On the day that we pulled up in the city of Hue in Central Vietnam, it rained. It had been raining most of the time we were on the bus, and really from the look of the soggy streets and people of Hue, it had been raining there a while too. Not really feeling like sloshing through the streets to find a place to stay, we did exactly what the bus company expected us to do and booked a room at the hotel where they dropped us off. The oddly named Google Hotel ironically had some of the worst internet we had experienced in all of Vietnam. We reserved ourselves to being stuck in our room for a while, waiting the end of the rain.
It didn’t stop, nor did it slow, and over the next few days we remembered just how it had felt in Sihanoukville, Cambodia when it had rained, constantly for more than a week. Our skin positively swelled in the dampness, our feet squelched and slipped in thongs on slimy footpaths, we flicked mud up onto the backs of our legs and our dry clothes started to run short. On the first day, walking out onto the bridge over the river, the rain pelted down and we fumbled for ponchos. I broke mine immediately and screamed at the sky before making a hasty retreat home. The next day, in slightly better (but not by much) ponchos we braved the bridge again. The not-so-aptly named Perfume River had swelled, not so different from our damp skin. Earthy and rushing it tore beneath us, thundering its power to the riverside and those measly human constructions. Boats were madly pulled up onto shores, concrete structures were submerged in the darkness, and the sky cried and cried without end.
Unsurprisingly, this weather was the result of a typhoon. So, we made the best of our time. In brief moments of steamy sunlight, we made for the streets and wandered around in circles among the traffic and the puddles. Our main aim in Hue, the citadel, was closed due to the fragility of the building in the inclement weather. We expected, rather sadly, to miss it all together, but there’s still tomorrow.
This post originally appeared on BarefootBeachBlonde.com, the pre-evolved version of Maps And Mandalas. I’ve republished it here with its original date because I love it that much.
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