Oooh Baby I Love Your Huê

krolesh
Aug 1, 2023
15 min read

Updated: Aug 14, 2023

Song Cau

And so here I am, in yet another completely non-touristed rough and ready hick town, on the central coast of Vietnam.

After finding a guest house, I rode around in the early afternoon, in the heat of the day, looking for something to eat, but there was pretty much nothing, everything was closed.

Every smart person was napping.

I settled on some bananas and rambutans, but the really old lady at the tiny fruit stall sold me too-old rambutans without me knowing, I had to ditch most of them. It’s hard to tell with that particular fruit just by looking at the outside, and it’s the first time that’s happened to me.

It was another beautiful, and, in part, rather hair-raising ride today.

The beachfront coming out of Tuy Hoa was as dead as a doornail as I rode through. There was just me, the shimmering heat, and the unexpected sound of music, coming from a whole series of permanent public speakers in the beachside park.

They were playing symphonic versions of Vietnamese classical songs.

But then suddenly a traditional orchestral version of “The Sounds of Silence” came on, which was quite fitting, given that I was the only person there, zooming along on my pretty-much-silent bike, pondering life and all its puzzles.

Nghinh Phong square, this sculpture was inspired by the shapes of a local coastal reef. It’s actually pretty impressive to see, and is beautifully lit up at night.

I stopped for a drink in the shade of these gums. Ripper mate.

As the road I had taken heading north was a dead end, for all but pedestrians and two-wheeled vehicles, the road was pretty much empty, and it was such a beautifully quiet ride.

Given the high population of this country (103m - last blog I think I said 97m, it's gone up 6 mill in a couple of weeks, these guys must be super horny!!), and the fact that most of them are squeezed into the flat bits on the coast and in the two main deltas (Mekong and Red River), it was quite a treat to be totally on my own for awhile.

I take that sort of feeling for granted in Australia, but not here. It’s really precious, even for awhile.

Aquaculture is massive in this country.

This spot really reminded me of Bali (besides the shape of the pagoda). It was so peaceful.

Drying seagrass

And then the hair-raising bit. As I’d left the main road and headed north right along the coast up many small narrow roads, the only way to get across the inlet at the end was to ride across the most rickety bumpy holey wonky dodgy bamboo and wooden bridge of all time.

And it was bloody long too.

It maybe looks easier than it was. Many of the planks weren’t nailed in properly anymore, they bounced around as you rode over, they were all different thicknesses, so my front wheel kept getting thrown around in all directions, which makes it all pretty wobbly on a loaded bike.

I really had to concentrate to stay on the straight and narrow.

There were loads of holes, where motorbike wheels had chipped off parts of planks, leaving sharp edges and more bumps, and nails were sticking out at some edges.

Also, there was motorbike traffic coming through sometimes, I’d have to veer and breathe in deep to make room for them, and also make sure I didn’t look across the bridge and out to the side, otherwise I might’ve knocked them off the bridge with my nose.

Sounds heroic doesn’t it.

But yeah of course I made it to the other end, and got slugged a whole 3,000 Dong for my crossing, a total of about 12c. A travesty.

Looking back on the endlessly pulsating action.

And more beautiful coastline

Quan Yin gracing the forest

Notice the builder up the top near the bucket, perched on his haunches right on the edge of a huge drop. Backwards. He was concreting a doorway. I tried to watch for awhile, my heart was in my mouth. Notice the makeshift crane too, controlled by the dude on the left. The bucket sometimes swung around at the top, hitting the guy up there right in the back.

WH&S, Asian style.

Btw, the tiny woman on the right was a labourer, she was shovelling masses of sand and cement, and mixing concrete and loading the bucket with bricks and concrete and wood etc. for the whole time I was watching. That was about an hour, as I sat having a drink.

She was unstoppable.

The Tam Giang River, from my guest house rooftop.

Quy Nonh

It feels so good to be here.

I’ve had four days of riding in the hot sun, and now it’s time for a rest.

As usual, as soon as I hit the coast today, the views were stunning.

