Hồ Hoàn Kiếm

Had a slow start to the morning, but eventually decided to do a walking tour as it would take us round the city a bit, but require minimal thinking from us as we are both still feeling quite ill.
We met our tour guide just after 12, and there was only one other person with us. We got a little brief overview of Vietnam's history, which I surprising knew quite a bit of already from all our other trips, then got shown around the French quarter. The old quarter where we are staying is full of busy streets full of cafes, restaurants, hostels and shops of all kind, with tiny alleys tucked away. It's very busy, and is where most things seem to be happening. The French quarter is less busy, has more grand buildings and designer shops and well as government buildings. We stopped off at the Women's museum, a place celebrating Vietnamese women. It had information and displays from cultures and traditions of many of the ethnic minority groups in Vietnam, as well as the history of women's roles within Vietnamese society. It was really interesting and different to most other museums, which I really liked.
I could've spent another 30 minutes looking around but we were whisked away to get to train street before the train arrived. Our guide ushered us past the guarded barrier and plonked us down on seats outside a cafe, a mere metre from the train track running through the narrow street. The street was lined with excited tourists sat outside coffee shops, and no less than 5 minutes after ordering our drinks, everyone started to stand us which indicated the train was arriving. It whizzed through the street pretty fast, I think if I stretched out my arm enough I could've touched it!
Our guide said it'd only been a tourist attraction since 2017, and even though was a cliché thing to do, I enjoyed it much more than expected!
Our final stop was Hoa Lo prison. It was originally built by French colonists in 1896 and primarily kept and tortured political prisoners. The conditions there sounded awful and the torture devices on display were brutal. It was pretty harrowing learning about the history, and shocking to see the tiny rooms where hundreds of people were kept.
In the courtyard and another section of the prison, we then learnt how US soldiers were kept and treated during the cold war. Just under 600 American pilots were captured and detained in the prison from 1964-73. Reading online afterwards, there were reports of brutal interrogation and torture in the prison, however this wasn't mentioned anywhere. Despite this, on the whole the American prisoners were seemingly treated extremely well and humanely considering the circumstances. They ate better foods than people did in the surrounding villages, were rationed 3 cigarettes a day and allowed a lot of recreation time. Stories from soldiers after they were released testify to this, and the excellent treatment of prisoners is how the place got the nickname the 'Hanoi Hilton'.
It was such a juxtaposition to learn about the two very different uses of the prison. It was quite emotional, especially when you think Vietnamese people were treated so badly by people who colonized their country, yet treated those trying to invade them so humanely. The prison information was of course slightly biased, but regardless, was a really interesting visit.
Later on, after the tour had finished, we hit up a cafe called the note cafe, a cafe covered in post-it notes very popular with travellers and instagram photographers. It was a tall skinny building with a winding staircase leading to four floors, with every single wall covered in colourful written notes. It was actually very cool, and we sat and wrote our own notes as we had a drink.
The main street outside the cafe, and around the lake in the city centre is closed off at the weekend to vehicles, so was full of people, mostly locals enjoying the space with their families. During the day there was kids racing up and down on bikes and in tiny plastic cars, and now was full of families dancing and playing with kites. Was lovely to watch out of the window.
We had a very poor attempt at eating dinner, neither of us really have an appetite but know we need to eat to have some energy.
It's Kath's last full day tomorrow so we're hoping we both feeling better so we can make the most of it!Baca lagi