No WAY! Yes Hue/ Another town in Vietnam

Hue was a surprising town in Vietnam. Surprisingly, a lot to do there.

I think we spent the most time in the Citadel also known as the Purple Forbidden City, The Forbidden city, or as I like to call it the Forbidden Purple City. On the tourist maps it is known as the Citadel and we spent 3 hours exploring what once was a whole town separated by a moat. Around the whole Citadel was a moat. This site is actually being voted on to be added to the UNESCO World Heritage sites. It was huge with many different pavilions, thrones, worship halls and even a library. The only thing I found sad about this place were two elephants we saw in an open field. The space was green and very open, but the elephants were chained with only 1 foot of chain and absolutely NO moving space. The ONLY time we saw the elephant move around was when 2 Westerners paid money to dress up in colorful silk robes with some shiny headdress and pretend they were royalty! I can't pin-point why exactly I felt this way, but this looked ridiculous to me. Why was I one of so few who actually felt sorry for these elephants? Why do people find pleasure in sitting on abused elephants and waving to strangers?

Well here are some pictures from the Forbidden City in Hue:

This same day, after our cyclo ride to the Citadel


..... we took a taxi to Dao Quoc Pagoda.
This pagoda, like many, was free. There are monks who live here and their belief is to not be obsessed with money and power. This means that most of these pagodas are free. Immediately after entering the pagoda I saw monks playing hacky sack. The sport they play in Vietnam is not actually with a hacky sack but what is known as a birdie (for badminton). It was a calm environment but still some fun for the monks.
As we explored this small area, we found a back area where studying monks were reading and sitting with friends.






That's not it!
after the pagoda we found the same taxi guy (who was apparently waiting for us (at no cost/ no meter running). We went to the Notre Dame Cathedral in Hue. This cathedral was an impressive modern building, VERY simplistic in nature. Yet it seemed to combine the functional aspects of a European cathedral with traditional Vietnamese spire. At first glance it looked like a typical Cathedral, once we viewed this church from another angle we could see the Vietnamese influenced steeple usually on pagodas.





Then, we finally called it a night.