A Big, Big Day in Hue...

Hue, Vietnam

June 13, 2007
N 16°28.114
E 107°35.480

The train pulled into the station in Hue a little before 9:00 AM. The plan was to walk from the train station directly to one of the recommended hotels in Lonely Planet. Elise did an excellent job scouting out the place on the internet and we all felt it would work perfectly.

The walk from the train station was about a mile in the blistering heat. Hue was supposed to be 10 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than Hanoi, but as we staggered down the street dripping in sweat I didn’t notice the difference. Maybe, just maybe, Hue had a little less humidity, so instead of 80% it is around 70%--maybe!

All of us checked into the little hotel, took cool showers, and headed out to explore the town. Hue was heavily damaged during the Vietnam War and was one of the only cities to be held by the North Vietnamese Army for more than a few days. The city lost at least 200,000 people during the bombings, the majority of them civilians. The history of the city was one of the draws for us.

We were able to make it down to the Perfume River and found a small patch of shade to protect us from the heat; Marc confirmed the temperature officially reached 100F. That was enough… the best place to be was inside our cool rooms with some water and air conditioning.

When we reached our hotel we discovered the market on the other side of the river closed at 5:00 PM. If we didn’t make it to the market today, we probably wouldn’t have a chance since we planned on taking a day long boat tour the following morning. Elise and I decided we could brave the heat and didn’t want to miss out on any deals, plus we heard good stories about Hue’s market.

The market resembled many of the .99 cent stores lining the streets of Chinatown in San Francisco. It appeared the majority of the goods were surplus items that ended up at this market to find a buyer. Each stall was piled as high as possible with hair accessories, plastic bowls, chopsticks, baskets, or whatever the stall was selling. If a particular stall was selling tin boxes, then every stall around it also sold tin boxes. Therefore, as soon as one person in the market knew what you were looking for, it quickly trickled back to everyone else until all of a sudden everyone had the perfect item for just for you!

Elise and I were looking for headbands to keep our hair out of our face, but along the way we were shown plenty of other items including, my personal favorite, girls underwear. The pink underwear decorated with super heros, kittens, etc. that looked like they might fit around one of my thighs, but the lady was making a hard sell. She may have made a sale if she didn’t start telling me “we have big, big for you” Thanks, I said… you just lost that sale for sure. Well, I guess there wasn’t really a chance in hell anyway.

We finally found headbands that might due the trick, looked for a few more small items and got out of the market before someone else tried to sell us more stuff we didn’t need. We made our way back across the bridge to the hotel… it was now our turn to cool off and rehydrate in our rooms.

Other notes: It's really a lot of fun traveling as a family. Since family is such a big part of the Vietnamese culture, we've received a lot of comments as to how nice it is to see us together. And of course, having a group helps us barter a little more when it comes to certain items such as tours.