Hue. The girls and I packed up our daypacks and headed out on a little roadtrip. Destination Hue. The imperial city, about 120 kms up the coast from Da Nang – once the capital of the southern kingdom, home to many universities and museums. It is on the Perfume River – a river famous from the Vietnam war, or the American war as it is known in these parts. The Americans dug in on the high banks of the river – built bunkers that still exist today, to try and watch the beautiful river for ambushes by water by oncoming Viet Cong. It is 3.5 hours north of Da Nang on the train….yup….3.5 hours to do 120 kms. As they say in Vietnam, often you can run faster than the train. But why would you? This particular stretch of railway is stunningly beautiful. Sharon and I had purchased our tickets in Hoi An - $5 for the journey – and supposedly we got the three last seats available.. When the three of us boarded it was clear that the information gathered previously had been somewhat bulls*** as there definitely was no shortage of seats on this train. We had a whole car nearly to ourselves, sharing with about 6 businessman. Not sure how the tickets work, but ours said "foreigner' and when I went exploring, I saw that the other cars were quite filled. With such few passengers it did allow us to open the windows and hang out as the train meandered along the beautiful coastline of central Vietnam into the mountains. Long tunnels had been carved out to facilitate this stretch and the views of desolated beach after beach highlighted the obviously bright future for Vietnamese tourism. This country has the most beautiful empty beaches that I have seen anywhere.
That is not to say that the developers are not here. They have captured the 27 kms of waterfront from Hoi An to Da Nang (China Beach) but outside of the cities, the countryside is open to more and more of the world finding Vietnam.
The train moved slowly, passing flagmen who stood out in the middle of the mountain passes, holding up yellow or red flags – I guess to tell the engineer if he should stop or not. I loved this train journey and spent my time hanging out the window like a dog on the way to Dairy Queen on a hot summer day.

I had visited Hue last year on my way from Na Trang to Nimh Binh and had only 6 hours to explore then. I had rented an old guy with an old motorbike to take me around for a quick trip and he was so delightful that I really wanted Laura and Sharon to see and experience Hue the way I had. The city is rather sprawling with beautiful wide tree lined streets and a walled inner city that sits majestically on the bank of the river. Dragon boats are available for dinner cruises and it is really a very sophisticated, European feeling place.   The historical sights are spread outside the city so travel by motorbike in the extreme heat is preferable over the alternative choice of minivan travels with rich Thai and Laotion and European tourists who flock to Hue. The three of us are just not aircon bus tour types. My friend Hilary, whom I met in Cambodia last year, had visited Hue with her son in September2009 and had toured around with the Hue Easyriders and had posted the phone numbers on her blog. I called one of the guys but he was on a multiday trip through the mountains but he quickly found us three eager drivers with nice bikes. We set off right after breakfast on our second day with the instructions to the guys to show us cool stuff, not temples and museums – we wanted to go into the mountains and see some countryside. The boys delivered and even though Hue is even hotter than Da Nang…… brutally drenching hot……we had a terrific day of being biker babes – this time with someone else driving so everyone could just sit back and enjoy. All of this fun for only $10 for 6 or 7 hours!!!!   The crappy thing was my camera battery quit on me and I forgot to bring my charger so...not so many pics....ahhhhh.
We saw cinnamon incense making and a hilarious rice museum in the middle of nowhere - staffed by an ancient little old lady who when she saw us ride into town, went home, put on her best outfit and pearls and headed over to open this government built project out in the rice paddies. her incredible enthusiasm in showing us the crude rice harvesting and processing equipment was a riot. She, as most older vietnamese, are betel nut or paan chewers. It is a nut, shaved into thin slices, mixed with calcium paste to aid digestion and wrapped into a green leaf. Betel chewing is rampant all over India and Asia - the nut when chewed turns bright red and the juice is spit out everywhere. Many poor people chew it as it helps quell hunger.  I had heard it had strong narcotic effect and had always wanted to try it so when little teeny weeny gramma got out her kit - Laura and I were in to join her. Wow - it really is something else. Immediately the bitterness and chalkiness hit me and then I could feel my tounge starting to numb. The old girl thought it was pretty funny watching two betel virgins with their first chaw Definitely no chance I will become an addict. Just seeing the damaged teeth everywhere is enough reason not to chew....and then the spitting.....


The plan was to stay 3 days because Laura had to teach but I just hadn’’t had enough of Hue at the end of the three days. It is touristy and that was a nice change as we have not had much opportunity to eat or shop in western type establishments. Laura reluctantly caught a bus back home and Sharon and I stayed on for another day before we caught the train back. This time the train went much faster and we were back home in 2.5 hours. Maybe there was a wind at our back???