What happened very early on the morning of the 30th of October?
I woke up. Having gone to bed very early, I opened my eyes about 6.30am and slipped the curtain open a little bit. There had been stories of Hue being flooded a week before our tour started, and the countryside I was looking at still looked pretty flooded at the moment. Every now and then you would see a power pole poking about halfway out of the water.
So I sat there, and waited for people to wake up, and looked out the window some more, and took videos on my mobile phone, and had unhindered usage of the toilet and eventually everyone began to look alive.
Hue would be coming down the train lines a little bit after 9.30am, and in the meantime we marvelled at the sheer amount of water laying around the place, and pointed our cameras out the windows. At the station we had little more to do than to walk along the platform and out the gate, and straight to our taxi. Too easy.
Once again I walked into our hotel room and declared that I would never leave, because it was in fact rather nice. Before our boat trip out to the Seven Level Pagoda at 2pm, we had to get lunch, and to get lunch we had to leave the hotel room, so there was no other way. The newer part of Hue is gathered around the south side of the river, while the old town is over the other side. In the newer part, a short walk toward the river, we found the Mandarin Cafe Tuan had recommended, and had a superb lunch of a local specialty called Banh Khoai, which is like an omelette-shaped fried pancake with vegetables inside and a satay sauce, as well as fried noodles and coffee and a mango pancake.
In the menu, potential toppings were listed in brackets (chocolate, honey, peanut butter, strawberry). Surely they wouldn’t actually produce such a thing as a mango pancake with peanut butter, but if one requests it, produce it they do. They look at you funny, and have a giggle, but a mango pancake with peanut butter on it is not actually a bad thing. Not bad at all.
On the walls of the Mandarin Cafe are a great many very good photographs, printed and framed. The owner, Mr Phan Cu, as his business card will testify, brings you an album of pictures, each one numbered, much bigger than the menu, and explains that these pictures are his hobby and he hopes you like them. It’s hard not to; they range from quite nice to really exquisite.
From the hotel we found Tuan waiting around and took a short taxi ride down to the river, hardly any further than the distance we walked down (and then back) to the restaurant. Along the edge many dragon boats were moored close together, bobbing, and we climbed the little step ladder into one of these and set off. It was hot, and steamy, and getting on the boat improved things only slightly. And then the lady on the boat pulled out all manner of trinkets, souvenirs, shirts, and trousers and spent most of the trip trying to sell these things to us.
There are two main bridges across the river in Hue, and under both of these bridges we floated, sitting sometimes in the shade of the boat, walking sometimes out onto the prow, and watching the town changing on one side, and the weeds crowing the bank on the other, and the fishing boats loafing along the Old town edge.
At a curve in the river we could see the pagoda nearing; at the edge was a stone wall, angled and reaching under the water, set upon the point of the river-curve, and just on this side of the curve steps were cut up into the stairs. There was nowhere really for the boat to moor; the lady hopped up and tied our boat to the one next door, but what it was tied to we did not check. They laid a plank over onto the steps, and we walked the plank and up the steps, and across the road there were more steps, this time leading up to a four-pillar gate and to the Thien Mu pagoda. The pagoda has seven levels, hence it’s English name.
But there is far more to the place than just the pagoda, which is ornate and austere at once. There is the monastery (hence the pagoda), but what I did not know is that this very monastery is the same one at which Thich Quang Duc was the Senior Monk. Or whatever they call the head or chief in Buddhism. People who remember that picture of a Buddhist monk setting himself on fire in Saigon, in 1963, have seen a picture of Thich Quang Duc. Out the side of the monastery, they have on display the restored car which was in the background of the photo, in which Thich drove himself down to Saigon. Somehow, his heart survived the fire, and the proper cremation which came after it, and it’s now stored in a glass case. And he is revered by Buddhists throughout Viet Nam.
Another thing I didn’t know was that he was indeed protesting the war in Viet Nam, but he was also protesting against the treatment of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government; the very same government that the US decided to prop up and put forward as victims of invasion by the North.
As the afternoon cooled, we walked back down the steps, rode the boat back to town, and taxied ourselves back to the hotel, where we were glad to find and exploit our remaining bottles of water. In the evening we met for dinner, and took another taxi across the river to a restaurant near the point of the first bridge, which was obviously popular with Intrepid groups, judging by the number of people who had written their names on the walls in a variety of sizes and colours, adding ‘Intrepid’ plus the year, or the trip name. Or something vulgar that they should have left in their backpack, or at home.
Almost every space in the wall was taken by people’s names and their drawings, including some space on the ceiling above where the fan was turning. Also adorning the walls were large frames full of small snapshots, evidently of people who had visited the restaurant and sent their photos back as a token.
Beer was ordered and bought to the table, and the opened with an unusual kind of tool; little more than a piece of balsa wood with a bolt on one end, but hitched up the right way and struck with finesse, it never fails.
Incidentally, they sell food as well, and good food. People who have been to a Vietnamese restaurant where they do those roll your own rice-paper rolls will know what we mean. People who haven’t should find their local Vietnamese restaurant.
On the way back over the new metal bridge, which was lit up in a variety of colours cycling through red, white, green, blue, purple and possibly some others I can’t remember, the cult of ‘Georgie’ began. I had already become a source of ridicule, or perhaps mere risibility, within the group for regularly disappearing completely when there were photos to be taken, and catching up or turning up somewhere between 1 and 15 minutes later. And with a metal bridge all lit up in front of you and traffic flying past, who can resist trying one of those tidy time-exposure pictures with the long lines of light streaking through?
Catherine had already suggested more than once that Alice acquire a leash for the purpose of restraint, so when I hurried along to the end of the bridge and the waiting group a few minutes later, they had decided it was not me who had disappeared, but George.
‘Georgie want a picture. Georgie run off.’
And so forth.
On the way back through town, a cyclo rider offered to sell us a ride, and when we said ‘No’, he offered to sell us a joint. Of course.
With all of that in mind, we went to bed, dreaming of the motorbike ride in the morning.
Greg
