Passing through Hue

A lot of visitors in Hue are only there for a brief moment, passing through on their way to Da Nang, Hoi An and other destinations in the middle of Vietnam. Although the streets of Hue are interesting, they were not our kind of streets. During the day these streets were filled with tourist busses that made a stop on one of its major heritage sites. At night, they were bustling with energetic young people drinking cheap cocktails to fuel them for all nighters.

For the short period we were in Hue, we opted for cocktails, good food and the imperial city. Perhaps going to a great restaurant was on top of our to do list after being in a place like Ninh Binh that seemed to lack eatable food.. After searching the internet for the best place (we wanted cheap and good), we chose a restaurant called “Golden Rice” and it turned out to be one of the best meals we had in Vietnam. I order the caramelized chicken which was sweet, spicy and garlicy. But let’s not talk food all day.. We visited the Imperial City in Hue. The locals seem to call it “The Citadel” or “The forbidden city of Vietnam” referring to the forbidden city in Beijing. Alas, it is nothing like it. Less grand, not as overwhelming and not so well maintained. That is at least my opinion after standing at the gates of the true Forbidden City one month earlier. If you however linger a while at this location, you see it’s own beauty and originality. No need to compare it with something it’s not. It’s on the UNESCO world heritage list for a reason and the the citadel possesses great parts of the rich Vietnamese history together with bits and pieces of it’s impressive architecture, like the red hallway below.But most of all it was a place full of color and full of remnants of former empires.  Although we probably wouldn’t return to Hue, there is much more to see (tombs). We just didn’t found sufficient time and energy to do more since spending two nights out of four on a train proved to be more exhausting than we could even imagine. As a result we skittled away one entire day sleeping. Oh well, it was very satisfying to say the least. Now we will be able to be awake at our next destination, Hoi An!

Kyoto : Geisha for a day

Did you ever see the movie Memoirs of a Geisha? If you did you’ll know Japan is truly magical. But for those who didn’t I’ll try to explain a bit how Kyoto felt for us (but seriously, you should see the movie).

Like I mentioned before, we were in Kyoto. It is the location where a big part of the movie Memoirs of a Geisha is situated but it is also a city that is packed with historical sites and UNESCO heritage. The same atmosphere you see in the movie can be experienced by walking through Kyoto. That was probably the reason why the whole city seemed to be booked out the days we wanted to stay there. It is filled with old wooden buildings that give you the feeling that time froze centuries ago. Unreal and romantic!

Another fun thing about Kyoto is that one of the tourist attractions for asian people is to dress up like a geisha. You can apparently dress up, get your make up done, walk around like that all day and have studio pictures taken for about 150 euros. This results in a city filled with geisha’s which certainly has something to it. The outcome is tourists taking pictures of tourist, like we did too funny enough.

But we’ve been busy and we were still not able to do everything that was on our to do list. We were located in the Gion area and it was only a short walk away from the Yasaka shrine, the geisha district and the Kiyomizu-dera temple which we almost by accident all saw the first evening accompanied by some green tea ice cream. Yum!

Like I mentioned before, we took a hot steaming Japanese bath, put on our Japanese PJ’s from our guesthouse called Gion Ryokan Q-beh (for those among you interested) and tried out the futon – Japanese quilted mattress that is on the floor – which was quite crappy to our taste. Maybe it is comparable to a very very hard mattress, but I generally like soft ones. The sleeping part was luckily not as bad as the mattress quality made me fear and we better get used to it because we are sleeping on futons for 5 more nights now, but yes.. We prefer European style beds. Although I must say the Japanese rooms are undoubtedly charming.

We also tried a lot of foodstuff again. We had one day on which we didn’t eat proper meals but snacked all day from little food stalls and strange things which we found on basement floors of gigantic department floors, the Nishiki food market, and grocery stores like Lawson. The food list included but was not limited to: savory pancakes, sausage on sticks, some sushi pieces, octopus balls with bonito flakes, green cake, little sweet balls on a stick. My favorite from the stalls so far are the savory pancakes but everything was actually genuinely delightful!

Talking about food again I also have to advise you to go to Hafuu Honten, which is at the moment number two on the Tripadvisor restaurant list for Kyoto. We ate wagyu beef and it was the BEST beef ever. I asked it medium and it was served with rice, a salad, some strange seafood dish, pickles, noodles and miso soup. The steak was to die for. It melted away in my mouth and I never tasted beef like this before. The picture I took is not the best, but it will give you an idea of what the food looked like. 

However, the highlight of being in Kyoto for us was the Fushimi Inari shrine. I thought there would be little more than a hundred meters of scarlet red gates to get to the top shrine, but there were a few thousands of them! I only discovered afterwards that the red gates (torii) are donated by families and companies. Overall it took us more than an hour walking under them getting to the top where we found a mirror. Somewhat strange but this object seems to be the most holy thing in the Shinto religion. Anyway, loved it! But be prepared for a lot of stairs and hordes of tourists in the beginning who all want to take 5 million pictures.

Another cool thing to see is the Nijo Castle and it is UNESCO heritage as well. But plan it earlier in your schedule because we were there at 3 pm and it already closes at four and there is quite a bit to see.

Last and in this case also least was the tea house we did today. It’s called Kasagiya and recommended by many website. Even lonely planet mentions it, so we thought we should definitely give it a try. Maybe it is me because I generally don’t like desserts (unless fruit pie and fruit salads) but it was so gross! The tea was extremely bitter and the “soups” we ordered which had to serve as a side dish with the tea were so sweet I got goosebumps just drinking it. I could not finish it. Like you can see below it was served quite cute with pickles on the side in the blue ceramic piece. But try it yourself.. I’m probably not the right person to judge it since I don’t even like chocolate, cheese cake and all kinds of other desserts people usually love.  Luckily the pricy coffee from the day before was much better.

Time for some awesome sleep on some terrible mattresses in Osaka! Looking forward to it..