Tet a Tete

Chuc mung nam moi! (Happy New Year!)

Upon our return from Cambodia on Saturday, we were greeted by a festive Hanoian atmosphere and some serious price gouging by airport taxis.  Like double what should have been charged.  To the extent that Kyle was asking for names and procuring evidence of fraudulence while loudly threatening to complain to a higher power.  But we swiftly put this negativity behind us and set out Sunday morning-ish for the Museum of Ethnology, which was holding a Tet celebration with traditional games and ethnic minority food.

Solid effort, Kyle.

The point is to try to swing as high as possible. It's traditionally done by a couple as a means to get to know one another while being chaperoned by the whole community.

These American guys really showed what's what.

This kid scored the only hole-in-one I witnessed. Kyle and I both sucked. :/

Making rice flour flowers.

This kid kicked ass at "stick-butting," an inverse of tug-o-war where you try to push the other person out of the circle.

Calligraphy.

Ink blocks. Kyle got one of a baby with a lobster because he says it's adorable...I'm still not convinced.

We didn't actually make it inside the building, which means I've been to the Museum three times, including volunteering, and still haven't managed to catch a single glimpse of their renowned exhibits.  But the museum grounds are filled with reproductions of ethnic houses from various groups, furnished with traditional housewares, at which mouth-watering snacks awaited us.  There were tonnnns of people there, so the pictures of the houses are generally from a week before when I went exploring one day after volunteering.

This one's my favorite. It's got its own aqueduct--swanky.

Entrance into the long house, over one hundred feet long. Yes, I used the right ladder, but I was very careful about my hand placement. ;)

Tall communal house.

This house was huge! Climbing twenty feet up the rustic ladder was fine, but figuring out how to make my way back down proved a bit trickier. I waited to watch how someone else fared then followed in suit when they made it safely down.

Parental discretion advised. This is an ethnic minority tomb. The sexual scenes aren't pornographic but rather represent the cycle of life.

These tombs also have carved weeping statues. This people comes from central Vietnam and have been highly influenced by Indonesia.

Stilt house, where the best food was served. :)

No food yet, but Kyle and I are enjoying our chopstick party.

Awesome! (Sorry, my vegetarian friends, but this smelled gooood.)

Delicious sausage. It went superbly with purple sticky rice.

The Ethnology Museum is one of the few places in Hanoi where you can take in a water puppet show.  We were fortunate enough to catch one today.  My favorites were the Dragons and Wizard Afraid of Ghost.  Check it out.

Dragons!

Monday morning was still a holiday, according to the U.S. embassy, so in continuance of our Tet-cation Kyle, Roman and I visited a supposedly haunted battlefield, now in the middle of Hanoi, on the anniversary of Vietnam's defeat of a Chinese army.  Alas, there were no Chinese ghosts in sight, but thousands of people in their Tet best came out to watch parades and dances, to eat sweets and snacks, and to buy balloons and rice flour figures.  I received a lovely purple rose molded from rice flour that has proceeded to harden to concrete.

The Vietnamese general who defeated the Chinese. He looks pretty hardcore.

Baby-sized balloons.

Rice flour figures! There were flowers, dragons and Power-Ranger-looking ninjas.

We finished up the day by visiting a nearby dinh (communal house) and pagoda to take part in some traditional ancestor worship and Buddhist ritual.  Burning fake money and papers with coins printed on them while thinking of your ancestors aids their prosperity in heaven and, hopefully, yours on Earth.  You then burn incense (in odd numbers and NEVER in fours, since that's the number of DEATH) and place the sticks in the incense holder before the pagoda entrance and at the stupas (small structures usually containing the remains of important Buddhist monks) while praying.

Burning fake money.

The stupas on which you place your incense...mine almost refused to light, but I managed to take part after some fire finagling.

It's been wonderful to see all of Hanoi in such high spirits with everyone smiling in their "Sunday best."  I'm very grateful I've been in Vietnam during the Tet season and have been able to have two New Years this time around.  Surely that's providential for next year.  So far my resolution of being stalwart and fearless in 2011 has been upheld more often than not.  Buddha willing, I'll keep it up. :)

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.  ;)

Girl Time

I had the day off again (long story) and decided to spend it with me, myself, and I.  I wasn't feeling particularly well (I think I'm getting this five-week cold that everyone who comes here apparently gets), but I forced myself into the gym and afterwards decided to check out the highly acclaimed Women's Museum.  No one I've talked to has been there, but they've all been raving about it, so I thought I'd scope it out.  Let's take a nice, long xe om ride there, shall we?

