22 FEBRUARY 2014: DA NANG CITY

Our first foray out of the resort since the trip to My Son and Steve's illness, but we really didn't want to miss out on this visit.
We were a little apprehensive of getting into a bus again, albeit for only 15 minutes, but we needn't have worried.

The Cham Museum:
First stop was the small Cham Museum which sits in a garden of frangipani trees at the south end of Bach Dang.

At My Son we had been told that we would today see many of the statues and carvings that had originally been in the temples, though sadly not all as many were destroyed by the American bombing.
The scale of the destruction hits you as soon as you walk into the museum and see this model of what the largest temple at My Son, which was completely destroyed, would have looked like.

 With hindsight it is fortunate that in the late 19th century French archaeologists started collecting statues, friezes and altars from a number of Cham sites dotted around the hinterland of Da Nang, and opened the museum in 1916, though it was rumoured at the time that many of the best statues were carried off into European private collections. Today it houses the most comprehensive display of Cham art in the world.

There's so much to see! Here's just a selection:

A sandstone guardian dvarapala is shown stomping on a bull, who in turn disgorges a small warrior.

An unfinished pediment shows the birth of Brahma from a lotus growing from the navel of Vishnu.

The Dancers' Pedestal of Trà Kiệu features this apsara or dancer and gandharva or musician.

Dragons:

13th century, sandstone sculpture.

Elephants:

Birds:

Dancing girls:

And so much more ....

The Han Market:

Next stop the large indoor Han Market that ranges over two floors.

Maybe because he was still feeling a bit queasy, but Steve had to go and sit down as the smell of the meat

and of the fish hit him.

You can buy just about anything here, and haggle over the price too.
Fruit and vegetables:

These are called Prickly Melons and are stuffed with mushrooms and then steamed.

Materials:

which you can have made up on the spot into dresses, shirts and suits.

Shoes galore!

The Silk Embroidery Gallery:

A short walk from the market we went into a gallery selling silk-embroidered pictures to see how they are made.
It can take a single girl 2 entire weeks

to complete a picture like this which sells for $290 (unframed).

As lovely as many of them were, they weren't the type of souvenirs we had in mind to buy!

The Rooster (Con Ga) Church:
Just across the road from the gallery was the candy-pink Catholic cathedral, built in 1923 for the French residents of the city and, somewhat surprisingly, the only church constructed in Da Nang under French colonial rule.

It is known locally by the less imposing name 'Rooster' Church because of the weather-cock on top of the steeple. Apparently, despite being built by the French, the rooster is not a symbol of France but a reference to the story of St Peter in the Bible to remind worshippers of repentance and awakening.

Today Danang Cathedral serves 4,000 parishioners and offers services in different languages, including an English Mass every Sunday at 10 am. The Vietnamese etiquette is to come early to avoid having to stand in the back or even in the street with cyclists for services led by the local priest. Papers are printed out to help parishioners follow the service.

The Waterfront:
The bus had parked by an impressive promenade which gave us a great view of the river.

These colourful garlands strung across the roads advertise the annual International Fireworks Festival and Competition due to take place in May.

Dragon Bridge

We weren't here long enough today to get more than a glimpse of this city of a million people but the pictures below will give you an idea of the feel of  the place. We'll definitely come again before we leave!

Our group walking resolutely to the next stop!

We'd seen many of these in Hong Kong too.

Wiring regulations here are VERY similar to in France.

This sums up Vietnam: the old and the modern co-existing.

And we did come back on a sunny Sunday morning a week later, and sat with Da Nang's 'Bright Young Things' at  the Highlands pavement coffee shop. Cappuchino and conversation are the same the world over it seems.

21 FEBRUARY 2014: DA NANG, CHINA BEACH

We flew into Da Nang Airport, which for anyone our age is redolent of the American involvement in the Vietnam War, Da Nang having been both the site of a massive US Air Force base and the place (at Red Beach) where on March 8th 1965 the first American combat troops waded ashore. (www.history.com/this-day-in-history/us-marines-land-at-da-nang‎).

The city's origins date back to the ancient Champa Kingdom, established in 192 AD. By the early 14th century  the area was settled as a small village in the wilds of central Vietnam but it wasn’t until the 17th century that the area was settled as a port, which traded with various European and Asian merchants. This small, backwater port was annexed by the French Empire under Napoleon III in 1858. 

In 1954 the French forces withdrew from all of South East Asia and an independent Vietnam was proclaimed. With the division of Vietnam into the North and South, it became part of the Republic of South Vietnam. 

Not least because of its massive American base,  Da Nang was the scene of fierce fighting throughout the Vietnam War, notably during the 1968 Tet Offensive. From a population of 50,000 in the 1950s, by the height of the American occupation it had become so important that the journalist John Pilger memorably described the sprawling base as 'a small American city' with a population that peaked at one million. Americans aside, thousands of refugees flocked to Da Nang. Most were villagers cleared from 'free-fire zones' but also people in search of work: labourers, cooks, laundry staff, pimps, prostitutes and drug-pushers all inhabiting a shanty town called Dogpatch on the base perimeter.
When the North Vietnamese army finally arrived to 'liberate' the city on March 29th 1975 it had been all but deserted by South Vietnamese forces, panic-stricken soldiers battling for space on any plane or boat leaving the city, having abandoned planes and tanks to the enemy.

Just a short stroll along the beach from our resort is China Beach.  Thousands of American servicemen were helicoptered here for what the guide books today euphemistically call 'R and R'. Today it's a beautiful and relatively unspoilt place. It's really difficult to get your head around what it must have been like then.

It's a long stretch of unpolluted golden sand:

All along it are bars and restaurants that have clearly seen 'better' days (and not-such-good-days, depending on how you look at it) and now look a little tired compared to the glitzy new developments springing up all around.

Plenty of evidence too of the ubiquitous fishing industry, though in the 1960s the American servicemen would have been looking at wooden corracles, not the fibreglass of today.

You only have to come here to see Modern Vietnam is very much a 'work-in-progress' ....and to hope that it doesn't all go horribly wrong as these people have suffered enough in modern times.

The walk back to the hotel, along the main road, was very interesting.
Steve had noticed a little park on the opposite side of the road to the sea, with interestingly -shaped trees and hedges.

As we got nearer we saw what looked like a large church on a very big site behind a gate and wall, and all along the wall were plaques with names on.

We haven't been able to discover exactly what the plaques are: it's been suggested to us they are either the names of the church's congregation or perhaps the names of the dead of the parish, which we think is more likely. Strange that the hotel staff we asked about it didn't know .....
Whatever, the garden houses 3 Catholic shrines, a mass of fresh flowers and numerous worshippers, both old and young, male and female, openly praying. Very interesting in a Communist country, albeit one that was French for 150 years.

It proved to be a fascinating walk as we passed peasants working in their allotments ......

........a happy group of coolie-hatted women who smiled and waved at us as they planted trees and shrubs alongside a new development ....

...a hospital ...

.....and numerous new hotels and homes.

We had been told that houses were built long and thin because of the soaring land prices once individuals were allowed by the government a few years ago to own and build houses. Many people had taken on loans they can no longer finance as land prices have now tumbled. Negative Equity, Vietnamese style!!

This scene just opposite the entrance to the hotel would give the impression of a bustling street,

BUT a view of the road as a whole tells a very different story:

Just a little further along, another amazing juxtaposition.
These American hangars, presumably used for helicopters, have been deliberately preserved as a permanent reminder of the war:

and almost opposite them is a Chinese-built and financed casino catering only for non-Vietnamese.