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Published: November 17th 2009
If I told you we found ourselves last night at a Havana-style party overflowing with mojitos, Cuban music, and Vietnamese dancing meringue in the street, would you think that the heat has finally melted my brain? Fear not, my brain is intact (barely), yet we found ourselves in just such a setting, watching in amazement as traffic stopped in both directions on a major street and hundreds of people (locals and tourists alike) gathered to watch the spectacle. I found myself (dead sober, by the way) pulled up on-stage (curse my blond hair!) by two Vietnamese guys clad in Caribbean get-up and palm-frond hats. A moment later I was dancing with a geriatric Aussie (who had jumped on-stage of his own free will), first something akin to the waltz, then to such classics as "YMCA," while cameras flashed and little kids shrieked with laughter. Yes, welcome one and all to Hue (pronounced "Hu-AY," like "Hooray!" without the "R").
Our journey here consisted of a three-hour bus ride north from Hoi An, through what we later discovered is the largest tunnel in southeast Asia! The narrow road hugged the coast and slowly ascended into the beautiful cloud-covered mountains we'd photographed flying
into Da Nang last week. Then we entered a 4-mile long tunnel (the Hai Van Tunnel and Pass) and emerged into bright sunshine and more spectacular coast. The road passed above a small island we later learned is actually a leper colony! A few hours later we arrived in Hue and once again had the displeasure of being dropped off on the edge of town. This was after, oddly enough, we drove in a big circle right through the city and past many of the hotels everyone on the bus was staying at. They kept shouting at the driver to stop and let them out, but the driver kept shrugging and making excuses as to why he wasn't "allowed" to stop there. By the time he finally stopped, near a small bus station supposedly on the edge of town, we were all furious. Of course, loads of taxis and motorbikes were waiting for us (we're pretty used to this game after 5 weeks in Asia), but having no idea where we were, we asked them to show us on a map. The only answer we got was, "Not on map!" implying that we were way on the outskirts and too
far away to try to walk to our hotel. We were quoted $6 for a taxi to our hotel, which seemed high to begin with, but we figured that maybe we were all the way across town or something - who knew?
So you can imagine our shock and disdain when the taxi takes two quick left-hand turns and drops us at our hotel literally less than two minutes later. We lost it. The whole trip, we've stood idly by as we've been ripped off for a dollar or two here or there - it's just the way it works here, and if you're going to travel independently you have to accept it, to a certain degree - but to blatantly be lied to that our hotel was really far away and then have it be practically across the street was an outrage. When the driver came to open our door for us, we refused to move until we got some of our money back. This quickly escalated into a shouting match, and the very kind owner of our hotel rushed out to see what the commotion was about. In the end, the driver begrudgingly gave us back $2
(I still think $4 was an outrage for the ride), and we stomped into the hotel ready to kill someone. The owner (like all the hotel owners we've met in this country) was super-nice and apologized profusely for our experience (though it was hardly his fault). He sat us down and brought us two big glasses of fresh-squeezed orange juice, then had one of his staff carry all of our bags up four flights of stairs to our room. That helped ease the rage (ah, the lovely Irish temper flares)...
After settling down, we headed out in search of the post office to gather information for mailing all our new clothes onward to New Zealand. Supposedly the post office was just down the street along the river, past the big 5-star hotel, and take a left. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, an hour later, we were still wandering the streets, clutching our Lonely Planet guidebook, staring uselessly at bus station maps that seemed to make little sense and didn't even attempt to point north. The hotel owner said it was a "big building, impossible to miss," so in the process we'd discovered the local hospital (nope), several banks (nope),
an embassy (nope), a TV station (nope), and plenty of tourist agencies (nope!)...At long last we pulled out our emergency translator (a sheet of obvious universal pictures you can point to and hope the person will point you in the right direction), showed it to a biker on a corner, and pointed helplessly at the picture of envelopes and stamps. He nodded and gestured vaguely down the street and to the left...so off we went again in search of this "unmissable" post office.
At long last we passed the big radio tower at the TV station (again) and felt like fools. Apparently, VNPT was NOT a TV station. Nor a radio station, as we'd hypothesized too. VNPT was, in fact,
the post office, a gigantic building that was, indeed, impossible to miss. Somehow we'd missed the big sign out front that clearly said, "POST." Feeling like morons, we stepped inside, quickly found the international shipment desk, gathered our prices, and left with our tails between our legs. Idiots!
As fate would have it, we found our hotel was about six doors down from the biggest and best backpacker bar/restaurant in town - the appropriately named "DMZ Bar" (for
the demilitarized zone left over from the Vietnam war). Like an oasis, it beckoned us inside and offered such delicacies as potato skins, buffalo chicken sandwiches, and lasagna. After our everything-that-can-go-wrong-will-go-wrong-day, chowing down on greasy comfort food made all the difference in the world. Feeling infinitely better, we returned just a few short hours later for dinner and the aforementioned Cuban fiesta (and four games of pool, which I miraculously won - Jeremy was way off his game!)...We ended up chatting with the old Aussie I'd danced with - very nice guy, here on some sort of reunion tour from the War (it was pretty loud so we didn't catch the whole story). He tried to talk us into coming to Australia instead of New Zealand, but we assured him we'd make time to visit "Oz" as it's affectionately called.
