The ancient city of Hué was an hours flight away, the journey to the airport was incident free until about 3kms away when a taxi driver flagged down our van. The long and short of it was that the cabbie was scamming his two female customers, he had picked up a friend en route and then drove the two women around the backstreets trying to intimidate them. He finally claimed he'd broken down in the motorway and demanded they pay 1.5 million dong (£45) for a fare that was costing us around £6. We let the women jump in our van and we drove the final 5 minutes to the airport. They were headed to Laos and we gave them our unspent Kip to try to bring some happiness back to their trip and some good karma for us.
Hué lies about halfway down Vietnam, it's a bit of a tourist trap due to the walled imperial city and its proximity to the Vietnam War Demilitarised Zone. We came for the former.
The ancient citadel was the stage for a huge battle during the Vietnam war that lasted 28 days, and during this time the Americans bombed and napalmed the ancient site, leaving just 10 of the 160 buildings standing. The pagodas are well restored, but the site was generally disjointed with large gaps or heaps of rubble and ruin where buildings once were. Sadly, we found little of real interest, despite spending 4 hours on site. I guess thats another legacy of war. The highlight, we've agreed was buying some pellets and feeding the Koi carp.
Unlike Hanoi, Hué had not been decorated for Tet, however there was a beautiful bonsai tree park along the river bank and in it there were lavish displays of yellow and red flowers marking the arrival of the new year.
At night, the locals crouched at the curb side and set small fires on which they burnt fake money and prayers written on thick colourful paper, the air was thick with smoke and incense as they silently offered up prayers for those who have died. But as they believe in reincarnation, it wasn't an overly solemn act. They we're quickly back in the shop or home and carrying on as normal.
On hindsight, we probably could have skipped Hué, the sights were average, the town itself was a bland tourist haven and was soulless. The people were interested only in parting us with our money and the continual scams regarding taxi fares, rickshaw tours and ticket prices just made us disconnect. What is the real price of a bottle of coke, is it 30,000, 50,000, 18,000 dong? The answer is all of the above, it's ridiculous.
The town's one saving grace is the quality of food, it was packed with flavour, really interesting (fermented shrimp dip, complete with extra heads and eyes, anyone?) and so what if the outdoor restaurant was teeming with huge rats? We've been there, done that.
Let's get a bus to pretty Hoi An for Tet, it's only 4 hours away.