Extensive aquaculture in this bay too

Large cages for fish and shellfish

Dried rice stalks

Dunes split by the road

There were quite a few rubbish dumping spots on the side of the road today. It’s pretty disgusting, especially considering they have perfectly efficient rubbish collection systems in the towns. I’m really not sure what’s going on here, but it’s a smelly bloody mess.

There were views of picturesque beaches, granite islands, and stunning coastlines all day.

As usual.

The wild beauty was sometimes spoilt by tourist developments like this.

And they’ve only just started - I eventually rode past the building site

Quy Nonh’s a tourist beach town, and the tourist infrastructure appears to be on the cusp of major development. I can imagine coming here in 10 years from now, the whole coastal strip around the town will probably be highrise.

Tourism is massive in Vietnam, and even though a whopping 8m foreign tourists are expected to holiday here in 2023, that doesn’t even make up 10% of the annual total tourist numbers here.

Yeah, domestic tourists are by far the major driver of the industry here. Locals are really getting around this country these days, with a massive 110m of them expected to travel domestically this calendar year alone.

That’s more than the whole population, and it requires a helluva lot of tourist infrastructure, such as hotels, guest houses, restaurants, transport and tour businesses, theme parks, and all the other shops and businesses that tourists love to visit when they’re on holidays.

Such massive numbers mean construction and development projects are going gangbusters in some places.

I happily stumbled upon another vegan place.

You Wouldn’t Read About It

Very strangely, the restaurant had a copy of Trump’s “The Art of the Deal” book on a display shelf. The book was number 1 on the New York Times Bestsellers List for 13 weeks in a row in the late 1980s.

Fact check: Trump is actually a complete business failure. Between 1985 and 1994, he made major losses every single year, totalling more than a billion dollars.

His losses were worse than any other individual in the US IRS’s records (Tax Department), in some years twice as bad as the next person.

Then in 1995, he had losses of nearly USD1bn for the one year. The only way he stayed afloat was to sell assets and get massive new loans from a small number of big lenders, who decided they’d lose less money by keeping certain of Trump’s businesses afloat and writing off some of the debt.

At least 7 of Trump’s major property projects, including the USD1.2bn Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City, have gone bankrupt.

Journalists haven't got hold of his recent tax returns, so it's hard to know what his personal financial situation is right now.

Trump businesses are renowned for dodgy practices, including underpaying their subcontractors, or not paying them at all, and then engaging in expensive lawsuits that the subcontractors often can't afford to fight.

So, by the time the book “The Art of the Deal” came out, it has now been shown that Trump was already in financial distress, and he knew it.

So, really, his book should’ve more aptly been named, “The Art of The Steal.”

Quy Nonh was pumping on a Sunday night. Every man and his mad monkey were out and about, families were swimming, or strolling in the beachfront park, restaurants were full, the neon was flashing left right and centre. I didn't get any pics of the crowds.

My rest day morning hangout spot.

The rest of the rest day I rested.

Mainly in a café.

Yeah, I know.

It’s not fair is it.

Black soya bean milk, very delicious, even though it looks like water out of a Vietnamese city canal.

Huê

What a cultured, amazingly manicured, architictecturally beautiful and interesting city this is.

And it’s no wonder.

Huê is pronounced ‘hweh’, hence this blog title, named after that great Peter Frampton song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVN-2qoquyE

(It's really worth watching the whole clip, peace and love dude).

Huê the city was the longtime imperial capital of Vietnam, centre for wealth, arts, architecture, and aesthetics, and the hub of all the finer things that the nobility and their French colonial cohorts (well, masters) loved.

The city is characterised by shady wide boulevardes flanked by ancient (and not so ancient) trees and gardens, the beautiful Sông Húóng (Perfume River), on whose banks hundreds stroll in the evening, there’s a multitude of beautiful colonial and pre-colonial buildings to feast the eyes upon, a pumping party district, and all manner of amazing eating places.

And the pièce de résistance here, of course, is the citadel and Imperial City, ex-home of the (now de-funked) royal family, as well as thousands of their mandarins, courtiers and chattels.

