Vietnam: Central/South, Hue & Hoi An 26 Apr - 1 May

Hue 26-28 Apr

Phong Na Homestay organised the local bus service for us to Hue for Dong 150k / $7. The pickup time was around 6.30am although they tell you to be ready from 5.15am. The driver rattled and honked at great speeds to the main road where the main bus was waiting with it packed full of locals glaring at us, we were clearly late although it waited all the same. It took four hours and I got a few more fillings rattled out my teeth and had a few more black outs from fright of near death as trucks accelerated towards us head on and then swerved at the last millisecond, but other than that the journey was alright, there is pretty scenery in these parts.

The city of Hue turned out to be one of my favourite places in Vietnam, although I wouldn’t have expected it from reading about it beforehand. Between 1802 and 1945 it was the imperial city of the Nguyen Dynasty and at a time became the shaky capital of Vietnam to try join the hands of North and South, and was subsequently ravaged by both the Viet Cong, the French and the Americans war. We saw some really disturbing photographs of soldiers, tanks and fighting in the war museum in Saigon, on the very streets we were tramping around. So almost the whole city is new except for the walled palace and fortress of the Imperial City. It turned out to be a really cool place to wander around, it’s a really easy city to explore and feels like a well operating, modern city but with all the little idiosyncrasies that make it bustling Vietnam and nowhere else. The tourists are all tucked away South of the river in Pham Ngu Lao.

Vroom!

Children waiting to be picked up at nursery

The city walls

Cutting up a pineapple for us, Hue main market

It costs around $4 to visit the Imperial City, and it was good to see something so old and historical in a place where most things were blasted to smithereens. It’s a quiet, big and ghostly collection of old historical buildings so if that isn’t your thing then it probably won’t excite you. If not have a wander East within the citadel walls to the market for some Vietnamese city flavours. There are many tours to be had on motorbikes around and outside of Hue to visit some historical war sites too, and also boat trips.

Imperial City

Imperial City

Imperial City - Farigo being fierce with the dragons

Imperial City

The most fun thing that we did in Hue though was to hire bicycles with our new friend David from our hostel for $1.50, to set off to try find some temples and pagodas that were spared the bombs dotted around South of the city. (The bicycles were pretty flimsy though, David had to have his handlebars screwed back on and the bike serviced en route for another $1.50) We had a really inadequate map from the Lonely Planet and rode off, trying to figure out roads and directions with some difficulty. Always bring a compass. We went into the heart of Hue’s non tourist city dwellings which was good fun, and stopped at a ‘vegan’ restaurant for some pho soup which was delicious, gesturing and pointing and getting the one guy who could speak a little English to help with the ordering. He brought over some pork crackling though as a treat, which makes their vegan credentials pretty shaky! We rode through busy streets and then quiet lanes and eventually found ourselves on a road leading out into the countryside, where we saw an expansive catholic graveyard and a huge, imposing statue of a past dynastic ruler on the hill which we stopped at to have a look at. There was a hill next to this monument, and we could see where we’d come from and the city centre but had no idea where these pagodas were. After gazing out into the distance we did see one poking out the trees though and set off to find it. One of the best things about hiring a bike in a city is that you can just ride around to wherever looks interesting and stop at whim, so we ended up seeing some strange and interesting holy places and shrines on the way. Some teenage boys started following us and pointing us in different directions trying to figure out what we were looking for. It was quite funny, thinking we could see in the distance what we were looking for and then getting there and being more lost. 

Huge monument

View from the hill

The whole family rides motorbikes - getting lost in Hue

Vegan pho

The grounds of a strange holy site - getting lost in Hue

Eventually we found a small side road where the boys were frantically pointing us to, and went down it. It turned out to be a road to a temple, although not one at all on the map. It was a collection of strange temples and a practising Buddhist monastery. It seemed that every sect, tradition and era was represented on these grounds, with old and new buildings, fat and thin Buddha’s, colourful statues, demure shrines, brightly painted fake mannequins, ponds with strange holy features, just a mishmash of everything and anything Buddhist. It was great! We spent ages walking around and looking at it all, up hills and around corners and into buildings. There was a statue of a Thai monk who was obviously a guru to this temple, as they had an absolutely terrifyingly lifelike statue of him in one of the temples. It was so real, that when I first saw it I thought there was a man there meditating, and when David and Stu were poking his face and telling me that he was in such a deep trance that he didn’t mind, I was shocked and didn’t want to go near him to disturb him. Even when I found out it wasn’t real I didn’t believe it and was too scared to touch it. Better than any Madame Tussauds waxwork, that’s for sure. What a strange experience! The boys were still there laughing and talking broken English to us, and pointing at things for us to look at and being funny. We cycled home through some treacherous rush hour traffic (you just have to go with the flow, if you just go all the trucks, bikes, tuk tuks, buses and trucks will just miraculously go around you. Just do not hesitate) It was a really great day getting lost and seeing the non tourist side of a good Vietnamese city. I highly recommend it.

