Slowly we got to the final chapter of our SouthEast Asia journey. This time we just need to get from Hue to Hanoi, sell our bike and get on the plane back home.
Talking about Hue: the most distinctive feature of this old capital of Vietnam is its Imperial City where Nguyen Dynasty was located. 13 different emperors from this dynasty added their marks to the Imperial capital. Inside the Citadel walls was once an enormous complex, lavish and opulent, with ornate gardens and intricate pagodas but unfortunately history wasn't kind to this historical monument. Major losses occurred in 1947 when conflict between Viát Minh and French forces took its place in Hue area. But the Vietnam War caused most of the damage to the Imperial City. Large parts of it are now nothing more than rubble. About 160 buildings once stood inside the Citadel’s walls and less than a dozen survived the Battle of Hue.
After Imperial City we headed 10km south from Hue city centre towards Chau Chu Mountain slopes, where Tomb of Khái Dinh is located. Despite being the smallest, Khai Dinh Tomb is the most recent and costly amongst other Nguyen royal tombs. You can easily notice that Khai Dinh tomb was influenced by the European architectural styles and it's a mix of oriental and Occidental architecture schools. Our favourite attraction in Hue area.
Another tomb we managed to visit was Tu Duc Tomb. This tomb was designed by Emperor Tu Duc himself before his death. It took just 3 years to complete it. Nowadays it looks more like a park as it’s very spacious.
On the way to Hanoi we couldn’t miss Ke Bang National Park with its Phong Nha Cave. The park was created to protect one of the world's two largest karst regions. The total discovered length of the cave system is an incredible 126 km.
You can spend weeks exploring this well preserved National park and due to time limit we managed to check just The Phong Nha cave, which is the longest wet cave in the world.
Luckily the last days in Vietnam were warm and sunny, with some really scenic roads. We couldn't wish for more than that.
To summarise our trip: it was an incredible experience and difficult challenge for our motorbike as we did 7000 km on it, changed oil 12 times and who knows how many bearings we’ve changed. We sold our bike for 165 dollars in 3 hours on the central streets of Hanoi to other tourists. Definitely we will do some similar trip in the future again.
See you next time somewhere on the way! (Don’t forget to subscribe to don’t miss our next adventure)