Five flavours: Day 4 Hue

Soundtrack: “The Lovecats”, The Cure

Five flavours: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, spicy. I must admit that over the last few years bitter and sour had become almost synonymous for me, thanks to flavours like bitter lemon, I’ve been using bitter to mean sour, and sour to mean bitter. Call it getting old and lazy. So I went back and looked it up: lemon juice/citrus is sour, coffee is bitter. Sour is related to acidity, bitter is more about the other chemistry. It gets confusing with things like beer: beer is acidic, but with the addition of hops it’s bitter. Lemon juice is sour, but lemon rind is bitter. A whisky sour cocktail has lemon juice and is sour, but a lemon lime and bitters is what exactly?

At breakfast, much to the amusement/bemusement of L, I gave myself a taste test. I’ll leave talking about the difference between amusement and bemusement to another day, but from what I understand you can be both at the same time. I took a glass of lemon juice, and a glass of iced black coffee, and had L take photos to see if I reacted differently. Of course, science only goes so far, as from the first sip I could taste the lemon juice had been sweetened, while the coffee, being Vietnamese black coffee, was just delicious. So instead of some sort of objective measurement of my reactions, we established that I need to work on being able to screw my face up in more than one way.

For our last day in Hue we took it easy. For better or worse, Hue is rather quiet for tourists. Once you do all the old Imperial things, and checked out the river, you’re basically done. It’s a shame as Hue has some amazing food, it just seems to need a few more things to do between meals.

So we hit the mall. Japan’s AEON opened a Hue mall in 2024, four floors of shiny shops, amusements, and food for families. Chain stores, name brands and a petting zoo are all part of the attraction. It too was a little quiet, it seemed to be in that state where it’s been open long enough that the initial excitement has worn off, so local folks aren’t likely to just drop in on a Tuesday morning. It likely gets busy on weekends and evenings. The currently have a deal where foreigners who spend 500,000 VND or more get a free souvenir, a tiny non la (conical hat) keyring, once you give the centre enough details they can probably steal your identity. I grabbed a couple of t-shirts at Uniqlo and hit the target, so if my identity does get cloned hopefully the world’s most purple t-shirt was worth it (and to whoever is does steal my ID, please feel free to pay off my credit card).

We spent a fun hour in the cat cafe, quite cheap too: less than $10 AUD for an hour with some entertaining kitties and unlimited drinks. As it was only us we met pretty much all the felines: there were a couple of mainecoons who were yin and yang, a relaxed ginger and a frenetic white; a couple of tabby coloured flat faced cats who were playful; a small flat faced cat who loved to be stroked under the chin; along with various fluffballs and a tabby that spent the whole hour just sitting on the floor, tail pointed to the door, just looking into the room. None of the cats seemed to be particularly needy, they’d let us come to them but didn’t really come to us, and all seemed fed, cleaned, and groomed. It was a nice way to spend an hour.

We found a bookshop with a small section of English books, though the Vietnamese titles included at least three editions of Tom Sawyer, two editions of The Godfather, as well as the obligatory Rebecca Yarros. In Vietnamese, Exploding Kittens translates to Meo Boom, now you know. Another shop had a bunch of random pop culture and weird tacky items, alongside random health products (cheese and mint toothpaste anyone? or how about a butt mask, whatever that is). For tomorrow’s road trip I’ll try the cheese flavoured tempura prawn heads, as well as the tom yum lotus chicken feet snacks I got the other day. Stay tuned. I was very amused by the little serves of instant coffee packaged in little F5 keys, it tickled the nerd in me (for normal folks, the F5 key is often used to refresh the screen or view).

The piped music was interesting, a mix of cultures, one minute it’s dance tunes and JLo, next it was marching band music. I guess at least it wasn’t xmas carols. There was a petting zoo, which included a play area whose floor was covered in dried corn, and there were little grinding machines. We didn’t get to see if they actually worked or were just for show. The star of the show appeared to be the capybara, who from a distance didn’t seem overly traumatised by the attention, but we figure if given the choice would have preferred to be somewhere more quiet.

The food court had Korean, Singaporean, Thai, Japanese, Dominos, Jolibee, the colonel, but amusingly no Vietnamese food, so we went for Japanese. The restaurant had a weird ordering system, you got a tray, ordered, got a menu stand with a fold-back clip marking your selection, wandered around the counter, and eventually paid. Then you took the tray to your table, still with the menu stand, and after a while your food was delivered. I think we would have struggled with the system even if we spoke the language. I got a passable pork katsudon, I’d have liked some soy or other condiment with it but I probably had to pick that up at some other point when I was wandering with my tray.

The AEON does have a small archery range, where for 100,000 VND we could fling 10 arrows at a target no more than 10 metres away. I did okay given it’s been a year since I last did any archery, it was a generic bow, the arrows weren’t my size and several were mis-fletched. All hit the target, one strayed into the outer black but the rest were fair, and i hit the centre on my fourth shot so probably should have stopped there. There appears to be a more professional range in Da Nang that we’re hoping to visit while we’re hanging down in Hoi An.

What should have been my afternoon nap time was spent finishing up yesterday’s blog, so I hope you, dear reader (both of you) appreciate the sacrifice I made. I finished blogging up on the rooftop bar, enjoying a complimentary pea flower tea that was sweet and fruity. It’s a tough life but sometimes it just has to be done.

Dinner was at the seafood restaurant across the road. Wanting to try something else, we went for steamed mussels with lemongrass, ginger and chilli, and the baby lobster with cheese. After ordering, the staff came back with a mobile phone, and at the other end was probably their lobster supplier, who asked us how many lobsters we wanted and told us the price per kilo. The mussels were wonderful, little parcels of goodness in an incredibly tasty lemongrass and ginger broth, with just a hint of chilli. We then had a bit of a wait, possibly the lobster guy got stuck in traffic, but this was eventually delivered, cooked with capsicum and dusted with cheese powder. A little unusual but also delicious, the lobster was fresh and meaty, the capsicum slightly sweet, and the dusting powder gave a salty tang. Fortunately this time they found us a couple of little forks and some nut crackers, so we didn’t have to try to get all the good food out with teeth and toothpicks.

This basically wraps up Hue, as tomorrow we’re taking the three or so hour car ride to Hoi An. Maybe it’s just the place we booked, or the time of year, but it’s definitely felt quiet. The hotel breakfast hasn’t seemed to be more that about a quarter full, the shops and restaurants along the street have rarely seemed full. I’d probably be happy to come back to Hue at some point, but can’t see it becoming a must-go place.

The hotel room has been okay, the aircon could be a little colder and stronger, the blackout curtains let in a little morning light around the top (the room has a lot of window). The bed is weirdly huge: instead of a queen they’ve put two doubles together making one seriously wide platform, but what’s most impressive is they have bedding that fits this arrangement. This bed could fit us both, plus the yin and yang mainecoons, and the capybara, with room to spare. The shower has a ceiling outlet that drops a good amount of hot water, though perhaps too hot, we haven’t taken the temperature lever above half way. The toilet seat has a contour, making it one of the most comfortable toilet seats I’ve ever encountered. With facilities like this I could definitely cope with 5 days underground, though I still wouldn’t want to share it with 199 other folks. There’s only a bedside table on one side, and the power sockets are in the bedboard right in the middle of the bed.