Hue, Vietnam
Just south of the DMZ
Monday October 6, 2003

Hue apparently has some interesting history, particularly wartime.  In town is a citadel with an imperial residence in it surrounded by a moat.  We went there today.

On the approach, we can see these 4 cannons with ornately carved stands.

Shortly after the cannons, this gentleman is demonstrating that indeed, anything can be sold from the back of a bicycle.  Actually, we'd just left a fish store with some very fine Discus specimens with gorgeous color, Bala cats, giant Plecostamus, etc...  Interesting how many fish, birds, cats and dogs are actually kept as pets in this country, something I haven't seen elsewhere in Asia yet.  (I've taken to greeting pet dogs with "Hello Dinner" since our last market excursion in Hanoi...)  I'm sure there's a doctoral thesis in there somewhere correlating a society's propensity to keep pets and a culture's standard of living / level of 'civilization'.  I'll leave it to the doctoral students, I just think it's interesting.

The below two photos show the entrance to the Imperial Palace.  Notice that there are three main entrances to the Palace.  We first walked up to the right entrance, where there were two very bored looking people sitting behind a 4 foot long folding table with a blue sign on it.  The sign was written in Vietnamese, so I'm not entirely sure what it said, but the number below it was distinct: 15,000vnd.  As we approached the counter, one of the women waved us over to the other entrance.  No words, just pointing.  So we went to the middle entrance: gated closed.  At the left entrance was a repeat of the first scene, with one difference.  This sign was written in English, and it said, "Entry fee for the Imperial Palace.  55,000vnd."  I didn't get it at first, and I thought the two different entry fees must allow access to different areas of the Palace.  But it quickly dawned on me that this is the part where they triple the price for foreigners.  Our Rough Guide explains that the Vietnamese two-tier pricing system is slowly being phased out, but that the process takes some time.  So after you get nailed at the door, don't put your wallet away.  If you have to pee, it'll cost you another 1,000vnd.  Nice touch.

This is the same shot done twice.  I thought it was a fun shot, and I like the way the umbrella pops, so I played with it in Photoshop a bit just for kicks...
   

After we found the restroom, we back tracked to the first building inside the entrance, the throne room.  No pictures are allowed in the throne room, so there's only some pictures from the outside.  Notice in the middle shot that the construction is brick with a thin layer of cement over it, just like everything else here.  These buildings are not anywhere near the caliber of the Forbidden City, which this place has been compared to conceptually, and the grounds are probably about a tenth the size, with most the buildings bombed out.  As far as I can tell, the only carved stone in the place is where the rollers from the poorly hung doors have ground out the floor tiles.

Behind the one main building on the grounds is another small gateway.  Behind the gateway is a lizard.  And a pond.  THE pond...

           (a Rain Barrel: Because Morton loves them)
So, you can see the pond, and it's about a foot and a half deep.  This is such a cool pond, and there was this awesome lizard running around.  I got the shot in the middle here, as you can see.  Cool lizard, yeah?  So Kath comes over to check out the lizard I'm raving about and the little guy scampers, scurries and swims down the edge of this pond about 10 feet away or so.  So I move and adjust and I'm looking over the edge of the pond to point out the lizard to Kath when the ground beneath me started moving.  One moment I was standing on a 'solid' rock edge, the next minute I'm on my ass in this pond, (holding the camera high and dry J).  I get out of the pond and start wringing out my clothes, checking the camera and laughing with Kathy.  Not that it could get much more embarrassing, but as I'm wringing out my clothes on my body I noticed the crowd of French tourists across the pond watching my antics.  I gave a wave: every one of them waved back.  I took a bow.  About that time two Vietnamese women showed up "to make sure I was OK."  A French guy showed up and was actually concerned for my physical well being, at least as far as I can remember my French.  Regardless, he wasn't trying to sell me something and that was nice.  He bought a pack of postcards from one of the concerned locals fairly quickly and rejoined his group.  We turned down the dry t-shirt they were trying to sell us for double the price, but that I didn't need (I was completely dry two hours later).  I'm not sure why we ended up with the two packs of postcards that we did, but I'm sure it made sense at the time.  Check your mailboxes...  

               
As we were drying off, and chilling out, we sat in a little pavilion next to a different, bigger pond.  Kath is sitting and relaxing.  The stairs and bombed out guardhouse lead up to what the plaque claims used to be the Emperor's residence until 1947, translation until it was destroyed in the war with the French.  Another brick wall showing burn marks and overgrown with morning glory, the local favorite vegetable.  And the pond.  There's some photos of the pond on the flower page as well, and the below dragonflies are also from next to the pond.

There really wasn't anyone else around to speak of, and we sort of just wandered around the complex and found interesting buildings and places.  Everything is very wet, and when it rains the drops are huge, heavy and fast.  Water runs in the streets, but the drenching is still stopping fairly quickly; usually within half an hour.  Still, though, standing water is a common site in flat places.  Here's Kathy exploring a building, trying to figure out what it is, some sort of pot in the courtyard next to the building, and a metal dragon outside the Royal Theater.
       

Here's the Moat around the palace...

And the Perfume river, around the Moat...

l    Home    l    Journal    l    Top

l    Due to SPAM issues, my email address is my first initial and last name at this domain.
Sorry for being vague, I get 40+ spam a day for posting my actual address.    l

Copyright 2003, Dana M. Brash. All Rights Reserved.