Dec 18
We took a taxi to our hotel and looked in the window to see
two staff sleeping on the sofas. We tapped lightly on the window and they were
up and ready to serve in an instant. We are charmed as they had a room
available for early check in. We were so grateful as we were tired and wanted a
shower badly. We rested and came down to breakfast late in the morning.
Today we decided to try and see four museums. Our first one
was the National Museum of Vietnamese History. Photos and documents were well
labeled in Vietnamese and English. Still it was hard to put everything in
context other than what we had read before arriving. The short version is
Vietnam has a history of others trying to dominate and the Vietnamese are
fighters and have their unification and independence now. Next we squeezed into a bicycle rickshaw to
go to the Vietnamese Women’s Museum. I had anticipated a small museum and was
surprised to see a large multi-storied modern building. This is a museum that
showcases women’s role in Vietnamese culture and society. We skipped the
fashion floor but enjoyed the famous women in their history, women who fought
for the resistance during the wars, seeing ethnic costumes and reading of their
societies, seeing propaganda posters and learning more about street vendors. One
room had brief interviews with the vendors on video. One woman talked about how
her husband had died and she had to support herself. She gets up at 4:30 and
goes out to sell and comes back when she has sold everything around 7:00p.m.
She shares a room with 10 other women and pays $0.35 a night to stay there.
That has stuck with me for days. What a very different life from mine.
We ate a great lunch at the museum café and enjoyed an
Americano before heading back to the hotel to rest. After a break we went to
the Hoa Lo Prison Museum . This structure was built in 1896 by the French to
hold 450 prisoners. In the 1930’s there were 2000 (The Hanoi Hilton, as the US prisoners called it). This is
where John McCain was imprisoned. There were photos of POWs cooking their
Christmas dinner, playing basket ball and reading letters from home. There were
not photos of the torture sessions. It was a grim experience and we decided to
not see the entire prison. Around 3:30 we headed for the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum
to see the stilt house where he had
lived. However we couldn’t see anything because some special delegation was
visiting and nothing was open to tourists. When we got back to the hotel we
went to get some cash at an ATM. On the way we were stopped by a rickshaw
driver saying we could have a free ride for 15 minutes if we would write a
Christmas card to some friends. I was very tired and said I would write the
card but wanted to go back to our hotel. So he handed me an elaborate laser cut
card and asked me to say ‘To Susan and Neville, Merry Christmas and Happy New
Year. I am Vinh. Thank you a million for everything'. I know there is a story
there. There are good people out there helping those less fortunate. Vinh
couldn’t write in English but persisted in getting the job done. We had dinner
at a cute little French restaurant around the corner from our hotel and packed
for our early departure to Hue in Central Vietnam.
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