Well, it's been a while. Happy Thanksgiving to the folks back home. It's certainly a bit weird to be waking up this morning and have it just be another working Thursday. Needless say I miss home, friends, family -- a running theme of this blog, to be sure -- but I've been getting much busier of late (to the unfortunate detriment of the frequency of my blog posts). And I think this is precisely the right time to be getting busier.
I've been to Vietnam and back since I last posted -- my first trip abroad since moving to China -- and it was, in a word, great. That's it for curbing my prolix tendencies, though; there's just too much to write about my trip to Hanoi and Halong Bay, and too many pictures to share to fit into one post. So the next few posts, hopefully with greater frequency than they have been in recent weeks, will be about Vietnam: from Hanoi, to Halong Bay, to the food, to the Hanoi Hilton, to the people, to the language, and more. If moving to China was primarily about immersing myself in a language and culture that intrigued me so much, then the ability to travel to faraway places that aren't so faraway to China was a close secondary reason.
So we'll start simple, with just a few highlights, in no order in particular, from walking the streets of Hanoi, the capital of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam:
Beer drinkers pay heed: the Vietnamese drink beer. I wouldn't go so far as to say they drink a lot, but they do like their beer, and specifically this kind of beer: Bia Hoi. Bia Hoi, which literally means "gas beer" in Vietnamese, is a government-owned brewing company that provides daily batches of light lager to many local establishments around town. The beer is not brewed to keep -- the restaurants that serve the beer, which are also called Bia Hois, get fresh batches every morning, sell the beer until it's finished, and then rinse (I wouldn't be surprised if many skipped the rinsing step) and repeat the next day. A beer costs anywhere from 25 cents to 40 cents US. This will become a running theme: Vietnam is cheap.
This architectural oddity is known simply as the One Pillar Pagoda. It was built over a millenium ago to a Buddhist Bodhisattva, and was destroyed by the French in 1954 after their colonial presence in the country was terminated. It has since been rebuilt, and has become one of the go-to sites for tourists.
You all know this guy: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. He stands prominently in the middle of a park (that is referred to simply as Lenin Park) on a main Hanoi drag. I met a Latvian family who was eagerly taking pictures of themselves in front of the statue -- vestiges of former Soviet Union pride, I suppose. They were somewhat surprised when they asked me whether I knew who this was and I said yes.
This is just one of many examples of the very palpable presence of communism in Vietnam. The streets of Shanghai, glittered with the gold advertisements of international merchandisers, seems positively cosmopolitan and capitalist compared to Hanoi, which has very little in terms of commercial ads. In their stead, they have standard communism signage calling for the prolonged life of the state, family harmony, and the like. They also have a neighborhood watch, which comes around every morning and makes announcements, presumably promoting the same sort of ideals. These announcements happen here too, but far more rarely.
This is one of my favorite pictures from the trip. This street houses real people -- and real trains. The track is live; in fact, it's the main artery into Hanoi Train Station. Train traffic is low by Western or Chinese standards, but the residents of this drag must take cover whenever a train rumbles by.
Hong Kiem Lake -- the unofficial center of Hanoi. It is situated in the center of the Old Quarter, a tight, compact neighborhood full of windy streets, street peddlers, backpacker hostels, bars, and restaurants. Hanoi is full of lakes, and is sometimes referred to as the "city of lakes." This one is the most famous, probably because of its cultural significance. As the story goes, an emperor was boating on this lake when a turtle rose from the waters and snatched his sword. The turtle dove back down into the depths, sword clutched between its teeth, and all of the emperor's search and rescue efforts failed to recover either turtle or sword. The emperor decided that the turtle represented a messenger from the gods, who had granted him the sword to assist him in rebellion against the Chinese Ming Dynasty. They were now reclaiming the heavenly sword. The emperor erected a shrine to the turtle god, which now sits on an island in the center of the lake. Turtles are quite revered in Vietnam, both because of this story and due to their representation of longevity.
On my first day in Hanoi, an old lady carrying this thing stopped and tried to sell me some bananas. I hesitated -- I was hungry, and wanted a banana -- and she proceeded to put the bar on my shoulder and offer to take a picture of me. Cool, I thought, a goofy picture to remember the trip. Then, of course, she refused to let me go without buying not 1, but a whole bunch of bananas. When I told her I only wanted to pay for one, she started hitting me, saying "I take picture, you pay! I take picture, you pay!" This is, as they say, the oldest trick in the book. Fruit peddlers use their devices to lure unsuspecting tourists into taking a picture, after which they guilt them into paying for the picture -- and a lot of fruit.
Nothing like a good old haircut in the park in Hanoi. I was told by one of the roommates of the friend with whom I stayed while there, that this barely scrapes the surface of what you can see done on the street. His most bizarre sighting: dental surgery.
This is Truc Bach Lake, another of the three lakes I walked around during my exploration of Hanoi. This one has significance to Americans: it is the site where John McCain's plane crashed after being shot down in 1967.
This is West Lake, the granddaddy of Hanoi's many lakes. Its shoreline winds around the lake for 17 kilometers (about 10 miles), making it Hanoi's largest lake by far. This guy is in the lake, fishing. In the 10 minutes I sat by the lake, I saw three separate successful fishing missions. The water seemed to glow a bit, with either sewage or radiation or something bad, so I'm not sure how I feel about those fish.
This is the presidential palace. Yeah, it's yellow.
After beloved leader Ho Chi Minh's death, his body was embalmed and preserved for viewing here, at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. I'm told that every year, Ho takes a trip to Russia where his body undergoes formaldehyde treatment to help keep him "fresh." It's supposed to be quite eerie, seeing him chilling there, a la Jeremy Bentham at LSE. Alas, one of the (only) tragedies of my trip was that the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum was closed for viewing during the time I was free to see it.
More to come! Happy Thanksgiving to all -- you are missed in Shanghai :)
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