A full day's outing in Hanoi

Now we are three... My friend Sandra Russell arrived from Scotland, so we are an international trio! We enjoyed dinner at Koto, a restaurant that trains and employs street children. The kids are delightful, the restaurant is lovely, and the food was yummy and beautifully presented.

Yesterday (3/31), we met our tour guide for the day, Hiep. My friend Julie Wagner in Connecticut met Hiep when she was in Vietnam late last year and she in turn introduced me to him. Hiep is a 20-year-old architecture student. He spent the entire day with the three of us, escorting us through this beguiling city. Stops included several pagodas (I'll provide more details, perhaps in another entry as I am a bit rushed this a.m.), the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum and museum, and the Temple of Literature.

We all found it hard to put into words the experience of the mausoleum. It was moving, for sure, seeing Vietnamese break down in tears during the few moments it's possible to see the embalmed leader as the queue moves slowly around the room. Happily, we arrived early in the day so didn't wait long. The queue was several hundred people long when we left.

The HCM museum, near the mausoleum, was truly incredible. No expense was spared in the building or the exhibits. Hiep enjoyed pointing out to us that HCM wasn't always the best speller. We pored over several of his letters on display as Hiep looked for misspellings.

An absolutely exquisite lunch at a vegetarian restaurant (thank you, Hiep) was followed by a taxi ride (air conditioning! hurray!) to the Temple of Literature. While there is indeed a temple there, the TOL is actually the first university in Vietnam, founded, I think, in 1076. Amazing! Take that, Wesleyan. The grounds are spectacular. The tile-roofed buildings are something out of a dream of Vietnam.

We finally all gave into a bit of travel exhaustion and headed back for a quick nap before dinner and a trip to see Hanoi's famous water puppets. We all agreed that the water puppet show was a highlight of the day. It's a traditional art form in this area, originally done perhaps in rice paddies using three-dimensional puppets on long bamboo poles. The puppeteers masterfully manipulate the puppets from behind a screen, making them splash and swim and cavort through the water.