Tour of Imperial Hue

Internet access was extremely spotty in Hue. Sometimes I could get into my email and sometimes not--sometimes I could log onto my blog and sometimes not. Sometimes the internet was down completely. And the credit card machine at the hotel was down when we left but fortunately we had enough cash to pay the bill.

Anyway this is the hotel we stayed at for two nights--the Hai Dang Hotel. I think the name means lighthouse. It is small by American standards but larger than the ones we've stayed in at Saigon. When we first got to Hue on the train we were bombarded with taxi drivers hawking one hotel or another--thank goodness there was one holding up my mother's name on a big piece of paper and he whisked us off to the hotel. There was no charge for the taxi, I guess the hotels arrange it as a perk in order to make sure their reservations actually show up and aren't side tracked by over zealous drivers.
Our room was on the third floor--again no elevator but the stairs here were very wide so it wasn't as hard to climb. We ended up getting a large corner room because we wanted internet access in the room--no wireless, they just gave us a cable to hook to an outlet. The room was $18 a night which included the usual "continental" breakfast. The staff was very friendly and helpful. We decided to return our train tickets from Hue to Hoi An and ride the bus. The hotel staff took our tickets to the station and got us an 80% refund, booked the bus, and called the hotel in Hoi An and told them the new pick up time.

We arranged an all day tour of the highlights of Hue. The cost was just $10 each which included the bus all day, an English speaking guide, and lunch (which consisted of rice, chicken, squid, pork, and bitter gourd soup.

Our first stop was the former Forbidden Purple City, now called the Citadel. This was the home for the Emperors during the Nguyen dynasty, 1802-1945. It is like a smaller version of the Forbidden City in Beijing, and was the home for the Emperor, his wives, concubines, and the eunuchs who staffed the harem.

Entrance Gate to the Forbidden Purple City

Right behind the entrance gate, where we paid the 55000 dong admission, was this audience hall where the emperor greeted dignitaries.

Further behind the hall there was a modern lotus plant. The area was very crowded, mostly with tourists from Thailand. They venerate their king in Thailand, I suppose it is strange to them to be moving in and out of royal residences and chambers.

The place was very large, but with lots of open space. My understanding is that the site was heavily bombed during the "American War"--no doubt the Communists were using the grounds and its buildings for offices and training. As a result there are extensive ruins, some of which are still yet in the procss of being renovated.
This side of the grounds seems to have been where the emperor actually lived.
Here is an example of one of the bombed out ruins. The grounds used to be far more crowded with buildings. Now there is room enough for a football field.
I found this site very interesting--the emperor's reading pavilion. There was a small building with a pond in front of it, and the pond had a small island within it that was beautifully landscaped.
This reading pavilion seems to have been the best preserved and best maintained of any of the buildings I saw on the site.


I didn't really understand the point of our next stop, other than to provide a 10,000 dong entrance fee to an elderly woman. This was called a garden house. The neigborhood had almost a donze, but this was the only one we visited. It is listed as an ecotourism site. The grounds around teh building had lush landscaping but it had rained a lot the night before and we mainly just looked at the main building. The guide referred to this lady as "the old woman". The man in the photo to the right of the candle was referred to as "the old woman's father". The man in the photo behind the candle was referred to as "the mandarin", and he was the woman's grandfather.

My understanding is that mandarins were the leaderhip, like advisors to the emperor. This neighborhood seems to have been once a very exclusive enclave where the mandarins lived. The house was furnished with 19th and early 20th century items that belonged to the mandarin.

Our next stop was a so-called Insense Making Village and Conical Hat Making Village. I was expecting a rustic Hmong type village far away from the city. It was more what I would call a neighborhood of small factories. It was interesting to see these girls making insense sticks.
We didn't see anyone make the hats, but I did see the hat forms and guess how they might have been made. The hats from Hue are well known for the poetry and pictures that are hidden in the palm leaves. If you hold the hat up to the light you can read what it says.

I think we disappointed the guide and the workers because no one in our group bought anything. We stayed there longer than I felt comfortable and I began to wonder if we would have to buy something to get out of there.

But we did finally leave, and made our way to the tomb of Tu Duc, the fourth emperor of the Nguyen dynasty. He had four hundred wives and concubines but had no children, our guide reported it was because he had contracted smallpox. The politics of the time was very bloody--Tu Duc imprisoned his older brother who had been passed over by the father to inherit the throne, because there was a growing movement to put the brother on the throne. Supposedly their mother plead for the brother's life and Tu Duc relented, but then three days later the brother supposedly killed himself in jail.

