The following couple of days were spent on sightseeing trips. We visited 3 of the 15 temples in town, and were amazed by the amount of people who visited these temples. (An Da Temple, Ha Temple, and the Red Temple) The temples all have different names and all had different meanings; one can spend an entire lifetime deciphering them all. As we watched the locals pray to their gods for good fortune, prosperity, luck, health and longevity, we could not help but ask for some ourselves. So at each temple, shrine, and pagoda we burnt some incense and money for our descendents in the afterlife, and prayed as the locals do.(Above Picture - Mom and Chris at An Da Temple)
We visited a shrine on the outskirts of town called (Ba De) dedicated to the local woman whom was wrongly killed. Legend has it that long ago in this small fishing village, a young lady was singing by the sea washing her clothes when the King of Vietnam just happened to be riding by. He was enchanted by her voice and demanded his troops to stop. He took the young lady as his wife (one of a thousand I am sure). When the king left, the young lady was left behind, and was told to wait for the king’s return. Several months had passed and the king had not returned and the young lady was with child and the villagers became suspicious as to why a young girl would be pregnant and without a husband. They deemed her to be a witch and captured her and threw her in the ocean. They said that if she floated, she would indeed be a witch and need to e killed and if she drowned then she was not a witch but would be killed none the less for becoming pregnant without being wed. A no win situation for the poor girl. She floated and they recaptured her, tied her to a rock and then through her into the ocean again. (Picture above - Statue of Ba De)Upon the king’s return to the village, he asked for his wife and the locals were shocked and amazed that the young lady’s story was true. The King mourned and erected a shrine for this wife, praying to the sea that the sea would keep her safe. The shrine still stands today, and many many sailors come to the shrine to pray to Bo De for protection on the high seas.
The temple has since tripled in size with massive reconstruction and additions to the original shrine. This shrine is located in what has become a resort town for the local people of this region. Hotels have been built surrounding the beaches, adjacent to the many many fishing farms that have cropped up over the last decade.
In this region, we also stopped and visited the vacation home of the last emperor of Vietnam. It was quite an extravagant home located on top of a hill overlooking the ocean. We happened to catch a glimpse of the sun setting that night from one of the guest rooms which was an amazing view.
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