After a late night, we manage to sleep somewhat ok: woken up by a poor bugger throwing his guts up with what we presume was food poisoning, then about 8am the classical music ringing from downstairs and finally housekeeping having some gossip sessions by the rooms

With a slow start, we chill for a bit before leaving the place for Nook Eatery to grab a couple of cappuccinos, a pad Thai and a Thai green curry – both were a little too fishy for our liking and the heat is a bit unbearable today

We wrap up here and head back for a couple hours to escape the midday heat; thankfully, we can do some work so it’s not wasted time

Later on, we grab a Grab taxi to the Northern side of the Imperial City

To kickstart our adventuring, we find a local place that does orange juice; with that sorted, we get on to the city

As we get to the bastion, it turns out you can’t enter from this way; we’re guided to stroll around

The heat has subsided a bit so not too bad plus there’s a nice breeze and view along the city’s moat

We find Đông Khuyết Đài – one of the other gates to the city – which you can’t enter from either but it’s prettier than the last

We continue and finally make it back to the South side, hosting the Meridian Gate, as well as having a very large flag tower

The entrance cost is a little pricey, at 200k Đong, but we figure it’s worth it

We get in and admire the fish pond and then up to Đại Nội which is part of the actual gate

It has some instruments for show that were used to introduce the emperors and their families as well as an exhibit dedicated to each members’ royal seal

After here, we continue round West of the complex and make it to the area of the Nine Dynastic Urns

These were cast in a two year period almost 200 years ago under the reign of Emperor Minh Mang and weigh between 1,900kg and 2,600kg

The urns are named with the posthumous titles of Nguyen emperors that are worshipped in the Mieu Temple which is at the back of this area; they all look very similar, symbolise the unification of the country but are each decorated slightly differently

We continue exploring the area that takes us through various intricately decorated buildings

At the most Northern part of the city is Kiến Trung Palace
Điện Kiến Trung, the most dramatically dressed building of all

It is also one of the newest renovated – being only finished last year – containing many newer artefacts of royal daily life, such as dinner ware, and even had a gift shop

It’s at the top of the grounds that make up the Forbidden Purple City which is the heart of this imperial city – it’s known as this due to it’s significance on ancient Chinese astronomy; purple refers to the North Star (appears in the center of startrails) which in ancient China was called the Ziwei Star

We make our way past the Duyet Thi Duong Royal Theater and then onto the Phủ Nội Vụ, or the Treasury Building

This building is very much abandoned but has some history: what we can see is actually a 20th century remake of the original 19th century building which served as the imperial city guard HQ, in 1936, before then becoming Hue College, on 1957, and then more specifically the College of Arts, in 1996 (though clearly no more)

We have a vending machine twister juice and make our way to the Meridian Gate to find out you can’t exit that way so back to the East gate

Out of here, we head diagonal for Cầu cửa Thượng Tứ bridge – as there aren’t any pedestrian-only bridges – and on to Đông Ba Market

This is a mix of fresh food, goods and restaurants in one both covered and then sprawling onto the surrounding streets; we weave through to the otherside and onto the Cầu Trường Tiền bridge

On the other side, we stroll around as this is where all the dragon boats are about as well as a little market

We admire the sun going down by the water’s edge

Getting hungry, we make our way back to near our hotel as there’s the Hue Night Walking Street a couple streets adjacent to it

One of the streets along this takes us to Why Not? Bar – Restaurant where we have a safe meal of mixed meat fajitas for two and a cheap beer tower

Very knackered, we finish the journey back to our hotel and have an early night