Vietnam - Hanoi, Part II

We arrived back in Hanoi around lunchtime Saturday and spent all afternoon walking around town, shopping for art and enjoying the city atmosphere.

Hanoi is a popular place to buy art in Asia and there were several galleries around town. We strolled through the French Quarter past the Opera House and visited a few art galleries in the neighborhood. While we saw some beautiful paintings, I didn't feel like I was educated about the artists enough to make the investment in their works. So, we opted to keep walking until we reached the street in town where we could buy reproductions instead.

Opera House

By the end of the afternoon, we had purchased three oil paintings and completed our souvenir shopping for the girls. We had a great time leisurely strolling through the streets and my personal favorite was the bread drive-thru of sorts on a street corner where motorbikes would quickly halt, grab a baguette and drive away.

Bread for Sale on a Busy Hanoi Street

Our hotel recommended a nearby restaurant for dinner. When we entered and saw only tourists like ourselves, we were a little concerned but the food ended up being very good. Although Brian pointed out that we had really blown the dining budget that night, spending almost $35 USD on dinner!

The following morning we had breakfast at the hotel, complete with traditional Vietnamese coffee. We had our first local coffee on the boat and while I liked the taste, I'm a decaf coffee drinker so the strong, caffeine-loaded coffee left me feeling a bit hyper the rest of the day! The concept is neat though. They brought us coffee with the grinds in a container that sat on top of the cup. We had to wait about 5 minutes for the coffee to finish brewing into the cups and then stirred in condensed milk. I'm not sure who first experimented with adding condensed milk to coffee but I began to wish I didn't know how sweet and delicious the finished product would taste because I could be tempted to try it at home as well.

Our guide and driver arrived after breakfast to finish our local tour before heading to the airport for our return flight Sunday afternoon. Our first stop was the Hoa Lo Prison, a place Americans know as the Hanoi Hilton.

Hoa Lo Prison was first built in the late 1800s by the French to imprison Vietnamese dissidents who threatened the French rule over its colony. While most of the prison has been destroyed, one section remains as a museum. The majority of the museum focused on the inhumane treatment of Vietnamese prisoners during the French colonial period. The French brought a guillotine with them and used it periodically to show the Vietnamese people the consequences of going against their rule.

Two rooms at the end of the museum described the use of the prison during the "American War" to contain captured American pilots. Of course the pictures depicted positive conditions for the POWs, showing the soldiers reading letters from their families, celebrating Christmas and playing basketball in the courtyard. Our guide maintained that the pilots were treated humanely and pointed out that John McCain returned to Hanoi and visited the prison in recent past.

John McCain's Flight Gear

While it's possible the Vietnamese treated the Americans better than they had been treated by the French (after all, no one was beheaded in the prison during the war), pictures showing the release of the POWs at the end of the war showed men who resembled skeletons. And having read McCain's book about his time in the Hanoi Hilton, I was well aware of the negative side not depicted in the museum.

From the prison we drove to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum and waited in line to view the embalmed Communist leader of Vietnam. Clearly he's still beloved by the Vietnamese people and I figured I might as well hit the trifecta of embalmed Communists -- Lenin, Mao and now Ho Chi Minh. We had to go through a metal detector and it's too bad I couldn't have the camera with me at that point because the sign entering the security area was priceless. The poor translation stated, "Please remove poisonous liquids, cash and germstones." At the same time, we were expected to maintain a solemn composure while entering the building to see Ho Chi Minh, when Brian quietly threatened to make an obnoxious French "duck call" when we saw the dead leader, causing me laugh. We were scolded by the throngs of soldiers guarding the body and after that, a few soldiers seemed to shadow us through the building. They were probably concerned we would reveal our poisonous liquids and GERMstones at any moment.

Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum

I read that Ho Chi Minh had expressed his wish to be cremated and have his ashes spread around the country but following his death, the Soviet Union convinced the Vietnamese leaders to preserve his body to help keep Communism alive in the country. You can only view his body a couple hours each morning and our guide said that it is still a very popular practice for the Vietnamese people to visit him, especially on national holidays and his birthday.

I loved this French building used by the government  for state visits

After seeing his body, we drove a short distance to Ho Chi Minh's home in Hanoi and we were able to see some beautiful French buildings along the way that are now used by the government. Ho Chi Minh lived in a peaceful, lake setting in the middle of Hanoi, where he enjoyed daily gardening and walks around the water. After several years in a French home, he moved into a smaller house on the opposite side of the lake that offered an open-air way of life. Everything we saw left the impression that Ho Chi Minh was a man with simple needs who did not desire the material riches of most leaders. And I have no doubt that's exactly the perception the Vietnamese want tourists to have about their country's hero.

Ho Chi Minh's First Hanoi Home

After visiting Hanoi, I would be interested to learn a little more about Ho Chi Minh because I had always viewed him as North Vietnam's military leader but that doesn't fit with the story we heard during our visit. Also, I never realized he died in 1969, years before the end of the war. He never actually saw his country unified since that didn't occur until 1976.

Reminders of Communism Around Town

It felt odd to visit a country America was at war with during our lifetime and while Brian and I joked about whether our daughters will visit Iraq in 30 years, it did make me consider Vietnam's situation in history. That small country was a constant target for foreign aggressors -- China, France, Japan and the US. The Vietnamese people eventually removed them all and while I wouldn't want to live in a communist country, the people there seem to be functioning well in the system. Yes, it's a little annoying that you can't log in to Facebook while you're there, but our guide told us that in most instances, the government stays out of his business. If he buys a car or a house, he will have to pay a high tax to the government but otherwise, most of the money he makes stays in his pocket and he likes it that way. He claimed that most Vietnamese people were more concerned with making a good living for their family and didn't spend too much time worrying about governmental affairs.

We returned to Singapore Sunday afternoon and we were thankful for the opportunity to visit Vietnam as it was a unique destination in the region. I wouldn't mind checking out a beach resort with our family at a later time because with good food and incredibly cheap prices, why not take advantage of a bargain? Next time I'll just leave my wallet at home and stay close to Brian.