The country was reunified in 1975 so I didn't expect the differences to be as extreme as they are. I have loved just about every place I've been in Vietnam, except Hanoi. The weather has been terrible, which hasn't helped. Hot and muggy one day, cold and rainy the next. But the food isn't as good and the people are nowhere near as friendly as they are in the south.
I hung out for a couple days with two young Canadian brothers, and by young I mean that I am older than the two of them combined. Sigh... All three of us are fans of the band and HBO show Flight of the Conchords. We were talking about the episode where a vendor refuses fruit to sell Brett and Jemaine because he hates New Zealanders.
We actually had that experience that night. The brothers wanted to buy some mangoes so I took them to a corner where there were a few fruit stalls where I had bought dragonfruit the night before. Two of the vendors refused to sell them fruit! One simply refused to acknowledge our presence and the other angrily waved us away.
But the purpose of this post is not to slag the city, because it's not without its charms. The tourist area is the Old Quarter, snuggled up against Hoan Kiem Lake. In fact, the entire city is dotted with lakes and bordered by rivers. The name Hanoi means "between rivers". The area has been inhabited since around 3,000 BC and the city itself will be 1,000 years old next year.
One of the lakes, Truc Bach, has a small memorial on its west bank. You'll miss it if you're not looking for it, and it's not much to look at when you do find it.
On the right you can see USA. Here's the inscription on the left.
The part that is of interest is "TCHN SNEY MA CAN". It says "Here on 26 October 1967 at Truc Bach Lake in the capital city of Ha Noi John Sidney McCain was shot out of the sky in his A4 aircraft by local citizens militia defending Yen Phu.There were 10 other planes shot down on the same day."
I've received emails asking if I've visited the "Hanoi Hilton", the prison where McCain was kept. There's a museum there now, which I'm told isn't all that interesting, so I decided to pass.
I did visit two fascinating museums. One is the Ho Chi Minh Museum, devoted to the former Vietnamese leader. I've been asked a lot what Americans are taught in school about him and what is known here as the American War.
Answer: nothing.
Things may have changed since I was in school but if I wanted to learn about the war I had to go looking for information. If memory serves the history curriculum stopped at WWII.
It's a shame because "Uncle Ho" is a fascinating man. He traveled the world, visiting 28 countries. The museum has documents he wrote in each of the seven languages he mastered.
His name is actually the best known of 50 or so aliases of Nguyen Tat Thanh. I've seen Ho Chi Minh translated as "he who enlightens" or "bringer of light". He was the president of the northern Democratic Republic of Vietnam from 1945 until his death but lived in a traditional stilt house in Hanoi.
He died of a heart attack in 1969, so he didn't live to see the American withdrawal, but he did lead Vietnam to oust the Chinese, Japanese and French. Politics aside, that's pretty darned impressive.
I knew almost nothing about the man so I found the museum quite enlightening. I normally avoid tour guides. If I had turned this trip into a reality show to find The World's Worst Tour Guide it would have been quite a competition. At the museum, though, they have trainees who work for free to improve their English. You tip them at the end if you think they did a decent job.
I'm glad I had a guide because a lot of the symbolism would have been lost on me, such as this giant Dali-esque table with fruit.
Since I had a guide there to explain I ... oh, who am I kidding. I still don't know what it means.
As an American I couldn't help but find this inscription of interest.
It's a quote from Ho Chi Minh: "All the peoples on earth are equal. Each people has the right to life, happiness and liberty." It's a deliberate play on Thomas Jefferson's words in the Declaration of Independence.
I also went to the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, a fantastic facility with exhibits on the dozens of ethnic groups and hundreds of subgroups in Vietnam. If I have any complaints it's that it was too much information to digest! It was fascinating seeing all the sometimes subtle and sometimes drastic differences in ethnic groups that often live in the same small communities. Most of the exhibits were behind glass in a dimly lit building so they were virtually impossible to photograph.
One of the things tourists love about Southeast Asia is seeing recounting stories of the amazing ways locals put their motorbikes and bikes to use. People who have only one mode of transportation have to make do. I saw a guy in Cambodia with two live adult pigs strapped across the back of his motorbike. I've seen guys hauling 20-foot-long bundles of rebar or plate glass on a moto.
It's common to see four adults on a single moto. I've seen families of five: dad driving, toddler standing between his legs, older child on the back and mom in the middle with a kid on each knee. I'm pretty sure you could get arrested for that in the US!
This photo is of a bike a man used to sell fishing traps. He could ride it with up to 700 traps.
Also fascinating was a temporary exhibit on Catholicism in Vietnam. Because of the French occupation there is a significant Catholic population in Vietnam. In Southeast Asia the Phillipines (because of the Spanish occupation) has a larger Catholic community.
It was fun reading the way the Catholic traditions and conventions were explained for visitors who aren't familiar with the religion. And I got a real kick out of the differences between the Vietnamese and Western interpretations. For instance, here is a model of the cave in which Jesus was born.
There's also an open-air section with buildings constructed by the different ethnic groups themselves, including this Bahnar communal house, which is over 60 feet tall.
It's fascinating to think that people still live in buildings like this, especially in a country famous for its crazy traffic. As in Saigon the streets are packed with motorbikes. There isn't much in the way of parking space, so they get parked on the sidewalk.
The sidewalks are also crammed with noodle stalls and vendors. This produces a crazy situation in which the sidewalks are so crowded that the only place to walk is in the street!
Crossing a major street in any city can involve walking across four or even six lanes of traffic. But because the streets in Vietnam are crowded with motos, you might have to walk through 10 or 12 lanes of traffic. This intersection is less than a block from my hotel.
At first it seems impossible. Because there are so many vehicles on the street at a given time there is never a big enough gap in traffic for pedestrians to cross. Drivers here are pretty civilized and attentive, which is a good thing, because the trick to crossing streets here is wait until the traffic lessens just a little and then start walking. You keep a steady pace and trust the moto drivers to avoid you.
It's terrifying at first but after a few minor heart attacks it becomes perfectly normal to walk across the street with motos whizzing by inches away on all sides.
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