Hue

I traveled to Hue by bus from Vinh on Highway 1, the main north-south artery. With the driver passing on hills and curves, weaving through motorbikes and people herding cows and water buffalo, the ride might appear to be dangerous, but drivers approaching from the opposite direction give way and the cows are predictable. The cities and towns between Vinh and Hue don’t have the charm of the ones north of Vinh. They are more of the concrete slab style.

The highway crosses over the former DMZ at the Ben Hai River north of Dong Ha. There is a railroad bridge to the east of the highway and a monument. After crossing into what was formerly called South Vietnam, there are a few military cemeteries to the west of the highway, rows of white crosses in sandy, scrubby soil.

Before leaving Vinh, I told the man who had sold me the bus ticket that I needed a hotel room in Hue, and the bus driver let me out right at the door of one. I believe the hotel was on Le Thanh Ton. It wasn’t much of a room, but it was cheap, just 120,000 with AC, and conveniently located if you want to be near the Old City. It was north of the Song River.

Hue is a tourist town. Expect to be offered a motorbike ride wherever you go. I went to a very popular restaurant with Vietnamese people, called Ngo Co Nham, which is in the Old City and has cheap, tasty food. It is an open air affair, made of bamboo, and has two floors. A trishaw driver who gives tours took me to this place, and then peddled me around the Old City. I usually resist being peddled around, but I was tired of walking. His English was good enough for us to have a conversation. The cost for one hour was about 30,000, I think. If war landmarks are what you are interested in, ask to be taken to an American bunker built in 1968 soon after the Tet Offensive. There is another one on the southwest corner of the city. While in the Old City, I recalled Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket,” but it was filmed at an abandoned gas works outside London. I am also old enough to remember the Tet Offensive, watching it play out on American television screens.

There are a few historic landmarks, like some shrines and the Forbidden City, that weren’t destroyed during the battle of Hue, but most of the buildings are new. Karaoke bars, cafes, and computer arcades seem to dominate. There are no hotels. Near the Forbidden City, some American military equipment captured from the “Puppet Government” is on display. The signs are amusing, and if it weren’t for the personalization of death in the small war museum, where American GI’s and ARVN’s ID cards are on display, this place might be amusing, too, how the Communist government portrays the war as one of liberation from the American occupiers.

My trishaw driver’s father was killed in the war in 1972. He referred to the day in 1975 when the South Vietnamese government fell as his country’s liberation day. The Vietnamese who talked about the war talked about it as if all the Vietnamese were fighting only the Americans, not mentioning that the Vietnamese were also fighting each other. The manager of the hotel I stayed in had fled the country by boat in 1980, ending up in California, where he had had a daughter before returning to Hue. The enmity that the victorious Vietnamese had for their brothers and sisters in the south, and the fear these southerners had of being punished by their new occupiers, is conveniently overlooked.

The train station is on the south side of the river, to the west. It is within walking distance of the Old City. It’s a good idea to buy a ticket to your destination at least the day before you depart. There will probably be lines at the ticket counter, people asking about who knows what, but if you’re lucky a security guard will take you aside and show you into an adjoining office, where an agent will sell you a ticket. Most of the trains depart from either Hanoi or Saigon, stopping briefly in Hue. Don’t expect them to be on time. Mine, which went to Danang, departing from Hanoi, was at least an hour late.