade, where tomorrow a Offering Ritual will be held (no more animal sacrifices nowadays ;-).

Khai Dinh Tomb:





Minh Mang Tomb:





Thien Mu Pagoda:

Here you can see the original car, that the monk Thich Quang Duc used to go from Hue to Saigon in 1963 to burn himself alive in the street to protest against the regime's policies of discriminating against Buddhists and violating religious freedom.

You might have seen this photograph before:

After digesting this, Thien Mu is a very peaceful place with a magnificent view:


Banh Mi (filled Baguette) with a view!