Tu Duc went on to adopt three sons of this brother as his own sons, but they had very short and violent reigns. One died when he was only 15. I can see how the Vietnamese would have wanted to do away with the monarchy because it really was a cause of turmoil for the country. The emperors had less and less power after Tu Duc, more power was given to the French. The only thing the emperos had left to do to express their power was build these elaborate tombs.

Tomb of Tu Duc

This is the entrance to the Tu Duc Tomb. It really is more of a tomb than what we think of, and in fact he isn't even buried there. It is more like a palace--it was completed well before his death and he seems to have spent a great deal of time there, if not actually lived there. There were places he went to meditate, places he went to write poetry, a hall dedicated to his mother, a tomb for his main wife (who presumably actually is buried there).
Several ponds and streams wind through the tomb area.
This is a stairway to the wife's tomb. It was somewhat overgrown and slippery with moss.

I saw things like this that had what looked like urns in the little chairs.
This is what is called the actual tomb of Tu Duc, though no one seems to know where he is really buried. This is a place to venerate him and record his story.

Tomb of Khai Dinh
Our next stop (after lunch) was the tomb of Khai Dinh, the 12th emperor and the father of the last emperor who abdicated in 1945. Khai Dinh ruled from 1916 to 1925. His tomb is very elaborate and is built on a hill removed from town. It is made of concrete and is about half European architecture and half Asian architecture.
A woman named Kris from Singapore walked through the tombs with me. She liked to take lots of photos and so after I took one of her she took with of me with my camera. Thus I have lots more photos of me at the tombs than I usually take.
There was lots of climbing at this tomb--it reminded me of Angkor Wat.

There was a beautiful view from the tomb, and on the top of the next mountain a very large statue of Kuan Yin was visible.
Mosaics in the tomb seemed to be made of recycled china pieces.
This is the altar to the king.
The guide told us that these drawings on the ceiling were painted by an artist using his feet instead of his hands to hold the brush.

Tomb of Minh Mang
Our last tomb was Minh Mang, who ruled from 1820 to 1840. This is the oldest of the tombs, the least influenced by European patterns, and reportedly the most majestic.

The tomb is known for blending well into its natural surroundings. While Tu Duc's tomb is in a busy neighborhood and Khai Dinh's is perched high on a mountain, Minh Mang's tomb is in a large sloping valley. The tomb grounds are large--700 m from one end to the other.

Our last stop was Thien Mu Pagoda, founded and built in the 17th century. This was the home pagoda of a monk who in the sixties drove to Saigon and set himself on fire to oppose the Catholic suppression of Buddhism. The car he drove to Saigon is on display.
Thien Mu Pagoda
As we left the pagoda just across the street we got in a "Dragon Boat" for the 4 km back to Hue on the Perfume River. The ride would have been more peaceful if the wife of the boat operator hadn't been dogging us the entire time to buy something from her. She kept putting out silk shirts, pants, skirts, and assorted bric a brac which nobody was interested in.

One Week from Today!

Reunification Express to Hue

Taxi rides are always such an ordeal! The manager of Bich Duyen, Chunh, flagged a taxi and helped schlep our stuff out to the street. He arranged a 40,000 dong fare to the train station, but as soon as he was out of sight the driver said "meter!" and to our protests just said "same, same." Off we went and even though I do have to admit I think the meter was fair (unlike the meter when we rode to the bus station and watching the numbers whirl past like a slot machine) but we had supposedly agreed to 40,000. When we got to the station I read 51,500 but somehow when we got out he was saying 55,000. That's only a difference of less than a dollar but my mother gets very offended by constantly being taken by these taxi drivers.

But we paid the fare and went on, made it into our four person compartment--only to have two women, two men, and a very portly 5 year old boy come in with tons of luggage. I feared that the entire compartment would be crammed with this group, but luckily the entourage was just on hand to assist one woman and her son in what I can only suppose was a move to Hanoi due to the large amount of luggage she crammed into the compartment.

The ride was basically pleasant, though the little boy did have some obnoxious noisy toys that he played until after midnight--when he wasn't caterwauling some song. It was hile amusing to watch his mother feed him--she tore the meat off a chicken leg and put it one small piece at a time into his gaping mouth. After his meal she had him stand up in the bunk and urinate into an empty plastic water bottle, even though the bathroom was less than ten feet away.

I spent the evening reading material for my hopefully soon to be completed dissertation. It was a very strange juxtaposition to be mentally immersed in turn of the 16th century English politics and culture while riding the Reunifcation Express up the coast of Vietnam.

