Hue for the Holidays

We made the decision to visit Hue and Hoi An for the holidays in early November, partially driven by our eagerness to get a headstart exploring Vietnam beyond Hanoi as well as the availability of direct flights between Bangkok and Danang for my parents to easily join us. Both UNESCO World Heritage sites, Hue and Hoi An are rich in culture and history and they're close enough to tie together in a one-week itinerary. Of course, the real clincher was the lure of delicious food. We had read in multiple guidebooks that Hue and Hoi An had cuisines considered to be some of the best in all of Vietnam. Well, that settled it!

Below is a list of where we stayed, some notable restaurants and other highlights of our stay in Hue.

Where We Stayed
- La Residence: My parents stayed at this refurbished art-deco hotel, the former residence of the French governor when Hue was under French rule. It overlooks the Perfume River and is close to the Hue train station. A fleet of dedicated cyclo drivers can take you around the citadel and the concierge can arrange for outings to the royal mausoleums of the Nguyen Dynasty. We enjoyed a festive Christmas Eve dinner here complete with a lion dance!
- Gerbera Hotel: With nightly live music that goes late, the Gerbera may not guarantee a peaceful night's sleep but it's close to the restaurants and bars of the backpacker street. This tidy, modern hotel has agreeable room rates (usually including breakfast) and with nearly 10 floors, offers a great nighttime view of the colorfully-lit Trang Tien bridge.

Where We Ate
- Les Jardins du Carambole: This recently opened establishment in the citadel is the second from the owners of La Carambole, located on the opposite side of the Perfume River. The ground-floor veranda is an ideal setting to enjoy a glass of chilled white wine and dig into a spicy green mango salad accompanied with crunchy, light-as-air rice crackers. Treat yourself after trekking around all those tombs by ending the meal with mango and passion fruit crepes and homemade coconut ice cream.
- Hong Mai Restaurant: On the citadel-side of the Perfume River, this small local restaurant only serves one thing - banh khoai, a Hue speciality. This crispy pancake, made of rice flour and egg batter, is usually topped with pork and shrimp but we got ours with beansprouts. Top a slice of the pancake with some mint, some green starfruit, paper thin slices of unripe banana and wrap it in a leaf of lettuce, and you've got yourself a very tasty snack.
- La Boulangerie Francaise: This bakery is a perfect place to recharge after a dreary, rain soaked morning trying to find the urns of the Imperial City. Order a tasty pastry or baguette sandwich (or both!) and warm up with a hot tea while reading about the bakery's mission to provide valuable vocational training to Hue's youngsters.
- Sunshine Restaurant: At the end of backpacker street, at the corner of Chu Van An and Tran Cao Van streets, the outdoor seating at Sunshine is an ideal spot to sip a 25-cent beer and watch the evening scene go by.

What We Saw
-  Off the main drag of Le Loi, Quoc Hoc High School where a statue of former student Ho Chi Minh stands in the center of the schoolyard.
- Aside from the must-see tombs and imperial city, we really enjoyed a morning walk around the bustling Dong Ba Market and an afternoon tour of the Au Lac Vien garden house. Tours of the tombs and citadel are heavy on the structural or architectural, whereas the market and garden house differ by offering glimpses into Hue's natural beauty.

Some photos below from the market and garden house... Next in the series, we head south to Hoi An where we get a pleasant surprise!

The Imperial City

On Dec. 22, less than one week after traveling nearly 30 hours to move our life from D.C. to Hanoi, we returned to Hanoi's Noi Bai airport to board another flight, this time bound for Central Vietnam. A merciful 45 minutes later, our plane touched down in Danang, where we would start the scenic train journey to Hue. After a brief detour to the Danang bus station and an attempt at drawing a train station for our irate (and possibly intoxicated) taxi driver, we made it to the nha ga (from the French gare) just in time for the next Hue-bound train. The train took three times as long as the flight but the tracks hugged the coastline nearly the entire journey, so the view as we chugged along the East Vietnam Sea was simply stunning.

By the time we arrived, evening had begun its descent and from the taxi window, we could just make out the outlines of the citadel across the Perfume River. My parents arrived to Bangkok later that evening and over the next couple days, we made our way through the Imperial City's Forbidden Purple City in pouring rain, explored a few tombs of the Nguyen Dynasty (the last ruling Vietnamese dynasty) and visited a monastery built by Vietnamese monk Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh. Below are a few pictures of the incredible grounds of the tombs (Tu Duc, Khai Dinh, Minh Mang) as well as interesting architectural flourishes of the tomb buildings and the monastery.

Tomorrow's post will feature information about where we stayed, what we ate and more of what we saw in Hue.

 

May I proudly present...

... The Lotus and The Frog (LAF, for short)! This is a Tumblr blog Pem and I started just over a week ago, to catalog our adventures in Hanoi and beyond through photos, quotes, and plenty of anecdotes. I'm terribly overdue to share our holiday pictures and stories from Hue and Hoi An on Dolma but I hope you'll visit LAF in the meantime to see a little of what we've been up to since we arrived in Vietnam.

Chúc mừng năm mới from Hanoi!

*photo taken in the Dongba Market of Hue, Central Vietnam, Christmas 2012.