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Anyone who visits Bac Lieu Town in Vietnam’s southern province of
Bac Lieu would like to stop over at the locally famous House of Bac Lieu Dude
(now Bac Lieu Dude Hotel) either for an overnight stay or a quick look.
The house is located at No.13 on Dien Bien Phu Street in Ward 3 and still
attracts many curious visitors.
Anyone who visits Bac Lieu Town in Vietnam’s southern province of Bac Lieu would
like to stop over at the locally famous "House of Bac Lieu Dude" (now Bac Lieu
Dude Hotel) either for an overnight stay or a quick look.
The house is located at No.13 on Dien Bien Phu Street in Ward 3 and still
attracts many curious visitors.
For many years, the nickname "Bac Lieu Dude" has been applied to children of the
rich landlords who had a well-off and loose lifestyle in Southern Vietnam under
the feudal colonialist time.
The most typical man for this title was Tran Trinh Huy (birth name Tran Trinh
Quy), born in 1900 in Vinh Hung Hamlet, Vinh Loi District, Bac Lieu Province,
and died in 1974 in Saigon, present-day Ho Chi Minh City.
During the time of French colonialism, the land belonging to the Southern
region, due to its early reclamation, was re-allocated to the local owners,
resulting in the forming of a new class of great landlords.
Those rich families often sent their children to Saigon to study at French
schools or overseas to France. However, most of those rich boys and girls were
badly influenced by the beauty and hustle and bustle of big cities, and with
money cast from their parents they tried to show off their wealth by living a
loose lifestyle.
Among them, Tran Trinh Huy topped the list of Bac Lieu braggarts because of his
constant financial flaunting as well as his second to non playboy lifestyle.
Huy’s father was landlord Tran Trinh Trach who had 74 farms with 110,000 ha of
rice fields, nearly 100,000 ha of salt fields, dozens of houses in Bac Lieu and
many luxurious villas in the big cities of Can Tho, Saigon, Vung Tau and Da Lat.
The "House of Bac Lieu Dude" was built by the Trach family in 1919 and designed
by a French architect. It was a 2-floor building with two bedrooms and two main
halls on the ground floor and three bedrooms and two main halls on the second
floor.
A grand staircase was situated in the centre of the house. The bedroom in the
northeast was reserved for Tran Trinh Trach, which was opposite a room reserved
for his son, "Bac Lieu Dude" Tran Trinh Huy.
Over nearly a century, the house has been kept almost intact to its original
design. In 2003 Bac Lieu Tourism Company invested in upgrading the house and
made it a hotel and cultural-tourist site.
Vo Kim Cuong, Director of the Bac Lieu Dude Hotel said that since its opening to
tourists, the Hotel has been virtually fully booked. In particular, Room 101 (of
Bac Lieu Dude) must be reserved 7-10 days in advance.
Due to pillaging and carelessness many household utensils have disappeared. From
those remaining visitors can learn about the former affluent life of the Trach
family in Bac Lieu.
Director Vo Kim Cuong also said that in the coming time when construction of a
new hotel is completed, Bac Lieu Dude house will no longer be served as a hotel,
but only a cultural-historical relic that bears the unique features of Bac Lieu
area.
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