Huế — A Tale of 13 Emperors
I can’t help feeling a slight sense of irony as the train rumbled through what was once the DMZ at 5:30am. Passengers barely awake. The coach heavy with the stench of urine and the putrid smell of durian. We pass another military graveyard and monument to the fallen and cross yet another river, a new bridge being built alongside the current. Farmers are already in their rice paddies and fisherman rowing their boats in the rivers. This is an atmospheric, beautiful place no doubt, which makes it hard to imagine the sounds and scenes of battle. The Vietnamese however, don’t seem to dwell on the American/Vietnam war, as much as I had imagined they would. There is very little sign that anything significant had happened in this place apart from the tourist tours and the many old people in the towns missing limbs or younger ones with obvious Agent Orange birth defects.
We had just left Huề, the imperial city. The capital of southern Vietnam for the Nguyen family that ruled Vietnam for nearly 100 years. Over this century, there were in total an astounding 13 kings. The longest ruling king being Tự Đức, who ruled for 36 years. The lives of these kings reads like something out of Game of Thrones. Continously under threat of falling out of favour with the bureaucrats (mandarins) and getting murdered or tiptoeing around the French imperialists, their legacy of elaborate tombs and dilapidated temples still survives today.
Here’s a whirlwind summary of the lives of these emperors:
The first emperor, Gia Long, established his palace at Huề and was said to have had 800 elephants as part of the palace’s defenses. His successor Minh Manh had over 500 concubines where legend has it, he would sleep with five of them each night. Minh Manh is famous for having banned missionaries in Vietnam much to the irritation of the French. Minh Manh’s son, Thiệu Trị, went one step further and imprisoned Spanish and French missionaries which resulted in a military response from France. The French in turn easily defeated the Vietnamese due to their inferior equipment. Thiệu Trị is said to have entombed himself with all of his childless wives.
Tự Đức, the longest ruling king, was the last to rule independently before the French started to exert their control on the country. Impotent due to a bout of smallpox, Tự Đức was considered a great romantic. He was succeeded by his nephew, Dục Đức, who was in power for a mere 3 days before being poisoned by the mandarins. They had considered him unfit to rule due to his debauched antics. Next up: Hiep Hoa, didn’t fare much better and reigned for a total of four months. He was forced to commit suicide by officials after signing over Vietnam to the French as a protectorate.
Hiep Hoa’s successor and youngest son, Kiến Phúc, was just 15 when he inherited the throne and lasted for a total eight months before being poisoned by his adopted mother. Hàm Nghi, the eighth emperor, reigned for one year (1884–1885) before he was exiled to Algeria, where he later died at the ripe old age of 71. Before Hàm Nghi was sent to Algeria, he was kidnapped by the chief mandarin — Tôn Thất Thuyết — and taken to the mountains in an effort to use him as a figurehead for the anti-French revolutionary movement. His successor and brother Đồng Khánh was installed as emperor by the French and was seen as a French sympathiser which did not sit well with the Vietnamese. He reigned for 4 years.
Emperor number 10, Thành Thái, was less amenable to the French and resisted them passively. However, to show that he was friendly with the French he would cut his hair in a western-style and was the first emperor to learn to drive a car. It is said he would often sneak out of the palace to talk to the local people to understand their lives under the French occupation. In order to avoid constant scrutiny from the ever-increasing French spies in the city, he pretended to be insane. Seen as a harmless lunatic, he tried to build up resistance. When the French discovered this, they forced him to abdicate his position on the throne due to insanity. He died in Saigon in 1954 after returning from Reunion Island where he had been exiled previously.
Thành Thái’s son, Duy Tân, came to power at the age of 7 and reigned for 9 years. Following in the footsteps of his father, he too tried to resist the French colonists and was eventually discovered and sent to join his father in exile on Reunion Island. Ironically, he died in a plane crash in 1945, on his way back to Vietnam to oppose Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh army on behalf of the French. Emperor number 12, Khải Định, was very unpopular with the Vietnamese as he was seen as a French sympathiser and used as a puppet figurehead. He suffered poor health and became a drug addict, before dying from tuberculosis in Huề.
