October 4 - Vietnam: Huê
Today was our flight to Huê at 12:15. We have heard that Vietnam Airlines is a bit of a stickler about luggage over 20kgs, and they charge $2.00 per additional kilo. So we took all the heavy "little" things out of our backpacks and stuffed them into our day packs to carry on the plane. These heavy "little" things included our bathroom kits, flashlights, jeans, peanut butter, Gatorade, and 400g of Tide. We also carried on our sleeping bags. So our day packs were heavier than our backpacks for once. When we checked them, we were both at 17.5kgs - a vast improvement!
Huê
Hue is a fairly small town situated on Perfume River on the east side of Vietnam. From the airport, we caught a share-taxi ride into town, which dropped us off at our hotel the Hoang Ngoc. The rooms were fairly basic, but the air-conditioning works and for $12 a night we really can't complain. The staff was very nice, and they did everything they could to get us a room with a nice and cool A/C. To the point of switching our room once and also bringing us a fan.
After getting settled in the hotel, we went off to find Mr Tahn on Le Loi street, whom Grant recommended to us. Le Loi is apparently the Main Street which every town in Vietnam has. So we walked down about 1 km to find #3 Le Loi and to set up a motorbike tour for tomorrow and a bus ride to Hoi An the next day.
Citadel
After chatting with Mr Tahn for a bit, we caught a cyclo ride to the Citadel. This is an expansive property that once housed the Forbidden Purple City. They wouldn't let me through the gate in my tank top, but pointed me toward the "borrow shirt" area where I was given an pretty blue brocade number to wear. Which, incidentally, I took off as soon as we got past the guards.
Most of the Forbidden City had been destroyed over the years, and the place is very, very rundown and overgrown. But it was still interesting to walk through despite the fact that few of the buildings remain. It was actually quite nice: the sun was setting, there were relatively few tourists, and the place was getting ready to close. So we had the entire "city" pretty much to ourselves. We stayed for about 45 minutes and then left.
Market
Thung, our cyclo driver, insisted on waiting for us outside the Citadel to take us to the market, which was fine because we had some time to kill tonight. On the way to the market, he took us through some of Hue's back-roads. Everyone here is very, very nice and little kids yell out "Hello!" because they just want to hear the Hello back. Many get a kick out of it when we say "Sin Chao" (Hello in Vietnamese). And most of the little girls laughed pleasantly when they saw me - I had a flower in my hair over my right ear and I gather that's not something they see every day here. I suppose that surprises me, seeing that this is such a tropical place.
The market was one big garage sale. They had everything from fruit, to fish, to clothes, to shoes, to cigarettes. Jon and I weren't interested in any of it so we made a quick tour of the stalls and then left to find Thung who was of course waiting for us outside.
Lac Thahn Restaurant
We had Thung drop us off at Lac Thahn restaurant - a place on the North bank across the bridge from our hotel. Here, Jon paid Thung a nice fee for his little tour and we told him that we were going to walk back and that he needn't wait for us. Lac Thahn is owned by a man named Lac who is deaf and mute but has a sparkling personality. His sign language is more understandable than most Americans' English!
The little restaurant only had four tables, and two of them were taken up by an Intrepid tour led by Sue, a leader we met at the Victory Hotel the other night. Ironically, this is the same tour group that we almost joined because it wasn't full and Intrepid was giving a discount to "Impulse Adventurers" like us. But we decided we'd had enough of the tour thing and wanted to be on our own. So this was a bit odd that we found ourselves in the same place as they were. After chatting with Sue for a bit we realized that we're also going to be in Hoi An at the same time as they are. Sort of awkward, but we'll try to avoid them so they don't feel like we've mooched their tour.
Anyway, the food at Lac Thahn was delicious. We had some shrimp pancake concoction that we wrapped up in a lettuce fajita much like Korean food. The big entertainment in the restaurant was the beer bottle openers, which were nothing more than a slab of wood with a nut and bolt screwed onto it. Using the bolt and the wood, Lac could pop a beer bottle open with amazing ease. He could also spin the wood around his fingers like a gunslinger, putting the wood into make-believe "holsters" and then blowing on their tips as the cowboys do. He had all four tables laughing hysterically, and he never spoke a word. He gave all of us a commemorative bottle opener to take home, signed by him. Ours has the date "9/4/2001" on it which - as Jon says - makes for an even better story later on.
Karate Class
We left Lac Thahn's and walked across the bridge and across the Perfume River to our hotel. A few doors before we reached the hotel was a Karate class of teenagers. It was an open-air classroom, so Jon and I stood outside and watched them for a while. These kids are tough and they definitely know their Karate - both the girls and the boys! We watched the different rounds, the referee, and the scoring until we ourselves had collected quite a crowd outside. I left after about 10 minutes, but could still hear their Karate shouts from our hotel window. Jon - who stayed to watch - said that a tall boy stood up and did really well because the reach of his arms and legs were so much longer than anyone else's. This made me think of my 6'6" brother who has been taking Karate classes for a while. I'll bet he has the same advantage!