Tomb raiders ... and the revenge of the monsoon

After spending yesterday visiting the palace of the Imperial emperors, today we decided we would head out of town to visit their tombs. Rather than join the rest of the tourists on the river boat tours, we decided we would rent bicycles from the hotel and explore things at our own pace.

After breakfast (most breakfast options so far !!) we hopped on the bikes and, armed with the dubious map in our six dollar knock-off Lonely Planet Guide, we headed into the Vietnamese traffic.  Thankfully Hue is no Saigon, and after a few hairy junctions we found ourselves on the quiet roads out of town, and 12 sweaty kilometers and only one map-reading argument later we arrived at the tomb of Khai Dinh, who was emperor in the 1920s and apparently was pretty much controlled by the French. His tomb complex, which took longer to build than he was in power, was influenced by European architecture and was gothic in style (according to our six dollar knock off Lonely Planet). It also involved climbing lots of steps !!

Next was a 2km jaunt across the river to the tomb of Minh Mang, emperor in the 1820s. His tomb complex was much more oriental in design with lakes, bridges and ying and yang stuff - we liked it more than the first one though !!

Turning back towards Hue, we headed off towards the tomb of Tu Duc, wary of the darkening sky - and before long the heavens opened. After a pitiful attempt to shelter under a lone tree, we decided to abandon our explorations for the day and hot foot it back into town, where we peeled off our saturated clothes and spent the rest of the afternoon figuring out how to dry everything and watching the Star Movie channel !!