The last of the Vietnamese emperors, Bảo Đại, died in France in 1997. He was responsible for renaming the country Vietnam. The Japanese ousted the French during World War II and ruled the country through Bảo Đại. He eventually was forced to abdicate in 1945 when the Japanese surrendered, but continued to be chief of state until he was ousted by the prime minister in a fraudulent referendum in 1955 — the number of votes cast against him were higher than the total votes cast. Four of his five children still live in France today.
Much of the Perfume City and the citadel at Huề was destroyed in 1968 by the Americans during the Tet Offensive. It is nonetheless a fascinating place to visit. One can only imagine what it must have been like during the height of the Nguyen dynasty. Efforts are under way by the Vietnamese government to restore the palace, even though, in some parts there is virtually nothing left.
Aside from visiting the citadel, we also made a side trip out to see the fourth emperor Tự Đức’s tomb. Set just outside Huề, the tomb was also used by Tự Đức as a vacation home, where he would spend time hunting, fishing and relaxing in the peaceful surroundings. As strange as it sounds, nobody actually knows where Tự Đức’s body was buried within the complex. Even though there is a place marking his tomb, his body was never found. It is thought that he did this in order to prevent his body from being destroyed or removed by any subsequent rulers.
As we travel through Vietnam, we have noticed that each region has its own food specialities and even its own beer. Huề is no different, and served up one of our most memorable meals which we happened upon by chance in the backstreets of the city. Nem Lui is minced pork wrapped around lemon grass and grilled on an open fire. As with many Vietnamese dishes, it is served with sheets of rice paper, sweet, pickled daikon and carrot and fresh herbs. You then roll the minced pork up in the rice paper along with the pickles and herbs and dip it in a sweet and salty dipping sauce. It is absolutely delicious and is best washed down with an ice cold local Huda beer.
Most tourists take a tour of the DMZ in this area, but our time was running short and we still hadn’t seen any of the north of the country so we decided to head north out of Huề on the train. Partly because our previous train trip to Hoi An was so comfortable and partly because the train is a lot less terrifying than the dodgy roads. And so we found ourselves waiting at the station at 5:00am for our 5:11am train. It appeared exactly on time which is quite a feat, considering it had rattled all the way up the line from Ho Chi Minh City the day before. This train trip proved to be a little less comfortable than the first, since we weren’t able to get our own sleeper cabin and instead booked soft-seats in a compartment full of people. It was no less interesting though and probably more scenic as the windows are larger and easy see out of.
Along the way we passed river-after-river and miles-and-miles of rice paddies, mountains and villages. Our destination was the small town of Ninh Binh and our journey took 9 hours in total. Ninh Binh is the hopping off point for the area known as Tam Cốc (pronounced Tam Cop). Known as the “Hao Long Bay on land”, the rural area is studded with 300m high, limestone karst formations, surrounded by tiny rice, fish and duck farms. It is a spectacular, peaceful place. Getting there from Ninh Binh however, was less than peaceful. Our taxi driver took the long route, as usual, promptly “got lost” and pretty much scared the bejeebers out of anything that moved on the side of the road by blasting his hooter at them. He even tried to scare the piles of freshly cut rice right off of the road, before he ploughed straight through. We did eventually find our hotel and ended the evening off in the pool with beer for me and a round of piña coladas for the girls.
Tam Coc is one of those places where you could probably lose two weeks and not even notice. It is incredibly laid back, the people are very friendly and there is very little to do apart from visiting a few local temples and taking a ride in a sampan down one of the many rivers that wind around the hills. It was exactly what the doctor had ordered after wandering the busy streets of Huề
After soaking up the atmosphere of the countryside for 3 nights, we made our way to Hanoi on the train one last time for our last few days in Vietnam.
