Bicycling through Hoi An, Vietnam

Following our silk lantern experience, we hired two bicycle taxis to take us on a tour of some of the local spots. As you can see, it was a bit of a tight fit in the bicycle! It was also around 95 degrees and sunny, so it was also a little uncomfortable. Spoiler alert, we ended up only visiting two locations out of the 6 because the kids couldn't take the heat and needed to get back to the resort pool.

We first went to a shrine, I believe it was called the Tran Family Home & Chapel. We were given a brief tour and allowed to take pictures of everything. Basically, this is an old family home and is a good demonstration of ancestry-worship. There was a wall that had the names of the deceased family members hanging on the wall with incense and food offerings below. We were also shown coins that were used for "good luck". The coins were dated by the various dynasties that ruled throughout Vietnamese history. We were given the opportunity to toss the coins, with the goal trying to get a ying & a yang, meaning "good luck". We all achieved the ying & yang in our 3 alloted throws, so it looks like we are destined for great things :)

We then hoped back into the bicycles and headed towards the Japanese Covered Bridge. This bridge was built in the early 17th century by the Japanese to help with trade. It is said to be a symbol of cultural exchange between the Japanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese people. It now has a temple inside for worship for local people. The one end of the bridge is guarded by monkey statues and the other end of the bridge is guarded by dog statues. I read one account that stated this was because the bridge construction began in The Year of the Monkey and ended in The Year of the Dog, but I can not say that is a true fact with certainty. The architecture of the bridge represents both the misfortune and happiness of the local people, or ying & yang, according to the signage outside of the bridge.

Following the bridge, we hired a taxi to head back to the resort. I don't think have mentioned it yet, but we were very fortunate to be vacationing with our dear friends that we met in Hong Kong. They are actually relocating back to Ohio in a couple of weeks, so this was their last big vacation in Asia. They had rented a pool villa, so we hung out there swimming and chillaxin' in the afternoon. They have 3 kids that are older than ours, however, their kids are troopers and endured hours of playing and talking sports with ours :)

We then cooked and shared an Easter dinner with them in the evening. It was very nice to have a "holiday feel" and be able to spend some time celebrating with great friends. We absolutely love our life here, but it is difficult to be so far away from family and friends. Holidays can be a little bit of a let-down. We know that our families and friends are all together celebrating, while it's just another day here. However, this year we were able to spend Thanksgiving with Janelle and Easter with our friends, so it wasn't so bad!

Easter in Vietnam: Introduction

Happy (Belated) Easter! We ran into the Easter Bunny at the airport before leaving for Vietnam. The Easter Bunny had just filled our Easter baskets the night before, but we didn't catch sight of him, so the kids were very surprised to see him hopping around the airport!

I am going to skip blogging about our Phuket, Thailand vacation over Chinese New Year, spent with my parents, to write about Vietnam, for now. I have already posted quite a bit about Thailand, so it's time for something a little different. But let's face it, our kids have a lot of vacation time here! They were only in school for about 5 weeks before having another 2 week break. I am constantly reminding them that when we move back to the USA, we won't be visiting another country every 2 months! (however, xxxfingers crossedxxx, I am hoping MY traveling doesn't slow down too much!--that is a hint to the husband)

Throughout the posts about Vietnam, I will continue, as always, to share what we have experienced and were taught along the way, I will also provide research that I have done on the various places. Please note that I will talk about the Vietnam War, as this is an important part of both Vietnam and American history. Mark and I both feel very strongly that while we are in Asia, we should learn and experience history and culture for ourselves and our children. We understand the war, was, and continues to be, a difficult subject for some. I will be sharing pictures and dialogue we had with Vietnamese people regarding the war. We do not want or wish to cause distress or offense to anyone, so please do not read these posts, if you feel this may occur. However, the war took place before Mark and I were born, and we felt, for our family, we had an excellent learning opportunity given our location. Please know that we do not put our children, or ourselves, into dangerous or unsafe situations. Finally, we fully support and greatly appreciate all of our American Veterans and Troops!

