I was out on the street at 6am, waiting for my pre-booked taxi, who was nowhere to be seen…. I called and it turns out he couldn’t find the address and needed me to tell him where it was. That was never going to end well, was it??!! Anyway, we got to the airport in plenty of time and I ate some breakfast. I *barely* slept last night, so I thought perhaps a spot of breakfast… I had some iced tea and a poached egg in a lovely salty broth. Just what I needed! I was almost ready to declare myself better.

The flight was only an hour long. Just enough time for a quick nap and a paper cup of coke. Baggage claim was quick and easy, and then there was my taxi, waiting for me. Hue was already working better than Hanoi! Except…. The taxi driver didn’t know my address. I said it, I showed it to him… nothing. So I passed him my phone and he tried to Google map what the phone said. BINGO!! It had a result! A little red pin whizzed confidently across the map and dropped into the middle of the river.   Hmmmm….still. We got here eventually.

My hosts here are super friendly. I’m staying in their family home, with three generations of them. Two grandmothers, a mother and father and two of the cutest little girls! As an aside, I have wondered in some of these homestays how they can afford the space…they live so many in not huge houses as it is. But I guess the answer is both within differing cultural expectations of residential space; and also differing perspectives on cost. For me, this is a super cheap and really very lovely alternative to big, international hotel chains. For them, I suspect it provides several times their annual income, per year. 

Anyway, Tinh (the mother of the little girls) welcomed me with huge warmth and took some trouble to orient me and recommend restaurants and cafes. She was very entertained by the fact that I hadn’t yet used Grab – the Vietnamese equivalent of Uber – and so I downloaded the app…. Much of my hesitancy so far has been that, while you can get cars on Grab, most of the rides are on the back of a moped and HAVE I MENTIONED THE TERRIFYING TRAFFIC???

And so I set off to explore the Imperial Citadel. Tinh had suggested 3 hours would be enough to take this in, in a fairly relaxed fashion. She was bob on!

The citadel was built in the 19th Century – from about about 1802 when the Nguyen dynasty was founded and Emperor Gia Long moved the country’s capital to Hue in an attempt to unify the north and south. 

Originally, the Imperial enclosure held around 148 buildings – from what I can make out these included palaces, temples, offices, a University, a theatre, medical facilities and many gardens. However, the citadel has repeatedly suffered attacks from both the wars with the French and the Americans, and most of it is now in ruins although restoration work is ongoing.  So you walk between lavish, rich areas and weed-choked rubble. It’s an extraordinary place! However, even where the exterior of buildings has been restored, there is very little interior furniture or decoration. In 1885, French forces responded to a Vietnamese attack by storming the citadel, burning the library, and removing every single object of value – right down to the toothpicks!

In 1968, during the Tet offensive, North Vietnamese forces seized Hue and, in the 3 1/2 weeks that they held the citadel and the Americans and south Vietnamese fought to regain it, about 10,000 people – mostly civilians – were killed and the citadel suffered extensive bomb damage. This is still evident in some areas.

So, the Citadel falls into distinct areas. The Imperial Enclosure was for official business – receptions, ceremonies and state occasions and contained the central bureaucracy and military offices. It also contained the Forbidden Purple City of which, sadly, there’s nothing left – it sounds like it would have been FAB! This was entirely for the personal use of the emperor – the only servants allowed in would have been eunuchs – for the protection of the concubines, d’you see?!I

On the southwest side are temples, which have been pretty extensively restored. These seem mostly to honour the 9 Emperors of the Nguyen dynasty and are lavishly decorated and obviously very much in use. For this reason, photography is not permitted inside the temples, although the outside is allowed to be photographed.

This area also contains the 9 dynastic urns, which are pretty impressive. They’re enormous bronze urns – about 2m in height – cast in 1835/6. Each one commemorates one of the emperors and they represent the stability of the dynasty. At each end of the row of urns is a somewhat bizarre dragon in what looks very like an old London phone box. 

The northwest of the complex was residential – palaces for queens and queen mothers, some of which are beautifully restored. The Dien Tho residence once comprised the apartments and audience hall of the queen mothers and is extensively restored and much praised by Lonely Planet. But I much preferred the Truong San residence. Apparently Emperor Thieu Tri reckoned this to be one of the most beautiful spots in Hue, and I think he might’ve been onto something… It was extensively destroyed but is now beautifully restored and simply stunning. It has an impressive entrance gate with dancing dragons and phoenixes, and its own moat (turns out I’m a fan of a moat!). The gardens are beautiful and the house – although empty inside – has been restored externally.

Much of the north and northwest of the enclosure was under reconstruction. 

I also loved the galleries of the Can Chanh Palace, which are beautifully re-lacquered, and some gorgeous tiles on the roof of the Emperor’s reading room and the royal theatre.

By this time, the heat was beginning to get to me, and I was HUNGRY – surely a good sign! It was about 33 degrees and my once 100% linen t shirt was now 20% linen and 80% sweat, so I reluctantly left the citadel, feeling like I could easily spend twice as long there and still miss much of what it has to offer. I made my way to a restaurant that Tinh had recommended. They only offer two dishes – crispy shrimp pancakes and grilled pork. I ordered one of each, and was given a very helpful lesson on how to eat them! They were truly delicious – the pork was grilled on a skewer of lemongrass – so yummy!

Then, my friends, I got a Grab. A moped. Yup. I sat on a moped in my shorts and t shirt and wound through the traffic of Hue!! It was possibly the most terrifying experience of my life to date 😂

It dropped me at Dong Ba market which, I have to say, I didn’t enjoy. The outside is great – an authentic bustling Vietnamese street market selling food, household goods, flowers and so on. The inside is incredibly hustly, though. Pushy and overpriced and just nonsense. I was stopped at one stall and shown some trousers made supposedly of bamboo. Two pairs of butterfly trousers, one pair of silk Thai trousers, and 4 t shirts and she wanted $200 – now I do need some more clothes and I appreciate that the point is to bargain, but I need clothes I can also wear back home, and so when she wouldn’t even give me a sensible starting point I walked away. Too many things, too high a price. Interestingly, she followed me trying to negotiate herself down and ended up at $80, where I was almost tempted but by then too hot and pissed off!

So. I came home, washed some things and fell into bed where I was asleep before I could finish the slightly painful process of uploading photos here! 

Today I’m going to head out for breakfast and to see the tombs of some of the kings whose palaces I was admiring yesterday. This will involve more Grabs!!