Renting Motorbikes sounded like a good idea….

We had so much fun last night running around Hue on motorbikes, that we decided to rent some today. We needed to go visit 2 tombs of emperors of Vietnam. We could have taken a tour, but figured hey why not try motorbikes? Both of us were interested in seeing a town famous for their incense along with hitting a few pagodas. With a tour, we would have been limited to the tombs and one pagoda.

Our not so trusty steed is above. What scared us most about the motorbikes is the traffic, so we walked across Hue to rent them and get closer to the tombs. We ended up leasing them for the day, for about $6. We then headed off to the tombs.

First stop – Minh Mang. Minh Mang was the emperor from 1820- 1840. The grounds were lovely with several small lakes along with a few buildings and beautiful walkways. You couldn’t take pictures in most spots, so you are only getting to see the above.

When leaving the tomb, I was putting up the kickstand on the motorbike and it broke. A nice gov’t employee used a straw to fix it. You have to love the ingenuity of necessity. We then headed out….on the way out of the parking lot, I skidded the bike and tipped it over onto Ashley and I. I was going to fast on tile, which had a bit of sand and no grip. We are both ok, minus a few bruises. The biggest bruise was to my ego, as up to this point, it was going swimmingly. Yeah, traffic was scary but not insurmountable.

We solidified on and visited the Tomb of Khai Dinh. He was the emperor from 1916 to 1925. The grounds were not near as grandiose, but the actual tomb was amazing.

Both of us were achy, but decided to visit the town famous for its incenses. We found the town but nothing other than a vegetarian restaurant was there. We ate at the vegetarian place, it was ok. We then elected not to visit the pagodas, as Ash was a bit jittery behind me. the final obstacle was the huge traffic circle, which may or may not follow different rules than we are accustomed to, as we got cussed out following a close call. After a circuitous route back to the rental spot, we dropped off the bike and went for a beer. The bike actually ran out of gas about a block away but we just walked it in. The rental lady didn’t seem to care about the kickstand, although her English wasn’t good that good. We did our normal after a bit of adventure, a few beers at a local bar.