Opportunity knocks
Hello! I hope your year has got off to a (fl)awesome start. Maybe you were at a new year’s party where you missed the countdown to midnight—we did. But it didn’t hamper our welcome to 2024 🥂!
Or maybe you turned up to a gathering over the festive season and realised you were not dressed for the occasion. We did that too and were turned away. But we didn’t miss out. Our incorrect dress gave us a (fl)awesome opportunity.
During our week in Chang Mai, we got used to dressing respectfully for wats, but we completely forgot to do so for the Hang Duong Cemetery on Con Dao, an island off the southern tip of Vietnam.
When we turned up on a hot afternoon wearing shorts, the entry guard politely turned us away. After an afternoon swim at the beach, we returned later to visit in the cool of the evening, legs suitably covered. At the entrance, two locals gestured for us to follow them to a corner of the cemetery.
There, with the help of Google translate, we participated in offering Christmas wishes to several departed souls to ‘cheer them up’, according to our hosts.
‘We dreamed about them last night and wanted to make them feel happier today,’ one said, via her phone’s translation app.
‘These people made our country what it is today,’ her friend typed on her screen.
It was both touching and funny. Two sweaty Australians, with no Vietnamese, dutifully following the instructions of our hosts, placing incense sticks on graves and singing ‘we wish you a merry Christmas’ in a language that only we spoke. We could all giggle though. At the same time, we felt honoured to participate. Our hosts recorded our every action on camera and hugged us at the end.
The cemetery is the resting place of many patriots and revolutionaries, including Vo Thi Sau, a schoolgirl guerrilla remembered as a national martyr in Vietnam and venerated as an ancestral spirit. Thousands of Vietnamese tourists visit year-round. They dress formally, present offerings, pray before shrines and graves, as well as laugh and chat as if at a party. It was a heady experience that I think we might have missed if we’d visited in the middle of the day, as we’d planned.
Our clothing mishap opened the door to an opportunity that no tour guide could promise. I think that’s a good omen for the year ahead, facilitating groups and life.
Links: Inside Hang Duong Cemetery in Con Dao Vietnam.VN 2024 and Vo-Thi-Sau
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