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Published: September 15th 2009
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From the charming Hoi An, we continued on to Hue by sleeper bus. Sometimes the sleeper busses were good, other times they were not. They varied in quality and the ride depended on the driver. Always, they were an experience to remember. Sometimes the driver would stop at midnight for “dinner”, if that was when the bus passed the roadside restaurant that paid him a commission. On the trip to Hue, the driver stopped at 11:30 for dinner, turning on all the lights in the bus, no matter that most people were already fast asleep.
The only recognizable features this particular restaurant had were tiny plastic tables and chairs, scattered about an open, barn-like room. Sectioned off, at the back of the room was the “kitchen”, containing no stove, no fridge and no electric or gas range burners. The kitchen did contain a large amount of kindling, four big pots cooking on a counter atop blazing fires and a chopping board on the dirt floor, used to chop the only vegetable present: cabbage. Every dish that emerged from the kitchen was the same, except for the driver’s table where they were feasting away on a variety of fish and chicken
dishes. Every other dish contained very sad-looking steamed cabbage, some rice and a little chicken. There was no menu and nobody spoke any English.
The bathroom, located behind the kitchen, was of a very wierd style I'd unfortunately witnessed before. It consisted of a tiled floor with a tiny hole in the corner, against the wall. This, I don't understand; why go to the trouble of tiling the floor if you aren't even going to put in a squat toilet? No matter what you do the tile causes a splash! Why not cement? Maybe wood? At least leave a big dirt hole in the corner! Thankfully I only had to pee in this strange excuse for a “bathroom”.
I ordered by pointing at some people's meals, but I guess they ran out of chicken, because in the middle of my plate was a miniscule, 6-inch fish. I could just imagine them in the kitchen saying, "Hmm. We're all out of chicken, is there anything we can throw on there? Oh, here's a fish I just found, that'll do." So the food was terrible and a lot of people were complaining about the price, $3, which was about three
times the normal price for a simple meal like this. But the system is set up perfectly for the bus driver; he agrees to stop at some little restaurant, and in return, he gets a cut of all sales and a free meal.
We arrived in Hue, an industrial littly city, at 7 AM. A woman actually came on to the bus and woke us to let us know that we could stay at her hotel and that it was very, very nice. This woman received a percentage of the sale for each customer she recruited. The bus stopped directly in front of her hotel, called the "Sports Hotel", apparently named because the owner loves sports. After attempting to choose another hotel because we resented this stranger’s control over us, we consented to her offers and she gave us a very lovely “Rapunzel” room. All we had to do was take the elevator to the fifth floor and then walk up three floors. But the beds were plush and soft, with thick, puffy comforters. And our view looked out over the tops of the buildings, all the way to the river, six blocks away. And the room was clean
and oh, so quiet.
In Hue, we met a young Vietnamese man who had grown up in Australia and was visiting Vietnam for the first time since leaving in childhood, alone. Curiously, he was very resistant to interacting with local people, and extremely nervous about “getting the most” out of his trip. I told him that I thought I got the most out of my trips by talking to local people everywhere I went, and he said, "Well, I don't really want to do that. Do you have any other suggestions for getting the most out of my trip?" He was embarrassed by his poor Vietnamese language skills but I was still surprised that he didn’t want to speak to his former countrymen. I think he was solely there to see the country.
We also spoke to a woman named CoCo who ran a restaurant in town. She was a spunky, 45 year old woman who worked all day at the restaurant and slept in the back at night. Her sister owned the restaurant and came in sometimes, but spent most of her time at her big, new home with her family. CoCo said she never got to visit because she always had to work. She wasn't married and didn't have any children of her own. She didn't seem to resent her sister at all, she said she didn't want the responsibility of owning the place. She got to stay in the back for free and eat all her food there but her sister didn't pay her any money. She told us she wanted a foreigner boyfriend because Vietnamese men just got drunk and tried to take all your money. I told her some foreigner men were like that too, but that I'd keep an eye out for a boyfriend for her.
Hue boasts some gorgeous old temples, as well as the Citadel, an old walled city featuring many wonderful ancient structures; all of this architecture is strongly and beautifully Chinese-influenced. The use of colorful broken ceramics to form mosaic walls, pillars and floors is striking and lovely. The Citadel can be explored by foot but the cool temples strewn about town are best reached by motorbike.
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