Train to Hue
Share Article A friendly grandfather, grandmother and their g-daughter are on the train going to Saigon to visit friends and relatives. Born in Hanoi, she’s been studying in Czechoslovakia for seven years. Sprawling Hanoi is new for her.
We roll though night lulled by the rhythm of click-clack rail language. At 4 a.m. a bone white moon dances with clouds and silent stars over rice paddies, forests and black mountains.
I went to the dining car for java at dawn. I saw a Hobbit inside a dark blue hooded sweatshirt framing wisps of brown hair, angular face and perfection facing a woman.
Wow you are a beautiful elf, I said. She looked up, smiling. Thank you.
I join her and her mom. They were away from Switzerland for five weeks, doing the SE Asia circuit. Simone, 19, is sincere and direct with piercing green eyes. She will begin a Hotel & Tourism management school in Zurich in the fall. She’s been traveling the planet since the age of two.
Her mom is a journalist and businesswoman. No nonsense. World wise. She leaves to find her husband.
We talk about the hospitality business and attention to detail. It’s called MBWA, I said, Management by walking around. I worked in Hyatt, Shangri-La and Ramada International operations. It’s about guest service and marketing. Get out of your office and on the floor. Get a head in the bed.
I’m really excited to learn so much, she said. You will make an excellent General Manager. I hope so, if I do I will give you a meal and bed.
Her stepfather wanders in after dreaming. He’s a professional cellist, teacher, diver and photographer. We talk about music. The cello is closest to the human voice, he said. In an opera when the music drops in a romantic or high drama point it’s the cello you hear. He mentions Jackie Du Pre and her genius. She did it all at 42 yeah, it’s strange for me and other professional musicians, after the performance and all the applause it feels so strange to return to a hotel room alone.
We met by chance on purpose with destiny dancing in the wood paneled dining car, a memory of an era with slow meandering train travel.
Hue was the ancient imperial capital of Vietnam from 1802 to 1945. We walked to the Citadel near the Perfume River and across a bridge toward long walled interiors. It’s filled with exhibits, temples, rooms, black and white photographs, art objects and paintings. One image shows an arena where they staged fights between elephants and tigers.
It rains heavy and the women disappear. Sam and I shelter under a pagoda roof with a young Vietnamese couple. She teaches poetry. Sam asked her to tell us a poem.
Thunder & Lightning. She jumps. Rain pours on fields, old marbled stones inside green.
Initially shy she recites a poem. It is musical and mysterious. It is about love and two people missing each other. Her voice is strong. She feels this poem through her, it is her life and history, all the creation stories and songs and poetry she learned growing up. Her voice is angelic. Her melody, rhythm and voice flows as rain thunders. Lightning flashes and dances. We applaud her performance. She is retiring, relieved.
Sam and I sing and perform Singing In The Rain for them, circling around stone pillars, twirling with the lyrics, feeling the music. Rain dance. They laugh.
The intensity of the rain slows. We walk through drizzle. The sun reflects diamonds off stones inside shallow water pools. Prussian blue skies decorate mountains. Sun drenched fields lie emerald green. A solitary gray elephant stands near a banyan tree anticipating a golden stalking tiger.
We walk over a bridge, over a river, over a world.
