Promenade

Lonely Planet's guide to Vietnam includes a one-page walking tour of the Old Quarter, located near Hoan Kiem Lake.  They suggest leaving yourself at least two hours (I fit it into two and half on Wednesday, but only because I was already familiar with about a third of it and didn't feel the need to linger.) to complete the three and a half km (over two miles) walk.  It starts at Ngoc Son Temple on the lake, so I skated by the first couple stops over to Hang Be Street, where I'd perused the long line of shops on Monday looking for things I couldn't live without.

Man, I wish I'd found this map earlier.

My first big stop was Memorial House, No 87 Ma May Street, which entertained many a foreign businessman back in the day.  It was a Chinese merchant's house built at the end of the nineteenth century, and has since undergone renovations to preserve its historical integrity.  Architecturally, it was pretty cool, but its filled with more items for sale than historical artifacts.  It was like having the museum gift shop inside the museum, taking up more room than the exhibits.  Still, for twenty five cents, Memorial House was well worth a stop.

Antique toilet. No joke--I'm going to continue to keep this a potty-humor-free zone.

Well.

Nice little open-air atrium.

I want one so badly now!!!

Silk embroidery station. I picked up a couple whilst shopping Monday. They could be for you!

Next stop was Bach Ma Temple, built in the ninth century.  It's said that the king who established Hanoi as the capital of Vietnam in 1010, Ly Thai To, would pray here while trying to erect the citadel walls.  They kept collapsing, and Bach Ma (White Horse), the spirit of ancient Hanoi, heard his prayers and posed as a workman, helping Ly Thai To finish his building project.  It sits right on bustling Hang Buom Street, traffic rushing past, as well as into and out of, the pagoda.

Prayer-burner that's apparently out of order.

Bach Ma.

I ended the tour back by St. Joseph's cathedral, having worked up an appetite and thirst that I quenched with pizza and beer, tea and lemon cake, the latter at the it coffee shop, Joma.  How much fun to stumble into being hip.

This pizza was about as close to pizza as the tea on the Heart of Gold was to tea. :/

Now this is more like it. London Fog Latte and a lemon bar.

My appetite was alternately worked up and quashed on the streets between the pagoda and St. Joseph's.  Flowers and fresh produce are sold, but so are "fresh" and processed meat of every variety, frequently overpowering any visual and aromatic enjoyment of the latter.  Animals can be found at the huge Dong Xuan Market, with birds, kittens and bunnies wanting to go home with you.  The metallic chung of blacksmiths wafts through the streets, adding auditory stimuli to all the others.

Piglet. :/

In the lower left corner is pickled bamboo root. The woman is shaving the conically shaped root into thin slices.

'Shrooms!

Mats being sold on "Mat Street."

Opened jack fruit, much less imposing than when it's intact.

Hair-don't

Blacksmith.

Herbs on "Herb Street."

For dinner that night, we finally had hotpot--it's a similar concept to cha ca.  You're given a hot-pad on which is a large pot of broth (supersaturated with MSG) into which you add whatever goodies you like.  We got seafood hotpot, so we put in vegges, shrimp, clams, fish and noodles.  There were five of us, and still plenty of food left over.  It's a good meal to have when you're in the mood to socially huddle around a flame (albeit an electronic one).

Look at all that raw goodness.

Hotpot!

The highlight for the day occurred near the end of my walking tour, when I stepped off the Lonely Planet path and into a shop touting to sell ethnic minority handicrafts.  I wasn't super concerned with these items, but my eye had been caught by these funky little statuettes made of soldered bolts, spark plugs, and other small pieces of hardware.  They had some really cool alien-robot-looking guys, a dino-monster or two, and even planes and helicopters.  But I settled on a slick black motorcycle for my nine-year-old cousin, Jake.  I've been desperately trying to find him something besides a t-shirt from Cambodia, and think I hit the mother lode with this one.  It's been difficult, having never been a nine-year-old boy, to find a gift that's not dorky or lame or terribly generic.  But I think this chopper's pretty rad and a good representation of Vietnam without screaming "I'm a souvenir from Vietnam!"

Don't you wish you were Barbie- (or GI Joe-) sized so you could ride this like a badass?!

Thursday, something very exciting happened.  I picked up the dresses I commissioned!  She finished them way faster than expected, and only one quick alteration had to be made, so I brought them home almost a week early.  Roman and I are going to a "country wedding" (not quite sure yet what that entails), and I'm desperately hoping the weather's nice enough for me take my silk dress out for a spin. ;)

It's so shiny and iridescent!!!

That afternoon I volunteered again at the Ethnology Museum (way at the western end of the map above).  I've finally mastered the bus there and back and no longer have to tell the driver where I'm going so he can let me off at the right place.  The street names are all so foreign, it's hard to remember them and between that and the fact the bus windows are always dirty, it's easy to miss your stop.  I've been working on a catalog for a new museum in the Dak Lak province of Vietnam.  It includes pictures of all the objects in the exhibits (The Peoples, Culture, and Long-Standing History) with descriptions and informative sections on everything from everyday life to jewelry to ancient objects to (in great detail) the American War.  The ethnologist, Mrs. Thuong, speaks fluent French (she has a Ph.D. in that subject) and very little English.  She and two French women have translated the Vietnamese into French, while the latter have attempted to translate this into English.  I've been attempting to make sense of this copy of a copy, this fax of a fax, and to relocate all the thoughts that have been lost in translation.  They are very nice women, but some concepts have been difficult to put into proper English while appeasing the particular desires and nuances of the Vietnamese.  It's not the most thrilling or glamorous work, but they dearly need the help, and I'm happy to give it.  My name will even be published in the catalog for the world (or, you know, the handful of people who read such catalogs) to see.  That, and the free tea Mrs. Thuong insists on making every time I volunteer, is enough for me. :)