Hardworking Women

After the tomb visit, our Hue Backroads adventure continued through a suburban area with more pagodas than Baptist churches in Alabama.  We stopped at one honoring Lady Buddha, a figure unbeknownst to me beforehand.

The pagoda's exquisite flowers and table linens suggested a woman's touch.

In fact, more than one person during our trip observed that women work much harder than men in Viet Nam.

Onward to the Hue Bunker, used by both the French and the Americans to shoot at invading Viet Cong from the north.  Cows graze around it now.

From across the river, we heard the unmistakable strains of "I Will Survive" from a distant wedding party, as good a theme song as any for a country more occupied than not.  

Next stop:  a handmade incense stick demonstration.  Other than our guide and drivers, there wasn't a man in sight.

Colored tips identify the scents (i.e. yellow for lemongrass, used like a citronella candle as a natural way to ward off insects) and please the eye in different marketing arrangements.

Chùa Thiên Mụ, or the Pagoda of the Celestial Lady rises up seven stories but I didn't see any representation of the woman who prophesied its erection in 1601.  

Several men, however, could be found on the grounds, including this scary fellow with a horsehair beard.

. . . and this Buddha who reflected the first sun in more than two weeks.

The pagoda also housed an interesting artifact.  Anyone who lived through the 60s probably recalls the image of a monk setting himself on fire in Saigon to protest South Vietnam's oppression of Buddhists.  Here's the Austin Westminster sedan that brought Thích Quảng Đức to his self-immolation, caught on camera by the AP.  "No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one," observed then-President JFK who put in motion an American-led coup that toppled the government in November 1963, shortly before his assassination. 

I made a pilgrimage to the memorial honoring Thích Quảng Đức before leaving Saigon several days later.  It sits on the very spot he died but paled in comparison to the photo, still burnt into my memory 55 years later.

In the meantime, Hue's afternoon delights kept coming.

We visited the home of the last woman in the city, ahem, who continues to make traditional conical hats from bamboo.

Tang illustrated how light illuminates the inlaid scenes of the city.  He'd make an excellent Brooklyn Bridge salesman!

I bought a string of miniatures to use as a Christmas decoration

. . . and photographed a mother's pride in her disabled daughter's industriousness.

Thom captioned his debut on the What's App Sticky Rice Crew group "off to the rice paddies" and managed to get the damn thing home!