Day 9 -- Hanoi
On the way to Ninh Binh we’d passed a number of cemeteries -- colorful miniature temples clustered just off the road. We stopped at a relatively large one to have a closer look. There was no sense that these were formally designated cemeteries, just that someone had buried a family member, then added another grave, then a neighbor had put their dead relative close by and over time a cemetery happened. Linh told us they’re rarely moved or disturbed as the country around them gets developed, but that in the cities, things are a little more organized. What was really striking was that while the graves for an individual family were tidily enclosed within small walls and well kept (many with fresh flowers or incense in evidence), there was clearly no one attending to the overall location. There were no paths and the rubble from new graves had been tossed into the spaces between plots, making navigation hazardous. But the bright colors and (to our eyes) fanciful shapes of the monuments made the entire place feel cheerfully anarchic rather than scruffy.
Nam gamely plodded back through the countryside and into the sprawl of Hanoi to the Old Quarter, our home for the next couple of days. Mild fears that we were facing a let down after the perfection of Tam Coc Garden were quickly laid to rest -- the Old Quarter of Hanoi is insanely great.
I’ve mentioned a few times that businesses of a particular type tend to cluster in Vietnam -- this tendency takes as its Platonic form the 36 Streets of the Old Quarter of Hanoi. The city is a thousand years old with architecture from every era still in gorgeous evidence. The 36 Streets refer to (duh) 36 streets, each named for the particular business the street was and often is still known for. There’s a street of paper sellers (lanterns, paper offerings, stationery), a street of buttons, a street of leather work and upholstering (where scooter seats were being repaired on the sidewalk), a street of “sweetmeats” (mostly very elaborate boxes of chocolates for giving as gifts or using as temple offerings), even what appeared to be an entire street of cell phone covers, though what the English translation of that street’s ancient name was I couldn’t say.
Each street featured tiny shops with open fronts, their wares literally filling the sidewalk, each more colorful and jam packed with craftspeople, salespeople, shoppers and tourists than the last. And any square foot of sidewalk not filled with merchandise was covered by little food carts, tiny plastic tables and miniature stools where people are having lunch or drinking beer. And any square inch leftover is used as scooter parking. Walking is a tricky dance between a step or two on the nearly nonexistent sidewalk and a step or two in the scooter-river of a road. It’s barely controlled chaos and incredibly, incredibly fun.
Holly had plans to meet up with her good friend Cait who lives in Hanoi and Mary was ready for a hot stone massage so the group split up for the afternoon. Dave, Glenn, Linh and I headed for the Temple of Literature. First built in 1070, it’s a handsome Confucian temple and the site of the first university in Vietnam. Along one long open hall stands a series of stele -- big, flat, standing stones with intricate text carved into them. These are the names of the only 1307 scholars who managed to complete the royal exams between 1442 and 1779. Apparently they were not big believers in grade inflation.
The courtyard featured more beautiful bonsai trees (though not as stunning as the ones at Thien Mu), and we were treated to a really fun vignette when a big group of high schools kid gathered to have their graduation pictures taken -- including the traditional tossing of the mortar boards. (The ancient university is a popular spot for these photos, which explains why there are groups of kids there for that purpose pretty much every day from January to May, according to Linh.)
But enough of this scholarly tranquility -- time for more self-defeating sadism at the Hanoi Hilton.
Maison Centrale was purpose built by the French in the 1880s as a jail for political prisoners. The building fronted on Hao Lo Street -- hao lo means oven or stove and that’s what was sold on Hao Lo Street. Pretty quickly, the place became known as Hao Lo Prison -- the implication of hot as hell was not coincidental. Americans know it as the Hanoi Hilton, the nickname given by the American pilots imprisoned there during the Vietnam war.
I’m guessing the French and Americans would tell it a little differently, but taken at the word of the museum currently housed there, here is the history of Hao Lo Prison:
The French are a bunch of sadistic monsters who shackled earnest young heroes, pregnant women and kindly old people and left them festering in their own shit until they either died on their own or were decapitated by the in-house guillotine.
The staunch, courageous and perfectly innocent Vietnamese patriots imprisoned at Hao Lo managed to give themselves college educations and build a civil society despite being, you know, shackled in their own shit. They spent their time singing songs, writing political philosophy, bucking each other up and generally behaving like saints. The French are evil bastards with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
Once the Vietnamese were in charge of this prison, they treated POW American pilots like beloved wayward children. It was like a “meditative retreat” with comfy beds, good food and kindly treatment, allowing the Americans to contemplate peacefully the evils they had been fooled into committing by their corrupt government. The Americans liked it here so much, they nicknamed Hao Lo Prison the Hanoi Hilton, after a well-known luxury hotel chain. (Irony not being native to the North Vietnamese propaganda approach, this is said in dead earnest in the text at the museum.)
Documentation of fake reality seems way less amusing than it might have had I visited this place a couple of years ago. My favorite unintentional irony was a pair of almost identical tin cups -- one was an illustration of the French humiliatingly feeding their prisoners slops from crappy implements and the other was part of a display of the simple but sufficient gear generously provided to the American prisoners. Sigh.
By now I was also in need of a hot stone massage. Dave joined Holly and Cait for some shopping while I got liquified back the the Essence Hanoi Hotel. Then Mary, Glenn and I set out to walk to Porte Damnak, our Cait-recommended dinner spot, but got fairly well lost. After a bit of fussing with phones and GPS, we managed to find Dave, Cait and Holly -- as well as Jeremy who joined us for dinner on his last night in Vietnam. It was yet another wonderful, creative, photogenic meal.
Dave had learned about Doors Bar -- a place with live music not far from our hotel -- so he and I hopped a cab there after dinner. Interestingly, while life continues in the streets until the wee hours, the bars close early. We arrived at about 10:15 but only managed to catch the last song and half by Rabbit Punch -- a bunch of middle aged Western guys playing straightforward rock to a bar full of slightly younger Western guys (and a few women). It was seedy and smoky and beers were a dollar. We will definitely go back when we return to Hanoi.
The bar was only about three blocks from the hotel, but Oh. My. God. I can’t even begin to convey how much was happening in the streets of Hanoi at 11 p.m. on a Sunday night. Dozens and dozens of little food carts with braziers full of white hot charcoal or vats of simmering oil teetering on them were serving up extremely appetizing snacks. Not just the sidewalks but the entire street was covered by hundreds and hundreds of tiny plastic tables and even tinier plastic stools (it’s like walking through hundreds of pre-school classrooms at snack time, except the people are adults, they’re eating a lot of things with tentacles, and everyone’s drinking). Vendors carried astonishing loads of little mylar cartoon-character balloons on sticks, light up fidget spinners, plates of fresh cut fruit, postcards, scarves, little fried donut-hole things on sticks. It’s just overwhelming, and awesome, and insane. Right smack in the middle of it, the Essence Hanoi Hotel nevertheless managed to be quiet and comfortable.
