Hanoi 2015

Patt did it again, chose an excellent hotel and hotel location. This is the street we are on. Hang Hanh Street near Hoan Kiem Lake. We are talking Old Quarter, beside the French Quarter and quaint begins to describe it. And hard to believe, well not so hard actually, but this is the first place we have been that is not actually a genuine high traffic lots of tourists place--- though there are tourists here — and t-shirts to buy. and souvenirs too. It is after all the capital city and Raleigh has t=shirts and souvenirs too.

The trees are the rule, not an exception, for streets in Hanoi.

Just a street and actually I don't know how we got one with so few motor cycles. You will notice the pedestrians are in the street — risking life and limb due to the high speed of motor cycles and ruthlessness of the cars. Bravery is what it takes to cross a street. We saw no one get hit and did cross several streets ourselves.

Tall buildings are not the standard, just lots and lots of small ones.

and right in the middle of the old quarter around a corner is Maison Centrale also known as the Hanoi Hilton. Most of the prison has been torn down but a portion remains. It serves as a monument to the inhumane treatment of Vietnamese prisoners by the French who built the prison and the wonderful treatment of the Vietnamese of the American pilots who were there briefly during the American brutal war on the population of Vietnam. The American pilots played basketball, opened gifts from home and decorated Christmas trees. We know, we saw the photos.

These are the rooms the Vietnamese prisoners stayed in, no photos were shown of the rooms the Americans stayed in. I assume while the Americans were here these rooms were empty?  Not likely, perhaps they put intractable or troublesome Vietnamese soldiers in them, surely not the American pilots. At least according to the story here at the prison, now museum.

Anyway, back on the street, in this land of small business enterprise, everyone it seems is selling something. We were offered an endless array of items.

We did like this tourist - ride rickshaws and enjoyed it greatly, despite the frequent near misses that occurred as shown here. Neither Patt nor I leapt forward as this person did to take a photo. I like to think we were a little more subtle than that.

A buddhist pagoda as it was called here. This one was locked, but we went into one large one that was not and had several devotees praying and burning incense and making offerings.

This, surprisingly was one of the few bakeries that we found. I was all excited thinking we would be eating lots of French pastries and breads. Unfortunately we found it hard to find bakeries and when we did, I was inside - spending dong and looking over the offerings.

No shortage of people selling single vegetable offerings from bicycles or setting up small shops on the sidewalks which were either motor cycle parking lots, store extensions, restaurants, play areas, storage units, or individual shops. Pedestrian byway would be an incidental activity.

See what I mean. Any pedestrian movement through here is purely a matter of inconvenience to the women who have set up here to visit and snack, the motor cycle parking, and I forgot what the men were doing, probably not much. Seeing groups of people like these women was a frequent occurrence on the sidewalk - sitting on low stools around a single table drinking tea and perhaps eating something.

If you were to go by the museums of "history" that we found there was no history prior to the French occupancy of IndoChina. However, we found evidence that there is recognition of the fact that there was at least one famous Vietnamese person prior to that time. Here is Patt in the huge plaza leading up to the large statute of Ly Thai To who founded the Ly dynasty and more importantly, I reckon, also established Hanoi by moving the capital city here about 1022.

Now this is more like it, though a bit orderly with only one motor bike breaking the line. Actually this is a major stop light intersection and more minor ones just operate on a good-luck-to-you system. Patt and I were crossing this one with the light. The minor ones, we cross with the wish-us-luck system. We actually like jaywalking on one way streets because then you only have to look two ways.

We did go to the Vietnam History Museum and yes it did only start with French Colonialism. The great peoples struggle and development of the peoples party with their involvement with the Paris studies and trips to Moscow went on and on with documents and photos of the heroes of the revolutions and struggles. There were also various photos and heroic paintings of the fight against the French in the early 1950s.

These are relics and a photo taken from the fall of the French Fort Dien Bien Phu, one of the great Vietnamese victories over the French during the French IndoChinese war in 1954.  This was a major battle in the fight between the French and the Vietnamese and marks a major strategic mistake by the French of trying to build and maintain isolated forts.

When I was a boy of about 11 or 12 years old I read a lot about the French Foreign Legion and was a great admirer of that unit and what they had done in their "romantic history".   The Legion had a significant role in the defense of the fort at Dien Bein Phu.  There was a listing of regiments involved in the surrender and I found the list very interesting in its composition.  Though defeated, the Legion presented this defeat, as noble in their histories, as they volunteered to parachute into Dien Bien Phu late in the battle to reinforce the surrounded regular French army there.

I never imagined that I would ever actually see relics of that battle or of French Foreign Legionnaires  from that battle, much like I never imagined I would ever be in Hanoi.

              A lot has changed in forty years — a lot has changed.