My Son and The Imperial City

Let's clear things up before I begin. I don't have a son, or any children for that matter. 'My Son' is a collection of Cham ruins outside Hoi An. Everyone says they're Vietnam's Angkor Wat, just a severely scaled down version.

Today's blog post will be incorporating two cities as I've been lazy about updating my blog these past few days. We'll start with Hoi An and My Son, taking us back to Wednesday.

Our trip to My Son had been planned the previous day. Gad and I would wake up at 4AM and pack our day packs, shower and get ready then head over to where Xan and Joe were staying. We'd meet them at 4:45, jump on the backs of their bikes and follow the tour bus to My Son. This would work out perfectly and we'd only end up paying the entrance fee for My Son. Brilliant!
Needless to say, our plan didn't work out. We woke up at 4 and found an SMS from Xan and Joe saying there was a problem with the bikes and we'd now be leaving at 7. We didn't complain, we were glad to get the extra couple of hours of sleep.

At 7 we jumped on the bikes and headed off. My Son was easy enough to find and it took us only an hour to get there. My Son was incredible. It is so difficult to describe. The sheer grandness of all the structures is mind-boggling and one can only imagine it's grandeur a millennium ago. The ruins hint at a time long ago and of the people who inhabited this incredible place. I am truly at a loss for words to describe it, the lsat paragraph has taken me fifteen minutes to write. Have a look at some pictures of My Son, they'll help me explain it to you.

The first view of My Son

An idea of the scale

Sight A, the main part of the ancient city

One of the many buildings in site A 

The day after our visit to My Son we headed to the ancient capital of Vietnam, Hue. It is in Hue that Ho Chi Minh's body is kept on display for 9 months of the year. Also in Hue is the Imperial City which was the home of the Emperors of the Nguyen - which reined from 1802 to1945. Our first day in Hue was spent getting our bearings and finding good places to eat and drink. Once our scouting was done we planned for the next day. We thought the best PoA was to head to the Citadel and walk around for the day, but only after we'd bought our tickets to Hanoi for the 1st. And so yesterday began with that course of action in mind. It took us more than two hours to sort the tickets out. This is because Gad has an open bus ticket and had payed for it in Saigon. Open bus tickets are supposed to be convenient. In each city you merely notify your guest house the day before you leave and they'll contact a bus to pick you up the next day. It's easy for me as I just book each leg separately, but Gad got sent to 4 different places to book the ticket and at the last place was told he had to pay an extra $9 to book the bus. The whole idea behind an open bus ticket is that you pay up front and you don't have to worry about availability of buses. In the end he managed to get his ticket, but not without serious hassle. We discovered that the extra charge was due to the Hue Festival which is taking place this weekend and the coming week.

A morning worth of exploring Hue had been wasted but we headed over to the Citadel anyway so as not to waste an entire day. In the Citadel we saw the Festival being set up and headed to the Imperial City. The Imperial City is probably one of Vietnam's biggest surprises. It is an enormous walled city in the middle of the Citadel and, despite having the shit bombed out of it during the war, still maintains it's incredible image.

A giant bronze urn in the corner of a courtyard

We spent the best part of 3 hours walking around this massive city, home to the Emperors, and taking in all the sights it has to offer. No photos were allowed in the emperors' main chamber which is a huge disappointment as it was the most spectacular room in the entire compound. A gold-plated throne stood in the middle of the room and poems were written on the walls, ceiling and pillars. There was a lot more that we could take photos of and all of it proved to be incredibly good. At My Son we had to imagine the grandeur many hundreds of years ago, at the Imperial City the grandeur takes no imagining. It jumps out at you from every corner of the place and shocks you to think that it was still in its prime only 65 years ago.

We walked around the Imperial City, lost in its charm and intricacy. We walked through chambers reserved for emperors and temples reserved for the ashes of emperors of old. We sat on the top of the main gate an looked out over the people of the city, as emperors did in years gone by. We were enthralled by the wonder of the place.

The view from the rear of the Forbidden Purple City compound

After an incredible day out we felt the need to wind down with some cheap beer with the locals. Near our guest house we found a place, grabbed a beer and asked a passing tourist to capture the moment.

A chilled lager with which to chill

The empire was built with millions of dong

Oliver

Suit Up!

The first thing you hear about Hoi An is that it is Vietnam's premiere destination for suit shopping. It certainly lives up to it's reputation. But before I go into any detail about my time in Hoi An so far let me tell you how I got here...

He's a big lad

Sunday was my last day in Nha Trang. The trip to Hoi An from Nha Trang takes 12 hours so the best choice is to take a sleeper bus overnight. This also saves on a night's accommodation. Sunday arrived as Sundays do, after Saturday and 24 hours before Monday (Rebecca Black would be pleased at my understanding of the days of the week.) I set off in the morning and booked my bus ticket for that evening along with four other Englishmen I'd met while traveling. The bus was leaving at 19h30 so I had another full day in Nha Trang. I had yet to see the giant, seated Buddha statue and decided it would be best to head straight there.

So to the giant Buddha I went (well, Gad and I went, but typing 'I' is so much simpler.) The Buddha is perched on a hill overlooking Nha Trang and there are some fantastic views from the top. To get to the seated  Buddha you must walk past a pagoda, a sleeping Buddha and a giant bell which weighs one and a half tons. I was told that if you stand at the bell the monks would pray for you so I was quite keen to put their prayers to the test. Unfortunately we arrived during the monks' afternoon nap and not a single prayer was heard. Not particularly fussed, we walked the rest of the steps up to the seated Buddha and milled around on the top of the hill, taking pictures and looking like typical tourists. Craving coffee, we headed back down and found the pagoda was being opened. Wanting to take pictures, we asked if we could go in. A monk explained that we could not take pictures until we had done three 'wais' in front of the Buddha statue in the pagoda. A 'wai' is merely a dip of the head and torso with the palms of your hands pressed together in front of your chest. We did our 'wais', snapped some photos and headed off to the nearest coffee shop, 30 metres away.

After a great day on our feet in Nha Trang it was time to lift them and hit the sleeper bus. All five of our group had been put at the back of the bus with no aisle between sleeping berths. The berths aren't exactly very wide so a lot of spooning went down on the trip to Hoi An. It wasn't uncomfortable, but the road wasn't exactly smooth and every bridge is slightly raised above the road level and acts as an extended speed bump. Everyone on the bus would be asleep and the bus would cross a bridge, everyone would be flung a foot above their berths and be rudely woken by the landing. We probably crossed twenty bridges that night.

This kinda makes up for the spooning

Hoi An is an amazing place. I would cross all those bridges twice to get here and still be pleased. The ancient town's architecture is stunning, the market is alive with activity and the whole place lights up at night like no other place in Vietnam. Everywhere you go the streets are lined with shops for suits, dresses and shoes. It's little wonder why Hoi An has been attracting tourists for years.

Gad had come to Hoi An with a single goal in mind: to get a tailored suit. He'd been preparing since Da Lat and was really eager to get going. So, after checking into a hotel, we set off to scout for a good place to buy a suit. Scouting for a suit shop in Hoi An is simple, close your eyes and point in any direction - you will be pointing at a suit shop when you open your eyes. Being sensible people we didn't just walk into any suit shop, we spent about half the day comparing prices and suit quality and pretending to know more than we actually do about suits and how they should look. At this point I would like to add that I'm not getting a suit, not yet at least. When Chris joins me for a month in June we'll be stopping off in Hoi An to do our suit shopping together.

Gad trying on his tailor-made suit

Gad settled on a place run by the famous Mr Xe, an incredibly flamboyant and openly gay Vietnamese man with a really good reputation for making fine suits. I will never buy a suit anywhere but in Vietnam. The prices are so cheap they make everywhere else's prices cry in shame in a dark corner. Gad is getting a cashmere suit with 2 extra pairs of pants, a waistcoat, 2 pure cotton shirts, a trenchcoat and 6 ties for under $300. And it takes only 2 days for everything to be ready. He's picking it up tomorrow morning, having been measured for it yesterday.

It's impossible to talk about Hoi An and not talk about suits, but I'll try add something extra. Hoi An severely lacks a night life. The entire town shuts down after 11PM, but that actually turns out to be a good thing. Very few people are out on the streets at night which means you're able to enjoy the beauty of the place with no other tourists around. And believe me Hoi An is ten times more amazing at night.

Lights start coming on around 5PM and more and more lights flicker into life as it gets darker. By 8 o'clock the town is lit almost entirely by lanterns and takes on a warm, yellow tone. After going to a night club, the walk back to our hotel was breathtaking. There was nobody out and it felt like the entire town was ours. The streets were quiet and the whole of Vietnam seemed, for once, to be resting. It was magnificent.

The market in Hoi An

This certainly makes up for the spooning!