Hue Day 1

So I took a sleeper bus to Hue (pronounced “Hway”) on Thursday night. I had a good time on the way there – I slept fine for the most part, and it took a while for the novelty to wear off. I met two nice British backpackers, Emily and Sam – they're just friends, mind you – and we talked for a little bit while we waited for the bus to arrive. It's nice to have been here for so long that I can actually comment on travel and the experience here. My first few days in Hanoi, I really didn't talk much because I had so little to say that was relevant. Now I have stories to tell and opinions to give to the newcomers. Oh, how the tables have turned.

They packed us onto the sleeper bus like sardines. The beds weren't fully flat – they were like chaise lounges, so that your back was angled up from your legs, so that they could fit more leg room for the person behind you under your back. Meanwhile, the backpack I was traveling with was too small to put in the storage compartment under the bus so I had to stuff it down with my legs. I still managed to sleep well, though. And the lack of curtains meant that I woke up when the sun rose, which was beautiful.

So when I arrived in Hue, around 9:00 in the morning, I didn't need to stop to take a rest at my hotel or anything. I checked in, took a much needed shower, loaded up on eggs and cheese and bread, and got going. The people at reception were very, very friendly and helpful. I rented a bicycle from them for the day and headed off towards the Imperial City with a 1.5 L water bottle in the basket. It didn't stay cold for very long. The temperature had to be at least 90 degrees, at 10:00 in the morning.

Hue is divided by the Perfume River (Apparently it's a mistranslation, since the river itself doesn't smell particularly like anything.) The part south of the river is the more modern part, and that's where most of the hotels and nice restaurants are. The part north of the city is mostly made up of the citadel, a square, walled-in area. To get inside the citadel, you have to bike across a bridge to the other side of the river, and then enter across a moat through a large gate in the wall. It's all very official and imposing. I was very impressed. And then inside the citadel, it just looks like a normal Vietnamese city, with dust and poverty and people selling you bananas and pho. Except that within the first wall, there's a smaller walled-off section – the Imperial Enclosure. This was built by the emperors of the last Vietnamese dynasty, the Nguyen Dynasty, in the early 1800s. It's solely for the emperor and his court, with homes for his family, temples, and buildings where official functions were held. Many of the buildings were destroyed by natural disasters or war, but the Vietnamese have restored a lot of them. They're so beautiful now that it's hard to imagine how beautiful they were originally. I'll post pictures later. It's funny, though – even though the recognize the potential of Hue as a tourist site, they don't seem to care particularly about protecting the parts that are still ruins. You can just go tromping around through broken stone, and I swear people are living in some of the abandoned houses.

I spent a few hours exploring there, and by then I was exhausted and tired (so hot!) so I went back to my hotel for a bit of a nap, and figured out what else I wanted to do with my day. I knew I wanted to buy some presents for some of the staff members at Peace House and the people I worked with at the school, so I asked the people at reception and they told me that there were lots of souvenir places around the river. I went out walking and exploring – it was lovely to walk along the river – but funnily enough, there really wasn't anything by the river itself. Just hotels, really. So I crossed the river to go to the Dong Ba Market, the biggest market in Hue. I love exploring markets – it's a lot of fun to see all the crazy stuff on sale – and honestly, I'm getting so sick of people asking me to buy from them like I owe them something that I've started to enjoy saying no. Except I'll never enjoy saying no to motorbike and taxi drivers – I just wish I didn't have to deal with them at all. They were worse in Hue than in Hanoi – I was never left alone for an instant.

But in the market, I bought a few cheap wooden bracelets, and then when I worked my way to the silk section, a woman grabbed me and started chatting in a friendly way, and then started wrapping something silk around me, and I firmly said no and asked her if she had silk scarves. She wanted to sell me three for 900,000 dong, which was ridiculous, and I said that the max I would pay was 300,000 (around $18.) She gave in when I started to walk away, but did not look happy about it.

After that, I crossed the bridge again and sat in a nice little sculpture garden by the river for a while, watching the sun set. Except for occasionally being harassed by people asking me if I wanted to take a boat ride – one hour! very cheap! - it was very peaceful. Then when it was getting dark, I made my way back to my hotel, relaxed for a little while, and turned on the TV, which is hardly ever a good idea in Vietnam. First I got kind of entranced by this Vietnamese music video about a man at a restaurant with one girl when the girl he's in love with shows up. It got pretty annoying because both of the girls were pouty and irritating, and his hair was just awful. Switch. Found a Korean TV show with English subtitles set in some time in the Imperial past that was pretty entertaining, but not in a “so bad it's good” way. When that ended, I was getting hungry, so I ventured back out to a restaurant Lonely Planet recommended.

It was very nice – live Vietnamese music (with no familiar instruments – one woman who also sang used a kind of castanets that looked like two small teacups in each hand she would clink together,) a friendly waitress who liked to chat – and the food was very good. I got the Hue version of beef noodle soup, which I eat every chance I get, and Hue “cake,” which was this sort of circle of fried dough folded over to make a pocket, full of bean sprouts and egg. Peanut dipping sauce. Very tasty. By the time I got back to my hotel, it was around nine, and I was exhausted.