I’m now definitely in central Vietnam, a short distance south of the 17th parallel, the line at which Vietnam was split into North and South way back in 1954.

I took the train up from Quy Nonh yesterday, after leaving my bike and some luggage there, so I could come up here for the visa run.

The trip was cruisey, my booked window seat was occupied by a sleeping teen when I boarded the train, and I didn’t have the heart to wake him up. No matter. Amazingly, I slept solidly in my aisle seat for 6 of the 8 hours of the trip.

I must’ve been super tired after all that riding. Plus, the gentle rocking of the train is just like being cradled in my mother's arms. If she had any free, that is, with eight siblings to share those only two arms with.

It’s so great to be here, and a little nostalgic.

In the 90s, when I came to Vietnam for the first time, alone on a cheap Chinese mountain bike from Laos, Huê was the first main town I hit, and I stayed for a bit, so I could get my head around the new country, language, food and currency.

I befriended the receptionist at my little guest house then, and we did a language exchange, she taught me some basic Vietnamese, and I helped her with her English pronunciation. I stayed in the country for some time on that trip, slowly cycling north, and eventually carried on overland into China and Tibet.

But somehow I’ve never been back to Vietnam until now. And I hardly remembered a word of Vietnamese when I got here, as I’ve never had the need or chance to use the language since then.

And I must say my Vietnamese this time is nowhere near as good as my Thai, for example - I mean, I learn a little more every day, on the road, and have mastered the basics, but it’s really quite a bit tougher to be properly understood than it is in Cambodian or Thai, or def in Indonesian, so I tend to rely on translation apps more than I had to in those places.

That’s less fun.

Like Thai, Vietnamese is a tonal language, but it appears that the tones are quite a bit more important here than they are in Thailand, and, as so many of the words are short and sound exactly the same, the only thing differentiating them is the tone, and that can be super tricky to remember.

Also, whoever put Latin script and weird symbols to the pronunciation of Vietnamese words was a complete tripper, as so many words are not pronounced as the pronunciation rules state that they should be. There lots of exceptions to the rules, and loads of localised variations.

For the whole long cycle from Nha Trang to Quy Nonh I didn’t see any Westerners at all, and didn’t meet any Vietnamese who could speak more than a couple of words of English.

Late arvo Perfume riverbank action

I arrived on the train, and walked to my guest house, which is in a really quiet quirky untouristed district within walking distance of pretty much everything interesting, including the river.

My pharmacy-heavy district, near the hospital.

I was starving when I arrived, and used Google Translate to check out the menus of some local veg places. It failed miserably.

These are actually pages of a menu:

Pretty funny.

I found a great place down by the river, and accidentally ordered way too much, because their rice dish (which I thought was just steamed rice) was packed full of other delicious stuff, and came with a cold veg soup.

I was starving, I got through it all without breathing.

The river is pretty at night, and has a really nice vibe, it’s a little cooler there, with families galore

Lotus flower restaurant

The Western district, nightlife quarter

Nice cool breeze on the river

I went to the movies one night, for the first time since Oz. The movie was crap, the latest Mission Impossible offering, but it was fun to be in a Vietnamese cinema.

The sound was in English, at least that (with Viet subtitles), but, unsurprisingly, the script sounded like it’d been created by ChatGPT, jam packed with every single nauseating cliché in the Complete Hollywood Adventure Movie Screenplay You’ve-Heard-Them-All-Before-And-We’ll-Say-Them-All-Again-And-Again-And-Again Phrasebook.

Thank God there were some great action moments in the flick, to justify the huge amount of money that I spent on my ticket ($2.20).

Cinema gaming room. Looks pretty universal to me.

That’s what I call a fruit tea! It’s basically a blackcurrant juice filled with goodies.

