Enter Vietnam

---

To Heaven and Hue

There are two ways to get from Vientiane to southern Vietnam; one is the sensible tourist oriented trip where they sort everything out for you and take you through an easily accessible border-crossing near Hue. The other is what I chose to do and involves a lot more effort, heartache and pain while providing the possibility of being cheaper. Sometimes thrift can really get you in trouble I have found.

To get the trip underway I had to catch one of those poky little local buses from the southern bus station in Vientiane and so as to save money (I took the trip as a personal challenge to travel cheaper than the organised bus version; for reference it would have been $21 and 18 odd hours in a bus) I decided to take a intra-city bus out there. Of course this made things instantly difficult, as I had to negotiate not one, but two bus stations in the early hours of the morning; a task that I did not look forward to with much joy. No real dramas ensued at the first station, but I did have to wait a long time for the bus to leave. Of course, when I got to the second bus station I found that the last bus to Lak Xao had already left two hours earlier anyway! Just my luck. I did however manage to get a seat on a bus to Pakse that I could jump off at Vieng Kham (the site of my Chinese dinner and bike fixing escapade during The Loop) for only $3. Bargain! Add to that the 40 cents for the bus across Vientiane and I was well within budget for getting to Vietnam.

As busses go, local busses that is, the trip wasn’t bad. Ok, I was stuck with locals who were as mad as cut snakes and put Karaoke music through the bus, nothing unusual there though. To put it simply, I was glad to leave the bus at the turnoff and to start heading east. Now, as you would have guessed from my previous journals (forgive me for assuming that you have read them) I am totally in love with the road to Lak Xao. What lies at the end of the road may be the creepiest town in the world, but the scenery en-route just cannot be beaten and it was with this frame of mind that I jumped into a jumbo for the four hour trek up into the hills (at a massive cost of $3). I had the distinct displeasure of sitting next to a blatant pedophile for the trip; presumably he comes from Lak Xao. He spent the entire trip either pointing at me and any girl he could find (he somehow thought he could pimp any girl in the world to me, regardless of the fact that he didn’t even know them), or touching my arm, or sitting really close to a four year old girl while leering suggestively. He also managed to pull off the Steve Buschemi look of total seedy-ness and lack of bathing which I thought to be quite an achievement for a Lao.

I will spare you details of my stay in Lak Xao that night as I wrote about that last time (sorry Lindsay but chronology just doesn’t suit me) except to say that it was surprisingly cold. I knew it was winter but everywhere else in Laos has been damn hot for weeks and weeks, and Lak Xao was quite hot when I was there not a week before, but all of a sudden the rains moved in from the East, blanketing everything in cloud and chill winds. Unfortunately the weather did not change over the subsequent days which made my journey even more miserable.

I awoke the next morning, without having the luxury of a functional shower or toilet, and hurriedly tried to get to the border - a short 30km drive away. I knew that it was going to be a long day so I was up and going by seven. Why is it though that border-crossings always bring out the biggest rip-offs? It really is true and I was told by several drivers that it was going to cost me $6 to get to the border which I thought to be outrageous. I finally found a tuk-tuk heading in that direction (it even had a pig-in-a-bag) who took me for $2 but I still felt sore at the inflated price. Perhaps the single bus option would have been cheaper? As we climbed towards the border, which resides at a small pass through the range which separates the two countries, the winds grew. The cold air did not fit well with my thin north Australian blood and I was soon shivering despite the multiple layers of clothing that I was wearing. Higher and higher we climbed, around twisting valleys and along the sides of mountains, cold mountain rivers rushing below us in a totally un-inviting manner. Eventually we climbed so high as to enter the clouds and that is when the truly miserable part of my day began.

