Hoi An

Hoi An is a town that history forgot about.  It was always just off the main north-south road in Vietnam so that when the French built the railroad, they went ahead and skipped it.  When the Americans came in, they sort of forgot about it and when the Viet Cong swept south, they didn’t bother with it either.  With no Viet Cong presence American bombing runs skipped Hoi An.  That means that all of the old structures that haven’t fallen down of their own accord are still standing: old buildings, old streets, old bridges.  The whole place just feels old and is rife with history.  And in a feat unseen anywhere else in Vietnam, it is quiet owing to a ban on motorized vehicles in the downtown area.














We walked the streets and popped into 14th century buildings from Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese builders.  We went to one very old house where an amazingly sweet man gave us a tour of the house that has been in his family since who-knows-when, but the house is hundreds of years old.  He was a retired math professor at the university, as was his father and his grandfather.  He son now teaches math there as well and will move into the old house when his father dies.  








An hour’s ride outside Hoi An is an area that unfortunately history did not forget about quite long enough.  The ruins of My Son (mee sun) go back to the 11th century and while they managed to stay hidden through almost a thousand years, they didn’t last the Vietnam War.  Unfortunately, the Viet Cong thought that they made a good base which meant that the US figured it was a good target to bomb.  And bomb they did.  It took a French archaeologist’s appeal to the UN who then appealed to LBJ to please stop bombing historical artifacts.  We stopped, but the damage was done.  What is left is pretty remarkable, but we couldn’t help feeling sad about what lay in ruins.  War sucks.









Most of the statues were clearly of ancient Hindu origin but some of the statuary had interestingly European characteristics.  The mystery of the identity of this handsome man remains unresolved.