Hue

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I just unwittingly ordered one of the best meals ive had here. Both our guidebooks blab on about Hue having the best food in vietnam and a huge amount of specialty dishes that you cant get anywhere else. anyway we got a starter and Gem ordered some crispy noodles with veg, i went for something from the Hue specialty page - i thought it was going to be some sort of saucy beef with rice. All the food comes out lightning fast here so within 5 minutes our starter came, gems dish and a small salad. In front of me was placed a pile of spring roll wraps, a larger salad and a plate of raw beef covered in pepper and onions - not a steak but slices. i was looking at it for about 30 secs thinking ok ive just ordered some tartar steak time to man up and eat it when our waitress brought over a pot of steaming broth with a fire under it, brilliant! cooked beef after all!

We arrived here 2 days ago after a flight to da nang and a pleasant train ride to hue through mountainous coastal scenery. (turns out you can fly direct to hue but for some reason we did not know this.) On the plane i read an english national newspaper and the front few pages were dominated by stories about local companies who had donated a total of 93 million US$ to educating hanoi street kids and doctors etc, green building, rubbish clean up day, the need to improve public transport and get more motorbikes off the road, and how 102 buses were fined for exhaust emissions and forced to have maintenance done. Good to see theyre trying to do something about the pollution.

The train we caught was old as. pretty cool though, the views were amazing as we cruised along the coast. there were probably about 100 workers that we passed along the way upgrading the tracks and the sheds that they lived in looked pretty...basic.
After a while these 2 nice girls started talking to us, wanting to practice english, they went to university in da nang and were heading home to hue for the weekend. They were great they chatted away to us for over 2 hours. Thats actually happened to us a few times, people come up to us wanting to practice their english, and only once has one tried to sell something after.

Hue is a beautiful city. WAY better than Hanoi. we couldnt wait to leave hanoi, totally sick of it, but i think we are going to miss hue. On our first night here we went to dinner at a place called the mandarin cafe. we were looking at the menu when a charming old man introduced himself as mr Cu. The owner. the walls were covered in beautiful photos of vietnamese life that he has taken (Turns out hes a world class photographer who has exhibited around the world). We talked to him quite a bit and asked if he still takes photos and he was like yes yes and then showed us his cameras - his main one had a whopper of a lens on it - and his original film camera from the 80s still has film in it!

We spent a whole day exploring the imperial palace, inside the citadel of hue. the citadel has a moat and a brick wall perimeter which is 10km long! and get this, the wall is 6m deep and 4m high, built of SOLID BRICKS. normal, red, small house bricks! The imperial palace is inside another wall and moat, smaller though, and most of it has been destroyed by the elements (Hue has the most annual rainfall of VN and a thunderstorm every night between sep and dec) and wars. Still a fair few buidings remain, a few have been restored to be truly magnificent, a few are in ruins, a few are being restored, a few house the workers doing to restoring, and a few are just grassed over foundations. the area it covers is massive! theres walls everywhere, hidden doorways and secret bonsai gardens, like i said we spent the whole day exploring. I also found out a major battle was here during the Tet offensive of the american war, we started looking for bullet holes and pock marks. There were heaps! I cant think of a more dramatic place for a battlefield, an imperial palace! especially one that was largely in ruins to begin with, the rain coming down like clockwork as night falls and lightning! continuous lightning until dawn!

im gonna go watch the lightning right now.

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Comments

[chriseves]

Correction:
The wall is actually 7m high and 20m thick... woah!

[chriseves]

Correction:
The citadel walls are actually 7m high and 20m thick.. woah!

[sandy]

writing
Wow sounds like you are having a fantastic time apart from little hospital incident.You are definitely a better travel writer than me take care