Hue Adventure – Vietnam Central Imperial City – 3 Days

Visit the Imperial City, the vast walled Citadel built in the 19th century and modelled on the Forbidden City in Beijing. Pass through its great gates into the Imperial Enclosure, with its palaces, temples and courtyards, and see why Hue is a city of colour: green gardens, the blue reflections of the Perfume River, women in white ao dai and conical hats passing in the streets.

Dinner is at Tha Om, a traditional garden house, where you can enjoy Hue’s refined cooking among fruit trees and ornamental plants.

Your guide and driver meet you at your hotel after breakfast, and you board a traditional boat for a scenic cruise up the Perfume River. In Thuy Bieu, spend a couple of hours walking or cycling around the peaceful village. Visit a family garden and an old ancestral temple, and stop to chat with the villagers along the way.

Lunch is with a local family in their home, a lovely way to see daily life in Hue up close.

Visit craft families at work, making incense, joss paper and traditional folk paintings. To finish, relax with a soak of your feet in warm herbal water, a traditional remedy, followed by a massage from visually impaired therapists, before you return to your hotel in Hue.

Board a traditional boat on the Perfume River to Thien Mu Pagoda, the city’s best-known symbol, whose tall tower has watched over the river for centuries. It is a peaceful place to sit and enjoy the view.

Continue to the tomb of Emperor Khai Dinh, set on a hillside and decorated inside with dazzling mosaics of porcelain and glass, an unusual blend of Vietnamese and European styles.

Visit Thuy Xuan, one of the last villages to keep up the craft of incense making, where bundles of red and yellow incense sticks fan out to dry in the sun. End at Dong Ba Market, which for generations has supplied the city with everything from fresh produce to conical hats, before returning to your hotel with the rest of the day at leisure.