Tuesday 23rd June 2009 Hue

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Tuesday 23rd June 2009 Hue
Skipped breakfast and got on the bus hopping they’d stop somewhere decent but we were sorely disappointed. The bus pulled in literally after being on the road about 20 minutes to a place called marble hill. We got off the bus and the air was almost at baking temperature again already and it wasn’t yet 9am. Surrounding us were over 100 shops and stalls selling everything you could ever dream of made out of marble and many that you would never even think anyone in their right mind would ever want or need. There were life size marble rhinos, big altars, a million Buddha statues, dolphins, monkeys, dragons, birds. It was a marble zoo but without any place to find anything to eat, not even a marble cake! We wandered around and resigned ourselves that they were too stupid to sell the tourists anything other than a set of marble rosary beads and got back on the bus.

It didn’t take too long to get to Hue and we pulled into town at about 12pm. We headed off with some guy outside the bus and he brought us to a place actually in our book and it was very nice, bingh dong 3. For $12 we have a huge spotless room with obligatory ac, fridge and even its own desktop pc in the room. It’s right in the heart of backpackerville too so we thought there would be plenty of food and drink places about.

Our starving bellies got us straight out on the streets after dropping our bags off and we wandered for about 30 minutes not seeing one place that looked any better than a mediocre café at home, the shops all looked crap and very limited restaurants beyond your very budget backpacker places and street stalls. We weren’t too impressed at all with Hue and we knew it wasn’t our first day in a new place thing not knowing where stuff was, it just didn’t seem that nice.

We found a basic enough place and got lunch and then decided to rent bikes and cycle into the citadel in the old town as the roads didn’t seem too crazy busy. There are I think about 350,000 people living in Hue so the roads were a bit more manageable than in HCMC. It was far too hot for walking anyhow, the sweat was beating down off us, I am not sure if it was half to do with the terror of crossing over through 10 lanes of mopeds and buses and trying to get through junctions with traffic converging from 7 roads with no obvious rules or right of ways. We made it to where we wanted anyhow after a bit of a cycle around which showed us that this area didn’t seem too much nicer than where we were. The citadel itself is impressive and imposing enough though. It was the seat of the Nguyen emperors in the past and in its original state seen from little scale models looked pretty impressive. The old walls and moates which remain are quite a sight but overall the place is very unrestored, they seem to be working away on bits of it around the compound though so it might be in better shape soon but today it needs a good old attack of a lawnmower. Did see an area, which unfortunately didn’t seem to be open, where they would dress you up in traditional ceremonial gear for photos. They had several options on the price list, on throne, no throne, with servants, with more servants and best of all and for only about $6 you could get a procession. How cool would that be, getting worshipped in a parade for the price of a pint. If only it wasn’t closed!

It was far too hot so we got on our bikes again, said a prayer and headed out onto the mad roads. We decided the one day would be enough in Hue so went to book our bus to Hanoi for tomorrow but the bloody thing was full so we had to hang around for another day so we booked a day tour to some outlying tombs of emperors. We had an email form John and Claire who it turns out were staying in the room below us in the same hotel amazingly so we met up for dinner. Actually had a really good Indian in a place right on the corner of our hotel which was handy and then went to a funky little café across the road for a few beers.

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