Hanoi, city of the red flags

Throughout Laos, Peter had kept commenting on how Laos doesn't feel communist and we wondered if Vietnam was going to be any different. First impression was no as we taxied into the busy streets of Hanoi. Guesthouses, restaurants, street kitchens, vendors, scooters, street performances(traditional dance, hip hop, yo-yo) and tourists filled every walkable inch of the old city. The next day  though was filled with propaganda, red flags, and boring architecture. 

Peter was all giddy when we spotted the angular soulless Ba Dinh Square with a giant marble and granite mausoleum right in the center.  Now this was the communism Peter was familiar with. Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum was modeled after Lenin's in Moscow, but bigger. Sadly Uncle Ho is currently in Russia getting touched up so we didn't get a chance to see him.

We did get to see his palace complex. Well, sort of. Uncle Ho refused to live in the lavish presidential palace and instead opted for a two room wooden stilt house.

Nearby his residence is the Ho

Chi Minh museum. The top floor is spectacularly well done with symbolic art installations and photographs depicting Uncle Ho's life and his contribution in liberating Vietnam. We didn't get to see the other floors because everything closes for lunch/nap time. But I'm sure if we did, Peter would have loved all the Soviet related memorabilia. 

Our next stop in our communist filled day was the Hoa Lo prison, aka Hanoi Hilton nicknamed by the American POWs who were imprisoned there. Emotions of disbelief, horror, injustice, and anger fills you as you walk through the prison reading the stories and watching the documentaries on the two very important bloody wars that have defined Vietnam. The first during the French colonization when they built the prison to house and torture Vietnamese political activists. The second time, the North Vietnamese used the prison for American POWs. The section on the treatment of American POWs was disturbingly one-sided and it left a very bad feeling in our gut. 

Some light hearted things we did involved a water puppet show that was absolutely delightful. Handcrafted puppets of traditional Vietnamese people and mythical creatures dance on the pools' surface controlled by puppeteers behind a black curtain. Really magical with all the bright colors, fire spewing from dragon puppets, and traditional music in the background. To make it more magical, the show is near Hoan Kiem Lake, meaning "Lake of the Returned Sword."  Legend goes that a Golden Turtle God appeared before the emperor on that lake asking for his magical sword back. There's now a turtle temple near the center of the lake to commemorate that day. 

Our second day was a museum day: the Military History Museum and the Women's Museum. The first one was ok and second one was really well done. It is 6 floors all about Vietnamese women and their contribution to Vietnamese society.   

We rounded our learning day off by visiting the Temple of Literature. How appropriate! There was even a graduation celebration occurring when we arrived.  The temple was built to honor the Chinese philosopher, Confucious, and was also the first university in Vietnam. There are rows and rows of giant turtles with giant stelae on their backs engraved with the names of those who have received doctorate degrees. 

-Priscilla