Explore Huế on the Back of a Motorbike

Huế layers badly on foot. The distances between its significant places are too far to walk and too interesting to skip. The motorbike solves that. Your driver knows where to park, which gates are open, which paths avoid the tour bus queues.

The morning starts at the Imperial Citadel — the Forbidden Purple City's inner sanctum, throne rooms open to the sky, dragon-carved walls giving way to frangipani and weeds. From there the ride to Tự Đức's tomb follows a road lined with lacquerware stalls. The emperor who built this retreat wrote poetry in it, mourned in it, and anticipated his own death within its garden walls. It shows in every considered detail.

Thủy Xuân Incense Village arrives mid-morning — bundles drying in rainbow rows outside modest homes, the air sharp and fragrant. Lunch is at a working pagoda: vegetarian food cooked as offering, eaten the way the monks eat it, in the kind of quiet Huế does better than anywhere else.