Once in a while, Vietnam has national or public holidays… Cause for celebration at our language centre: no classes, we get a day (or days) off! An opportunity to escape the drudgery of teaching English in a smallish provincial town. Quang Ngai may well be the capital of Quang Ngai Province, but it has still a lot of catching up to do with the more well-known and touristy coastal towns of Da Nang, Hoi An and Hue.
With Reunification Day (04/30 marking the fall of Saigon in 1975) followed on the heel by Labour Day (05/01), a two day stretch lay ahead of us. Definitely enough time to explore what Vietnam has to offer further afield than the local beach and Da Nang. Still, since Vietnam does not yet have a fleet of high-speed bullet trains like China, even travel by rail has its limitations for such a short break, especially as the whole of Vietnam might be taking advantage of the holiday and be on the move as well.
The imperial city of Hue beckoned and came highly recommended on travel sites. Located just a little to the north of Da Nang, Hue was the national capital from 1802 until 1945. As the seat of the Nguyen Dynasty emperors, Hue is steeped in history and there are plenty of the emperors’ legacies left for visitors to admire. Beyond a moat and thick walls, Hue’s 19th-century Dai Noi Citadel encompasses the palaces and shrines of the Imperial City, as well as the Forbidden Purple City which was once the emperors’ home, and a replica of the Royal Theatre. And just out of town, dotted along the Perfume River, majestic mausoleums are nestled between lush green hills, ensuring the emperors a peaceful final resting place. Definitely a city worth our attention…
Train tickets booked well in advance – although not early enough to snap up comfortable beds in a sleeper compartment – the only thing left to organize was accommodation. Booking.com all the way!! No need to pay anything online, just pay cash on arrival. What is there not to like about such an arrangement?? We selected a guesthouse on the periphery of the busy centre, one with plenty of excellent reviews of course, and forewarned them of our very late arrival in the wee hours of Monday morning. As we were teaching on Sunday until past 7:00 pm, our train options had been limited and the 8.20pm train would get us to Hue just after 1.30 am. A well-laid plan. What could go wrong?
Sunday lunchtime: a quick glance at my phone alerted me of missed calls from a Vietnam number, and a text message…. ‘Sorry, we cannot accept your booking’. It transpired the guesthouse had seen it entirely within their rights to give our room to other guests. As Booking.com does not ask for payment in advance or a deposit, the guesthouse probably felt safer to fill their rooms with guests who just turned up on the day rather than risking a no-show in the middle of the night. Of course, a little panic ensued: this two-day break was not just for us teachers, but the whole of Vietnam would be on the move… How to find a place to sleep on our arrival in the dead of night? Luckily, just a call to Booking.com in the UK was all that was needed to find another hotel. Saved by the skin of our teeth, or so we thought…
Our train left late, no reason to fret: this is Vietnam.. It will happen when it happens. Instead of our scheduled arrival in Hue at 01.30 am, the train finally pulled in closer to 02.30 am. Not to worry, I had again indicated on the booking form that we would reach the hotel sometime after 2:00 am and the internet blurb suggested a 24-hour manned reception desk. At least we’d been able to fit in a little bit of a kip, just like other passengers who opted to try the comfort of the train floor instead of the reclining ‘soft’ seats.
As we left the station, rain pelted down… Umbrella? Rain coat? Quang Ngai had been basking in glorious sunshine that afternoon; practicalities such as taking waterproofs had completely slipped our mind. Our plan to walk to our hotel, a mere 1.5 kms away, washed down the drains… Although there were plenty of taxis on the station forecourt, sleepy taxi drivers shook their heads on reading our intended destination. Clearly the distance was not worth waking up for. We almost resigned ourselves to a soggy midnight jaunt through town, when an eager motorbike taxi pulled up. After some haggling, we wheedled the fare down to a realistic figure and squeezed on the back seat. A tight fit indeed… one driver, two adult passengers and bulging backpacks…
I cannot discount the possibility of an error on my behalf. Vietnamese addresses with multiple numbers at the front flummox me… and I may inadvertently have ignored a vital digit or two. To cut a long story short, sometime between 2.30 and 3:00 am, we were dropped off at the end of the longest road in the middle of nowhere in Hue, nowhere near our hotel… The rain continued unabated and we resorted to the help of Google Maps… If phoning the hotel had seemed a sensible move, we duly tried it but the ringing at the other end fell on very deaf ears.. So much for a 24 hour reception desk! We walked on guided by the blue dot on Google Maps, but even the satellite directions failed to pinpoint the exact location of the guesthouse… We spotted a man on the pavement, busily washing pots and pans – a mystery to me why anyone would need to attend to washing dishes at 3.00 am at night – whose vision immediately deteriorated at the sight of the address of my phone. Even enlarging the address did not improve his reading ability… Eventually, we bumped into some tourists, foreigners, who kindly pointed us in the right direction. Finally, just after 3:00 am, we made it to the hotel… and found the door unlocked!! We were in!!
