Rain, rain, go away!

  Hué, Vietnam
Saturday, January 6, 2007

The bus journey from Hoi An to the former Imperial capital of Hué was relatively smooth and speedy. Highway One hugs the coast a lot in this area so the views were often glorious (we saw lots of fishermen balancing precariously in woven bamboo coracles at one point), although the weather steadily deteriorated as we got further north, so that by the time we arrived, it was bucketing down with rain. Now we'd had the odd downpour in Hoi An, but this was relentless - apparently they get 3 metres of rain on average every year in Hué. We're amazed it's not more, as it didn't stop pelting down the whole time we were there.

02 Rain, rain go away...

With this in mind, tourists clearly don't opt to stay here for very long, at least that would account for the welcome we received as we got off the bus - we were besieged by hotel touts. No where, not even in India, have we encountered such persistent attention and it came as quite a surprise. Only once we'd walked the short distance to the place we wanted to stay and found they had rooms available did we manage to convince the last of them we weren't interested in what they were offering. We had dinner close to the hotel that night as the rain was relentless and the sight of hundreds of moped drivers trying to negotiate slick roads while holding umbrellas or sheltering under voluminous plastic ponchos made us strangely more road safety conscious than usual.

01 Hue Mausoleum

The lure of an organised city tour and the bus that it would entail was too much of a temptation to resist and we signed up for one that promised to take us to the top attractions. These included three Imperial tombs, the old citadel and the symbol of Hué, the Thien Mu Pagoda. In 1902, Emperor Gia Long, the founder of the Nguyen Dynasty, moved the capital from Hanoi and built his court in Hué. (Why is beyond both of us, as although the city is undoubtedly lovely when it's not pissing down, it is a bit dismal in the wet and imagine living here before Goretex and plastic were invented!) Gia Long's heirs ruled Vietnam from here until Emperor Bia Dai's abdication in 1945, although they were only nominally in control after the French seized the city in 1885.

05 Sian and the mandarins

Hué has had quite a turbulent history - in 1968 during the Tet Offensive the North Vietnamese army held the city of 25 days, until it was all but levelled by the South's counter offensive. There are still quite a few outlying sights to see and UNESCO is overseeing the rebuilding of many of the others. In the morning we went to see three of the royal mausoleums outside the city. Two of them (the tombs of Minh Mang and Tu Duc) were built along fairly traditional lines - with strategically placed lakes, trees and buildings (the Vietnamese Emperors were firm believers in Chinese Feng Shui), but the third was much more unusual. It belonged to Emperor Khai Dinh and took eleven years to build (1920-31) - quite a feat considering he only ruled the country for nine (1916-25)!

04 Vietnamese Emperor Khai Dinh

His tomb complex was a startling mix of European Baroque and ornamental Sino-Vietnamese style - the over-the-topness of it apparently matched his personality; our guide Do, delighted in telling us that despite all his concubines, he never fathered any children because he was gay. Our guidebook told us that he was given a string of fairy lights from some French dignitary and he wore them around his neck until the batteries ran out. I guess such a flamboyant character would be pleased with his legacy - the walls and ceiling inside the tomb are covered with glass and porcelain mosaics and there's a life-size gold plated statue of him in all his finery which was cast in Italy (he was practically a midget). It really was all quite extraordinary and went some way toward explaining our good Communist guide's reaction to this particular Emperor.

11 Hue citadel

As well as the tombs we got our obligatory shopping trip where we saw women making bamboo hats and incense sticks - the hat lady made two a day which she would hopefully sell for a dollar each. The incense woman rolled little bamboo sticks into a thick sandalwood or cinnamon goo and would sell a bundle for a few thousand Dong. After lunch, which proved a great opportunity to try and dry out a bit, we went to have a look at the nineteenth century citadel. When it was built, the complex must have been really awe inspiring - but time, war and weather have all taken their toll and of the 148 original buildings only twenty have survived. What we did see though gave you some idea of the scale of the project and how powerful the royal family must have been.

09 Dragon gutter

The first place we visited was the Ngo Mon gate. This is where Emperors used to come to watch the Civil Service exam results being read out, it's also the place where the last Emperor handed the jade encrusted sword and heavy solid gold ingot which represented his power to the new government in 1945. We then visited the Thai Hoa palace, it's the only major building in the complex to have escaped bomb damage and you can see some of the unrestored red and gold lacquer pillars dating from 1833, along with the newly restored ones.

08 Hue citadel

After taking in the sights and atmosphere of the Imperial city we decided to call it a day. Our group were visiting one of the city's most important landmarks - the Thien Mu Pagoda which was founded in 1601 - and then travelling back into the city by boat along the Perfume River. Normally this would have been a trip we'd look forward to, travelling by boat into the city is supposed to be a highlight, but the idea of spending 40 minutes on the water in the pouring rain wasn't so attractive so we bailed out (excuse the pun and installed ourselves in the nearest patisserie in an effort to dry off before we caught the overnight train to Hanoi.