Day 6 – Hue

Hue.

Pronounced Hway.

As in the sound a sleep deprived traveller makes when stepping off a train into bright light, holding a backpack, trying to balance.

Hue.

Hue’s schtick is that it’s an old and cultural city, the capital from 1803-1945 or thereabouts, home to 3 loved kings, 1 hated one, and 9 others who generally seem to have been treated with a mixture of reverent indifference. It’s a bit of a weird city, trying to figure out the whole narrative — there’s a lot of emphasis on the damage to the city from the American and French Wars (and always the damage caused by the invaders, not the local South VN troops nor any VN combatants for that matter). It’s like the government are trying to say how great it was when VN was an independent kingdom, which in my head goes against the whole Communist/Socialist narrative. There is much fond talk of how the King was not allowed to be viewed directly, how he’d gold plate everything and have areas where women were not allowed, and how he’d hold court, build large and decadent palaces, have many wives and concubines, and generally do what Kings do.

At the same time there’s no narrative around the peasant farmers, the workers, and I’d imagine that back then their lot wasn’t much better than it is today — and today they still work hard and don’t have a lot of cash.

Hue.

Went from train to a wonderful Pho Bon place, the breakfast of Hue champions. Soup, noodles, broth a little spicier, and some pork and shrimp. Also a wonderful and rather spicy chilli paste that I added. A good breakfast, accompanied by the very strong and sweet coffee and condensed milk.

To the hotel for an hour of colling off, freshening up, then began the motorbike tour. After many days of seeing the crazies swerve in and out of traffic, it was our turn to join them. First was a quick spin to the river to hop on a riverboat, basically a portable souvenir shop that was also the slowest boat on the river, so was told many times “you buy you buy”. Intrepid’s schtick is that they are trying to make a difference to local communities, so in this case it was a local family business that was trying to get more out of us than what we’d already paid for the trip. But as long as it’s supporting locals, Intrepid says okay.

Hue.

A city of temples, many apparently look the same. Went to one on a hill, the one that has the crispy monk’s car — the monk that set fire to himself in 1963 in Saigon to protest the Sth VN dictator’s general attempt to piss off all the buddhists, his old blue car is parked here. Didn’t check how many miles on the clock, but I’m guessing that, unlike just about everything else, the car ain’t for sale. We reflected.

Then it was back on the motorcycles (I should be clear — we were only passengers, we had drivers, mine an old guy with a big smile and a good eye for the road, thank goodness) tearing through the back alleys of Hue to another temple/citadel. Was quite exhilarating, fastest we got to was 60 kmh, lots of turns and narrow lanes and the occasional chicken trying to cross the road. And rice. It’s just gone harvest time so the locals are drying their rice on the road. As one does, I guess.

The citadel/temple was built by the third king, the last of the ones that folk really liked. There’s a story that no one knows where he is actually buried: when he died they had a bunch of fake burials, and the monk who really buried him then had to kill himself (I’m no detective but couldn’t they at the time just have gone around and found out which monk was dead and check out where he’d been digging?).

We were quite hot and hungry at this stage, and also hearing the rumble of thunder and some big dark clouds. So the Gourmands of Anarchy rode again, through more tiny streets and alleys, and some bumpy off road shortcuts that had me saying the magic word.

Hue.

At this point we took our first casualty, one of the riders skidded and fell, possibly due to a local cutting across (Intrepid helping those pesky locals indeed). No major damage, just some mild scrapes and bruises — this member of our group is now known as Evel Knievel.

Lunch was at a monastery/nunnery, vegetarian. I didn’t have any bacon patches, but fortunately these folks try to make soy chicken/ham substitute and in all it was very tasty. We arrived just as the heavens broke, lots and lots and lots of rain, thunder and lightning. Very beautiful, and really cooled the place down. Also took out the electricity, but it got cool. Courses of soup, soy chicken and greens, some rice and soy ham and veggies, and some other stuff I can’t quite remember but all good.

Once the rain eased, we headed back to Hue, to the big old citadel, the place where the kings had the most fun and also the place that got muchly levelled during the wars and is now being rebuilt. Not wanting to get political, but I’m a fan of the concept that in war, no one is innocent. From the way I read things, the citadel was occupied by South VN troops, then came the Tet offensive where the VC/NVA occupied it, and then the Sth VN/US marines recaptured it, in the process calling in airstrikes to do a bunch of levelling because there were lots of people in the citadel shooting at them. To me, part of the moral is, if you don’t want your house bombed, don’t sit in it shooting at folks. Just saying.

By this stage, the group were tired and very templed out, so couldn’t wait to get back on the bikes and back to the hotel. Time for a quick local beer (not great, too warm and tasted a lot of emu export) and then off to a restaurant for a local recommendation from our guide. I have noticed that when our guide recommends a place, it’s a little on the pricey side. Good food, good drinks, but probably 20-30% over what other places offer. I’m hoping it’s not like Morocco, where the guide was obviously getting kick backs for bringing foreigners into places. Had a wonderful hot pot at this place, accompanied by a bit of chilli. The guide put a bowl with a pickled chilli cut in half, and a grabbed half in my chopsticks and down it went. i think it was supposed to be dipped in the soup and steeped, not eaten, but it was a little hot. Think it was pickled in formaldehyde, then came a tidal wave of chilli. Went a lovely shade of red, I’m told.