Danang/Hue/HoiAn 2025 - Hoi An Quan Cong Temple (3/3)

 < work in progress, will update in near future!>

 

Danang/Hue/HoiAn 2025 - Hoi An Quan Cong Temple (2/3)

 < work in progress, will update the photos in near future!>

Danang/Hue/HoiAn 2025 - Hoi An Quan Cong Temple (1/3)

 < work in progress, will update in near future!>

 

Danang/Hue/HoiAn 2025 - Hoi An Hokkien Clan Temple (3/3)

 

More lovely doors! I am obsess with such lovely doors!

Tiles and doors. I guess my photos speaks louder than my words here. 

Small corner of the clan house. People used to use it for gathering, for places to come and gossip maybe? Discuss business or family affairs.

Halls for maybe gathering? Studying? Ceremony? To be frank, I've never belong to any clan officially before! Mainly cause my families are all English speaking, and we have kinda forgotten our roots after settling in Malaysia for generations..... We have all these there, but we aren't really a part of it as maybe someone who is more active in these circle.

More lovely ring incense.

I don't really know why I have so many of these photos. Lol.

More lovely doors.

Soon I think we came to the temple part of the building. My friend is seen here praying. 

The altars for the Gods or deities are a lot more elaborated. 

I think this is near the Mazu altar. Love the tiles in blue. 

For sea crossing immigrants, Mazu the sea goddess is greatly worship for good weather and smooth sailing. She is found almost in every country that has immigrant south Chinese people, mainly Hokkien.

Mazu herself (I think....)

Even the ship has it's own altar! Smooth sailing!

At the back of the building, another small courtyard where another fountain exist. This one was special.

It was a dragon fountain! 

And so me as a dragon, got to have my photo taken with the dragon. It was nice to know that I belong at the very inner part of this old building. As if the dragon is so precious it has to be hidden away and kept in their own courtyard! I like that. I like to have my own inner part of the house for sure!

Danang/Hue/HoiAn 2025 - Hoi An Hokkien Clan Temple (2/3)

Walking into the clan temple, we were greeted with even more art work. From the door frame, to the walls, the doors, everything! If you take your time, you could cover every single inch of this building and find something delicate to admire. The wordings in gold here just says Hokkien Clan House. 

And on the two sides of it, were these detail art pieces, too high to see in details, but you knew it was lovely and took some artisans to create these. 

They exist on both sides, and both side has different designs and paintings on it. 

Walking in, these are the door looking out. Pretty similar to what you will find in Penang clan houses. 

But there seems to be more paintings on the wall here. 

Not sure what they are saying with these paintings. History? Legends? I didn't see much descriptions on them. 

Walking in further, we came to another hall with a lovely floor design, and ring incense hanging from the ceiling. 

 

Lovely floor tiles! And the incenses are so mesmorising. 

Further in, more paintings and altar. Not sure what altar are these. Ancestors? 

They looked like it, but it's rather few compared to what you will find in the clan houses of Penang. 

Association photos. These must be all the Hokkien living in Hoi An! But somehow, Hokkien doesn't seems to be spoken widely here, not like in Singapore or Penang where you can hear it on the streets and in daily lives. 

Confucious is here too!

I love green doors! And this one even has a dragon carved into it! It looked western, yet easter at the same time. I want a house with such door! There is a village called Wentworth in the UK that only has green doors! I could own a house there and have green doors according to the village code, but mine would have a dragon on it! Ha!

Danang/Hue/HoiAn 2025 - Hoi An Hokkien Clan Temple (1/3)

 

Next, we finally reached the Hokkien Clan Temple, our 3rd attraction. Remember, we only get to visit 6! Actually, we don't really need to see what a clan temple looked like, we have plenty in Singapore and Penang Malaysia. But as a Hokkien, I just felt like we should, you know, to go in and pay our respect to our fellow clan family? We may not know each other, but our ancestors were probably from the same village or district! And that made us practically families! Our dialect and our culture unite us somehow.....

This was the entrance way into the clan temple. It was small, yet pretty impressive with all it's detailed carving on the entrance gate.

Here is a more close up look!

Walking in, you can see the garden with their moon window and more Chinese designs. 

The window and the roof design is so pretty!

There was also a fountain at the front. And I think another one at the back of the temple...

A wider view.

They also have the stone carving of the dragon leading up to the stairs. They have such details in almost every stairways inside the Forbidden City in Beijing! Each one unique and beautifully carved. 

Danang/Hue/HoiAn 2025 - Hoi An Museum of Trade and Ceramic (2/2)

The museum has two storeys, and you could just walk up the old wooden stairs and look out the balcony! I know this a ceramic museum, but somehow, the building itself became the highlight of our visit! Because it was a great vantage point to take a photo of the old streets below! So don't miss it!

The upstairs was pretty bare as well, but it was great for me because everything was made of dark wood, and when the lights shined in from the open windows, it was just haunting to be there. It looked like those old kampung houses I see in my Lat comics when I was young of houses in the Malaysian Village. Only, this one was a lot modern and advance compared to those Kampung Boy houses. 

One of the thing that caught  my attention was how high their worship altar was! Someone must have had to climb up daily, maybe once or twice a day for prayers! Must be good exercise! But this design does save a lot of space from the floor area! 

There is a evacuation map that shows the building layout which I thought was interesting. It does a good job to show you how the whole building looks like.

More small ceramics were also displayed at the second floor..... 

But really, the view was the most lovely thing to see here. This is the view from the second floor looking down to my lovely tea corner at the courtyard below! I wish people still build buildings like these. It's just so lovely! Or maybe it's just me who can't afford to own such a lovely building..... lol 

Imagine having your family staying in such a house. People can just shout across to each other since there was probably no phone during those days! And you could see each other from a far too! It was so open, yet so private cause everything was still, technically, inside your own house!

The high up altar all in red. I understand that there are a lot of historical flooding that happens in Hoi An. We will go into that when we reach the entry on one of the old houses, but to have the altar this high on the second floor???? 

Our favourite photo spot upstairs was this balcony. It was quite narrow, yet so pretty! I love the indigo blue on the wall. It reminded me very much of the Blue Mansion in Penang. And right outside was the busy streets of Hoi An. You could just stand there and watch all the activities of the town vibe below without leaving your house! Oh man! What an introvert's dream house!

The view of the town below....

It looked even more dreamy when you add the blue walls and a red lantern into the photo! Postcard perfect!

Lastly, before we left, we exit from one of the small corridor after the gift shop. I though it was rather cute with the vespa parked there, so I took this photo of the scene we passed by :)  This looked so very local Vietnamese, making me recall those small corridors I walked into when I went exploring on my own in HCM City once :)  Good memories :)