Another interesting experience came the
following morning when the western toilet was out of action because an entire
family had moved in there to sleep – meaning the squat toilet was the only
option, and trying to use said toilet on a very fast moving and bumpy train is
an experience I don’t care to repeat too often!
Miraculously though we had reached our
destination – Hue – and after barely making it through the onslaught of people
waving hotel brochures in our face at the other end we managed to flag a taxi
to take us in air-conditioned comfort to our hotel.
Our initial (foolish) thought in booking
the overnight train is that we’d save a night’s accommodation and arrive fresh
as a daisy at our next destination ready to hit the streets. The reality was
that we were two sweaty, exhausted and haggard shells of our former selves so
the only real option was to sleep it off and that’s exactly what we did for the
next few hours!
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| Market trudge! |
We woke up ravenous so headed to a place
nearby for lunch called Phong Nam, which had been recommended by some friends
of ours. After a good 20 minutes of searching the back streets of Hue we found
it. The place wasn’t much to look at (just a few plastic chairs on the
streets!) but the food was cheap and incredible so we were glad we’d
persevered.
After lunch we were feeling re-energised so
decided to stroll across the river to Hue’s very famous and incredibly busy
central market. We probably made it in about 20 feet before the shouting and
being grabbed by people trying to sell their wares soon blitzed any energy we’d
had from lunch and once we hit the dried fish and animal entrails section we
knew it was time to turn around and head back out!
The heat was taking it’s toll so we treated
ourselves to an ice cream on the walk back at the floating restaurant in the
river. We’d read good reviews of the place everywhere and had been considering
it as a dinner option, however, on careful examination of their menu we
realised that unless you wanted to eat stewed seahorses or braised porcupine it
really wasn’t the place for you. Plus the décor was straight out of the
seventies! We enjoyed our ice cream and fizzy drinks like 6-year-olds though…
It was early evening by the time we got
back to our hotel and after an hour or so of chilling out I was feeling train-lagged
and hideous and just wanted to sleep it off. James however was ravenous so he
left me snoozing as he popped out to the restaurant strip just outside to pick
up some takeaway spring rolls. He returned about 15 minutes later with a
bemused look on his face and told me that pretty much every guy on a motorcycle
he’d passed had offered him drugs and girls! And we’d both thought Hue was such
a quiet, historical city…!
The next day we were determined to be a bit
more productive and get out to see some sights and after a good night’s sleep
we were prepped and ready!
Hue is the former capital of Vietnam and a
historical city with more tombs, pagoda’s and temples than you can shake a
stick at, but they’re pretty spread out along the river with some up to 20km
away from the centre. The traffic in Hue looked like a breeze compared to Hanoi
so we decided that rather than pay for a city tour for $25 or so that we’d just
hire a scooter for $6 instead! We hadn’t been too scarred by our Bali
experience and if anything the roads looked in slightly better condition so we
figured we’d be fine.
Our first stop was the Minh Mang tomb, it
was the furthest away so we figured we’d hit that one first and do the others
on the return journey. The roads were okay – not too busy but a bit dusty and
rocky at times! We took a couple of wrong turns but finally figured ourselves
out, and we were surprised at how friendly people passing us were – everyone
was waving and smiling! (Probably the beard again…)
 |
| Minh Mang Tomb |
It was for this reason that we weren’t
overly suspicious when a woman on a scooter pulled up along side us to say
hello as we were scooting along. A few people had done the same to ask where we
were from before scooting off again, but this lady stayed with us for a while
(which was a bit weird, having a conversation while you’re scooting along!) and
was telling us how she was a farmer and all about her family. Every so often
she’d scoot off ahead and I think we were both secretly hoping she’d turn off,
but every time she’d slow time and spark up a conversation again. Finally she
asked us where we were going and without really giving the consequences any
thought we told her – and then she told us she lived nearby and knew a short
cut so we should follow her.
Now it all sounds very sinister when you
put it like that, but it was a gorgeous day and there were plenty of people on
the roads and she seemed nice so we agreed, but although we weren’t saying it
to each other we were both a bit nervous!
