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Travel day. Fly out day. We’re headed for central Vietnam, to Hue. Aboard Jetstar Asia, so pray for no delays.
Thanks to genius planning on Husbando’s behalf, we’re right next to the airport and have only a two minute drive to the domestic terminal. There’s barely enough room in the hotel room for the both of us and our luggage, but the rooftop pool and bar which overlooked the airport runway and the rest of District 1 more than made up for it. 10/10, would stay again.
The Ho Chi Minh City domestic terminal is pretty good. Large, well lit and well signed. We’re dropped off, checked in and through security in little more than 20 minutes. Security is a full shoes off, laptops, liquids and cameras out for scanning arrangement. The security personnel are relaxed and hardly paying attention, so there’s no shoving and the whole process is relatively painless. Airside, there’s plenty of seating and enough shops and cafes to keep you occupied. Flight is on time, and I feel a little bit sad watching this writhing, heaving city disappear beneath us. I feel like there’s more to see and do there – vow to go back.
If we thought Ho Chi Minh City was hot, it’s got nothing on Hue. We touch down under a blazing sun and it feels as though we are walking on a frying pan as we walk from aircraft to terminal. Cicadas scream in the heat. Husbando, always the clever one, has arranged a transfer with our hotel. We avoid running the gauntlet of hailing a cab, and leap straight into a crisply air conditioned car.
Hue is much drier than Ho Chi Minh City. You know when you look at a place, and you can feel how hot it is? Yeah, that. As we speed away from the airport, I notice the rice paddies are yellowing and the grass is brown. The horizon ripples in the mirages from the heat. Is the sky hazy from the heat, or is it smoke from the spot fires in the rice paddies? I can almost feel the heat radiating off the concrete footpath alongside the road. Still, locals are riding their bicycles along – some loaded with kids, others loaded with sugar cane, vegetables or bamboo. The familiar motorbikes sail past, aunties wearing the brightly patterned ‘pajamas’ we’ve become used to seeing. Occasionally a small wooden stall sprouts from the pavement, selling fruit, lollies or other items in colourful packets. I notice blue tarps spread on the ground, with some kind of grain on it, drying in the sun. A man rides past with a huge bag of baguettes on the back on his bike.
I discover on arrival to the hotel that I am terribly under dressed. Hotel Saigon Morin is classic European colonial style, like the Strand in Yangon or Raffles of Singapore. The lobby is shining marble, rich swarthy teak wood and chandeliers. We are served fresh pomegranate juice and sit in luxurious couches while a tiny Vietnamese lady in a red ao dai checks us in. A man in a suit is also checking in. I’m here in tights and an oversized t-shirt, and dirty sneakers. The elevators are glass walled, with a view to the courtyard garden and pool. The rug on the floor is red and says “good morning”. Our room is embarrassingly large, with a separate lounge room and bathroom bigger than our bedroom at home. More marble, more teak wood. There’s expensive looking pottery on shelves. I’m out of place, but I also love the grandeur.
Decide to head out for lunch, and find a laundry shop along the way. We walk along Lê Loi, which runs parallel to the lazy Perfume River. Pass a brutalist looking high school which I originally mistake for a hospital, and a Soviet-era looking monument. I’m sick of carrying the bag of dirty clothing, drop it off to a lady in the first shop Husbando spots with the ubiquitous ‘laundry’ sign out the front. From the street, she looks to sells backpacks, sunglasses, belts and conical ‘non la’ hats. But when we ask about laundry, she throws her hands up. “Yes, I do! When you come back? Later! Maybe you give me 4 hours? Yes,” she announces while dragging an ancient looking scale out of the depths of the shop. Dropping the bag of clothes onto the scale, she crouches down to read the dial and determine a reasonable price for this sized bag of washing. These ladies are lifesavers in your travels. Workers of magic. I deliver a bag of rank, dusty, dirty clothes, and they return cleaner than the day I bought them, smelling of jasmine and impeccably ironed and folded. She hands us a slip of blue paper with numbers scrawled on it. Bring this back later to get our clothes. All hail the laundry lady.
Hue is quiet during the day. Tourists board buses in the early morning and spend the day visiting the tombs of Vietnamese emperors, the Hai Van Pass or Hoi An. The only people I see while we eat lunch at bar-slash-restaurant-slash-late night music lounge ‘Are You Tipsy Yet?’ is one couple who sit on the footpath, and a Vietnamese lady collecting recycling. There’s a smattering of activity along the river as we walk back to the hotel. Men are building marquees and stalls are sprouting from the grass like mushrooms. Music blares from speakers, none of them playing the same song. Reunification Day is only days away; Husbando guesses this will be a festival celebration of same in the days to come.
Phuc, the Saigon Morin pool bar tender solves this mystery for us. “Art festival!”, he announces, delivering my third cocktail of the evening. “Many many artists, many stalls, lots of food – very good!”. Phuc has taken a shining to us, practising his English with us between serving other patrons. He has a son and a daughter, his wife is a good cook and he is looking forward to the holiday coming up. Phuc and his family plan to head to a lake for the day, to BBQ and drink beer. “Swimming!” he says, miming breast stroke. He refills our roasted peanuts and drinks with astonishing efficiency. He lights a joss stick to keep the mosquitos away, and changes our coasters regularly. We talk like friends, and I feel bad that he can’t sit with us for dinner. On our way out, we promise to see him tomorrow.
As the sun sinks below the horizon, the tour buses start to return and Hue fills up again. Streets surrounding the backpacker area close to vehicles after a certain time, so there’s plenty of traffic in a rush to deliver customers back to their hotels before the roads are closed. In fact, I’m almost run over by a bus while sitting on the footpath out the front of the Gecko Pub. The bus is doing its best to navigate an already crowded street and its front comes ever closer until its only inches from my face. True to form, I smash a glass while reaching for the menu display board to stop it from falling beneath the bus wheels. Of course. Can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it. Note to the wise though – the fresh spring rolls at Gecko Pub are to die for. We drop past regularly during our stay to stuff our faces with prawny, herby deliciousness.
Around the corner from Gecko Pub, we find Hot Tuna. We also find loud music. Locals and other Asian travellers pack out seafood restaurants on the corners opposite to Hot Tuna, sitting on low stools, drinking local whisky and chowing down on BBQ’d seafood. Some sit French style, both facing the street and smoking. Others sit facing each other, are happily drunk and order beers with wreckless abandon. The Vietnamese version of ‘fuck it, we’re on holidays!’. The music is techno, club music – completely incongruous to what we’re looking at. This sort of music must be a Vietnamese thing, I decide. As is the volume they play it at.
A local offers us weed on the walk back to the Saigon Morin. The rug in the lift is now deep blue and says “good evening”.
Notes:
- Huda beer is cheap here. Its good.
- Eat the fresh spring rolls at Gecko Pub. And the deep fried ones too. Maybe pick a spot upstairs if you’re not keen on doing battle with the buses though.
Enjoying my Vietnam diaries? You can read the others here, or catch up on my Cambodian adventures!