Some people may think that the idea of immigrating in a cloud is great; just like going to heaven. I wasn’t fooled by this (I know that only hell awaits me) but the eerie mood put a distinctly surreal note to my departure from Laos. As I left the building and faced the 1km walk to the Vietnamese post I could barely see five meters in front of me. The sound of rushing water was present but I could not discern its source; I walked across a bridge without even realising. Eventually though, a much colder and damper version of me reached the border post with a smile on his face; here was a new country, a new adventure. The guards were actually really friendly, something that I wasn’t prepared for but a nice change none-the-less. We jovially talked about things, mostly how to get from the border to the next city (Vinh) which resulted in them bringing a taxi driver over who told me it would cost $20 and that he was the cheapest option available. I didn’t want to go with him because his was disturbingly dirty in the way that mechanics are and he was bleeding profusely from every part of his mouth, not to mention the price. The guards did turn unfriendly eventually, right after they told me that I had to pay $1 for the stamp which they had already given me or else I could not get my passport back. I went into stunned disbelief slash pretend to be outraged mode in order to test their patience but I realised that they were going to sit around all day doing nothing whether I was there or not. If I didn’t pay the dollar I would not have been able to get anywhere that day so I relented. I got out the dollar bill that I had been saving since Cambodia for just such an occasion; it was so crushed, torn and scribbled on that I doubt it would constitute legal tender even in the US. Vietnamese border guards 0 - MattyLee 1!!!

I walked out into the surreal cloud-land which was surrounding the border and tried to look for a tuk-tuk, taxi or bus heading down the mountain. Of course, being cloudy I couldn’t see any so I went for a short walk. Still nothing. “Bugger” I though, I was going to have to take that filthy $20 taxi, or hitch. After asking around at a few trucks, waving at anything which moved (even border guards) and just generally being totally unsuccessful at hitching (even the taxi had driven away from me in disgust to sit somewhere out of sight in the mist) a miraculous thing happened: a mini-van arrived with a Vietnamese girl who could speak fluent English. I quickly put on my puppy-dog face and asked if they could give me a lift down the mountain, something they agreed to do after realising that I wasn’t a serial killer. It turned out that they were a film crew searching for a location to shoot a motion picture; the director was apparently one of the most famous in all Vietnam (he made a big movie called The Woodcutter). What a chance of luck that was! They fed me, gave me vodka to warm up and drove me down to the next town, and what is more, I got to stop with them at various beautiful villages along to way, which was something I could hardly have hoped to do. The mountains in the west of Vietnam are some of the most beautiful I have seen, particularly in the mist. As we drove downwards, ever hugging the side of deeply forested mountains, the valleys opened up before us for short glimpses through the fog. Streams appeared out of nothingness only to gurgle away into a void slightly further away from us. The mountains in the distance were shrouded in cloud and their shape could only be discerned by the ways in which the fog wisped over their summits. It truly was a beautiful drive, if a hair-raising one in parts, and I scarcely had time to look away from my surroundings. It also saved me a bucketload of money.

So there I was, dropped on a street in some random town in Vietnam without a clue. Due to my die hard traveling spirit - lack of sense that is - I had neglected to get a guidebook for Vietnam. I had vaguely assumed that I would meet someone at the border that I could swap books with but alas I hadn't seen a foreigner all day. I did have a map of Laos though which included small parts of Vietnam around the edges of a totally useless and inaccurate way. To be honest, I didn't even know where in Vietnam I was heading, just wherever was close sounded like fun, so I waltzed into a post office and asked around for a map. Looking down the Vietnamese coast for a name which I recognised I suddenly fell on Hue which looked to be very close by to where I was (or where I thought that I was). With that important decision made I then only had to deal with the comparatively small task of actually getting there.

Well it turns out that Hue is a very long way from where I was; I must have crossed from Laos into the heart of Siberia judging by how long it took me. First of all I had to get a mini-van to the east coast where I could join highway number one which runs all the way south, a task which turned out to be quite easy; when you draw pictures of buses everywhere and keep yelling "Hue, Hue!" the locals get the point rather easily. Unfortunately for me however the bus (which for reference cost me $3) was chock-full of Red Bull cans, contained no less than four chain smokers who refused to open windows, and had the exhaust pipe conveniently located face high in the cabin. Whoa, was I giddy when I got out of there! I was so happy when they dropped me at some random street corner in some other random city somewhere near Vinh (I think) that I nearly kissed the tarmac. I was so happy in fact that I decided to treat myself to lunch, what with it being well passed lunch time and all.

