One reason I didn't get a lot of the Vietnamese pix posted right after I came home was that I wanted some reference material, to wit the Lonely Planets travel Guide my mom was wise enough to bring along” and took back home with her. (I just checked something out of the library. This was not an economy.) I liked this guidebook a lot, and so, apparently do a lot of other westerners, because it was the brand most commonly cited on restaurant signs (recommended by Lonely Planet!). She has since kindly loaned it to me, and now that the obligatory procrastinational period has passed, I can start making pages again.
After spending a day at the Victoria Hotel, we returned to Ho Chi Minh city (commonly abbreviated HCMC) in fact to the same hotel we stayed at before. This time, however, we were put up in the older section, with hardwood floors; I liked those rooms better. Like the exterior of the hotel, our room was decorated with live orchids.
On the way to Dalat....the only time we got seriously soaked was on the way to “Little Paris; its 70 degree temps were heaven for us, but many Vietnamese wore heavy jackets to keep out the cold.
We made it out early to see Notre Dame Cathedral, which according to Lonely Planet was built between 1877 and 1883. Though you will see women, *younger women particularly& wearing short sleeved or sleeveless shirts, long shirts and pants are the norm, and it is considered disrespectful to go into religious buildings without one's knees (and technically elbows) covered. This was one of the reasons I spent so much time trying to find relatively loose-fitting (i.e. not skin-tight) lightweight long-sleeved shirts and capri-length pants, though my major concern was avoiding sunburn.
But it meant I could go in, and my mom couldn't, which I found just a bit ironic, since she's Catholic and I'm agnostic. At her urging, however, I explored the many chapels along the sides of the church, even though a mass was going on. Instead of the individual colored glass holders for each candle, tiered and ranked in rows, supplicants melted a pool of wax anywhere on a flat, round platform about hip height, jamming an ordinary taper into the wax. (According to my mom, this is the custom in Mexico as well, but I'd never seen it before.)
The other thing that struck me were the plaques cemented onto the partitions of the chapels, typically carved in stone, varying in size, though generally were roughly the dimensions of a hard-backed book, featuring a mix of Vietnamese, French and English, occasionally sprinkled other languages like Korean. Quite often they expressed a single sentiment, such as Mercy. Added incrementally from the floor up, they were fit together cheek by jowl.
I liked them very much.
This photo is actually the last I took in the series, though it shows the front of the church. The style of the Romanesque building is quite typical of French churches. As you can tell from the clock, we got up at dawn for this little foray: not difficult, as I typically woke then.
The ‘bumps’ sticking out are the chapels, of course.
Another view.
A closeup of the beautiful doors near the rear of the building.
I'm not much of a landscape photographer, and most of our ride was relatively flat. However, there are mountains in Vietnam, and I even rode up one.
I'm sorry to say that my research for this trip consisted of reading one memoir by Lady Burton and a couple of guidebooks. My effort to learn any Vietnamese bombed totally when presented with the necessity to learn tones. But I did learn that traditional Vietnamese like to live in the land of their ancestors, so they can tend the graves.
My mom was charmed by Vietnamese cattle, which are all of this small, slender brown type, so I took a picture of one. The scenery behind it is quite typical of the Vietnamese countryside.
Next time: Flowers and Silk; or back to floating market; or return to the Vietnam index.
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.
