October 2 - Vietnam: Hanoi
This morning, we had breakfast in the hotel (it's spartan, but it's included!) and had the most delicious French bread I've had in a long time. It was so good that we didn't even mind that all we were eating was bread and butter!. After breakfast, we went to the front desk and arranged for transportation to Huê and Saigon for the next week and a half. Unfortunately, the overnight trains to Huê are booked for the rest of the week so we'll have to fly. This is a blessing and a problem. It saves us 12 hours in travel time, but it sort of breaks the bank for us right now.
Quest for a Lonely Planet for Vietnam
We feel strangely vulnerable without a guide book, because we don't know where to go or what to do. The Intrepid info in the hotel said that there was a book street 10 minutes away, and that Vietnam has a large "photocopied book" market. So we set out to find it. A boy on the street selling postcards wanted to sell us a Lonely Planet for $6.00, but we wanted to wait and see what the book street had to offer, especially since we wanted to get Thailand, NZ, and Australia as well. Bad idea. The Book Street wasn't much of a book street at all, and we ended up walking back to find the postcard boy but he was long gone. So we wandered around for while hoping another postcard boy would approach us (they were out in packs last night). Of course, the one time we want to be harassed there's no one around. So we walked for a while longer and tried to find a particularly touristy area where these boys would be.
Finally, after an hour, we were approached by someone who had books to sell. He was very nice, and told us he was a student and was doing this to pay his bills. Who knows if that was true or not, but I do know that he saved me from getting splashed by a street-cleaner. So he won my support then! When he found out that we wanted other Lonely Planets, he took us to the store that provides them to him so he could check on the availability. He could only get us Thailand and Cambodia, and we didn't know if we wanted Cambodia because we may not have the money to get there. So we bargained on the price of the Vietnam and Thailand books for a while, and we all left happy.
Lunch at Mocha Cafe
We had lunch at the Mocha Cafe in Hanoi's Old Quarter. It was filled with Westerners which ordinarily is a bad thing but after wandering around all morning we're ready for some comfort food. The burgers were good and we were very happy. Of course - just our luck - there were at least 3 postcard boys outside with books to sell. After lunch we tried to get in to see St Joseph's Cathedral, but it was closed and there was no way in.
Hanoi Hilton (Hao Lo Prison Museum)
Jon wanted to go to the POW camp that US POWs called "The Hanoi Hilton". This is the place where John McCain spent his years of captivity. Grant says they call it "Propaganda Prison" which it definitely was. Most of the compound was torn down years ago to make room for a high-rise, but the front gate area was left and is now a small museum. The prison was originally used by the French to imprison Vietnamese revolutionaries, and this is what most of the museum focuses on. It shows different cells, foot locks, and torture devices - all with captions such as "Used by the French Secret Service to torture Vietnamese revolutionaries." The paintings demonstrating the use of the cells and whatnot all show the Vietnamese prisoners with their fists raised in rebellion despite their imprisonment.
There is one room devoted to the US POWs. It's a small room and has only a few artifacts, but has pictures of very happy looking POWs. Some of the captions are "US serviceman receiving his mail", "US servicemen celebrating Christmas Mass", "US servicemen dining with Vietnamese journalists". The most interesting part of it is the placard on the wall which reads:
From August 5, 1964 to January 24, 1973, US government carried out two destruction wars by air and navy against Northern Vietnam. The Northern Army and people brought down thousands of pilots. Part of these pilots were detained in Hao Lo Prison by our Ministry of Interior. Though having committed untold crimes on our people, but American pilots suffered no revenge once they were captures and detained. Instead they were well treated with adequate food, clothing, and shelter. According to the provisions of Paris Agreement, our government had in March 1973 returned all captured pilots to the US government.
Well. Now I've heard everything.
Temple of Literature
We went back to the hotel to chill out for a while and checked in at the front desk to see about a day trip to Halong Bay tomorrow. At $54/person, it's WAY out of our budget so we'll just have to content ourselves around town instead.
We went to the Temple of Literature for about an hour, which was just lovely. It was founded in 1070 by Emperor Ly Thanh Tong, who dedicated it to Confucius to honor scholarly men. The temple was very quiet (except for the motorbike horns, of course) and had a few ponds filled with lily pads and lotus flowers. Inside the temple, there are 82 stelae, arrayed to either side of the enclosure, and each sits on its own stone tortise.
Dinner at Le Tonkin
For dinner, we went to Le Tonkin, which is run by the same people who own Indochine (where we went last night). It was a long walk away and we were hungry, so we took a cyclo instead. At $.75, you really can't miss. A cyclo is a cushioned wheel-barrow contraption attached to the front of a bike, where the driver was behind us the entire time. Much different from India, where we were behind the driver instead. But he got us to Le Tonkin much faster than had we walked, and the restaurant itself was much less busy - probably because of the non-central location (Ngo Van So Street). But the food was good, the menu different from last night, and the local musicians were very entertaining.
When we left the restaurant, another cyclo driver was asking much too much to take us back to the hotel so we decided to walk. This was a nice walk because we'd had a big dinner and needed to walk some of it off. And the walk wasn't that long - only about 20 minutes.
Back in the room, we stopped by the Intrepid Office to take advantage of their book swap. Now we're a walking library!