Today was a driving day, with over 4 hours between Hoi An and Hue. Hue is like Vietnam’s Rome… the history village.

It was the capital of the country for a couple of hundred years from 1809 onwards, with the king’s weekday and weekend palaces here. During the war, however, the Pink Palace, which was the main palace, was bombed extensively by the Americans. It’ll take another 20 years for it to be restored.

We had a look at the undamaged weekend palace. But first, we stopped at a marble carving place.

Robin told us about the superstition surrounding the laughing Buddha.
“If you want your child to be smart, you rub the Laughing Buddha’s head and then rub your child’s head. If you want your child to be rich, you rub the Laughing Buddha’s tummy and then rub your child’s tummy. If you want your child to be a tour guide, you rub the Laughing Buddha’s mouth…” and he grinned.

I have a tiny collection of religious figurines… weird for an atheist, I know, so I went hunting for a little Buddha. I found one made from tigers-eye. I forgot to snap a photo before she wrapped it up, sorry. I’ll show it to you when I get home.

We set off along the road to Danone and Hue. The sea is the South China Sea, though in Vietnam it’s called something else.

As we drove along, Robin regaled us with some interesting facts about astrology and relationships up in the mountains.

In the countryside, fortune tellers and astrology are very important. The fortune tellers are mainly men, which surprised me a bit. City people don’t pay it as much mind as the country people do.

When a new building is being built, the fortune teller will decide which day to start and which brick to lay first.

First day of the year, someone from the Rooster or Buffalo years should enter first for good luck. People line up a friend or neighbour born in the appropriate years to do this. Robin said, “People from every other year tend to stay at home on the first day of the year. They’re too scared they’ll give someone bad luck if they’re accidentally the first guest in their house!”

Dating someone? In the country, if your signs don’t match up, they try to break you up. In the cities, it isn’t taken seriously.
Foreigners can only buy apartments in Vietnam, and only for 50 years. Sounds more like a lease to me…

Danang is the 3rd biggest city in Vietnam, with 1.3 million people. It has a casino, but only foreigners are allowed in. You have to show your passport. Eastern retirees prefer this city, while Westerners prefer Hoi An.

Danang was a huge US base during the war.

We were driving through the mountains when Robin mentioned the Love Market. Naturally, we were all intrigued by this.
“It’s hard for boys and girls to meet each other in the mountains,” he said. “It’s not like in the city where you meet at a bar or club. There’s so much distance between villages. So on Saturdays, it’s a normal market during the day, but at night it becomes a place where families bring their sons and daughters to meet. It’s called the Love Market. If a girl and a boy talk and get to love each other, they get married.”

”Oh” he said. “ I forgot to say that before they get married, the boy has to kidnap the girl and keep her in his room for 3 days and feed her breakfast, lunch and dinner. If she eats all the food, she is saying yes. At the end of the 3 days, he has to let her go, whether she accepts or refuses him, it doesn’t matter. He has to let her go.”

This island with all of the houses on it is where Vietnam houses its lepers. There aren’t as many people suffering from leprosy as there have been in the past, but it still exists here.

The last king in Vietnam abdicated in 1945. He is buried 500m from the Eiffel Tower in Paris. When he got married, he promised his wife that she would be his only wife.

He didn’t exactly keep that promise, having 13 wives in total. His last wife was french.

Still, that was positively restrained when you consider that the average number of wives the kings had was around 100.

Every night, the king was presented with a table with all the wives names and he’d select which women he wanted to sleep with that night. Eunuchs grew rich with the bribes the wives gave them to put their names forward. It was important to give the king a child. When he died, the wives who were childless were buried alive with him.

One king was famous for sleeping with 6 wives on the one night and getting 5 of them pregnant. He ended up having 165 children.

When the kin selected the lucky ladies, they would be brought to him, wrapped naked in blankets “ like spring rolls,” said Robin. “ So they couldn’t bring weapon to kill the king.”

I’ve been cropping out the litter left everywhere, but this is how much of the space looks. It’s a shame, because this place is so beautiful, but you see evidence of human plastics and paper just about everywhere.

After lunch, we went for a boat ride on the Perfumed River. So named because back in the day, there were many apricot trees upriver, and when the fruit fell into the water, the river was scented.

There was a shop on the boat. Immediately, all the women snapped into gear. After yesterday’s effort, I wasn’t going to buy anything, but when I saw that fridge magnets were $2:40 AUS, I bought one.

I’m only human.

A 400 year old Buddhist temple. This was built on the site of a Muslim temple that had been there for hundreds of years before.

This reminded me of when Helen and I went to the temple in Beijing and lit some incense.

We only had about 5 minutes here, but it was beautiful.

Happy Buddha.

Vietnam has small shops and markets everywhere.

Our next stop was the second palace. The king had a weekday palace in the east ( near the rising sun) and a weekend palace in the west that when he dies becomes where his tomb is.

When the king dies, he is cremated and then 4 bodyguards take his body behind a big door and bury it there. Straight after they emerge, they’re killed, so no one will ever know where the king lies.

The entrance to see the king is long, so that when people finally meet him, or more usually, the upper ministers, they are already hot and tired and at a disadvantage.

The chocopie offering is a nice touch.

This used to be the king’s bedroom.

You’d have to be careful going up and down this set of stairs!

This is the part of the river that flows through the palace, so if they were ever under attack, they’d still have water. It’s also how goods were delivered before trucks.

And finally … the door. I wonder if it was weird to spend your weekends there as the king, knowing that one day you’ll be hidden behind here, or if it brought comfort.

It must’ve been lovely to spend time here. It’s so calm and beautiful.

Then it was time for a rickshaw ride through the old citadel. This was an optional extra. It cost something like 250,000 dong, which sounds like a hellava lot but is only $15.

Those guys worked hard for that $15.

We stopped once for a look at the top of the citadel. The rest of the time we stayed in the rickshaws as the traffic swirled closely around us. The drivers here have nerves of steel.

It was interesting to be in the thick of it, but sometimes the exhaust fumes were a bit strong.

We were dropped off at the Romance Hotel, where we were booked for the night.
I walked in and started laughing… look at the size of the bed! I put my iPad on it for scale.

You could have an orgy here with no worries whatsoever.

Totally wasted on me, however!
Dad Joke of the day:

Never iron a four-leaf clover. You don’t want to press your luck.