Day 19 - The Citadel

We had another bus the next day this time to the ancient Vietnamese capitol of Hue, pronounced "way." When this trip was first conceived I thought three weeks was too long to spend in Vietnam, but almost everyone we met was spending longer. It could get boring spending that much time in one place, but Vietnam is surprisingly big and there was a lot of stuff not on our itinerary, and a lot of places we could have spent more time. People were telling us the whole time that they were spending weeks or months more in the country. We had also been hearing from everyone who lived in Vietnam what great weather they'd been having recently and how lucky we were. Since it was supposed to be the dry season I figured it was just always that sunny in January. But our luck finally gave out and when we got to Hue it was raining and it didn't let up really all day. It wasn't hard tropical rain, like you might expect in the wet season, but it drizzled on and off all that morning and throughout the day. The bus trip to Hue wasn't as long or as eventful as some of the others. We were on a bigger bus, which basically meant that it went slower, and the rain dampened some of the views. Sometimes though when we just come around a corner I would catch a glimpse of a tall green mountain its top enclosed in a ring of clouds leading up to the gray sky. Driving around Vietnam, despite the constant risk of a sudden and fiery death, was amazing.

We arrived at Hue during one of the heavier raining periods of the day and were immediately beset by about 10 people with little brochures trying to get us to come to their hotels. These people were especially annoying and insistent not even letting us thumb through the guide book in peace without poking over our shoulder trying to point to their hotel. Eventually since it was raining and they all had cars we relented and went with the one who annoyed us the least. Every city seems to have these people who more or less mob tourists trying to push hotels. I've seen some pretty push street vendors before but some of these guys are on another level. They don't seem to be put off by anything. They don't care if you say you have a hotel or even if you aren't even stopping in the town. I've had people try to get me to come to a hotel as I'm clearly on a bus out of town. The hotel we came to was fine and we got a room and spent some time surfing the internet. Since it was still raining no one really wanted to do anything during the day and soon it was night. We looked in the book and found one semi-French restaurant with a fixed price seven course meal that looked interesting. It was pretty far away but it had basically stopped raining so we decided to walk.

Hue is famous for its Citadel a large walled area that used to be the whole city. Nowadays inside this wall besides the ruins of what used to be the palace it is mostly residential. Hue was captured during the Tet Offensive and held by VC forces for several weeks as the US commanders believed the whole Tet Offensive was a diversion to attack froward bases like Khe San. While the Communists held the city they executed nearly 3,000 people because of their class or their connection to the South Vietnamese government. When the US eventually decided to retake the city the ensuing battle damaged much of the historic city and after the war the Communist government saw no point in fixing it up for decades. Eventually the government realized its value as a tourism sight and some restoration has begun along with the construction of the countries biggest flag pole holding a huge government flag. The restaurant was inside the Citadel in a small residential neighborhood. By the time we got to the restaurant we were pretty wet, this combined with our already shaggy appearance would have been enough to keep us out of a lot of restaurants in the US or Europe, but here it was no problem.

The restaurant had a table with a reservation card on it, the hotel had called ahead, for "Davids party of 3." I just thought it was nice that they split the difference between mine and David's name, though the person at the hotel had tried to read out Davis letter by letter. The food at the restaurant was really interesting especially the first course which was spring rolls delivered in a chicken made out of fruits and vegetables. The head was a carefully carved carrot, while the body was a hallowed out pineapple with a candle in it. The wings were the spring rolls on tooth picks, though you had to avoid burning your hand near the candle when getting them. I was curious what they would have done had I eaten the carrot head of the animal, but having no idea just how long they had been using it I passed. The desert was also interesting made out of some condensed been thing covered in a semi-sweat glaze to look like a flower. The been thing didn't really taste very good, but it looked fantastic.