Ancient town of Hoi An

So there we were, riding on a back of a motorcycle on a 4 hour journey towards Hoi An from Hue. It was an exciting ride speeding through the hi-ways of Vietnam. I felt I was the young Che Guevarra (hoping to look as well :P) of Motorcycle Diaries who traveled from Argentina to Chile. But the problem was I was really feeling sleepy during the trip, which is kind of dangerous when you’re on the back of the bike. Good thing our “Easy Rider” guide gave me a bubble gum to chew on to fight the sleepiness.

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Hue | Tomb of Tu Duc

Still part of Hue’s UNESCO sites are the numerous Royal Tombs scattered along its area. Most of these are form the Nguyen Dynasty (1802-1945) which is the last of Vietnam’s Royal families. There were 13 kings then but for some reasons there were only 7 royal tombs constructed on the hilly regions just south of the Imperial Citadel. In order to access to these tombs, you can hire a scooter or a motorcycle to drive you in each tomb, most popular though are the Dragon Boats which will cruise you along the Perfume River. Dragon boats, which are the leisurely way to travel, cost about $3 USD per pax for a whole day including lunch. Downside here is once you docked on different points; you still have to hire a xe om (scooter) to take you to the tombs since. And you know you have to haggle for a really good price and a good price starts around $1 USD and in addition to that is the 55000 Dong in each of the tomb entrance. It takes a couple of days to see all the tombs. For us however, having only limited time, we were able to visit two tombs, via motorcycle (which we contracted for the duration of our trip). Our first stop it the Tomb of Tu Duc.

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Hué’s Imperial Citadel

One reason why I’ve chosen to go to Central Vietnam instead of the popular cities of Hanoi in the north or Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) in the south is because the Central region has a concentration of 3 UNESCO World Heritage Sites all quite accessible from the regions main gateway city of Da Nang. UNESCO’s got quite a lengthy list, which I doubt I could cover all of them in this lifetime. And you could never go wrong visiting these sites as they are carefully selected, funded and preserved.

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KK Adventure 04: Down on wobbly legs

Time to go down

It’s interesting going down as this time you could see the view, whereas when you climb all was in darkness. Though for some, the darkness was good to cover out the scene, because now you could actually see where you could fall. Going down from the summit is kinda hard on the knees and toes as your body have to balance itself from the pull down. Then navigating through the ropes requires a bit of rapeling skills. Which I found to be fun actually.

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