Our bikes at the gates to the temple

Weird water feature in the temple

Weird mannequins in temple

Farigo paying his respects to the guru

The insanely real mannequin of the monk 

We stayed in Hue Backpackers which has really nice rooms that have lots of secure storage and little extras that make staying in a hostel nice; like aircon and clean comfy beds. It was David’s birthday so the staff went out and got him a cake and made everyone sing and then gave us some free drinks which was really nice of them. It’s a good place to meet other travellers and have some good ol’ western food. There aren’t many places like it other than Hanoi, so take advantage of meeting people and having some familiar comforts while you can in Hue. It cost $6 a night.

Hoi An 28 Apr – 1 May

We got the bus the next day to Hoi An which took around five hours. The buses definitely get more comfortable and sane the further south you go in Vietnam. There was a public holiday on that weekend, and so most hotels and buses were completely booked up and there were people piled in the aisles of the bus with a general holiday spirit in the air. Hoi An is what I’d call a ‘chocolate box’ town. Its an intact and ancient city with original quaint architecture, famous for being a historic trading port that avoided being annihilated war, trading all those romantic commodities of olden time voyages to the east... silk, spices, sugar, tea, porcelain. But mostly now it’s probably famous for tailors and because of that there are hundreds of them. 

I booked one of the only hotels that was available after all the local holidaymakers descended for their long weekend, Dai Long hotel. They all seem pretty much the same, around $15 for an aircon room and if you’re lucky there’s a nice pool too. There are no backpacker hostels in Hoi An but you can get a single room for $6 if you look around. The group of us (Emily, David who we met in Hue, Kylie and Steve Emily’s friends from Hoi An) spent three nights there, and actually I felt like that was too much and I was heartily sick of it by the end although some people absolutely dote on it and want to stay weeks. In its defence, It is a very pretty place, with very sweet old buildings and architecture. 

Lanterns in Hoi An

You can carry anything on a motorbike, including a huge lantern

Bridges in Hoi An

The old town is buzzing with tourists and there were some street theatre going on, with instruments and games and people clapping and cheering, but I had no idea what they were all about. There are some really nice (but expensive) places to eat, although you can find local food too and not just eat at the tourist spots. We hired a bike one day and cycled round the old town, I really wanted to find a shoemaker to make me some hardy leather sandals, but most of the places I looked at had tons of shoes but made in a very quick way with weak materials, for the hordes of tourists. I finally happened upon a little shop tucked away where an old lady was sitting with a sewing machine, and I saw in her window some sandals like I wanted so I stopped to have a chat. I showed a very blurry picture off the internet and in no time she was measuring my feet and pointing at bits of leather and straps. Her husband was going to do the making, and he arrived to point at more materials and colours, as there was no English between them. I thought that might be a mistake, there were plenty of tailors in the town who could speak good English, but I loved the look of them. The cost was $35 and I was to come back the next day to check on progress. I came in the next day and sure enough the talented man had made a replica of the really unclear picture I showed him, which was amazing. Without any English he had made almost exactly what I wanted, and for that he definitely deserved my $35. Hopefully these shoes will last me five months of Asia trodding.

Measuring 

My shoemaker in Hoi An

New shoes!

Another day we all hired motorbikes and set off for An Bang Beach, which was supposed to be the prettier, quieter beach away from the riff raff of the main beach in Hoi An. It only took around 15 min to ride there, and it was a really nice beach but quite busy still with lots of restaurants and deck chairs laid out. But the water was clean and still and great to swim in after the hot ride. We got back on the bikes and rode into the sunset North West, although that turned out to be a huge stretch of half finished resorts along the beaches. We rode into one, a ghostly huge shell of a half finished resort, and did some off road sand motorbiking, skidding and throwing sand into the air and at times getting completely stuck, it was really fun. But we were promptly chased off the property by the security guard. We sped back to town before dark with the wind whipping us around, such a nice feeling of motorbiking freedom, zipping fast down a good road.

An Bang Beach Hoi An

Hoi An is a pretty town, but way too ‘twee’ for my liking. There were no backpacker hostels, and it was filled mostly couples on a short break to Vietnam so I felt a bit like a stray mongrel in a poodle parlour. Its perfect for a romantic getaway, where you can walk along the river amongst the lanterns holding hands and talking about how much money you’ve spent on getting clothes made... needless to say not really for me. I was glad to leave.

Here are pics of Hue (after the Phong Na pics)
And here are the Hoi An pics (before Mui Ne pics)