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Published: September 16th 2008
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Hue seems like a pretty average Vietnamese town on arrival, lacking the charm of Hoi An, but hidden in the middle is a walled moat-surrounded citadel, in which is a second mini-citadel, the imperial enclosure of the Nguyen Dynasty. Its a strange sort of place, I thought, but the fact that is was piddling rain may have added to the sense of desolation. We've had some almightly monsoon downpours but they are generally at night. This was the first time the monsoon hit during the day. So, the rain, and more so the fact that the imperial citadel has been devastated by various wars (the French & later by the Communist and U.S. armies during the 1968 Tet Offensive. The Communists killed 2500 "uncooperatives" in just 3 1/2 weeks, some buried alive), gives it a weird sense of eeriness. Its constantly under restoration - Id say that'll take forever.
We spent a good few hours wandering around the citadel, looking at the various ruins and restored temples and came upon a pair of elephants in a field, just grazing away. That was pretty deadly, and I really wanted to go up and have a chat, but Si would have killed
me. The elephants probably would have killed me too. They had cute fuzzy heads, but I did think one of them looked a bit disturbed, he kept pacing on the same spot - not a good sign. They werent tied up and the area was pretty big with a lake for them as well. Hopefully, he wasnt too distressed - they looked pretty healthy and had lots of room to manouvre. We kept bumping into this one Ozzie girl, Michelle, and eventually we went for lunch together. Which led later on to a big boozy session in the DMZ Bar with herself and some UK/Ozzie blokes she had met the night before. By the end it was me with the fuzzy head. Not so cute though.
The next day, we had made plans to go on a motorbike tour of the various pagodas and Nguyen Emperors' tombs in the area, but I swear I was in such a hoop, I thought I might knock out my driver with my boozy fumes. Once or twice, while barrelling along gorgeous country laneways, I did think I might upchuck on his shoulder but thankfully I didnt. The bikes were great though, cleared
the heads nicely but everytime we got off to visit somewhere we died a death altogether! We dragged ourselves around regardless (at least the rain had pretty much stopped), and it was actually a great day. We went to Thien Mu Pagoda and got so see the monks chanting. We headed then to Tombs of Tu Duc and Minh Mang. The tombs & their temples were in much better condition than the building in the citadel, probably because they didnt have the crap bombed out of them. It's madness to think that for the most part such beautiful places were built for when the Emperors and his wives were dead. Nothing new I guess. There is gorgeous gardens and lakes, temples for the concubines and statues of mandarins and eunuchs lined up outside the (dead) emperors palace to see him to the other side.
Anyway, that night we caught the night bus to Ninh Binh - 12 hours. It was a sleeper bus with bunk-bed seats that almost fully recline which was great, except that Si got done on the leg room front and didnt sleep much. We stopped off for dinner in the DMZ area and my god,
it was total shite. The "chicken" (I should have taken a photo) was a very dark brown colour and was like leather. You literally couldnt tear the flesh off the bone. I cant believe I tried it. Si's rice was "extra spicy" and decidedly reheated. We feared we'd be on the loo for the whole journey, but by some miracle we were okay. I slept until about 2.30am and when I woke up (I was right behind the driver) I made the mistake of watching the road. Bad, bad idea. Driving during the day is hairy enough. At night time, they play chicken with all the other bus drivers and HGVs on the road. The rules are - hurtle along in the middle of the road, ignore any road markings, flash the ongoing driver ferociously so that he (and you) are completely blinded and then at the very last second, pull over into your lane. For extra fun, do this while overtaking another bus. Add to this the fact that the bus driver pulled over twice to inspect the wheel that I happened to be lying over. So either we were going to have a head long collision with another
bus or the wheel would fall off while playing chicken with one. I was happy to arrive in Ninh Binh at 5.30am. We figured we deserved a nice hotel ($20) after that!
Sorry for spelling mistakes - this PC doesnt seem to do spellcheck and also for lack of photos. Uploading takes forever and ever
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Angela
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Enjoying!
Love getting your updates. I suppose you won't be near Thailand in November? I'll be there in Hua Hin first week November. Maybe we could get delly belly together! Hugs to you both. We had a lovely weekend with Cliona here :). She went home yesterday :( Ange