Edge of National Highway No. 1, Vietnam, 15 February 2007
We began our ascent of Vietnam on an overnight bus to Nha Trang. I spent the night either hallucinating in the heat or reading my book, plaintively using my phone as a light. It wasn't a very good book. The fact that the conductor was snoring loudly from where he lay across the back seat didn't help either (yup Brandon, bus conductors really are the same the world over). Imagine our joy when we rolled into a quiet little beach town, took a room with a balcony overlooking the sea, strolled down to the beach, hired a beach chair, ordered lobster and a beer and passed out for the rest of the day? This, essentially, is Nha Trang.
Two days, several beers, some shellfish, a tan, a mudbath and some new books later we tore ourselves away from the decadent little hamlet by the beach only to find ourselves arriving in another decadent little hamlet - Hoi An.
Hoi An is a shabby little Vietnamese-French village, built in the 17th Century when it was a central trading port in the South China Sea. The houses haven't changed since the 17th Century and as a result the town is on the World Heritage List; we could have been walking through the Vietnamese version of Chocolat. Hoi An has long had a reputation for silk and tailor shops. It would be fair to say that Al and I pillaged the local tailors. We spent four days drinking coffee and eating croissants in the local patisserie and walking in and out of different tailor shops for fittings. We also took in some of the sights of the town (in between fittings). The most interesting of these were the Chinese family chapels. We were shown around the family chapel of the Tran Family. The family can trace itself back 13 generations (300 years) and on the alter in the chapel there are oblong wooden funerary boxes containing a name tablet and the biographical details of each deceased family member. There is also a photograph of more recent deceased family members on the wall. Out the back is a garden where a newborn's umbilical cord is buried so that, even if he travels far away, he will always know where home is. Essentially the chapel is a place where the Tran Family gather to venerate their ancestors and discuss family affairs.
Tailored suits in hand and prescribing ourselves several hours of sight seeing and cultural appreciation in penance for our yuppie consumerism, we travelled up to Hue. Hue, it turns out, is a veritable feast of sight seeing and cultural appreciation. I spent yesterday hanging on to the back of a motorbike (driven by a old Vietnamese guy who, in an insane fit of vanity, kept on sucking in his love handles) while dodging cows in paddy fields so we could see the mausoleums of the emperors of the Nguyen Dynasty.
The mausoleums are interesting stuff. The Emperors play a big part in designing their own monuments before they die and as such each is a unique expression of the monarch's personality. For instance, Khai Dinh's is suffused with European baroque and has lavish displays in porcelain mosaic. Legend has it, Khai Dinh was a particularly flamboyant dresser and it's rumoured that he brought back a string of fairy lights from France and proceeded to wear them around the palace, twinkling until the battery ran out. In complete contrast is the mausoleum of Minh Mang who was an authoritarian and distrusted the intrusion of Western religion. In keeping with this character, his is designed along traditional Chinese lines with all the principal buildings symmetrical about an east-west axis. It is at once stately and grand yet at the same time softened by a still lake with a red roofed pavillion.
Two days, several beers, some shellfish, a tan, a mudbath and some new books later we tore ourselves away from the decadent little hamlet by the beach only to find ourselves arriving in another decadent little hamlet - Hoi An.
Hoi An is a shabby little Vietnamese-French village, built in the 17th Century when it was a central trading port in the South China Sea. The houses haven't changed since the 17th Century and as a result the town is on the World Heritage List; we could have been walking through the Vietnamese version of Chocolat. Hoi An has long had a reputation for silk and tailor shops. It would be fair to say that Al and I pillaged the local tailors. We spent four days drinking coffee and eating croissants in the local patisserie and walking in and out of different tailor shops for fittings. We also took in some of the sights of the town (in between fittings). The most interesting of these were the Chinese family chapels. We were shown around the family chapel of the Tran Family. The family can trace itself back 13 generations (300 years) and on the alter in the chapel there are oblong wooden funerary boxes containing a name tablet and the biographical details of each deceased family member. There is also a photograph of more recent deceased family members on the wall. Out the back is a garden where a newborn's umbilical cord is buried so that, even if he travels far away, he will always know where home is. Essentially the chapel is a place where the Tran Family gather to venerate their ancestors and discuss family affairs.
Tailored suits in hand and prescribing ourselves several hours of sight seeing and cultural appreciation in penance for our yuppie consumerism, we travelled up to Hue. Hue, it turns out, is a veritable feast of sight seeing and cultural appreciation. I spent yesterday hanging on to the back of a motorbike (driven by a old Vietnamese guy who, in an insane fit of vanity, kept on sucking in his love handles) while dodging cows in paddy fields so we could see the mausoleums of the emperors of the Nguyen Dynasty.
The mausoleums are interesting stuff. The Emperors play a big part in designing their own monuments before they die and as such each is a unique expression of the monarch's personality. For instance, Khai Dinh's is suffused with European baroque and has lavish displays in porcelain mosaic. Legend has it, Khai Dinh was a particularly flamboyant dresser and it's rumoured that he brought back a string of fairy lights from France and proceeded to wear them around the palace, twinkling until the battery ran out. In complete contrast is the mausoleum of Minh Mang who was an authoritarian and distrusted the intrusion of Western religion. In keeping with this character, his is designed along traditional Chinese lines with all the principal buildings symmetrical about an east-west axis. It is at once stately and grand yet at the same time softened by a still lake with a red roofed pavillion.
posted by Kait at 6:40 pm
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