Hue

Watch out, difficult children. In fact, stay away from Hue Airport altogether!
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As we head for Hue (pronounced like Hway in the south but like Huoy in the town itself) Andy heads further into a cold. When we arrive, our new guide tells us our driver is a traditional healer. Well, didn’t Andy come here to learn more about alternative medicine? Immediately upon arrival at the Pilgrimage Village (a little bit of paradise reminiscent of a Hawaiian spa) he gets to work – excruciatingly – on a coughing, hacking, sniffing Andy. Tinh uses a coin to scrape white Tiger Balm into Andy’s skin, on each side of his neck, down his spine and in a rib-like pattern in three more locations. Andy’s in pain but the practitioner presses on, then instructs him to sleep under the covers with the air conditioning off, for an hour. When he awakes, the cough is gone. Later, the driver tells us that if he’d not been sick, there would have been no red marks. Amazing!

Ouch! Ouch! Bite the pillow and remember the intention to learn about traditional medicine.
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The Pilgrimage Village is civilized without artifice, luxurious without excess. Its slogan? Looking for lost time. We would actually be looking for lotsa time. Three charming tiny ceramic apothecary pots in the bathroom sit on a ceramic tray and contain shampoo, bath gel and hand lotion. Fractured English abounds with signs warning, for instance, to please close the doors when you get out at night as insects may fly into your room. Mini star shaped flowers dot the bed, the desk and the sink, like chocolates that have ascended to the next life.

Searching For Lost Time

Multi-tasking involves administering painful coin strokes while arranging a lunch date by cell phone.
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Now I sit on the bed in our luscious room, attempting to reconstruct a rich day as a storm passes through. It began before sunset, with sheet lightning in the distance tinged with orange and red. As it closed in and dark descended, the lightning forked to announce the arrival of wind and thunder. Chillingly, it looks and sounds like war – hardly an irrelevant motif given that we’re at the site of the Tet Offensive which, in 1968, killed 10,000 civilians here, with blame on both sides.

The mandarins keep watch at Khai Dinhs tomb. This is an Andarin sighting.
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Our support team met us at 8am today and we struck off over a ridiculously bumpy road that had me pleading for a girlie saddle tomorrow. The bikes are impressive – knobby tires, smooth gears and disc brakes – but aren’t a patch on our guide’s knowledge of the thirteen kings of the Nguyen Dynasty! Each has a full name, a year name, a dead name and a royal name. Personally, I like the fifth emperor, Nquyen Phuc Ung Chan, whose year name is Duc Duc. What a goose!

Each emperor spent many a humid Hue day choosing the site for his eternal life, then building something that could approximate how gorgeously grand, important, wise and generally god-like he was. Many had many wives, not to mention concubines and eunuchs, and many also died young, ha ha. One Tu Duc was so busy composing poetry, the French took over. But who can fault a man who asked for his cup to be placed on a lotus leaf in the middle of his personal reflection pond so that the mist could descend in the morning to infuse his tea?

This was one of the better paths: rougher on the seat but it took us to places other tourists dont reach.
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We cycle down tiny rural roads, cut across fields, and end up on dirt paths that turn abruptly into two lane bitumen, complete with shoulders on each side. Picture this: We’ve just crossed a bridge made entirely of bamboo that spans a small ravine. On the other side is the toll-taker – the woman who made the bridge with the help of her neighbors. Coming the other way is a Frenchman on a motorbike, with an old woman riding pillion. The toll taker demands the toll. The Frenchman feigns no Vietnamese. The toll taker starts smacking the passenger, who smiles beatifically. Our guide explains that the old woman is mad, and hitches rides for no reason from anyone passing by. She gets off, smiling, and wanders off into the bush.

You too might let the French overwhelm you when this is the view from your breakfast table.
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We marvel at the ubiquitous “land temples” along these small roads. Probably one in four houses displays at least one, sometimes two out front, like elaborate, multi-colored mailboxes to the gods. Given that this is farm country, these people pay due respect to the Buddhist tradition of honoring the beings who guard the earth. One such temple sports a blind on the front – a mini version of the plastic blue and white ones we see all over, providing privacy and shade for these people whose lives are so public, whose multi-purpose dwellings have no front doors, just accordion security gates. We ask the guide about the temple blind. Some people are so pious, he explains, that they don’t want disbelievers looking at their holy place, where they burn their incense and place their flowers and fruit.

