A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
Hue has been a bit of a disappointment to me, I must admit. My original interest in Vietnam was spurred years ago by a book called Falling Off the Map, by Pico Iyer, in which the author wrote a section on maybe five or six places in the world that people don't really go. Hue was one of them, and his description of the city was poetic and lyrical. Now I suspect he was smoking something funny.

Hue is a very historic city in Vietnam, and served as its capital during the Nguyen Dynasty and the colonial period from 1803 to 1945. It lies on the banks of the Perfume River about halfway up the country, amid lush greenery and rolling hills. The highlight of the city is the Citadel, the walled and moated area of the city that used to house the kings and royal family members and hangers-on of the Nguyen dynasty, the final "ruling" family of Vietnam. The Citadel, built in 1804 with a 10 kilometer perimeter, included a smaller Imperial Enclosure where the family resided, and an even smaller Forbidden Purple City where many of the ornate ceremonial buildings and palaces were located. There are, in fact, lovely photos of the Citadel area and Imperial Enclosure from the early 20th century, that included buildings in the Chinese and French style and ornate gardens and lakes in which the denizens took their leisure.

Doesn't all that sound great? The problem is that Hue really took it in the shorts from both the French and Americans. In 1885 Emperor Ham Nghi objected to French activities in Tonkin and launched an attack. The French decided to set him straight on who was really in charge by encircling the city and mercilessly pounding it with artillery, followed by the looting of its treasures. Ham Nghi fled, and the French replace him with a more amenable Nguyen family member.

In 1968 the situation was far worse. VC troops walked into Hue while the Americans weren't paying attention and held the city for 25 days, punctuated by massive summary executions of local civilians and religious people supporting the South. The South Vietnamese army was unable to oust the occupying force, US troops laid seige to the city for weeks during the Tet Offensive. Sections of the city were leveled by VC and/or US bombs, and 10,000 were killed either by bombs or in house-to-house fighting. Most were civilians.

The upshot of this history is that most of the city was built in the 70's and 80's with limited funds, which I think we would all agree is not a good thing architecturally. Most of the old French-style buildings, particularly on the north shore, were razed to the ground. Over 90 percent of the area within the citadel was destroyed, including all but a handful of the royal palace buildings. Now most of the area is given over to weeds or small-scale agriculture, with ruined walls and arches littering the landscape in a very eerie way.

Despite the limited amount remaining, it was an interesting place, and I spent the rest of the day wandering around town to look at temples and pagodas, the other thing the city is famous for. I'm a bit dragonned out at this point (the Vietnamese really don't know the meaning of understatement), but I got lots of exercise and actually went four straight hours without seeing another tourist. The high point of my day was when I carried on an actual 10 minute (in fits and starts) conversation with a Vietnamese boy who decided to walk with me. Well actually, it was a combination of Vietnamese and French, but as I was inexplicably blocked on the French, I generally spoke Vietnamese and he spoke French when he had a particularly complex question. Quite a victory for me!

?2003 Katy Warren





posted by Katy at 1:38 AM