Chilled in Hanoi

As per usual, it's been a long time since I've written and so I'm just going to hit the highlights of what I've been up to in Hanoi. Because Jurre, Annika, and I wanted to do New Years Eve in Hanoi, we had to stick around town for quite a while. This means that some of the days we didn't have much planned and would just wander around the old city, take in a movie, or nurse a hangover. We were staying at the legendary Hanoi Backpackers Hostel as before, so we always had plenty of friends.

One of the first trips that we did after Christmas was to the Temple of Literature. It's a small collection of reconstructed old buildings sitting on the site of Vietnam's first university. The university was founded in 1076 on the site of a Confucian temple that was built a few years earlier. The students studied the philosophy of a few scholars, including Confucius. I think that most of it dealt with issues of morality and at several levels tests were given to see if the student could pass on to the next level. To become the head of different levels of government, it was necessary to pass different levels of education and the final test was administered by the king himself.

Besides the buildings which are mostly gift shops and shrines to Confucius, the most interesting thing were the stone steles which sat upon carved stone tortoises. On these stones, the names of every scholar who passed the highest test were recorded. Only 82 of the original 116 survive, and cover a period of 600 years ending in the 18th century. There wasn't really much written down in English about the place and it's hard to be terribly interested in any of it unfortunately.

On one of the other days, we visited the Hoa Lo Prison in downtown Hanoi. It was built in 1896 by the French and was mostly used to hold political prisoners, or at least that's all the current government has chosen to highlight about it. It's pretty small and has about a dozen small rooms for solitary confinement, though they each had several iron racks in them so I guess it was flexible. Also there was a single large cell room where a couple dozen prisoners were chained to the floor. A lot of famous revolutionary literature and poems were produced there and it's now celebrated as an important think tank for the communists. The prison also held a guillotine room and had some gruesome photos of various victims.

As much as the documentation plays up how cruel and unsanitary the prison was, they do exactly the opposite when describing how the US POWs were held here during the war. There are loads of photos of POWs making Christmas dinners, playing volleyball, and meeting with journalists. Also on display are written orders detailing how well the prisoners are to be cared for and pictures of foreign demonstrations against the war. One cell is highlighted as having been home to John McCain and his flight suit and personal belongings are on display. Yea, it was pretty skewed politically, but overall a very good museum.

What else did we do... oh, yea, one of my most anticipated activities was the tour of Ho Chi Minh's tomb. Like Lenin, Stalin, and Mao before him, when uncle Ho died in 1969 we was embalmed against his wishes and enshrined in a large marble tomb in the middle of town. It's only open for a few hours a day and no cameras are allowed so I've just got some pics from the outside. Suffice it to say that security was high and we went through several checkpoints before getting to parade through the tomb in a large group surrounded by elite guards. I was lucky enough to be in the front of the large group and I felt like I was walking somewhere very special as I went down narrow hallways past icy guards staring into eternity on either side. It was a lot more formal than Lenin's tomb and that one's pretty over the top too. The body looked waxy but warm in the yellow lights and had a pretty impressive beard for a Vietnamese guy. Those communists knew the value of good facial hair.

Also in the complex was Ho's summer and winter homes, a small collection of cars that he drove, and a huge and tacky museum that we could enter unlike everything else there. The museum was dedicated to the changes that communism had brought to the oppressed Vietnam, but was really confusing and light on anything of substance. I don't think that I learned anything there. Later that day we met up with my German acquaintance, Elena, but let me tell you about her.

She's the gf of my friend Jason, whom I lived with for a month in Camarillo and ultimately pushed into backpacking Central America for 3 months a few years ago. He had an excellent time, and ended up meeting Elena and has kept in contact with her making several visits to Germans and Vietnam since to keep their relationship alive. She's currently working in the Hanoi Womens Museum for a year and agreed to meet me. At first, she met the 3 of us for dinner at a good local place of her choice and told us about her life in Hanoi, what it's like getting around, and how hopeless her coworkers are.

I think the lack of initiative that some people have here drives her mad... I hear that a lot in Asian countries. You see, it's the culture here and elsewhere to defer to the decisions of people higher up even if the decisions are stupid and inefficient. That also means that for anything to get done, someone higher up has to command it. That's just how things are done, and it has some benefits like occasionally increased satisfaction and social order. Mostly it's a hindrance though. One other custom that comes to mind is how when you invite a local to do something in the future, they will always say that yes, they will do it even when they know they won't because of some conflict. At the last minute they will call to tell a lie about why they're not coming (child has a fever is popular) and refuse to decline an invitation even when pressed by someone who know how this works. The only way to get around it is reading subtle facial movements when they accept, but it's tough for foreigners. She's upset that she has to take classes about local customs when the people she works with don't have to learn anything about her culture. I'd go nuts.

Anyways, dinner with her was nice. The next day after seeing the tomb, we met her at the Women's Museum and she freed up some time to give us an excellent tour of the place. The museum focuses on marriage and childbirth practices, women in history (as rebel fighters), and a section for ethnic costumes. The documentation was great and we really liked the museum. Elena works to train the local museum operators and to improve the condition of the displays. Her work is funded by a German government cultural venture that's helping to pay for the whole project. She's there to oversee where their money is going, and the locals seem to appreciate her in general though on many such projects that would not be the case. Anyways, it was great having such an informed guide but she eventually had to go back to work and we were on our own again.

