Hoi An - the sights
Trip Start
Nov 30, 2004
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12
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Trip End
Feb 04, 2005
Hoi An, Vietnam
Thursday, January 27, 2005
I just found a great little town in Vietnam. Liked it so much I extended my ticket by a week. There's so much to say I don't know where to start.
Hoi An is a quaint little town on the Thu Bon River. It was a major international port for trade from the 17th to the 19th centuries. The trade these days is mostly between hand-tailored silk clothes and tourists' dollars. Yes, I've been trading! I'm smiling a lot more after Hue. Will be here two weeks and there's still parts I haven't been to yet. If/when I come back to Vietnam, this is the first city on my list. One of the reasons is the beautiful architecture.
Hoi An was not touched during the war
01 Legendary Night performance
. Consequently, the city's buildings make up a good museum. Walking around and soaking up the ambience is the appeal here. There are private homes, wells, bridges, assembly halls and communal buildings. In addition to French, Japanese and Chinese styles, Hoi An also has some of the best-preserved traditional Vietnamese architecture. Collectively there are over 800 buildings that have helped Hoi An's old town be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Some of the highlights are: the Japanese Covered Bridge, House at 77 Tran Phu and the Assembly Hall of the Fujian Chinese Congregation. I rented a motorcycle one day to drive up to Danang. A local girl on a moto pulled up next to me and told me about the Marble Mountains. So I followed her there. Surprisingly, her family had a shop selling marble souvenirs outside the entrance. Without her, I would have missed a great site. So I obliged and got a small incense holder.
There are 5 mountains total and each is made of marble. Each represents one of the natural elements: water, wood, fire, metal and earth. I took a walking tour through the largest, Thuy Son. There are several large buddhas carved out of the mountainside. One of the most prominent stands about 20 feet tall carved out of white marble
02 Busy morning in the market
. There are also some interesting caves. One was used by the VC during the war as a field hospital. Up in Danang I went to the Museum of Cham Sculpture. It is the best collection of Cham sculpture in the world. Mostly, it's carvings out of sandstone that date from the 7th to the 15th centuries. The most common image is of the dancing Shiva. The centerpiece is the Tra Kieu Altar, which tells a Ramayana story in four parts around each side.
I took a second road trip to My Son. Got up at 5am to get there by sunrise! It was a religious center from the 4th to the 13th centuries. Most of the buildings are temples that were dedicated to Cham kings. The structures were built first and then had relief figures carved second. The temples stood until the war when they were deliberately targeted out of bitter fighting. It was really sad to look at. I could see huge stone pillars from the entrance of the temples just knocked off their stands. They must have been magnificent to look at intact. They were used for centuries, stood for centuries afterwards, then destroyed out of spite.
More of Hoi An on the way. Some interesting stories. By the way, computers here are FRUSTRATINGLY slow and error-prone. More than once, I've been on for an hour without accessing email. So if I don't respond to your messages quickly, you'll know why.
Eric
