Bar Hopping

My time is running out.  I'm not ready to leave.  I thought I would be by this point, but I'm not.  I have to, though.  The longer I stay, the harder it will be to go back to the life from which I've taken a break.  I was generously invited to go on a last-minute holiday to Singapore Thursday, Friday and Saturday, but I can't even imagine having had to give up any of the sights I've squeezed in these final days.

Friday I got off to a late-ish start.  I know.  Here I am complaining about how much more I want to absorb of Hanoi, and I slept in.  But I wouldn't have been able to properly appreciate any mini-adventures running on fumes, which I had been for several days while trying to fill as much time as possible with Vietnam.  So I set off for a site I've been meaning to visit for a while: the Hanoi Hilton.  Before you get the wrong idea, let me swiftly clarify by saying that "Hanoi Hilton" is the name given to the prison that housed American soldiers shot down or arrested in 1964-1973 during the American War and Vietnamese revolutionists during the French colonial period before that.  Built in 1896, it apparently replaced a small village, about which the Vietnamese still seem pretty testy if the slightly incendiary and very blaming informative plaques are anything to go by.  They use phrases like "French oppression," "persecuted body and mind," "machine of suppression," and "imperialistic prison"...I think they might still be holding a small grudge. 

Central House, I guess? A.k.a. Hanoi Hilton.

It now sits in the shadow of Hanoi Towers, an upscale ex-pat apartment and shopping center.

Main door locks.

Catching a glimpse of this face through the bars scared the hell out me! I actually audibly gasped and jumped a few inches. Also, it's in the freaking DUNGEON! There's a DUNGEON!

 

Male prisoner stockade.

Death row cell.  This is about the time that the heeby jeebies really started to set in. :/

Oh, there's also a freaking GUILLOTINE! By the way, do any of you have any idea how difficult it is to photograph a GUILLOTINE?! Because it's hard.

There was also this lovely photo of decapitated heads being put on display in baskets to warn others against revolutionary activities.

Sixteen prisoners escaped through this sewer in 1951.

So in the area focusing of the American War period, they had all these displays trying to show what wonderful conditions American soldiers were kept in, including real twin beds, games to play, books, a guitar, and even photos of soldiers decorating Christmas trees! Right. And I'm the Queen of England. Pip pip!

After this fairly depressing mini-adventure, I needed some serious serotonin.  Fortunately, the Metropole Hotel (which is a real hotel, unlike the Hanoi Hilton) has every single day a CHOCOLATE BUFFET.  Yes, dear friends and family, an entire all-you-can-stuff-your-face-with smorgasbord of cocoa concoctions and delicious delicacies.  There were bon-bons, petit fours, mousse, chocolate creme brulee, ice creams, a chocolate fountain, cookies, crepes, and the literal creme de la creme--hot chocolate, but not like any hot chocolate you or I have ever had before.  That stuff I can now only consider swill.  This hot chocolate was poured by the gods to Earth to give humans a hint of a shadow of what they're missing up in the heavens.  My life will never be the same.

Oh, Metropole. How I wish I could afford to sleep in you.

I'm this little garden building has an actual name, but I just think of it as Where's the Chocolate Already?

Roman was a beast. I LOVE chocolate, but I think Roman would willingly have hybrid human-chocolate babies if it were scientifically possible.

Choco-coffee bon-bons. They have little coffee beans edibly painted on top!

This was my first plate...of three. I also had to take a little savory break and partake of some finger sandwiches.

Personalized crepe-maker!

The hot chocolate was made by heating heavy cream and adding broken chocolate bars till boiling.  It was the best thing that has ever existed in the history of the universe. Maybe the Ultimate Question is "How many cups of this hot chocolate should you drink everyday?"

After gorging ourselves on chocolate for two and a half hours, we had (not surprisingly) very little appetite, so we met Kyle, Ken and Aussie David and Aussie Sue (the couple who had us over for dinner right before Tet) for drinks at the Cinematheque bar before taking in an Israeli film entitled Passover Fever.  It was kind of a weird movie, but it had been kind of a weird day, so I didn't particularly mind.  The highlight was the Amaretto Sour I got at the bar, just a little preview of what awaits me next week when my three best friends and I meet up for Savannah Reunion Weekend 2011.  If I have to leave, at least there's something worth leaving for waiting for me. :D

Can't wait for the plethora of Amaretto Sours that will await me in Savannah!

P.S.--Bonus points for figuring out the ingeniousness of this post's title.  That's right.  I'm really clever.  Thanks for noticing.  ;)

Miss Adventure or Misadventure?

