Xin Chao (Howdy) from Danang & Hoi….

No words or pics can describe this resort adequately. I’ve had the privilege of staying in 5 star resorts all over the world during my 50 years of traveling, and I’d definitely rank this paradise in the top 5 for luxury. The beach is enticing… daring your toes to wiggle in its sparking white sand, and the ocean waves are high enough to make that hypnotic crashing noise that tells your body to lay back, close your eyes and enjoy a sense of peacefulness only God could have created.

Despite lots of rain, we had an exciting day exploring Hoi ….An ancient city and the Danang countryside with a local driver and English speaking guide, Lien.

Our first stop was a couple hours out into the countryside where we visited The My Son Sanctuary. The history of this sacred site was mind boggling. Imagine 1600 years ago…the King of Champa had his people construct these beautiful Hindu temples in a densely jungled valley below the Holy mountain for worship by the upper class and eventually to be his gravesite. The Holy river, Thu Bon, flows thru this World Heritage site. Many of the temples lay in ruins alongside craters left by the bombs of the Vietnam War. They actually have a B-52 bomb on display within one of the temples. As I mentioned, these are Hindu temples, but in current times the majority of Vietnamese people are Buddhists. They believe in “karma” which basically teaches that a person can earn merits by doing good deeds and living a moral lifestyle now, so they will have a better life when their soul is reborn in a new body.

As we are driving back thru the rice fields and farms, I notice there are many local women selling watermelon on the side of the road, and lots of local men stopping to buy. Our driver explains that watermelon and also snake blood added to rice wine are the local viagra substitutes. 😄
Since over 2 million Vietnamese people died in the War, we also asked our driver to show us both types of cemeteries… The fancy well kept ones are where the North Vietnamese soldiers are buried. And then the “local” cemeteries are where the South Vietnamese soldiers and the local people are buried. HUGE difference.

Then we went to the Ancient city of Hoi, once the centre of Vietnam’s spice trade. It’s listed as a UNESCO and we quickly realized why it’s called Vietnam’s most atmospheric town. The streets are lined with an array of colorful hand painted silk lanterns. There are never ending canals, lined with countless intriguing buildings dated back many centuries. Every few years, the town endures a typhoon and the canals flood. These ancient shops and buildings remain 3-10 ft underwater for multiple days. Several of the houses have markings on the beams to show the year and height of each flood. The teak wood they use to line the walls inside the structures handles the floodwaters with very little deterioration. Lien explains to us how the flooding causes the many cholera epidemics for which Vietnam is famous. She and her sister got cholera when they were about 10. She spent 3 months in a local hospital before the meds were available to cure her.

As we wandered thru the ancient city I was amazed at how many tailor shops there are and they tell you the can have your custom clothes ready in 24 hrs. There’s also a really ornate Japanese bridge in the middle of town that’s 400 years old…. Almost twice as old as the USA!
Exhausted and full of new information about a culture so very different from ours….Time for relaxing.

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