A few times last night the train stopped in the middle of the forest. I peered out trying to make out what was outside my window. Sitting there in the middle of Vietnam, staring into the blackness I felt like the only person in the world.
When day finally broke I awoke to more of the same I’d seen the day before when I ventured to Tam Coc – in the foreground thick deciduous forests, rice patties and sprawling mountains in the background.
Stephen woke up shortly after me. We heard a food-cart man wheeling outside and Stephen decided to purchase something. He came back to the room with something wrapped in a banana leaf.
“What is it?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’m not really sure.”
He peeled the banana leaf off and inside was a gelatinous substance with an off-white hue…inside there was some mystery meat that neither of us could identify (sadly, mystery meat could literally mean anything here).
Stephen at a piece of it.
“Is it good?” I asked.
He shook his head and handed it to me.
I took a bite of it – disgusting! It had the consistency of a cooked jelly fish and tasted awful. He put it on the table between us and we had the pleasure of watching the bizarre gelatinous food bounce and tremble all the way to Hue.
A little while later another food cart wheeled by. Still hungry we stopped her and bought two coffees. To our disappointment the coffee she made was instant and tasted nothing like the gourmet coffee we’d become accustomed to in Hanoi. I also purchased a roll which had what looked like blonde-hair and balls of butter in its center. I have no idea what it was, but it actually was delicious.
STILL starving Stephen got off at the next station and purchased some bananas…we were finally satiated.
The Vietnamese guys from the night before got off at some random station and they were replaced by a Vietnamese woman who was taking her sonto Ho Chi Minh University. She was nice and spoke broken English. She asked me how much my apple computer was, and where we were from in America, and how old we were and if we were married. They were very nice people and Stephen and I were again relieved we didn’t get stuck with weirdos.
After ‘breakfast’ I read and napped a while longer and then decided to try and get some pictures of the passing landscape. We were going through an area with water buffalos grazing in rice patties and beautiful flocks of birds flying above them. Our windows cant open so I went to the bathroom (which had the window open all the time) and stuck my head out – BUT – just as I did that I pulled it back in. I remembered someone telling me never to put your face near the windows because apparently it’s a popular thing for kids to throw rocks at the train as it goes by. A lot of people have been seriously injured…so I didn’t get the picture I wanted, oh well.
The Hue train station was smaller and quieter than Hanoi’s.
Stephen and I walked to the front of the station and took pictures of the train that had taken us there from Hanoi. While we were taking pictures a swarm of dragonflies surrounded us and it was hard to get a picture without a dragonfly interfering in one way or another.
Once we got out of the station we met our driver, who was carrying a piece of paper with ‘JOSEPH QUADERER’ written on it. He took us back to our hotel and we were both able to take well deserved showers after going way too long without a shower.
After lunch Stephen and I set out to see the Hue Citadel (The citadel was constructed in 1804 by Emperor Gia Long. It served as the imperial capital of Vietnam until 1945).
Stephen and I were walking along the Song Huong (perfume river) when we were accosted by a man on a wooden dragon boat. The man said that for 100,000 dong ($5) he would take us for an hour boat ride to see the fishing villages and the citadel. We took him up on his offer. Little did we know that seeing the fishing villages literally meant seeing them – as in we just kept cruising past them on the boat…never once stopping, getting off or getting a real chance to check out Hue’s fishing villages.
While we were driving from the fishing villages to the citadel the man tried to sell us a variety of things:
· Coca Cola, water, etcetera (standard)
· Embroidered items (standard in Vietnam, for some reason)
· A quarter from 1979 (WTF?)
· A dog tag
· A USA issued army knife
We declined all his offers, getting a chuckle out of the fact that he wanted to sell us a unit of our currency…umm…
Finally he “dropped us off” at the Citadel. Meaning he pointed his boat at the shore (which was covered in mud and knee high elephant grass) rammed his boat into the shore so that the front of it was jutting out over said mud + grass, and then told us to jump. It wasn’t quite jumping out of a Higgins craft on China beach, but more than Stephen and I were expecting. We jumped off the boat and the man, who was supposed to wait for us, took off. Sweet!
We eventually got to the citadel and saw one forlorn, rotting building after the next. It was amazing how many man-hours had to go into creating this absolutely massive structure and when we saw it it was almost destroyed by war, neglect and an environment that seems to foster rot and decay.
Afterwards we walked back and grabbed a beer at DMZ, a local expat bar, ate dinner at a ‘fancy’ restaurant where there were a total of four people in the restaurant and they didn’t play any music or talk (awkward), and then went BACK to DMZ and proceeded to drink adult beverages for the rest of the night.
By the time we got back to our hotel (2:30 AM) all the lights were out. We literally thought we’d have to sleep in the streets (we were told the residents of Hue don’t stay up past 10:00)…but when I pulled the door… it opened. I went behind the desk and found our key. When I turned around I realized the concierge was asleep on the floor. This shocked me and I dropped a large wooden drawer on the floor. She had to have woken up from the noise, but didn’t indicate it.
Then we passed out…another fun day.
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