Hanoi Touristing

It is now Sunday morning and we have had two more eventful, chilly days in Hanoi.  After intense warnings to bring light clothes and to prepare for the heat, we hearty Minnesotans are shivering in our cotton clothing.  With record low temperatures of the 45 - 50 degrees and highs in the humid 50's, we were unprepared for the weather.

On Friday we visited the Temple of Literature, the oldest university in Viet Nam, starting in 1070 CE.  As an academic, I had a sense of eerie pride in the veneration of scholars.  This was an amazing complex, with eight increasingly ornate gates and courtyards, all with ponds, large outdoor bonsai in exquisite planters, and finally moving into a large temple building which once housed the students on the top floor.  The complex was immense, intricately planted, and well renovated.

The academic process there was somewhat different from what we have in the western world.  The emperor was the one who gave the final exams and those who passed created a treatise venerating the monarch.  The homages were incised into stone and placed on the back of carved turtles, one of the four national symbols of Viet Nam (the other three being dragons, cranes, and something I can't recall).

Following our tour we found a little street lunch spot, where we had fried rice for lunch before spending the afternoon at the Vietnam National Fine Arts Museum.  The museum is housed in an ornate French colonial mansion with exquisite grounds and houses an historical collection of Vietnamese art.  We were transfixed by the work surrounding the revolution which provided an alternative narrative to the one we heard in the United States.  As history, along with art history, is written by the victors, we saw moving portrayals of the liberation of the peoples of Vietnam from their colonizers, and the veneration of Uncle Ho, who understood and loved the peasants.

Following the exhibits, we walked back to our hotel where I needed to corral Rich into walking, rather than photo shooting the traffic.  When we arrived back in the afternoon, we fell into bed and slept until the next morning, only being distracted by the raucous party our hosts we having in the main floor below our chambers.

The next morning we decided to go to the Ho Chi Minh Museum and complex.  The museum itself is strikingly beautiful, with exhibits illuminating the life of Ho and the influences on his mission.   The museum presented artifacts of Ho's life as well as moving exhibits of the Spanish Civil War, the Russian Revolution, the Native American genocide and the Holocaust.  All were portrayed in a moving modern art style, and were exquisitely executed.

Following our tour of the museum, we scurried to find Ho Chi Minh's resting place as we had read that it was about to close.  We were ushered into the mausoleum by white clad guards, who were very deliberate in waking us past the embalmed body of Ho Chi Minh.  The body was lying in a bed, was chalky white, and to me a bit gruesome to encounter, as I do not do dead bodies very well.

After viewing the body, we viewed the stilt house where the deceased revolutionary leader lived while president and during the war.  It was a beautifully simple structure and was raised on stilts with a secluded view of a serene lake vista.   Paradoxically, when leaving the house, we looked across the lake and saw an edifice serving drinks with a Pepsi awning over its outdoor tables.  What would Ho think!?!

The museum closed at noon and so we took off to the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology.  After a harrowing taxi ride, where I think we may have been taken on a tour to increase the rate, we arrived.  The museum traces the fifty four ethnic groups in Vietnam which are centered in five  ethnolinguistic families.  There were two parts to the museum, an inside area featuring artifacts of the differing groups and an outside area with recreations of the housing types for each ethnic area of Vietnam.

There was a major exhibit focused on destigmatizing HIV/AIDS.  This exhibit was co-sponsored by the Vietnam department of health and the University of Washington, Seattle. HIV seems to be a significant challenge here, and the government seems to be taking the struggle on directly.  There are laws promoting condom usage for all sexual activity (I don't know how they can do this).   The stigma of HIV appears to be intense.  There is some indication that there are education efforts in the schools to stem transmission.  Other efforts are working to confront the prejudicial attitudes through the dissemination of accurate information about the transmission routes of the virus.

Barb's pics are here

Rich's pics day 2 are here

Rich's pics day 3 are here