Days 14-15 Hue

The overnight bus was surprisingly cosy, like being in a pod floating along the highway - or rather lurching, veering and honking as that is road travel Vietnamese style. We passed through the DMZ (demilitarized zone) which was full of odd little graveyards, big formal graveyards and monuments next to graveyards. Arrived in Hue (pronounced "hway") to our first rain of the trip. Set out to wander through the citadel, past its wide moat full of water lilies and golden fish, and the Imperial Palace, which is slowly being restored after bombing during the American War (as it's called here) and decay and neglect after. What's been restored is quite wonderful, with colourful tiles, bells and mosaics, and the ruins waiting for their turn are covered in vines and mould, with the drip drip of rain ever present. Hue gets a ton of rain, which makes the decay rather romantic.

There were virtually no others around, and one could imagine what it might have been like not too many decades ago.

We were in the right place at the right time to see a performance of traditional music and dance in costume (including a dragon dance that included the full mating cycle of two amourous reptiles complete with birth of a baby dragon), such as that enjoyed by the imperial family whose photos looked seriously down on us everywhere. We were ushered to the front row of the rather magnificant restored theatre, and ceremoniously given Imperial tea and biscuits, which comprised a sort of thick chewy bean curd surrounding a delicate rice cookie all wrapped beautifully in banana leaves. Exquisite and completely foreign to our palate.

We thought it was raining quite heavily during the day, but during the night it absolutely poured. It rattled on the roof in spasms all night and into the morning, whcne it cleared to a drizzle. Due to the pervading mist we decided against taking a ride on a dragon boat along the Perfume River (a misnomer if ever there was one!) and walked instead to the Tien Mu Pagopda, which our book says was 3km from the centre of town. Now we are pretty fair walkers, maybe 8 km an hour, and we walked a good hour and a half without finding the thing, as the weather just deteriorated to more hilarious proportions. In the end we silently cursed said Pagoda and trekked back in squishy feet. We'll just pretend it looked like any one of the Imperial palace gates: