Rainy day in Hue

Rainy day in Hue

Hue, Vietnam, Asia

We woke up this morning at 7am to the sound of pouring rain outside. We checked out the forecast for the rest of the day and it didn’t look like it was going to get any better, so we headed down to the restaurant for breakfast and then out for the day. The rain never let up all day long, but at least the temperature is much lower than I’ve been used to. It’s only about 29*C (88*F) here, where it’s been in the 30*C’s most other places. It’s nice not walking around and constantly sweating, but with the swirling rain, I was pretty wet anyway.

We walked over to the Imperial City and had a walk around inside for a couple of hours. We saw where the Palace used to be and checked out the Citadel, but there was nothing much more to see there. We had been hounded by a woman trying to get us on a boat ride on our way over to the city, and we figured this could be a good way to get down river to see the pagoda. We walked back over the bridge and found some more women trying to sell boat rides, and they would not give up on their cause. We finally found out that it was a longer journey to the Pagoda than we originally thought, and with the amount of rain that we were having, it didn’t make a lot of sense to take the boat ride. The women didn’t want to hear that though and were trying to make every possible concession possible to get us on the boat.

We finally decided that we should grab something to eat for lunch and think about what we wanted to do. We found a place called Why Not? where Dad could get some pizza and I got some chicken fajitas. The food was actually really nice for a backpacker’s restaurant, and from there we got a good tip from the waitress that when it’s raining, the boat ride is pretty miserable. It would have been at least an hour to get there and an hour back, and you are stuck inside a small boat while it’s pouring outside. Not my idea of fun. We decided to take a taxi.

We got to the pagoda and had a look around in the rain. There wasn’t any information about it in English, so we didn’t really know the significance of what we were looking at. The one interesting thing we saw was an old Austin Healy car that was shown in a Pulitzer Prize winning photograph. A monk drove that very same car into a busy intersection in Saigon, got out, doused himself in petrol and lit himself on fire to protest the poor treatment of Buddhists during the Vietnam War. I’m not really sure why the car was at this temple, but I’m sure there’s a reason for it.

We got a taxi back to the hotel and relaxed for a bit while the rain continued to fall outside. At this point I was really happy that we had flights booked to Hanoi for tomorrow, because another day of sitting around in the rain doesn’t really appeal. We went out for dinner at a place called Ruby and it was a strange experience. We first tried to sit outside under some umbrellas, but we were managing to get wet anyway, so we moved inside. As soon as we moved in there, they turned on ridiculously loud club music (at 7pm), so loud that we couldn’t hear ourselves think. We then realized that even sitting inside near a window, we were getting wet anyway, so we had to close the windows. It wasn’t the most comfortable setting for dinner, but the food was really good and the waitresses were all very nice. They didn’t speak English very well but they all welcomed the chance to practice on us.

After dinner I just came back to the hotel and I’m relaxing here for the night. The forecast shows that the rain isn’t going to stop in Hue for about a week, so I’m even happier to be getting away tomorrow. I know that Hanoi is supposed to be just another big city, but if the weather is nicer than here, I’ll be very happy.

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