Now, in the Lao countryside when I was hungry I would walk into any old restaurant, do the international sign language for "Please feed me, I'm a poor hungry backpacker" and sit down to a good old noodle soup. When I got up to leave I pay them some trivial sum for the food and off I would go. Now enter Vietnam, things are very different here. I played out the usual charade, got fed a massive but totally unappealing meal (think day old cold fish and vegetables) and was then asked to pay $10 for the privilege! I was outraged and did my best to get out of there with my money and without a Vietnamese Yakuza gang on my heels. To get away from that terrible town I just flagged down the first bus that came past in the right direction and was on my way before they could murder me.

The big bus came as quite a shock to me as I was immediately greeted by 60-odd really surly locals who were traveling all the way from Hanoi to Saigon in one hit (30 hours or so). The journey was already 7 hours old for them and they really weren't having a fun time; they had even stopped the karaoke. It was another 7 hours drive to Hue which I spent absorbed in my mp3 collection while trying my best to get comfortable with what little space I could get. I was quite literally sitting on people. I was lucky though as quite a lot of passengers didn't even get to sit down! I'm sure that you can imagine how happy I was to get off that bus, and to show it I waved a cheery goodbye to my fellow passengers who looked back at me as though they wanted to kill me. Apparently a lot of people from Hanoi travel south to Saigon to work in the factories there and they are only allowed to return over the New Year holiday (Tet), which was just recently, thus resulting in thousands of these horrible bus journeys.

So there I was in Hue, or more precisely, there I was at the turnoff to Hue in the middle of nowhere. Of course there were some motos around who were all too happy to try and charge me $10 for the ride into the city, which I flatly refused to pay; instead I opted to try hitching my way in. However, the motos just wouldn't go away so while I waited for a ride I casually attempted to barter the price down to a more reasonable level without actually having any conviction of being able to get anything better than six. Eventually however, I just paid them $4 as it was now almost 10pm, I had not eaten since lunch, had not showered for 36 hours and just generally wanted to be somewhere better than a crossroads in the middle of nowhere Vietnam. Overall, my journey took two days, cost $25.40 (plus the accommodation and food that I had to buy in order to stay overnight) and was hellish to say the least. But I think that it was worth it all just for the views near Lak Xao, the immigration in a cloud and the trip with the film crew.

Hue

Hue is an undeniably beautiful city; it is small (only 450,000-odd people) and is dominated by a citadel used by the Nguyen dynasty rulers in the 18th and 19th centuries. Compared to Laos it is a bustling metropolis filled with traffic (the unbelievably fun Vietnamese form thereof), touts selling anything and everything, people busily running here and there, and above all Danish people. I have me a staggeringly large percentage of the Danish population so far in Vietnam; almost 12 of them turned up on a single day without previously having met each other in order to perpetrate some sort of invasion. Everywhere I go they just appear it would seem. I have nothing against the Danes, and I actually haven't met one that I disliked, but I am just wondering what it is about Denmark that has made them all run off the Vietnam in one hit.

I really enjoyed my time in Hue, which I mostly spent reveling in the new-found bustle of a real city. I ran around trying out as many restaurants as I could and frequenting the bars which were always packed with tourists playing pool or just talking (my pool skills were really rusty and it has taken me a week to get back into the swing of things).

One night found me with four friends: Steve (an English guy that I'm following south in order to get his Vietnam guidebook once he finishes with it), Marten (a Norwegian guy), Tom (a totally outrageous Australian who never stops talking and does all sorts of crazy things) and MC Bob (a very drunk local guy who tried to sell us food all night and we kept around for entertainment). We were sitting on stools in front of an unmarked building on some secluded street drinking beer that cost $1 for 2 liters; you really can't beat that. On the way home we managed to fit all four of us (MC Bob had to go home unfortunately) onto a single cyclo in what we thought was the ultimate in across-city transport. We pulled up outside of a bar looking like complete twats and we didn't even care!

