Hue and Phong Nha

Huế and Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng National Park 

Hue was briefly the imperial capital of Vietnam when it housed the emperors of the Nguyen dynasty (whose conquests are responsible for up to 40% of the Vietnamese population having the last name of 'Nguyen') from the years 1802-1945. The Nguyen dynasty was the last of the imperial dynasties in Vietnam and their rule was marred by the French colonisation in late 19th century and a variety of succession crises. From 1885, the Nguyen emperors held power over Vietnam in name only, with actual control of the country having been relinquished to the French invaders. Nevertheless, during their rule, the Nguyens built a huge and impressive imperial complex in the city of Hue. Unfortunately, the vast majority of this complex was destroyed during the years of the Vietnam war. In particular, the city of hue was home to the 'Tet Offensive' of 1968 where, on the eve of the New Year, tens of thousands of Northern Vietnamese troops launched an offensive on the city that resulted in over 100,000 residents of the city being left homeless with another 3,000 dead. Of the 160 or so buildings that originally stood in the imperial citadel, only ten remained after the offensive.

When I visited Hue, the whole of the city was in preparation for Tet. Huge lines of people waiting to withdraw cash from the ATMs snaked along the roads (apparently when the banks close for Tet, the ATMs are not refilled with cash for a pretty long time and there is a danger of people losing access to cash), with people withdrawing tens of Vietnamese dong in front of me. 

Before heading to the citadel, I was determined to try the City's most famous dish, Bunh Bo Hue, which some bloggers claim to be worth of rivalling the nationwide dish of Pho. Bunh Bo Hue, like pho, consists of rice noodles and slices of beef. However, central Vietnamese is notable for its spiciness and the broth had more chili than you'd expect in Northern and Southern cuisine. The soup also had big chunks of crab meat which were incredibly rich and flavourful.

The huge vats of broth and bowls of herbs and noodles at the eatery I settled on.

On my walk to the citadel, I also encountered row upon row of New Year's flowers being sold. When I was in the Mekong delta, my tour guides continually pointed out the trucks of flowers which were being shipped out of the region. I didn't quite realise the significance of the flowers until travelling to the rest of the country where the flowers  (along with small orange trees) were all over the place. 

One of the many flower delivery trucks.

After navigating my way across some sidewalk free streets, I arrived at the gates of the citadel, proudly displaying the face of Ho Chi Minh in a way very reminiscent to the Mao portrait which decorates the Forbidden City in Beijing.

The inside of the citadel had a really informal feel, and with all the construction going on (in efforts to rebuild the destroy the buildings), it felt a little half finished. However, this didn't take away from the citadel at all and it was a really interesting place.

Much of the citadel consisted of fields of grass with the remains of the buildings that had been destroyed during the Tet Offensive.

However, the buildings that remained were really beautiful, and I especially loved the faded yellows, blues and reds that all the buildings were painted in.

The citadel, along with letting you walk around the buildings and view their preserved interiors, also had some interesting exhibitions on the Nguyen Dynasty. There was a wealth of photographs of the court life, small biographies of all the emperors (there were quite a few considering their short reign) and sections on all aspects of court life, including the festivals, the roles of the eunuchs, the role of women and many other things. It was pretty well done and made for some interesting reading.

The citadel was surprisingly empty when I visited, save for a number of private tours taking around tourists of all nationalities in their native languages.

Some of the workers in the building also seemed to travel around by traditional looking horse drawn carriages. It's possible these are meant to take tourists around, although I didn't see any riding any.

There were also collections of imperial clothing, and the opportunity to try them on (which I opted out of).

The ticket to the citadel also provided access to a nearby museum, which I decided to use my remaining time to check out. On the walk there, I passed huge collections of American tanks and airplanes.

The museum was pretty small and mostly consisted of one large open room with a collection of imperial treasures and furniture. It was interesting to see the pieces the museum held, although there wasn't much information or context given in English.

As mid afternoon approached, I made my way to my next bus station, headed even further north to the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, a recently opened nature attraction that is home to a number of huge and beautiful caves including the world's largest cave (which could apparently hold a whole block of New York skyscrapers and in which a helicopter would be able to fly around).

