Just one of the gifts that our morning walks gave us each day

Photograph with some of the Hoi An walking students at 6am at the Entrance Gate of the  Ba Mu (Midwife) Temple, chosen by Malcolm McInerney as a special image from the trip to Vietnam.


Malcolm writes:


So many snapshots in time that stay with me long after I return

On the trip to Vietnam there are always so many snapshots in time that stay with me long after I return.  I always write down on the plane back to Australia these significant moments of the trip and just one of these moments I would like to share with you all. It relates to a part of the trip that happened by chance back in 2016 – the early morning walks.  What crazy people on a non-stop tour of Vietnam would get up at 5.30am to go for walk? I am happy to say, most of us! 

These walks early in the morning continue to provide many of the highlights of the trip for me. They are an opportunity to see Vietnam waking up and to experience so much that the normal tourist just does not see. We see the real Vietnamese community and lifestyle before the craziness of the day takes over. We see the buzz and smells of the food markets, the energetically alive and welcoming people in the park and on the pavements exercising (who can ever forget the Happy Yoga people), the people in the water at Vung Tau bobbing in the sea, students getting delivered to school at 6am on the back of their parents bikes and vistas and places that in the hubbub of the busy day go unnoticed to the visitor. One of the later is the image I have chosen.

The photograph was taken on our morning walk around deserted Hoi An. The night before the streets of Hoi An were packed with people looking, buying and eating. In the morning there was just the quiet streets with the sound of a few bikes buzzing around. We walked down one of the street lanes (Hai Ba Trung Street) of Hoi An and out of the corner of our eye we saw an amazing structure that we had not seen on the previous day. There were no people in the square in front of the structure except us and it made us wonder about what it was, how long had it been there and was it still important to the people of Hoi An. In fact, this by chance discovery we made is an important and ancient place, a place very significant to the people of Hoi An, and in fact across Vietnam. After having the obligatory group photograph of the nine students on the walk, we found out that this beautiful structure was one of the entrance gates to a complex of grounds and two worshipping areas known by locals as the Ba Mu (Midwife) Temple. During its years of operation the complex was known to worship a life-protecting God, 36 heavenly protectors, a goddess giving safety and wealth, and 12 midwives involved in delivering babies and keeping them from harm. Apparently Hoi An people visited the temple to ask for a peaceful life, happiness and health for their children. Amazingly the complex was built in 1626 at a different location in feudal Vietnam but then moved sometime in the 18^th Century to the present position. The temple experienced major restorations in 1848 and 1922 and was regarded as one of the most beautiful structures in Hoi An. After 1930 most of the complex was damaged by regular flooding and war, and only the entrance gate remained. In recent years the gate has been restored - the local government spent over VND5.3 billion (US$228,000) on restoring the gate and landscaping the complex to its original beauty with its elaborate designs. To us it was just a very peaceful location and beautiful structure that we had stumbled upon by chance, but to the people of Hoi An its history and significance to their religion and life is so much more. 


We were indeed lucky to see the gate and experience the peace and beauty early on a morning in Hoi An. Without our morning walk we never would have seen and experienced that peaceful place. That is just one of the gifts that our morning walks gave us each day on the trip - visions and feelings of discovery that I will always remember from the Premier's Anzac Spirit School Prize tours to Vietnam. Without the painful early morning alarms we would have missed out on so much!  I feel for those poor tourists who sleep-in and waste the opportunity to discover early morning Vietnam.  We have plenty of time to sleep when we return home! 


Thanks to all the students who sacrificed their sleep for this crazy part of the trip – I hope you thought it was worthwhile and added to your learning and experiences from the trip.



Deserted Hoi An at the Japanese Bridge - another tourist area of hubbub the night before. Those not on the morning walk that day, can you imagine this scene the night before?