Susan's Shanghai Blog - Week 113

We continue with Hanoi (yes, we took lots of pictures!) From the prison, we headed over to the Vietnam National Museum of History. The museum showcases Vietnam's history, housed in a colonial French building that dates back to 1932. The building is considered a successful blend of French colonial and traditional Vietnamese architecture, called Indochina architecture.

As with many places in Asia, there are large stone turtles with stele on their backs. This one was HUGE so we wanted to get a picture of Tom next to it so that you could get a feeling for the actual size.

We saw other phoenix-like birds at the Temple of Literature.

This is a lovely statue of Avalokitesvara (Kuan Yin) with many arms and legs, made of gilded wood. Avalokitesvara is a bodhisattva who embodies the compassion of all Buddhas. It is portrayed as both male and female, depending on the culture. It is one of the more widely revered bodhisattvas in mainstream Mahayana Buddhism, as well as unofficially in Theravada Buddhism.

A nice wooden boat

This is a temple painting of Five of the Ten Kings of Hell, also in guilded wood.

A bronze lion dog figurine from the Nguyen dynasty.

Another crimson and guilded wood object, this one is an altar in the shape of a char, dating back also to the Nguyen dynasty.

These are a few picture of some screens with lovely inlaid mother of pearl (we assume mother of pearl). The detail is amazing!

A few stone figures as well, that just caught my eye.

These are pictures of the interior, which still retains alot of French Colonial features.

The Hanoi Opera House is around the corner from our hotel, and seemed to be a popular place for wedding pictures, as we found out because there was a wedding party getting pictures taken when we got there. As you can imagine, it was also built by the French colonial administration, between 1901 and 1911. It was modeled after the Palais Garnier opera house in Paris.

Out front of the Sofitel they had these two old cars.

Along the streets near our hotel were these banner things across the road. Not sure what they mean, but they were lining this one street.

This picture really didn't come out as good as we had wanted. What we were attempting to show is how you actually park your scooter INSIDE the store. Many of the stores have a little "bike" ramp where you can bring you bike or scooter inside easily up the ramp and just park it inside.

Another picture of the exterior of the hotel and then we start going through a private tour of the bomb shelter (you can only take the tour if you stay at the hotel). The story is quite interesting. The aid raid/bomb shelter was created by the hotel and was used by the hotel's wartime guests from mid-1960s through the Christmas Bombings of 1972. It somehow got "lost" and was left undisturbed until it was found by chance when the hotel was excavating to expand their outdoor bar area. It is about 4 meters deep below a few different layers of soil, sand, and concrete. Some of the pictures are better than others .. it is difficult to get a good view of these rooms, that are just long, narrow concrete rooms. The last picture is a little blurry, but was taken of Tom and I with our hard-hats by the tour guide.

We had to rush out from the tour (which we had stuck in between our day tour and dinner but that was the only time they did the tour) to get to our dinner reservation at Quan An Ngon. It was an interesting, large, very busy place. Around the outside edges were lots of small kitchens that each cooked a set of small street-food specialities from across Vietnam. It seemed to be somewhat outdoors with just cloth covering as a roof. Each of the kitchen has listed what they make (if you can read Vietnamese)

Another dish that they came over to show us how to eat (although we didn't feel too bad since we saw them show 2 or 3 other tables how to eat the same dish). It is a pancake folded in half with pork and shrimp on the inside, served with a set of rice paper and herbs. I had always thought that rice papers HAD to be soaked to make them soft, but these they brought out dry. They are very thin (thinner than the ones that I buy to soak for rolls). You take a thin rice paper and make a roll, taking a piece of the pancake, some fresh herbs, and then wrapping it up. There was an art to it that we failed miserably at even after watching the server do it.

Next came a green papaya salad and cubes of beef that are sauteed. You can see the french bread pieces, another holdover from the French colonial period. You don't think about Asia and bread, but in Vietnam, it is everywhere ... people sitting on the street corner selling baguettes out of a bag and people riding bikes with bread similar to in France.

We picked up two desserts: a steamed banana in coconut milk and something else ... it sounded okay on the menu but neither one was really that good for us. We also picked up a sweet drink with coconut milk, red beans, and tapioca pearls.

Next day, we started out early on our own for our own little walking tour. A couple blocks from our hotel was the Hoan Kiem Lake, which means Lake of the Returned Sword. According to legend, emperor Le Loi was boating on the lake when a Golden Turtle God (Kim Qui) surfaced and asked for his magic sword, Heaven's Will. Loi concluded that Kim Qui had come to reclaim the sword that its master, a local God, the Dragon King had given him during his revolt against the Chinese Ming Dynasty. Loi renamed the lake to commemorate this event. The Turtle Tower standing on a small island near the centre of lake is linked to the legend.

