Author Archives: jkmarsch

We got to see how conical hats are made. They are put around a ‘skeleton’ (wire frame) of a conical hat. The dried leaves are ironed using a hot stone and steam from a clay pot. The leaves are then wrapped around and around the wire framing. Voila- you have a hat! These remind me of images from Vietnam that I saw when I was younger of people working in the rice paddies. The real life images are the same today.

Long ago there was a small stream running through this area. The king wanted it to be bigger so the stream was made into a lake. The kings concubines would lounge around the lake all day. The king would often take walks through the paths, meditate or get on a boat so he could be rowed down the stream.

Kings had an official wife and minor wives. The official wife got her own tomb, the minor wives had a little memorial off to the side. A lot of the memorials were ruined during the Vietnam War during bombings. What is left standing is still quite impressive.
Here is a picture of me next to a tomb of an official wife. It was hot and I was getting a little bored so I thought we should start taking some “creative” photos.

Kings are buried all around the city of Hue in special tombs. Each one has a large stone tablet with the biography of the king that is buried there.

King Khai Dinh designed this tomb for himself- it was pretty elaborate. There were lots of mosaics which reminded me of the Thai temples. One of the temples in Bangkok was decorated entirely of old dining china. The story behind it is kind of interesting. A king was moving into a new home so he wanted all of his fine china transported to the new house. A majority of it broke while in transit. Instead of throwing it away, he had artists shatter it even more and make mosaics out of it that covered one of the temples entirely. Waste not, want not!
The tomb in this picture is not decorated with broken china, but with gold and jewels.

The kids have been troopers most of the time, so Jesse found a hotel with a really nice pool so they could just relax and play for a day or so. There were some cool things to see in Hue, but the kids kept wanting to go back to the pool and swim. They always want Daddy in the pool to play some type of game. In these photos, they are trying to jump and catch a ball. Of course, it has to somehow be competitive so they were judged on height and form.