The beautiful colors have nothing to do with the incense and everything to do with impelling us to apply the brakes and stop for a lesson in incense making (and purchasing.)
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Everywhere we stop, we have to buy. Look at these colorful incense stalls! Whoops. We don’t even like incense but after watching it made, how can we say no?

Now we’re off our bikes and onto the river, in a dragon boat owned by “the talented Ms. Phoenix” and her husband. My oh my. Now we’re eating. Tuna in killer sauce (and caught off this boat here in the Perfume River), braised bamboo shoots, sautéed morning glory, vegetable pancakes the shape of samosas. This is fragrant, deliriously scrumptious food. Ms. Phoenix tries to sell us pajamas, postcards, slacks, robes, greeting cards and wooden statues but none of it is a match for her cooking. We hop off to admire the Thien Mu pagoda, a living, breathing Mahayana Buddhist temple and are quite moved by the sight of the blue Austin out of which stepped 66 year old Thich Quang Duc in 1963 to immolate himself in a Saigon street to protest the way Buddhism was being suppressed by the Communist regime.

If youre a homesick Pommie visiting Hues citadel, you could be forgiven for thinking the motherland just a phone call away.
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We finish the day at the Citadel. No, actually, we finish the day with this marvelous thunderstorm and tomorrow, we thunder away from Hue to conquer new roads to the south.

The next day dawns wet and cooler. Marvelous! We don our plastic bags – er, rain slickers – and charge off into the countryside. For a while, we’re sharing roads with motos ferrying European faces to an attraction – a Japanese covered bridge. But after the bridge, we’re on our own. We pass a village school and the kids swarm out. We play “Alo! What’s your name?” and they squeal with delight every time we say their name and they repeat ours back to us. High fives all round. Kids are kids are kids. The cheeky ones push to the front and urge the others on. The shy ones stand back, their voices timid. Every time we stop, to check out a boat dressed up for an approaching ceremony, to see inside the straw hut where mushrooms are cultivated, to watch rice being hulled and sorted by hand, we attract a crowd who inspect the bikes and us like we’re visiting from another planet which, truly, we are. We’re surprised by the interest until our driver confirms that, in fact, most tourists never see these villages. This is the value of biking.

The talented Ms. Phoenix prepares our splendid lunch table at the stern of her dragon boat.
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But the extent of our wimpy athleticism becomes apparent when we hear how far we have to ride to the lunch stop, and we gauge our energy. I got my girlie seat today but still, my crotch is so numb I can’t tell if I need a place to squat or whether I’ve already peed my pants. Happily, the van, with its iced washcloths, and cool watermelon, dragon fruit and mulberry juice is there with us, so we call it a morning and DRIVE TWO HOURS to lunch. Yes, our idea of biking differs from many of the macho dudes who cycle this route. And as for the “challenge of the six-mile climb” of the post-lunch Hai Van Pass, we knew we’d be giving that a miss before we even left home, and joked with the trip planner that this is where cyclists say, “Oh hi, there’s my van!”

Isnt he the one the teacher always has to have her eye on? Peace Man The teacher was in te schoolhouse in the background. She gave them ten minutes with us then whistled them back in.
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Today it’s shrouded in mist but as soon as we bag the peak (in the air-conditioned van!) we see sunny Danang below, and the bay where American troops first landed. To save (our) face, the guide unloads the bikes at China Beach and finds a flat smooth bitumen surface for us to pedal the hell out of before packing the bikes away until the Mekong Delta, five days hence. Before mounting, I pick up a pair of “ugly sunglasses” from a kid on the sand. Except he was saying Oakley and I was paying $2.

Ingenious rain covers allow for headlights at night or, more commonly, for children standing up front on the scooter to be able to see where mum or dad is taking them.
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We cruise into Hoi An, the new Kuta Beach for Australians by the look and sound of it, for a couple of days rest and catch up.