Hue

A few weeks ago, I went off to Hue to do some fraud investigations. Yes, they sometimes lie about family relationships in Vietnam. This was my reason for going to Hue, and all I will say about that in particular. I managed to take a few pictures while I was there.


As for the region itself, Hue is in the dead center of Vietnam if you look from south to north. Hue is also the historical capital of Imperial Vietnam, the seat of the royal empire. Before the French built a citadel around it, Hue was known for its own forbidden city. Now that Vietnam is as much a war as it is a country (to most Americans, anyway), Hue evokes images of U.S. Marines taking back the citadel in 1968 after it was overrun by the Viet Cong during the famous Tet Offensive. Two of my college history professors won their Navy Crosses there as young Marine officers.

The citadel itself is typical of early industrial age fortresses, with its masonry and block construction, and angles intended to thwart climbers and provide vantage points for enfilading fire. From the outside it is quite formidable. On the inside, it is truly an ancient city. I only spent enough time there to take a few pictures, and look at the pockmarks caused by bullets and larger projectiles that still mar the outer walls halfway between the parapets and the moat.

The topography of Hue reminded me of North Carolina in micro. Starting at the South China Sea, the area is largely sand dunes that move inland for a few miles in some places. There is also a small barrier isthmus similar NC's Outer Banks. Moving a couple miles inland, the land flattens out into vast rice paddies, with small depot villages and communes interpersed in the causeways and islands bewteen the paddies. This is the lowland area. Move just a couple miles further inland and you come to a piedmont of sorts, where rice gives way to both vegetable farming and a few small industries. Work your way just a couple more miles west, and the mountains of the central highlands rise sharply.



Hue is full of ghosts. In Vietnam, the people live among the dead. They commune with them, talk to them, feed them during holidays, and worship them. Vast cemeteries in the sand dunes remind me of literally how long people have lived here and fished the sounds, farmed the paddies. Most of the evidence of the "American War" are gone. Our soldiers built temporary bunkers and bases out of sand and soil, and one or two seasons were enough to completely erase them. Years before, the French built more permanent structures of concrete. Their old bunkers and fortresses still stand scattered in the rice paddies around Hue, testament to the French intention of staying indefinitely. There are ghost towns as well, empty communes giving silent testimony to the shortcomings of the commune system. Most of the former inhabitants moved to the larger population centers to pursue more fruitful strategies in a country that proclaims communism, but practices free enterprise, sometimes in its purest forms.

Hue is one of the hottest places I can remember. Baghdad was hot, but Hue throws in a healthy mix of humidity that literally makes you want to gasp for air. Even the evenings are sultry, due to a weaker than expected sea breeze. Saigon is surprisingly cooler than Hue and other central region cities like Da Nang. Walking and sweating down one of the main thoroughfares on a hot night, I pass by numerous bars and shops that seem to beckon to old soldiers who come back here looking for what, I do not know. Maybe old friends, buddies. Maybe some kind of absolution. The DMZ bar is full of 60-something American men.


Around here, not all ghosts are Vietnamese.