This post is long overdue, but I won't bore you with the last few weeks... I'll save that for a different, long delayed post.
My Uncle Jon, Nom De Plume: Honorable Uncle Jon, came to Hanoi to visit over Tet. He was very active in the SDS and anti-war movements in the 70's and we started his visit with some Vietnam War history.
Khe San:
Wait, no, I've gotten ahead of myself. We picked Jon up at about 11 P.M.and didn't rush into the war history. It was the eve of the start of Tet. As we came back from the airport the driver took a turn. I knew that it was a short cut but it would run us right into the Dragons. Around West Lake there are a number of dragons such as
these. A set of them is right by our school and at the end of a shortcut....or at the beginning of the massive fireworks display!
Since we had paid at the airport, the rate wouldn't have changed so I let the driver take the tiny road down the short cut. We stopped about 100m/300ft from the dragons and saw an awesome display amidst the parked motorbikes. Let me define two words: Stopped: forced to a halt because the street was a convenient place for everyone else to park and watch the fireworks. Parked: forced to halt because the street was a convenient place for everyone else to park and watch the fireworks.
We got down to the
Sofitel Metropole a bit before 1 A.M. and Jon got situated. He also gave us our presents:
Moisturiser without bleaching cream, razors which I haven't used much since I've got a mad beard going on right now, girl scout cookies and.... Frank's Red Hot sauce. Tossing glass bottles in your check in can result in breakage so Jon washed out a few bottles of hair conditioner and poured in the liquid goodness!
Now you think that this would last me the rest of the year. Ha! I've nearly used all three bottles!
The Sofitel was awesome and had some cool history. The next day we took a tour around Hoan Kiem lake (Old Quarter).
Red Bridge to the Jade Island We looked for turtles (Janet is always optimistic) but we didn't see any.
Ly Thai To was a very very popular
statue for Tet. Although a lot is closed over Tet, we got to see everyone out in full force enjoying their own city. There were more Vietnamese tourists and worshippers everywhere than I'd ever seen before. In between lighting incense and praying at these statues and pagodas, they took pictures just like the rest of us.
Turtle pagoda in Hoan Kiem
The front of the Metropole still has the same charm as it did in 190something
You can rent these cars, one is currently not working, but both are beautiful, except for the CD player in the running one.
This is one of Jon's pictures. He sends these electrical nightmares to his theater grips and reminds them to tape the cords down and keep them organized.
In Hanoi, we happen to live next to the most important pagoda on the lake. So important that everyone and their great-grandmother started coming on the night of Tet. Yes, we left Jon at the Sofitel around 1 A.M. and got home to see cars rushing by. Normally, we see a bit of light activity on the road. This middle of the night traffic was just the beginning of this:
This went on for a few days and then for every weekend into March. It wasn't as crowded, but it was craziness. We've walked down to the pagoda, and walked around it with absolutely no one there! This day we got as far as the "old men" who write fortunes and turned around.
From where you see Janet and Jon in the picture, the pagoda is 500 hundred meters, but the cars did not move while we walked there and it looked vaguely the same after we turned around and waked in the opposite direction about 150 meters (all of these measurements are based on the fact that our apartment was right where we took this picture from). So 150m away, we found a very sparsely visited, but beautiful pagoda that had some tombs that looked to be very very old.
At the time I didn't take pictures of the old tombs and graves around the side, or the pagoda itself since people were praying. Writing this, I wish I had since it isn't a big deal to whip out a camera and take pictures of anything anytime in Hanoi. Oh well, one of these days I guess I could take 10 minutes, walk down, take pictures, and walk back. At the other gate of this pagoda there is a large piece of un-polished marble. It is interesting and beautiful and there is no good reason why I don't have pictures of it, I see it a few times a week.
In the picture above, when you glance to the left, there is a gate, the main gate, that is often closed. The marble stone is just on the far side of the statue, as is another gate. This gate is always open and it is where we first walked in to see the marble stone. Coming from that side, we thought that it was the main attraction of the temple area. Therefore Jon decided that it must be a meteorite if they had built this big temple area around it. I wish he had been right, but it is just a cool piece of rock.
So the next day we went to go see Ho Chi Minh sleeping.
We went in through the 'outside' gate since we didn't have an appointment and we had no idea where to go. We did have to go through a metal detector that went off to the annoyance of the security as they waved us through. After standing outside in the rain we realized that there was a big line to get in. We asked how to get in and were escorted to the front 10% of the line. This line took us right into the mausoleum and around to the museum which was crazy according to Janet and Jon. I walked back around to pick up our bags from security and couldn't get back in. At this point in the day the line was wrapped around in an over 2 hour wait.
I'm glad we got to cut into the front of the line. Along with the attendance of the pagodas, visiting the mausoleum is also an important Tet event and was crowded.
After that we went to the 1 pillar pagoda.
It is supposed to look like a lotus flower.
How many pillars? Ahh, I got it wrong, it is just a 1
pillar pagoda.
On the second day of Tet we were invited to my assistant teacher's father's home. We had a great afternoon (after a cab ride from someone who wouldn't admit they were lost and only took us an hour and a bit out of the way). So nearly 2 hours late, we got to Ms. Ha's father's house.
It was a really fun afternoon. The food was good, my legs went numb from time to time since I'm not built to sit on the floor, we scooped rice wine out of bowls into shot glasses and the kids got lucky money envelopes. It was a great experience, and that afternoon we went off to the airport on our way to Hue.
