Hồ Trúc Bạch

By this morning, we had already explored the Old Town of Hanoi, and were looking for something more to see. We decided on a circumnavigation of Ho Tay, the largest lake in Hanoi. If I remember the display at the Hanoi Hilton rightly, it is also the lake that John McCain had the misfortune to land in, prior to his capture, imprisonment, and torture.

Launching ourselves into an exciting day of walking, we made our way to the lake, which we had reached on our earlier aborted attempt to go for a run. And from there it was just a matter of keeping the lake on our left hand side. The use of the word lake to describe this body of water, was more than a bit opptimistic however. It seemed to more rather large stagnant, and polluted pond. It stunk, it was littered with rubbish, and a had a wonderful sheen from all the petrochemicals floating over its surface. That didn't stop the locals from fishing in the murky waters, or raising their chickens and turkeys on the water's edge, before they became dinner at a later date. This city based small scale argiculture was a bit different, but perhaps it is something that the Western world can learn from in the future.

Making our way around the lake, it quickly became apparent that it was less a lake, and more a fresh water sea. Certainly too far for us to contemplate walking around in a day, while staying comfortable. We decided we needed to change our plans, and headed to the nearest coffee shop to consider this exciting pivot in our plan.

The first stop on the revised plan was a temple, pretty close to the coffee shop we had just stopped at. So far as temples go, it was pretty similar to many other buddhist temples that we had also seen. In Vietnam however, this was the first one we had seen that was full of Chinese pictographs, rather than Vietnamese in written in latin script. While there, as is customary in Vietnam, Courtney was accosted by a lady trying to sell awful postcards. She persisted with Courtney for a few minutes, even tucking her postcards into Courtney's bag to try and get her to buy them. As Courtney said no repeatedly, the lady tired to suggest that she was pregnant, and needed the money for her unborn baby.

Unfortunately, for the Vietnamese lady, and many other hawkers we might meet on the way home, I have adopted a rather severe policy of not giving them a penny. It is the result of having been done a few times for rather modest sums of money, We all have, and yet it never feels wonderful when you work it out. So for this hawker who may or may not have been pregnant, I came to Courtney's rescue by removig the postcard wedged in Courtney's bag, shoving it back in the hand of the hawker, looking her in the eye and telling her no. When she interjected with something about her baby, she only got another no from me.

If she was pregant and looking for money to feed her baby, then I was a bit more abrupt than I could have been. If she was not pregnant, and she certainly wasn't showing, then I wasn't abrupt enough. And this is the problem with hawkers, and selling things to people unsolicitied. In so many cases, the potential customer is going to either resent themselves for being had, or resent the fact that they are being approached unsolicited. In this part of the world, it is going to happen far more, but that doesn't change the fact that it weighs on the conscience when people use a sob story to sell you something.

Personal introspection over for the day, we carried on to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. It was closed. This was annoying. But it serves us right for not doing the research. It isn't uncommon for 'attractions' like this to be closed on one or two odd days each week, or during the middle of the day. For us, the mausoleum was closed for the day, and was not opening again, any time soon. WIth that we decided to visit the Army Museum, and inform ourselves a bit more about the military history of Vietnam, which began so much earlier than the United States ill-fated intervention.

Wandering through the musuem we learned about the the occupation of Vietnam by the Chinese, the French, and of course the Americans, before reunification and independence in the 1970's. While there, we were approached yet again, this time by someone claiming to be from the tourism ministry. It transpired that he was doing a survey for the tourism ministry. Having done the survey, the next question was if we would put our names in his book of interviewees. This was when the request for money came. Having had an inkling that this was coming, or names had been written in his little book os illegibly that I may as well have been writing in arabic script. He got nothing from me, and left rather angry that he got nothing too.

For the second time in the day, it was time for some self reflection. How to deal with such people. You can be horrible to everyone, so that no one will come near you. Or you can be the polite person you were raised to be, and have people try to take advantage, at an emotional cost to yourself. So you take the high road, and hope that repeated attempts to take advantage don't take too much of a toll. Being an asshole to those that might approach you, will for now take a greater emotional toll. Hopefully that remains the case, but only time will tell.

Wiser in the our knowledge of Vietnamese history, which in so many cases is one of conflict, we headed back to the hotel for a quick shower before heading out on a food tour that evening. Setting off with our guide at 1800, we headed directly to the first street food vendor of the night. Though it was a group tour, we were the only ones on it, which was pretty good.

The tour was well worth it, if for nothing else than to understand how the street food world works, how much things cost, and what the etiqutte is. The best thing we had was definitely the the che, aka cold sweet soup. It is a mixture of green beans, black beans, coconut, lotus fruit, and somekind of gelatinous leaf product. It is entirely vegetarian, and incredibly tasty.

Feeling very full, and very hot, we made our way back to the hotel after the tour, to get an early night ahead of our trip to Halong Bay tomorrow. We'll have to be up at 0600. Everthing starts nice and early in this part of the world.Read more