Hanoi - Day 3
We've got a Hanoi on foot tour booked for 9am, which gives us plenty of time to have another leisurely breakfast and look out over Hanoi.
The communication on all of the stuff we have booked has been brilliant via WhatsApp. For the tour today, which only cost about $5 each, I get a message from the organisers explaining how they are actually a non-for-profit business and the tours are run mostly by students and other locals who are keen to show-off their city, but also gain experience in interacting with foreigners and improving their English.
We are greeted by a very young girl (we find out later she is 13) at reception and she asks us where would we most like to go today. She mentions that the "bigger guide" will be here soon. The main guide, Linh arrives. She is in her 3rd year at university studying International Studies, Commerce and Law.
We say we want to see the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and the Temple of Literature. The guide leads the way and off we go. Its tricky to chat and walk in Hanoi because its loud and so busy that you need to be concentrating too much on what's happening to avoid getting run over. Linh shows us the Jedi mind-tricks approach to crossing the road. Put your hand out and they will stop, basically. Good to know.
As we get closer to the Mausoleum we can see large lines of people. We need to buy some pants; you can't enter in shorts. We're still not 100% sure what happened with opening times in the end, but we wouldn't have time to get in before it closes at 10:30am. But that's OK; we've later heard rumours that its not really Ho Chi Min's preserved body in there anyway, but maybe a good wax replica. Considering he requested to have his body split in 3 and sent to different parts of Vietnam, and also the strong set of post-death traditions, this probably makes a lot of sense.
We head to the Ho Chi Minh museum instead. This should be good. We know bits and pieces of his story via the very long documentary series on the war we recently watched, but the story is told mostly from the side of the USA, so it will be great to hear more from a local depiction.
There are school kids everywhere, all wanting to say hello to us and practice their English. Some were taken aback when we say "Xing Chow" back to them. Very fun. Amazing to see them all wanting to interact with us.
Another free tour guide (from the same organisation) gives us a guided tour of the museum, which was needed as there was not a lot of written information at the installations in English. It was difficult to hear her though because of all the kids and the accent was a bit tricky. But we got a lot out of it.
Interesting to hear her explanation of the "American War". How the South were "occupied" by USA and their government was a puppet state. Jeff asks "Did the South think the same about the North?". Our guide: "No, because we weren't occupied".... enough said.
Uncle Ho is the dude though, that is clear. It seems all children need to learn a lot about him through school, including his 5 principles:
- Love the Fatherland, love the compatriots
- Study well, work well
- Good solidarity, good discipline
- Maintain good hygiene
- Humility, honesty, courage
“To reap a return in ten years, plant trees. To reap a return in 100, cultivate the people”.
From the little we have seen so far, I think the 100 year plan is going OK. But we have many questions to ask still and can't wait to hear how people from the South think about about Ho Chi Minh, and Vietnam's trajectory in general.
Lunch time - our guides take us to one of their favourite beef noodle places. Very authentic. Up some narrow steep stairs and leave the ordering to the locals. The beef cuts were a bit intimidating to us westerners, as well as the crab roe, but pretty delicious. Over lunch we ask about 1,000 questions. Linh asks a lot back. She passes the "what's the capital of Australia test" pretty well. Better than how we would have done on Vietnam a few months ago...
Off to the Temple of Literature. But a quick coffee stop first. Man, their coffee is strong here. Strong and bloody delicious.
The temple is about 1,000 years old. Its a temple dedicated to Confucius and hosted the Imperial Academy, which was Vietnam's first national university from 1076 to 1779. We get the guided tour of the temple from Linh. Its pretty cool with a lot of history, but the "temple" parts are a bit lost on us. For example the offerings of cookies and soft drink to the ancestors.
Vietnamese people seem to be quite spiritual, but not very religious, so they seem to channel that spirituality towards respecting their dead and other traditions. I guess its almost the opposite of most western cultures where many are quite religious, but not very spiritual.
Back to the hotel and we say bye for now to our guide and tell her that we hope to repay the favour in Sydney one day.
Quick freshen up and its back out on the street, this time for a self-guided food tour. First stop, banh mi and a beer on a corner. That hit the spot. Then a short stroll to another staple that we haven't tried yet, banh coun.
We're hesitant at first, the place looks a little dicey. There's a kitten running around and jumping on tables (not that we can judge). The food is great, and an actual food tour comes in shortly after we order, so we start to relax. Maybe that second beer helped as well.
Back to beer alley for a couple of Bia Hoi, which is cheap entertainment when all we want to do is people-watch see how this crazy part of the world works. We like the scramble from the owners to get customers to choose their little bar. All of the bars have tables and chairs on the sidewalk, and actually further, sprawling out onto the street. No wonder the people working for the bars also double as driver's assistants when things start to get a bit tight - e.g. whenever a big car comes down the street.
Every 5 minutes we see something we've never seen before. What a way to spend Christmas Eve. Time to pull up stumps though, we have an early morning departure tomorrow, so we need our beauty sleep.
