Scott Fletcher Travels

Day 38-40, 22nd-24th August - Hue, Tet, Beach and Rice Wine

Well nothing like a 7am bus from Hoi An to Hue. On arrival it was quite hot and I wanted to drop off my bags, I found a great place down a dead end lane, it was quite and had a nice garden and only $5! As it was to hot to do much I read up about Hue and found out a lot that I had no idea about.

Hue was the capital of Vietnam from 1802 to 1945
This is the city where a major part of the Tet Offensive happened ‘Battle of Hue‘, the North Vietnamese invaded held the main Citadel for three weeks and flew their flag. They killed over 3000 locals in the three weeks, anyone who possibly posed a threat.
The Flag tower is the tallest in Vietnam at 37m, I didn’t think that sounded impressive but it is pretty cool.
Rice wine is between 10-30cents for 500ml and it is about as strong as vodka, also known as Happy Water

Well after it cooled down a little it was time for a walk, I was on the south bank of the river and most of the historic sites are on the north, so I walked about 2km across the river and then to the market. This market was the same as every other market. Lunch was good, with some beef noodle soup, a funny drink and some prawn rice paper rolls. Then I walked towards the eastern side entrance of the citadel to have a walk around. The fortress is huge with a 10km perimeter, a 30m moat, and wall about 2m thick and pretty high. When I walked in it was surprising to see what was inside, it was a mixture of a town and a rural area with some rice paddies, and lakes where people were fishing. I walked around there was not a lot of individual things that were overly special that afternoon as I left the rest of it for the next day. There is an inner Citadel which was where the Emperor lived, more like palace grounds and I ended up playing soccer with some kids before walking home.

That night I went out for a few drinks and played some pool which was good, finally starting to get my touch back.

On Thursday I walked to the Citadel again towards the Imperial enclosure, the heat was stifling but thems the blows. The enclosure was good but doing it self guided was a little boring. Maybe because of not knowing every little detail, or maybe it was not the most thrilling thing and I was right. The flagpole and the Citadel itself were very impressive, huge structures that were started in 1804. After walking around for about four hours it was getting really hot and about 2pm so I went home for a rest. I spent the rest of the day reading and relaxing followed by a few beers.

Friday came and I hired another bike as I wanted to go a little further than my legs wanted to carry me, there were a Tomb of Tu Duc which was amazing. The emperors used to start building their burial enclosure long before they were going to be knocked off or die. Tu Duc had 104 wives but never had any children, the women must have been barren. The whole complex is surrounded by a huge octagonal wall, and inside were lush gardens, a lake, several temples, several tombs for wives and relatives and other ’stuff’. When a king dies usually the next king writes about his accomplishments and adds this to their tomb, Tuc had different ideas he wanted to write his own, so on a 20 tonne stone tablet brought from 500 miles away he wrote about his achievements and failures, and named his tomb ‘modest’. Weird thing is that he was never buried there.

Later that day a New Zealander I met Katie and I decided to go to the beach. We knew roughly where it was, and ended up going through the country side on dirt tracks for about 20km, then had to get on a little local ferry across a river with the bike, over a massive sand dune, through a cemetery to the beach, about 90mins all up. The water was warm although pretty dirty and it was already getting dark. The trip back was much more eventful, we just caught the last boat back (had to call them back as they already left). The guys on the boat were all drunk and were sharing their beer with us. Then driving back along a goat track in the dark was interesting so we stopped for dinner. The dinner was good but everyone from about 3 houses in every direction came to watch us eat it was quite funny with almost no language in common. We ended up getting some rice wine with dinner, and some to take away. Back in town there was a festival because it was the coming up to the full moon, so we had a good look around. We spent 20000 Dong ($1.50) for 1 Liter of rice wine, and two dinners. It was to easy and a great night out.