Day 5 -- Hoi An to Hue
We’d been taken with the many stone carving workshops we’d seen on the way from Danang airport to Hoi An, so we made a stop at one on our way to Hue. In addition to the many (many) completed statues and carvings on display (everything from ottoman-sized elephants to buddhas 15 feet tall), we saw several works in progress: little clusters of patient workers chiseled, sanded, washed and polished by hand, turning slabs of white, pink, yellow, green and black stone into elaborate scenes and figures. And there was a shop! No one was quite up to purchasing a full-sized lucky buddha (as the exceedingly helpful salesladies suggested), but most of us left with marble beads or small carved animals.
Our drive took us right through downtown Danang -- we got a nice view of the dragon bridge on the way to our next stop at Han Market, a massive indoor market that sells everything. No modifiers -- it’s a market that sells everything. Here’s a partial list of things we saw on offer:
Paper cell phones, musical instruments, cars, clothing and money to burn as offerings to your ancestors
Wading pools, beach umbrellas and bathing suits
Electronics
Live sea creatures (one section for the ones you eat, another for the ones you keep as pets)
Absolute mountains of produce
Scooter tires wrapped in colorful foil like Ferrero Rocher chocolates
About 75 different crayon-colored pickled things in open plastic buckets
Makeup, nail polish and hair accessories
Many extremely appetizing snacks being cooked on the spot
More pickled things
Christmas lights
Very lame liquor (I actually should have modified “everything” to say “everything except bourbon”)
Extremely scary meat
One million pounds of garlic
Artificial forsythia, artificial hydrangeas, artificial azaleas, artificial cherry blossoms, artificial orchids, artificial poppies, and some fresh flowers, too
And a few more pickles on the way out
Back in the van and on up into the hills to an amazing overlook taking in Danang Bay on one side and basically the entire South China Sea on the other. (I was astonished that people were doing this trip on scooters, but the only alternative is to drive through a massive tunnel that doesn’t allow them.) Then down the mountain and a quick stop at the pig wash (you heard me -- it’s a place where the pig trucks stop to hose down the pigs) before making our way to an absolutely perfect waterside restaurant for lunch.
Tuan had a little more trouble than he probably should have talking Dave out of eating fresh water oysters and we soldiered on with nothing but unbelievably delicious clams steamed in ginger and lemongrass, a delectable scallop dish with green onions, more stir fried morning glory, steamed rice and a plate of whole, small squid that were a little intimidating, but briny and good once you nerved yourself up to bite into one. Beer helped.
Back on the road for a very interesting drive along the main road between Danang and Hue -- many tall, skinny, colorful houses with gorgeous carvings and woodwork, numerous temples (easily spotted because of the elaborate dragons on the roofs), little shops and restaurants and the occasional field of vegetables or rice paddy.
We arrived at our destination -- Khiem Tomb -- as the afternoon light became almost painfully gorgeous, suffusing the park-like setting in gold. The tomb was the first of several spectacular monuments we visited erected by Nguyen emperors -- the last dynastic ruling family of Vietnam -- in honor of themselves. The emperors (with a couple of notable exceptions) were viewed as having rolled over for the French and their monuments were funded by massive taxes and built by lots of “volunteer” labor. As a result, they are not particularly beloved by the Vietnamese. Still, the picture-perfect lilypond, symmetrical pavilions and ornately decorated obelisks of the tomb are beautiful and the emperor it memorializes was the last of the Nguyens to rule independently (he died in 1883). (Tuan’s account of this emperor included the sentence “but the people liked him because he fought the French.” His accent made that sound like “but the people liked him because he fucked the French.” And because “fought the French” was a phrase uttered fairly regularly as we visited historical sites in Hue, that immaturity thing I mentioned earlier came into play a lot.)
Our home for the next couple of nights was La Residence Hotel in Hue -- an Art Deco stunner originally built as the French governor’s mansion in 1930. It was slightly too chilly for a swim, but spa treatments and naps were indulged in by some members of the crew. Dave and I had a small adventure walking to a laundry a kilometer or so from the hotel. We were on the “new” side of the river so things were fairly modern and slick -- one overlit psuedo-temple turned out to be a universally disliked WWI monument. The most charming thing we passed was a brightly lit kiddie park with a tiny train. Within a block were two more brightly lit kiddie parks with tiny trains. Apparently it’s a thing to put all of the (insert kind of business here) in one place -- more on that when we get to Hanoi.
And speaking of foreshadowing Hanoi, Dave and I thought we were being very death-defying and competent as we dodged traffic at intersections in Hue. Only a few crossings include walk signals, and about the dumbest thing a human being could possibly do would be to reflexively obey a walk signal in Vietnam. As Tuan told us, in Vietnam a green light means you can go. A yellow light means you can go. And a red light means you can go. On the other hand, you can’t simply wait for a break in traffic -- there will not be one. So you have to wait for a slightly bigger gap than usual, step out with a hand up and just keep walking -- do NOT stop -- on the assumption that the never-ending flow of scooters will part around you. And it basically does. Usually.
Mary, Dave and I had just enough gas left in the tank to go out for a quick dinner at a hole in the wall Tuan had pointed out on our way to the hotel. As with so many of the local places, people went to this spot for just two things: little kebabs of ground pork grilled on sugarcane skewers and crispy Vietnamese pancakes, which are more like very thin omelets folded over bean sprouts with slivered ginger and cilantro. You eat both with a thin peanut sauce, plenty of fresh lettuce, mint and basil leaves plus little squares of rice paper to wrap it all up in. Add a couple of nice cold cans of beer and really, what could be better?
A NOTE ON EATING AND DRINKING. The advice everyone gets before traveling to this part of the world is to avoid the water. It’s easy enough to stick to bottled water for drinking and tooth brushing. And of course, drinking lots of beer is a good way to avoid exotic bugs. You also hear that you should avoid ice, but most places served manufactured ice made with filtered water (easy to spot because of the hole through the center). Besides, most of the ice we encountered was in highly alcoholic fruit beverages with built in antibacterial properties. The hardest thing was to avoid fresh greens -- they’re ubiquitous, spectacularly appetizing and more or less essential to enjoying Vietnamese food. Also ubiquitous is the rice paper we’d all seen drying on the side of the road outside Danang, which just can’t be hygienic. After a day or two of being paranoid, we just ate the food -- all of it. And while each of us had one or two moments of feeling a bit squishy, gastric issues were really not a factor.
