Hue: an ancient city, some emperors tombs, and did somebody mention a war?
I spent less than a day in Hanoi after Sa Pa, leaving that evening for the overnight trip to Hue on the central coast of Vietnam.
Vietnam is the most expensive place I’ve been so far, and transport particularly so. Two train tickets to and from Lao Cai cost over $20. However, the saviour comes in the form of the “Open Bus Ticket” For $20 you can travel on nice buses from Hanoi to Saigon, with various hop-on hop-off stops along the way.
The bus arrives in Hue late due to a bad traffic jam overnight. After Hanoi, Hue is a lot calmer, though the cyclo drivers are more persistent here!
Hue (UNESCO World Heritage Site) was the political capital of Vietnam for almost 150 years until 1945. North of the Perfume River is the ancient Citadel, south is the sleeping, eating and drinking places, and even further south are the tombs of the Nguyen dynasty emperors. There are now four of us together, and we find somewhere suitably cheap to dump our stuff, and then somewhere to eat.
The first afternoon we head across to the citadel in the blazing sun. Built in 1804, it’s centre is the Imperial Enclosure, next to the “biggest flagpole in Vietnam”, or some such claim to fame.
It’s in pretty good condition, although a lot of it was destroyed by those pesky Americans dropping their bombs…
To escape the heat we first go to a fine art museum. A bit disappointing, notable only for the poems in ancient Chinese along the eaves, and the bizarre game where you had to bounce a long stick into a tall vase. Despite this sounding quite fun, they wouldn’t let us play…. the expensive vase might get broken.
The Imperial Enclosure was where the emperor carried out his official business, and is full of impressive Chinese style pagodas and buildings.
In the middle of it all is the “Forbidden Purple City”.
This was the emperors private apartments. The only women allowed to enter were those of his Royal Concubines, and the only servants were eunuchs. Afterwards we wander to some lilly covered lakes. That’s the citadel ticked off!
Next morning we leave at 6am for the tour of the demilitarized zone: DMZ- north of Dong Ha (my first stop in the country, and north of Hue). From 1945 to 1975, the Ben Hai river was the dividing line between north and south Vietnam, and 5km either side was the DMZ.
Our guide was interesting, though heavily accented so she was hard to follow. Most commentaries started with, “During the war…” Shame she wasn’t a bearded, blue capped, pensioner from Peckham.
We see the bridge that was the crossing point, and the craters from the bombs which are now used as fish ponds in the farmers fields. At Vinh Moc are the tunnels which connected with the Ho Chi Minh trails network through the jungle, and were hiding places and bomb shelters for the local people.
They are dug into the clay at various depths down to about 20m, and must have been very claustrophobic. We return south by Highway 1 to Highway 9, and head towards Laos. Here there are a lot of “this was where such and such happened”, so it’s a bit less interesting. The Rockpile area, now re-vegetated was an area the Americans used Agent Orange and Napalm to clear the jungles so that they could better find the Viet Cong.
Our final stop is Khe Sanh combat base a US air force base. There’s an interesting, if biased, photo exhibition, “here we see the terror in the soldiers’ faces as they are airlifted from their personal hell”, and some wrecked aircraft outside.
The guestbook makes interesting reading: a comment from a few days earlier read, “Oh look, the Americans entering into a war in a country they don’t understand. Some things never change…”
That evening we visit the appropriately named DMZ bar.
All that’s left to do is see some of the tombs. As these are expensive, and all “same, same”, we pick what is supposed to be the most impressive. The woman at our hotel is happy we have finally taken up her offer to rent us bikes (we wonder for a long time if the only phrase she knows in English is, “you take bikes today?” It’s a long way, and with the combination of the bad map in the guidebook, and even more confusingly the map in the basket on my bike of Chiang Mai in Thailand, we get a bit lost. The mad traffic doesn’t help either, and we’re soon weaving out of the cars and motorbikes like locals, somewhat aided by my lack of brakes.
Eventually we find Tu Duc’s tomb. These are places the emperors used to use, which became shrines to them when they died, but they aren’t usually buried here. It’s a pleasant site with temples and pagodas, a lilly filled lake and lots of shady trees.
On the way back we have to cross a small bamboo bridge where some local children have constructed a barrier to try and make you pay to cross. It didn’t work in their favour. By this point we are really lost, and no road signs point back to Hue.
We find our way back, and visit the Sampan village
where people live entirely on boats, next to a busy road in the citadel, then it’s all done and dusted, and we head to Hoi An tomorrow.
Tags: Travel
Nick