It's been a weird week.  Not bad, definitely not fantabulous, but weird.  My internship was put on hold this whole week...don't ask, because there's not much to tell.  Hopefully it'll pick back up after we get back from Cambodia.  (T-minus ten hours till our flight leaves!)  So I started volunteering at the Ethnology Museum on Wednesday.  I went with a worldly French woman who volunteers there and is, of course, a friend of Roman's.  Basically, all they're letting me do right now is edit the English sections of catalogs and artifact descriptions...not very glamorous, but then again I'm in Hanoi. ;)


I've had some serious transportation misadventures the second half of this week, partially because Tet is coming up and everyone's driving crazy and trying to extort money to pay for all their jubilation, and partially because I've attempted to conquer the bus system, a beast which, it seems, cannot be vanquished by the likes of me.


The Ethnology Museum is way out west, so it's a real schlep to get out there, and the first day I volunteered, I had to get back to our side of town on my own.  Being impatient and too timid, I climbed into a cab with a wildly rigged meter, and made him let me out at the corner of No and Where, begrudgingly handed him his ill-earned commission and swiftly bid him adieu.  I could have walked the rest of the way, but the street was SCARY, packed with stalls and people and vehicular dangers, and I soon found a xe om, the driver of which wanted a slightly exorbitant amount of money (of course) and then didn't want to let me use his extra helmet.  I was in no mood, and he could tell, so he quietly pocketed the money and handed over the helmet.  So that was Wednesday, saved only by the fact that Roman and I attended a Tet and Kitchen Gods party in which we ceremoniously released fish into the lake to take our kitchen reports up to the gods.

Mine was the pretty silver one in the bottom corner. :)

Thursday.  Oh, Thursday.  After spending a small fortune on transportation the day before, I thought, "Hey.  How hard can it be to figure out the bus system for a sprawling city in which all the signs are in Vietnamese?  I'm a college graduate.  This should be no big deal."  Ah, to be as young and naive as I was yesterday.  My morning was spent at Hoan Kiem Lake checking out the Ngoc Son Temple, dedicated to the Spirits of Literature.

Bridge over not-so-troubled-waters leading to the Temple.

The mountain represents a good foundation. The tower says "Writing on the clear blue sky," always be truthful.

Furnace used to burn offerings to ancestors. Poems are burned as well, as a respectful method of disposal.

Wave Stopping Pavilion, symbol of resistance against "waves" of foreign influence.

The parrot represents a legend in which a woman  in need of self-improvement was flanked by two parrots, who repeated all she said back to her, and therefore ensured her honesty.

I have absolutely no idea what's up with this guy, but he's pretty friggin' awesome.

If you don't already know, taxidermy totally wigs me out. But this giant soft-shelled turtle was pretty cool.

And then I had a leisurely lunch and did some serious present-shopping for some of you lovely readers.  (At least, you better be lovely readers or you might not be getting your presents.)  I should have had plenty of time to find my way to a bus stop to take me to the Ethnology Museum to volunteer that afternoon, but after lapping the lake twice (and this is seriously a lake, not some dinky fishing hole); feeling my feet begin to violently mutiny and mist settle on my cheeks; and with the distinct urge to throw a tantrum in my ever-increasing frustration at being stuck around this damn lake like a rat in a maze, knowing how to get out but somehow not managing to, I called it quits.  Bested by a bus.  Ugh.  So I took yet another xe om, this time with a driver who proceeded to immerse me in the most TERRIFYING fifteen minutes of my life.  I swear he must have had a death wish or, at the very least, homicidal tendencies.

We got one of these and one of the lanterns above for Ms. Madagascar.

 

So walking in the apartment door, I was done with 'Nam and all it's 'Nam-ness.  I drowned my sorrows in a bowl of pineapple and pampered my poor pedary paws and took a well-earned nap.  And when I awoke, the clouds didn't seem to darken the sky quite so much.  My spirits were lifted further by another visit to Hang Ma, the seasonal decorations street, where Kyle and I shopped for a Tet gift for our hostess in Cambodia next week.  Gold and red tinted the night air and gleamed out of the corner of my eye.  I finished the day with a viewing of The Maltese Falcon at the Cinematheque with beer in hand.

The highlight of the week needs a small introduction.  Hoan Kiem Lake is legendarily known for its giant turtles.  There's a story of a king who received a divine sword from the lake and used it to free Vietnam from Chinese rule.  After this accomplishment, a giant turtle retrieved the sword from the king while he was out on the lake one day.  These turtles are fairly rarely seen now, but if you spot one poking it's head out of the water, you're granted good luck.  Guess who saw one this week.  ;)