We never made it beyond the lobby. We snatched the receptionist from the arms of Morpheus, only to be told… ‘No rooms, go find other hotel.’ What about our reservation from Booking.com? It happened to be the middle of the night and raining relentlessly?? Obviously booking ‘.com’ did not guarantee us a bed; with no deposit paid, the room had again been given to other guests… The receptionist was unperturbed, rolled over and immediately returned to his slumber. Leaving the hotel well after the witching hour was not an option, so we camped on the cold lobby floor. When ‘numb bum’ syndrome finally got the better of us and daybreak heralded the prospect of an early coffee, we sneaked out into the drizzle. Luckily, it did not take us too long to locate another hotel, in a much more exciting part of town… We only had to stay upright until midday to check in…
That first morning passed in a haze… We trailed the perfume River and, along with a sea of other tourists, visited the much-praised Imperial City. It may have been the lack of sleep, but somehow the Imperial City did not impress and the only thing that kept us going was the thought of a soft bed around midday and the abundance of exotic food… pizza, bruschetta, granola as well as local Hue cuisine… It would be a culinary experience to savour!!!
Of course, the next day our sentiments regarding Hue greatly improved. A long rest, a great breakfast and we felt fit to explore the outskirt of Hue by bicycle. We set our sights on one of the famous tombs, the Tomb of Dong Khanh, about 9 km from our hotel. Hardly worth breaking a sweat over… only, following the walking route recommended by Google Maps may have been a tad over-optimistic. City bikes were hardly a match for the dirt tracks we encountered. On the upside, we rattled over luscious green hills, were mesmerized by the impressive looking statues of a military figure and a giant buddha, passed the entrance to a hidden pagoda and definitely found someone’s tomb tucked away in the depths of nowhere .. but it sure wasn’t the one we were looking for.
‘Only three kilometers along the path,’ a helpful local had indicated. By then Google Maps’ guardian angel had completely lost interest in our plight and it seemed safer to withdraw to a nearby tarmacked road – at least we had spotted some signs of life there. And lo and behold, just around the corner, a large tomb complex appeared and … masses of tourists. A sure sign we had finally found the tomb we were looking for, much closer than the three kilometers away…
As it transpired, it was one of ‘the tombs’ alright, but not the one we had intended to visit, the one with the row upon row of military figures watching over the burial chamber. In fact, this was the Tu Duc Tomb, more famous and touristy than the one we were heading to. At least we did not miss out on the mandarins lining the Honour Courtyard; there just were not as many as we had expected and all rather diminutive, in keeping with the emperor’s actual stature of just 153 cm!
The emperor himself designed the tomb complex and as it was completed well ahead of his demise, he took ample advantage of the amenities during his life time… A separate building to house his more than one hundred concubines, a pond for fishing, temples and pagodas… Impressive quarters fit for a ruler!
The Stele Pavilion, bearing an inscription about the Emperor’s life – composed by none other than the Emperor himself – was neatly covered for restoration work, but the sepulcher was accessible.
Not that the Emperor was actually laid to rest there… Although his wife and adopted son are buried in far flung corners of the grounds, the whereabouts of the Emperor’s real grave are to this day unknown. To keep the secret safe and make sure there would be no grave robberies, the 200 labourers involved in the burial were all beheaded by the mandarins after their return from the undisclosed route…
We spent the rest of the day lazing about on our bikes and, of course, making the most of the availability of Western food: another pizza feast. It could be a while before we would have another opportunity to indulge in pizza…
Lieve Round The World 