September 5th
When we wake up and look outside, we thought that it might be raining since some of the scooter drivers were wearing plastic bags, but it was really because the humidity was close to 100%.
Like yesterday, we have breakfast at the hotel. The breakfast buffet is enormous! We see breakfast foods from Vietnam, but also from Europe, China, Japan and Korea. Except for the bread, I try foods from everywhere but Europe - steamed buns from China, a vermicelli vegetable stir-fry from Vietnam, and a grilled piece of haddock from Japan.
Today, we are all day (5 hrs) with Tien. Our first stop is the Mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh, regarded here as the father of modern Vietnam because he led the country against first the French and then the Americans. Tien told us a lot about Ho Chin Minh including that he was once employed as a baker in Boston after he had been exiled by the French. Tien says that children are taught in school that the war with America was a fight against US imperialism, but he says that he knows that this war was essentially a civil war due to the fact that after WWII, the French only controlled the northern part of the country and when they were finally kicked out of the country in 1956, the country was not reunified. Here is a picture of the Mausoleum:
We learned that this Mausoleum is based on a smaller one housing Lenin in Moscow's Red Square. Outside, we see a lot of men my age wearing green hats with a single red star. These are Viet Cong veterans of either the war versus the US or later against the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. We also see high-stepping solders with lots of medals marching back and forth and there are dignitaries, ethnic minorities in fancy outfits, and a lot of school children here:
It is cold inside and in the middle of the building is Ho Chi Minh's corpsicle. Tien tells us that Ho Chi Minh wanted to be cremated, but the authorities at the time denied the request. I heard a group of Americans behind us in line saying that the same people who embalmed Josef Stalin came here to make Ho Chi Minh look like he was just taking a nap. We did notice that they had to cut his long beard, but we're not sure if that had to do with the preservation methods used.
Ho Chi Minh died in 1969 shortly after the huge Tet (Vietnamese Lunar New Year) offensive. This campaign was a loss in terms of a stupendous number of North Vietnamese troops being killed but turned out to be a victory because it proved to the North Vietnamese people that victory was possible. I'm sure that people in the southern part of the country and the huge Vietnamese diaspora may see this differently. I'm only reporting what I was told.
Behind the Mausoleum we see this:
This was the Presidential Palace while the French were in control of Vietnam. When the French were defeated, people wanted Ho Chi Minh to move in, but he refused. Now it is a stage for official meetings with foreign dignitaries. Tien tells us that the building was just used for a meeting between Vietnam's president and the Prime Minister of New Zealand to celebrate signing a document that will make New Zealand one of Vietnam's special trading partners.
Close to the Presidential Palace, there are three houses where Ho Chi Minh lived in his later years. The first was built by the French:
The green wall to the right is the wall of the bomb shelter. You can imagine that this was a target that the American's tried very hard to hit. So, when the air raid siren went off, Ho Chi Minh could be easily wheeled into the bomb shelter. The buildings were also connected through a maze of tunnels.
While something like 70% of Vietnamese people have no religion, that does not mean that there are no shrines. In fact, here is one that is next to Ho Chi Minh's final house:
This is called the one-pillar pagoda. The original dates back to the period of Chinese control and was perhaps 1,000 years old. Unfortunately, in one of their last acts before leaving the country, the French blew it up. This is only a replica. There is a lot of Chinese influence here:
Tien tells us that he wants us to try two forms of Vietnamese soups today. The first one is pho (pronounced like fuh). The is a chicken or beef-based soup with flat rice noodles, bits of meat and options for adding things like bean sprouts or mint leaves. It typically takes 10 hr of more of simmering to make the complex broth. Beth and I are familiar with pho, but since most of the Vietnamese people in California are from the south of the country, it is a little different here - more meat, less vegetables. We are also used to having some sort of spicy peppers (jalapenos or similar), but that doesn't seem to be a thing here.
Feeling much better after our meal, we are taken to the Northern end of the city where the largest lake is located. It used to be larger, but a road cut the lake in two. On the smaller lake, we see this monument:
It is hard to make out the writing, but this is where, in October 1967, John McCain's A-4 fighter bomber was shot down and he landed in this lake. At the time, the second largest building on the right was the only powerplant in Hanoi and McCain's mission was to take it out. McCain came back to this spot many times (the first time jokingly complaining that the plaque said that he was in the Air Force when he was really in the Marines). He came back in 2017 to celebrate the 50th anniversary and was reunited with the guy who arrested him. McCain said that the other man was not his jailor, he was his savior because McCain broke his shoulder while bailing out, got tangled up in his parachute and would have drowned if this man had not come around. Originally, only the plaque was here, but the trees and flowers were added to honor McCain when he died.
