Lake of Sighs:
This is a natural lake and enlarged by a French - built dam. The lake is six kilometers to the north east of the city. It is situated on top of a high hill covered with pine forests. The lake-scape looks very poetic with the vast and tranquil water surface being compared to a human being in meditation. Standing on the edge of the lake visitors can see a small earth path running towards the forests. The only sound that can be heard comes from the pine forests where the path disappears. The continuous sound from the forests make ones think of repeated sighs from an invisible human being. The existence of the lake has been surrounded with many love stories and legends with sorrowful endings when the heroines always drowned themselves in the lake to keep for ever their true love they had once enjoyed.
One legend has it that Mai Nuong and Hoang Tung met here in 1788 while he was hunting and she picking mushrooms. They fell in love and sought their parents' permission to mrry. But at that time Vietnam was threatened by a Chinese invasion and Hoang Tung, heeding Emperor Quang Trung's call-to-arms, joined the army without waiting to tell Mai Nuong. Unaware that he had gone to war and afraid that his absence meant that he was no longer in love with her, Mai Nuong sent words to Hoang Tung to meet her at the lakeside. When he did not turn up she was overcome with sorrow and, to prove her love to him, threw herself into the conveniently located lake and drowned. Thereafter, the lake has been known as the Lake of Sighs.