Better Late...

Wednesday was my last day volunteering at the Museum of Ethnology.  I've accomplished basically everything that they needed from me for the catalog for the new museum in the Dak Lak province, and Mrs. Thuong has promised to send me a copy when it's published in November...so I'll be waiting a while to see my name in print (as English Editor), but that just gives me more time to get excited about it.

Mrs. Thuong, Mrs. Vincente, and Mrs. Nicole.

I bid the spunky French ladies and dear Mrs. Thuong adieu and set foot in the museum for the first time.  Yes, I've been volunteering there for over three weeks but in an adjacent building.  This being the last time I'd make the schlep over there, I decided it was finally the right afternoon to peruse the collections at my leisure.  The building itself has an interesting crescent layout with two floors representing all of the fifty four ethnic minorities.

Atrium with pottery display.

I love me some pots!

Bike loaded down with fish baskets.

Wood block printing. It's done in layers, with each block used for one color.

Tay shamanic ritual tree.

Shaman initiation mask.

Hmong skirts.

Bark clothing.

Model of Jarai tomb.

Hoa Lion Dance costume.

Their collection is pretty impressive, and they use interesting display techniques to help you visualize the objects' use in the everyday lives of minorities.

Muong funeral.

Tay house.

Hmong weaving.

In remembrance of the twentieth anniversary of the first diagnosed case of HIV in Vietnam and to increase awareness, the museum also has a temporary exhibition on HIV and AIDS and its impact on the lives and culture of Vietnam.  It was pretty somber passing through, reading first-hand accounts of those both living and dead with the disease and seeing personal and medical items.  The whole thing was rather unsettling, but it reminded me that my uncle is here for a reason, and that's because there's a problem that needs a solution.

Pie chart representing the demographics of those with HIV. From largest to smallest: Drug Addicts/Injectors, "Other Subjects," Patients Suspected to be AIDS Patients, Tuberculosis Patients, Prostitutes, Unknown Reasons, Blood Donors.

Self-administered AIDS test, used by a man who tested positive.

Condom dress, just one of many created by The Flamboyant Club to raise safe sex awareness.

You could write a short blurb about your thoughts on AIDS and the exhibit.

Finally, there was a less morbid temporary exhibit that gives visitors a taste of what's to come with the museum's future permanent exhibit on Southeast Asia.  I liked the Indonesian glass paintings best.  My coulrophobic friends *cough Cassie cough* might want to skip the first photo.

Renowned clowns (in Java) that are apparently quite popular...and creepy.

Common Javanese dance of women, accompanied by instruments.

Wedding.

That evening I attempted to attend a lecture and demonstration by a famous Vietnamese medium, but by the time I got there it was standing room only for the lecture.  I decided to skip it and wander around the Hoan Kiem Lake area in the drizzle, enjoying the twilight hour and slightly calmer nature settling over the city due to the time and the weather.  It was here that I stumbled upon today's highlight, something I've been planning to experience since my first week but which fate deemed to happen today.  There is this locally famous ice cream shop at which one can just drive one's bike--pedal or motor--into the store, pick up one's ice cream, and drive back out.  A veritable drive-in.  So seeing this as my last chance, since it's in an area I rarely visit, I popped over and got the specialty that all the locals were ordering.  Imagine my surprise when, at my first lick, I discovered my apparent vanilla cone to be a delicious coconut concoction.  Perfect end to the kind of day that makes me not want to leave.

Ice cream drive-in.

Country Mouse

This post is brought to you by the word ANTI-CLIMACTIC.  So, we decided to set out on a country excursion Sunday, in search of caves to spelunk and rivers to ride, and none of that happened.  A lot happened and a lot didn't happen, just none of it was what we'd hoped would happen.

Apparently, this is a haunted rice paddy.

 

We headed to Hoa Binh, west-southwest of Hanoi, knowing that it had a large open-air reservoir (and having only recently discovered there are no caves to be found there) on which we were hoping to ride.  And we sort of did for about ten minutes--on a barge that we'd tried to rent for an hour from some old woman at the docks--before the "captain" (or whoever) said we were turning around because he had to get back to work.  *anti-climactic shrug*  The dam itself was actually, well not cool, but kind of visually engaging.  People were fishing off the top with hundreds of feet of line that they somehow magically kept from getting as tangled as a soap opera storyline.  And while passing through the town (after turning down the legitimate boat renters who tried to savagely rip us off), we came upon a woman roasting little minnow-esque fish that you more or less eat whole.  She and her gaggle of gossippy watchers got a real kick out of our fascination by the clever fish-roasting process and were positively tickled pink when Roman bought a couple dozen off them...that might be the most interesting thing that happened that day.

Dam! Would you look at that!

People actually fish off the side--you can see them sitting at the tippy top.

Tiny minnows being roasted between strips of split bamboo. You dip them in an herb/MSG mixture and eat them whole, save for the spine.

So, of course, Roman bought a whole strip and made me try one...I left a lot more than just the spine.