A brif introduction: The Socialist Republic of Vietnam was established on July 2, 1976. I want to clarify this, as quite a few people (from America) have asked us if we went to "North Vietnam" or "South Vietnam". There is only the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The country had reunification of the North and South on July 2, 1976. The fall of Saigon, where South Vietnam officially surrendered to North Vietnam forces occured, on April 30th, 1975.

Geography Lesson: Vietnam has a "S" shaped appearance and is located on the Indochinese penninsula of Asia. It shares borders with China (north), Laos (west), and Cambodia (south and soutwest). Coastal borders include the Gulf of Tonkin, South China Sea, and Gulf of Thailand. Vietnam is a little over a one hour flight from Hong Kong. We stayed at a resort in the town of Da Nang, which is centrally located and on the coast of the South China Sea. The town itself is a little more of a local, small-scale city, so not a lot of stuff to do there off the resort. The town that has more of the cultural experiences, restaurants, bars, and sightseeing is Hoi An, and that is a 30 minute cab ride away. We took the kids there on 2 of the days.

Hoi An Ancient town was designated as a UNESCO city in 1999. It was awarded this title because it is a great representation of a historical and traditional Asian trading port and has a rich blend of many cultural influences of Asia. In simple terms, the town is just plain cute and has been cute for a very long time! It's history can be traced back to 2nd century B.C., although much of the architecture we saw dates around the 19th and 20th century. According to what I have read, Christianity was brought into Vietnam through Hoi An (http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/948). However, Vietnam offers many religions and beliefs, with one of the most common being "ancestor-worship". Buddishn is said to be the largest "mainstream" type religion. Ok, back to Hoi An...

We took our taxi into Hoi An without a specific destination in mind and ended up at a local "artisan village".

Silk fabric is one of the famous trademark crafts of the Vietnamese. At the village, we were able to take a tour and watch silk production. They had an entire mini silk factory set-up for people to view, including silk worms, weaving looms, and spooling of the thread. We were told about the life cycle of a silk worm, but apparently the kids have already been educated on that in school, so it was old news to them.

Here are the silk worms in their bamboo baskets. Each basket has a different stage of the life cycle.

Here are the cocoons

You can see the small yellow dots floating in the basket, those are the cocoons waiting to be placed in the loom. These particular cocoons are producing yellow silk thread. If you look at the backgroun you can see green silk on a bolt on the loom. That is produced with the yellow and blue threads.

The weaving of the silk was very interesting to me because we were able to see different colors of fabric being produced. For instance, to make the orange silks, they used the red and yellow silk threads. The worms can be fed different diets to help dye their ultimate silk fibers. Another interesting tidbit was how strong the silk thread was, I always picture silk being rather delicate. However, the thread itself is very tough as the young lady demonstrated.


After learning about the silk process, we were led through the shopping section. They sold individual silk fabric bolts, table linens, scarves, and dresses, however, the most impressive was the artwork. They do amazing embroidery work with the silk threads. The artist told us that to master the basic embroidery, a student attends school for 6 months, but the intricate and detailed pieces are produced by artists that spent around 3 years in education. It was then our turn to try our hands at crafting Vietnamese silk lanterns.Hoi An, and many places in Vietnam, have gorgeous silk lanterns hanging around. I will show more pictures of them later, but you will see the mini version here.

The shell of the lantern is made of bamboo. We then used what smelled like industrial rubber cement to glue silk piecees onto the bamboo. The process took about 30 minutes in total. Evie now has her lantern hanging in her bedroom. Mark has fashioned it into a nightlight. Of course, we don't use it as a nightlight because I do not really think it seems fire-retardant, but she likes the idea that it can "glow" if she wants. Carson's lantern functions as a dream-catcher by his bed. (Just so you know, he picked the colors red and yellow for his favorite football team, Real Madrid...that's a soccer team for you Americans.) Of course, both kids loved doing this activity, Evie slightly more so, but Carson had a great time too. Unfortunately, Carson had to work with me as his "expert" while Evelyn had our Vietnamese professional lantern and silk creator, so the experience was a little skewed.

More to come!