Today it rained.
A 7.30am start this morning, waking up to the horn opera of Vietnam. It was pouring with rain outside so I ferreted around a bit for my umbrella – after a bit I decided to abandon my search… the rain usually stops anyway right? Bad decision.
Kelly was off to the hospital again to the get her cut cleaned/bandages changed, so I headed down by myself to breakfast. It was a random buffet breakfast again – noodles, cold fries, sausages, pastries, very bizarre.but yummy.
Waiting to leave we met up with four new people – some of our replacements after we leave tomorrow (our trip has only been a section of the whole tour). A Norwegian, a Canadian and two Aussies from Perth! We all caught a taxi through the pouring rain to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum – we certainly didn’t mind not walking and keep dry. The mausoleum is a bit of a big deal – there are long lines everywhere, lots of security checks including handing over of cameras (so no photos, sorry). Lots of these lines were out in the open and I was getting very wet with my no umbrella.
The Mausoleum itself was freezing inside – like walking into a refrigerator (which I guess, essentially, is what it was). We all meandered past in single file around Ho Chi Minh’s body, which was surrounding by guards (I got told off for talking too loud). This was actually really cool – when I had heard his body was embalmed I’d kinda expected a mummy, not a realistic, actual body just sitting there. Wow at the work that must go into keeping him like that.
There was some googling later to actually find out the history behind this guy who is absolutely everywhere here.
After we’d spent our 20 seconds checking out the body we headed to the Presidential Palace next door. This wasn’t too impressive – not very grand, like the palace in Luang Prabang – and we wandered aimlessly around for a bit. Really beginning to regret not bringing an umbrella at this point, the raindrops were getting big! At least I was walking next to Andy, who also had no umbrella – we were soaked together.
Next everybody wanted to head to the Military Museum. I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about this, war history is not my favourite topic, but I tagged along anyway. The museum actually ended up being pretty good – lots of planes, guns, displays – certainly one of the best museums we’d seen. Again, there was some googling later to fill in some gaps in my history knowledge!
We had a while until our next destination opened so we trudged around in the downpour until we found a little Mexican place – being inside and dry was beautiful. I managed to order a traditional Vietnamese dish instead of say, nachos…something called Bun Cha. Nom.
All too soon we were out in the rain again to find the Hanoi Hilton, the city’s famous prison. We got lost for a bit and now I was really getting wet… there were drops dripping off the end of my nose, my hair was just big wet clumps….again, at least Andy looked the same!
The prison (when we found it) was really interesting, with cells, models and a big guillotine. The most interesting bit about it though was the difference in how they conveyed the treatment of the Vietnamese political prisoners during French colonisation and the treatment of the American prisoners of war. There was a lot of info about how the Vietnamese were tortured and treated hideously but then there were pictures of the Americans getting medical treatment, receiving letters from home, smiling lots – so as to look like the Americans weren’t treated badly by the Vietnamese at all. It was ridiculously biased – I had expected this but to actually see it was fascinating.
Eventually, an opportunity to go back to the hotel, spend and hour getting dry and to finally find my umbrella! And then off to see a water puppet show (with a quick stopover to eat passionfruit cheesecake).
The water puppets, well, not really much to say about them. They were interesting for the first ten minutes and then got a bit repetitive and I zoned out quite a bit, only paying attention again when they used fire or UV lights.
We had a little time to kill after the show so we headed back to Beer Corner. I actually had a Beer Hoi this time – its a pretty light beer and easy to drink. I still didn’t enjoy it as such but hey, been there, drank that.
Off to dinner afterwards – a bit group of us, seeing as we had six new people for the next leg of the tour. Yummy sesame seed covered pork for dinner and a hideous glass of Vietnamese red wine. After dinner some of us headed out, including all but one of the new people. We went to a nifty bar called the Funky Buddha and I had an expensive cocktail in an attempt to get rid of some of my extra dong! This was good fun – having new people injected a bit of life back into the group… just in time for us to leave :(
And then it was goodbye time. This was really hard and I think Kelly and I are going to make an effort to get downstairs again tomorrow morning to see the group off – the goodbyes seemed too short tonight!
Tomorrow shall be interesting – Kelly needs to go to hospital again in the morning. There has been a bit of drama with this – her cut is now infected and the doctor suggested postponing her flight. Kelly really wants to get home though, so we are going to see how we go. It will be an interesting one!
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