Another activity that we partook in was the mildly famous water puppet show. It's an old old thing and started as a puppet show in the rice paddies (supposedly) where the actors would hide the mechanisms of control under the water. Nowadays they also hide behind a screen while wading in the water and cover rural topics. That's about all I can say of it because the plot was pushed forward by some actors speaking Vietnamese and the scenes didn't have any connection so far as I could tell. I've met a lot of backpackers who have been to it, most say that they fell asleep at some point (I did too) and at least it's super cheap and just 45 minutes long. I still found myself recommending it but I don't really know why... is there anything better to do at 9pm for $2? Good enough.

Most of our time was spent wandering around town looking at souvenirs and eating. The souvenirs here are pretty nice... there's lots of lacquer products, embroidered tote bags, tasteful jewelry and hats, flags and tshirts, and propaganda poster shops. I kept thinking that I should get a poster, but the more I look at them the less I want to hang them up. The coolest ones usually cover defeating America (as opposed to beating AIDS and improving agriculture) and I just don't feel right hanging them in my home even though I would take a tongue in cheek attitude about it. Many streets deal with specific issues, like a handyman street, dog meat street, doorknob street, socks street... it was pretty silly but I like that it's organized at all.

Finally we reached New Years Eve and while wandering around that day we impulsively decided to dress like idiots to ring in the new year. That's just what people do at parties I suppose. Nah, I got really into it. We decided to go as bees, so we bought as much yellow and black stuff as possible including yellow tights, ties, armbands, headbands, and sunglasses. I got some weird looks when I knocked the lenses out of my newly purchases yellow Raybans. They're so cheap out here that you can do whatever with them. It was a crazy night. The hostel opened it's roof bar at 5pm and we started drinking. We were the only group in costume and got a lot of attention as you might expect, for better or worse. Around 10 the hostel moved to a new bar where we stayed until 1:30. The police kicked everyone out of the bar so we had to find a new place. The police are always like that here... they let every bar stay open exactly as late as the bar pays them to let them. Confused? The police get a cut of everything here. A dozen Vietnamese people worked the crowd when the 60+ of us got onto the street and half a dozen women felt me and Jurre up to find what they could rob us of but we wisely didn't bring much of anything. We manages to fund the 10 hours of drinking with $20 we each stashed in our underwear. I had my camera hanging from a strap and a foot down the inside of my tights so it was safe. We got home at 3:30 and went to bed exhausted.

The next morning I had an epic hangover and proceeded to drink a lot of water from the sink. I've done this everywhere in the Middle East and Europe but just a couple times in Asia and this was the first time I got sick from it. Even eating all the strange street food like this stuff I was fine. I was laid up in bed for the next 2 days going to the toilet every 45 minutes day and night. Not too fun, but at least I had a lot of TV downloaded on my laptop and some friends to bring me food. Sadly though, I had to skip out on the bus tickets that Annika bought us to go to Sapa and I came up a day later to meet her and Jurre.

Sapa is a popular mountain town North of Hanoi at 1900 meters elevation. Most of the year it's a great place to escape the heat of the capitol but at this time of year it's foggy and cold. Ugh, and I thought I was cold in Hanoi. Anyways, the Sapa area is home to many ethnic villages and the popular activity is to hire a local guide to go hiking with for a few days to visit some of the more accessible villages. Jurre and Annika did this for a day before I got there but when I arrived in the morning after taking a night train up (more expensive than a bus, but I wanted to have a bathroom handy) I found the place to be intensely foggy and far too cold to handle. These are two pictures that Annika took of the girls that led them around. I was wearing 2 thin jackets, gloves, a warm hat I bought, and I still shivered every minute of the day. We ended up hiring a van with a few other backpackers and riding to a Tuesday market way out in the countryside. By the time we got there in the afternoon, it was mostly closed and we made our way back to town to warm ourselves by a fire in a restaurant. Not the most eventful day.

In the morning we researched our options and decided to head back to Hanoi. It took another day in Sapa and an overnight bus to make that happen. The funniest thing was that in the night the bus stopped at a restaurant with not a single thing that I wanted to put in my mouth... and that says a lot. On all the walls there were jars of rice wine, and not the usual stuff with scorpions and snakes, but some really strange stuff. One large jar had a huge cat in it and another had a baby horse! Some others had monitor lizards and huge geckos. It was really horrifying. The cat is in the lower right of the picture. For a while we thought that we'd go to the park that Jurre and I visited a week or two earlier on motorcycles and spend a couple nights there, but there were logistical problems and we were intensely sick of the cold weather. In the end, we decided that the best thing was to send Jurre and Annika off to Laos on a night bus since it's 10 degrees C warmer there and for me just to wait a few days for my plane to Saigon. When they left later that night I was sad to see them go. They were good friends to me... accepted and loved all my quirks, and I them. I really hope that I get to see one or both of them again some day.

From there, I used the next couple days to write this blog, download a mess of stuff to my laptop, and finalize the camper van plans for New Zealand. After crunching on the math, I think that it makes more sense to rent than to buy since it's just for a month though the difference in money is pretty close. If it was 2 months I'd definitely buy. I'm wholly focused on the New Zealand trip and seeing Diane again and I'm so sick of Vietnam i can't describe. The people here are just too pushy in their sales and generally very rude. I can't say that I've really liked any of them but most have been good enough I suppose. I'm also very tired of the food and have eaten western food every meal for the last 3 days. I need to get out of here and I can't wait for some Kiwi hospitality I guess.