Aw-Hue (Get it?? As in 'Away'!) We Go

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**since wifi is like a luxury now, I've been blogging on my phone or iPad so I can't format pictures along with my writing so all the pictures are at the end and mostly in the order of what I'm writing about..yay for technology!

Started the day early at 730am with Hue city tour. The group consisted of mainly locals, an elderly Thai couple, couple from Germany though the wide is Vietnamese (there's actually quite a number of mixed foreign couples where the wives are Vietnamese) and this small elderly family from alaska. The tour guide is kinda awkward when he makes really lame jokes where no one laughs but him and even his own laughter sounds forced. and his English sounds like there is an exclamation point after every! Sentence! It! Gets! Annoying! Especially with his awkward fake laugh!

Anyway, we went to the tombs id the 2nd king who has the biggest tomb and then the 12th king who has the smallest but the must elaborate since he was the first king to go to France and got influenced by western architecture. The 12th king was also the last king and it was during his reign that Vietnam got colonized by the French.

After, we saw a martial arts show where they fought with bamboo sticks, fans, numchucks, broke bricks with their heads and one guy bent a steel spear with his throat?!! I sat in the middle in the front (and only) row so I kept making eye contact with them so that was slightly uncomfortable. Then we went to (another) tomb of the 4th king. I put one of the flowers from they trees in my hair and the tour guide said it was used for perfume. And I was like cool, then he said yeah the kings wanted his concubines to smell nice...then he did his awkward laugh.

Lunch was this amazing buffet with a nice variety of Vietnamese food! Ohmigosh probably the best part of the whole tour honestly. They have this water chestnut dessert that I kept eating but I realized that no one was eating it even the locals weren't...so hopefully they're not bad or anything. Well at least now I have my own bathroom lawlzz

After lunch, we went to the citadel and the imperial city inside its walls and visited all the different palaces for the queens, grandparents, concubines and the remains of the main palace. The tour guide by 2035, the goal is to restore most of the forbidden city. Then we went to the thien mu pagoda where I saw some monks then took a cool boat ride on the Perfume River. After, I was alone again so I walked around then went back to the park i went to yesterday after I felt like people kept staring at me. While I was reading, this local university girl asked if she can sit with me. I'm used to this, the locals wanting to practice they're English with he. So we talked all night and I asked her for any suggestions for good Hue food and she took me to this hole-in-the-wall place for banh khaio (?)!!! While we were walking and when we turned of the main road I vaguely thought ohmigosh this could be a scam but I had good vibes from her and luckily I was right. Just guess to show how you never know who you'll meet!!

Also, in case you won't notice..I wore my 'backpacker' pants today. Excited for Hoi On tomorrow! Just get me to a beach already!

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