Paper Lanterns

Our unique train ride took us to Da Nang, where we were picked up by a taxi and driven about an hour south to the ancient trading town of Hoi An.

Da Nang is a big city, full of the usual rush and activity we’ve come to expect in Vietnam. Da Nang was also the site of America’s largest airbase (what is now Da Nang International Airport) and its major center of operations during the Vietnam War.

On our way out of the city, we saw rows of concrete Quonset huts next to the airport-definite leftovers from the war, we surmised.

Da Nang is a coastal city and was also the location of the famous ‘China Beach’ – the only in-country R&R site for US soldiers (and the name of a TV series that I avidly watched in the 1990s).

The long stretch of beautiful coastline Da Nang has always been famous for is now sadly lined with a dispiriting parade of luxury hotels and resorts, with all the familiar names: Radisson, Sheraton, Hyatt, Crowne Plaza, Marriott, Four Season, Hilton etc. and a myriad other lesser known—a wall to wall succession of high rise and gated off properties that completely block any view of the wide beautiful beach for a full 30 km.

We were glad we opted not to spend any time there at all.

Travelling throughout SE Asia, we have come to understand the necessity of abandoning as much as possible our ‘European gaze’ and to appreciate our surroundings through a different lens.

Even where the infrastructure is new and modern, across the way is the ramshackle, the haphazard, the broken-down and the cobbled together.

The attractive old French Colonial buildings and shiny new high rises exist alongside streets that appear to have no building codes whatsoever.

Singapore excepted, nothing in the Asia we have visited is neat, tidy, quaint or picturesque in the way of say, a chocolate-box Swiss hamlet, a white-washed Italian hill-town or an enchanting thatch-cottage English village.

If anything has come close though, it is Hoi An.

The city is undoubtedly extremely touristy (though Asian tourists far outnumbered Western ones when we were there) but it is difficult to resist its charms.

Located on what was once a major navigable river, it was an important port from the 16^th -18^h centuries, with Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese merchants all living there. After the French took over Indochina, the river was allowed to silt up and the town slid into sleepy obscurity.

Ironically, this neglect saved Hoi An during the various Vietnam wars of the 20^th century, as it was considered of no strategic value and was left alone.

Apparently, it was a haven for refugees from the surrounding countryside, which was largely controlled by the Viet Cong and saw some fierce fighting. But the ancient center of Hoi An remained intact and its historic buildings, many dating back several hundred years, were rescued from certain destruction in the 1980s largely through the efforts of a Polish architectural historian, Kazimierz Kwiatkowski, who headed a Polish-Vietnamese mission to salvage Vietnam’s cultural heritage after the war.

Even after Poland withdrew its support for the project, Kwiatkowski remained in Hoi An, overseeing its revival and the maintenance of its buildings, dying there in 1997. He did not live to see Hoi An declared a Unesco World Heritage site two years later, but his legacy is deeply appreciated by the Vietnamese, who erected a large statue of him on the main street of Hoi An’s old town.

We were staying a couple of kilometers from the old town, in a lovely hotel on the river, which we enjoyed a view of from our spacious room. The view was enhanced by the constant passing of little putt-putt boats that plied the river all day and into the night.

The hotel had a pool, too, which was a welcome relief after mornings spent sightseeing (and sweating) in the old town.

It was staffed by the sweetest young women, who despite limited English were incredibly friendly and helpful. In fact, ever since we had left Saigon, we had noticed how incredibly friendly and kind everyone was, no matter how brief the interaction.

We constantly remarked at how unjaded and attentive Vietnamese people in the service sector were to us, a result, no doubt of being a still emerging tourist destination. We were happy we came at this time, wondering what Vietnam will be like twenty years from now,

We ventured into old Hoi An after dark on our first night there and were instantly enchanted.

A very busy night market was underway on a small island in the river across from the old town where our Grab (Asian Uber) dropped us off, and the entire waterfront on both sides of the river was strung with brightly colored paper lanterns, giving it the most festive atmosphere.

When we crossed a bridge to the mainland, we saw that the water below was teeming with little boats, all hung with paper lanterns, bobbing along on the calm waters.

The streets were lined with shops, restaurants and cafes, many in the distinctive old wooden buildings Hoi An is famous for. It was a fabulous introduction to the city.

We walked back to the hotel that evening along the river, which lined with small hotels and villas, all brightly lit along with bridges linking the mainland to the various islands in the river.

That was the last time we did the walk, though, because Hoi An introduced us to a new level of heat, and even a couple of kilometers after dark left us exhausted and sweaty.

Fortunately, the Grab rides were easy to summon and ridiculously cheap (about $1 a ride), so for the next three days, we walked as little as humanly possible (though, as car traffic is banned in the old town we still walked more than 5 miles each day).

The next morning, we went back in to town to explore some more. The town was completely different by day- the streets no longer jammed with people and the river empty of little boats.

Within the old town are several old merchants’ houses and a number of important temples that require an admission ticket to enter, so the next day, we began our tour of several of these.

The houses were quite similar to one another, with an entry room, which was once a shop, a living area behind that, an open courtyard, and a room at the back, which opened on to the river, and was used to unload and store cargo. Each house also had a family altar for honoring the ancestors.

