This time Sam told us we'd be in first class rather than second but warned us the train wasn't as smart or as safe as our last one. In fact he gave us rather detailed instructions about making sure our door was locked during the night and waking someone up to ensure it was locked behind you if you needed the loo during the night. That reassured us all entirely! We'd had to draw lots for our berths on this train, although Sam kindly allowed married Bob and Marie to share a cabin. The rest of us took our chances and I found myself sharing with Sergio, Andrea and Liz. With Ros, Caroline, Jamilla and Andrea squirrelled away right next door I was thoroughly expecting the carriage to be party central. But I wasn't prepared for the travel sickness that kicked in after only 20 mins on the train. I've only once felt travel sick in my life - when I took a plane journey over the Nasca lines in Peru where the four seater plane corkscrewed around for over an hour so everyone could see everything - and long train journeys are one of my pleasures in life. So to find myself turning green and forced to stand near the open window gulping for air was a bit of a shock. It also meant I didn't get to share the Hanoi Vodka, or Vietnamese rice whiskey, that I'd bought Sam as a gift. Instead it was early doors for me - crawling into my berth as darkness fell, fully expecting a night of zero sleep.
And that's exactly what I got - thrown around on my bed by a very bumpy and noisy train, there was no sleep for this little traveller and it was with immense relief that we finally reached our next destination, Hue. Hue had been the capital of Vietnam for nearly 150 years, ending in 1945, and still has a rather imposing air of grandeur, partly thanks to the impressive citadel walls that still surround and protect it's old town. Built in the early 1800s, this old town was once the Vietnamese equivalent of the Chinese 'Forbidden City', an Imperial world behind high walls with the royal palaces of the Forbidden Purple City at it's heart. Our local guide reliably informed us that nearly 90% of these regal and political buildings were destroyed by the local population in order to stop the French imperialists taking them back after the end of the Vietnam War. My Rough Guide book on the area suggests the city's destruction wasn't really the result of such self-sacrificing bravery but the disastrous effect of the massive fire power unleashed by the Americans on the North Vietnamese Army, who had holed up in the city. As we are constantly finding, Vietnamese history is a complicated affair - often obfuscated by political tensions, local loyalties and an accepted rewriting of the true facts.
Either way, the remainders of the Imperial City which we explored that afternoon were impressive enough to mourn the loss of the splendour that must have existed before. Unfortunately our guide wasn't that forthcoming with much in the way of historical detail but it was easy to see why what remained of the city had been deemed a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1993 and why it now was getting some help in its restoration efforts. To list the different rooms, halls, courtyards and passage ways we walked through would be of no help or interest but it is easy to imagine that the servants who scurried along its hallways from one part to the next must have been super fit to cover so much ground every day.
After the Imperial City it was time for the Thien Mu Pagoda, or the 'Pagoda of the Celestial Lady'. As always, the building of such temples are shrouded in myth. According to this one, a Lord who left Hanoi to govern the southern Vietnamese territories met an elderly woman who told him to walk with a burning incense stick until it stopped burning. At the point it stopped, he should build his city. The city of Hue was the result. The Lord erected the pagoda at the site where he met the old lady, someone he felt must have been a messenger from the gods. In later years the Pagoda and its temples became the centre of Buddhist resistance to French colonialism and we were taken to see the car of a monk who had, in 1963, driven it to Saigon before burning himself to death in protest at the excesses of the regime then in power. The photograph of his self-sacrifice became internationally famous and is also on rather sobering display.
Despite Sam's warnings that a trip on Hue's Perfume River would just lead to an onslaught of people trying to sell us things, the group decided it wanted the trip anyway, if only to see if the dire warnings were true and if the river lived up to its aromatic name. Fortunately and unfortunately, neither was actually true, so although the trip left us unhassled it also left us rather bored. There wasn't much to see and the river certainly wasn't perfumed, at least not in any pleasant way.
The valley of Hue's Perfume River is also home to a series of royal mausoleums, planned in immaculate detail by the monarchs themselves during their own lifetimes, with the intention that they'd be palaces for their after lives. We only had time to visit one and settled upon that of Tu Duc, the longest ruler of the Nguyen Empire and something of a romantic poet. It's easy to see the poetic imagination at work in the design of the lily covered pond, stilted wooden boating pavilion, royal theatre and series of courtyards full of statues and crumbling gateways. Crumbling is the best description of the whole place - despite the royal wish to be prayed for and remembered after death, the mausoleum has fallen into poetic disrepair. Beautiful and haunting in its deteriorated state and a peaceful pause in our increasingly frantic sight-seeing.
We were only in Hue for the one day so headed out to an evening meal of local culinary specialities. It should be said that dining out in Vietnam, and the other Indochina countries, can be a rather odd experience. The best food isn't always served in the fanciest restaurants. In fact some of the tastiest dishes are sold by street traders, parked with their grills and pans at the edge of the pavement with customers grabbing a kindergarten sized chair and chowing down on the street as well. Even 'proper' restaurants can look less than salubrious - more kindergarten chairs, piles of boxes and the sort of wipe down vinyl tablecloths you get in nursery. That was exactly the sort of place Sam recommended to us for Hue local delicacies. I opted for the Banh khoai - a crispy rice pancake with pork filling that you broke into pieces then added to a bowl along with star fruit, green banana, lettuce before dousing with a peanut and sesame sauce. Delicious - one of my favourite experiments in Vietnamese food so far. Besides the good food, the restaurant was fascinating itself. It was owned and run by a family of deaf mutes who communicated with each other by sign language. The main guy was a real showman - opening beer bottles with his own patent gadget (wood and a nail) and using charts to tell us how 7 of his 8 siblings were also born deaf and mute while all of their children were fully hearing. It might not have been the classiest of places but it had heart and was a nice taste of local life.
Leaving Hue behind us our bus headed towards a three night stay in Hoi An. Our itinerary simply said that we would have 'time to relax and explore in between all the tailors fitting'. A description that didn't do much to get me excited. In fact this was the part of the trip I had been least looking forward to - I'm not much of a shopper and I didn't have any clothes I wanted made. Three nights in this cultural wasteland was going to be an ordeal I thought. But I couldn't have been more wrong. Find out why in the next exciting instalment.
Photos below: Hue's crumbling Imperial City; Tu Duc's boating pavilion; Tu Duc's stone noblemen; Banh khoai.
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