Down Perfume River

Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Hue, Vietnam
Tomb and Temple day. Set off at 8am to take a trip down river with a group of 20 or so fellow travellers to see the tombs and temples which are prolific along this river. It seems every Emperor built his own personal temple or tomb using geomancy to determine the location and of course the river was very important to them. The journey down river was slow and on the way we were passed by several small boats laden down to the water line with sand. Not sure how you would define these boats, sampans? They seem to be family affairs with a man a woman and a younger man in each. The vietnamese are so busy building things around Hue they need a constant supply of building sand and this is how it is supplied. The ingenious way they get the sand we found out later as we went further down river. We came to a section of river where about 5 or 6 boats were anchored out in the stream. Great jets of water spurted over the side of the boats through a screen of some sort and we could see a small pile of sand in the bottom of the boat. Ingenious Vietnamese using the river as a source of building supplies and as a highway and delivery system.
We visited four or five tombs and temples and after the first one we had to walk about a kilometer along a road to get to the next . It was gruelling for me but gave me the chance to see the most remarkable carpenters workshop you could hope to see. See photo's. This man was making bed ends.
The temples blended into one another after a while and the guide was very hard to follow and had the unfortunate habit of repeating the last two words of every sentence, every sentence.
After a few temple visits we had lunch on the boat, fried fish for me and it was one of the best things i've eaten here. Sitting opposite were two Canadians who were working their way round the world. From Ottawa they were in their late 30's and had been travelling for six months working as Woofers in Tasmania and Queensland and staying in low cost accommodation. In Hue they were paying $8 a night, with AC and hot water.
Halfway through our trip we changed from boat to bus and visited a village that specialises in conical hats, the sort you see in rural asian scenes. I had bought one at the Citadel for $4 and when it rained later in the day it came into its own.
Tomorrow we return to Hoi An to meet up with my daughter and my sister and other odd members of the family for brother in laws 80th birthday, should be a quiet riot.

http://www.vietscape.com/travel/hue/tombs.html
http://huongviettravel.com/VietNam/guides/19/hue-province.html
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