Vietnam, Hue: Finding Elaine at the Citadel

Our arrival in Hue began the second half of our visit to Vietnam, but this was not the reason we were most excited about getting to the city. Excitement was in the air as our open bus arrived because we had planned to meet up with Elaine. Elaine is a friend of ours from London whom we have both known for several years, and after travelling in Southeast Asia for over three months, it was nice to see a familiar face.

We had booked accommodation online at Hai Dang Hotel, the same place that Elaine had booked. As soon as we arrived at the hotel, we called Elaine to see where she was, so we could meet her straight away. It turned out that she was at Hue’s famous Citadel, a UNESCO site that was the original Imperial City of Vietnam dating back to 1804 and the country’s capital under the Nguyen dynasty.

They 'kindly' offered to drive us around on their cyclos until the gates were opened, and we knew immediately that we had been duped

Setting out from the hotel to find Elaine inside the Citadel seemed like an easy enough task, as we were given simple directions from the staff at Hai Dang. They told us to walk straight along the road that our hotel was situated on and to cross a large bridge over Perfume River, before turning left and walking to the Citadel gates. What they failed to mention was the fact that the inside of the Citadel was very spread out and there were no clear signs pointing the way for us.

A couple of cyclo (bicycles with a small cart attached to take people around the city) drivers spotted us when we entered through the gates of the Citadel. Since we clearly looked lost, they tried to take advantage of the situation by sending us around to the east side of the inner walls within the old city, which they knew would be closed at that time of the day. We thanked them and started walking around to the area they pointed out and, although they annoyed us by following us the entire way, we didn’t really care as we thought we would be seeing Elaine soon; nothing could deter our excitement.

When we arrived at the locked gates, the cyclo drivers told us that the Citadel was closed and would not reopen until an hour or so later. They “kindly” offered to drive us around on their cyclos until the gates were opened, and we knew immediately that we had been duped. Just to make sure, we walked to a nearby camera kiosk and asked to use their phone to call Elaine and see where she was. We were now running at least fifteen minutes late and had no idea where to go.

Upon talking to Elaine, we found out that the entrance to the Citadel was right in front of us when we walked through the main gates, but we had not seen this since we were distracted by the cyclo drivers. Elaine went through the same experience so we think our situation was not a one-off. Anyone reading this journal entry that is planning on going to Hue, make sure you ignore those cyclo scammers!

We spent a couple of hours walking lazily through the Citadel with Elaine, catching up on our travel experiences the whole time. At one point during our walk, we were mobbed by a huge group of schoolchildren on a field trip that treated us like the rock stars we are; they surrounded us and fought each other off, trying to get closer to us in order to practice their English or give us high fives. We hadn’t heard so much laughter and happiness in one place in a long time.

That evening, Elaine took us to “Cafe on Thu Wheels”, a place she visited upon arrival, and also where she booked a whirlwind motorbike tour around Hue to see surrounding temples, mausoleums and the countryside. When she told us about the tour, we decided it sounded like a fun and very quick way to see the nearby sights and we booked ourselves on the same tour for the following morning.

At Thu Wheels, we met the owner of the cafe, Thu (pronounced “two”). Thu was a crazy and hilarious Vietnamese woman who had clearly spent a lot of time around backpackers and other travellers. She had picked up a cheekiness that was hard not to love, and she had also picked up some key catch phrases that, when thrown out at the appropriate time, had all of the cafe patrons laughing out loud.

Thu told us that it was happy hour and we would get free drinks. We think she just meant that the hour should be happy when we buy drinks as there was nothing free. But, the Larue beers we had with Elaine were very cold and cheap and after having a couple of them, we decide to go for some dinner. Elaine and Kyle had both read about a restaurant called “Lac Thien” in Hue that is run by a deaf mute family and were interested in trying it out for a meal. Dan agreed once he heard about the place and we went there for a great dinner.

There were two Lac Thien restaurants right next to each other, but one of the restaurants was a fake. If you face the two, the one on the left is the legitimate restaurant, while the one on the right is a copycat. The food we ordered was really delicious and it went well with more Vietnamese beers.

The owner of the restaurant, a deaf mute man, took our order and also made special wooden bottle openers for us to take home. The idea is that we take a picture in front of a famous landmark somewhere in the world with the bottle opener, which has “Lac Thien” written in permanent marker on one side, and send the picture back to the restaurant so they can display the photo in an album with many others.

Cafe on Thu Wheels was calling our name when we left Lac Thien. Thu had asked us earlier that day to play drinking games in her cafe and Kyle knew a good one called “3-Man”. The game required dice and, luckily, Kyle was able to get a pair nearby Lac Thien. When we arrived at Thu Wheels, an Australian couple and another Australian named Thomas joined in on the game, and madness ensued.

The object of the game was to avoid having to drink by a lucky roll of the dice. Someone was designated as 3-Man at the beginning of the game and every time a 3 appeared on one of the dice, or a combination of 2 and 1, 3-Man had to drink. There were many other rules, which meant people around the table had to consume a fair amount of their drinks in short spaces of time. This combined with the fact that the 3-Man title can be passed along to other players fairly easily and we had finished off many beers in the couple of hours that we were at Thu Wheels.

