Vietnam, Part I

The fast boat from Phnom Penh to Vietnam was far faster than any boat I'd been on this trip, but exceeded its 4 hour promise by 3 hours. The Mekong finally looked liked a major river.

After not very interesting border formalities, the boat pulled ashore twice, we turned up a tributory of the Mekong and into Chau Doc. Vietnam looks quickly different from Cambodia. Certainly it is greener. At least here it looks prosperous. Bouncier?

Chau Doc is a fairly small upper Mekong delta town, with a mixed population of Khmer, Cham and Vietnamese. Nearby is a sacred mountain by the name of Sam, which should speak for itself.

The big draw at Sam Mountain is a Godess with a complicated history I do not understand well enough to try to explain. It involves the Thais, somehow, and 40 virgin girls stronger than 100 men.

The Godess is particularly venerated by local women. A couple of men in Chau Doc credit her as the explanation for why the women in town are powerful and the men do as they are told. She is too sacred to be photographed. However, her extensive wardrobe can be reproduced. Each of these many hundred are made to measure for an three meter figure with Viking scale shoulders. There are also douzens of hats and shoes of similar scale. Gifts from women grateful for the boost, or men hoping for an easier go of it (or grateful for the wonderful and wise and powerful wives)?

Another temple of peculiar architecture if filled with wonderfully odd painted wooden sculpture.

Next stop Ho Chi Minh City, where I spent most of three days fighting some kind of flu bug. Got to happen on a trip. I'd had a couple of nice visits to this high energy city before, so I could have had worse places to feel low. I did crawl out long enough to visit a lovely History Museum and get a taste of Cham architecture. The Cham's, as I understand it, were long time sparring partners of the Khmer at Angor, actually capturing Angor in the 11th century. Time and the growing power of the Vietnamese caught up with them. They left some beautiful monuments. Some preserved in part. Some victims of time and old and recent wars.

I took a night train to Danang and stopped only long enough to see Vietnam's best collection of Cham art at Danang's Museum of Cham Sculpture. Certainly one of the nicest small museums I've seen on the trip and a legacy of the French colonial period in major part. Cham art owes a lot to Indian art, and was later influenced by Khmer art. At its hight it was monumental and fluid. This is good stuff.

Having had a load of Cham art I took a taxi to Hoi An, a lovely small town that seems to have survivied relatively intact for a few hundred years. This town was a great sea trading venue until its river silted a hundred or so years ago and business moved to Danang. Its core is now a museum town oddly filled with a couple hundred tailor shops. No exaggeration.

Perhaps some will be pleased to hear that much of the sewing is done by the young men in town. What is the proper designation of a male that sews for a living? Tailor sounds a bit grand. I don't like the sound of "seamster", that gives the image of the guy who gets to try and get a camel through the eye of a needle. I looked in at the "Hoi An Department of Managing and Gathering Swallow's Nests" and found a goodly number of men scraping away at what I took to be swallows' nests. Hoi on also specializes in silk lanterns. Very pretty at night.And they move about the area on sometimes very crowded ferry boats. Hoi An is lovely day and night. It is very much a tourist destination, which meant another shot of performances, making nice use of the antique buildings. I stayed for three lazy nights, once getting up the energy to take a bicycle around the local area, stopping at a local village noted for its clay tiles and pots. The pots are thrown on a curious to me two person wheel. The wheel itself is near ground level, and the potter sits on the ground to work the clay. The second person stands and kicks back with leg to power the wheel.

The clay tiles made in the village are seen on many of the buildings in Hoi An, and were laid out in neat rows in front of homes in the village to dry a bit in the sun. I saw a woman making simple rectangles. A shallow wooden frame was dusted with what I took for fine sand. This sits on the ground. A clump of clay is thrown into its center. Four economical steps with a foot inside each edge of the wood frame form a rough pyramid of clay in the form. A final step in the center to get excess clay off the foot. A jerk with a wire along the top of the frame to remove the extra clay from the frame. The frame is carried a few steps, laid upside down on the ground and pulled away. Another tile joins its mates, presumably waiting to be fired.

The next day took a taxi a round about route to Hue, taking a detour to see a couple of Cham sites. While these sites may not as grand as the decorations the provided to the museums, it was good to see some context. The larger site, My Son, spreads a bit, some of it showing damage from recent wars. The smaller site, Chien Dan, was maybe closed. The gate was shut and latched but no lock was in place. I considered that maybe opened. The three towers were nice and made a bit endearing for their current use as a good place for a farmer to dry rice.

A very nice drive north to Hue over the Hai Van Pass. Dramatic views over the harbor at Danang and some interesting fortifications from the French and the US at the pass summit.

I ended the day in Hue, Vietnam's onetime imperial capital. The weather was misty and cool with a bit of rain. Perfectly lovely sightseeing weather.

Hue is a real city lying on both sides of the beautifully named Perfume River. It has its own present, and a past made of imperial palaces and temples, and it the countryside wonderful imperial tombs. The tombs sit in grounds lovely or formal.

This is a place my guidebook didn't praise enough. I enjoyed three days.

That takes me to April 22, the center of Vietnam, and the middle of my time in the country.

Next stop, Hanoi.