Thursday, January 3, 2008 (afternoon)
While at the park we noticed how extremely cold the weather was getting -- after so many days of broiling heat we didn't think it would come down to this but we realized we needed to buy some clothes (especially since we were going to be on a boat for a day and a half!). First things first -- after exploring the rest of the park which was filled with sculptural relics of the magic tortoise myth (and sternly telling the horrid touts with their useless photocopied guidebooks to go away) we went across the street from the park to the world-famous Water Puppet theater to get tickets for that night's show (our only opportunity). Crossing the street here was probably the scariest part of the trip. You wait til traffic is not too horrendous (like the ocean, it comes in waves)
then, as mentioned in the previous post, just sort of dive in and go straight ahead. You have to keep in mind that unlike in the U.S., drivers here really don't want to kill you -- they'd rather dodge you if possible. It actually got to be kind of fun. Laura didn't take any photos of this modern dodge-ball game but Charles did shoot some video...
With tickets procured for later in the evening we set out for the indoor shopping mall a few blocks away. The mall was kind of strange -- while there were plenty of different types of medium to high-end shops most of them didn't have that much merchandise. And most of the clothing they had was for people who were pretty tiny compared to us fat, Western folk! After finally finding an Old Navy-type of store we spent some time searching for the right sizes. There was a cool, British-looking sweater that Charles could barely fit in (so much for losing weight on this trip) and Laura had to shop in the men's section because most of
the women's stuff was either size zero or size 2! The clerks here were pretty much the same as the types you'd find in the U.S. -- indifferent, gossipy teenagers who looked like they didn't want to be there at all. While they occasionally showed interest in helping us (one salesgirl went through the motions of showing Laura the dressing rooms) they seemed a bit bored with it all.... not exactly the party line work ethic we were expecting. As they didn't speak much English Charles was unable to get across a meaningful dialogue regarding the benefits of cooperation in a collective setting. We decided to simply pay up (they were delighted with our decadent, Americanski dollars, ironically enough) and leave once Laura finally found a pair of cool 'Nam jeans she could wear for the rest of the trip...
After purchasing two mini-DV tapes from the Sony store at the bottom level (the clerk here regarded this transaction as if we were buying a Fabergé egg) we walked by a well-stocked electronics store. Hoping to find a deal on an iPod, Charles inquired as to the price. Not one clerk spoke a word of basic English and our basic Vietnamese wasn't up to par (and Charles' basic patience most limited) so, needless to say, we have no idea if any deals could have been made... Back to our destination - the World Famous Hanoi Hilton! Strangely enough, the locals did not understand the ironic humor of this term -- when we told our front desk clerk where we were headed he tried to show us where the actual Hilton Hotel was on the other side of town!
On our way to the notorious prison we passed by a smaller museum (this town has quite a few museums most of which didn't look so interesting) which proved most intriguing -- the Vietnam Women Museum.
In Saigon we had heard that during the "American war" Northern women played a significant part in the NVA success...here was an opportunity to explore some of that. After paying 10,000 dong (about .60!) we entered this strange 2-story converted office space. While we were primarily interested in the first floor display which featured personal letters, photographs, videos and paraphernalia showcasing women's efforts during Vietnam's struggle for independence (the 'woman warrior/mother' mystique), the second floor also had some interesting displays showcasing modern women overcoming obstacles to achieve financial success in an uncertain economy. Not a bad way to spend an hour or so but strange that so few people other than ourselves are checking this out. Perhaps Western-style marketing and design know-how is needed?
We kept going down the same street, walking by yet another grade school -- this one was breaking for lunch with tons of kids cavorting, yelling "hello" to us and singing and playing, etc. Again, we are impressed with the normalcy of these students despite the collectivist setting. So far, no harsh rebukes to our Western attitude and appearance.
