Hue

We caught the overnight train from Hanoi to Hue. We've decided that, at the very least, the train we caught was a pensioned off Chinese sleeper train. The standard in trains between China and Vietnam was quiet amazing, although I've since read there are different train companies one can book through. As a consequence of the different standard we did not sleep as much as we would have liked :-).





Arriving in Hue at around 10am we bypassed the taxi touts and went straight to a reputable metered taxi company - learning from our arrival experience in Hanoi. We fronted at the Gold Hotel to find they didn't have room for us despite having booked, confirmed and paid a deposit. After some discussion and staying firm to our guns, the General Manager was called and we found ourselves being chauffeured to another hotel of a higher standard - and still only paying our hostel rates -win win!

That night, New Year's Eve, we attended the hotel gala dinner. It was a bit of a hoot - reminding me of a Japanese game show. - with male and female MCs who drew lottery tickets to very emotive music in between the entertainment, which we suspect was all the hotel staff. It was an enjoyable night of a different kind!

Day 2 in Hue was a tour. Hue was the old capital of a united Vietnam in between Hanoi periods. It has been the location of many battles - north/south, French, and the infamous Tet offensive in 1968. We visited the Citadel - that was originally built in 1802 and which has seen many a bloody battle inside the fortress. It was humbling to hear our guide try to explain the history of battles between north and south and the then what we know as the Vietnam War - it brought me close to tears to hear him talk of his fathers experience of the Tet offensive. He explained that they were expecting fireworks to celebrate Tet (Chinese new year) and how he had gone to wake up his wife to have her join the celebrations only to open the door and find a soldier with an ak47 telling them to return inside. Dotted between these stories and explanations were exclamations of 'my country' statements that made one feel very humble but also amazed at the almost consistent history of conflict that Vietnamese have experienced over the centuries - fighting off many invaders or attempted invaders.

We also visited outside Hue - to the royal tombs of Tu Doc, Minh Mang, and Khai Dinh and the associated temples, a number of them have been restored but my preference was for the unrestored summer palace.

The end of the day saw a visit to the Buddhist temple pagoda that was the scene of an immolation in the early 90s that led to Vietnam being taken to the Human Rights Courts for breaching their constitution when prosecuting the temple, accusing it of being part of an international Buddhist faction (which I believe is at odds with the ideals of communist Vietnam).


Day 3 we spent a few hours wandering the Dong Ba markets which were much more like the markets I was expecting than the ones in Hanoi. These were markets for the local people not tourists. We saw all manner of fruits and vegetables, meats and fish as well as fabrics, home wares, clothes and cloth. We didn't have time to investigate all of it as we needed to get back to catch the bus to hoi an...the next adventure.