While we wait patiently for the chance to sail off to new cruise adventures, it’s an opportunity to reminisce about favorite past shore excursions. A tour to Hue is a highlight of any visit to Vietnam. This review from a day trip from Oceania’s Nautica was originally posted 10 years ago.

There’s something I always ponder when I visit royal fortresses. Were their high walls, moats and drawbridges mainly to keep marauding invaders out, or were they craftily built to keep the politicians in, so the people could get on with their lives?

The historic photos of life in Vietnam’s venerable imperial palace in the ancient city of Hue make a case that it was an enclave of mandarins who never really learned to ease back on a casual Friday. The glum-faced groups of guys wearing long, heavy gowns and bell bottom silk trousers sometimes sported head gear whose jutting, alien antennas seem more appropriate for a Caribbean carnival than a day in court.

Read it all in The Cruisington Times