Still the night passed well. For an hour or so a railroad worker came in and slept on the bunk above the woman and her son and he snored very loudly. But he left and was replaced by an older woman who got on in Nha Trang who fell imediately and quietly asleep.
In the morning we were treated to very lovely scenery after we passed Danang. The train had to have an extra engine attached to it before we started into this seaside pass.
We shared an open window in the hallway with some other tourists who were taking photos and marveling at the beauty. The locals seemed accustomed to it and did not pay attention.

Hue

We made it to Hue a little after 8 in the morning, and thankfully the hotel had a taxi to meet us. Hue is the old capital of Vietnam, back when the country had an emperor. The Nguyen dynasty had their residence here for several hundred years, until the last one abdicated in 1945 and spent out the rest of his life in Paris. I believe his eldest son just died a couple of weeks ago. Strange to think that if Vietnam still had an emperor they would be having a big state funeral now.

It is great to have reservations and a ride to meet you. After a rest we walked down to the Perfume River and ate at this restaurant built out into the water.
The restaurant looked out onto a bridge that was solely used by bicycles, motorbikes, and pedestrians.
I decided to order seafood since we are at a coastal city. I was brave and ordered sauteed squid with vegetables. It was very tasty but a little rubbery in my opinion. But I'm not a big squid eater.
While we were eating a local man in a small boat appeared to be gathering fire wood that had washed up under the edge of the restaurant.
As we ate we watched a somewhat hazy sunset. I think Hue is cloudy most of the time. It reminds me of Lima, Peru. The combination of the mountains and the wind from the ocean creates a hazy sky the locals call "donkey belly".
We made our way across the bridge, dodging locals trying to sell us paintings or rides on Dragon boats or a tour on a cyclo.
We found the local market. It was very crowded.
At this clothing booth I bought two traditional outfits for Henry. I'm pretty sure they are too big for him now, but I got the smallest they had. One is the traditional ao dai, the other is pajamas. I also bought two silk shirts for myself--I didn't really want them but they are nice, my mother got a silk shirt for Harold and I also got a cheap t shirt. The original price was $170 but my mother bargained them down to $130.
The woman below recognized my mother from back in July when she was here and bought some clothes from her. She would have thought the woman was just trying to make a sales pitch but she recalled too many details so even though my mother didn't remember her she did say that she must be telling the truth.

The woman doesn't really have a store of her own, she just scouts out tourists and drags them from one seller to another. She is good at figuring out what you want. My mother had complained about a jade bracelet that I brought her from Thailand that is too small, and I mentioned to the woman about larger bracelets. She dragged us to a shop in the next aisle where they greased up my mother's hand with lotion and crammed a few bracelets--my mother swears that her hand is going to be black and blue tomorrow.
Tomorrow we are booked for an all day tour of Hue--in the morning we go to the Forbidden Purple City, which is a smaller version of Beijing's Forbidden City. In the afternoon we take a boat ride on the Perfume River to visit some of the former emperors' tombs.

A Street Performance on our Day out of Saigon

We had to get up relatively early this morning to go to the tailor shop to pick up our clothes for the wedding. My mother had an ao dai made and yesterday when I went with her to her fitting I decided to have a white shirt made, at a cost of $17. I remember how I felt like such a bum in Chiang Mai going to church in the travel clothes, and I decided I wanted to look somewhat presentable for this wedding.

On the way we passed this presentation with dragons that I think was a sort of good luck opening for a new business. Two men operated each dragon, sometimes one would leap on the other one's head and the dragon would be really tal, most of the time one was in front of the other like a horse.
In the door there was a roast pig and drinks. These were not offered to us street watchers. I guess there was a celebration inside. The musical accompanying the dance was deafening, bone shaking. After a while I got used to my teeth rattling and tried to enjoy the sight.
So now we are packing to catch the train at 1 PM for Hue. We will arrive at 8 tomorrow morning. We got "soft sleepers" which I think will be a higher class than we had in Thailand. We will share a compartment with two other people and meals are included in the fare. The scenery is supposed to be very beautiful, especially from Danang to Hue.

And now it's ten days until the G&R, and just nine days until I get Henry! I can't believe I'm finally coming to the end of this long and twisting road. I just hope all is smooth from here on out--that my fingerprint clearance comes quickly and that the INS interview goes okay.

Oh I wanted to say that I added a counter to the blog last Monday the 15th. It has been tracking the traffic as I was curious how much the blog was viewed. I'm glad to see that so many of my friends and family and co-workers seem to be viewing it, as well as others in the adoption community who have been following my saga.