8/8 -- Explore Hanoi

One of the glories of Hanoi is the unbidden wake-up calls: roosters in the center of the city (I have my hearing aids out so I miss them) and communist propaganda blaring away at 6am.

I thought we would be used to heat and humidity after our 2 weeks in Central America recently, but the 95 degree heat and 95% humidity are challenging to deal with. We started the day with 2-3 hours on our feet, first waiting in a LONG line to see Ho Chi Minh's tomb and putative corpse (now it is a wax replica) and then another 45 minutes or so learning about Ho Chi Minh and how he lived. Unlike many other leaders, he preferred a simple life and spent much of his time as president living in a two-room stilt house. By the time we were done, I had made a huge dent in my objective to walk 10000 steps each day but I was already looking forward to a nap and we had more to do. A cold bottle of water helped to revive us, but the heat was oppressive.

Throngs of people wait to go past the stilt house

The larger of the two rooms. The other is a bedroom.

This is a one-pillar pagoda, unique to Vietnam.

The gold statue is one Vietnamese version of Kuan Yin, the
goddess of mercy. Here she looks like a Buddha with 8 arms
to enable her to do more.

Our next stop was the Museum of Ethnology, which reviewed the customs, locations. costumes, history of  both the majority Viet (or Kinh) inhabitants, and the 53 additional cultures that make up the other 14% of the population. Unfortunately, the museum was busy and had lousy acoustics so it was difficult for me to follow our guide's commentary and the noise made it hard for me to concentrate, plus the A/C was less than impressive. Fortunately, there was good signage in English and we had a lot of time to wander on our own, so we found it very interesting overall. A special treat was the existence of full-sized building replicas outside the museum that we could actually walk through. Some of the construction seemed a bit shaky to walk on!

Stilt house with living space below and  Jim about to go upstairs.

Interior of stilt house - the floor foundation is covered with
thin bamboo that does not appear firmly attached.

Interior of a long house, which can be shared with several families.

Several of the hill tribes are matriarchal and
the support beams are symbolic as well as
structural.

This one was my favorite -- a sort of community hall. 

Next was lunch, which was a multi-course affair -- delicious crunchy spring rolls, chicken pho, veggies, rice, and a wonderful pork dish. After lunch, we were supposed to visit the Temple of Literature, but David could see we were all impacted by the heat and delayed it a day so we could recover at the hotel. It felt like heaven to walk into the wonderfully cool hotel room!

A couple hours later, we were back at it, taking a 45 minute rickshaw ride around the old quarter and a lake park to end up at a water puppet show. The rickshaw ride was, shall we say, 'interesting' as we competed for road space with all the cars, trucks, buses, and motorcycles. David made a stop once we got started, and his driver caught up to each of us so he could deliver an ice cream cone and a bottle of water! The scariest part was entering the roundabout. It is astonishing that there aren't more accidents. David joked that how you get a driver's license here is to go to a police station where they loan you a scooter for 2 days. If you come back alive, you get your license. There are traffic lights, but like many  parts of the world, they are primarily decorative.

Happy before the ride started

Sharing the road - even with a wheel chair

Even though it was 97 degrees, most of the
young women ride fully covered to protect
their skin from tanning: whiteness is prized.

The founder of  Hanoi

Biker with fruit.

My driver

The water puppet show was unique. there are puppeteers hidden behind bamboo screens and they operate all manner of puppets--dragons, fish, birds, people, ducks and many others--who perform in a pool of water. The fish jump and do flips, the dragons spout fireworks, and there are several stories told in the 45 minute show, unfortunately all in Vietnamese,but most of the time we could figure it out. We had seats in the front row and were close to the musicians, who produced Chinese opera-style music -- very screechy to  my ears, even with my hearing aids out.

Difficult to photograph in low light without flash, so most of
our attempts were blurry. Here two dragons are facing off.

The puppet theater is across the street from a public lake, so we walked around it towards dinner. At one point, we stopped near a group of young people talking to an older couple who asked if we were Americans -- they were Brazilians with some command of English and the young people were college students learning English who wandered in the parks looking for tourists to talk to. Jim chatted with one girl for a bit, but two folks in our group really got into it and talked as we walked along til it was time for dinner which was another multi-course extravaganza,

Temple in the center of the lake dedicated to turtles, one of
four significant animals to the Vietnamese.

This gaggle of college students ahead of us turned out to be the
English learners talking to the Brazilian couple.

Back at the hotel, I started working on today's post, but crashed early.