Whatever. Lunchtime. We were starving so we stopped in at some place that looked kinda cool. It didn't look like a typical touristy-restaurant which was a good thing. As we were seated we noticed a young Vietnamese couple sitting to our left. The guy, wearing sunglasses indoors despite the darkened room stared at us for a moment with utter contempt then whispered something to his embarrassed looking date. Ah, at last, we were thinking - a young intellectual will come up to us and berate us for our Western-style complacency! "Comrade," he will say, "I have serious issues with your decadent, bourgeoisie lifestyle -- allow me to preach to you the wisdom of Uncle Ho's words in a collective setting!" Alas, nothing of the sort happened. The dude looked like an a*s; spoke on his cel phone when his girlfriend was speaking to him, barked "woh!" when he wanted his check and even made his date pay for the meal when he didn't have enough money! A sad state of affairs, indeed. It seems the U.S. won the war after all -- Western style mores have invaded and conquered the hardcore socialist nation. Poor comrade Ho...
On the same block as our lunch spot was a shop with an unfortunate name that you could tell was lost in translation...
While at the park we noticed how extremely cold the weather was getting -- after so many days of broiling heat we didn't think it would come down to this but we realized we needed to buy some clothes (especially since we were going to be on a boat for a day and a half!). First things first -- after exploring the rest of the park which was filled with sculptural relics of the magic tortoise myth (and sternly telling the horrid touts with their useless photocopied guidebooks to go away) we went across the street from the park to the world-famous Water Puppet theater to get tickets for that night's show (our only opportunity). Crossing the street here was probably the scariest part of the trip. You wait til traffic is not too horrendous (like the ocean, it comes in waves)
then, as mentioned in the previous post, just sort of dive in and go straight ahead. You have to keep in mind that unlike in the U.S., drivers here really don't want to kill you -- they'd rather dodge you if possible. It actually got to be kind of fun. Laura didn't take any photos of this modern dodge-ball game but Charles did shoot some video...With tickets procured for later in the evening we set out for the indoor shopping mall a few blocks away. The mall was kind of strange -- while there were plenty of different types of medium to high-end shops most of them didn't have that much merchandise. And most of the clothing they had was for people who were pretty tiny compared to us fat, Western folk! After finally finding an Old Navy-type of store we spent some time searching for the right sizes. There was a cool, British-looking sweater that Charles could barely fit in (so much for losing weight on this trip) and Laura had to shop in the men's section because most of
the women's stuff was either size zero or size 2! The clerks here were pretty much the same as the types you'd find in the U.S. -- indifferent, gossipy teenagers who looked like they didn't want to be there at all. While they occasionally showed interest in helping us (one salesgirl went through the motions of showing Laura the dressing rooms) they seemed a bit bored with it all.... not exactly the party line work ethic we were expecting. As they didn't speak much English Charles was unable to get across a meaningful dialogue regarding the benefits of cooperation in a collective setting. We decided to simply pay up (they were delighted with our decadent, Americanski dollars, ironically enough) and leave once Laura finally found a pair of cool 'Nam jeans she could wear for the rest of the trip...After purchasing two mini-DV tapes from the Sony store at the bottom level (the clerk here regarded this transaction as if we were buying a Fabergé egg) we walked by a well-stocked electronics store. Hoping to find a deal on an iPod, Charles inquired as to the price. Not one clerk spoke a word of basic English and our basic Vietnamese wasn't up to par (and Charles' basic patience most limited) so, needless to say, we have no idea if any deals could have been made... Back to our destination - the World Famous Hanoi Hilton! Strangely enough, the locals did not understand the ironic humor of this term -- when we told our front desk clerk where we were headed he tried to show us where the actual Hilton Hotel was on the other side of town!
On our way to the notorious prison we passed by a smaller museum (this town has quite a few museums most of which didn't look so interesting) which proved most intriguing -- the Vietnam Women Museum.
