October 3 - Vietnam: Hanoi
Ethnology Museum
At 10:00, we arranged for a car through the hotel to go to the Ethnology Museum on the very outskirts of town. Interestingly enough, the museum isn't even listed in Lonely Planet but it was spectacular. It was a large, new museum which exhibited the different ethnicities and customs of Vietnam's 54 ethnic groups - many of which are disappearing in this quickly modernizing country. The museum was an open-air museum, meaning all the doors and windows were open, and it was interesting because the hot and muggy atmosphere made us feel more connected to the different ethnic groups.
Each ethnic group had a different area of the museum. One part had an authentic "Black Tay" house, in which the Tay people do weaving and cotton and silk designs. Other parts of the museum had video monitors to demonstrate the different ways of making things (such as conical hats), different ceremonies (Tay Shaman Ceremony) or rituals (Bahnar Buffalo Sacrifice). It was one of the most engaging museums we've been to yet.
In the "back yard" of the museum were some life-sizes houses of the different ethnic groups. One house, for example, was entirely on stilts. Another structure was a "funeral house" which is built to house the body of a deceased family member until all the funeral ceremonies are completed 75 days later. While we were walking around, I stopped to take a picture of one of the houses and felt something tickling my foot. I glanced down, saw that it was a little ant, and decided not to let it distract me from my photo. That's when it decided to bite off my toe. OK - that was an exaggeration but this thing really did pack a wallop! The welt that immediately formed was bigger than the ant itself. It reminded us of the scene in "Platoon" where Charlie Sheen wakes up in the jungle with bugs crawling all over him and his face covered in welts. I'm convinced it's the exact same ant.
So between this and the hornet sting - which is still the biggest, ugliest thing I've ever seen - I'm not having much luck with nature lately.
When we left the museum, it began to pour so we hopped in the car just in time. When it rains here, the number of motorbikes doesn't diminish. It seems that a required accessory to any motorbike is the big plastic poncho. Somehow, everyone on the road had one although we don't know where they came from. Maybe there's storage beneath the seats. At any rate, Jon and I will feel right at home with our big blue ponchos!
KOTO's For Lunch - Know One, Teach One
We went to KOTO's for lunch, which is the place we tried to find last night for dinner but it was closed. KOTO's was founded in 1999 by a former Intrepid Travel Leader named Jimmy. He wanted to devise a way to get the boys selling postcards off the street and into a more marketable job. So he began this restaurant. KOTO's stands for "Know One, Teach One" which is the main principal of the restaurant. Each boy or girl that comes here hones his or her skills in the hospitality industry. When their learning is done, they must then teach other students. This last concept isn't what's so ambitious about the place. Rather, it's the fact that Jimmy is bringing in kids off the street and teaching them something that will help them for the rest of their lives. Bill Clinton, when he visited Vietnam last year, stopped by KOTOs for a few photo ops.
The menu in KOTOs is brought in a little postcard folder, and each part of the menu is its own postcard. The pictures on the postcards are pictures of the boys and girls who work there. What a fabulous idea! The irony (for those who missed it) is that these postcards are exactly what the boys and girls used to sell to make money. Now they wait tables during lunch, and take English and other lessons in the evening. This is why the restaurant isn't open for dinner.
Jon ordered the eggplant in a clay pot, and I had the chicken ravioli special. One of the instructors came by later to ask how I liked the ravioli, because it was "one of the new things the kids have been learning". I told her that it was delicious - which it was. In fact, Jon thinks it was the best ravioli he's had. EVER.
We would have liked to linger over lunch a bit, but the place was much too hot and we were dying to get outside in the fresh air again. So Jon asked for the bill and our friendly waitress brought it over. It was 15,000 Dong ($1.00) less than we thought it would be, and on closer inspection we saw that the waitress had charged me for the risotto instead of the ravioli. So we called her over and told her that we'd been undercharged. She was incredibly surprised at our honesty, and apologized profusely.
Curio Shopping
We went back to hotel to relax in the A/C for a bit because it was incredibly hot and humid after the afternoon's rain. Then we set out in the now-sunny weather for Huong Dong, which is a street of curios and stuff. Jon bought some lovely chopsticks and we looked at the different plates and pictures for sale. We didn't find much else that was worth carting around in our backpacks so we wandered to ANZ Bank for the ATM.
The Pineapple Woman
Many women here sell fruit and other items which they cart all over town. The fruit (or whatever they're selling) are stored in two large baskets hung from either end of a bamboo pole, which the woman has balanced on one of her shoulders. The baskets are supported by long twine ropes, and both baskets hang almost to the ground, so the effect looks like the women are walking around with a rudimentary scale system. When they walk, the bamboo bends with the weight of the baskets. Most of them have fruit in their baskets, but some are carting around small convenience stores! These women are everywhere, and Jon was dying for a photo of one of them but no one would let him take one. He finally decided that - when he saw a woman approaching - he would have me suddenly stop and pose so he could sneak a photo over my shoulder. But this never worked very well because they're onto this scam.
But we tried it again on the way to ANZ, and this time the woman as very cheerful and insisted that I put the pole and baskets of pineapple on my shoulder. So she put her conical hat on my head and helped put the goods over my shoulder and posed for a picture with me. OH MY GOD this thing was so heavy!!! Our backpacks are at least 40 pounds each, and this was much heavier. And it was 3:00 in the afternoon, which means that the baskets were much more full of pineapples this morning. So I was delighted when she took the pole off my shoulder, and I squeezed her shoulder and we both laughed as she mimicked how strong she was. We bought two of her little pineapples from her, which probably didn't do much to lessen the load but it did pay for the pictures. Jon also got a picture of just her with the bamboo and baskets which I think will be a better picture.
The Evening
Afterwards, we went back to the hotel to settle up the bill and pay for the plane tickets we bought. We also went to the Intrepid office to swap books. Sue - the Intrepid Leader who's in town now - was very nice to let us in and gave us free reign of their book shelves. Then Jon and I had dinner at a little restaurant called Pepperoni's Pizza Place in the Old Town part of Hanoi (near where we were shopping today). The woman who was the hostess there had lived in Australia for a few years and had an interesting Vietnamese/Australian accent. After dinner, we went to a nearby Internet Cafe and stayed for two hours which cost an unbelievable 24,000 Dong (about $1.75). So inexpensive! I also bought a cute little sun hat for 20,000 Dong ($1.25). This place is great!
It was raining when we left the Internet Cafe, but we walked back anyway and the rain felt kind of nice. So - of course - we were soaking wet by the time we got back but we didn't care. We showered and went to bed.