Hue (pronounced Way) lies in the central province of Vietnam, Thừa Thiên-Huế and has a population sitting just under half a million. This ancient capital is known for the palaces and dwellings of the Emperors of the past; the calm nature of the people who now call this place home, a pace that matches, the beautiful Perfume River and of course the rich and delicious cuisine. But Hue has a dark past, you can sense it in the undercurrents of the city.
My train journey to Hue was calm and collected. Taking second class did me well with good seats, a quiet crowd, and air conditioning. The scenery was stunning, with rice fields and farmers, villages, and limestone mountains passing by. Only 25 cad to travel 418km; about a quarter of the country. I’m still pretty rattled from the sickness, it’s kind of like a security breach. I felt as if I went a little mad, tormented with the karaoke, laughter and night sweats. I’m moving forward with trepidation, being careful what I eat; being aware of my limitations. That being said, I’m sure I’ll get back to myself soon enough. Before boarding the train I said a little prayer of gratitude for making it to this turning point. I felt like I was in quicksand, while in reality some people will never leave here. I’ll never forget the intensity of the villagers looking into my eyes and the unspoken communication. Who am I in this world to be born into such mobility and privilege? There are more questions than answers in this world.
So let’s get out of my head and back into the present. Here we are arriving in Hue at 4am. I didn’t sleep, I just watched and meditated on my moment. Definitely an interesting time of day to arrive at the station… with a decent mob of people sprawling out into the parking lot, another mob of taxi drivers ready to disperse us into the early morning. My mise en place is jarred, because I was in a rush to move forward. But here I am. Let’s go. I booked a hotel during the train journey, and the reception sent me a message saying a taxi should be no more than 50k vnd (2.50 cad) so I was able to bargain the 100k offer from a driver down, and off we fly into the ancient city. Turns out the hotel didn’t exist at the address I send my driver to. He searched with me for a good ten minutes, until I had the breakthrough to check my email and saw a new message from the hotel relaying the new address. Off we go to the proper location and I end up paying the 100k in the end, because my driver had the decency to ensure I got checked in, and did not leave me in the street at this hour. Choppy waters, but here I am content in a private room of a 2-star hotel (only 13 cad/night). Still wired, I turn on the tv to some football and do some breathing exercises. I finally crash out at 5 and I’m dead to the world for a little while.
The sun wakes me at 9 and I’m happy that my body is gaining some strength back. I run downstairs to grab a coffee and crackers at the corner store. I can’t even fathom the thought of eating rice again at this point (read: texture). I happily lock myself up in the hotel and get some writing done, getting some of these swirling thoughts and weaknesses out from under me.
I finally bust out of there into the late afternoon sunshine, and feel like a new person, in uncharted territory, ready to begin again. I step into the coffee shop next door that has tables overlooking the river, and it hits me how lucky I am. It’s really nice here in Hue. I’m in the open air of a city with a lot of history. I watch the sun set, freeing the day, making room for the night. There is a group of teenage boys beside me drinking bubble teas and playing cards. They have cool sneakers and t-shirts on. I dig it here. This new wave of Vietnamese culture is coming alive. The past is free, not dwelled upon, and there is room for new growth in this generation.
The Perfume (Hương) River runs through the centre of Hue. It is about 80km in length, flowing through orchards and forests before it reaches the city. The name derives from the flower pedals that fall into the gentle river and the aroma that fills the air. It really is a beautiful place to walk and adds to the romance that makes Vietnam what it is. I take a walk along the river and enjoy the scene. The perimeter of the old city walls, the forbidden Imperial city, lie just across the river, adding a note of mystery that is never too far away in this country. A walking path and a French influenced boulevard run parallel, with towering ancient trees, little food stalls and a handful of vendors, and a few row boats on the water. The people here are dialed in: different from the hectic vibe of HCMC and also from that of the sleepy countryside of Dong Hoa. It has a nice pace and a lot of locals just doing their thing. There are quite a few tourists as well, most people coming through here in search of historical experiences.
On my walk, I meet a girl named Shriya who is from Uttarakhand, India, up in the Himalayas. Life is funny like that, because this was the original place I wanted to travel to, I just couldn’t get the visa at the time. I will get to those Himalayas one way or another: the draw to that mountain range and culture is something that comes from deep within myself. The gravity seems to have drawn her to me. We chat a while, and her best friend is from Vancouver so we click right away. We go for a stroll and talk about life. I tell her of my love for Vandana Shiva (from the same region of India), who is an environmental activist and has a sustainable and biodiverse farm and education centre called Navdanya in Uttarakhand. I’d love to visit this place and so would my new friend. It was nice to meet someone on the same wavelength, who appreciates what Shiva is doing to fight monoculture and Monsanto. I think we were equally refreshed by each other’s knowledge. Shriya is moving south through Vietnam, while I’m moving north, so it’s a meaningful place to cross paths, here in the middle. We go for a meal, and I indulge in the famous dish of the region, Bun Bo Hue. A rich and delicious noodle soup, and it pairs well with the local Chang beer. ;) we make plans to meet in India when I make my way there, and I have a new pal in a faraway land.
