Get a motorbike taxis called easy riders or xe om?? No, no silly - we
walked! We went to breakfast at Mandarin Cafe where the owner, Mr. Cu,
displays his excellent photographs. My pho was good and Robert enjoyed
his Hue-style beef bun soup. After we ate, we spent about the same
amount of time again looking at his photo books. They were hopeful
that we would buy something, but we are still in the "no collecting
mode" and loathe to change our ways. We asked if they sold postcards
because those are one of the few things we do buy, but we were told
no. (we stopped by later in the day to ask about a bus ticket and
there was a guy flipping through an enormous stack of postcards! So
alas, there was a misunderstanding. Why did we go to a cafe to arrange
a bus ticket? Oh, because most places run a travel agency on the side.
Basically, if you have a phone and can speak Vietnamese, you can sell
marked-up bus tickets.)
Walking tour of hue
The cafe did give us a walking tour map, so we struck out to follow
that. The cyclo drivers here are insane. They like to call out to
Robert, "so long!" "how long it take?" or the standard "hello, where
are you from?" "where are you going?" "one hour!" "tour city" "ONE
HOUR!" They also all wave to you, indicating - come take a ride, but
we just like to smile and wave back and then walk away. Occasionally
they will follow you, pedaling their bike at walking speed to continue
the conversation, but they rarely follow you for more than a block, at
most three. I think they would hassle us less if we just straight up
ignored them, but where is the fun in that?
Hue is divided into north and south by the Perfume River. There are
two areas south of the river where tourist hotels and restaurants are
huddled. North of the river is the old city, surrounded by a giant
city wall. That's where all the old crumbly bits are, so that's where
we started. We started by visiting a closed museum, then the gate to
the Imperial Palace (a citadel within a citadel). We didn't pay to go
inside because none of the sights inside seemed particularly enticing.
You can tell we are getting a little burned out from seeing too many
supposedly important old things. Across the street from the Imperial
Palace Gate is this giant black monument thing flying a Communist
flag. It was imposing so I took a picture, then we continued our
stroll. We walked all the way around the outside of the imperial
palace wall and noticed how few people make it so far off the tourist
trail. We were literally just on the outside of the wall and we were
the only westerners in sight. Tourists are definitely pack animals.
Lunch
We stopped for lunch at a little place robert had marked on the map.
We ordered vegetable spring rolls, which looked and tasted a lot like
pigs in a blanket, fried rice with an egg, water spinach and grilled
pork. The portions of rice and greens were heaping, while the grilled
pork was barely a single serving. You can tell which parts of the meal
are expensive to buy. However, the grilled pork was the most tasty by
far. Not because of the meat, but because of the amazing sauce. They
chop up chilis, mix them with a heaping portion of salt and give you a
lime. Those in the know or those that have spied on enough locals to
be in the know, know to squeeze the lime over the salt and chili to
make a delightful lip-puckering sauce. Be careful though because it is
mostly a dish full of salt - a little goes a long way. I rendered the
rest of my fried rice inedible by dumping the leftover sauce into it!
The waiter we had tried to be helpful, but he was a little over the
top. He opened Robert's chopsticks for him and arranged his eating
bowl on a plate along with the chopsticks - I think he thought that
Robert's thumbs didn't oppose properly. It got worse when the food
actually came and he took it upon himself to chop up the egg omelet
and wouldn't let me serve myself. We of course did not pour our own
lukewarm beer into our small polka-dotted glasses. I thought he was
pandering for a tip, but he ran after us with our change that we were
going to leave him. Tipping is so strange here - this is not the first
overly helpful waiter we have had and no one really believes that you
would give them extra money for being so helpful.
Peeing and the market
The sun came out and the angels sang! We continued our walking tour by
exiting the old city and walking along the river for a piece. Robert
made like a local and peed in the river. He was spied by a passing
cyclo driver, who nearly laughed himself off his bike seat. He looked
at me and I clowned covering my eyes so I wouldn't have to watch my
boyfriend urinate. The driver said come-see, come-saw, which means...?
"it doesn't matter"? Not sure, but it was an amusing exchange. Then we
got an ice cold can of Huda beer and continued on our merry way. The
beer is improved immensely when it is actually cold, why don't they
all serve it like that?
Next we wandered through the big market, which was interesting if
challenging. Every single seller calls out to you, "look-ing!" "buy
something!" "very nice." Also, the aisles were so skinny we touched
both sides as we turned sideways and shuffled through. The only cool
thing we saw was a "poem hat." Hue makes lots of conical hats, but the
poem hat variety is cooler than the rest. The hat looks normal when
you wear it, but when you put it up to the light, images are revealed.
