In this cemetery, many of the tombs cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. People with ordinary jobs work all their lives to be able to have a rest worthy of an emperor, from all the details to the expensive materials they use. The beliefs people have about death will never cease to amaze.
We are in the ancient capital of Vietnam, the beautiful city of Hue, and today we will concentrate on visiting Thombs. Some of the most opulent and impressive tombs in the region are located here. We will even visit the one known as the city of ghosts.
A tremendous adventure full of absurd contrasts, legends and respect for the next plane, the afterlife, awaits us. We start at the mausoleum of the penultimate emperor of Vietnam, Hai Din. This is another example that some of the most impressive architectural works of our planet are always tombs, they have always wasted hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars to pay respect to a dead, to a corpse.
In this space of about 5000 m², only one person is buried. The human sculptures that can be seen were made with a short stature, because the emperor was about one meter sixty and he did not want any other human being to be bigger than himself. Are you looking at the impressive paint job on the ceiling?
Well, the artist responsible for this did it entirely with his feet. He was a very creative artist here, very crazy. And yes, it is said that he used to climb ladders, he would put his brush on his little fingers, like a little dog, extremely skillful.
Who are we to judge the creative process of a genius? What we have just seen has no comparison with the tomb of the emperor, I hope I am pronouncing it correctly, which has more than hectares of surface. It is said that this emperor was very small, that he was only 1.
42 meters tall, and that is why all these sculptures that we see are quite small. And yes, look, they are all very small. My brother-in-law was probably nicknamed the nun, because she was a little mother.
It is said that this emperor had more than 100 wives, but curiously, he never had a single child, because he was infertile. A curious and rather obscure fact is that anyone who wished to work for the king in the royal lands had to be a eunuch. They were castrated before crossing the gates to the estates so that they would not be tempted to mess with one of the king's wives.
Wow, how disturbing, how dark working in the royal fields, but at what a cost. This is the emperor's representative tomb, and I say representative because no one really knows where he is buried. It could be anywhere in the 10 hectares, under the waters of the lakes, among the fish, well guarded, with all his gold, because he did not want anyone to steal it.
Greed at its best. It is said that only four of his workers knew where he was buried, because the more than 200 who helped in the process of being buried were killed by the dynasty. Many years later, when the French arrived in the territory, they dug the surrounding soil with the intention of finding him.
That, in fact, is why you see two different shades of mosaics. Nothing new, just Europeans, plundering territories as they have done throughout history. So, yes, to know the exact value of this tomb, how much it cost, is something impossible, because in addition to the millions it surely cost to make the lakes and the tombstones and all the craftsmanship, it could be more than triple in the valuable resource of gold.
Just as in many parts of the world it is common to see large flower markets outside cemeteries, in this region it is more usual to see many incense stores. The explanation for this is because it is believed that through fire one can communicate with the other plane, with the afterlife. In fact, we are now commenting on a shamanism ceremony for the channel.
I recommend that you go and watch it in case you are interested in this subject. I personally find it fascinating. And yes, in many, many countries in Asia you will see that there is a huge incense industry and it is really very beautiful.
They make beautiful figures with the colors, the aromas are enchanting, to the point that it has even become something very touristy. Here the saleswoman friends show you how incense is made, which I had never thought of. Basically, it is dry wood.
Look at this thing we are seeing here, quite wet, isn't it? Yes, this texture is excremental. It is basically wood extract, to which they then put natural flower essences.
And then, by rolling it like this you can. . .
Look, let's see, like this, like this, like this, like this. Here we go. There is more or less my incense, you roll it on a stick and then you rub it with the powder, which will make it burn easier and smell good.
According to many religious or simply spiritual ideologies, fresh incense must always be present in the tombs. Hey, how nice it is to travel in Vietnam, how warm the people are, they love the photos, the videos and it is being very easy to move around using my GPS, my translator, because in this journey I stay very well connected thanks to HolaFly. Once again, a mention of our favorite sponsor, HolaFly, which is this excellent service, which I have told you about before, that I use to have internet on my phone practically all over the planet.
