Touring Hanoi

I’m totally enchanted with Hanoi!  It’s a mix of old and new everywhere – literally.  On the same street, you can buy either a brand-new, state-of-the-art LG washing machine (your drooling, Shelly Cline!) or a freshly-butchered pig!  There are thousands of little shops everywhere, each its own little Mom-&-Pop place with its own little niche.  Usually they only sell one or two items in each place – might be copier paper, might be kites, might be shoes, and might be copper wire.  But it’s their specialty, and they seem to make a happy living at it.  All the shopkeepers sit  on little plastic step stools in front of their shops, eating noodles, playing with their children, maybe shucking corn for tonight’s dinner, talking together.  It’s really peaceful in the midst of the big-city chaos.

Because Hanoi is a really BIG city.  It feels bigger here than Chicago to me.  Not bigger as in skyscrapers, bigger as in waaaaay more people.  There are people and motorscooters and cars everywhere.  The streets are very, very full with everyone just living there lives – going to the market for food (so gorgeous, I think I may never shop at my sad little grocery store again!), running errands, delivering goods…you name it.

We spent the first half of our tour day in Hanoi visiting the major sites.  We saw the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, Ho Chi Minh’s house, One Pillar Pagoda, Temple of Literature, Hanoi Hilton Prison (really creepy!), Hoan Kiem Lake, The Red Bridge and a Temple by the Lake.  It sounds like a lot, but really everything is only packed into the downtown area – only about maybe one or two square miles, so you can get to all of it really quickly.  (We also had a tour guide who knew where he was going to make it happen too!)  I wish I could describe everything to you, but I just don’t have that much typing time!  My general impression is that it is all beautiful, and it is so much better with a guide to tell you the stories behind the buildings.  There is so much history, pride, and tradition here in Hanoi – it is reminded Bill & I constantly of how you feel when you visit Washington D.C. 

Late in the afternoon, we went to the Water Puppet Theater.  It’s neat to see – basically, the puppets are controlled with really long bamboo sticks submerged under a pool of water, so it looks like the puppets are floating on the pool.  The puppet show is accompanied by traditional Vietnamese singers and musicians, playing instruments similar to an autoharp, a mandolin, and big kettle drums.  They sing the stories that the puppets are acting out in Vietnamese, sort of like an opera.  The sound is sort of beautiful and eerie all at the same time.  It must be a tourist favorite, because there were a ton of charter buses parked in front, and we were NOT the only Americans there! :)

More to tell you later!  Ha Long Bay is next!