Vietnam, 10.Feb.2025, Monday

Today, we all relished breakfast again, such good food. Pat and Scott asked the server about the Vietnamese coffee that is a traditional drink. It’s very very slowly pressed strong coffee with condensed milk and poured over ice. They decided to try the coffee. They both loved it, thought it was a great addition to the coffee repertoire. Even Scott who doesn’t normally drink caffeine. Pat began slightly hallucinating because it was so strong and on top of the coffee he’d already drunk, the caffeine load was big. He and Scott then jittered their way out of the restaurant 🙂

Today, we’re driving out to the Tràng An. A scenic area near Hoa Lú which is renowned for its boat cave tours and historic temples. On 23 June 2014, at the 38th session of the World Heritage Committee in Daha, the Trang An Scenic Landscape Complex was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

Honestly, it was a bit odd. It’s a two hour drive, we’ve been driving almost two hours now (I’m writing in the van) and it’s been a continual city spread, occasional rice patties, but mostly just a series of buildings, with occasional houses in the midst along the road. Reminds me of Houston, where the spread just never ends. The video shows a bit of this. 

The photo here is the “house” of one of the two cement kings. As our guide says, if you have money, you can show off as much as you want. He wanted to build a house that looked like St. Petersburg. And he did!

At the end of the drive, we got out and into an open air bus that drove us to a river spot. And we were in Disney. Well, obviously it wasn’t, but it felt like it. We got into boats, 3 into each with a rower; both of our rowers were women. The rowers were small and strong. They started off using hands, then switched to feet to row us for almost 2 hours up a river and then back down. So all these little boats are going along in a row, all visitors wearing bright orange life vests. 

It was pretty rowing along the rice patties surrounded by the karst peaks. There were occasional cemetery spots or just a cemetery stone. The practice for cemeteries in this area is when someone dies, they are buried. After 5 years, the family lifts the body out of the grave, cleans the bones, then they put it back in with the rest of the family. The vaults along the rivers are recent and carved out of cement. Later they will be painted. Some of the cemeteries we passed were beautiful with the carvings and paintings.

After almost 2 hours, we left the boats, thanking our guides, and walked along a path that passed an ancient small temple carved into the mountain. My photo translation of the stone said “The Tran Dynasty brought spring to the country after thousands of years of Chinese domination.” Thai Vi Lunh Tu was the leader of this dynasty who consolidated Vietnam and the various fighting factions to defeat the Chinese. 

This cave temple was “The sacred place of worship of the Tran dynasty, established by the Supreme Emperor Tran Thai Tong, the first King of the Tran Dynasty to leave home and become a monk in 1273.”  The final note on the stone was clearly a more recent note recognizing history. “Since the Dai Viet era, our people have always firmly protected the fatherland, all people as one, chasing the enemy to the north. The Tran Dynasty had great achievements in the three resistance wars against the Yuan-Mongol army. Generations of Vietnamese people have always worshiped the Tran Kings as the sun that appears daily from the east, radiating a radiant halo for the nation.”

Turns out that where we were going next after lunch was the 18th century recreation of the temples recognizing these original emperors. 

Our guide told us that a temple honors kings/emperors and a pagoda is a place of worship and there were both in this site we were visiting.

But before that site, we went to a temple with some notes (transcribed) about the history: Thai VI Temple. Saving the country is a great achievement, the old temple is a 1000 years old, the Northern land is famous. May the people be blessed with endless blessings. Ancient temple, a building that the South can admire.

And no, it’s not a dead dog, just sleeping hard.

Incredible incense container behind the yellow flowers.

As we were leaving haunting music started, instantly transporting us back many years.

Then we saw the musician. I could have stayed there a long time. He told us that he was the last who could play the instrument and that no one wanted to learn.

 And now to the main destination. Lu is the site of a 10th-century capital of an ancient Vietnamese Kingdom called Dai Co Viet. This small Kingdom covered an area of only 300 hectares, and reigned from the 10th century, during the Dinh and Le dynasties to the 11th century, during the Ly Dynasty. In 968, King Dinh Bo Linh of Dai Co Viet (an ancient name of Vietnam) constructed his capital in Hoa Lu and ruled until 980. This first king fought off the Chinese and brought all the Vietnamese groups together. Hoa Lu endured for almost 31 years through the Le dynasty (980-1009) and the Ly dynasty (1009–1010). This latter dynasty cemented power and built gorgeous buildings (all now long gone). 

Banner welcoming us says: Celebrate the 1057th Anniversary of the Dai Co Viet State (968-2025)

River surrounds a lot of the site. 

It was hard to get photos of the full buildings, ornate, with sculptures and incense burners in front. This was the first small temple we saw:

A marker next to a temple  had these words (per my Photo Translate and shortened a bit): This was the first ancestor of the Dam Huy Hoan family. More than 2000 years ago…he was an intelligent, upright and brave person and he had many descendants. In the family genealogy, there is a passage that says: The Dam family had scholars who passed the imperial examinations (more about this later) . In the family, there was a daughter who worked as an oil painter. Because she was from a noble family, she was intelligent and virtuous, complete in both her ability and her behavior. And it continued on through her son who revered her. Nice to see a woman so noted. Not a lot of that here. 

Except for these two women, mentioned several times over our days: Two of the country’s most revered heroes are the Trung sisters, Trac and Nhi, who led an insurrection against China in A.D. 40 and liberated Vietnam. One of their commanders, Phung Thi Chinh, is said to have given birth during the battle and to have continued fighting with her infant strapped to her back.

A few scenes that definitely miss the intricacy of the palaces and temples:

The Vietnamese knew where the palaces were, and the early history of Vietnam’s first emperors. The Nguyen dynasties rebuilt on the original site temples in their own style in the 17th and 18th centuries to celebrate Vietnam’s history. It wasn’t until the late 1990’s and early 2000’s that they uncovered the original palaces, finding columns, coins, pottery, etc. Amazing 1000 year old pieces. 

That night we were all feeling jet lagged and had dinner at the hotel and all went to bed.