Marriage Counseling

Mr. T had another tour guide with him when he met us in the morning and her name was Miss Soo (maybe, she was very soft spoken) and she was in ao dai, traditional Vietnamese dress for women. These are very long tunic style silk tops, almost floor length, of brilliant fabrics with slits up the sides to just about the mid ribcage. These are worn with loose fitting, slim slacks and were the norm through the late 20^th century but are less popular now. Mr. T said that, in the past, when the children rode their bicycles to school wearing ao dai, it looked like butterflies flapping in the wind.

Together Mr. T and Miss Soo took us outside of Hue for the morning. On the road, Mr. T explained that the divorce rate in the south and the north was very high but in the central highlands it was very low, only 1%. He commenced in giving Chris advice about how to stay married a long, long time and it went something like this: when Sandra gets very angry that you have been out with many women, instead of arguing about it when there is much heat, walk outside and stay away for many days until no one is angry anymore and then come back and all will be fine. Somehow, that’s how they maintain low divorce rates in Hue. He keeps telling us that the Vietnamese don’t look back; maybe this is one example of that,  but I do look back so Chris can keep walking if he has been out with many women. Or even just one. I can use that several days he’s walking around to pack his things.

We visited a morning market at Thuy Thanh village and I realized for the first time on this trip that I hadn’t seen any Vietnamese men at the markets we’ve been to. The vendors are all female and the buyers, as well. Miss Soo said this is because the markets are for people preparing family meals and men do not do that work in Vietnam. This town is also home to the Thanh Toan bridge, a Japanese ^th Century which replaced an earlier monkey bridge and served to connect the rice fields to the town and which is a terrific break from the sunshine, as well. At the bridge, Miss Soo talked through the process of harvesting rice which is done by hand in this part of the country.

styled, ornate foot bridge from the 18

Our next stop was a family garden where we had a cooking lesson and learned (kind of, but not really) how to make the Hue cakes banh beo and banh loc, but Hue cakes are not like… cake. The first was a rice paste spread on a banana leaf and then spread again with a mixture of shrimp and pork puree, then folded into an envelope and steamed. The second was a tapioca paste spread on a banana leaf and then a piece of pork fat and a whole shrimp was added before it was folded into an envelope and steamed. Don’t worry about taking the shell off the shrimp, you hardly notice the shell is on there once it’s steamed if you’ve been eating this particular dish your whole life. If you’ve only eaten it once, then you kind of notice. The man who taught us was taciturn with a wizened face and it was hilarious to watch him watch Chris get rice paste everywhere and eventually he was belly

laughing at the mess Chris made of his cake. His operation is just like the FoodNetwork in that as soon as we had rolled several of each kind of cake relatively successfully, that plate was whisked away and a fresh plate returned with just cooked cakes that had clearly been steaming while we worked.

After lunch, we drove a bit and then stopped at Anh He Café, where the artist-owner has collected memorabilia from the Vietnam War and has repurposed it as furniture in his café. As we sat and sipped our coffee, Mr. T pointed out the difference between Russian and American fuel tanks and talked about which canteens and radios he had used during the war. He says “we” when he refers to himself and the American soldiers and that

is telling about his experience.

 From there we walked a short way to the Tu Hieu Pagoda, built in a pine forest in the mid-19^th Century and known as the resting place of the Nguyen Dynasty’s Eunichs. It is a peaceful, quiet, beautiful place and at its entrance is a large reservoir because there is great reverence for water here; in fact, many Vietnamese people have some symbolic lake in their gardens for this reason. The pagoda counts among its students the famous Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh and is currently home to 70 monks, who were singing their mid-day prayers when we were there. It was a holy sound and we were lucky to be there to experience it.

We parted ways with Miss Soo and Mr. T brought us to the Imperial Citadel, where, mostly, photos are not allowed (ugh). It was built in 1804 in accordance with the principles of geomancy and faces east. It is a massive walled fortress surrounded by a moat that is fed through two sluices by the Perfume River. The Imperial City is within the fortress walls and also the Purple Forbidden City, to which access was restricted by all but the Nguyen imperial family. There is a pool in which 400 concubines would have been swimming in the mid-19^th Century and there is a temple with worship alters to all of the kings of the Nguyen dynasty, which lasted from 1802 to 1945. This temple is a long two story corridor of red and gold that reminded me of a Vietnamese Hall of Mirrors for its opulence and scale. The worship altars here are fashioned similarly to the ones in people’s homes: there are two candles, a vessel of water, food as an offering and incense, always incense. This is the best smelling country in the world for all of the incense. These tables are to keep the ancestors close to the living. We visited the throne room and plaza, where the armies would present in formation for audiences with the king and the library, as well. Another World Heritage Site, Unesco is working to preserve what buildings remain and recreate the ones that sustained damage or were destroyed by termites, cyclones and war. Unfortunately, the Citadel was attacked by the North Vietnamese Army as part of the Tet Offensive and the artillery fire damage is clear.  I wish I could use words in a way to do more justice to this place.

It was time for our flight to Hanoi and when Mr. T brought us to the airport it was hard to say goodbye. I will long remember his words and his eyes and his intense life story.