Tourists

On Saturday, six of us decided to be tourists for the morning as we visited the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology and Hoa Lo Prison.

Our original plan was to visit the Temple of Literature, which is an old Confucian temple and also Vietnam's first university.  But it was raining, and the Temple of Literature is mostly outside, so we went to the Museum of Ethnology first.  We had a wonderful taxi driver who stopped and asked for directions a couple of times (instead of being too proud to ask like some men) to make sure we got to our final destination, and not just dropping us off in the middle of some random road - which unfortunately has happened a couple of times. He even let us sit in his taxi, out of the rain, until the museum opened.

I was really impressed with the museum!  It is all about Vietnam's 54 different ethnic groups.  Some consisting of more than a million and some having only a couple thousand.  The museum had many photos and exhibits with mannequins dressed in traditional clothing who were weaving or cooking. They also had quite a few artifacts from different ethnic groups.  And lots of words explaining where the groups live and what they do - farming or weaving...  There were many beautiful clothes that they wear!  I don't understand how they can wear so many layers in this heat though! This also reminds me that Hanoi (just the city, not Vietnam) is celebrating it's 1000 year birthday on October 10 of this year.  That is a long time that people have been living in the city!  There are already many signs and big plannings for the celebration.  I've also heard rumors that school will be closed for a weekish to celebrate!  I'm imagining that it will be quite a big deal. 

This was a bike filled with hundreds of fishing traps that some guy would ride around selling his fish and such. 

Some traditional clothes (taken through the glass)

This picture is taken for you, Dad!  These are different styles of windows that were in some people's houses.  I'm not really sure how they worked...  I know they slid up and down and I think were more for decoration than for actual use... But they are beautifully and intricately designed!

Outside there was a little trail that we could follow that took us around to explore 6 or so houses that are built like traditional houses for some groups.  We could go inside and see how they were set up.  Some had different buildings for the kitchen, living room, bedrooms...  Some were really long and skinny, and this one was really tall with a very high roof - I don't know what the purpose was... 

The floor and walls (of the high roof house) were like this.  I'm going to say it's pieces of bamboo woven together supported by thicker pieces of wood underneath.  It was pretty cool and breezy in this house!  And underneath was lots of room for people to eat or cook in the shade.  The stairs to get up to the house were pretty steep!

We also saw some water puppets!  Which are supposedly a big deal in Hanoi.  

It's hard to see on this picture, but in front of the house/building, there are two farmer puppets with their water buffaloes preparing the rice fields. The puppeteers are behind the screen, in the water, maneuvering the puppets in their thigh high waders.  It was a little different, but interesting to watch for a few minutes.

Our next stop was the Hilton Hanoi or Hoa Lo Prison.  (I had never heard of the Hilton Hanoi until Saturday.)  This was the prison where US POWs stayed during the Vietnam War.  It was originally built in the late 1800s by the French to hold Vietnamese who were trying to overthrow French control of their government.  Most of the jail was demolished in 1993 to make room for a high rise building.

This is a sculpture of Vietnamese who were in the jail while under French control.  The majority of the jail was about the courage of the Vietnamese who tried to overthrow the French.  Which makes sense because everyone wants to make their country sound good!

Another art piece depicting French mistreatment of the Vietnamese in the prison.  I wondered if the jail would be sorta creepy, with the few things I have heard about Americans in the war, but it wasn't creepy at all, thankfully!

This is sort of a shrine for all the Vietnamese who fought for inependence.

The first photo might me hard to see, but this bottom photo says, "The American pilots decorate the Christmas tree."  The top photo is a bunch of pictures of the US pilots cooking their turkey dinner, receiving Christmas gifts from back home and singing Christmas carols.  There were other photos of them playing chess and badminton and Monopoly and having a jolly time.  This isn't exactly what I've heard from the other side about life for the US pilots in this prison... 

I know this is getting long, but all this war stuff reminded me of a story some of our Lao teammates just told us about one of their students.  When he was five years old, he found a ball to play with, which was actually an unexploded bomb that the US dropped in Laos during the Vietnam War.  While he was playing with the "ball" it exploded and he became blind in one eye and has a hard time seeing in his other eye.  His parents dropped him off in Vientiane at a place for the visually impaired.  He is now a student at the University. He has a hard time learning because of problems with his sight.  He really wants to get his eye fixed... maybe he can have surgery in Thailand...

Just so sad to think of all the bad things that come from war.  And how they are still effecting people thirty years later.