The Next Day:
The slower pace of the city and the wide boulevards motivate me to rent a bicycle for a few days and I couldn’t be happier about it. I heard rumors about an abandoned water park that is pretty epic here in the outskirts of the city. A girl at my hotel tipped me in the right direction, and I decided to go check it out. What a beautiful ride it was, with the sun shining down on me. I’m feeling more myself again, getting past the sickness. I feel like a 10 year old on this bike, exploring new territory. Health coming back like a spring day. I leave the centre of Hue, which always ends up being interesting and I find the park about an hour and half later. With Communism, often resources and commodities are hard to come by. Projects get half completed or simply cannot be maintained. And the lockdown pushed that to an extreme. There are a lot of abandoned places throughout Vietnam, and most of them are pretty eerie. Here, we have a giant dragon that sits on a lake, like it’s guarding a deep secret. There are 3 walking bridges you can take to get to the layers within. Inside, there are winding staircases that lead to lookouts and slides. I choose a staircase and end up in the mouth, between all the fangs, looking out onto the lake. Graffiti everywhere, people tagging their identity, narrating a moment in history. The whole experience was pretty punk and held the weight of life beyond the wars that took place here for hundreds of years. People will make their mark on their environment, one way or another.
Next stop: Food!!!!
I stopped at a nice local restaurant on my way bike ride back, with a wonderful owner/chef. She wanted to practice English so we chatted for quite a while about what makes Hue unique. I was after bahn xeo, the crispy crepe, and she taught me the dish is actually called bahn khoai in this part of the country, unique to Hue. It differs from the southern version, it is thicker and smaller, and they add carrots to the filling. The dip is peanut sauce rather than nuoc cham (chili oil). Khoai translates to joy or happiness. I was certainly feeling that. And furthermore, I had some mango juice straight from her garden where she also picked some banana and papaya to share with me.
Lots of energy to ride back, where I explored the ins and outs of the little side streets where the locals live around Hue and took in the evening tone. People just going quietly about their business, along the river. A peaceful place. I had an early night in preparation for my next day when I would be visiting the Imperial City and enjoying the rich history of this ancient place.
Day 3:
Being my second time in Hue, my time here allows me to capture and appreciate more layers. During my first trip, a new love for architecture sprang from visiting the Imperial City, the Citadel and the Royal Palace, contained within a fortress, surrounded by beautiful gardens. The fortress is a perfect example of feudal urban planning in East Asia. It was called the forbidden city because commoners and women (except the wives, mistresses and mothers ) were not allowed to enter. This is a unique historical place, protected under UNESCO World Heritage.
It was rainy and gloomy and set the mood for wandering through these ancient dwellings, through towering gates, crumbling at the corners.
Historical Context:
During the Nguyen Dynasty (the last royal dynasty), in 1802, Hue was established as The Imperial capital of Vietnam. It was the political, religious and cultural centre of the united nation up until 1945. The grandeur architecture was planned by founder of the dynasty, Emperor Gia Long and built in 1803. This Hue citadel complex was the place where the 9 Nguyen Lords and 13 Nguyen Dynasty Emperors chose to live and govern the country. It took 31 years to complete from 1802 to 1833. The city is surrounded by canals, which served as protection, and for the transportation of goods. There are ten massive ornate gates that tower over you as you enter the fortress, stunning and moving to say the least. The site has been restored and preserved since the destruction of the Vietnam War, becoming a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1993.
You can really see how the architecture, and what it represents coming from the influence of the Chinese Dynasties that ruled here for a thousand years. The site was chosen for a combination of natural features – hills representing a protective screen in front of the monuments or taking the role of “a blue dragon” to the left and “a white tiger” to the right – which shield the main entrance and prevent the entry of malevolent spirits. Buddhist, Doaist and Confusus beliefs and superstitions pepper the fortress. Within this landscape, the main features of the city are laid out.
The structures of the Complex of Hue Monuments are carefully placed within the natural setting of the site and aligned cosmologically with the Five Cardinal Points (centre, west, east, north, south), the Five Elements (earth, metal, wood, water, fire), and the Five Colours (yellow, white, blue, black, red). Tran Binh Dai, an additional defensive work in the north-east corner of the Capital City, was designed to control movement on the river. Another fortress, Tran Hai Thanh, was constructed a little later to protect the capital against assault from the sea. There are tombs holding the ruling emperors and monuments in their honour throughout the site. It is very apparent that the afterlife is held in high esteem. Duyet Thi Duong theater is the place for royal banquets and nowadays, for special festivals, this theater is the venue to display Hue Royal Court music, which is a Unesco world Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible heritage.