Munchkins learning punchkins

The French influence. A typical café, with all the chairs facing outwards, just like in people-watching Paris

The main dragon

Huê's hues

Hoàng Thàn (The Imperial City)

The Huê Imperial City is one of the most beautiful historic sites in the whole of Vietnam, and is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

It was built in the early 1800s under Emperor Gia Long, as the new capital of the unified kingdom of Vietnam, after his forces finally ended centuries of division and conflict between the northern, central and southern kingdoms. To rule more effectively, Gia Long moved the capital from Hanoi to Huê.

The city is huge, and contains palaces for the imperial family, villas for the mandarins (who were basically high-ranking administrative officials), amazing temples, and huge gardens and open spaces.

The design was based on the the Forbidden City in Beijing, with some differences. The moats and walls surrounding the city are a huge 10km long, and then further sets of high walls fortify the inner city.

The inner area, called the Purple Forbidden City, was only accessible to the imperial family and their servants.

Outer walls

The Meridian Gate

Inside the gate building

Mandarins waiting for an audience with the Emperor

There’s a multitude of incredible gates within the maze of roadways and walkways of the city.

Temple dedicated to the imperial Nguyen dynasty.

Stunning decorated gardens

Unrenovated building. There’s a lot of those around too. The city suffered extensive damage during the French and American Wars, and much has been rebuilt since then. But not everything.

I wanted to step into this sacred portal, but it disappeared as soon as I got close

Imperial phone box

The Empress taking an Uber

Mandarins of the court. They knew nothing of helicopter parenting in those days, these guys were really bad at it.

The Emperor shooting off

Hosting some French grandwig

There’s so much to explore in the extensive grounds of the city. But as the temperature was about 300 degrees and clear on the day I visited, I only stayed for a few hours, and tried to keep to the more shady bits. It was intense, even for generally impervious-to-heat me.

Another Day, Another Visa

And so off I went to the Laos border, with a return van ticket, so I could leave Vietnam and re-enter on a new 30 day visa.

The process was pretty easy, albeit seriously illogical and a complete waste of my super precious time.

Hey, I know I’ve got shitloads of time, but that doesn’t mean I wanna waste a whole day of it doing dumb things.

Sometimes our modern society is so riddled with stupidity. For no other reason than bureaucracy, I was required to leave Vietnam, even though I was already holding a new Vietnamese e-visa in my hot sweaty hands, which allowed me to stay in the country for a further 30 days, and was valid from the day I had to leave the country.

Go figure.

Actually I’ve since heard on the grapevine that, in a burst of economic intelligence, Vietnam has decided to issue 3 month e-visas from August. I missed it by a few weeks.

Anyway, by a huge stroke of luck, I had a great companion with me for the long journey in the back of the van. Leah, from London, was doing the same silly visa thing as me.

Between napping, we chatted for hours, and realised quickly that we share many of the same views about social and political issues. And we talked about our lives, our relationships, you know, the important things. I love that.

It was so interesting to listen and learn from her, she’s super knowledgeable about so many things, plus she’s very cool. And, to top it all off, she’s heard of and even potentially likes the Cinematic Orchestra.

Leah’s a civil servant in the Home Office, working on programs for youth who have been targeted for radicalisation by various groups. She took a few months off to travel South America and Asia, and has just discovered that after a work restructure her actual position no longer exists. Workplaces do that, don’t they.

But she’s actually positive about the change, she’ll move into a completely new line of work somewhere in the civil service, she’d like to change direction anyway, as she sees a much greater need in other areas, particularly for vulnerable women.

Leah told me she’d been hanging out with a couple of Aussie 20 yr olds (or so) recently, and was amazed at how inane most of their conversations were. “They were so young,” she said. Yeah, well. Leah’s already an ancient 30, poor thing.

I asked her where the Aussies were from and she told me they were from the Gold Coast.

Ah, the Cold Ghost.

Well that explains it.

A Delicious Circle

And so I returned south on the train, back to where I’d come from, Quy Nonh, and back to Black Bewdy, my loyal (if rather hard-arsed) bike.

I hung out on the train with Russell, a super interesting American guy, and the next day we headed out on a motorbike to explore some of the beautiful ancient sites in this area.