In Saigon we had heard that during the "American war" Northern women played a significant part in the NVA success...here was an opportunity to explore some of that. After paying 10,000 dong (about .60!) we entered this strange 2-story converted office space. While we were primarily interested in the first floor display which featured personal letters, photographs, videos and paraphernalia showcasing women's efforts during Vietnam's struggle for independence (the 'woman warrior/mother' mystique), the second floor also had some interesting displays showcasing modern women overcoming obstacles to achieve financial success in an uncertain economy. Not a bad way to spend an hour or so but strange that so few people other than ourselves are checking this out. Perhaps Western-style marketing and design know-how is needed?
We kept going down the same street, walking by yet another grade school -- this one was breaking for lunch with tons of kids cavorting, yelling "hello" to us and singing and playing, etc. Again, we are impressed with the normalcy of these students despite the collectivist setting. So far, no harsh rebukes to our Western attitude and appearance.Whatever. Lunchtime. We were starving so we stopped in at some place that looked kinda cool. It didn't look like a typical touristy-restaurant which was a good thing. As we were seated we noticed a young Vietnamese couple sitting to our left. The guy, wearing sunglasses indoors despite the darkened room stared at us for a moment with utter contempt then whispered something to his embarrassed looking date. Ah, at last, we were thinking - a young intellectual will come up to us and berate us for our Western-style complacency! "Comrade," he will say, "I have serious issues with your decadent, bourgeoisie lifestyle -- allow me to preach to you the wisdom of Uncle Ho's words in a collective setting!" Alas, nothing of the sort happened. The dude looked like an a*s; spoke on his cel phone when his girlfriend was speaking to him, barked "woh!" when he wanted his check and even made his date pay for the meal when he didn't have enough money! A sad state of affairs, indeed. It seems the U.S. won the war after all -- Western style mores have invaded and conquered the hardcore socialist nation. Poor comrade Ho...
On the same block as our lunch spot was a shop with an unfortunate name that you could tell was lost in translation...Finally we reach the infamous Hoa Loa prison (as it is officially called) or "Maison Centrale" -- the French title. We could have taken a taxi or cyclo but Laura was unwilling to try any public transportation in this town after the misery of Saigon...so we ended up walking everywhere! Not a bad thing considering how much fried food and alcohol we consumed. Luckily, everything was centrally located including our hotel ... and the prison.
As for the Maison Centrale... well it's something else. Very informative but, uh, somewhat biased (more on this later). The prison was built in 1901 by the French to house Vietnamese dissenters. Nothing to be proud of here as we looked at the photographs of French guards holding the decapitated heads of some prisoners. We also saw the cause of the decapitations -- a working guillotine the French brought over (we assumed it was working - didn't want to test it out!). Most of the displays showed all-too realistic sculptures of Vietnamese prisoners chained in what's left of the cells (in the 90's part of the prison was demolished to build a high-rise and some of the cells were reportedly redone to not look as awful as they were
-- at least the cells which held the American P.O.W.s). Vivid stories of French mistreatment of the "revolutionaries" are displayed throughout. There were bronze reliefs and a plaque recounting the tale of a brave band of Vietnamese prisoners making a daring underground escape. The French were repeatedly described as horrible abusers -- (interesting that so many French today have invested money and property in this country) only interested in the exploitation and control of their colony. It is also interesting that the prison-museum's primary intent is to showcase the colonial-era of the prison's history as opposed to how most American's saw it -- a hellish detention center for American pilots that were shot down.
When we finally got to the "American War" section of the prison we were disappointed to see such a ridiculously one-sided approach by the Vietnamese in their stubborn insistence in re-
writing the history of the war. According to the party-line, all Americans were treated extremely well and played sports (there is one photograph showing some guys playing basketball) all the time, and, in general, enjoyed a healthy, happy life while serving time here! Unbelievable! How anyone could write this with a straight face is beyond us. Click here for a different viewpoint altogether.
