Day 5 - Imperial City Walking Tour

This morning started a little later than normal, woke a little after 5, but didn't have to head out until much later so was able to relax for a bit before heading down to get breakfast. The hotel offered a buffet breakfast as part of our stay which was nice, and a lot more options than the hotel we had in Da Nang.

After breakfast we went back to our rooms to relax a little before our guided walk of the Imperial City. We headed off about 10:15 to make our way towards the Imperial City, despite not needing to be there for some time, but this gave us time look around and check out some markets before making our way to the Imperial City.

We met our guide Nhi who talked to us about what to expect from the day and explained to us about the 4 canons where we met, each Canon represents a different season, then she talked about the other five canons which represent the Five Elements (Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth), they symbolise the Nguyen Dynasty's power and harmony with nature. We weren't the only ones on our tour, we had two others join us, an English guy named Ben and a German girl came Anh.

We made our way through the Imperial as Nhi explained the history of the place, the history of of the kings and why there is no longer a king in Vietnam. The kings reigned from 1802 to 1945, at one point they had 3 kings within a year, one of whom only lasted 3 days, while there was a bit of French influence with some of the kings taking rule, essentially in 1945 the 13th king decided to step down from the monarchy, this essentially led Vietnam to become the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1976.

We continued through lots of other parts of the city. As it's now a UNESCO protected place a lot of funding has come their way to restore a lot of the city, some of the places have already been restored however there are still plenty of parts the city that restoration is either starting on or needs to start on, for those where it's started, Nhi kept saying come back in 10 years to see how different it is.

After the tour we headed to a place for lunch that a random guy who we had met in the morning suggested, we ordered only to find out that what we had ordered were just essentially the flavours to add to our meal which was essentially just rice paper, even though it wasn't what we expected, it wasn't bad.

Went for a swim, while mucking around a smacked my head on the bottom of the pool and took a chunk of skin off my head. That made my swim very short, after pulling the skin down and straightening it out a bit I was able to pull it back over the grazed part, I was able to paddle around a little in the pool provided I didn't get my head up the water. Headed back up to the room and I was able to grab a Bandaid to patch up my head.

A quick rest before heading out to Dinner at Madam Thu 2 restaurant, a restaurant that Nhi had suggest trying out. It was just a 10 minute walk from our hotel and as we walked there we found a lot of food spots on the way, it would have been helpful if we had known that 2 days ago when we were hunting around looking for a good food spot, turns out we had gone in the total opposite direction the previous day.

The meal was enjoyable, Mike struck up a conversation with the table next to us, as well as the waitress that served us Nah or goes by Hannah in English, she has lived in Hue her entire life, she speaks English pretty well and Mike let her know that, she didn't think she did, but we all assured her she did and Mike said she's doing the right thing just speaking it to her guests as it will help. After dinner we took a walk trying to find a bank machine that would work for me, walking down a street by the river we came across one of the giant snails that I had stood on the other day. I could see why the one from the other day made such a crunch when I stood on it. We ended up having to go to the bank I used the other day, thankfully only a block or so away from the hotel, then went and got an Icecreme before heading back to the hotel for the night.