The bus station was a little hectic at first. When the bus arrived to pick us up, it quickly became apparent that there wasn't enough space for all of us to fit on it. We were all ushered off the bus and after a twenty minute wait, a new larger bus appeared for us. Unlike the original minibus, this second bus was one of Vietnam's many sleeper bus, which meant that we had a lot more space as everyone had their own sleeper compartment.

We arrived in the evening to Phong Nha at the Easy Tiger Hostel. This hostel is owned by the people who originally started to build tourism in the area. The hostel was probably my favourite place that I stayed in my trip (homestay excluded). It had a huge social area, live music every other night and very knowledgable staff who provided a ton of information on the area and seemed to really care about ensuring the area wasn't damaged by tourism in the way other places were. They instead seemed to be encouraging local tourism, giving lots of informations about locally owned restaurants and home stays in the region.

I was booked for their National Park Tour the next day, so headed to bed early in preparation for an early start.

The next morning, a number of other travellers and I boarded the buses and headed towards the national park. The scenery was stunning, with a number of Karst mountains enveloping the nearby deep blue river. 

We began the trip with a quick detour to a small memorial known as the Cave of Eight Voluntary Youths. The Vietnam war seemed to have touched even the furthest reaches of the country and in 1972, eight young volunteers were locked inside a cave after 1000 tons of rocks collapsed and closed the entrance. The youths were unable to be saved and died inside the cave. Now the memorial marks their deaths with a small temple.

After this, we headed to Paradise Cave (Thiên Đường Cave), a breathtakingly large cave that winds on for 31km, although only 1km is open to this to tourists who aren't doing overnight tours. The cave was only discovered in 2005 and has been open to the public since 2010.

The cave could be entered through a tiny staircase leaving through a narrow hole in the rocks (I'm impressed someone was able to discover find this cave!). This humble entrance did nothing to prepare you for the site inside.

The inside of the cave was impossibly big, with thousands of stalactites and stalagmites that gave the appearance of the cave melting away, as if you were inside a Dali painting.

Although by no means the biggest cave in the area, the scale was incredible, and the photos I'd seen before had done little to prepare me for the atmosphere inside.

One of the many massive stalactite columns within the cave.

Although we went with a tour group, everyone was soon split up enough that soon there was nobody else in sight and it felt like I had the massive enclosure to myself.

The cave wasn't fully immersive as you had to walk along these wooden pathways, dotted with neon lights, but this didn't take much away from the experience. Apparently if you do the overnight tour here, you get to walk further past these wooden paths and guide your way by the light of your own head torches.

We were given just the right amount of time to meander around the cave without feeling rush, but without feeling bored by the end. After Paradise cave, we embarked to a place called Dark Cave for the final part of the tour. Dark Cave was situated alongside the river and the scenery of the vegetation covered karst mountains rising out of the turquoise water was stunning.

Before entering the cave, we were treated to a huge feast of vegetables, rice, grilled meats, herbs and rice paper wrappers, all presented on a giant banana leaf wrapped plate. The food was amazing and a real sight to behold.

Dark Cave ended up being my highlight of the tour, although unfortunately I was unable to photograph it due to the nature of the journey. Despite the very chilly weather, we all changed into bathing suits, and were marched in a shivering line to a zip line over the river. One by one, we were attached to the zip line and zoomed down along the river to the entrance of the cave, surrounded by the beautiful Karsts as we descended. To enter the cave, we had to swim briefly in the river which everyone was incredible reluctant to do on account of the cold weather. However, the guides promised that the water was warmer than it looked, and the swim was surprisingly bearable, once you plucked up the courage to jump in.

Upon entering the cave, we shuffled along the slipper paths at the side deeper into the cave guided by head torches on our helmets. As we went in deeper, the cave became narrower and muddier. Soon we reached a narrow mud tunnel which was only accessible by everyone walking in single file. This tunnel soon transformed into a river of mud (comparisons to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory were abundant), which we had to wade, and then swim across. The mud was a very strange consistency and it felt like swimming in pudding. The mud was so thick that if you relaxed your muscles, your legs immediately floated to the top of the water so that you could sit up right in the mud with no effort. For some reason, the temperature of the cave increased a lot on the inside of the cave, so the mud river was surprisingly warm and comfortable, although it did leave us all covered in a pretty thick layer of mud.

After messing around in the mud for a bit, including a brief period where everyone turned off their headlamps so that we were enveloped in complete and utter darkness, we headed back to the entrance, rinsing ourselves off on the way.

At the entrance to the cave, we all boarded on kayaks to paddle ourselves back to land. The quality of the kayaks left a little to be desired and many of us found ourselves turning around at various intervals and having to realign ourselves.

After getting off the kayaks, there was one more zip line to try. Unlike the first one, where we were harnessed one, this one was just made up of a handlebar which you held onto, before letting go and dropping into the river below. 

After changing back into our warm clothes, we were treated to some warm tea and some kind of Vietnamese spirit. Then, some huge wooden vats were brought out and filled with boiling water and a number of herbs for us to soak our feet in.

The next morning was the New Year's Eve, and you could really feel the whole area closing down. The hostel I was staying in shut its doors by noon, but I had the whole day to explore the area, as I wasn't getting a night bus to Hanoi until around nine in the evening. The people at the hostel desk gave me a map of the farmland, which was marked with a number of small farms that served food and beer to tourists. The suggested path was something like 14km long and obviously meant for people to travel along on bicycle or motorbike. However, I had a lot of time to kill, and with everything else closing down, decided to walk along it. The weather had suddenly turned warm and sunny and I was looking forward to enjoying the outdoors. The receptionist warned me that many of the restaurants were probably closed for the New Year, but I decided to go for it anyway.

There walk passed many yellow-green rice fields that were really beautiful.

I know that in China and Taiwan, people clean out their houses before the New Year, and this seemed to be what many Vietnamese people were doing too. Some of the roads were dotted with people sweeping away garbage and burning it in piles, and the route here was pretty smoky.

I really loved the atmosphere here, and it felt a world away from the bigger cities I'd visited. As tourism is fairly new to the area, the locals all took a big interest in me, with hundreds of people saying high to me, and a number of children pointing to my camera and asking me to take a picture. Along the way, I was constantly greeted by huge smiles, 'Hello's and 'Where are you from?'s and was feeling really great.

Soon the cement roads disappeared and turned into dirt paths, some of which were a little difficult to navigate due to the pools of mud. Eventually, save for a few scooters, I was the only person around and the atmosphere was really peaceful. I don't think many people walk this route, as many Vietnamese people with a better command of English asked me if I was lost or if I needed a ride. I was also greeted by one American girl who lives in the area and apologetically explained that she would have given me a ride, but as it was New Year's Eve, she was already pretty drunk, and didn't feel comfortable giving rides to other people.

Soon, signs for a place called 'The Pub with Cold Beer' appeared, and I decided to make this my ultimate destination. Fortunately the signs were pretty frequent and served as a good motivator when it seemed like the roads were never going to end.

Along the way, I passed a number of farmers tending their fields.

The distances on the signs for the Pub With Cold Beer grew ever smaller, although I began to feel that they were growing a little liberal with their interpretation of '500' metres.

Eventually, I arrived, and was pleasantly surprised to see that it was open! The 'Pub' was actually a local farm which provided a number of food dishes and the eponymous bottles of cold beer. I bumped into some people from the hostel here (who I later bumped into in Hanoi and Cat Ba Island at various points) and we enjoyed some really amazing fried rice and grilled pork with delicious peanut sauce.

After relaxing at the Pub for a while, I began to make my journey back to the town centre. Although the 14 kilometres there were pretty doable, my legs were definitely beginning to feel the stress on the root back. I also gradually grew tired of saying hello to everyone I passed, and I'm pretty sure my mouth was beginning to ache from smiling at people.

Nevertheless, the weather was great and the beautiful scenery was enough to keep me going!

I arrived back in the town centre as the sun was setting. I took up shop in one of the few open restaurants (where the owners seemed to be really enjoying the huge influx of customers they had who were waiting for the bus with nowhere else to go) and spent my remaining hours sipping on Vietnamese coffee (complete with condensed milk) and eating noodles.