We walk along the edge of the lake past what seems like a million coffee shops - seriously, Hanoi puts Seattle to shame when it comes to the number of coffee shops! Here are a couple of pictures:
Around the next corner and along a canal, we see a small lake and a plaque next to it:
In 1972, President Nixon, in an attempt to gain leverage in the peace talks that were underway approved Operation Linebacker, a large-scale strategic bombing campaign over all of North Vietnam. Of course, the North Vietnamese were not totally defenseless. They had an Air Force, but more importantly, had a lot of Russian-made surface-to-air missiles. One of those missiles blew up a B-52 Stratofortress and this piece of fuselage and wing landed here and has been left as a reminder to the local people that they did defeat the Americans (as well as the French and even earlier Chinese).
We are walking through very narrow alleyways with scooters flying by and I ask Tien how people avoid getting lost. He said that it used to be that only the locals came here and knew every street in their neighborhood well. But as more people have moved into the area, more and more people have gotten lost, so people use the equivalent of Google Maps to find their way. Of course, that means that they are holding the scooter handlebar in one hand and the phone in their other hand.
This part of town is quite historic, so the locals have drawn murals showing what life looks like in the "old days". Here are a couple that I liked:
Then it was time for our 2nd soup. This one is called Bun Cha. When we sit down in this little hole-in-the-wall place, we see this picture on the wall:
In 2016, Barack Obama and Anthony Bourdain had lunch here and ever since the place has been called Bun Cha Obama. Tien said that the owners got a call the day before saying that someone important was going to be coming for lunch the next day. In the morning, the secret service detail arrived to check out the whole process of making the food and running the restaurant. Then a motorcade pulls up and out get Obama and Bourdain. Apparently, all of the other customers had been prescreened as well. The "Obama set" is soup, spring rolls and a local beer. The soup (Bun Cha) is a much heavier, beef-based soup compared to the much more subtle pho. The broth also has a slightly sweet tang to it. We liked it!
Our next stop was at the Temple of Literature. This was Vietnam's first university built in 1070 in part as way of developing national scholars independent of Chinese influence. Outside, there was a woman selling intricate 3D paper items:
Every three years, the scholars from all over the country would travel to the emperor's palace to take the royal examinations. While this was a school back then, the most important part now is the 82 stone stellae with the names of 1,307 people who passed the exams and were recruited to attend this school:
Each stella sits on the back of the turtle which signifies wisdom and longevity. This is also the school where the Vietnamese people decided not to base their written language on Chinese. This was because there are a number of diphthongs in Vietnamese, including a couple that sound like a hard swallow, that are not in Mandarin. For example, Tien shows us that the vowel o can be pronounced six different ways. This big number of diphthongs made it much easier for the Vietnamese to later accept the French concept of using dialectic marks to indicate intonation and are what is used in modern written Vietnamese.
Our next-to-last stop was at a factory/showroom displaying lacquerware. There is a whole village making these items, but this is where the show what they are making. Since I have a bunch of Chinese lacquerware items from my great aunt Helen (who worked for the YMCA in China in the early 1900's), it was fascinating to see how these items are made. They start with a wood base. Next comes a base layer consisting of a cloth mesh, clay which is followed by a coat with a thick layer of lacquer. That is dried and sanded to be as flat as possible. Nine more lacquer layers are added, each time being allowed to dry and sanded flat. As each layer is added, the surface becomes shinier and completely flat. After all of this work (which takes weeks), they are ready to add the artwork. These people make pictures in three ways. The first is to take duck eggs and partially burn them so that the eggshell covers a range of colors from black through brown to a sort of cream color. Next, the artist breaks the eggshell into tiny pieces and sorts them by color, picks out the ones of the right color and adds them to one of the prepared bases that has been coated with a thin layer of lacquer to make it sticky. Here is a picture of the process:
The second option is to use mother-of-pearl. In this case, they take an abalone shell and extract the mother-of-pearl on the inside of the shell. Then they heat it so that it can be pressed flat. Finally, they cut it into the shapes that they need for the pictures they are making and stick it onto a base layer. The third way is to just paint on the base layer. Most of their artwork uses some combination of all three of these techniques. Once the art is complete, multiple layers of clear lacquer are added to seal the surface. Like all good museums, we have to exit through the gift shop where there are lots of beautiful things to buy. Beth and I settle on a square plate that is bent into a curved shape and painted with what looks like orange and yellow sand dunes along with a layer of the duck eggshells.
Our last stop for the day was what was billed as a rickshaw ride through the old city. My idea of a rickshaw is a guy carrying two long poles attached to a seat on wheels, but these were bicycle powered by a man in the back, so they are properly called cyclos. When we arrive, there are a long line of these cyclos and an even longer line of older men. The manager calls for four of the men to drive us. These guys look older than I am, and I thought that this was going to be pretty hokey, but it turned out to be quite fun. This video will give you an idea of the experience of riding somewhere in Hanoi: Driving in Hanoi
Dinner is on our own tonight, so Tien drops us off at the hotel, but we've already had so much to eat that none of us has much appetite. We did notice that the hotel has a chocolate happy hour, and we decide that eating chocolate and talking beats another meal!
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