The Complex of Hue Monuments is wholly owned by the Government of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam. Guided by the 1972 Convention on the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, the National Heritage Law, the Hue Monuments Conservation Centre, is the institution responsible for the management of the complex and the protection. Staffed by more than 700 people from many different professional backgrounds, this institution deals with all issues including zoning, research, tangible and intangible heritage preservation, traditional material reproduction, visitor management, as well as the planning and protection of the landscape setting and associated features in the buffer zone and immediately surrounding area. There is immense socioeconomic value and it's great to see something positive come out of this history.
I paid 10 cad to enter the grounds, and you could hire a guide for 10 more. I chose to go at my own pace. I spent the entirety of the afternoon looking around. There is information to be read about each empire and emperors, and what their prominent governing features and characteristics were. The gardens were unbelievably beautiful and I was happy to just sit and reflect on what life used to be like here.
Layers upon layers, looking back into a history with many ghosts. These ghosts are less and less visible to the living. Hue holds a dark past. After the violence of the occupation by the Chinese, then the French, came the Vietnam/American War, and many many people lost their lives here in this particular place of the country. It's surely a haunted place.
The Battle of Hue
During the TET Offensive of 1968, the Battle of Hue took place and many lives were lost. Communist forces including The North Vietnamese Army, The National Liberation Front (Viet Cong forces) and communist sympathizers launched an attack that left 3500 southern Vietnamese people missing, both soldiers of the Army of the Republic and civilians, and of course American soldiers (but far less). 80 percent of the city was destroyed. The TET Offensive was the final movement of the war. The United States withdrew forces and left behind many south Vietnamese people that were promised salvation.
Many of these people turned up in mass graves, about 2300 to be exact. Most of these were civilians, women and children. Some were shot, others buried alive. That leaves over a thousand missing, whether in war and reeducation communist camps, or just on the run, probably deep in the jungles. A year later, in the sand plains south of the city, a farmer came across evidence of another grave site. Over 800 more bodies were unearthed. Just imagine living here with a missing relative, wanting to find something, but very much not wanting to. Living in uncertainty and dread. Having to go on without your family.
You can sense the heaviness here. This massacre signals that no matter your beliefs or your practices, there were horrendous things done to the people here. The ones doing the killings maybe weren’t even doing it by choice.
Hue is not a huge place, so it’s hard to walk anywhere that isn’t in close proximity to these graves.
The Communist forces committed atrocities, and so did the Nationalists during this war. The people against each other. The ammunition supplies came from the Cold War forces. In the name of independence and freedom?
A historian is quoted in the New York Times:
The Saigon government, which claims that the Communists have killed 25,000 civilians since 1957 and abducted another 46,000, has made negligible propaganda use of the massacre. In Hue it has not had to. Says Colonel Le Van Than, the local province chief: "After Tet, the people realized that the Viet Cong would kill them, regardless of political belief."
Even this article can be considered propaganda. It’s all a subjective matter, as history so often is. But the point is that death is not, and there was just too much of it here.
I’ve just finished reading a book called “The Sympathizer” by Viet Thanh Nguyen. It is a fiction work from the perspective of a half-French, half-Vietnamese communist sleeper agent in America, just after the Vietnam War. He is considered a bastard himself, as his father was a French priest who came to Vietnam to convert the people to catholocism. The protagonist is a child of one of the other war crimes that so often took place here. The work offers an intimate look into the blurry lines of who the enemy was. Both sides were capable of atrocities and both were fighting for their lives and what they believed was right. It was what they were willing to do to achieve these means where the horror lies.
Here is a passage that stuck with me:
“Our country itself was cursed, bastardized, partitioned into north and south, and if it could be said of us that we chose division and death in our uncivil war, that was also only partially true. We had not chosen to be debased by the French, to be divided by them into an unholy trinity of north, center and south, to be turned over to the great powers of capitalism and communism for a further bisection, then given roles as the clashing armies of a Cold War chess match played in air-conditioned rooms by white men wearing suits and lies.
He questions if people give value to human life. And he confronts what revolutionaries do with a failed revolution.
It’s really a trip how peaceful Hue is now. You’ll have to come and see for yourself if you don’t believe me. I think they are just happy to be alive and are living the best way they can.
I’m continuing my journey north up to Ninh Binh and onto Hanoi. So more stories are coming your way. Stay tuned and hug your loved ones. Not everyone is so lucky to be able to do that.
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