7th - 10th November 2011
Rain, rain, rain. As soon as we had sorted out our room with a view we headed out for noodles. We stopped at what turned out to our favourite restaurant for a long time, I think it's fair to say that because of this place, I now think that Vietnamese cuisine has a bit more going for it than flavourless noodle soup (al-right, sometimes you do get a decent broth but it's hit and miss), fried egg baguettes (I think these are the business, delicious) and dog. We had some Hue noodles, which was basically noodle soup with perfect pieces of beef and on the side; bean sprouts and salad leaves to add as you desire. It was delicious, there is something indescribably heartening and warming about soup on a cold wet miserable day. After the lovely old lady at our hotel, the friendly guy at the restaurant who was serving us and the warming effect of the soup, I decided that Hue was definitely one of the nicer places in Vietnam. To round of the feeling of warm deliciousness we also had pudding. We had not had pudding for ages, I can't even remember the last time we ordered dessert. Our friendly waiter suggested the banana pancake with chocolate sauce and Djalma opted for proper crepes, sprinkled with plenty of sugar and lemon juice, they were delicious but they couldn't compare to the wonderful light, fluffy, crispy, banana filled, chocolate covered vision and taste of heaven that sat in front of me (and not for very long). Feeling sated and warm and happy we left the weather to itself, waded back to our little room, had hot showers and watched Mosquito Island.
The next day came round and we were up bright and early, we decided to get breakfast on the way to the market. We strolled along the road by the Perfume river and reached the market – fresh produce being sold on the street, the undesirable outer leaves of cabbages and various other vegetables strewn across the ground making it squelchy to walk through. We wandered down a street looking for food – I was fussy, I wanted something other than noodle soup for breakfast. I wanted a fried egg baguette! We ended up eating at a fast food baguette place, a small army of teenage girls worked in a tiny area, cutting baguettes and slathering on Mayo or butter on one side, pate on the other, another girl putting in slices of cured and processed meats, someone else inserting the odd green leave and a spring onion, another bagging them and a couple of girls taking orders and money. We had to push in to get served and after a guy tried to get n front of me – I saw that he wasn't next in line cheeky bastard, I, hungry and grumpy from lack of food and with very UN-English aggression, deliberate stood right in front of him and put my order first. We ate our warm meaty baguettes and wandered in the direction of the citadel.
Hue is the cultural capital of Vietnam, well it's packed with temples, tombs, palaces and pagodas, most of which are fairly well preserved despite heavy battering from artillery and hand to hand combat in 1968 during the Tet Offensive (when the commies took control of the city for about three weeks before the South Vietnamese Army took it back with help from the Americans). The other reason there is so much here is because of the Nguyen Royalty who controlled the country (from the 18th century to 1945) from the citadel city, Phu Xuan. This is the place that we were on our way to see, unfortunately in my rush to leave the hotel and get on our way we left the map in our room, so we wandered about within the walls of the citadel, dodging out of the way of scooters driving too fast and kicking up water and cars doing the same thing. The whole place was flooded, about knee deep in some places, the sky was grey, it drizzled almost constantly, it let up occasionally and occasionally the heavens opened. We stopped for a typical Vietnamese coffee – a pre-mixed coffee concoction with zero caffeine content, sweetened with an equal amount of condensed milk and then topped up with massive chunks of bashed ice. We sat underneath a large canopy perched atop a small tower of child-sized chairs our legs in water that reached half way up pour calves, our drinks balanced on little tables. We watched as a couple of boys tried to paddle in a little canoe, falling in so often that it became less of a competition as to who could stay in the longest and more of who could do it the most spectacularly.
Moving on we came to on of he walls of the inner citadel which was reserved for Royalty and guests only, we walked through the doors and were greeted by a man sweeping the water and leaves to one side 'NO!' He mimed water up to the knee, we said no problem and moved further in, the guy totally lost it, shouting NO NO NO! Waving his arms around and pulling horrible faces (I think this is something that everyone's face does when they're angry), Djalma shouted back and then the horrid little man ran, ran to his little office (Djalma later confessed that he thought the guy was running to get a gun, he was that angry) and came out waving a walkie talkie. We left after that, feeling rather hateful to be honest, he could have easily got a job as a 'tourist bus' driver.
