Good Morning All!!! We started today off at the Royal Tombs, set on the bank of the perfume river, all of the royals are eventually buried here. The location is fairly large, and we took in many tombs and temple this morning. This is Roeline, Carmel and Natalie with these royal tomb protectors!
...and me! This guy was kinda cute! Not sure about the beard though!
All the grounds had these trees with beautiful little flowers that were sooooo lovely smelling, Frangipani is their name. I just adore the smell!!
One of the tombs being fixed up!
Such amazing old structures, and always with many colours! The sunlight of early morning would shine through a circle on the top of the building directly behind me while taking this photo, and the sun would shine through this doorway, and directly onto the circle on the wall through the door way. There were double circles on some walls representing ying and yang, as well as double squares which apparently reference earth.
The temple...
I love these so much, I lined my braid with them so I could keep smelling their sweet smell!
After the Royal Tombs, we headed out on a motor bike tour and made a bunch of different stops, traversed down weee paths through fields as well as very small roads through Hue's countryside to see all sorts of new angles of Vietnam. No, we didn't get to drive, and I was pretty thankful for that since driving here is absolute insanity! This was our first stop, and we had to drive off road to get there - you can imagine the grin on my face when off the road we went! It was so incredibly peaceful here!
Most of us and our bikes...
Our next stop was in a small village that made incense. Below the non coloured end of the stick is what they roll the incense onto.
A little demo, looked easy enough! They use a mixture of several powders with water to roll onto the stick, then roll that in the scent. I grabbed some cinnamon and sandalwood!
Back on the bikes, we headed through the country side to see all the rice fields and other crops growing.
Cute little bridge with white ducks, there was a duck farm somewhere close to here but we didn't have a chance to stop at it.
Machinery used to harvest the rice - thought dad might get a kick outta this!
Then we stopped in this little village where a beautiful old woman showed us how rice was processed in the olden days. All the equipment in the below two photos took the rice from the stem, then ground the hull off, then pounded the rice clean, each time shaking the good from the bad apart in the baskets, followed by grinding to make flour.
Today, when the rice is harvested, families lay it out to dry on their property, or on the roads in front of their property, then bag it in huge bags for them to refine and eat all year long. This is a super funky house with the rise drying out in front. The houses don't all look like this!
My first Jeep... I was giddy with delight! ...and actually snapped this one right off the back of the bike as we were driving!
Tonight, we will head to a families home for dinner, will post more pics when I can! XO
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