The Perfume River

They pointed a rifle at me  -  again!

We headed off to the Perfume River. There was a large group of young people by the side of the water drilling in a disorganized manner with two AK-47 rifles. They saw me and came running; several dozen of them. One of them shoved the barrel of her rifle into my stomach, and they all laughed. I was quite surprised at this undisciplined behavior and with one finger pushed the barrel to one side. Immediately the student with the other rifle shoved his barrel in my stomach. What is there about my stomach that so fascinates these people? 

This time I pushed the rifle aside firmly and said, "No," and looking at their eyes said, "That's been tried before." Just then the instructor arrived and caught the last bit and spoke to the youngsters severely. They looked at me very differently all of a sudden, and we left, a bit disturbed, if the truth be known. 

We arrived at the boat dock expecting VietNam Tourism to put us on a boat with 23 other tourists. What we discovered was a 40 foot motorized dragon boat and crew all to ourselves. It was ingeniously built out of scrap aluminum and trimmed with teak. The boatman and his wife pushed off, and he pulled up a section of the floor in the cabin and jumped down into the bilge. He turned on the

diesel fuel and fitted a large hand crank into a big flywheel. He wound it up and with much wheezing and coughing we headed very slowly up the lovely Perfume River. All along the way, we met boats chugging toward Hue with loads of sand and gravel. Each boat is crewed by a family which lives aboard. As each passed, we saw the everyday chores being done. A women on the fore deck washed clothes, a child in the center bailed water over the side. The boats have only an inch of freeboard as they wallow north. A man steers. Sometimes youngsters trip the load with hoes. 

We head on, passing dozens of these long wooden boats. Then, we began to come upon them at anchor in the river taking on the sand and gravel. I had thought perhaps that they hand loaded the boats form a sand bank, but no They dredge the sand and gravel up from the river bottom! They use large metal scoops on the end of a 10 meter bamboo pole. A line is connected to the open face of the scoop. The person with the pole lowers the scoop about mid-ships until it reaches the river bottom. The scoop is winched from the bow of the boat, pulling it forward and digging out a cut from the sand bank below. The winch is powered by 2 or 3 people who use hands and feet simultaneously to dredge the river bottom. The scoop is then lifted to the deck by the winch and dumped. Children bail. The labor is incredible, but this is the source of Hue's construction sand and gravel. I calculated that a family could make one trip per day, both dredging it first, and unloading it by hand after transport. They must do it all for pennies. 

About that time our asthmatic engine breathed its last and we floated around for awhile. The boatman pulled up the deck and banged on things for half an hour, finally getting it running again, although it was hard to tell. I tried not to look at the leaking coolant and spraying fuel as he gave a victory smile and we began to head once more up the Perfume River. The Perfume River. What a beautiful and mysterious name for a perfectly lovely river. The water is clean, for few people live along it in the highlands from which it comes. The hills are gorgeous and the land is intensively tilled in the lower area, right down to the water line. After a couple of hours of chugging through the countryside, we were dropped off on the bank to visit the Thien Mu Pagoda. It is one of the most famous structures in the country. The Buddhist Monastery there dates from 1601. This little place in this very rural setting has often been a thorn in the side of various governments. 

In response to President Diem's oppression of Buddhists, the most venerable Thich Quang Duc, a monk from this pagoda, traveled in 1963 from there by motor car to a square a few blocks from our Saigon Star Hotel in HCM City, where attendants poured gasoline on him, and he struck a match for all the world to see. Madame Ngu, the president's wife, said of this event, "I'll supply all the gasoline they want, lets have a real barbecue." The Ven. Mr. Thich is much revered here. The car, an old Austin, is on display. 

Our next stop was another half hour up the river. The waterway narrows there and the countryside is very green, beautiful, and peaceful. Here the Nguyen Kings built their tombs. First, we visited that of Ming Mang, who ruled from 1820 to 1840. In the afternoon, we visited the tomb of Tu Duc, closer to the city. We also drive by another in deep country, right in the middle of a rice field. They vary in size, but all have much the same layout, and match in general, the design of the Citadel. 

The most interesting thing to me is that each "tomb" is built with royal residences, temples, libraries, gardens, and lakes. There is a courtyard with a palace on one side for the wives and on the other for the concubines. Ming had 107 children, for instance. The sites were used as summer retreats in the lifetime of the kings. Upon their deaths, their household, including the hundreds of wives and concubines, were confined within the walls of the complex for the remainder of their lives. 

These hauntingly beautiful sites are crumbling fast, mainly because the Communist Party considers interest in the old kings to be politically incorrect. They talk about the Party being the assurance against the feudalism of kings. What the party has produced, however, is a feudalism of the Communist Elite. 

As I contemplated these places, it occurred to me that these kings wanted peace and quiet, they wanted beauty and serenity, they wanted their ponds and trees, flowers and birds. They wanted architecture and landscapes that meant something to them and in which they could be content. It sounds pretty much like the rest of us, myself especially, but the difference is they had 10,000 or so laborers at hand for a few years to build such "Pieces of Heaven."

Drive the:    DMZ and Highway 9