We followed the outside of the wall, taking care to avoid the moat surrounding the citadel in the citadel and eventually reached the ticket office. Well the man could have mimed getting a ticket or shown us where to go, but instead when we tried to talk to him he got al aggressive. This is easily my biggest problem with Vietnam, people jump to shouting, shoving and aggressive behaviour way to quickly for my liking. We paid our money to the lady sitting on her chair with her feet in the water and continued through to explore our way round the rather larger small inner city.
We walked into a large square, the drizzle picked up some weight and we walked round the covered sides to a large green area flanked by two identical red pavilion type things (I really should have read the labels) opening out into a raised garden area looking out to the moat in front of the enclosing wall.
Still without a map we splashed through flooded tree lined street after flooded tree lined street peering over walls and through gaps in the brickwork to see things that were closed. We came across a beautiful building, painted yellow and set in some beautifully manicured gardens.
There was the best guttering system I have even seen, on the roof a huge fish face with an open mouth spurted rain water down a central gap on the roof down to the gutter and then onto the pavement. The roof tiles them selves were glazed different shades of burnt orange and the rows ended in round tiles decorated with motifs. Through the wet garden and out the garden we walked into a flooded garden that we'd seen over a wall but couldn't get into because the doors were locked. After I slipped on a muddy tile I stayed glued to Djalma's side, we waded along a path that followed a small river, a bit of a joke really, and over a bridge. The place was beautiful and deserted, there were large rock formations planted with orchids and ferns as a kind of garden ornament I guess. There were also lots of outdoor murals, painted in bright colours and adorned with pieces of china and shells, some of the detail was 3D and little birds looked at each other in a rather charming way. It all felt very Chinese, not having been to China (yet) I can't pick out what is Chinese and therefore what might be Vietnamese.
Having spent several hours wandering around the citadel without any water or food, I decided that we should head back, fortunately despite being very lost in the beginning, the way out was easy and we passed several flooded fields before ending up back at the beginning. We climbed to the top of the building where the ticket office was and looked out at the semi panoramic views before climbing down the steps to find that the water level had, despite the rain, receded rather a lot. Crossing over a bridge to our side of the river we came upon a vegetarian restaurant and shared a set menu, with several different dishes; fried aubergine, tofu, make believe chicken, sour soup (with pineapple), rice and spring rolls with a thick peanut sauce. It was gorgeous but rich and we walked very slowly back to our hotel. Djalma feel asleep and while he lay dreaming (at 5pm) I worked on the pictures and the blog entry for Hoi An (much more productive!). We returned to the nice restaurant where we had the Hue Noodle soup and tucked into the most delicious beef pan fried with lemongrass, chilli and garlic, a salad and a seafood noodle soup.
After a good nights sleep and a lazy morning we got a couple of bikes from our hotel and then went for breakfast at the same restaurant. Hello Banana Pancakes! Djalma got some seafood with rice but I definitely got the best dish, it was heavy but heavenly. After playing with the ridiculously cute fluffy puppy we set off crossing over the Perfume River that looked more like eau d'Toilette in the literal sense rather than anything beautiful and purple hued that I'd seen in some pictures. We stopped at a mosquito feeding station just because there were lots of people outside, inside a grumpy middle aged woman told us that it was flower garden, sounding much like the “bonsai” garden we visited to fill out our tour in Vinh Long, we decided to give it a miss.
Jumping back on our bikes and getting away as quickly as possible from the clouds of HUGE hungry mozzies we followed the road and the river to the very popular Thien Mu Pagoda. Since it was first built in the 17th century it has been destroyed and rebuilt several times, it does have a nice story though... A direct quote from LP 'According to legend, a Fairy Woman (Thien Mu) appeared and the people that a lord would come and build a pagoda for the country's prosperity. On hearing this Nguyen Hoang ordered a pagoda to be constructed here.' Isn't that nice. The seven stories of the tower are dedicated to a different manushi-buddha – buddhas that appeared in human form. It was surrounded by a couple of small buildings and behind a building housed a laughing Buddha. Out the back, gardens stretched out, the beautiful orange tiles ready to give a careless the slip.