Ah, the open road. Parental units, don't think about where my hands are while filming this.

Time for some seriously strategic maneuvering. Brace yourself for the part where we go perpendicular to the flow of traffic.

Wooh!  We made it.  Traffic's getting craaaaazy with Tet right around the corner.  Everyone's taking two-hour lunch breaks and returning loaded down with bags of gifts.  Drivers also seem more concerned with the impending festivities than with keeping themselves (or me) alive.  But decorations spill out of the stores and onto the streets, radiating from the shops' front doors, permeating the entire city and sneaking jubiliation into your subconscious.

From behind, it looks like the tree's driving the motorcycle. :D

The museum is elegantly designed and laid out very accessibly.  We start with marriage and the various rituals of the different tribes, depending on whether they are patrilineal or matrilineal.  The displays of wedding garments and gifts demonstrate the importance placed upon matrimonial rituals.  This exhibit is followed swiftly by one on childbearing...we're going to scoot right on through this one.

Wedding album.

Traditional wedding garments.

Bridal veil and headdress.

Bridal veiled headdress of the Black Thai.

"Master bedroom" of the Black Thai.

And then comes traditional women's roles within the family: cooking, weaving, pottery and teaching their children how to do the same.

Look at all those hoes!

Loom.

Weaving...stuff.

Next there was this really cool, slightly disturbing, somewhat awkward exhibit on women's roles during the American (Vietnam) War.  The women here took active roles in the military, on the homefront, and even as spies.  One of the latter was hailed in the exhibit for infiltrating enemy (American) ranks and praised for causing deaths within these.  It was odd to be put in this situation: impressed with the achievements of these women but slightly put off by the fact that their lauded actions killed Americans.  I felt like I was walking on eggshells through the whole exhibit, like I'd be caught behind enemy lines if I didn't tread carefully.  Despite these feelings, this was actually my favorite section of the museum.  It told the stories of heroic women, including some who'd been imprisoned in south Vietnamese camps in tiger cages, tortured with nails driven through their fingers, and still maintained hope for themselves and their political ideals.  There were also some really cool propaganda posters, many of which I've seen updated and posted around Hanoi during Vietnam's 11th Party Congress, which took place earlier this month.

This might be the scariest picture I've ever seen. But it's of political and technical training for clandestine missions, like those of the lady spies.

Brightly colored propaganda posters.

"Ever Vigilant."

I love this one! "Work well. Train well." These chicks are hardcore.

Of course, they had to put in a fashion section, and of course, I went gaga for it.  The clothes are so varied and lush, whether with complicated patterns or a simplicity that speaks of sophistication.

I'll take one of everything, thank you very much.

And then I hoofed it halfway (well, maybe more like fifthway) across the city back to the Temple of Literature to check out these amazing calligraphy scrolls, which appeared overnight and will be gone after Tet.  I'm dragging Roman along with me next time to act as translator, so I can load myself up.

I kind of really like these practice strokes on newspaper. Maybe next time I'll see if she'll just give them to me. :)

This guy was free-handing all those intricate works behind him.

This guy was awesome! He must have been a hundred and fifteen, and the coolest gentleman I've ever seen.

After my long solo day, it was wonderful to see some familiar faces.  The guys and I were invited to dinner with a lovely Australian couple (Aussie Sue and Aussie David) and their son and new Vietnamese daughter-in-law, who is terribly friendly and wears a mischievous grin when you catch her in just the right light.  Dinner was amazing and non-Vietnamese. :)  I'm greatly enjoying Vietnamese food, but I miss the variety and ease of accessibility found in the States.  At this point, I'm basically doing one Western-ish meal to every three or four Vietnamese meals.  I'm craving something homey at the moment, so I think I'm going to have to satisfy that need very shortly.

Today's highlight probably occurred during my long walk.  I realized that I distinctly recognized seventy five percent of my surroundings along the way.  It's nice to know that I'm beginning to familiarize myself with and recognize the different areas of the city.  Soon, I won't even need the giant map that glows like a neon sign reading "Yes, I'm an even bigger tourist than I might appear at first glance."