We started our visit by walking through the Quarter's 36 where the streets are named or the products historically sold on them. For instance, Shoe Street has lots of storefronts selling shoes while Hat Street sold hats. There were streets for kitchen equipment, flags, silks, and so on. It was a lot of sensory overload walking through the crowded streets and I'm still not sure how we managed to make it without being run over. Each intersection involved a lot of praying and sprinting and trying to be brave. Thank goodness for our guide's assistance!
Coffee place was down this dark, narrow corridor - never would have found it without our guide. Turns out many of the locals live down these narrow corridors behind and above the storefronts. There is a community bathroom area for the families to use and most have indoor plumbing and then individual rooms for each family.
Sights of Communist government buildings as you walk around the city - our guide made a joke that if you see a big building that's empty, then it's a government building built to look impressive!
Our next stop was Hoam Kiem Lake - meaning Lake of the Returned Sword. According to legend, in 1428 Emperor Le Loi was boating on the lake when an ancient Golden Turtle God surfaced and asked for his magic sword, Heaven's Will. The emperor determined that the turtle was looking to reclaim the sword that his master, had given to the emperor some time before. The emperor renamed the lake in honor of this turtle and Turtle Tower was built to honor this story. Large soft-shelled turtles have been spotted in the lake over the years with the most recent body being discovered this past January.
Turtle Tower
Jade Island is an island on the lake where the Temple of the Jade Mountain was built in the 18th century. We visited this temple and Sumner fell in love with all the bonsai trees in the temple. Bonsai trees are considered great Feng Shui and are found throughout Asia.
Shrine outside the temple where students wanting to get a good grade on an exam come to pray and make an offering - we were there the week of public school end-of-year exams so many teenagers were there asking for help.
Bridge over to Jade Island
The next day we had a four hour drive through rustic Vietnamese countryside to Halong Bay, one of the UNESCO World Heritage sites. There are hundreds of giant limestone peaks jutting out of the water at the Bay of Tonkins and it is really an impressive sight. Halong translates into "where the dragon descends into the sea" and legends has it that a dragon was racing toward the sea and it's tail gouged valleys and gorges and when the dragon fell into the sea, the water rose covering almost everything leaving the pinnacles exposed.
We took a Paradise Luxury traditional Vietnamese cruise boat for a 2 day - 1 night cruise in the bay. There were 68 staterooms on the boat and we had a great time exploring the area. After leaving Tuan Chau Island we cruised past floating fishing villages and many different islets before stopping at Luon Cave where we took kayaks out to explore the cave. We also went climbing to a temple at the top of an islet which offered us amazing views of the hundreds of islands around us. We then continued to cruise while the sun set and we changed for dinner. We were provided traditional Vietnamese Bao Tai clothing wear at dinner - made for some fun pictures although we were all glad we didn't dress like that all the time!
Learning how to make Vietnamese Spring Rolls during cocktail hour
Henry of course made a friend on the boat!
Henry receiving his "Vietnamese Cooking" certificate
Learning how to squid fish (unsuccessfully)
The next morning I woke up earl to do Tai Chi on the deck while watching the sun rise - so peaceful and beautiful, right up until the Virkler boys woke up and disturbed the peace! We then headed out on a pre-breakfast hike into Sung Sot Cave, also known as Surprise Cave - hiking up and down 600 steps into a magnificent limestone cavern. It is on Bo Hon Island and is one of the most famous grottoes of Halong Bay. Huge stalactites hang from the ceiling and stalagmites are everywhere. The cave is over 90 feet tall and covers over 30,000 square feet. Once again we found that the Vietnamese tourism folks lit up the cavern which brightly colored lights which sort of takes away from the natural beauty but we still were amazed. Hard to capture in pictures!
Our last afternoon in Hanoi was spent visiting famous Vietnamese sights - the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, Ho Chi Minh's former residence, Hoa Lo Prison (also known as Hanoi Hilton where John McCain, along with many other POWs, spent over 5 years) and then lastly the Vietnamese Women's Museum.
In front of Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum - seemed very reminiscent of Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
Vietnamese Presidential Palace, built 1900 - 1906 to house the French Indochina Governor. After reunification of Vietnam Ho Chi Minh refused to live in the building for symbolic reasons and instead built a traditional Vietnamese home behind this building.
Famous palm tree growing out of the middle of a Banyan tree
Guard change at Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum
The Hanoi Hilton was really called the Hoa Lo Prison (although officially Masion Centralle)and was built by the French to house Vietnamese political prisoners. It was then taken over by the North Vietnamese to house American Prisoners of War who referred to it as Hanoi Hilton. Hoa Lo translates into "Hell's Hole" and was a very good description of this prison. We found it interesting that the museum described the prison as absolutely barbaric and terrible and definitely a "hell's hole" when the French ran it and housed Vietnamese prisoners. Yet when you came to the part of the museum that glossed over the time it housed American prisoners, it talked about how wonderful the prison was and how all prisoners played games, ate big Christmas dinners and loved their time there. Needless to say, we took it as a rather biased description of prisoners' time there!
Last was our stop in the Vietnamese Women's Museum where we learned how the women were really the strength of the country, during times of conflict as well as peacetime. Of course, I wasn't surprised!