As it was, she took us off the dusty, bumpy
road and down a track next to the river, which was beautiful. It did get a bit
hairy when we had to follow her off road, under a bridge and through a local
village but soon enough we arrived at the entrance to the tomb.
We said our thank-you’s to Roy – our newly
adopted guide – and were half expecting her to ask for some money for leading
us there but what came instead was an invitation to visit her house for tea
after we had explored the tomb, and that she would wait for us outside.
What could we possibly do?! We mentioned
that we were on a pretty tight itinerary for the day (true) but it didn’t deter
her, she said her place was only minutes away and we only had to visit for five
minutes to see where she lived. I scolded myself for always being so skeptical
of seemingly nice people and agreed (to be fair we didn’t really have much
choice!)
Off we went to the tomb, and it was pretty
spectacular – set among gardens and a lake with wildflowers everywhere... We
didn’t get to enjoy any of that though because James was speculating about ways
she would kill us once we got back to her house.
We spent about an hour exploring the tomb
and when we left we were both kind of hoping that she might have got bored and left!
But there she was, beaming and waiting for us. So we climbed aboard the scoot
and followed her along the dirt track into a tiny local village, the whole way
she kept telling us how happy she was that we were coming to visit her house,
interspersed with comments about how beautiful our white skin was… James turned
his head and said to me that he really hoped she wasn’t going to take it from
us…
We pulled up outside her house – a fairly
small wooden cabin set back from the road surrounded by others that looked the
same with chickens and ducks everywhere! She invited us in and made us some
Vietnamese tea and we sat around her table making polite conversation.
It was about 2-3 minutes before James asked
her how she’d learn to speak English so well and she mentioned that she’d
taught herself by speaking to tourists coming off the boat to visit the tomb.
James and I shot each other the ‘alarm-bells-are-going-off-in-my-head’ look and
then it started as we’d expected it to – the story of her two teenage children
and how expensive their education is, and how hard it was for her to afford to
send them to school in Hue. This continued for about 10 minutes, even when we
changed the subject or asked a different question.
Pre-empting what we knew was coming anyway,
James asked if we could offer her some money for the tea. She was instantly
embarrassed and said that we didn’t need to pay her for the tea, that she was
just so happy to have us in her house and to have met us…BUT, if we wanted to
contribute towards her children’s education we could.
 |
| Inside the Citadel |
While in the tomb we’d hidden most of our
money in various places in the bag on in our pockets just incase our fear of
being robbed had come to fruition and we had to hand over the wallet. James got
his wallet out to give her some money and I explained we didn’t have much to
give and she continued to protest that we really didn’t need to give her
anything unless we wanted to…
James handed over 75,000 dong (about $3.50)
and explained that was all we had at which point her smile dropped instantly
from her face and she said ‘What, you don’t have 100,000?’
Feeling pleased with ourselves for our
paranoid choice to hide our cash we thanked Roy for the tea and made our
excuses to get on the road. By this point she looked bored with us anyway and
it did make us wander how many tourists she managed to wrangle into her house
each day!
Pleased to be back on the road we tried
looking for a couple of other tombs but one was up the steepest dirt road you
have ever seen and there was no way our scoot would’ve made it, and by the time
we’d written that one off as a failed attempt time was getting on so we took
the scenic route back to Hue instead to explore the biggest historical
attraction in the city – the Citadel and Imperial Enclosure.
 |
| Forbidden Purple City |
The Citadel is enormous – 10km around, and
inside is essentially just a smaller version of Hue! Inside that is the
Imperial Enclosure or Forbidden Purple City as it was once known. Built in the
1800’s it was where the Emperor lived with his concubines and eunuchs!
Unfortunately, during the Vietnam war Hue was heavily bombed and most of the fighting was centered around the Citadel, meaning many of the grand buildings that were once there are now just a few bricks and an ornate doorway here and there. They’re currently undertaking a huge project to recreate all the old buildings that were bombed, but James and I agreed that some of the remains were much more interesting than the reconstructions, so we were on the fence as to whether it was a good thing or not.
Given the sheer size and scales of the walls surrounding the enclosure though it was an absolute sun trap and within an hour we both felt like we were suffering from heat stroke so we decided to call it a day and head back to our hotel for a much needed ice-cold shower!
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