Hue à la Duc

Hue is an elegant and vibrant city that has embraced tourism. It's a bit of a jolt after Dong Ha, Land of No Tourists Whatsoever, where we pretty much felt like rock stars (EVERY kid said hello, every group of teenagers stared and giggled, every adult smiled and waved). But while I was concerned that we might not get to scratch below the tourist trade's surface here, I could not have been more mistaken -- thanks to Mr. Duc.

Duc runs a one-man taxi service with a small motorbike - an upgrade from the cyclo bicycle-taxi he used to pedal around the city. Chuck met him several years ago during a visit to Hue and they've been friends ever since. Being friends of Mr. Chuck landed four of us a dinner invitation to Duc's home where we met his lovely family and ate a fantastic home-cooked Vietnamese feast of spring rolls, fish, squid, noodles and home-grown bananas. The meal was made more atmospheric by the muggy-hot weather, the hum of insects and evening bird calls, and by a power outage that left everyone in Duc's village using candlelight. We weren't just a world away - it felt like we'd stepped back in time.

This morning Duc recruited his friends and arranged a countryside motorbike tour for Chuck, Cindy and me. The back of a bike at 30 miles per hour, buzzing down skinny streets and country lanes along the Perfume River, is a perfect way to experience the area. We also got a culture-and-history fix, stopping at tombs of two Nguyen Dynasty emperors set in serene park-like grounds. As we strolled through the temples and ruins, butterflies danced in the trees around us and the air was sweet and heavy with plumeria. It felt alternately like Disneyland and holy ground.

Next we went from the sacred to the mundane to the exquisite: we left the tombs, zipped back to the hotel, stopped for a lunch where I ate my body weight in fried noodles, then lumbered off in a cyclo to visit Hue's best known landmark, the Citadel. Though seriously damaged during the Tet Offensive in 1968, 80 out of 300 structures survived and a number have been restored to their 19th century appearance with elaborate painting, carvings, mosaic designs and tiled roofs.

Tomorrow we depart Hue for Hanoi. We'll see Duc again before we go, and perhaps take another quick spin on the motorbike. (I LIKE motorbikes! Who knew?) I've put together a small photo album for him with pictures from last night's visit. (Yes - I can print them, but I still can't post them. Sorry!) How wonderful it's been to get beyond the surface and to have the privilege of seeing Hue from the inside out. Vive le Duc!