The one we were shown had a boy and girl kissing under a heart-shaped
arbor, aww. Next we meandered by some hot food stalls, one woman
coming out to take me by the arm and guide me to her shop. Thankfully
I have been eating my water spinach and I was able to shake her easily
enough. Next came the fresh produce section. The aisle was a giant mud
puddle, making navigation among the passing bikes, carts and
motorbikes interesting. I ran into my normal troubles in markets. I
wanted to take pictures of everything, but not to be rude about it. I
haven't been able to learn the "can I take your photo?" phrase in
Vietnamese and my Thai works less here than in Laos!, so I am shit up
a creek. Asking and gesturing in English gets you no where. I got my
feelers hurt by a woman wanting to charge me if i took a picture, so
we left. The market was dumb anyways!!
Dad, you would enjoy the giant pool halls full of billiards tables and
the pool gloves hanging dry out front, but it was so close to the
market incident that I didn't even try to get a photo.
Travel arrangements
I was ready for a break, but we needed to make sure we could arrange
onward travel for tomorrow before we retired for a while. We visited
three travel agencies (hence the return trip to mandarin cafe) and
they all told us the same thing. You want to go to Da Lat? $25 US, 24
hours, three buses. A set menu from hell. No thanks. We stayed at the
last travel agency/cafe, Stop and Go Cafe, to have a beer and a sprite
and reconsider our options. I have to be in Saigon by the 13th for my
mammoth trip home and we have a lot of ground to cover. The other
patrons stepped up and tried to help us out. Parents of three sick
kids (absent and curled up in their hotel room) gave us a business
card of the guy they hired to drive them up the coast. It took five
days, but they enjoyed it. Too expensive. Then another couple said
they flew up from Saigon for under fifty bucks....hmm. That sounds
better. We are trying to squeeze too much into these last few days,
seeing all of Vietnam just isn't going to happen. I am sad that I
don't have more time here, but I think we will enjoy seeing less more
than seeing more. We bought cheap tickets to Saigon. Tomorrow we will
bus to the airport in Danang, four hours south, stay the night and fly
the next day for 1.7 MILLION...dong. It sounds like so much! But its
only about $45 USD.
Pre-dinner and real dinner
We rewarded ourselves for this accomplishment with a pizza at our
hotel and hot showers! No. The water was hot for about a minute,
scaldingly hot, and I enjoyed it immensely. Probably too much because
the rest of my shower and Robert's was frigid. Damn circuit breaker
and shoddy wiring. I could understand it if they didn't have cheap
electricity here, but they do! What's the deal? We watched some
excellent tv, a national geographic special on westerners coming to
Asia for stem cell treatments and the mixed results.
Finally we escaped for dinner. We walked over to the other tourist
enclave and were surprised to find it quite abuzz with activity. So
here is where all the people are! Hue has a multitude of high-rise
hotels, some very fancy from the looks of their exteriors and we were
wondering if they had any people in them. It is low season here
because winter brings drear and drizzle here, but there were more
people here than where we are staying. We made the block a few times
before deciding on Indian for dinner, Shiva-Shakti Indian Food. We got
veggie samosas, which came with the best mint chutney and tamarind
jelly of the trip. Then we got chicken vindaloo, malai kofta, two naan
and two rice. We barely touched the rice, but the rest of the food was
amazing. I have a new love of the small copper serving dishes some
Indian places use to serve the main dishes (like clay pit in Austin if
you are familiar, I never liked the clay pit dishes, but these are
quite chic!). We managed to spend all of our budget today. Robert even
had to pull money from our stash to cover dinner! He claims that we
started the day with less than our full million dollar allotment thus
we didn't truly go over, but we were much closer than we have been in
a while.
Observations of Place:
Watching the city waterproof itself was quite a treat. Most produced a
poncho, some had ponchos with clear plastic windows for the front
headlight of their motorbike. I enjoyed spying a western woman wearing
one of these just on herself, the window revealing her short white
shorts and goosebumpy thighs. Additionally, there were lots of
creative styles of riding a motorbike so as to use the poncho to the
fullest extent possible. Multiple people covered by one poncho yielded
quasimodo shaped drivers and riding with feet tucked up was the
standard. I regret not venturing out more to take pictures of the
spectacle, but I thought it would rain again. How disappointing!
Here the norm for offering is yellow flowers and red sticks of
incense. Offering are placed in trees in front of your house or
building, sometimes encapsulated in an offering house nailed to the
tree, or a red bull can in a pinch.
If you need to put two people on a bike and you don't have pegs on the
real axle, the second rider can sit above the back tire and put her
feet on the pedals as well! Or you can dangle your feet like the boys
do, but two feet on one pedal is much cooler!
In the evenings, the trash man comes around ringing a little bell,
calling the trash to the curb, a much better system than just piling
it on the sidewalk like in Thailand and Laos (and here too).
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