Ok, I didn't spend all of my time in Hue eating and drinking; I also went and saw the sights. The citadel is a marvelous construction, set within a massive moat with attached ramifications it is more of an old city than a citadel in itself - the remains of an ancient walled city. Within the citadel there is another moat and wall which surrounds the palace and the "Forbidden Purple City" which sounds like an overly flowery and descriptive name but turns out to be quite apt. The palace is a gorgeous compound filled with dozens of restored temples and other buildings. Flowered gardens and carefully manicured greenery abounds. I could have walked for days among the beautiful architecture had it not cost so much to enter. I also spent a day on a bicycle when I headed out to see the tombs of the old emperors that are scattered around the surrounding countryside (which, by the way, was much hillier than I had anticipated). The tombs are gigantic, the sort of places that only emperors and kings could dream of building, and in themselves could occupy me for days on end.

Just quickly, I went to the Museum of Fine Arts late one afternoon and chanced upon what is possibly the greatest exhibit I have ever seen. Among ancient coins from before Christ’s time and the fantastic works of art created in centuries past there lies a small wooden bowl filled with six dice; the ordinary sort dice that you can buy anywhere. The plaque stated that these were replicas of the original "Grains of Dice" used by the Nguyen emperors. Each grain had six sides would you believe, and each side had a different number imprinted on it as a number of black dots! I just loved that exhibit.

---

Photos

The Road Down From the Border
After we descended below the clouds it was possible to take a few photos. Unfortunately it doesn't capture the scene as well as I had hoped, mainly due to my lack of photography skills.

Hue Citadel Wall and Moat
This is one of 10 (I think) bridges across the moat which surrounds the citadel. Each entrance is guarded by a tower such as this one. What makes it all difficult is that pedestrians have to share the single lane entrance with bicycles, motorbikes, cars and trucks.

The Tallest Flagpole in Vietnam
Really? I bet you could have guessed what it was.

Gate to the Palace
Once inside the citadel you have to cross a second moat and enter the palace via this impressive guardhouse. Three separate bridges and three corresponding doors pass through the structure; the middle one is reserved for the emperor even to this day.

A Gate Inside the Palace
One annonymous gate which looks quite old.

Flowers
Hue is supposedly famous for its gardens but I was there in the wrong season to see them fully. Some flowers were still around though in the far reaches of the palace grounds.

Tree-lined Walkways
Inside the Palace compound.

Old Hue
Reconstruction of the Palace has only been partially completed so you run into a lot of decrepit buildings like this one. They are all very unique and charming in my opinion.

Palanquin
Is that all it takes to be emperor? I can play dressups!

Royal Reading Room
This building was used by one emperor as his reading room. It had by far the most beautifully manicured garden in the compound.

Trees, Rocks and Old Buildings
Summary of the Palace experience.

Lake Inside the Palace
A large man-made lake was built in the north-eastern quarter of the Palace grounds; presumably for swimming and boating.

Gate to The Emperors' Memorial
All of the Nguyen Emperors are remembered in a series of shrines which lie beyond this gate.

Shrines for the Nguyen Emperors
The shrines to the Emperors are held inside this building.

Oh Fishy Fishy Fish
That went, wherever I, did go.

Tomb of Emperor Tu Duc
The tombs of the Nguyen Emperors are dotted around the hills surrounding Hue. This gate is within the tomb of Tu Duc.

Tower at Tu Duc's Tomb
Freudian?

Minh Mang's Tomb
Part of the tomb for Emperor Minh Mang. His tomb was essentially one massive lake which surrounds a series of temples and pagodas leading up to a massive burial mound (about 15m high I would guess).

Flowers at Minh Mang's Tomb
Colour!

Comments

[anonymous]

Let me send you a Vietnam Airlines domestic timetable ;)) Bill