We were on the Perfume river in Hue, central Vietnam. hue is best known to Americans as the only city we lost during the Tet Offensive of 1968 and the city we pretty much destroyed re-taking three weeks later. Hue served as the imperial capital of Vietnam from 1802-1945, and our bombs wiped out big chunks of history.

The Nguyen emporers who ruled Vietnam created several sites that bring visitors here today. In Hue itself are the remains of the old fortified city, a giant walled area that houses the even more secure Forbidden Purple City, where the emporer lived. Outside of town scattered in the jungle along the river are the royal tombs, Vietnam's own "Valley of the Kings."

We arrived yesterday morning from Hanoi on the Reunification Express in an absolute torrential downpour. The 10-second dash from the train car to the station soaked us right down to our underwear. The train was an overnight sleeper, so we arrived in the morning and hoped to get in a day of siteseeing, but the rain kept us pinned in our hotel room all day. This wasn't Seattle drizzle. It wasn't even a Minnesota thunderstorm. It was Old Testament stuff.

Buckets -- no, bathtubs -- of rain were still coming down this morning, but we didn't want to waste another day, so we found a tour company that would charter a boat to shuttle us up river to the royal tombs.

At 8:00 a.m., Sarah and I and six others boarded a long narrow wooden boat. It was covered, thank goodness, but it was so tippy we had to sit still. The river was thick and chocolaty, moving fast. It had already spilled over the banks and flooded nearby houses.

We puttered slowly upstream, fighting the frothy brown eddies and swift currents. Within an hour we reached Thien Mu Pagoda and jumped ashore for a quick look around. It was a nice enough place with a good view out over the river, pretty gardens, and a little brick tower. The most memorable thing here, though, was an old baby blue Austin motor car that was parked in a small garage behind the main temple. It is a normal car, but it gained instant international fame in 1963 when a monk burned himself to death infront of the car to protest the South Vietnamese government. A famous photo was snapped of the burning monk, and there in the background of the picture is this very car.

We boarded our boat and continued on. The swollen river had risen high enough to obscure the channel markers, so the pregnate wife of our captain had to stand on the bow of the boat in the driving rain, sounding for depth with a long bamboo pole.

Another hour, give or take, and our boat pulled over to the bank of the river. All we could see was jungle. No dock, no road. Our captain motioned for us to get off, so we jumped into the shin-deep water and waded ashore. As we pushed aside the foliage we saw a small trail leading uphill. The tomb of Tu Duc lay 1-2 miles ahead.

Within a few minutes the trail widened. There, parked in the pouring rain, were 3 or 4 local villagers on scooters. Vietnamese Death Scooters.

For about $1, these guys would shuttle us up to the tomb. We wanted as much time as possible to explore, and this would save us an hour, so Sarah and I eached picked a driver and climbed on the back of his motorbike. What followed was sheer terror.

Now, even in perfect conditions riding a Vietnamese motorbike is a risky proposition. The brakes kind of work, but not with any real conviction. The clutch tends to slip in and out of gear at random. The tires are so bald and shiny you could use them as a pretty good shaving mirror. Add to that the fact that these drivers are used to carrying lithe 90 pound Vietnamese waifs, not bulky beef-fed lumps like me. It adds up to a tippy, jerky, rollar-coaster of a ride.

Today, though, nature threw in a bonus. The driving rain made the path muddy at best, flowing waterfalls elsewhere. Pavement was even worse; the curvy roads and our wet shiny tires were better suited for air hockey than for frivolous luxuries like traction. The driver flew through the jungle, screaming around corners. He hunched forward against the rain. I sat behind, my face slapped pink by his crackling poncho, parts of my butt spilling off the back of the bike. Deep dark corners of my body that I didn't even know existed were getting wet.

About the time I was ready to convert to Catholicism or Buddhism or whatever God would take me, our drivers cut the engines and coasted to a stop. The madness of our carnival of a bike ride ended in a quiet, peaceful jungle. The only sound was the tinkling of the rain against the trees.

We went through a gate into the tomb. It was a large walled compound, hundreds of meters across. Inside were numerous temples, courtyards, ponds, and monuments. Sprinkled amongst the frangipani trees were even a few pines.

The first set of structures we saw had been restored and were OK, but could have been any Chinese style temple. It was when we pushed on to the next area that things got interesting. Here was our first ever sight of over-grown-ruins-in-the-jungle. Whether it's a Jungian archetype or it's programmed into us by Hollywood movies I am not sure, but you just can't see over-grown-ruins-in-the-jungle without feeling adventerous. Looking at those vines crawling over crumbling stone, you feel like you are discovering something. Never mind that you are only 1 1/2 hours from a major city. Never mind that package tours bring dozens of people here each day. It was a discovery to us, and it was darn cool.

From there it was a hair-raising motorbike ride back to the boat, and another tippy puttering ride upstream. Next stop, the tomb of Khai Dinh. This scooter ride was even worse. Five kilometers of mud and floods and slippery pavement. The tomb itself was amazing. It wad been restored and the main building held intricate mosiacs made of thousands of pottery and glass shards. The artisans had woven broken china and even beer bottles into delicate figures of dragons and birds. Sarah and I were the only people who made the treck out here (the rest of our group had stayed back at the boat to keep dry), so the lone attendant at the tomb was glad to have visitors and eagerly showed us around.

On the ride back to the boat, I began to get a little worried. The water was rising so fast that a place that just an hour ago on the drive out had been two lakes on the side of the road was now one big lake with no road. This is not a good sign.

Back on the boat, our captain headed as fast as possible downstream, back to Hue. The floods had made a visit to the last tomb on our itinerary impossible, so we were heading home. It was an uneventful ride until we got back into town.

Which brings us to our predicament under the bridge. On the way out this morning it had been a rather tight fit, maybe 3 feet to spare. As we soon discovered, the river had risen since then.

Captain slowed down as we neared the bridge. It looked tight. He tied us up along the shore, got out, walked to the base of the bridge, and did a quick survey. I am not exactly sure how or why he decided this next part was the best course of action . . .

Rather than getting back on board, he had us wedge the large anchor against the deck on the bow of the boat and throw him the line. He wanted to slowly let line out, easing us under the bridge down stream. This might sound like a fine plan, but I assure you it was not.

Within seconds the current had pulled us away from shore. An instant later our stern (yes, he was sending us under backwards) passed under the bridge and -- bam! -- we were stuck. Captain's tugging on the rope just served to turn us sideways to the swollen current, further upping the pressure on our fragile wooden boat.

So, there we were. Eight western tourists and his very pregnate wife wedged in a flooding river while the captain stood nearby on terra firma.

I wasn't all that nervous until I looked up and saw that the bridge we were under wasn't a normal bridge for traffic, rather, it was a railroad bridge. There was no deck, just metal tracks and cross ties. When the next Reunification Express came barrelling along. . . Well, I don't know exactly what would happen, but the though of hundreds of tons of fast moving steel inches above our heads didn't fill me with a warm and fuzzy feeling.

Thorugh experimentation we learned that we could use the boats tippiness to our advantage. Several of us piled into the stern, tipping the bow up sharply and lowering our end just enough to let the boat slip a few inches downstream. We repeated this process over and over, working our way to the bow until, finally, we were through.