{"id":393,"date":"2018-03-05T13:01:51","date_gmt":"2018-03-05T21:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mwenda.com\/teletype\/?p=393"},"modified":"2018-05-06T21:08:30","modified_gmt":"2018-05-07T05:08:30","slug":"hue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mwenda.com\/teletype\/?p=393","title":{"rendered":"South from Hu\u00e9"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was gray and rainy when our bunch landed in\u00a0Hu\u00e9, but Alex and I were prepared.\u00a0 While the others pedaled around in filmy handout ponchos, we Seattleites were snug and warm in\u00a0our robust, reflective yellow winter cycling jackets, rain pants, helmet covers, and even booties.\u00a0 Still, we were plenty glad to pull up at our hotel, the Art Deco La Residence<\/a>\u00a0 (the history<\/a> link on their website is worth a look). We spent some time cleaning the road dirt off our gear and then settled in for the evening, passing up the tour of the Citadel on the other shore of the Perfume River.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Among the splendid sights of central Vietnam is the\u00a0Khai\u00a0Dinh\u00a0Mausoleum, resting place of the next-to-last\u00a0Nguy\u1ec5n emperor, who died in 1925. The bronze likeness was cast in France — a clue to his coziness with the colonialists, which earned him criticism from many of his subjects, including the young\u00a0H\u1ed3 Ch\u00ed Minh. Nonetheless, we have the Emperor to thank for the decree that Vietnamese would no longer be written in Chinese characters, providing the tourist with the single scant hope of understanding some of the language.<\/p>\n

Veneration of ancestors is important in this part of the world, so you don’t have to be the king to get a noticeable tomb. Elaborate monuments rise from rice fields and hillsides. At another altar, we joined in the ritual of burning currency so that wealth might be carried aloft by the smoke to waiting spirits.\u00a0 (The money that’s burned is normally counterfeit, raising some question about who is being fooled.\u00a0 Later I saw a guy carrying a cardboard motor scooter, and yet still had to be told its purpose.)<\/p>\n

We aren’t souvenir hunters, but one of my favorite stops was at a village where handicrafts were on display.\u00a0 One little shop was producing incense sticks, starting from freshly-cut bamboo that we saw being brought in. Next door was a maker of those ubiquitous conical hats made from palm leaves; and there I learned another thing I wouldn’t have guessed.<\/p>\n

The hats aren’t completely opaque, and it turns out that it’s possible during construction to add an intermediate layer with a message or a picture, like in a shadow-play, that will be visible only when the hat is trans-illuminated, as by holding it up to the sun. Traditionally, a suitor might carry this discreet message for his beloved, revealing it, wordlessly, only at the ideal time and place. While it wasn’t practical for me to commission one of these “poem hats,” I was very glad to bring the concept back with me.<\/p>\n

After a couple days in\u00a0Hu\u00e9 it was time to head south. The idea is to ride over\u00a0H\u1ea7m H\u1ea3i V\u00e2n\u00a0(“Ocean Cloud Pass”) to \u0110\u00e0 N\u1eb5ng; but, as sometimes happens, I got a late start and decided to skip the uphill grade. From the summit though it was a new day, the weather now sunny and warming, with a pleasant ride downhill and then across the harbor to the Buddhist temple out on the peninsula. Lunch followed at a resort near there and then a bus ride, south along China Beach to our next stop, the Four Seasons Nam Hai at Hoi An.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

\u0110\u00e0 N\u1eb5ng’s answer to Fisherman’s Terminal.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was gray and rainy when our bunch landed in\u00a0Hu\u00e9, but Alex and I were prepared.\u00a0 While the others pedaled around in filmy handout ponchos, we Seattleites were snug and warm in\u00a0our robust, reflective yellow winter cycling jackets, rain pants, helmet covers, and even booties.\u00a0 Still, we were plenty glad to pull up at our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mwenda.com\/teletype\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mwenda.com\/teletype\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mwenda.com\/teletype\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mwenda.com\/teletype\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mwenda.com\/teletype\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=393"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/mwenda.com\/teletype\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":523,"href":"https:\/\/mwenda.com\/teletype\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393\/revisions\/523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mwenda.com\/teletype\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mwenda.com\/teletype\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mwenda.com\/teletype\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}