Day 17 - Hue

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Colourless Hue 16-17

We left Hanoi in the evening of Day 16 to board the overnight sleeper train to Hue. The train was different from the one that we took in Thailand, it’s wasn’t one big communal sleeper like before, this time we had a four berth compartment. It wasn’t as comfortable or a clean as the Thai train, but it was better as it was compartmentalised and felt more secure that way. A 14 hour train had us in Hue; unfortunately it didn’t live up to its colourful name. Hue, I will remember for fun! Taking a full day tour of the city on the back of a motorbike is fun, lots of fun. Hue had less traffic than Hanoi, but the traffic was still crazy, driving in every direction and beeping all the time. So been the passenger of the motorbike was scary at first, but once I felt confident with my driver I started to sit back and enjoy the ride, whilst still holding on for dear life.
On our motorbike ride we stopped to take photos of temples, war memorials, we also had to make a quick dash under a tree stop to put on raincoats and macs, from the sudden down pour of rain. In Hue it doesn’t just rain, it rains cats and dogs. We stopped at monastery for lunch for a mouth-watering buffet of many kinds and flavours of vegetarian food, yummy in my tummy!

After lunch we drove a short distance, through a maze of alleyways to arrive at a women’s house. The woman, we were told, is renowned for making the famous Vietnamese conical hat. What makes her special is that she has only the use of one hand, as her other arm was blown off in a land line leaving her with nothing below her elbow. Although, she manages to use the stump on her elbow as good as she would her hand. We watched her as she meticulously made a conical hat for us, skilfully and perfectly all within about 5 minutes. The hat is made from hand ironed palm leaves, to give them a flat shape; there are two layers of the leaves on top of each other, which are then vanished to make them waterproof. Between the two layers this women put stencilled newspaper, so that when you place the hat up to the light you could see her name and the word ‘Hue’ written, a unique touch I thought. On the way home we drove we the country side to meet another woman. The women had planned to show use around the rice patties, but since the town was under 1 meter of water only the week prior, this was no longer possible. Instead she showed us around her little museum which demonstrated the process of rice from field to grain. All the work is done either by hand and helped on with bull power. There’s no tractor or combine harvester in sight!

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