ethnography museum2

Here are 2 of my favorite buildings from behind the museum.

The 1st was extremely high, and a shape that really appeals to me. Might keep things cooler in the hot summer, I don't know, I bet there is some practical reason for that design, but anyway I think it looks cool.

The second is a mausoleum surrounded by erotic art. Whichever tribe likes to put statues of people having sex, pregnant women, and other funny things around the departed. I think I would really like that, at least while I'm alive it would make me laugh to think of my dirty, dirty Sarcophagus. Probably once I'm dead I wouldn't care a whole lot.

All around this back area, there was a couple taking wedding photos. People in Taiwan also go around with a photographer to famous beautiful spots, dressed in the wedding clothes, making a photo album before the wedding. It's interesting, but I feel bad for them, wearing so many clothes when it's 35+ Celsius and humid. Strangely, while I sweat like crazy in shorts and a tshirt, they seem to have no problem.

ethnography museum1

One of the other highpoints in Hanoi was the Ethnography museum. I especially loved the houses built behind the museum showing the different building styles of the different tribes in Vietnam. It's too bad we only had an hour at this place, maybe too much time for the other people there, but not enough for me to wander around those houses to my heart's content. I like these statues, especially the 2nd one from left which I think is the spitting image of GW.

ho chi min

I made a point of doing tourist things in hanoi. I took a tour and we saw this place, Ho Chi Min's mausoleum. They have preserved his dead body (against his wishes, he wanted to be cremated), and I walked by to take a look. Also saw his house, pretty simple which I liked. His cars weren't too great, Russian cars. Seeing Chiang Kai Chek's cadillacs, you have to say picking the American side was a good choice, car wise. That Lotus temple was next door to his house.

young rice ice cream

I enjoyed getting ice cream from this french style ice cream shop. My flavor of choice was young rice flavor. Later on my trip, I had the opportunity to eat some raw rice from inside the plant. Very sweet and interesting. And this ice cream tasted like that. Sort of like rice, but more so.

xoi #2

And here it is, in a "to go" box. You can see the meat is pretty fatty, cut off a big roast piece. You can also see that the portion isn't huge, but it's a good sized snack or about half of a large meal. I ate this several times. Now I need to find it here.

Xoi

Back in Hanoi, this is the most interesting restaurant I found. I followed the taiwanese tradition of going to the most popular place and this place was always hopping. Xoi, which I've never had before, was simple rice, with some thick yellow paste with a texture similar to polenta, I'm guessing some kind of bean, put on top. Then some meat (the pork was better, and cheaper, than the chicken), some fried shallots (those things are great, and everywhere in asia) and some oil (just oil) poured over the top. Yum. And very cheap, less than $1 us.

last one

I have a lot of photos from Halong Bay. Here is the sunset. I had a very nice time there, though it was only 2 days and 1 night. And I just did silly touristy stuff like the cave, went canoeing, climbed another mountain for a view. But it was relaxing and pretty nice. Not as much aggressive selling and you could just relax. After this sunset, I drank a couple of beers on the deck of the boat and looked at the stars. Chatted with some other passengers about nothing. Read a book in my cabin. Pretty good.

Nice, isn't it

This was a view after we came out of the cave. Yes, it's nice.

blending in

My fashion sense. Amazing, isn't it? Note the Arsenal cap.

I went to a cave while I was there, the usual stalactites and stalagmites. But very nice and cool on a hot day. Damp. And interesting graffiti from 100 years ago when it was discovered, mostly in french and some in Chinese. It had been discovered, and then lost, and then used by the viet kong to hide people and weapons from American detection. I haven't been to a cave for a while, and I enjoyed it. Touristy as hell, of course, but occasionally I was actually alone in a section, so it wasn't objectionably crowded.

Halong Bay

Here is a shot from the junk I was on in Halong Bay. It was really beautiful there, not quite as hot as hanoi, cleaner air, and these views. The Junk I was on was nice, I had a very comfortable bed and a private shower.

water puppet dragons

Here are the dragons squirting water at each other. They also breathed fire at each other.

another water puppet

Here is a standard water puppet. Hand painted wood, they fall apart after a few months of use. Apparently, they provide work for a whole village somewhere. This style of puppetry was started in the north of vietnam when the rice fields would flood every year. Apparently, there were lots of secrets that were passed down in families. Women were previously not allowed to do this. And the people who did do it, prior to the waders that they all wear now, got all types of horrible illnesses and problems from spending so much time with their body in the water.

