Day 32 - Saturday, Nov. 16 - Hanoi

The traditional ao dai dress

Not knowing when the shops open, I allow myself a late start.  The market street is just up past the lake.  And on the week-end the road around the lake is pedestrian!  Of course that just means cars that would have driven up it are merely diverted elsewhere, so you have double the risk of being run down by a car/bike/motorbike/motorcycle/truck/bus/rickshaw on those streets!  (The hotel clerk tells me the government is banning all motorbikes in a few years because of pollution.  Every Vietnamese has one, he tells me, and as they can’t afford a car, they’ll have to get around by bike or bus.)  Not sure this will ever actually happen though.

Dong Xuan Market

       When I get to the market area, the shops all sell more or less the same thing, as far as I can see, and they appear to be grouped by object sold.  A surprising number of shops sell only belt buckles!  Another that does just stationery is off Hang Ma Street, which is dedicated to selling things to make paper offerings to your ancestors...  And what a surprise that is:  paper and textiles, of course, of all sizes and colors, as well as feathers, pompoms, sequins, glitter...  The other streets also specialize:  an entire street each for medicines, shoes, sewing goods, toy trains, sugar (!), noodles!!
       The big market - Dong Xuan - is the same:  divided into specialties.  Built by the French in 1902, the three-story building burned down in 1994 but has been rebuilt with the same façade.  The aisles are super narrow; with shoppers stopping to look, it’s hard to get by.  China was jostling; here it’s more of an immovable opposition that you have to go around somehow.  (Is that how they won the wars?)  The only open space is a fountain in the middle.
       I enjoyed the walk, dangerous though it was, traffic-wise, and felt proud to not only get back to the hotel alive but to have gotten the knack of crossing when vehicles don’t respect niceties like red lights and one-ways.  It’s really just like Paris, taken to the nth degree.  And it was great to see how alike children are everywhere, running after bubbles, learning to walk.  And fun to see how much goods you can load on a motorbike!

Fine Arts Museum

The Vietnamese may feel it’s chilly but I’m sweltering.  So a change of clothes later, I’m off to the Fine Arts Museum.  If I had realized it was so close to the Temple of Knowledge (almost kitty-corner from it), I’d have visited it yesterday.  The hotel clerk calls a taxi; this must be the driver’s first time behind the wheel.  He inches down the street, eliciting honks from those behind him.  But he does get me there.

        The museum is housed in an ex-girl’s school from the French colonial days:  Joan of Ark Boarding School, where nice European girls in Indochina took lessons from the nuns.  It’s easy to imagine them, given the configuration of the museum:  three floors of (class)rooms off of a hall.  The objects range from small animal sculptures from Phu Tho province inland dating from 1,000 BCE and a frieze from 600 BCE, to a 7th-8th century sandstone Champa elephant from Quang Nam (just south of Danang), and running right up to contemporary works.  Some of the Vietnamese artists seem to have been inspired by Kandinsky and Picasso, with a very Modigliani-like sculpture of a woman from 1967.  Room 11 is all about Vietnam’s war with France and then with the United States.  There’s another room for rubbings taken from pagodas, one for woodcuttings, and two for paintings on silk.  And I get to see the original landscape of its copy that hangs in the hotel’s dining room.
       There’s a smaller building - the Annex - that includes displays of ao dais, the Vietnamese women’s dress/pants ensemble, and other objects I might also have seen in the Museum of Ethnography if it weren’t so far away.  The collection here includes clothing from the various regions, musical instruments, jars and dishes, jewelry and jewelry boxes, tiny ceramic figurines, basketry, masks and even two models of rural houses on stilts.
       In my whole two hours there, I see less than a dozen other people.  It’s lunchtime, but still... at 40,000 dong ($1.75) a head, it’s not paying for itself.

No taxis in sight, so I set out walking, map in hand.  Between the heavy traffic and the unruly motorbikes driving on sidewalks already taken up with shop displays and mom-and-pop sitting out in front.  Sometimes - often - you have to step into the gutter to get around them, but make sure you check before you do.  The neighborhoods change a bit in cleanliness and order, but China this is not!  One neighborhood is for mechanical repairs and I pass men crouching or sitting on ultra-low stools, lower than those for kindergarten.  But there’s a reason:  that way they can use their knees for a workbench.  At several places I see men making neon signs.

Water Puppet musicians

       In front of the Hanoi Digestive Center clinic, I see people crouched around street vendors, eating.  And at one shop I see a black T-shirt with the Vietnamese flag in vivid colors and below it:  “Good morning Vietnam!”  I stop and laugh, hearing Robin Williams’ voice in my head.  The shopkeeper gets up off his chair and asks if I want it.  “How much?” I ask.  He tells me, and I hesitate because it’s visibly too large for me.  He must think I feel that’s too expensive, so he brings the price down.  Now I have to buy it!  I’ll give it to my tall son.
       After 45 minutes, map still in hand, I’m back at the lake.  And it’s early so I go to the Water Puppet Theater.  The  reservations the hotel made for me are for the 4:10 show but I get in line to exchange them for the earlier 3 o’clock one.  The door guard pulls me out of the line - why, I don't know - and takes me around the side to another window where there’s no line and I choose an aisle seat.  The lights go down, the music and singing starts and the puppets appear, their “handlers” invisible behind curtains (or under the water?).  I have no idea what the story is, but it involves fishermen, fish, a pesky cat, a tortoise and an emperor.  It might be the legend of the magic sword, but whatever the plot, the few children among the tourists love it.  I have no idea how the puppeteers do their job in the water!  They get a big round of applause when they step out, er, wade out from behind the bamboo screen at the end.

Water Puppets

Back to the hotel to shower off the dust of the streets and rest my weary feet.  Then, again, shrimp-and-pork nems with a glass of sauvignon blanc on the rooftop overlooking the lake.  It’s quieter tonight because the street around the lake is still pedestrian.  Of course, there is the music show at the far end that, on a sound level scale of 1 to 10 is a 25, but...
       As I listen to this Western music blaring out over free Vietnam’s capital, I can’t help but wonder if this is what Uncle Ho had in mind when he drove out the French and then the Americans.  And if he were sitting next to me tonight, listening, would he be all right with it, or in tears?
       Later, I’m off, by cab, to Minh’s Jazz Club. Minh is a saxophonist.  His club’s address is Number 1 on the main street that runs from the lake to the Red River, so it should be simple to find, but in fact it’s hidden down a narrow side street off that main street and behind the Opera House.  A small space with mismatched tables and chairs - room for maybe 60 people.  Unfortunately, Minh isn’t playing tonight.  There’s a quartet - or rather a trio of guitar/bass/drums plus a saxophonist - all young musicians.  Not the soulfulness I thought I’d get from an older musician, but musically good.  The audience is more than half Vietnamese, the other half probably tourists.  Few are over 30.  An employee sees me at the bar; she motions to me and seats me at a table with a group of young Vietnamese who welcome me with an inquisitive smile.  An aging white woman here by herself at night is a curiosity to them, I guess.  As I listen and watch the guitarist rock back and forth in his sweatshirt and Hush Puppies, again I can’t help but wonder whether this is what Uncle Ho was fighting to offer his country.  But I enjoy every moment of it... and leave at the end of “In a Sentimental Mood” in the second set.
       No way to find a taxi but I’m starting to know my way around, and it’s a straight 20-minute shot down Trang Tien Street, past the Opera House, to the lake and my hotel bed.  My last night in Hanoi.