Three days in Hue: the one Vietnamese city that was designed, not grown

Hue is laid out around the Perfume River, which is a real name and a slightly optimistic one. The north bank holds the citadel: a square of ramparts and a moat nearly ten kilometres around, built from 1804 on a Vauban plan by French engineers working for a Vietnamese emperor, with a whole neighbourhood of ordinary streets inside it as well as the palaces. The south bank is the modern town, and it is where you will sleep and eat.

The tombs are the other half of the city and they are not in it. Each Nguyen emperor built his own funerary complex in the hills south and west along the river, and each one is an estate rather than a grave: gates, courtyards, stelae, pavilions, lakes and, somewhere at the back, a walled burial mound. None is closer than four kilometres and the furthest is nearer ten, they are quiet, and two of them in one day is the right amount.

The city itself is small and low and moves slowly, which after Hanoi or Saigon is a considerable relief. Students cycle over the bridges, the riverside park fills up in the evening, and nothing is far from anything else. It rains a great deal. Bring the jacket and go anyway.

The train is the good option here. Hue sits on the north to south line, with several services a day from Hanoi, taking around fourteen hours overnight, and from Ho Chi Minh City. The three or four hour run south to Da Nang climbs over the Hai Van Pass with the sea directly below the window and is one of the best short rail journeys in Asia.

The airport at Phu Bai is 15 km from the centre, about half an hour by taxi, with daily flights to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. It is small, and flights are disrupted often enough in the wet months that a train ticket is the safer plan between mid October and mid December. Da Nang's airport is two hours away by road through the Hai Van tunnel and has far more connections.

By road, a private car from Hoi An or Da Nang takes about three hours over the pass rather than through the tunnel, and drivers will stop at Lang Co and the old French forts at the summit for a few dollars more. It is worth doing in that direction at least once.

The river splits the city. The citadel and the Imperial City are on the north bank; almost all the hotels, restaurants and bars are on the south. Two bridges connect them and the walk across takes ten minutes.

The tombs are four to ten kilometres south and each is a separate site with its own gate and ticket, so they need transport. A car and driver for a half day is the straightforward answer and is not expensive; a hired motorbike is the cheerful one. Taxis should use the meter, and a metered half day taking in two tombs with waiting time is a well-established fare rather than a negotiation.

Dragon boats run upriver from the south bank to Thien Mu Pagoda and, on longer trips, to some of the tombs. The boat is slow and the landing stages are a walk from the sites, so treat it as the point rather than as transport.

Hue has a deserved reputation for bad weather. The mountains immediately south trap moisture against the coast, and the city is misty, drizzling or properly wet for a large part of the year. The heaviest rain runs from September to December, and flooding in November is normal rather than exceptional.

February to May is the dry window and the best time to come. June to August is hot and bright but can be fierce inland at the tombs, where there is little shade between the gate and the buildings. Take a hat and water whatever month you arrive.

The Imperial City and each of the tombs charge separately, and combined tickets covering the citadel plus two or three tombs are sold at the gates and usually work out cheaper than paying at each. Buy the combination that matches what you actually intend to see rather than the largest one on the board.

Sites open early and close around five, with last admission before that. The tombs are far enough apart that trying to see more than two properly in one day turns the day into a car journey.

Hue cooks differently from anywhere else in Vietnam, because it cooked for a court. The dishes are small, numerous and fiddly, and they arrive as sets: banh beo, tiny steamed rice discs with dried shrimp; banh loc, translucent tapioca parcels; banh khoai, a crisp folded pancake eaten with a thick fermented soybean and peanut sauce; nem lui, minced pork grilled on lemongrass skewers and rolled at the table.

Bun bo Hue is the famous one and the city eats it for breakfast: a beef and pork broth with lemongrass and shrimp paste, considerably spicier than pho, with thick round noodles. Hue also has the country's strongest tradition of vegetarian cooking, thanks to its Buddhist temples, and several of the best restaurants in town serve no meat at all.