TRAVELLIVE 07-2016
My grandfather often took me to school in the mornings when I was a little girl. We usually left earlier and stopped by a bakery near my school. He ordered cakes and milk for me while choosing a cup of black coffee with filter for him. When eating my food, I loved counting the drops of coffee falling down through the filter, wondering how they tasted. Once, when my grandfather was buying a magazine, I surreptitiously dipped a finger in the cup of coffee. Bitter! It was the first time I tasted it and couldn’t understand why the drink that many adults love was so bitter. That time I felt like I would never like coffee.
My grandfather often took me to school in the mornings when I was a little girl. We usually left earlier and stopped by a bakery near my school. He ordered cakes and milk for me while choosing a cup of black coffee with filter for him. When eating my food, I loved counting the drops of coffee falling down through the filter, wondering how they tasted. Once, when my grandfather was buying a magazine, I surreptitiously dipped a finger in the cup of coffee. Bitter! It was the first time I tasted it and couldn’t understand why the drink that many adults love was so bitter. That time I felt like I would never like coffee.
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Ms. Nguyen Viet Loan - the owner of Villa La Rose<br />
The blend of French and Vietnamese cultures<br />
is harmoniously represented in their many<br />
decorative features especially the “Bois Doree”<br />
sculptures of Hanoi. However, it’s not an easy<br />
task to display them in the house, making each<br />
corner look refined and elegant. Ms. Nguyen Viet<br />
Loan - a respected interior designer, multi-cultured<br />
citizen, and polyglot - is one of the few people<br />
who can achieve that. With a background in art<br />
history, archaeology and her unconditional love for<br />
“Hanoi things”, she has meticulously arranged her<br />
collection of fine objects, a table, a daybed, a pair of<br />
antique vases into the place they seem to belong for<br />
centuries. Every corner reveals something new and<br />
splendid, a fitting testimony to how stylish Vietnam<br />
can be.<br />
Villa La Rose is set in a lush garden<br />
complex next to Villa La Räsidence, Ms<br />
Loan’s private home, has been renovated<br />
by the American architect Grover Dear,<br />
from Hong Kong. Under her guidance, Grover<br />
Dear kept the original division of a Vietnamese<br />
ancestral hall house with three parallel rooms.<br />
La Räsidence boasts the most unique features in<br />
French and Vietnamese architectures. The first<br />
floor or main villa dates back to 1910 and the<br />
wooden timber ancestral hall-house on the second<br />
floor goes to around 1865, and has the typical<br />
architectural style of the Red River Delta ancestral<br />
hall-houses which had once belonged to a high<br />
ranking mandarin in Ha Tay who served under<br />
Emperor Thanh Thai.<br />
Fine<br />
antique<br />
objects<br />
in Villa La<br />
Rose<br />
130<br />
<strong>TRAVELLIVE</strong>
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