I have no idea how I managed to neither fall down the rocky side of this muddy hill or off the gang-plank to the boat.

And then, much to my chagrin as I was ready to get the hell out of this weird backwoods, we hiked up to the top of one of the hills/small mountains surrounding this little cove in an effort to get a distant view of the dam.  Here's what happened with that.

I managed to find the dam...

...but only by scrambling up this gravel mountain down which I just assumed I would fall and parts of which would be permanently embedded in my flesh. But, fortuitously, I made it down scot-free.

I also serendipitously came up with this.

So, the only other thing to do in Hoa Binh was visit the Muong Ethnic Minority Museum...don't get too excited.  It was actually fairly cool but was mostly a bunch of Muong-style houses and a couple rooms of ethnic tools and objects, plus a library in which every single book was in Vietnamese.  *anti-climactic shrug*  The best part was the overall atmosphere in which this little museum-village is located, lush with trees and surrounded by misted mountains.  We managed to have a few laughs and a bounteous picnic lunch.

Entering the Muong Ethnic Minority "Museum."

Kyle said he wanted "good," rather than silly pics of him from now on.

What a handsome pair. :)

Gigantic fish traps.

Traditional Muong hut.

Kyle getting his comeuppance for being nosy.

This was the loudest, most chatty cat I've ever met.

The view from our Muong picnic.

Bamboo being held underwater, presumably to make it pliable enough to weave into fences.

Outside the museum and down some "road" a ways is another village that would have made for absolutely beautiful photos were it not for the cable lines cutting across it and the mountainous backdrop no matter what angle you tried.

Terraced village. The tiny dots of color are the welcome committee, from whom we fled before they were halfway down the hill.

Just chillaxin'.

Sunday could have, needless to say, been better.  But we got some fresh (i.e. filled with just dust rather than a dust-exhaust fumes mixture) air and some exercise.  And the young Polish couple with whom we went had it way worse than we did as they had to get up at eight in the morning following a farewell party the night before.  They were, unsurprisingly, a bit worse for wear Sunday and slept every time we were in the car for more than ten minutes.  How I envied their somnial abilities.


Monday, Roman and I headed off to a country wedding.  We were invited by a friend of his who is...somehow related to the happy couple.  I think it's one of those villages that's so small, most people are inter-related in some way or another, making relationships complicated and hard to determine.  On top of that, I think he was reeeally distantly related to them.  I wore my new silk dress and drew a ton of attention on the forty five minute bus ride to some village outside Hanoi, where we were unceremoniously dropped off FIVE MILES OUTSIDE OF TOWN because the bus driver didn't want to wait out a traffic jam.  I was rather perturbed but not at all surprised by this turn of events.  It was one of those unrealistically disastrous moments where you just have to laugh.  Roman tried to tell his friend to just go on without us, but he insisted on picking us up and driving back to the wedding, making us over an hour late.  So, we missed the actual ceremony but arrived in time for the reception-like portion of events.  Unfortunately, our arrival coincided precisely with that of the bride and groom, drawing attention away from them.  This happened for the next hour and a half.  We felt really badly about it.  An uncle of the groom insisted on putting us at a table at the very front of the reception tent and people wanted to take our pictures while the bride and groom were having their pictures taken.  Ugh. 

The happy, albeit somewhat somber, couple.

We were finally allowed to move to a room at the very, very back, where we held court while eating a late lunch, with various uncles and brothers-in-law and even the mother of the groom coming to toast us.  We must have had at least a dozen toasts with rice liquor, and every time they wanted us to drain our little shot cups.  I managed to just touch it to my lips each time (or I'd have been under the table after the first half hour), but Roman turned to me part way through and said, "I need to stop drinking for a little while."  Poor guy.  But I don't feel too badly for him, because he forced me to try betel nut, a popular pastime here.  You chew (DON'T SWALLOW!) areca, or betel, nut wrapped in betel leaf with a bit lime (not the fruit, but the mineral :/) and swallow just your saliva.  It's extremely bitter--even one of the older women who's used to it made a face when she first tried this particular concoction--and I could only keep it in my mouth for forty five seconds before I couldn't take it anymore.  Roman asked how it tasted and I replied, "Awful incarnate."  We then made our way to Roman's friend's grandmother's house (got all that?) followed by every single schoolchild in the village.  It probably looked like we were being run out of a town of dwarves.

I felt like the Piper of Hamlin with all these kids following me to the edge of town.

Kids going home through the rice fields for lunch.

Wilburs.

You want a highlight, you say?  That's a toughy this time.  Nothing really comes to mind.  Monday I picked up my final piece from the tailor, a top that I might like even better than my fabulous dresses.  And there you have it.  Just one more piece of evidence that I am in no way, shape or form a country mouse.  I didn't think I was a city mouse either, until I came to Hanoi and managed to carry on fairly easily.  Suburban mouse is probably most accurate.  Regardless, green acres just aren't the place for me.

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. :)