Saturday 27th June 2009 Hanoi

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Saturday 27th June 2009 Hanoi
We got up early enough well at about 9.30 and got ourselves out and about as we wanted to go to Ho Chi Minhs Mausoleum which only opens in the mornings until 10.15 or something. We were running late so decided to take a cyclo to it, bit of a funny experience, it seems like you are floating along in the traffic amongst the million mopeds. Kind of nice though and necessary as it would have been a fair walk. The queue when we arrived wasn’t too bad luckily as apparently sometimes you can be in line for 2 hours, we were only about 10 minutes getting into the imposing building itself. Utmost respect and solemnity is required with nothing louder than a whisper in the chamber as you file past the surreal mummified body of Uncle Ho who just looks like he is taking a bit of a nap in a glass case. We headed to the museum dedicated to the man then afterwards which was an interestingly put together exhibition. It is full of your normal walls and racks of history, correspondence and pictures of him but they use very modern, imaginative and sometimes weird ways of representing his influences and ideals.

From that museum we decided to overload on our cultural sightseeing for the day and head to the museum of literature which is a major site in the study of Confucianism and the site of the first Vietnamese university. It not the greatest place we’ve been but all these things only cost less than a Euro so might as well have a gander. There was a big giant drum which was probably worth the admission fee.

Tired of all that museum stuff we got motos home and had lunch in the aptly named No Noodle sandwich bar near our hotel. It was brilliant, an absolutely massive fresh Vienna roll brim filled with lovely ingredients for about 2 Euro, not bad. That filled us up to get us through a bit of a stroll around and down to a bar where John said they were showing the Lions game.

Jaspas where we met John and Clair to watch the game is a very strange bar. It’s not a hotel bar but an apartment bar. Its on the 4th floor of the Hanoi towers, a luxury apartment tower which I’d say is full of expats who all gather there as if it is their living room and drink beer which is twice the price of anywhere else in Hanoi. They did show the game though so after 3 months of missing all the big rugby matches I finally got to see one and the Lions lose cruelly with the last kick of the game. Didn’t spot any of the lads in the crowd though.

It was about 9.30 when the four of us left then and tried to find somewhere that would still be serving dinner. Not too easy a task even on a Saturday night over here, you can get street noodles at nearly any time though so we weren’t going to starve. IN the end found a very lush bar overlooking the lake which served great food for about 2.50 so we were sorted. We then headed up to Dragonfly again as knew it should be open late enough. Good fun in there with a few more people, bopping away to Michael Jackson tunes who sadly passed away the day before. The police came in to shut the place down at about 1.30, no one seemed to bothered leaving and I think they served again after they had left but we just headed home.

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