Visit the village where tombs are built for the dead and the living

VietNamNet Bridge – An Bang is a quiet coastal village in the central city of Thua Thien – Hue. About twenty kilometers east of Hue City, the village is very well-known to tourists as “the City of Ghosts”.

In a bizarre variation of keeping up with the Joneses, the villagers compete to build increasingly lavish and elaborate tombs for their ancestors, and even sometimes for family members who have not yet died.

The graveyard, with its brilliantly colored structures built on white sand, stretches along the side of the road for 3 kilometers. Some of the mausoleums can be mistaken for mansions. Regal stone lions abound and glittering mosaic dragons adorn the roof ridges.

Some 90 percent of the villagers have overseas relatives, who send money home, much of which is used to build tombs. Some grave-markers include information on the building costs alongside the names and dates. Typical figures are between 25 and 50,000 US dollars. The homes of the villagers remain humble, but the dead are resting in luxury.

The idea to turn An Bang cemetery into a tourist site was suggested by several researchers of Hue culture several years ago, especially Nguyen Huu Thong, director of the Institute for Vietnamese Culture and Art in Hue city.

According to Thong, An Bang cemetery is worthy of being a tourist site thanks to its unique culture and architecture. Tombs in this cemetery are built in various styles: Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Vietnamese, Chinese and Western… Many tombs in An Bang are copies of Nguyen Kings’ tombs and the Hue royal citadel.

Thanks to this City of Ghosts, many unique traditional occupations in Vietnam have been restored, for example, making dragons and phoenixes with glazed terra-cotta and potteries on walls, etc.

The idea became reality when Hue Travel recently offered a tour to An Bang village and Tam Giang lagoon.

More luxury tombs are still being built in the village.

The latest pictures of the City of Ghosts: