Hue is known for producing the finest conical hats in Vietnam. The city's speciality is "poem hats", which, when held up to the light, reveal shadowy scenes of daily life.
Hue is also home to one of the largest and most beautiful selections of rice -paper and silk paintings available in Vietnam, but the prices quoted are usually inflated to about four times the real price.
Dong Ba market (Tran Hung Dao street, opened: 6am to 6pm) on the north bank of the Perfume River a few hundred metres north of Trang Tien bridge, is Hue's largest market, where anything and everything can be bought. It was rebuilt after much of the structure was destroyed by a typhoon in 1986.
