Romantic Hoi An and Imperial Huế

It's over three weeks since we've updated the blog - somehow Vietnam has kept us busy and left us very little time (or motivation) to be online. Since Can Tho we've been in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Dalat in Central Highlands, by the South China Sea in Nha Trang, and in Central Vietnam in Hoi An and Huế. The latest posts about Vietnam have ended being a long lists of things we've done and not very descriptive, so we're now uploading a few pictures to correct this issue! This post covers Hoi An and Huế, and there is a post below for HCMC, Dalat and Nha Trang, and also we've added photos to couple of the earlier posts - check them out!

From Nha Trang we took a 13-hour night train to Danang, and carried on by a local bus for another hour and half to reach Hoi An. The second class sleeper beds on the train were quite hard, but we slept well enough and handily for the top bunks there was space for luggage at the top too. Hoi An had been described as romantic to me by a fellow traveller, and I vouch for this statement! The picturesque old town had a lot of charm with its narrow alleyways, brightly coloured lanterns, old temples and assembly halls and riverside cafes. It was a major trading post in centuries gone-by. The old town is luckily an UNESCO World Heritage Site, as Vietnamese have a tendency of modernising everything old! Hoi An is excellent for having clothes tailored and for all sorts of other shopping, but unfortunately our travel budget did not allow for this. We ate once in a top quality restaurant, The Cargo, and by the looks of it, those with fatter wallets could have a culinary blast in Hoi An!

 

 Narrow streets of Hoi An are lined with old houses with yellow fronts and wooden shutters. These days each house has turned into some sort of establishment to cater for tourists.

Note the lady in conical hat carrying the food she sells.

Red lanterns and beautiful greenery decorate the streets.

 The colourful lanterns were at their prettiest in the dark.

Hoi An riverside by night.

Entrance to one of the assembly halls; places where Chinese of a specific language group would congregate and help each other out.

Nine mosaic dragons in an assembly hall courtyard.

 

Elaborate woodwork on an assembly hall eaves.

Bonsai garden in front in a Chinese-style temple courtyard.

Chinese-style temple altar.

A wooden boat inside a Chinese-style temple. Most of the Chinese inhabitants were seafarers so many of the temples were dedicated to safety on sea.

Local specialty, Cao Lau, being prepared on the street. Of the three places where we had this, the best place to get it was a similar stall on the north bank of the river near where there were cultural dance shows at 7:30 pm each night.

 The famous Japanese covered bridge by night. The day view can be found from the 20,000 dong note (about 1 USD).

An hour drive away from Hoi An is another World Heritage Site, My Son. The site contains ruins of Cham temples dedicated to Shiva dating back to 4th to 14th century AD. Unfortunately the site was bombed during the Vietnam War, destroying most of the previously well-preserved temples. I'm not sure if I'm angrier to the Viet Cong who had a base there, or the Americans who dropped the bombs.

The tallest remaining temple tower at My Son. The taller ones (up to 28 metres) were destroyed, and overall, only twenty out of sixty temple towers remain in some state or another, the remainder having been destroyed only decades ago after surviving for about a millennium.

The temple towers were built from brick which were decorately carved. The heads of the figures were chopped off and taken to Paris by French archeologists in the late 19th century, but have been replaced by restorations.

Our current location Huế is yet another World Heritage Site. Huế was the imperial capital during the Nguyen dynasty (mainly puppet leaders under the French colonial rule) between 1802 and 1945, leaving behind the ruins of the Citadel (an impressively-walled city of about 2.5km by 2.5km, with a smaller Imperial City within it, with the smaller Purple Forbidden City within that) and many imperial tombs. Huế is also known for its bad weather, as the mountains surrounding it tend to bottle up the damp, cold air from the north. This time though the mountains have kept away the rain clouds that have covered rest of SE Asia and the weather has been sunny with maximum of 41'C! So we had two days of sightseeing the imperial ruins in the stifling, still, cloudless heat.

The main entrance to the Imperial City.

The main entrance viewed from inside. The Imperial City was also badly bombed during the war when the Viet Cong briefly occupied it, but it's being busily rebuilt to its former glory.

Additionally to the Nguyen emperors having their imperial palace in the city, most of them also had smaller palaces in the surrounding countryside, which were converted into their imperial tombs after their death. These tombs were an impressive sight. The first lot of the pictures are from the Khai Dinh tomb, which was mostly made of concrete, but it was elaborately sculpted and contained the most impressive china mosaics inside.

The eulogy of emperor Khai Dinh is carved on a stone slate inside the structure on the front.

These statues represent the emperor's retinue in the afterlife. Note the carvings on the dresses of the mandarins in the front row.

The porcelain mosaic bas reliefs were exquisite...

...and covered three rooms floor to ceiling.

The final resting place of emperor Khai Dinh (several metres under his statue).

The second tomb we visited was emperor Minh Mang's. The tomb was set in a beautiful park with harmonious temple-like buildings, and the emperor liked to sit here by the lake to fish, enjoy the scenery and contemplate the moon.

An example of the harmony between water, nature and temples.

The tomb itself was across this bridge, in a palace buried under earth and never opened since.

The final tomb we visited was emperor Tu Duc's. He had an unfortunate life without an heir, although he had many wives and 104 concubines. The tomb was more decrepit than others, but contained a lovely little pond with an island for rare animals, which the emperor enjoyed rowing around in a small boat.

The pond-side pavilion was for the emperor to write poems, and it inspired us to write a poem too. Our poem was called "Ode to Sweat", as the afternoon temperature rose to 41'C!

As emperor Tu Duc did not have an heir, he had to write his own eulogy, which was self-critical and housed in this building.

(C) all pictures: Boyfriend.