Getting A Hue

The view on top of the citadel wall.

Thanksgiving weekend in Hue (pronounced like Hway) has been a pleasant change.  We missed our turkey and stuffing, but we found some AMAZING Indian food at Omar's Indian Restaurant and are contemplating adding a few more days to our trip just so we can eat there a few more times.  Oh, and yes, the historical sights of Hue and the surrounding area were nice too.

One discovery that we made is that bicycles can be a saving grace.  Foster and Brianna have adopted the "temples and pagodas and ruins...oh my" attitude and are non-plussed by adventures involving any of the above.  However, we discovered that if we temple hop on bicycles it is much more entertaining and enjoyable for all of us.  So, we rented bikes just like the ones we have back in Hoi An and hit the road. On our first day we just ventured across the river into the old citadel of Hue - the Imperial City of the Nguyen Dynasty.

The Imperial City

After three months in Hoi An, I have stopped worrying about the kids in traffic.  They have had lots of experience with scooter dodging and maneuvering around other random roadside obstacles.  City biking almost seemed too easy.  The roads were paved.  There were traffic lights, and the drivers generally seemed to follow traffic rules that we were once familiar with back home.  Biking across the Perfume River on a gigantic bridge with thousands of other scooters and bicycles was a new level of busy in their biking books, but they came through it unscathed.

We parked the bikes outside the walls of the Imperial City (the citadel within the citadel). The bike parking process highlighted Foster's developing savvy as "the artful bargainer."  His negotiating skills that irritate me to no end as a parent are finally being put to use for my benefit instead of my aggravation. He negotiated a fair parking price for us and then proceeded to talk the ice tea vendor down for some liquid refreshment. 

The Imperial Horse

After taking a cursory sweep of the grounds, Foster and Brianna settled in with their books amid the ruins.  They were happy.  There was no whining.  John, Nolan and I spent the next two hours exploring ruins, temples, lotus ponds and statues that are just now being restored after having been damaged by the American and French wars.  When we all regrouped a few hours later, Foster brow beat the ice cream vendor into a good deal before I took off for the restroom. 

It was there that I was treated to a foot wash with my toilet time.  I had waited patiently outside of the men's room with Foster while it was being "cleaned" (hosed out) - not realizing it was just a men's room.  When I discovered that there was, in fact, a ladies' room, the cleaner was headed there.  I pantomimed what I thought was a very polite, "I am absolutely busting (new vocab courtesy of my little Australian friend), so thank you for letting me quickly pop in the stall before you clean."  Next thing I knew, there was a hose with cold water on full blast being squeezed under the stall door - soaking my feet and shins.  As I watched the nastiness that had coated the bathroom floor spray upon my toes and shins, I felt nothing but relief and gratitude. I obviously was in dire need of that toilet.  Afterwards, I was disgusted, and I swear that cleaning lady was grinning as I exited the stall.

  

Imperial toilet adventures over, we decided to add a little exercise to our day.  We decided to bike around the inside of the citadel wall (a 10 km square) just for fun.  And it was fun.  We all had a great time.  The scenery quickly changed from busy city to rural country roads and back to busy city again.  We paused to take photos and explore the top of the wall from time to time.  As it got dark, we turned back into the city and had an "authentic" Vietnamese restaurant experience.  That means we got the ATPF stares, giggles and audience of four waitstaff watching us eat.  We were surrounded by tables of mostly Vietnamese men eating and drinking.  Each table had a case of beer sitting on the floor at the end, and the patrons simply helped themselves whenever they ran out.  The food was fine.  The audience was a bit much.  We were happy to ride off on our bikes back across the bridge to our sweet little hotel in the alley to enjoy a good dose of CNN, HBO and Cartoon Network.

Day two found us back in the saddle again.  This time we were headed for the countryside in search of the tomb of Emperor Tu Duc, the longest ruling monarch of the Nygen dynasty.  We were hardly the only ones heading out on this quest as Tu Duc's tomb is a major attraction on the Hue tourist circuit.  However, shunning the tourist bus package to the tomb was where the pioneering part of the adventure came in.  It's not like the tour bus operators or the hotels that feed them are handing out free bike maps to the sacred tombs.  So, armed with a vague sketch in the Lonely Planet Guidebook and an inkling that we'd eventually see tourist buses, we headed out of town on our bikes.

As handy as that Lonely Planet can be at times, the sketch of the area surrounding Hue neglected to show the topographical attributes of the countryside.  We had erroneously begun to assume that all of Vietnam was flat and easily negotiated on a one-speed wonder.  "Not so!" screamed Hue.  We hit the first big hill just as we turned away from the river and left the city behind.  We huffed and puffed our way up to the top and were rewarded with a long descent and another steep uphill.  The pattern continued for a few miles before we came to an oddly out-of-place pine forest.  We stopped at the Nam Giao Esplanade, a three-tiered sacrificial altar, in the middle of the forest just to get a whiff of the trees.  The kids were transported back to Vermont by the smell and spent a long time just playing tag in the woods.  We even paused to take our annual Christmas tree cutting picture in front of a stand of what appeared to be scotch pines.

White's Tree Farm?

Foster sniffing incense

After dragging the kids away from this nostalgic return to the scents of Vermont at Christmas time, we hopped back on the bikes for some more roller coaster hills to Tu Duc's tomb.  After passing through a village full of colorful incense, we found the tour buses and the tomb of Tu Duc.  The ironic part of the story is that most likely Tu Duc is not buried in his tomb.  He built this enormous natural sanctuary during his lifetime and spent significant time there with his 104 wives (seriously?) and concubines.  However, in the end, the emperor was not interred here, and the location of his body and its accompanying treasure is a secret to this day (because everyone associated with his burial was beheaded).  It sounds like a great mystery for Indiana Jones, but the Vietnamese believe in letting the dead rest in peace, so there is no search party seeking his remains.

  

We can thank Emperor Tu Duc and his taste for women for the funniest comment of the day.  I had read the guidebook aloud to the kids at the beginning of our visit and had paused at the phrase "...the only servants allowed were eunuchs who would pose no threat to the royal concubines."  Naturally this lead to a funny discussion about concubines and eunuchs, at which point Brianna chimed in.  "Isn't Eunuchs the name of a city in Arizona?"  Sorry Phoenix, but I believe you have been castrated.  Of course the conversation deteriorated from there, concluding with Foster's suggestion that we start a peanut packaging company to rival Planter's...Eunuch's Dry Roasted Peanuts.  The educational value of travel is never to be underestimated.

When we were though with Tu Duc, we decided to beat a different path back to the city in hopes of finding a flatter route.  We did find a dead end that lead to a path that we followed for awhile.  Miraculously we landed in a rice paddy hood with a friendly girl that pointed us to another tomb where we could get our bearings on our sketch.  We eventually wound our way back to Hue on a not-so-flat route.  We were racing against darkness to make it to the Thien Mu Pagoda, an icon of Vietnam (can't miss that), so we pedalled as fast as we could back into Hue, across the river and into the countryside in the other direction.  We made it to the riverside pagoda with about twenty minutes to spare before the sun set.  We snapped the necessary pictures and hopped back onto our bikes and sped back into the city where we encountered driving rain and rush hour traffic.  The only thing to do was laugh as we all found ourselves soaked to the skin. We opted for hot showers before descending on Omar's restaurant and falling in love with India in Vietnam.

Temples, pagodas and ruins were the historical highlights of Hue, but it will most likely be remembered for bike rides, drenching rain, neutered cities and naan.  It's good to get a Hue.