Hanoi and Halong Bay

Both Ben and I weren't feeling well today, but it didn't stop us from seeing what Hanoi had to offer. The first thing we did was go to the Ho Chi Minh Complex. We stood in line to go into Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. We weren't allowed to bring our camera inside the building. In fact our guide took it before we even got close. There were a lot of people in line to see Ho Chi Minh. He looked really peaceful just lying there in his clear case. Supposedly he goes to Russia every year to make sure that his body continues to be preserved. Inside the room containing his body, he was guarded by 4 soldiers, but there were a lot more soldiers around the building both inside and out. I had seen a Pope preserved when I visited the Vatican, so this wasn't the first preserved body I had seen. It is still a little strange to just walk by a person who has been dead for longer than I've been alive. Ho Chi Minh died in 1969. The people really relate to him though and call him "Uncle Ho." In 1945 he declared Vietnam's independence from France and lead the revolts against France and the reunification front during the time the country was split into North and South. The French had occupied Vietnam for over 100 years and you could tell that the country had a lot of French influence. A lot of the architecture was French and you could get French bread on any street corner. Something I didn't expect in Vietnam. After the mausoleum we looked around the complex with our guide seeing the Presidential Palace, and two houses that Ho Chi Minh had lived in. His last house, the house on stilts, even had an area near by where he could go when he was getting bombed. The complex was really clean unlike most of Hanoi. We saw the one tiered pagoda, which like a lot of things in both Korea and Vietnam, was destroyed and then rebuilt. Next was the Ho Chi Minh museum which was as much a tribute to the deceased leader as an art museum. We next went to a temple which housed the first university in Vietnam and I believe it was called the Temple of Literature. The temple was built to worship and pray to Confucius in 1070 AD with the university teaching doctrines of Confucius. There were 82 turtles with stone stele with the names of those who received a degree there inscribed on the stone. It was pretty neat. Next we went to the Hoa Lo prison which was built by the French in 1896. Only a small part of the actual prison still stands because in the late 1990s most of it was destroyed to make room for a high rise. Though the majority of its history details Vietnamese political prisoners being held there by the French, most Americans know it by the name it received during the Vietnam War, the Hanoi Hilton.Most of the standing prison was dedicated to the details of the Vietnamese prisoners, but there were 2 small rooms addressing the U.S. POWs who had been held there. These rooms had several pictures and effects of those who had been detained in the prison including John McCain's flight suit. There were pictures showing the POWs having a great time, celebrating Christmas, playing basketball and getting interviewed by reporters. If I hadn't known better I would have thought they were having a good time and were treated well. It sort of made me mad, but mostly I was just sad. We then went to the National Museum of Vietnamese History. This was housed in a French building and was actually a pretty good museum covering a large amount of history. We had Pho bo (Vietnamese noodle soup with beef) for lunch, yum, and then we were off to Halong Bay. It was a three hour drive from Hanoi to Halong bay. We saw a lot of the countryside on the trip. I figured out that you can put anything on the back of a motorbike. We saw a dozen ducks in a bag with just their heads and necks hanging out on the back of one. One poor duck was totally upside down and I felt bad for him. The entire drive was on a two lane road (one lane each way) and people were passing all the time. They drive even worse here than in Korea. I thought for sure we'd hit someone, but thankfully we didn't. One thing I did notice was that they would buy tickets (seemed like a toll) and then a short distance away (and I mean short) there was a person that collected the ticket. I'm not sure why they couldn't combine that process, but they didn't. About halfway we stopped at a place that made and sold a lot of handicraft items. The unsettling part about this place was that they had handicap children (maybe ages 9-15 or so) hand stitching some really beautiful pictures. While the pictures were pretty, I just couldn't buy anything. Its like you know that this happens, but rarely do you actually get to see it. Finally we got to Halong Bay (northeast Vietnam near the China border) and we checked into our hotel. The day was pretty "foggy" as our guide said, so it was hard to see the islands out in the bay. Ben and I put some flip flops on and went to go on the beach. The water was cold, so we just stuck our feet in and then went to get some dinner. I had pizza and it was good. I know I shouldn't have had pizza, and for the most part I ate local food, but I was craving some pizza (one of my favorite foods) so I ordered it. After dinner we browsed the night market, but pretty much every stall had the same thing.