Get thee to a nunnery!

This morning we set out to tour the city of Hue. Our first stop was a local shop where we saw women making incense and the traditional conical hats. A layer of raffia is woven on as a base layer, then the hatmaker places on some symbolic paper cutouts that can include poems by the hatmaker, symbols of pagodas, etc. The one we saw had a cutout of a heart and two young lovers in the middle. A final layer of raffia is woven on top and painted with a clear glaze. Monks and nuns have hats that are slightly lower so that they don't see the human suffering of this world. The hats last for a year, after which, children use the hat pieces to make kites.



Our next stop was the tomb of the fourth emperor. He was a very handsome man, who visited his mother often, wrote poems, had 103 wives but never any children. The Vietnamese said it was because he was shooting blanks.....but I question whether he was aiming at the right target! He was buried at the back of the grounds, but his exact burial site is a mystery. Everyone who dug the grave was killed immediately after burial, including a member of the royal family. The french tried exvacating the site but found nothing. Although it would be possible to find him now with new technology, the Vietnamese prefer to leave him undisturbed.



We had a vegetarian feast at a small local nunnery. Lisa and I kept cracking jokes about how the nunnery would refuse us. The food however was amazing....lots of tofu prepared in tasty ways!



We ended our afternoon at the perfume pagoda. This is the pagoda where a Buddhist monk drove his car to saigon and self-emolated himself to protest the treatment of buddhists by the catholic leaders. It was this event that lead to the wife of the south Vietnamese prime minister saying that she wouldn't mind a few more bbq'd monks. Needless to say, there was outrage at her comments.



I'm now on an overnight train to Hanoi......hope you all have a better night's sleep than I will!

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