Citadels and pagodas

Sitting on the banks of the Perfume River is the old imperial city of Hué. It is here that the last of Vietnamese emperors met their end and it is here that you find reminders of Vietnam' recent imperial past. The walled citadel and its Forbidden City was the home to dynasties that had ruled Vietnam for a few centuries only.

Since time immemorial, this part of the Asia has been converted for its resources. When local kingdoms were not battling each other, they were battling foreign invaders. The Chinese, the Mongols, the Japanese, the French and finally the Americans have all come and been seen off. The current one is Capitalism and it seems set to stay. Each invader has left their mark and one remarkable mark is that of the Citadel and the Forbidden City.

Here the emperors built a city reserved exclusively for themselves and their mandarins to rule their empires and weave stories of their dynasties origins and their subsequent myths and legends. The greatest influence here is that of the Chinese and their own Forbidden City.Despite the repeat attacks the Forbidden City have endured at the hands of its enemies, it remains an evocative place.

The best time to view something is when it is cool and when nobody else is around. In Vietnam, and Hué, that is when the sun gets up. It is the time when most of the population are out and about exercising - playing badminton, soccer, doing tai chi, running or just walking with friends and family. It was like a secret glimpse into a new world. There was certainly no westerners up at 0530 that morning!

But we had the whole Forbidden City to ourselves. It is only in recent times, when the promotion of tourism has been recognized as a valid course for commerce has the Forbidden City undergone a restoration program. When the Communist North eventually governed the whole country, there was a systematic attempt to remove and reduce all evidence of Vietnam's imperial past. But most of the City was rubble from the repeated shelling from the French and then the Americans in each of their wars.

Although there is much to restore, there is far more to see and experience during the hours that you wonder through here. Here is a place where some of Vietnam's greatest artists would have unveiled their work; from metalwork to jewelry to poetry and art right through to engineering and architecture. There was no field of creativity that the Vietnamese don't venture into. It was also home to a university that started in the 12th century.

If there was ever any evidence needed to know that this country existed long before the modern West came to know it through the mass media outputs about the Vietnam War, then the Citadel and Forbidden City was it. But that is not to say that the very recent past is forgotten. Above one of the gates leading into the Citadel is an empty partially ruined concrete bunker and there are plenty of offers of tours taking you to battlefields past, the old DMZ and even the VC tunnels. The war and its effects have been turned to more benign fields of endeavour.

But Hué City is not just the Citadel or the Forbidden City, it is the place to see the emperors' pagodas and temples and pleasure centres. We took some bikes, joined the biking masses and cycled our way out of the Citadel and into the nearby city-country fringe. Hué is a place where the small 125hp motorbike and bicycle reign supreme. And on our bikes, we were just another one of the crowd.

In order to keep hydrated after stints of riding and pagoda investigation, we made frequent pit-stops in local cafés. In some countries, you can't stand still, never mind sit in a local's café, without somebody trying to sell you something and invading your peace. Here, you are just one of the crowd and iced coffee breaks where a pleasure. Of the good things that the French left behind, one was coffee. But in the heat, hot coffee was unbearable. So the Vietnamese adapted it to ice-coffee. In a glass, take pour in two fingers of condensed milk and two fingers of strong bitter cold coffee add in chucks of ice and serve. Stir it all up and you have a simple delicious treat that will refresh and hydrate you in no time!

Although the pagodas and temples and monuments that emperors past have built to themselves were very impressive and set in some surprising locations - one emperor's complex could have been in Europe because the pine trees that dominate the estate lent an air completely in contrast to the countryside outside of the estate's boundaries - it was actually the people that we met, saw, greeted and interacted with as we rode from place to place that left the most beguiling impression. Each and every person would smile or wave back in response and if in earshot, would offer a greeting.

Hué was a place that seemed very comfortable with itself and her people seemed very much at ease as they watched the world go by and smiled and waved at two strange biking Western travellers!