Today we were complete lazy bums and didn't wake up 'til about 11:30 (mind you, we were home from the Cuban craziness shortly before 11pm...seriously, when did we get this OLD?)...but we are FINALLY in a decent bed reminisce of our beloved Tempurpedic back home (many of the beds here have been about as soft as a two-by-four). So
we slept in. We also decided, after examining prices for the mail service, that it would probably be more cost-efficient to buy a duffel bag for our new clothes and carry them along and check the bag during flights, rather than mailing them ahead to New Zealand. But, alas, our trip to the post office was not a
total waste - we did send off a small box of knick-knacks and souvenirs to my parents back home.
Lunch was at a cute little tiki-hut type bar near our hotel, where we sampled some of Hue's local specialties. This included grilled pork on sugar cane skewers, served with sheets of rice paper, cucumbers, mint, and a sweet sesame sauce...divine, though I personally liked it without the rice paper. Jeremy got a complicated dish of seafood wrapped in gelatin-like tapioca, then wrapped in banana leaves and steamed through. Very bizarre dish with a strange consistency, but the taste was good. We split a dish similar to the "White Rose" in Hoi An - flattened rice cakes (with a very jelly-like consistency) topped with crispy bits of pork and shrimp and served with hot garlic chili dipping sauce. Yum!! Then Jeremy went
all-out and ordered durian ice cream. Durian is an intensely smelly fruit the locals love and we've seen in markets everywhere, but haven't quite had the courage to sample. Well, long before the waitress even got to the table, we could smell the ice cream heading our way. The smell is something akin to rotten fruit inside a sweaty men's locker room - and the taste is even worse! We each tried a bite and were repulsed by the foul rotten-flesh flavor oozing out. Quite possibly the most disgusting thing either of us has ever eaten - so when you come to Vietnam, don't let the locals talk you into trying durian. Honestly, it has to be a trick they play on poor unsuspecting tourists...
Upon exiting the restaurant we were pounced upon by Mark and Susan, the lovely Irish couple we'd met on the bus ride from China, and then again in Hanoi last week. They'd just arrived in town, too, and we made plans to meet for dinner. Within the space of an hour, we also ran into the Scottish couple and a British girl we'd cruised Ha Long Bay with, then a couple British girls we'd
shared a dorm with in Hanoi. Small world when you're traveling...
So finally, at a pathetic 3pm, we arrived at the Citadel, a smaller version of the Forbidden City in Beijing. It's much newer, built in the early 1800's, but it's where the emperor lived and ruled up until the very recent 1947. Most of it was (sadly) leveled during the War, but they're in the middle of a massive restoration work (compliments of the Korean government, funnily enough), and one day it will be truly beautiful once again! A video showed digital reconstruction and what they hoped to achieve, and when it's complete it will easily rival any of the other royal residences in Asia.
After the Citadel, we headed back to the hotel to clean up and meet Mark and Susan. We headed for a pretty slightly-upscale Vietnamese restaurant, where we split a couple seven-course set menus (which sounds like a lot of food, but in fact we all left still hungry)...Right when we sat down, the hostess asked us where we were from, which we found kind of odd, but she then returned with an Irish flag and an American one and set them on
our table. We got a kick out of that, and we noticed as more diners trickled in, little British and French flags began popping up everywhere...I wonder how many different flags they have? We joked and said we should've said we were from some totally obscure place (Uganda!) just to see if they had the flag.
Anyway! Dinner was lovely, and it was nice to have someone to talk to other than each other (not that I'm entirely sick of Jeremy, mind you, but we've been together 24 hours a day for 5 weeks straight now...). It started getting very windy during dinner and (gasp!) we FINALLY saw some real rain begin to fall. We ducked inside DMZ Bar supposedly just for dessert, but decided we were all still hungry and ordered some pizzas and spring rolls, then some homemade chocolate mousse that was heavenly! The weather forecast (I just checked) calls for rain and wind for the next SIX days, so it appears our streak of sunny beautiful weather has finally come to an end. It's okay though, as our only other plans for the city is a day trip to the DMZ, which is mostly museums and
tunnels anyway. We snagged another cheap flight down to Ho Chi Minh City (old Saigon) for Thursday morning, which will be our final city in Vietnam before we head for Cambodia. We'd love to stay longer, but our visa is ticking away, and as my father would say, "Save something for next time!" There are lots of little mountain towns and coastal cities we by-passed for times' sake, but we would love to return on a future trip and catch the sights we missed. So that's all for now...love and miss you all, and hope all is well back home!
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Denise
non-member comment
Wow!
That is some post office! It is easy to see why you thought it was something else. Enjoying traveling vicariously with you through your blog. Thanks for sharing. D