Back in Hanoi (and Leaving on a Jet Plane)

Reproduction of Common House at Museum of Ethnology

I struck out at Hanoi Airport.

We arrived at 5:30pm, and I searched for the Asiana Airlines ticket line – and it was nowhere to be found.  Turns out it doesn’t open until a few hours before the flight takes off.  Who knew?  I got the travel agency to give me their phone number – but even after I used the right prefix all I could get was a busy signal.  So – we decamped to the “Food Court,” where I had pretty awesome fish soup, and where there was a great wifi signal.

By 9pm, the Asiana line was open, and a helpful clerk took my itinerary and walked over a few stalls and furiously typed for about 40 minutes (2 short stories in “Good Scent from a Strange Mountains.”) The denouement was that there were no seats on the flight out of Hanoi --  and I appreciate their not keeping me in that line until 11:20!

I had made (nonrefundable) reservations at the Intercontinental in advance – and the hotel is even nicer than it sounded in the New York Times.   It’s built on an artificial island on West Lake, and luxurious beyond my imagination, especially after two weeks of drizzling showers over bathroom floors with drains.   It’s an oasis in Hanoi where all the staff speak English There was a generous breakfast buffet, a plush bed with a pillowtop and choice of 6 different types of pillows – and an outdoor pool where you can do real laps.   Honestly, it was hard getting myself out of this resort after the evening of peaceful sleep.  The internet was even fast enough to watch John Stewart ape Glen Beck (hilarious) and upload most of my photos to Shutterfly. (I’ll be posting URLs in the relevant blog entries in the future.)

Water Puppet Theater

I did get out though, and visited the Museum of Ethnology– where I read explanations about the housing and farming choices of the Dao (I spelled the tribe “Zhou” earlier – since that’s how it’s pronounced) and the Hmong.  The museum also has a huge outdoor exhibit where houses are reconstructed, including an impressive multistory community house (from Vietnam’s central highlands –not where we cycled).   There was a boisterous high school class on a fieldtrip – so it took awhile to climb down from the community house since the high schoolers were posing for multiple pictures.

Sculpture of Vietnamese captives when Hoa Lo was the French Colonial prison. 

I then went to Hoa Lo, the prison which was called the Hanoi Hilton for the dozen years that American airmen including John McCain were held prisoner there. Some Americans I know have been unhappy at the prison museum – the American POWs seem like a mere footnote, and the focus of the museum is the 60 years that the French colonials used the prison to jail various revolutionaries, including some of the founding fathers (and mothers) of current Vietnam.   The text highlights that the Vietnamese would have liked to try the Americans using criminal law, but were generous eough to feed them and give them another chance despite the damage caused by their bombing.  There are impressive sculptures of Vietnamese prisoners in the French era prison – and a memorial to the sewer used as an escape hatch by Vietnamese prisoners. There’s also the remaining guillotine used by the French to behead Vietnamese prisoners.

I did a bit more shopping – getting myself totally lost in the process – and discovered that even with all the diversity in Hanoi, there are some things that are impossible to find.  My assistant, for instance, likes exotic shot glasses.  Now I KNOW the Vietnamese and Laotians use shot glasses – we used them in a restaurant to taste the rice whiskey we purchased along the bike road.  Still none of the stalls anywhere had any shot glasses at all – never mind the ones that say “Hanoi,” perhaps with a painting of a woman with a triangular hat in a rice paddy.  I wonder now that I’ve been up and down Ha Bong asking whether in a month the place will be overflowing with them!    I also had this idea to get my son a sports jersey from Vietnam or Laos.  However, it turns out that Vietnamese and Laotians just don’t wear their teams’ jerseys.  The trendy folks wear Manchester United (AIG) or Chelsea (Samsung).

After shopping, I had a dinner of hors d’oevres at the Intercontinental.  Great shrimp paste on sugar cane. Then, I had a swim (brisk and breezy after sunset) and an exceptionally good massage in preparation for the 36 hours of flight.  Very civilized.  The masseuse told me that I should get massages regularly because my calfs were so tight.  Maybe that has something to do with cycling 800 km?

I’m writing this on an Asiana Airlines flight to Seoul – first real leg of the trip home.   I have a long layover here – so perhaps will get to see a tiny bit of Seoul outside of the airport.