From Hanoi, Valerie and I moseyed down to Vietnam's central coast. OK, we took a plane, but it was a very laid-back kind of plane. Which is appropriate, because the central coast is a laid-back kind of place. Both Hue and Hoi An are small cities (Hoi An is really more of a town), the traffic is more mellow, there's less of it, and hey, you're practically on the beach. Less honking. It's nice.
Hue was newly-unified Vietnam's capital through the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, but it was pretty well demolished between 1945 and 1968. A number of the buildings within the Imperial Enclosure (similar to Beijing's Forbidden City) have been nicely restored, but there are also vast areas of overgrowth, or piles of bricks, where buildings used to be. There's also a pair of elephants hanging out in some of the overgrowth in a less-trafficked corner of the Enclosure, presumably kept there by the government, but for what reason I have yet to figure out -- they're not considered a tourist attraction, anyway. Outside of the Citadel -- the moated portion of the old city that contains the Imperial Enclosure as well as (now) residential areas (entrance in photo) -- Hue is a pretty regular city.
Hoi An, on the other hand is a tourist haven. The town had its heyday as an international trading port in the 16th and 17th centuries, and is now enjoying a resurgence as an international tailoring port.
These shops are everywhere in Hoi An, which claims a population of about 25,000 people, and over 200 tailors. The downtown section is small and easily walkable (a decent portion of it is closed to motor traffic, such that instead of honking, we heard one guy walking his cart down the street, saying "beep beep"), and about evenly split between Vietnamese merchants and Westerners trying to decide what fabric and pattern they would like for their cheap, custom-made shirt, dress, suit, or winter coat.
RSS Feed
