Today we arrived at the little Vietnamese industrial port of Chan May,
the country’s main export point for sandlewood chips.
In that it was pretty
isolated and uninteresting, we were glad that we had signed up for an
excursion, to the old imperial city of Huế,
nearly a two-hour drive away (during which we got some great views of the Vietnamese countryside, including the rice paddy that appears below).
There we visited the mausoleum of Emperor Tự Đức, who ruled from 1847-1883; the Heavenly
Lady Pagoda and monastery, home of monk Thích Quảng Đức, who famously set himself on
fire during the Vietnam War; and the Imperial Citadel, which was a battleground
for U.S. and North Vietnamese forces in 1968 during the brutal Tết Offensive (one of the gateways within the citadel can be seen at right).
Tết,
in fact, is the name for the New Year in Vietnam, and we saw more public
preparations for the holiday here than anywhere else during our trip.
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