Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

After months of travel, most under at least partly sunny skies, the rain has found us! The wet season is arriving in central Vietnam, and as we rolled out of Hanoi on Saturday, the rains began. We moved by overnight train from Hanoi to Hue (pronounced 'Hway'), a former capital of Vietnam under the Nguyen dynasty from 1802 - 1945, just south of the de-militarized zone (DMZ) of the Vietnam War. We’re old pros at overnight trains by now, but it was great to add the Reunification Railway, which connects Hanoi in the north to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in the south, to our collection.

Hue is about half way to Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon) from Hanoi. While we were greeted by a partly sunny day on arrival in Hue, central Vietnam’s skies opened up to show us the force of monsoon: flooding in the streets; dark grey skies; strong winds.

If Hanoi is a hip 20-ish young trend-setter, Hue is his old stodgy uncle with the over-sized empty house but thankfully a decent cook. The town is a UNESCO heritage site but we could have come to Vietnam, skipped Hue, and not really missed anything (in our opinion). Our time in Hue consisted of a visit to the Citadel and a stormy day on the Perfume River. While recent history recalls Hue most famously for the battle there in 1968 during the Vietnam War, our time focused on local and more dated attractions.

The Citadel is the primary attraction in Hue, and with 65% destroyed mostly by the French but more recently by the Battle of Hue in 1968, several buildings have been renovated and offer a glimpse of what life might have been like as an Emperor. We experienced our last Vietnamese sunshine at the Citadel (for the time-being!) and cyclo’d our way back to our hotel. With the onset of monsoon-type weather, roads turned into rivers and we practically waded (I wish I was joking!) to dinner at La Carambole where we enjoyed nine mini-courses of fine Vietnamese cuisine.

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Our boat trip up the Perfume river (rather slowly, as the monsoon flow was quite strong) took us Emperor Minh Mang’s tomb and Thien Mu pagoda dating from 1601 and which – if you’d ever heard of Hue before today – might be the image you have in mind. The tomb offered us the chance to get acquainted with Vietnam’s recent royal history, enjoy the Chinese influenced architecture, but most of all experience monsoon rains in the outdoors!

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The pagoda housed a monastery with connections to the Vietnam War via an old car, used by elder monk Thich Quang Duc to protest the South Vietnamese government’s treatment of Buddhists under the Diem regime by immolating himself. The car he drove to the site was loaned to him by a monk from the pagoda’s monastery, where it now resides as a memorial to the monk’s sacrifice.

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A water lily posing for us just in front of the Thien Mu pagoda

Hue was, perhaps, our least favorite stop in Vietnam so far and, in retrospect, we wished we'd spent the time visiting the DMZ (the demilitarized zone). But we left Hue with high spirits despite the weather. Vietnam's impression upon us still seems watertight!