The most beautiful house I've ever been inside belonged to the family of a university friend of mine, Mai. I'm from Hanoi, and during the Lunar New Year holiday a few years ago she invited me to her family's old house in Hoi An, a historic town in central Vietnam.
It was a traditional merchant's house, about two hundred years old, in a narrow street near the river. From the front it looked quite plain, just a wooden shopfront with dark tiles on the roof, but it went back an incredibly long way, room after room.
Inside, almost everything was made of dark, polished wood. The columns and beams were carved with dragons and flowers, and some of the carvings were so fine you could see the scales on the fish. In the middle of the house there was a small open courtyard with a stone water tank and potted plants, so light and air came right into the centre of the home. At the back was the family altar, with photos of Mai's great-grandparents and fresh fruit offerings for the holiday.
What made it beautiful to me wasn't luxury, because it was actually quite simple. It was the way it had been designed to suit the climate. Even in the afternoon heat, the courtyard kept it cool without air conditioning. I also loved the sense of history. Mai showed me a mark on a pillar showing how high the floodwater reached in the past, and her grandmother told us stories of moving furniture upstairs every rainy season. Living there seemed like being part of a very long family story, and I envied that a little.