Russell’s a lovely and fascinating guy. He grew up in Texas, then lived in LA for most of his life, and two years ago moved to Sweetwater, near Knoxville in Tennessee. He’s been away from his home country for about the same time as me, 7 months or so, and has travelled through Western and Eastern Europe, Central Asia and India, and is now moving through Southeast Asia towards Singapore.

It was inspiring to spend time with him. He knows so much about so much, and it’s just so interesting to learn about what’s happening in the US from someone who’s right there in the stink.

Russell moved to Sweetwater because his kids are there (and grandchild), and said it’s a beautiful place, except for the Trumpists. There’s a large and very vocal contingent of them there, which annoys everyone else profusely.

Russell’s an extremely young 72, fit as a fiddle, although debilitated by the fact that he can’t eat salt due to a kidney condition, which means, in Asia, that he basically can’t eat anything at all (except fresh fruit and veg, and eggs).

I thought just being a vego was quite difficult.

Actually Russell does eat some stuff, but can rarely eat out, because there’s so much salt in the food here. I gotta say, even for unfussy me, sometimes I nearly gag on it.

Beautiful coastal view from the train

Russell spotting more boiled eggs

Champing At The Bit

So that we could get around together, Russell attempted to hire a pushbike here in Quy Nonh, but all roads led to failure. So yesterday we hired a motorbike, and he rode us around to some beautiful places in the area. I did the one-handed navigation thing on the back, hanging on with the other hand.

I just can’t do what Southeast Asians do. They ride as passengers on the back of motorbikes without holding on at all, doing stuff on their phones, or even carrying major things like pushbikes or televisions on their laps. Without fear.

I've even seen motorbikes go past me carrying other motorbikes sideways across their back seat.

I'm not bullshitting.

Man, it scares the hell out of me just to watch it, and I’m not even on there. It just takes one unexpected obstacle or movement and you’re off that thing, crashing onto the ground, with your new widescreen (and your bones) shattering all over the place.

Even on our short journey yesterday a woman on a bike stopped unexpectedly in front of us, Russell had to swerve to miss her, and I clipped a sharp part of her motorbike foot stand with the top of my sandal, narrowly missing my exposed toes.

Something small like that can be disastrous on a motorbike.

So anyway off we went to explore, on another scorcher of a globally heated day.

The Kingdom of Champa ruled many parts of southern and central Vietnam from around the 2nd Century AD till 1833, when the Nguyen dynasty Emperor Minh Mang annexed the final areas of Cham territory and they became part of a unified Vietnam. Champa was an Indianised kingdom, like many Southeast Asian kingdoms (eg. Khmer, Srivijaya, Dvaravati), and was at its peak at around 900 - 1000AD.

The main driver of Indianisation throughout the Southeast Asian region was the continued and extensive maritime trade contacts over many centuries. Also, Buddhist missions sent out to Southeast Asia by the Indian Emperor Ashoka influenced culture, and obviously religious beliefs.

Russell and I visited two beautiful Cham sites outside Quy Nonh, the Banh It temple complex and the Thap Binh Lâm ancient tower.

Stairway to Heaven

These amazing structures were built around the turn of the last millennium, and are looking pretty good for their age, although they’ve been restored to some extent. They’re situated on the tops of hills, providing beautiful and auspicious views.

Hinduism was the state religion of Champa, and so the temples were dedicated to various Hindu deities.

Shiva

The temple interiors were occupied by small bats, the smell of their guano adding considerable spice to the sacred vibe.

Makeshift batshit protection

Overgrown cemetery

We also stopped at Tinh Xá Nuoc So’n, a beautiful Buddhist temple and pagoda, one of many we saw on the road back to town.

Brothers in alms

Night Moves

Quy Nonh really happens in the evenings, with a whole stack of eating places and cafés along the beachfront, as well as in many other parts of the city.

It’s one of the many things I really love about cities like this - everyone’s out and about at all hours, there’s so many places to go, so many interesting things to see in the shops and markets, so many food and drink options, so much for families to do with their kids.