Hanoi

So here we are almost at the end of the Vietnam portion of the trip. We went from one major city to another, South to North, passing through some incredible sights along the way!

First day in Hanoi, we went to an old prison where, along with many Vietnamese revolution fighters, some American POWs were kept. Among those was also John McCain. They even have a picture on the wall of him being “rescued” out of the water where his jet went down. Not sure if it was intentional, but there was a whole room of pictures of “American pilots playing cards” and “American pilot getting excellent medical care” and ” American pilots playing volleyball” kind of pictures where the men are almost giving thumbs up…. But not quite. I mean, it was a prison. They couldn’t have been happy to be there. I don’t know.

We took ourselves on a self guided walking tour through Old Town, including the following: spices road, silk road, blacksmith road, pagoda, temple in the lake, communal house.

Temple of Literature is a Confucian temple (the first confucian temple weve seen so far) for education originally built in 12th century for people of prestigious families.

We also walked through the French quarter on our way to the national museum of Vietnam, which houses some very old artifacts from over 2500 years ago and gives a kind of timeline of rulers and invaders of the last 2000 years!

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum

Creeeeeepy. Seriously. He is lying in a box in the center of a cold square room with glazed stone walls. There were something like 8 guards standing around the room in white uniform. Nobody makes eye contact. The room is dark with only warm spotlights aimed down at him in his glass box. We were ushered through by the guards along a walkway near the walls to look at him as we continue moving. No stopping, no talking, hands must stay out of pockets, hats off, no chewing gum. It’s very serious. And seriously creepy. No pictures unfortunately, as is the rule. But this is the outside.

Other than the mausoleum, which is free, there is also a museum dedicated to him and the revolution. We also saw the stilt house where he lived and a pagoda originally built 800 years ago but bombed and then restored in the 50s. All very cool stuff.