Day 8: Happy Birthday, Hanoi!
Today marked the 1000th anniversary of the founding of Hanoi, and we were awakened at 5:30 am by some cheery music that was sent blasting into every room via the speakers cleverly hidden in the nightstand. Talk about your rude awakenings.
After waking up again at a far more reasonable hour, we headed to breakfast where we got to watch some of the parade on TV. The floats and costumes were beautiful. I want an ao dai - a traditional Vietnamese dress - in the worst way. It amazes me how orderly processions are in Communist countries. Not so for the regular people crowded along the parade route and thronging around Hoan Kiem Lake to witness the proceedings. But I've bitched about the crowds enough, so I'll refrain.
After breakfast we took a tour through the Old Quarter, an area founded in the 15th century that consists of 36 narrow streets that are named after the businesses that once existed on them. Basically if you know the name of the street, you know what they sell or used to sell. It's a great way to build vocabulary. We dodged the pedestrians and ever present motorbikes - the streets were closed to cars today - and saw the sites and did some shopping - including at shop contained in a 19th century French-style house that had great stuff and prompted an ATM visit for some much-needed Dong. We also stopped at a coffee shop were Eacata bought coffee that is processed by being eaten by a weasel. She was very excited. Finally, we had lunch at a fantastic, family-owned restaurant called Little Hanoi. Heh.
After lunch, we took a brief rest in our hotel before heading back out for our evening activity, a Water Puppet show, which is according to our itinerary the most traditional of Vietnamese art forms. The show was beautiful. Musicians playing traditional instruments and singers singing a mix of narration and counter-point provided the accompaniment to the puppets. The show takes place on a flooded stage, a small recreation of the lakes on which the shows were performed in olden times. The puppeteers stand behind a screen and use long sticks to make the puppets dance, twirl, splash, and flip across the stage. Photographing the moving puppets was difficult in the low light so I used my camera to take short videos of the more boisterous acts to give you a flavor of the performance. A very enjoyable experience even though I had to shoot over this one guy's very pointy head.
Dan said goodbye for the day before the puppet show, so afterward we were on our own. We wanted to try a restaurant that is famous for selling a certain type of fish. We were still stuffed from the five course lunch we had before our rest at the hotel, however, so we decided to take the long way to the restaurant. Along the way we stopped in a few souvenir stores just to look around. And then I saw it: a beautiful ao dai in a store window. At my suggestion, we decided to take look. Silk. Inexpensive silk. Made into scarves, and robes, and shirts, and all manner of evil things. Only able to carry so much, we've already decided that we'll be going back there on our last day in Vietnam when we have a free shopping day. *sigh* The shop owner was a lovely old woman who treated us like queens - queens with money - and gave us a free gift to thank us for our purchases. That's what I call service.
Hungry from shopping, we took the shortest way from the shop to the restaurant. The restaurant is called Cha Ca La Vong, which is located on Cha Ca street. They only sell one dish: cha ca fish served with noodles, mint leaves, peanuts, and chili sauce. The fish comes out in a skillet sitting atop a portable burner while the burner is still on. Whoosh! It was delicious...or at least it was once we finally got a table. The place was packed with both locals and tourists, which is reportedly its normal state. We ended up sharing out table with two English speakers from Singapore and the Philippines. They'd had a crazy experience with incorrectly booked hotel rooms that I hope never to have happen to me.
After dinner it was dark out so we decided to take a cyclo, which is basically like a rickshaw powered by a bicycle. The driver's English wasn't great, but he was very personable and actually asked before he touched my hair. Heh. He also didn't give me correct change for our ride, but I say he earned his tip pushing us through the streets using only his legs.
The cyclo driver dropped us off right in front our hotel, but before we could go inside, we heard a voice say, "You ladies! I seen you before twice!" Thus began our encounter with the extremely nice, nine months pregnant bicycling t-shirt seller. She pulled us to the sidewalk across from our hotel, sat us down on the stoop of a closed store and started pulling out beautiful T-shirts. Need I elaborate? Anyway, there were a few shirts we liked that she didn't in our size so she asked us to wait there while she rode to her sister's store to get the sizes we needed. Yeah. Service like this in America? I don't think so. I'm pretty sure we've ensured at least a couple of years of university schooling for her soon-to-be born child. And the fact that she said she loved our skin tones and our interesting hair styles and kept asking for our help to improve her already quite decent English only endeared her to us more. In fact, she said that she'd learned most of her English from tourist customers. I wish her enterprising soul the best of luck of luck. I'm sure she'll do well.
