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Published: June 14th 2013
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I am deep in enemy territory, NVA is everywhere and the hotel is far too luxurious. Our arrival into Hanoi was less smooth than I had anticipated, but nevertheless we were now in Vietnam, and in the luxurious Gia Bao hotel near Hoan Kiem lake. This was our treat at the start of a new country and it was reduced from £120 to £20, so we don't feel too bad about the budget. So we settled into a peaceful nights sleep, knowing that it should have been much more expensive.
The next morning we woke to a beautiful day in North Vietnam and took a stroll around the lake. First stop was actually in the lake at the turtle temple. It's a Buddhist temple with a 2.1m preserved carcass of a giant turtle, an animal seen as sacred/auspicious here, hence the practise of comparing women to turtles as a compliment. Somehow I don't think this will catch on back home.
Whilst we were around the lake we booked our trip to the famous Ha Long Bay. If you're doing this at any point, every office offers the same range of tours and there are hundreds of offices on the
streets around the lake. They all offer broadly similar prices, but you can go from door to door and gradually get the price down. With mission accomplished we found the Water Puppet Theatre, down by the lake and booked our tickets for the evening showing. It was an entirely strange experience from start to end. It starts off with the story of how the Vietnamese nation came to be. Allegedly it was the result of a dragon and a fairy getting freaky and laying an egg. Within the egg are 100 sacks each containing a son. Witnessing this wide screen in water puppet format (soon to replace 3D TVs) is even more surreal. We also visited the “Notre Dame” cathedral, kindly left behind by the French as a sort of colonial leaving present. The exterior was similar to the real deal, but like most cheap Vietnamese knock offs, not as good.
Early the next morning, we woke from abject luxury to transfer to the significantly more meagre Golden Time hostel a couple of blocks away. Then it was a quick taxi ride to Hi Chi Minh's Mausoleum. This is only open until 11am and last admission is at 10.30.
We arrived at 10.15. No-one is allowed to take any form of luggage in, so it is kept in a security booth next to the queue, however a problem arose when they told us the office shut at 10.30 and failure to retrieve any baggage would result in a fee and we would only be able to get them back on Saturday, two days hence. This would be a problem, as we would be in Ha Long Bay by then. So we thought that we would have a quick look at Uncle Ho and be back in time. When he died, Ho Chi Minh left instruction that he should be cremated and his ashes scattered across the length of Vietnam. This was ignored. Instead, they built a huge marble and concrete box in the middle of Hanoi, pumped him full of formaldehyde and put him on display. So we walked around and thought things like, “Ooh,” and “Ahh” and “Isn't that a strange thing to do with someone”. I then had to sprint back around to the security office to salvage our stuff. Running 800m when you're not as fit as you should be, in 44°C heat with 65% humidity
leaves you looking ridiculous. Safely having got the bags at 10.29, an Aussie man who was in the same predicament asked the pertinent question “If you're open until 11, why does this office close at 10.30?” To which the reply was, “Oh, yes I mean 11 before”. Profanity occurred. We then proceeded to go around the Ho Chi Minh museum, which included his collection of cars, his presidential house, and the traditional stilted house he lived in during his later years (to show his solidarity with the people, who also lived in 10 acre compounds in central Hanoi).
Next was the tiresome errand of having to buy a train ticket to Hue for when we finished the Ha Long trip. Vietnamese trains are worse than Indian ones and are more expensive, but this will referred to in due course. If you are intending on going to the 'Nam, just get an open tour bus ticket. It will be cheaper and less terrible. Tickets bought for a hefty 1.2 million Dong, we went to the Temple of Literature, Vietnam's first university and also part time Buddhist temple. There is a rather odd way of conveying one of the 82 available
degrees, as a certificate would be too easy. Around the edges of the courtyards are 82 stone tablets mounted on the back of stone turtles. It just so happened that there was some variety of photoshoot happening that day, so there was a huge group of very pretty girls in immaculate traditional dresses being photographed and bossed around by some pervy photographer and his onanist assistant. So for some light relief, one posed for a picture for Amelia.
From there it was a trip across town to see the notorious Hanoi Hilton. For those of you who are not aware of what this is, it is not similar to the equally notorious “Bangkok Hilton”, which is a Thai jail where they put people like Gary Glitter. Now a museum, this was a prison built by the French called the Maison Centrale (Central House) to house Vietnamese political prisoner involved in actions against the state. Getting there was slightly more tricky than expected. We asked a cyclo rickshaw driver to take us to the Hanoi Hilton, and pointed at the street and Vietnamese name for the jail and sat back to await our arrival. To our consternation we shortly arrived
at the Hanoi Opera House Hilton, the actual hotel. It turned out that our driver was actually severely visually impaired, which made the corrective journey all the more bum-clenching through the mad traffic. Having arrived, we found the conditions that the Colonial French had kept the prisoners in to be predictably barbaric. All the names of the jailers and torturers were all up on a wall, I assume to shame the families and descendants, however, there was not a French name there. All the names were of Vietnamese people. This was glossed over. The whole thing has been turned into a part of the communist propaganda machine, as during the Vietnam war, captured American servicemen (mostly shot down B52 pilots), who gave Maison Centrale its' ironic nickname. Veterans accounts of the brutality of their captors are notoriously well documented, and previous prisoners include former presidential candidate, Senator John McCain. However, all the exhibits on show depict a rather rosier existence for the inhabitants. Life was hard but fair as they were allowed recreational activities such as chess, basketball and playing cards. This conflicts somewhat with the accounts of torture, until the captured men agreed to sign a confession and a
document stating to the Vietnamese people that the war was immoral, and that they no longer agreed with it, and other morale boosting propaganda statements. Everyone who comes here knows what went on, making the subject a rather obvious elephant in the room, and in my view make the museum a somewhat cynical exercise, but an interesting one nevertheless.
Hanoi has without a doubt gone straight into the top 10 of favourite cities. The atmosphere is one of a laid back city with more than a hint of the mystery and secrets that are held within if you delve a little below the surface. Even more than that, the city is clean, everything is within walking distance, and doesn't feel scary at any point, which I had been expecting before coming here. A definite must see in the world.
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