My solo day is almost over, but has gone well so far. After my last post, I hung out in the hotel room for a while longer, finishing the David Baldacci book that I’ve been reading and watching the made-for-tv movie (I think) “Into Thin Air,” which makes for the second Mt. Everest themed movie I’ve seen on this trip, while doing jumping jacks and stretches.
I finally ventured out into Hue around 11:30, walking back to the Citadel and to the Forbidden Purple City where I roamed around for an hour or so. Hue apparently has money from South Korea to do restoration work, so there’s a lot of that going on. Parts of the Forbidden City are marvelously restored, parts are being worked on now, and parts are gone entirely. Hue was hit particularly hard by the Tet Offensive in 1968–it was the longest held city–so the scars, both human and architectural, are still apparent. During our walk in the neighborhood where Huckleberry’s father grew up yesterday, every neighbor we talked to had lost someone during the Tet Offensive. The Viet Cong had marched thousands of adult males out of the city and shot them or buried them alive. Several of the buildings in the Forbidden City were heavily damaged in 68, as well as in an early battle in 1947 during an earlier phase of the war.
After browsing, I found a little outdoor cafe in the Forbidden City and stopped there for my break. I ordered a ca phe den da, which is black coffee with ice, sweetened with just a little bit of sugar. I got that instead of ca phe sua da, which is sweetened with condensed milk, since the ca phe sua da tends to be incredibly sweet here. Oh, and I also got some oreos in lieu of lunch. I spent an hour or so there enjoying the treat while catching up on my journal writing, then browsed another part of the Forbidden City before walking back to the hotel.
I managed not to be harassed too much by cyclo drivers and vendors. Walking alone means that you’re much more likely to be solicited for services or goods. I find that kind of annoying–I like hands-off customer service, which is exceedingly rare, if not impossible, to find in Vietnam. Oh well.
After a quick rest in the hotel room, I head two doors down for my massage, which is where my cultural experience of the day really began. Several in our group went there for foot massages the other day, but I kind of forgot to ask them how it was. I decided to splurge and get a full massage in addition to a foot massage. For $15 US total, I could certainly afford it. As soon as I was ushered into the massage room, I sort of regreted the splurge.
The room couldn’t have been bigger than 5 feet by 12 feet. Inside was a small massage table covered by a faded lavender bed cover and a pillow with a matching sham, hooks for clothes, and a wall-mounted fan blowing down on the table. There was no sheet for me to lay under, so I just sat on the bed waiting for my masseuse to arrive. I’m kind of modest, to say the least, and I didn’t intend to lie naked, uncovered, on the bed in a room that adjoined such a busy hallway. After much confusion, I managed to pantomime my need for a towel or sheet of some sort, which the masseuse provided. She then stood in the room expectantly, waiting for me to undress. Pantomime didn’t really help here, but thankfully I manged to dig out “you go” (chi di) from my limited vocabulary and she did leave long enough for me to undress. I decided, after another glance at the bedspread, not to take off my underwear. I figured the masseuse wouldn’t like this (indeed, she thought it bizarre), but I wasn’t confident that the table covering got changed between clients. On they stayed.
Thankfully, we got massages at the resort near Nha Trang last week, so I was expecting the masseuse to climb onto the bed and straddle me for the massage. Overall, it was a good massage–my back had been aching and now that feels much better–but under the circumstances I wasn’t quite as blissed out as I usually am during a massage. Any time I had to change position was a bit of a challenge, since my masseuse’s English seemed to be limited to “you,” “finish,” and “tip.” I am afraid I gave her a very small tip, since I wasn’t expecting that as part of the exchange. Tipping isn’t customary in most circumstances in Vietnam, so I only had really large bills and one 5000 dong bill, which is what she got. At the end of the massage, she waited for me to redress for just a minute, and then remembered that I’m a silly foreigner who likes privacy and left for just a minute while I got redressed.
From there, I was escorted to the foot massage room, where I sat on a sort of chaise lounge with a massage pad (kind of like what you might find in a Sharper Image store) for twenty minutes or so. My masseure finally came in and got started. He spoke more English than my masseuse, enough for us to establish our ages, our names, and where we’re from. We also established that I’m married (though I left out the to a woman part) and I don’t have children. I think he tried to ask me what I’d seen in Hue, but I don’t know any of the Vietnamese names for what I’ve seen and he doesn’t know any of the English names. I also think I established that my friends are from Hue, but I’m not entirely sure. I did use some of my Vietnamese, answering questions in Vietnamese whenever possible, but eventually we both realized that we’d reached the limits of our respective vocabularies and were mostly silent after that. The foot massage was worth the extra stay, and by the end I’d planned out what to say to communicate to him that I needed to break my 100,000 dong bill in order to tip him.
As I left the hotel, a foreign couple (Brits maybe?) was checking out the sign and asked for a review. I did tell them about the slight sketchiness, but recommended the foot massage. I’m not sure, but I think they passed.
Now I’m headed back to my room for a shower, which I think is in order, before the rest of the group comes back. I’m pretty hungry now (turns out oreos and ca phe den da aren’t enough for lunch) so I may spoil dinner by going to the restaurant next door for an appetizer if folks aren’t back by the time I’m out of my shower.