At last we escaped back to our hotel where we proceeding to pack for our two-day excursion to Mai Chau and to contemplate our much reduced stash of Dong. ^^
After waking up again at a far more reasonable hour, we headed to breakfast where we got to watch some of the parade on TV. The floats and costumes were beautiful. I want an ao dai - a traditional Vietnamese dress - in the worst way. It amazes me how orderly processions are in Communist countries. Not so for the regular people crowded along the parade route and thronging around Hoan Kiem Lake to witness the proceedings. But I've bitched about the crowds enough, so I'll refrain.
After breakfast we took a tour through the Old Quarter, an area founded in the 15th century that consists of 36 narrow streets that are named after the businesses that once existed on them. Basically if you know the name of the street, you know what they sell or used to sell. It's a great way to build vocabulary. We dodged the pedestrians and ever present motorbikes - the streets were closed to cars today - and saw the sites and did some shopping - including at shop contained in a 19th century French-style house that had great stuff and prompted an ATM visit for some much-needed Dong. We also stopped at a coffee shop were Eacata bought coffee that is processed by being eaten by a weasel. She was very excited. Finally, we had lunch at a fantastic, family-owned restaurant called Little Hanoi. Heh.
After lunch, we took a brief rest in our hotel before heading back out for our evening activity, a Water Puppet show, which is according to our itinerary the most traditional of Vietnamese art forms. The show was beautiful. Musicians playing traditional instruments and singers singing a mix of narration and counter-point provided the accompaniment to the puppets. The show takes place on a flooded stage, a small recreation of the lakes on which the shows were performed in olden times. The puppeteers stand behind a screen and use long sticks to make the puppets dance, twirl, splash, and flip across the stage. Photographing the moving puppets was difficult in the low light so I used my camera to take short videos of the more boisterous acts to give you a flavor of the performance. A very enjoyable experience even though I had to shoot over this one guy's very pointy head.
Dan said goodbye for the day before the puppet show, so afterward we were on our own. We wanted to try a restaurant that is famous for selling a certain type of fish. We were still stuffed from the five course lunch we had before our rest at the hotel, however, so we decided to take the long way to the restaurant. Along the way we stopped in a few souvenir stores just to look around. And then I saw it: a beautiful ao dai in a store window. At my suggestion, we decided to take look. Silk. Inexpensive silk. Made into scarves, and robes, and shirts, and all manner of evil things. Only able to carry so much, we've already decided that we'll be going back there on our last day in Vietnam when we have a free shopping day. *sigh* The shop owner was a lovely old woman who treated us like queens - queens with money - and gave us a free gift to thank us for our purchases. That's what I call service.
Hungry from shopping, we took the shortest way from the shop to the restaurant. The restaurant is called Cha Ca La Vong, which is located on Cha Ca street. They only sell one dish: cha ca fish served with noodles, mint leaves, peanuts, and chili sauce. The fish comes out in a skillet sitting atop a portable burner while the burner is still on. Whoosh! It was delicious...or at least it was once we finally got a table. The place was packed with both locals and tourists, which is reportedly its normal state. We ended up sharing out table with two English speakers from Singapore and the Philippines. They'd had a crazy experience with incorrectly booked hotel rooms that I hope never to have happen to me.
After dinner it was dark out so we decided to take a cyclo, which is basically like a rickshaw powered by a bicycle. The driver's English wasn't great, but he was very personable and actually asked before he touched my hair. Heh. He also didn't give me correct change for our ride, but I say he earned his tip pushing us through the streets using only his legs.
The cyclo driver dropped us off right in front our hotel, but before we could go inside, we heard a voice say, "You ladies! I seen you before twice!" Thus began our encounter with the extremely nice, nine months pregnant bicycling t-shirt seller. She pulled us to the sidewalk across from our hotel, sat us down on the stoop of a closed store and started pulling out beautiful T-shirts. Need I elaborate? Anyway, there were a few shirts we liked that she didn't in our size so she asked us to wait there while she rode to her sister's store to get the sizes we needed. Yeah. Service like this in America? I don't think so. I'm pretty sure we've ensured at least a couple of years of university schooling for her soon-to-be born child. And the fact that she said she loved our skin tones and our interesting hair styles and kept asking for our help to improve her already quite decent English only endeared her to us more. In fact, she said that she'd learned most of her English from tourist customers. I wish her enterprising soul the best of luck of luck. I'm sure she'll do well.
At last we escaped back to our hotel where we proceeding to pack for our two-day excursion to Mai Chau and to contemplate our much reduced stash of Dong. ^^