Interiors

I didn't know her name; she was of royal descent and she wore purple, perhaps to gently make the point. We had been in the Purple Forbidden City which is neither purple nor forbidden these days; We saw its grandeur and its bullet holes and watched as pretty people wandered around in fabulous outfits* or maybe just had themselves a wedding.





After suffering so much, the Imperial City of Huế is being tenderly restored to its former glories, and we were being restored too, with a meal created by the hands of a princess. Kings had wives and concubines in plenty and therefore numerous descendants, many of whom still who live in the surrounds of the old royal citadel. We saw the shrine to the family ancestors at the centre of the lady's house and learned that while one's birthday is no big deal in Vietnam, one's death day is quite the reverse. Three years after a family member dies their bones are dug up, and if they have separated and appear free from sticky remains the deceased is considered to have moved on and incarnated again. Then their bones are re-interred, and their portrait/ photo is added to the family shrine to be included in prayers and offerings. Matter remaining on the bones is not a favourable indicator of good karma, and in such a case, monks are called in to chant and pray for the deceased, the bones are reinterred and that is the end of that.

Not that her ancestors were likely to be difficult. One relative had created a thoroughly fabulous mausoleum, where I suspect his body remains undisturbed. Away from the city's hubbub and the citadel, Emperor Khải Định's tomb is a grand blend of styles.







He spent a lot of time and energy planning it, as well as making himself unpopular by raising taxes to pay for the thing; the people were not keen on him already, seeing him as a French puppet. He slept with his guard, sent all his concubines home, and had the one necessary son with his second wife. After his death from TB, said son finished the mausoleum, an extraordinary lavish creation, all majesty and mosaics. I feel for Khải Định, the one they mocked by calling the 'Bamboo Dragon'. But he created a marvellous edifice that now brings people and money to Vietnam, and once again the point is made: when it comes to eternal tourism, interior decorators will surely inherit the Earth.

Back in the heart of Huế, we sat and ate. The princess made a pumpkin soup unlike any I have tasted, savoury and delicious, and there was another soup too, later in the meal as a palate cleanser; it had a hint of anise. But for me the stars were undoubtedly the spring rolls, made with a lattice like covering of rice paper, light but very tasty. They were the best spring rolls I have ever tasted, and when I said as much to the lady, her smile broadened, deep and genuine. She reminded us all that the greatest compliment guests can pay a host is to eat everything up, and I certainly gave it my best attempt.

Stuffed and rolling out of the citadel we made our way into modern Huế, with its cool clean river, academic reputation, and slightly terrifying market. The latter is a labyrinth crying out to be used as a location in some action/thriller movie; it just lends itself to cop/perp chases. You go in, turn in some random direction, find yourself assailed by the smell of dried fish being scraped and fish sauce in vats everywhere, so pungent it invades your whole head. Then choose your goal,say for example, shoes. Find a few shoes and follow that trail. Keep following as stalls become more and more clustered with shoes, until shoes are all over everything, shelves and tables, floor to ceiling, and now you are in a corridor of shoe walls that keep getting higher and more narrow, and suddenly everywhere you look there are little lanes of shoe town crisscrossing each other and they're all selling what look like exactly the same shoes, not necessarily in pairs. Meanwhile the smell of latex and leather gets thicker in the heat, you turn round and realise you haven't got a clue where you are or where your companions got to. They're probably wandering round the caverns of bra or reeling at the endless vats of fish sauce somewhere far behind you, fish sauce you can smell forever but will never find again.

This is where you may find Mr Benn and the be-fezzed gent at the fancy dress shop, or a stall refusing to sell you Mogwai, or Diagon Alley's much more reasonable rival. Just because the rest of Huế looks genteel and rational, don't get any ideas. When the heat's at fever pitch and you think you are going to faint, you'll find exactly the artefact your learned professor told you to avoid, complete with instructions telling you never to take it to the mausoleum at midnight in case someone is waiting...

*I should point out that the princess was not among these three. These are Instagram princesses.