Hue is Hue?

Number one daughter continues her journey through Vietnam - never a dull moment, clearly! 

A three and a half hour journey by train dropped us off in Hue - after a slight 

reluctance to leave Hoi An, knowing that it would be difficult to compare our 

experience there as we travelled northwards in Vietnam. The train chugged 

and hugged the coastline, giving us views of narrow inlets and pockets of 

beaches, fishermen and their boats and the scaling green hills on the other 

side.

Hue is home to the Citadel and was the capital city of Vietnam in the 19th 

century and where Ho Chi Minh grew up. As you walk along the street into 

town, Hue is divided by a clean split down the river - the Citadel down one 

side and the town down the other. For this reason, the charm that we had 

been hit by in Hoi An, was lacking here - the people choosing not to base 

themselves around what is to tourists, the heart of Hue, and very reason 

why so many people come to visit here. You are left with an impression of 

a 'wannabe city' - modern hacked buildings, unappealing hotels and cross 

the bridge to immerse yourself in history and culture.

We felt finagled by the promise of Hue - but I promise that this disappointment 

will not linger long in this blog.

Hue's Imperial City, the Citadel, is a fortress surrounded by a moat, with 

water taken from 'The Perfume River' - which runs through the centre of 

town. Inside is the imperial enclosure to the 'Purple Forbidden City' - where 

the Emperor, his wives and his concubines lived and where all official 

business and ceremonies took place. The Citadel was bombed in the 

Vietnam war and we are told, looked very different a few years ago, but 

now all of the bomb craters have been filled up with soil and modern 

hallways provide paths to and from the original buildings that have 

survived.

Now, Alex is a typical boy in that, in laddish fashion, he spent much of his 

time looking around the Citadel and designing his own personal fortress. I 

am informed, by him, that I may live on an island in the middle of a lake and 

build my own treehouse but that I do not have permission to fish to survive 

and that if I was to disobey him, he would arrange for his servants to throw 

things at me and order the angry seabass in the moat to deprive me of 

bathing or escaping, akin to Austin Powers.

In retaliation, I spent much of the time imagining well-oiled men in loin cloths 

tending to my every whim, daily massages and a library beating the splendour 

of Codrington Library at Old Souls College, Oxford. The list goes on.

The DMZ bar hosted us as we clinked our glasses and watched the football 

and England vs New Zealand rugby in sequential fashion. The DMZ bar 

stands out due to its ceiling which is a geographical tour of the Demilitarised 

Zone which was the dividing line between North and South Vietnam during 

the Indochina War which saw the Viet Cong beat the French to be 

recognised as its own government in North Vietnam. This paved the way 

towards the Vietnam War which saw Americans in South Vietnam fighting 

the 'communism of the North', or as the Vietnamese would probably say - 

barbarically depriving them of their right to independence. A tale of two sides, 

as always.

Speaking of which, those who know me well are aware of the amount of 

literature I absorb on a weekly basis. So far I have probably read about ten 

books in the past two weeks, but the one that has left me absorbed in the 

history of Vietnam is called 'Saigon' by Anthony Grey. Through the eyes of 

a young American who visits the country for the first time in 1926, hunting 

tiger in the jungles with his wealthy father and brother, the book spans fifty 

years of Vietnamese history. The young American returns, time and time 

again, haunted and beguiled by the lumbering country as it leaned harder 

and harder towards independence. Constantly torn between his patriotism 

and an innate understanding of the sacrifices Vietnam had made for 

French colonialism, you observe the battle within himself as much as he 

details the battle surrounding him. Historical fiction might be its genre, but 

the way that the author cannily and accurately portrays Saigon, Hue and 

other places around us leads me to take much of his account as truth and 

it is considerably unbiased in comparison to the other fiction and non-fiction 

I have read in understanding this country better.

In Agatha Christie fashion, we boarded the sleeper train that would carry us 

to Hanoi. The tracks lie flat to the platform and local men sit casually puffing 

away in the smoky dark until the train arrives. We found ourselves in a cabin 

with two bunk beds and a narrow table sitting in between. The door only just 

about shuts and a guard sat outside our cabin, presumably, to ward off the 

spooky and murderous ghosts of the Orient Express. The train, I had 

imagined - in typical romantic fashion, would rock me softly to sleep with 

murmurs of the 'chug-a-chug' beneath me. This was not to be. The train 

would slow down mildly before throwing down its brakes and hurtling to a 

stop - nearly throwing us out of the bunk. Occasionally, the guard felt the 

need to slide our door open and pop his head in, throwing light into the cabin. 

This was, I assume, to check that we were still there not that somebody had 

climbed over the top and murdered us in our sleep.

Next stop is Hanoi - on a brief detour before we climb the hills and the fog to 

Sapa.