When Thu Wheels closed at 11pm, we wanted to search out another venue to have more drinks. We decided upon a bar recommended by Elaine, and unfortunately we cannot remember the name. We walked there with Thomas and a group of English lads who were also leaving the cafe. It was a night of meeting Australians - there was an annoying guy at the bar who was visiting Vietnam with his brother-in-law, a much less annoying Vietnamese man living in Australia. Thomas, by the way, was not annoying at all.

It was the annoying Australian’s birthday and he bought everyone a round of drinks, so he became slightly less annoying at that point. We grudgingly accepted them because, at that time, we were getting pretty drunk and knew we had an early motorbike tour the next morning. Elaine, on the other hand, seemed to be coping well with the additional alcohol and it seemed that her fun times in Thailand had boosted her tolerance levels quite a bit.

The next morning, after waking up thankful that we didn’t finish the final free beer bought for us, we had breakfast at Hai Dang Hotel and then headed to Thu Wheels for our tour. Throughout the morning, we visited a beautiful Japanese covered bridge, a large market with many traders busily selling their goods, a viewpoint atop a large hill overlooking Hamburger Hill and Perfume River, the large and serene area where Tu Duc’s tomb was located, Thien Mu pagoda and Tu Hieu pagoda. The Thien Mu pagoda is where a famous blue Austin car is on display, the same car which many people will know featured in a photograph of a Vietnamese monk who set fire to himself in protest several years ago.

The best sight we visited was hands down the Tu Hieu pagoda, where we were able to watch monks and novices chanting their daily prayers and nuns returning from their daily meditation in the forest. Our tour guide, one of Thu’s 10 brothers who are all tour guides for Cafe Thu Wheels, was really informative and he even told us the best places where we could take photographs! We learned a lot from him and would highly recommend the motorbike tour to others.

The tour was really great but the tour started off on a scary note; it was raining heavily and the first streets the motorbikes drove through were completely washed out and muddy. Our drivers were not deterred by the rain and drove very fast through the windy roads, dodging pedestrians and other traffic like it was nothing. As the morning went on, the rain stopped and the roads dried up, so the trip became very enjoyable once Mother Nature’s obstacles were out of the way.

Kyle kept looking back, thinking that Dan and his driver surely must have slid in the mud and crashed, but luckily no accidents happened that morning. Dan later recounted a few near misses, however, and we were glad that no visits to the hospital were in store for us in Hue. One of the scarier moments was riding through a narrow section of a long bridge, whereby our motorbikes had to ride single-file to the end. There seemed to be only about 2 inches of room on either side of the bikes, and the bikes were surrounded on both sides by steel fences.

Safely back at Thu Wheels, we decided to have some lunch. Elaine had changed her plans to leave Hue the following day instead of that morning, so she could spend more time with us. She met us for lunch and, after, we were all a bit tired from the previous night’s fun, so we set off in search of a DVD player we could rent in order to watch a film or two back in the hotel.

About five hours later, we had a DVD player in hand, and we also had experienced a part of Hue that was definitely off the beaten track. We passed a couple of really large churches, talked with many friendly people, walked through many small neighbourhoods and we even had an early dinner at someone’s house. They were selling Vietnamese pancakes and noodle soup, and when we asked if they sold spring rolls, they ended up going to the market to purchase the ingredients to cook us some! Hospitality at its finest, we really enjoyed the experience, even if the spring rolls were a little burnt and chewy.

Negotiating the DVD player rental was not easy, as we ended up renting one from a woman running a VCD and computer game shop who didn’t speak any English. The woman asked for a 1 million Dong deposit and once we figured out the fact that we would get the deposit back when we returned the player, we handed over the large sum of money to her. It turned out that we had nothing to worry about and we enjoyed watching a couple of films with Elaine on our last night in Hue together.

The next day, we both slept in as our overnight bus to Ninh Binh was not due to depart Hue until 6pm. For lunch, we ate at a restaurant across the street from our hotel and afterwards decided to go to the ATM machine to withdraw some more cash. At this point, Kyle realised his bank card was missing, and panic hit very hard.

We backtracked all of our steps the previous two days and remembered using Kyle’s card at an ATM down the road on the day of our arrival in Hue. The ATM was connected to a small bank and Kyle’s card was with the bank staff. Apparently, he forgot to take the card from the ATM machine after he withdrew cash, and the machine “ate” his card. We are lucky that the bank was there and were appreciative of the honest staff who kept his card after the incident.

You have to read our next journal entry for Tam Coc to understand what happened on our open bus journey. Hopefully, from the title, you see that we ended up in a different destination to Ninh Binh, and it was a hassle even getting there.

Leaving Hue, we were sad to have parted ways with Elaine, as it is unlikely our paths will cross again until we are all three back in London in 2008, but the two days with her was a great interruption in our travels and we wouldn’t have had it any other way!