Exploring the centre of Vietnam
Hue and Hoi An are two cities in central Vietnam. I quite liked central Vietnam - it is far more relaxed than the big cities although still there are a lot of motorbikes and it just pains me to see all the garbage on the floor and in the rivers (the Perfume river in Hue has this name because it used to smell nice with all the flowers on the river banks. Now the river is so dirty you can't smell the flowers anymore, inhabitants of Hue say). It is not hard to recognise here that Vietnam is mainly an agricularal country. Second important income source seems to be tourism which unfortunately can be easily noticed in Hoi An.
Hue has a lot of Chinese influences. The Forbidden Purple City there has not only a name that ressembles the Forbidden City of Beijing - also the buildings and its purposes are similar, just a little bit different in style (yellow being prevalent in Hue while red is the prevalent colour in Beijing).
In Hue we also visited the Tomb of Emperor Tu Doc who had 104 wives and concubines, but no children (probably due to smallpox). Tu Doc was only 1,53 m high (probably due to smallpox as well) and built the mandarine stone statues guarding this tomb even smaller than he was!
Waterpuppet theatre is famous for Vietnam. The puppets' performance is done in water - quite weird, but also interesting to e.g. watch the fishermen puppets catch the fish puppets.
After a stop in Danang and the white marble mountains the next highlight was Hoi An.
Hoi An's city centre is UNESCO world heritage. It is nice to stroll along its pedestrian or pedestrian / motorbike streets at nights due to the unique atmosphere. However, many many tourists visit this town and nearly every single house is some tourist shop or restaurant nowadays...
In Hoi An I also went with an old rusty bike to the beach - My first beach trip of this year! Unfortunately, it was very stormy at the sea and it was impossible to stay there...
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