The Hanoi Hilton

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A night recuperating at the Hanoi Rendezvous hotel had done us good, but we were far from better. Still, we only had the day in Hanoi before taking the night train to Hoi An, so it made sense to Imodium up and see some more sights. First up was the prison museum, dubbed the 'Hanoi Hilton' by shot down US Air Force pilots who were interned at the jail during the Vietnam War. We'd been forewarned about the biased nature of the museum and it's skewed look at history, so it was no surprise to see photos of US POWs having a lovely time playing volleyball, decorating Christmas trees and writing home to their families, when in reality torture and maltreatment of prisoners was commonplace. That aside though, many of the museum's exhibits did give a sobering (and more accurate) look at the French's brutal use of the prison during the colonial days, in particular the menacing looking guillotine.

Next up was the Military History Museum, which provided another very biased history lesson. The museum's courtyard was littered with military hardware left over from the Vietnam War, anything from tanks to the iconic Huey helicopter and F4 Phantom jet fighter. The labeling of these machines of war was particularly interesting: anything American and it would state where it was captured, or how many of that type were shot down/destroyed by 'North Vietnamese heroes'. Anything North Vietnamese, and it would stay how many US or South Vietnamese planes/tanks etc the particular machine destroyed at the hands of 'North Vietnamese heroes'. The propaganda was so blatant, it made what should have been a compelling museum instead quite amusing. The inside exhibits, however, did give you an impression of just how much Vietnam's history has been defined by war. The Vietnam War, or American War as it's more commonly known here, may have been the most costly and destructive conflict the country has seen, but it's only part of Vietnam's bloody history. The way the country has recovered and flourished following lasting peace seems nothing short of a miracle.

We were hoping to see the One Pillar Pagoda after the Military History Museum, but time was getting on and we needed to pick up our bags from the hotel and head over to the train station. When we boarded our train - which by my reckoning was at least 40 years old - it felt as though the sense of adventure had been injected back into the trip. Our appetites had returned, and we were excited about arriving in Hoi An. We slept as best as we could, cocooned in our silk sleeping bags and trying to ignore the snoring of the other passengers in our cabin, unaware that our bout of food poisoning hadn't gone away quite as we'd thought.

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