We’ve been looking forward to this portion of the trip almost as much as we anticipated the month we spent in Italy. We think that Vietnam could be our jam….mostly for the food, but hopefully for other stuff too.
A city of 8 million people, Hanoi is everything we expected of Southeast Asia ~ great food and interesting things around every corner, crowded and loud, full of traffic.
I was born the year the Vietnam conflict became an all-out war for America….which means the Vietnam War has always been a part of my experience. Logically, I learned about the war from the American viewpoint and it has been very educational to see it from this side. Most interesting has been Vietnam’s almost continual struggle against invasion. Recent history includes resistance to the Japanese, then the French, then the Americans – our guides refer to those last two conflicts individually as “The French War”, and “The American War”. I haven’t read Graham Greene’s novel The Quiet American, but I understand it is a good read about this particular portion of Vietnam’s history and America’s involvement in it.
Ho Chi Minh was an effective leader for the Vietnamese people from the August Revolution to throw out the Japanese in 1945 until his death in 1969. Hanoi city has a very large square dedicated to the strength of Vietnamese people in general and Ho Chi Minh individually. The centerpiece of this park is the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh. Like Lenin, Ho Chi Minh is embalmed and preserved for all time and lies in state within a huge granite structure. After getting through the gauntlet that is the entry gates, you wind around in a VERY orderly line (there were men in uniform regularly telling us to straighten the line, take our hands out of our pockets, remove our sunglasses, etc….), you spend about three seconds walking through the actual room ~NO PICTURES! (No, we didn’t get shouted at but it was very clear we would have been “corrected” if our hand even made a move toward our phone!). Ho Chi Minh is protected by a very serious honor guard and I am convinced they had live rounds in their rifles.
The remainder of the park is dedicated to various Ho Chi Minh historical exhibits including his living quarters, the one pillar Pagoda, the Presidential Palace (for ceremonies only, built by the French in the 19th century), and some other square, solid almost Soviet looking government buildings ~ not much to look at architecturally, but interesting historically.
We spent the rest of our day in Hanoi visiting the Confucian Temple of Literature, having the best Pho from a small restaurant nearby, catching glimpses of French architecture, watching a water puppet show with live traditional instruments and wandering around Ngoc Son Heroic Temple and surrounding lake while reading about the city’s ancient turtle protectors. The turtles were keepers of an ancient sacred sword used to throw off would-be invaders. There are two HUGE stuffed turtles at Ngoc Son. Who knew fresh water turtles could get so big?! We wandered around the narrow streets of old town for awhile and at the end of the evening enjoyed a nice, although very warm dinner. When we asked for the fans to be turned on we were told ~ “it’s winter so the fans have been turned off for the season”. Clearly “winter” means something different at this latitude.
From Hanoi we drove to the dock to pick up our three day cruise to Lan Ha Bay. While the cruise itself was pretty touristy and targeted to Westerners, we still enjoyed our time on and off the boat. We did a couple of land excursions to the interior of Cat Ba Island that were very cool. We biked to Viet Hai village that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and it was amazing. Lush, protected by very tall mountains on either side, vibrant with shops and people giving demonstrations about rice wine ~ beautiful visit. The excursion Erin went on by herself the next day was up a winding road to a neat cave with atmospheric lighting ~ a nice way to spend a couple hours off the boat before heading back to port.
I am struck by the difference in Vietnam and Cambodia from a development perspective. As a direct result of Pol Pot’s leadership, Cambodia lost about three generations of progress because the Khmer Rouge targeted intellectuals and leaders for elimination. Ho Chi Minh was a leader and who united and inspired the people of Vietnam. Even though Ho Chi Minh died in 1969, the system he nurtured was strong enough to go on to defeat a superpower in a war that could have devastated the country and the population. Vietnam feels like it’s in the middle of its development phase, while Cambodia feels like a country just getting started.
The Cruise; would we do it again? No ~ although it was interesting, we think once is enough for that particular experience. Would we recommend it to others? Yes……with the caveat that you have to be able to look past the trash in the Bay. The literature talks about the “pristine” bay ~ it might have been true once, but we did not get in the water because of the oil slick that could often be seen from the deck. The boat, food and service were top notch, the degraded marine ecosystem not so much.
Hanoi; Would we live there? Same answer as with the rest of our Southeast Asia destinations ~ nope. Would we visit again? Probably not, but it was an educational experience for sure.
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