Museum legs

We have been in Hanoi for a full three days now and I am exhausted. We have seen so much in the past 72 hours that it makes my brain hurt. I wish that we could have not squeezed so much into every day but I guess this way I get to see most of it; however, I know that I would have appreciated the beauty and history behind each site if I had been able to go at my own pace. Oh well. Tuesday we went to Ho Chi Minh's house. A mansion was built for him, but he was a humble man so he requested that a small house on stilts be built behind the mansion and this is where he lived. There is also a rather large fish pond on the estate with lots of fish swimming around. Adjacent to his house is his mausoleum. Ho Chi Minh asked to have his ashes spread across Vietnam, in the mountains, jungles, rivers, and oceans but his wishes were not granted and instead his body is preserved in the mausoleum.

The house Uncle Ho turned down.

House on stilts!

The fish pond and the house on stilts.

Professor Le explaining yin-yang
with the crane on the tortoise.

I have also visited the literature temple, Van Mieu– lots of Confucianism there. It is one of the oldest universities in the world. That same morning (Wednesday) we were lectured by Professor Le Van Lan who also served as our tour guide in the afternoon. Turns out Professor Le is a famous historian/author and during our tour of Van Mieu multiple Vietnamese ran up to him and asked to take a picture with him. It was pretty entertaining.  Professor Le also brought us to the Thang Long Citadel– the former palace of all the emperors besides the Nguyen dynasty– they made their home in Hue... I just visited it– remember?! Each dynasty made their own renovations and additions to Thang Long Citadel so it represents each era and legend. Unfortunately, Nguyen demolished the palace and built a mansion so he had a satisfactory place to live on his visits to Hanoi since he established Hue as the capital. In the late 19th century the French tore down Nguyen's mansion. Between the damage done by the French and Nguyen there are only a few original architectural constructions, but there are many artifacts representing each of the dynasties that are continuously being excavated.

Entrance to Van Mieu

Site of former Thang Long Citadel. The yellow building was
built by the French. Underneath the glass is an excavation site.

Today we had a lecture at Hanoi University in the morning and in the afternoon we went to the Ethnology Museum. There are fifty-four different ethnic groups  in Vietnam and each group was represented by some sort of photograph, object or artifact. Needless to say, there was a lot of stuff to keep me busy!

What is this– a house for ants!! No but actually this is a model of
a house of a certain ethnic group.. can't remember the name sorry. There are
54 of them so give me a break.

My new house. (That is me in case you can't tell)

Hanoi was formerly called Thang Long, English translation: Ascending Dragon. Legend has it that  Le Thai To, the first emperor of the Le dynasty, saw a dragon rising out of the Red River and therefore decided to name his city after it. Hanoi is pretty similar to Saigon only it is no where near as uncomfortably hot. People told me that the traffic is crazier here but I don't think it is too different. I guess they are a little more reckless but all Vietnam drivers are.

Oh, just remembered we went to a water puppet show. It was very entertaining. There was traditional Vietnamese music played on the left side the whole time and then a puppet show on water. The funniest part was when one of the arm of the puppets fell off in the first act and was floating in the water the whole time.

This isn't a great picture but it shows the water puppet show.

Sorry that this post isn't very informative but like I said, I am exhausted. Information overload.