Each house also had second floor living quarters, but in most of these houses, the family which had owned the house for centuries still occupied it and the second floor was closed to visitors. There was one exception, and going upstairs helped us get a feel for the entire layout of the home and what it might have been like to live there.

Each house also had flood markers in the rear rooms showing long ago and more recent flood lines, some of which nearly reached the second story.

There was a hoist in the ceiling where goods and furniture were hauled upstairs before a flood.

The houses were constructed of ironwood, which is nearly impervious to water, allowing them to withstand the frequent flooding. The columns holding the upper floors were all ironwood that sat on marble bases, to prevent rotting.

The main living areas were a synthesis of Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese architectural features, and featured intricately carved and decorated columns with inlaid mother of pearl Chinese characters in the shape of birds, which bring good luck.

The beams, we were told in house after house, feature three cross-beams and 5 uprights, symbolizing the three lines on the palm of the hand and the five fingers of the hand-all important signifiers of the five elements and the fortune lines of the hand.

The houses are all purportedly owned by descendants of the founding families and every one has some kind of gift shop or souvenirs they want you to buy, but it wasn’t a hard sell situation, and I didn’t begrudge them the chance to make some extra income.

The temples were…temples.

Colorful, full of dragons and figures, altars and offerings, fountains and incense.

The famed Japanese covered bridge was inaccessible, as it had been completely dismantled and was undergoing restoration.

Over a couple of days we felt we thoroughly explored the old town and its lovely buildings, including eating dinner upstairs in one of them one evening.

We had seen the sign outside that described the history of the house –an ancient merchant house that had been converted to a French soap making workshop in the 19^th century and a maternity clinic during the war, remaining so until the clinic was removed to a newer hospital in 1992.

With the economic reforms of the 1980s, the building was now available tor entrepreneurial enterprises, and became a souvenir workshop staffed by the deaf and handicapped. The pandemic spelled the end of this endeavour and when it became available for sale, a woman whose siblings and herself had been born in the building when it was a clinic bought it and opened a fine dining restaurant upstairs and fancy shop downstairs selling upscale food, soaps and other goods.

We were so taken with this story that we decided to eat there (even though it was quite a bit more expensive than the usual Vietnamese fare) and found the upstairs dining room, which looked out on the river below quite charming.

After a tasty dinner, we complimented the server on how nice it all was and she summoned the owner, who was delighted to hear why we had chosen the restaurant and enlarged a bit on her family’s story as her English was quite fluent.

Her father had been a communications specialist with the South Vietnamese forces and after the war was sent to a ‘re-education camp’ for four years. Her uncle was similarly incarcerated-for fourteen years. It was a sobering reminder that those years have reverberations for all Vietnamese of her immediate post-war generation and we were a bit surprised that she was so willing to discuss those events with us.

Not all of our culinary experiences in Hoi An were as pleasant—on our second day, I carelessly ordered some cinnamon gelato without checking ingredients (it was delicious) and a few hours later was beginning to suffer with what I now can easily recognize as symptoms of having ingested gluten in some form. (I checked later and the ice cream was sprinkled with ‘cinnamon dough’ i.e. cookie crumbs)

That evening I didn’t feel well enough to eat dinner, but did walk around the corner from our hotel with Tom while he ordered some take-out. Even though I felt rotten, I was glad I had stepped out because as we turned the corner along the river path, I was mesmerized by the sight of dozens and dozens of little colored paper boats with candles inside floating along with the current, a scene that momentarily distracted me from my gastric discomfort and reinforced just what a delightful place Hoi An was.

On our final day in Hoi An, I suggested that we do another wildly touristy thing—take a ride on a basket boat among the coconut mangroves just outside Hoi An.

It was ridiculously hokey (and insanely hot, hence we actually wore the conical hats we were handed at the start) but actually good fun for an hour or so. There were a lot of Westerners in other boats, but a lot of Asians, too, a pair of which glided by singing merrily.

Thank goodness our boat rower- a sweet older woman who spoke no English- did NOT want to spin us as many of the energetic young male boatman did.

She did insist on rowing right into the coconut forest to try to catch crabs to show us, and I found her persistence quite endearing.

She also rowed us over to read the sign with the rules, the last of which ‘Do not urinate, defecate indiscriminately’ quite amused me!

And it was kind of cool being amongst these feathery coconut palms that they cut for use in building. The fruit is not like a ‘normal’ coconut- they grow bunches of small knobbly fruits that are apparently kind of jelly-like inside and quite tasty. I have seen them for sale in the markets, but have not tried them as I am not sure how to even get at the meat!

We also observed a fisherman gathering and throwing his net out, impressively. When we drew close, he invited me aboard to try my hand, but I declined.

Our last night in Hoi An we decided to go back into the old town one final time to enjoy yet again the lovely atmosphere created by the throngs of happy people enjoying themselves in the warm evening air and even more, the multitudes of colorful and festive paper lanterns strung along every street and alleyway.

It will forever be my enduring memory of this town, whose history and charms made us look past the tourist tat and just enjoy the lights.