The orchestra at the water puppet theater

More Vietnam

I'm going to try to put up some more before I forget it all.

A highpoint in Hanoi was the water puppets. I'm generally a big fan of puppets, and these puppets were especially cool, appearing and disappearing out of and into water. Lots of fire and squirting water too. They had all kinds of dragons, animals, boats, animals and elaborate moving sets. Also, the orchestra played great, sometimes chinese style music, and occasionally interacted with the puppets, talking to them and emphasizing their movements. Of course I didn't understand, but the stories were pretty simple and generally easy to understand from the action. It's a pity my camera isn't good enough to take good pictures in the dark (too far away for a flash) but you can get an idea from my photos. The one above is the stage.

I was trapped trying to come back from Sapa when this happened. I was in both Lao Cai and Yen Bai. I need to post more soon before I forget too much. http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=79779

churches and temples

Apparently the communists in Vietnam are very tolerant of religion since there are buddhist temples and churches everywhere. This one was in Hanoi, but my favorite was up in Sapa. It was nice to hear the church bells echoing around the town at night. The temple is the one pillar pagoda, built to resemble a lotus blossom. It was destroyed by the french (out of spite) when they were driven out in 1954 The church is St. Joseph's cathedral, built by the french in 1886.

Hanoi Street video

I hope the sound works on this to give an idea of the honking horns, but even if not, you get some idea of the streets. no lights or signs, just people driving from all directions, often on both the right and left side of the road on all sides. total driving anarchy. It's amazing I only saw 2 or 3 accidents. crossing involves looking all directions, moving slowly so people can try to avoid you, and possibly prayer.

Vietnam post #1

So I'm back from Vietnam. The trip to the usa isn't going to happen because I missed my flight and couldn't reschedule this month. And I'll be tied down to Chinese classes for the next few months, oh well. It's so expensive and difficult to fly - it really is a bad time to travel.

For the record, I should mention that I finally got the Typhoon day I was bitching about on the last week at my job.

So, on to my trip. I flew into Hanoi, which is an interesting but tiring city. So much noise and chaos. It reminded me of many other cities mixed together. The streets felt like Calcutta, in some disrepair, but lively and filled with interesting smells and street stands. But also like Taipei, with ghost money smoke and masses of scooters and a certain east asian energy. And certain stretches had trees and buildings that reminded me of Tours, but maybe not Paris. And there was something about the strange tall, thin, long buildings that reminded me of Oman. And certain industrial stretches reminded me of the Bangkok Charlie and I visited in the early 90's. But actually, the chaos and noise were unique to Hanoi.

I stayed in the old quarter, which is located to the north of a large lake. It's interesting, but again, swarming with people grabbing at you, stepping in front of you, trying to sell you all types of things. The most common are the motorbike guys who greet you with "Hello motorbike!"on every corner or every time you step out of a hotel or restaurant. I met a dutch guy named Jan who would try to reply "Hello motorbike! How are you, Motorbike?" which kind of underlines how often you hear this phrase in Hanoi. There are also ubiquitous ladies with the conical hats and the balance scale carryalls who sell everything, but usually the tiny bananas and pineapples that seem to be all over Vietnam. I heard many foreigners talking about how great the fruit is in Vietnam, but I'm spoiled in Taiwan, which, I swear, has the most delicious tropical fruit in the world. Then there are guys selling rides on their cyclo (a bicycle rickshaw, basically) which I wasn't interested in but I heard was very expensive. Also, I felt there was something horrible about seeing a 120 lb. Vietnamese guy peddling a 250+ lb. white woman around the street. I decided I didn't want to be that 250+ lb. white woman. Occasionally, some guy would jump off the back of a scooter and follow you around trying to sell you photocopied books, that still weren't at much of a discount, actually. I burned through the one book I brought quickly (excellent) and was curious, but who wants to pay $10 us for a photocopy of a crap book? And finally, occasionally one of these different types of hawkers would try to sell me drugs or women. Not for me, but even if I was interested in that, I get the feeling that time spent in a Vietnamese prison would not be fun.