Hue too hot, Hue to sweaty!

After returning from the beautiful mountains of SaPa, there has been one common them, insanely hot temperatures! Due to the combination of our fatigue from a miserably hot overnight train ride (the AC was was broken for 2 hours!), we spent most of the day in Hanoi resting and preparing for our journey to Hue (pronounced 'way', get the title now?!), although we did have two important stops. Back to Bun Bo Nam Bo (that's 3 times in 3 days in Hanoi if you're counting, thanks again Jeff!) and a sweltering walk through the Sahara desert, or at least that's what it felt like, to find Ca Phe Giang, a hole in the wall place in Hanoi that makes a coffee with whipped egg whites. It may sound weird, but I assure you it was one of the most delicious drinks ever to touch my lips.

Just as we got back from our coffee, a monsoon struck Hanoi (no, seriously) that kept us in the dark for the rest of the night, but thanks to the Gillam's we had an intense evening of Settlers of Catan while wearing our headlamps for light!



Our journey to Hue the next day was fortunately not disturbed by the weather, but when we arrived by 10am I swear it felt like it was over 110 degrees! Nevertheless we braved the heat and headed over to the local market. The produce part of the market was quite a site to see and a smell to be remembered, both for good and for bad. We saw cucumbers that must have been 3 feet long with a diameter of over 6 inches, enormous baskets of garlic that could be found by your nose 300 feet away, and of course my new favorite, mangos! After epically failing to buy an overpriced coconut, I decided to buy a fresh mango for a little snack thinking it would be sliced up for me to eat (not because I'm snooty, because I asked him to cut it before I paid for it!). Instead, the man simply passed me a machete (ok, just a large knife, but machete sounds cooler, right?) and him and his friends laughed hysterically as I attempted to peel and slice the mango, all the while with a stream of sweat pouring off of my chin.

Since it was unbearably hot outside, we didn’t have the opportunity to visit all of the tombs and pagodas in Hue (though they’re not really our cup of tea anyways), but did make time to stop at one. While we hadn't lived through it ourselves, we read about Thich Quang Duc, a man that some of you may remember as the 'burning monk'. On June 11, 1963 Duc drove from his pagoda in Hue to Saigon, poured gasoline over his body and set himself on fire in the middle of a crowded intersection in protest of the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government. The act was captured on camera and spread throughout the World causing intense reactions. One witness, a New York Times reporter that was covering the War in Vietnam, describes the scene below:

"I was to see that sight again, but once was enough. Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning human flesh; human beings burn surprisingly quickly. Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were now gathering. I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think…. As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him."

The car that Duc drove to Saigon is on display at this pagoda in Hue, where he is revered as a hero. I cannot speak to the politics of the time or the feelings that people had when they saw this happen but even in briefly seeing the car and reading about the event I can feel the determination that this man felt for his cause and a sickness inside that situation was so bad as to cause this horrific death.

After the market, a failed attempt at getting a good meal at Bun Bo Hue (not nearly as tasty as Bun Bo Nam Bo), and the worst boat tour recommendation ever, we decided to call it an afternoon and relax a bit in the comfort of our hotel room while catching up on our new favorite old TV show West Wing (btw, if you're ever out of the country and need to access Netflix or Hulu, Hide My Ass VPN will do the trick wonderfully!).

Hue's one saving grace was the experience that we had at dinner. At the recommendation of a few websites and blogs we visited a small family run restaurant called Lac Thien. The food at Lac Thien was delicious, spring rolls, Bancakes (basically fried tortillas stuffed with beef) and stir fry with crunch noodles topped with an amazing peanut sauce, but the food wasn't the reason we came (shocker of the century, I know). We came to visit the store owner and see what all the hype was about. Thien (Lac, the surname, is written first for Vietnamese names) has an amazing story. He is the second eldest of 8 children born to a mother that had limited hearing. Thien and 6 of his siblings were born deaf. However this hasn't stopped him from living, in fact he has one of the most infectious personalities I've ever come across. He wears a smile from ear to ear, the ease with which he communicates with you is astonishing, and the way that he engages customers makes you never forget the man. Thien told us his life story through pictures, he introduced us to his mother, sister, and one of his six daughters, and then he gave us a bottle opener that he constructed and signed with his name and address. We aren't the only visitors that have received this treatment, Thien seems to treat every customer like part of his family. In return, he only asks one thing. Take this bottle opener with you wherever you may travel, and send him pictures of where it has been. He then showed us photo albums of all of the customers that have sent him pictures since he opened the restaurant in 1990, in front of the Eiffel Tower, Golden Gate Bridge, and inside the borders of Cuba to name a few. One picture that we didn't see was a picture of Thien's bottle opener on a safari, so that's our goal now. To get an amazing picture with the bottle opener in front of an elephant, a lion, or maybe a lion chasing an elephant, and send that picture to Thien along with a picture from each of the countries that we visit on this trip. People like Thien inspire us and remind us that life is a beautiful thing and we should cherish every moment of it and not take things for granted. Sammar and I are blessed with wonderful families, amazing friends, and the ability to take this incredible trip and meet people like Thien. If you are ever in Vietnam, I urge to you to stop by Hue for at least an evening and visit Lac Thien so that you can experience this for yourselves.

Southeast Asia