Walking around toward the north end of the lake, we passed the statue of Ly Thai To in the center of Indira Gandhi Park. Ly Thai To was the founder and first king of the Ly Dynasty, which ruled for more than two hundred years, from 1009 to 1225. The dynasty was founded by Ly Cong Uan, who changed his name to Ly Thai To when he ascended the throne. It was Ly Thai To who moved the capital to Thang Long, near present-day Hanoi, and this move resulted in the eventual founding of Hanoi as a city and present-day capital. Near the statue was this great big tree with orange flowers which looked nice, so I snapped a picture.

The Cam Tu Cho To Quoc Quyet Sinh Monument which translates to "Decide to die for the country to live".

Then we arrived at the Jade Island on which the Temple of the Jade Mountain (Ngoc Son Temple) stands. You first go through these large gates past 3D walls with tigers and other animals.

Then across the Huc Bridge (or Morning Sunlight Bridge) to the actual temple and its' rock gardens. The temple was built in the 18th century and honors the 13th-century military leader, Tran Hung Dao, who distinguished himself in the fight against the Yuan Dynasty, Van Xuong, a scholar, and Nguyen Van Sieu, a Confucian master and famous writer in charge of repairs made to the temple in 1864.

Inside the temple building is a model of a Ho Guom tortoise. These are related to the legend who returned the swod to the Golden Turtle God. It was made in 1968 and weighs in at around 250 kilos.

And then the main temple.

A few views of a typical streets and street corners in the old town. Pedal/bike taxis and scooters are everywhere, as are overhead lines (like power lines) that we aren't used to seeing anymore. We just had to take the picture of the mass of wires ... I have no words to describe it!

We continued to walk around and headed down this little alleyway, which ended up being very much "local". Now, I'm sure this is good and we saw lots of locals buying goods at these little butcher stores (and there were lots of these type of stores as well), but I still get a bit queasy when I go by these.

You see lots of these little temples or "community houses" throughout the old town. To me, they all looked to be temples but supposedly there are differences. But they are very eloborately decorated on the outside.

You also see lots of ladies carrying these balance-looking baskets. In many cases, they are full of things that are for sale. Our guide mentioned that they spend all day going through the neighborhoods selling goods and what they sell changes throughout the day. During the morning hours, they would sell things that people would buy for breakfast, then switch to other items, then lunch foods, then snacks, etc. You also see people on bikes with bags full of things (this was popcorn I believe).

As we got to the edge of the old city, there were some remnants of the old city walls.

Here is another view of what I mentioned earlier, where each of the streets seems to sell a specific thing. In this case, bamboo. There was bamboo of a variety of diameters and lengths, including those made already into bamboo ladders.

There were originally 16 gates providing access to the old walled city of Hanoi. Cua O Quan Chong, or the Old East Gate, is the only city gate that remains from the time when Hanoi was a mediaval city.

This is something you don't normally see. As I mentioned before, you have ladies going around selling "stuff" .. different stuff, lots of different stuff. This one is selling ceramic vases, tea pots, bowls and plates ... all loaded on a bicycle.

You can still see alot of French influences in the architecture. Not only is the building itself very French, but if you look closely at the covering over the door, it is very much like some of the older metro entrances in Paris.

Lunches were included in our tour, and today's was at Le Tonkin Vietnamese Restaurant. It was a very nice little restaurant with an outdoor courtyard.

We had a set menu. We started off with a traditional Hanoi beef noodle soup, Pho bo Ha Noi (Pho I believe is the noodle soup part and bo means beef).

Then Mixed lotus root salad. They seem to do alot of lotus root in asia, since we also see lotus root alot in China.

Fried eggplant with plum sauce and grilled beef with a pepper sauce. I'm not a big eggplant person but this was pretty good. The beef was VERY tender!

Stir fried prawn with cashew nuts and stir fried mixed vegetables came next.

Last dish before dessert was Stewed port in clay-pot (the things stewed in clay pot are REALLY good!! with steamed rice in coconut milk,

For dessert, we had one ice cream and one caramel pudding along with Vietnamese tea.

On the way back, we wanted to get Vietnamese coffee, "local style". So we ended up at this little local "sidwalk" coffee place, sitting on little plastic kiddie-stools, sipping vietnamese coffee with a bunch of locals. I don't know if I would even call it a coffee house or cafe .. it was more of a cart that served coffee on the sidewalk, which seems to be quite normal and quite popular in Hanoi.