We’ve just set off on our first far-away adventure since Covid struck. Rather perversely my thoughts turn to our last big trip, to Vietnam. I somehow didn’t have the heart write about it then. Now I do. So while I gather my thoughts about Madrid, and as we move on to Buenos Aries, I look back on Hanoi with so many good memories. I cannot say that the information in the practical stuff still holds. But I leave it there – just in case. 

Hue, Vietnam February 2020

Who knew that Vietnam had it’s own forbidden city? Temples and palaces and gates, one hundred and forty-eight buildings, hidden behind six-metre high and two-and-a-half-kilometre long walls. Heavily bombed during the French and American wars the Imperial Citadel is now a shadow of it’s former self (only twenty buildings survived) but we like run-down and past-it’s-best, ‘how are the mighty fallen’ kind of atmospheres, that allow us to be directors of our own film-sets and fill in seemingly forgotten details of history.

We went through the Ngo Mon Gate to the Thai Hoa Palace. Beyond that to the Halls of the Mandarins and the ruins of Can Chanh Palace. Thrones. Ornate wood. Lacquered scarlet columns. Hints of opulence, excess, vanity, ego. Fascinating old photographs did more than hint – they showed it exactly as it was – or as they wanted it to be – puppet rulers playing at being kings.

Meals for instance. The emperor had three a day. Breakfast at 06.30. Lunch at 11.00 and dinner at 17.00. All meals were prepared by a group of cooks from the Royal Kitchen; and each consisted of fifty different dishes, made by a different cook whose name was stuck on the meal’s closed container. The rice for the emperor had to be ‘quite white’ and chosen grain by grain! His chopsticks were made from young bamboo (ivory was considered to be too heavy) and discarded after every meal. The emperor Minh Mang drank a special kind of medicated alcohol named ‘Five times of sexual intercourse a night’. Perhaps because, as a rule, he had at his side five concubines while relaxing. Each had a different duty: one prepared tobacco, betels and areca, one fanned, one  massaged, one sang lullabies, and one implemented his orders immediately. Minh Mang lived only to the age of fifty, but had one hundred and forty-two children.

It was the outer areas I liked most; away from the tour groups and dotted with the odd few who had the luxury of time. Crumbling walls. Grounds overgrown with weeds. Roof tiles reminiscent of candied orange-peel. Prancing dragons and proud phoenixes. Still moats and large ponds. A one-time pleasure pavilion, now a cafe, surrounded by a lily pond and shimmering carp. Gardens with bonsai and potted plants. A world of colour, now derived from flowering plants and textured, decaying plaster, once from the red and green clothes favoured by concubines, the yellow reserved for the emperor, the Queen Mother and the Queen, and the blue silk dresses embroidered with flowers worn by the eunuchs. Scents now from blossoms, once from essential oils, tobacco and eucalyptus wood. Sounds – now of selfie-taking tourists crying out and laughing, then of musicians and theatre performances. The forbidden purple city, a citadel within a citadel within a citadel, a Russian doll of power and intrigue, glimpses of which are perhaps still possible in quiet corners.

We wandered for several hours, dallying, resting, re-living. More than a ruin, much more than rubble, an insight into the sadness and illusion of power. Glorious to visit, the complex left me with a feeling of gratitude that I’m an ordinary mortal!

Practical Stuff.
There are some places to buy drinks and ice creams but we found only a couple of places to buy anything of substance to eat (sandwiches) – Highland Coffee right at the end, just before the exit, and a place near the Co Ha Gardens. The audio guide did not add much to the experience.