We got on our bikes, leaving the pagoda and another angry man behind – when we pulled up and parked our bikes and he appeared and shouted NO! and started doing the same thing as the man the previous day – jumping about, looking mean, waving his hands around and generally behaving like he was a stroppy six year old.
We cycled a few kilometres away from the Eau d'Toilette River and to the beginning of the Royal Tombs. We cycled up and down hills, dodging the odd scooter and stopping for more of the half coffee half condensed milk stuff that I don't really like but can't seem to stop drinking and these really odd sausages that had bits of gristle with tubes attached, needless to say this sustained Djalma over the next few hours and not my fussy self.
We passed by large burial grounds on the sides of hills, the tombs facing out over a sea of green, the only picture I took didn't do it justice, these were the most beautiful graveyards I've ever seen. We eventually came to the would be final resting place of the wealthiest and longest reigning of the Nguyen Emperors. This guy lived in the grounds that he planned to be buried in but he was so rich and had so much loot that when it finally came to putting him in the ground he was buried in a secret place and the 200 servants who buried him were all beheaded so no-one could loot the loot. Stingy in death but not when it came to furnishing his pad and living life.
He larged it up writing poetry and shagging his 104 wives, not to mention all the lusty concubines he kept on standby. He didn't have any children, not because his willy fell off from so much action but rather a bout of smallpox that resulted in sterility. The grounds were covered with pine trees and bare frangipani trees. We had to pay to get in so we took our time exploring the grounds. They were enclosed by a wall, he had a pond with an island in the middle, three mausoleums (that we found) and a really cool pagoda type things in front of his tomb which of course was the most elaborately decorated. The whole place was beautiful and because of the rain, peaceful. We left around 4ish in a hurry to get to get back before dark.
We cycled like we were being chased by all the angry men we'd met in Vietnam and made it back in really good time. Worried about being cut up in the evening traffic I whistled as I overtook scooters and other cyclists, changing to bellowing out the few lines I know of Queen's hits when the traffic got heavier. I may sound silly but I'm not dead and no-one pulled out in front of me. We arrived back well before dark, completely wet but cheerful. We quickly planned the next stop and wanting avoid buses for the time being we booked train tickets to the next town. I say we, it took Djalma more than an hour to get there and back – it was a twenty minute round trip at most. Just as I was starting to get worried he strolled through the door and told me that he was looking at which train and ticket to get (it's fairly complicated here, I'll explain later) he turned to the lady at the counter who promptly put her sign up and told him that it was closed for dinner and he'd have to wait for an hour. Charming, so he went and got a beer and the wait wasn't all that bad. We went back to our favourite restaurant for dinner, feeling adventurous we ordered squid stuffed with pork, shrimp, noodles and mushrooms, some sautéed vegetables and a mix soup, we splashed out and got a couple of Hue beers, surprisingly good actually. Feeling merry on our beer we decided to head down to Brown Eyes, a bar we'd been given Buy One Get One Free flyers for. We had some welcome shots, free snacks and over sweet Singapore slings. When I say over sweet, I mean sickly, teeth achingly sweet, I'm surprised I have any pegs left. We played Jenga and watched Vietnam kick Est Timors ass in the SEA Games (South East Asia football league). Rolling home to relax, I started working on photos and ended up talking to my wife for over an hour for the first time in weeks if not months. Heaven, it put such a big smile on my face (thanks Gabs!). After ringing off I washed off the smoke from my body and then go into bed and slept like a baby next to my already snoring husband.
I did yoga the next morning, I waited until 9am when I wasn't feeling quite so rough and wobbled my way through my usual routine. We packed, checked out and then walked to the vegetarian restaurant for another set menu before making our way to the train station for our first train. Exciting!
It was a little late and we left just after 1.30pm, we passed through some beautiful countryside, plenty of flooded fields, herds of water buffalo, people in coolie hats, loads of trees and mountains misting up in the background. Four and a half hours later we pulled into Dong Hoi, which is about half way between the North and South, after a circus with the taxi guys who were all very friendly and spoke their English phonetically (just making the sounds without much understanding) we got into one taxi with our laughing lovely driver who then dropped us in the right part of town (it was touch and go for a while) and we made our way to a cheap guest house bypassing the more expensive hotels.
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