Today it is 82 degrees Fahrenheit (28 Celsius) and about 82% humidity. It is miserable. And our local guide, who weighs just about as must as one of my legs, skips around the sites and says “It’s not even summer yet!”

Yesh.

Vietnam is geographically separated into three sections: South, Middle and North. We have now arrived in the middle and docked in Chan May. My cooking class was canceled when several other folks pulled out. No problem, here Silversea offered tours in many different directions from the port. So I choose north and the imperial city of Hue – pronounced “whey”, like Little Miss Muffet’s “curds and whey”.

As opposed to most of the “imperial” remains I’ve viewed in my travels, this was built recently – the 19th century. Vietnam was recently united and under the “influence” of the French. Seems some of the ruling family visited both China and France. So they built an equivalent to Beijing’s Forbidden City, but with some European touches.

Only the King can use the middle gate, so there are 2 or 4 other gates for the non-kings to use.

What attracted my attention was how intricate the roofs were.

The ground and exterior look a little run down with a constant film of mold (did I mention the heat and humidity?), but the meeting hall throne area was very impressive.

I love the fusion of China and France with the family home.

The statement of the day was when our guide told us the king had 500 wives and over 100 children: “He was a very busy king.” That line got all the tour guests.

We then visited the Thien Mu temple. With it’s very many steep stairs. It was getting close to lunch time and folks were very much feeling the weather. There was an interior gate with impressive carved guardians.

From the temple we boarded “dragon boats” to cruise on the Perfume River to lunch. While we were captured on the boats there were many shopping opportunities. Of course there were.

We finished the day visiting the tomb of Minh Mang, which contained many buildings with steps going up and down for no reason other than to make people work for it. The shrine was well maintained, as were the grounds.

A very hot day, but some good history – even tho the “history” was much more current that some of the previous sites I’ve seen over the last three weeks.

Maybe it’s because Vietnam is just starting to really open up to Westerners, but it felt like the Communist Part of Vietnam is only begrudgingly maintaining these pre-Ho Chi Minh buildings. I could be over-reacting.