Culture & Travel

Thais needed to rebuild their world after Burmese armies traumatized them by sacking Ayutthaya, the capital of their largest kingdom, in 1767. The first king

Wat Pho is the second of the three monuments that the first Chakri kings established in Bangkok’s center to reaffirm traditional Thai ways of perceiving

The horrors of the sack of Ayutthaya in 1767 made old Thai traditions seem like a lost haven. The siege dragged on for more than

Confucians from the royal court in Hue probably would have found Hoi An chaotic if they had ventured there. Although the Nguyen Dynasty’s kings tried

In 1802 the last Nguyen lord, Nguyen Anh, defeated the Tay Son rulers of Vietnam after a traumatic civil war. He returned from the north

Vietnam is full of underappreciated cultural blends.     China had ruled Vietnam since 111 BCE. The Vietnamese finally gained independence in 939, after China’s Tang Dynasty disintegrated.