So with said, 91 posts have been written of varying quality (a couple not published because I feel the need to re-work them) and now I find myself with departure from Asia looming ever nearer which will draw to a close these series of "self" experiments. Unless things really kick up a gear it doesn't seem likely that I will hit the 100 mark, but I will plug away with this regardless and I guess it will be done, when it's done. If you have enjoyed reading anything I have thrown out over the last couple of years, I am genuinely thrilled but I am also sorry that I can't create every piece as engaging as the last, The non fun ones act more or a marker in the sand, to say I was there even after I have been forgotten. When nobody remembers who I was or what I did, hopefully this writing will still get the occasional read by somebody accidentally finding it whilst looking for a Monty Python sketch,
no.92. The Larch
On the 22nd March 2016 and for the 3rd time during my travels I ended up back at the Nhi Nhi hotel in Hoi An minus my credit cards that I had managed to leave in the safe at my previous stop. The really lucky thing about this was that the Nhi Nhi and the Orange hotel are sister hotels, and without much hassle at all the staff had arranged to send the cards on to me this afternoon in a car that was already going to be travelling between the 2. Of all the places I could have cocked up like that, I thank my lucky stars that it somewhere that the situation could be so easily resolved. Within a couple of hours my credit cards were back in my hands and the car going back the other way was back in possession of the Orange Hotels laundry bag that I had pilfered in the rush before I left.
The reason for my return to Hoi An was primarily to experience the towns celebratory Lunar festival where once a month the evening streets and river are lit predominately by candle, either fixed to the side or above, or floating down stream in the waters. It's a spectacle that draws big crowds and the streets congest as everyone hunts for a prime position to admire the spectacle amongst the swelled number of street sellers looking to make good trade. In ordinary circumstances this would have been tough work for me, but with the headache I had been suffering with from a few hours before combined with my diminished ability to see clearly in low level light made every move I made potentially hazardous, often leading me to take "Baby Steps" in such areas where I suspected there may be a raised step or pronounced drop, but was unable to see anything of the floor. Frustrated with my inability to walk safely and freely or photograph anything without messing something up, retreated to a area a little further away, to get some sustenance and watch the procession of people passing by from my relative safety of the retracted seating area at the edge of the busy street. I've become a danger voyeur obsessed with watching how people cope and react to conditions alien to what they are used to.
My Son (pro Mee Son) lies a 1 hour coach trip west of Hoi An and much like Ankor Wat in Cambodia is an architectural site that lay hidden from view for hundreds of years before the French rediscovered it. Cham temples and structures were built here from 700 - 1600 A.D before the Champa eventually left the area, relocating to the Mekong Delta in order to avoid the Chinese and leaving the monuments to lay undisturbed until they were rediscovered in 1885 by French archaeologist Henri Parmentier. By all accounts 71 of these structures remained in excellent condition all the way up until 1968 when President Richard Nixon, suspecting the the Vietcong were hiding out in the area, ordered it to be pummelled by 10 days of relentless bombing using B52 bombers, desecrating the site. Of the 71 structures that originally stood more than 50 were destroyed by age bombings and others heavily damaged. Some are still left in the state of disrepair, held up with supports and close to the craters of the bombs that brought their destruction. Other monuments have been recreated using a mixtures of original and new stones using techniques to try and adhere as closely as is possible to the original methods, with the help of Italian Scholars. This collaboration has resulted in full size reconstructions of the Roman Colosseum, Pantheon and Roman Baths all built from famous local red brick* .
It's worth noting that, although the structure were apparently in good condition before 1968, several of the states at the site were already missing body parts It seems that Mr Parmentiar, like many french in the past, had a thing about removing heads and in this case collected them for his private collection. To this date some of these heads are still kept in the Louvre in Paris, and despite repeated requested by the vietnamese to return these to the to their original homes, the French still refuse to do so. A situation I guess not too far removed from the British refusal to return the Elgin Marbles to the Greece, the country from which they were taken initially to preserve them. But maybe it's now time for us to stop playing mother.
Ok, back on My Son, The site isn't huge and the tour around the areas that are open to visit only takes a couple of hours to complete. As usual with these kind of tours you get led around the same places as everyone else and then try to get pictures of the same things at the same time as everyone else leading to an experience not conducive with the way I like to get a feel for place that I find myself, ultimately ending up with a bunch of pictures I'm not entirely happy about in their ability to convey the soul of a place. It's still worth the visit for sure if you like that kind of thing, which I usually do, but if you can do it under your own steam without being constrained by someone else's time frame, then you may find the experience more rewarding than maybe I did.
Unfortunately as the hours of walking literally wore on, the secondary reason for my trip to My Son relayed bad news. The uncomfortable feeling under the outstep of the left foot indicated that it still wasn't quite ready for a full days worth of trekking through the Vietnamese countryside, a tour I had been hoping to be able to do for the last couple of weeks for both the much needed exercise and the photographic opportunities it would have presented. Every cloud though and instead of rushing around for the next few days, I spent time just trying to let everything fix, posting a couple of gifts from the post office and eating food in in a place where, I am starting to conclude, may actually be the culinary centre the world.
Top end food at bottom table prices, in a beautiful town and a hotel where I'm lucky enough to be able to think of the staff as friends. I guess that there's plenty of worse places to be despite the obvious frustrations but these things despite my wishes take time. Thats life.
In the evening of the 26th I decided that I needed to get at least a one nice picture of Hoi An to make my stay there complete. I had nothing at all until the end of the evening, at just past 10 with the town preparing to sleep, I was lucky enough to capture the below picture. The following day I again returned to Da Nang to plan a short trip north to visit the Imperial City of Hue.
My final shot of Hoi An in 2016.
*utter lies
Nice one, My Son! Keep them coming.
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