Hue (Who-way) Not Much to Say

HUE:

After Hoi An I blew straight through Danang and stopped for the night and a little sight seeing in Hue, which I believe is the fourth largest city and the former imperial capitol. Hue may have been a much cooler place than I was able to discover in my short stay, I pretty much did a turn and burn in Hue. The bus ride through the central highlands south of Hue had the best natural scenery I've seen yet in Vietnam. Beautiful mountains covered in cheery little pines with the coastal lowland rice paddy flats below dotted by idealic little villages. I had been told by some familiar with Vietnam that Hue was full of well preserved Vietnamese imperial culture and charm, it was not very touristy and basically not to be missed. Hue was the former imperial seat of the Nguyens, the last dynasty to rule Vietnam. The Nguyens were emasculated by the French colonialists and then forced to abdicate in 1945 due to the rise of Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese Communist party. I spent a half day sight-seeing with every other western tourist working the North-South trail and I think I was ready to go after two hours. There were some gorgeous vistas afforded from the banks of the river and the ruins of the imperial palace were OK. (Being just south of the DMZ and a heavily contested strategic battlefield during the war Hue was completely decimated by American bombs) I know this is going to sound extremely snotty, but after seeing Ankor Wat, the Great Wall of China, and the Forbidden City of Peking its hard to get excited about the ruins from the lesser old imperial palaces of the orient. It didn't help matters that it was hot in Hue as it had been in Hoi An, bloody blue blazes, sweat all the way through your shirt in 4 minutes hot. That afternoon it was with great glee that I uncomfortably straddled a scooter balancing my massive duffel bag on my back, as I am very used to doing now, and set off for the Hue train station to catch the overnight sleeper to Hanoi. The train arrived four hours late in a very antiquated and dingy communist train station curiously devoid of signs or posted arrival/departure information. The waiting area was spartan even by old communists standards and with no signs and all of the announcements in Vietnamese there were a couple of times when I feared I may have missed my trains. I had a few false starts too, jumping like a dumb herd animal anytime the other tourists started making for the exits with their luggage. The only tip-off it was 2009 instead of 1979 was a flat-screen TV mounted in the waiting area that displayed a steady feed of advertisements with zero programed content. Maybe this is an example of what Marshal McLuhan really meant when he coined the apocryphal aphorism "The media is the message". The train ride was OK, but not really restful. The train did have the best air-conditioning I have encountered in Vietnam.