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We have arrived at the City of Ghosts, also known as the City of Millionaire Spirits. This cemetery with more than 250 hectares of surface, to put it in a more understandable way, more than seven times Disneyland, where there are about 3000 tombs of up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. And wow, it is very impressive the level of detail they put into it.
I want to clarify that unlike the ones we saw before, these tombs do not belong to royalty, ancient emperors. These tombs are of ordinary people and of modern times. In fact, in many of them there is not even someone buried yet, but people in life are still building the spaces in which they will rest with their relatives once they retire from our plane, the plane of the living.
And the reason why this luxurious and ostentatious cemetery exists, in fact, has a most peculiar context, because until a few decades ago the town where it is located was a fishing community in which there was no money to spare and suddenly they are wasting tens of thousands of dollars on tombs that seem to belong to kings and emperors. We should know that this whole area of Vietnam used to be the capitalist region until 1975, when the country was divided in two. Once the Communist Party ruled the whole territory, people here were very much afraid of being persecuted, imprisoned.
That is why at the end of the 70's a massive migration movement took place in which literally millions of Vietnamese left the territory in small heavy boats. Fishing boats, to refugee camps in Hong Kong, to later be sent to other countries around the world. As a result, to date, more than 2 million Vietnamese live in the United States and it was not until the early 1990s, when an economic relationship began to develop between the two countries, that the migrants were able to start sending money to their families in the United States.
Then, the people who lived in this poor fishing village where property is quite cheap, began to receive economy in dollars and were able to start building huge houses and tombs worthy of a king himself. In fact, as you drive through the streets, it is shocking to see the size of the properties and how luxurious they look. They build palace-like gates and adorn them with intricate mosaics.
Many of the buildings we are seeing are valued in the tens of thousands of dollars, some even in the hundreds of thousands. When I first read this, I didn't believe it. I was like, how ostentatious can they be, what is so much money going into.
But seeing the level of detail that goes into it, I did believe it, because craftsmanship is well known to be very expensive. And seeing the complexity of art that exists here, because that's what it is, it's art, of course I can imagine how so much money would be wasted. How curious to think that the ideology of the people here dictates them to work all their lives for the day of their death.
We are flying the drone and this is how you can see how massive the site is and how impressive many of these structures are. See, this one even has a lake. Wow, that was very, very expensive.
More than tombs, these are mausoleums. This is an example of a tomb of people who are still alive. We can tell by how the floor is partially covered, as if waiting for its owners to pass away and lift it up and bury it.
And likewise, by the tombstone that has the names written behind a protective mica, as if they already know which members of the family are going to be here. And all at once they wrote the names there waiting for them to die. What a crazy and harsh mentality, drinking your name on a tombstone when you are still alive.
And what that week you made your grandfather mad, then your grandfather took you out of his will: Ay, ungrateful grandson. And he had the tombstone made, so you are no longer there, all your cousins are there, your uncles and aunts are there. And you just because you pierced your ears, painted your hair and your grandfather told you: I dishonor you, you no longer go out there.
No, look how hard all this is. And look, for example, at this stone sculpture, how long did it take to make it and how much did it cost? Yes, all this makes us think and see, I make this comment not as a criticism, merely as an observation for us to think, to analyze.
Will their houses be as luxurious and beautiful in life as their houses will be in their times of death? If someone were to bring me here without context and tell me that this is a centuries-old religious temple, I would believe him. But no, it turns out that this tomb might belong to Aunt Nguyen, who owns the little shop on the corner.
And the fact that locals invest so much in their cemeteries makes a lot more sense when you understand the importance given to respecting your dead in Vietnam. For example, every store you go into will have altars, every person's house will have an altar for the deities, for their dead. Yes, they believe very much in paying respect to their ancestors.
Well, what a level of tombs we have seen today. A strong reflection of the complexity of the human mind that makes us want to continue proving something, even when we are no longer alive. Thank you very much for joining me.
See you, as always, as you know, in a few days with a new video. Goodbye.
