Christmas in Vietnam
Friday, December 28th, 2007A few days ago we arrived in Hoi An, a delightful small colonial town in central Vietnam at a good time for two events: the full moon of Dec. 23, and Christmas.
Each full moon night the street lights in the old part of Hoi An are switched off and the town is lit only by Chinese lanterns that hang from restaurants, shops and houses. There is also live traditional music and entertainment, and candles sent adrift down the river complete the ambience. It’s a lovely time to stroll around town and we really enjoyed it.
Hoi An isn’t as ‘into’ Christmas as Ho Chi Minh City is (but I suspect in Ho Chi Minh, the economic capital of Vietnam, Christmas is more about capitalism than Christianity; seeing Christmas decorations there reminded me of seeing them in the shopping malls of conservative Muslim Qatar), but Hoi An has probably the best food in the country, and that was good enough for me. We had a 7-course seafood feast for Christmas lunch – White Rose (shrimp wrapped in a type of rice paper), Fried Wantons, Shrimp Spring Rolls, Calamari Fried Noodles, Sweet and Sour Shrimp, Grilled Fish in Banana Leaves, and Fruit Salad for desert, all topped off by a couple of fruit cocktails … and it only cost us US$12.50 for the lot. Since we’ve had Christmases in places like Yemen and Burma before, this was actually quite a good one by our recent standards.
Yesterday we left Hoi An after four days and are now a little further north in Hue, famous for its 19th century imperial city and emperors’ tombs. The city is not nearly as nice as Hoi An because it’s much bigger and mostly devoid of French colonial architecture, but the sites have been interesting enough – today we cycled about 30km in our explorations of the tombs outside the city.
Tonight we’re taking the bus to the capital Hanoi, and we’ll hopefully be able to explore north Vietnam for the next 10 days or so.
Nick