AN BANG CEMETERY HUE VIETNAM – CITY OF GHOSTS

By Barry Sphere - August 05, 2020

If Hue is famous for many unique constructions, including must be mentioned the famous An Bang Cemetery. Tombs of hundreds of millions to several billion VND are mushrooming after rain. Why does a fishing village once have an extremely poor period and must lead each other to beg to become so luxurious? Behind the most lavish tombs in Vietnam are stories that not everyone knows.

An Bang Cemetery is famous not only in Vietnam but also in the world and is referred to by domestic people and foreign newspapers with fine words such as "An Bang ghost city", "city of the dead", " villa area of

1. An Bang cemetery interesting facts

1.1. The story in the pass

An Bang village is originally a poor fishing village, the life of the people here mainly depends on the fishing and fishing near the shore, so the people's life is still deprivation and misery


However, in the early 1990s, when the Vietnamese government allowed overseas Vietnamese to send money to their relatives in the country, the village quickly changed flesh. Up to 90% of the villagers have relatives residing abroad, mostly in the US.


    The rapid change in life led to the development of the cemetery p

1.2. The dire competition to build tomb

The competition to build a big and beautiful tomb is very fierce, many families have finished building for a long time, immediately demolish the old tomb area to make it more spectacular and more beautiful. Many people, though still alive but have been built graves, so many steles only show the year of birth but not the year of death because its owner is still healthy.

1.3. The strange jobs

The increasing number of tombs has created quite stable jobs with relatively good income for masons, porcelain mosaic workers, and carvers in the area. Many people from neighboring districts also get jobs such as towing cars, carrying materials, or building an auxiliary lake to build a mausoleum.

Not only that, other services such as lighting incense, turning on electricity at night, cleaning, and protecting the tomb also give people an income of 2 to 3 million VND / person per month. On Tet holiday is due to high demand and high work, so the wage level is also increased significantly. Because of these reasons, the cemetery of An Bang village was dubbed the place where "the dead raise the living".

1.4. The most valish tombs in Hue and Vietnam


Because of its enormous size and sophisticated architecture, the cost of making tombs in An Bang is very high, an average of 50.000 dollars/ tomb. There are "super tomb" costing 200.000 dollars, which takes more than half a year of construction with dozens of workers to complete.

2. An Bang cemetery location

An Bang Village Cemetery is also called the City of Ghost, considered to be the most luxurious and magnificent in Vietnam, located in An Bang coastal fishing village in Vinh An commune, Phu Vang district, Thua Thien - Hue province, 35 km east of Hue city.

3An Bang cemetery structure

The uniqueness of the tomb village is not only in the size of the tombs but also in the architecture of building


An Bang village currently has about 3,000 large and small tombs. In the early 1990s, because the local government did not have a specific plan, families arbitrarily seized land to build a tomb. Tombs in cemeteries of all sizes, shapes, and areas of 40 - 400 square meters. Many tombs are about 7 - 8 m high, nearly the height of a two-story house, some even as high as 10 m. The tomb is surrounded by dense houses, in An Bang village, between the living and the dead there are no "boundaries" anymore.

In the past the four holy beasts and serving only for the emperors, now you can see in many tombs here. On the stone steps, the mascots are both majestic and brave to guard the tombs. On the pillars, the dragon and the phoenix winding, hovering on the deep blue sky.

4. How to get there

"City of Ghosts"- An Bang Cemetery is about 40 km from Hue city center. It's located in An Bang village, Vinh An commune, Phu Vang district. The best way to See this particular city would be to book the Hue to Hoi An motorbike tour or Personal Car From Hue To Hoi An. 


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