Hue ... Rain, more rain and more Moto's!

We arrived in Hue early in the morning, the train ride took almost 12 hours. This train, the SE-1 that leaves every day from HaNoi, to Saigon is a little older and not quite as nice as the train to Sapa. Around 10 at night, just before turning out the lights to go to sleep we spotted a few cockroaches crawling on the wall beside the bed. We knew that we’d run into bugs and a lot of them in Asia, but I don’t think that we were ready for it. We ended up sleeping with the reading lights on to try to keep them at bay. When we arrived, it was still raining and we again got hosed and paid four times the price to get a cab to our hotel, we really have to learn to bargain harder. We stayed at the Sports hotel, it was on a street with a lot of Vietnamese-Western restaurants and shops to buy silk clothes and ties. After breakfast and checking in we decided to take a walk around the area. The hotel, like many of the tourist hotels makes a lot of money from selling tours and because of this, they often try a little too hard to sell you tours, train tickets, or try to arrange hotels for you in the next city. We have learned that they often over-charge by significant amounts and their smiling pushy attitude is a bit tough to take. As soon as we left the Hotel we noticed an immediate difference between Ha Noi and Hue, it was almost quiet here! The amount of traffic was pretty low, it was nice not to hear honking every 1.5 seconds when walking on the street. You mostly have to walk on the street since there are only sidewalks on certain streets, and if there are sidewalks they are usually used to park motorcycles. It’s easier just to walk on the street. We were enjoying the quiet walk until the joy of walking was extinguished by rickshaw driver after rickshaw driver asking us: Where you going? One hour, one hour”. Meaning they would drive us around the city for one hour. But we wanted to walk and had to fend them off again and again. We figured out that it was easier to walk in the opposite direction of traffic flow, because if you were walking in the same direction they would just follow you. We think they might be under the impression that if they ask you enough or pester you enough you will just give in. We didn’t. Less traffic, more harassment…if that was possible.

more from the Citadel

We decided that we would check out the Citadel which was quite close to the hostel, it was the residence of the Kings of Vietnam as Hue used to be the capital of Vietnam. When we entered the fortress we quickly realised that it was way to big to walk around in and decided we would get on a tour later in our stay that would take us there. Hue isn’t as modern as Ha Noi was so we had quite a hard time finding a place to eat that we were comfortable with (yes, yes, snobs that we are) We eventually had lunch three hours after we decided we were hungry and the best part about that is, is that it was less than 30 meters from our Hotel. For the first time in a long time we had fresh vegetables and boiled chicken breast. Chad is in heaven with all of the rice and noodles in Vietnam. One staple of our diet since we got here has been Pho soup which is usually eaten for breakfast. We have it for breakfast, lunch and sometimes dinner. It has Ichiban type noodles and usually meat and vegetables, topped with bean sprouts and fresh chilly peppers cut up along with a lime to squeeze into your soup, it’s delicious! As we were going for dinner yet another rickshaw driver asked us if we wanted a ride, we said no we’re just walking to the restaurant he asked us the usual things: Where you from? How long in city? Then he told us he wanted to be a DJ and said he would take us to a dance club. Now here is the problem with this, being us, Canadian (we think this might be a Canadian disease) we didn’t say NO Thank you, we said (and keep saying) : Maybe. This is a huge mistake. But for some reason it just falls out of our mouths before we can catch ourselves. Ewa has resorted to saying no and shaking her head and does not stop, just keeps walking, this works…sometimes. If you say “Maybe” they think that there is a possibility of you going for a ride with them, maybe, maybe tomorrow, maybe in an hour, there is hope! So Chad said Maybe to our DJ rickshaw driver and we were sure to see him again, and again.

Cuddlin in bed. Not every day is about seeing temples!

The next day we woke up to more rain, it has been raining since we got here, pretty much non stop. We went to grab some breakfast but as soon as we walked into the hallway we stepped into a few inches of water, the hallway had flooded from all of the rain. Sweet. We didn’t do much because of the rain, it just felt like a lazy day. We booked a half day tour for the next day and Ewa tried to find some long thin pants at the shops near our Hotel for the heat and mosquitoes. She didn’t find any but while browsing at one of the stores she was flipping through the racks and stopped at a beige pair of pants that looked like it had some sort of broach on it or decoration only to realize that it was a big beige spider the size of her hand! The sales lady just laughed, took the pants and shook them out onto the street, she said: “ Normal in Vietnam, not like in movies, they no bite”…ehm sure ok, but it’s still the size of an orange!

We had dinner and a good night of conversation and bad pool (none of us are any good at playing) with some friends we met in HaNoi. The whole evening our DJ rickshaw driver was sitting in the rain outside of the restaurant we were in. We couldn’t figure out if this was just his route or if he was seriously waiting for us. Sure enough when we were leaving, he runs up to us and we had to say no no…and he looked sad (that may have been a ploy since he was seriously making a puppy face). On a side note, it’s not only verbal agreements that seem to be taken way too seriously, its also gestures like the good ol’ thumbs up. We were at another restaurant and this rickshaw driver kept giving us a thumbs up from outside, we thought he was being friendly…turns out that that means that we want a ride, we quickly had to say no when we were leaving. It’s a crazy world here in Vietnam.

The Citadel and the rain..

The tour started at 9 am so we got up semi early. Still raining and raining. The tour guide picked us up at our Hotel and we were off to see the oldest Pagoda in Vietnam as well as the Citadel . The Thien Mu Pagoda is a Buddhist place of worship. This particular Pagoda was home to the monk Thich Quang Duc, who burned himself alive in protest of the Vietnamese government disallowing Buddhist worship during communism. He drove himself from Hue to Saigon, got out of the car, sat in the lotus position and had a fellow monk to pour gasoline & diesel all over his body. This was done in front of a large crowd and many other monks who knew what his intentions were. He then calmly lit a match and went up in flames, not moving, screaming or making any type of noise and burned alive. It is a legend that his heart wouldn’t burn, even after he was re-cremated after his death. A number of other monks also burned themselves alive for this cause and the government was forced to allow for Buddhist worship to continue. The Pagoda has a nice garden area, a temple where Buddhists go to pray and the tomb of this famous monk who stood up for his beliefs. On the grounds are also living quarters for young boys who are sent there by their families who are usually poor so that they can receive an education. When they are older they can choose if they want to become monks or return to their former way of life. Many children are also simply inspired by Buddhism and join the monastery of their own accord. It was very serene being at the pagoda even with the other tourists. At the time we visited there were also many people praying and every time someone finished a prayer a young boy would ring a large gong that echoed though the area. We continued on to the Citadel which is really an impressive structure. It was constructed to mimic the forbidden city in Beijing and construction started in 1802, for the royalty of Vietnam. It is about 525 hectares in size. It once was the residence of the King, his royal entourage, concubines and the high military officials. It was very badly damaged in the French war as well as the American war ( the Vietnam war in Vietnam is called the American war). The Citadel is now a Unesco Heritage site and the government is rebuilding it with the funds they receive from the Unesco organization but it is a slow process. We were a little disappointed because the tour was supposed to be a half day tour, but in reality it was over in 2 hours, maybe due to the rain. By the time we got back to the hotel we were drenched. We spent the rest of the day lounging around again, listening to the never ending beating of the rain against our window. The next day we had an 8 am train to Nha Trang which is further south, the trip will take us another 12 hours, but this time we booked seats and it’ll be all day, hopefully the time will go by quick.

Our horrible train on the ride to Nha Trang

The train ride to Nha Trang was definitely an experience! We were sitting in a car with 62 other people. We got seats instead of the sleeper car because are travelling by day and they are cheaper. In most of Asia you can get a whole range of tickets depending on what you want. There are the hard seats which are cheap and uncomfortable, the soft seats with AC which is what we got- a softer chair that reclines. Then there are the hard sleepers which have 6 beds in a berth and the soft sleepers which are 4 beds in a berth. There is also a “tourist” car which is a bit better than the soft sleepers and more expensive. Right from the get go we in for a new experience. Getting on the train everyone was pushing and shoving, we are wearing our huge backpacks and people are trying to get passed us in the tiny hallway. As soon as the train started there was a cart that came along selling some sort of dish we saw later it was rice out of a not so clean bucket, that they topped off with a hard boiled egg. Then came the soup cart, where soup was ladled out of a huge metal canister into plastic cups, also unidentifiable. They also come around with to go meals, meat and rice, vegetables and a chicken leg for 20 000 dong, not so bad, that’s 1.30$. The people get right comfortable on the train, they take their flip flops off and put their feet up, literally wherever there is space, be it on a table in front of them, the window, the next seat in front of them…wherever. At least the spitting isn’t as bad in Vietnam as it was in China but now we’ve discovered that vomiting is really not a faux pas. At one of the stops people got off the train to buy snacks. Chad got off in search of some bananas and Ewa stayed behind to watch the bags. Looking out the window she saw two people (not at the same time) just bending over and vomiting on the tracks. Apparently if you gotta hurl there’s no reason to do it behind a building or something or in the bathroom, nope right in front of the train. At least they used bottled water to wash it off the cement. We realize that sometimes you can’t help but vomit, it’s not a thing you can control, it was more about the fact that it seems that that was the place to do it. The people weren’t really shy about. First the kids with a hole in the pants, now this! It’s a bit strange for us.

We wanted to ask everyone for some feedback regarding the blog. We are writing about our experiences because it’s a nice way for everyone to experience it with us in a way and it is also a good way for us to record our experiences. We want to know if there is something you would like to hear more about I.e. cultural differences, our observations about the country and people. Sometimes we tend to write much about what we did and little reflection on how we feel about it. Send us an email if you want to hear more about something, or maybe less about other things, we don’t have jobs so it’s nice to have some things to do. We hope everyone is enjoying the blog!

written by

ECRadventure on October 22, 2009 from Hue, Vietnam

from the travel blog: ECRadventure's Travel Blog

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