Photographs of some of the more famous Americans held here -- John McCain, James Stockdale, etc., were shown along with several photos of anti-U.S. demonstrations all over the world. It was a very interesting experience but somewhat perplexing -- is it really that difficult for the Vietnamese to come to terms with the fact that they weren't exactly angelic creatures during this war? While the U.S. openly acknowledges the abuses, anti-war sentiment, criminal mishaps, etc, it is doubtful that any negative mention of mistreatment perpetuated by the North Vietnamese will see the light of day anytime soon. A strange, childlike, stubborn attitude...
We walked back to the hotel and napped for a bit before our evening's activities. First off we went to a large marketplace to purchase bathing towels which we supposedly needed to bring with us for our Halong Bay boat cruise. Finding a place where they sold this sort of merchandise wasn't exactly easy but our front desk clerk drew us a map on where to go and also wote out the word in Vietnamese so there was no confusion. Very cool. As it was around dinner time there was rush hour traffic everywhere -- again we did the "suicide traffic walk" and, surprisingly enough wound up without a scratch (We ended up getting bruised more in Disneyland last month than anytime in SE Asia!). Most of the stalls were closing but the shopkeepers looked happy to see Western tourists...Charles showed one lady the paper with the word "towel" on it and she brought us up a winding staircase then back around some labyrinth of tiny stalls to a woman who was closing up her shop. She wanted about $10 USD for two flimsy towels. So sick of these corrupt idiots trying to bilk us. "Forget it" we said, p*ssed off, and started to walk away. We ended up paying $3 USD for the cartoon-character towls (that's all they had!) and exited, again fighting traffic, successfully finding an ATM, and -- best of all -- finding the LE CYCLO BAR AND RESTAURANT!
We had passed by this place the night before and were determined to check it out as it looked so incredibly cool. The restaurant's main gimmick, (as you can tell by it's name), is that the furniture is entirely made up of old, refurbished cyclos! (Click here for a funny review of the food and decor by actual cyclo drivers) Yes, you are served food while sitting in a cyclo. Well, take a look...
Anyway, over a plate of duck breast with goat cheese (Charles with the better meal this time) and one of Laura's all-time faves, stuffed crabs, and a couple of "333" beers we enjoyed the ambience of the restaurant. The owner of the place was a young, effeminate, Eurasian French-speaking dude who we saw gliding around the restaurant talking to various French tourists. We hoped to try our French out on him but he must have had his American radar going full blast and seemed uninterested in conversing with us. (Picture above shows us in our recently purchased, trendy Vietnamese duds!)
Off next to the world famous Thalong Water Puppet theater we go. This turned out to be a pretty wonderful experience and it was justifiably packed with tourists from all over the world. Charles paid a measly $5 USD for "video rights" and has almost the entire show taped. According to their website:
As you can see, no expense was spared in the creation of the sets. Someday we'll add some video to this site, showcasing the skilled puppet-masters in action. The skits performed by the puppets all told Vietnamese folk tales dealing with farming, fishing and supernatural creatures like fairies and unicorns.
The show ended and we departed for the hotel, our long day finally at an end. We were looking forward to our Halong Bay adventure starting the next morning.
As for the Maison Centrale... well it's something else. Very informative but, uh, somewhat biased (more on this later). The prison was built in 1901 by the French to house Vietnamese dissenters. Nothing to be proud of here as we looked at the photographs of French guards holding the decapitated heads of some prisoners. We also saw the cause of the decapitations -- a working guillotine the French brought over (we assumed it was working - didn't want to test it out!). Most of the displays showed all-too realistic sculptures of Vietnamese prisoners chained in what's left of the cells (in the 90's part of the prison was demolished to build a high-rise and some of the cells were reportedly redone to not look as awful as they were
-- at least the cells which held the American P.O.W.s). Vivid stories of French mistreatment of the "revolutionaries" are displayed throughout. There were bronze reliefs and a plaque recounting the tale of a brave band of Vietnamese prisoners making a daring underground escape. The French were repeatedly described as horrible abusers -- (interesting that so many French today have invested money and property in this country) only interested in the exploitation and control of their colony. It is also interesting that the prison-museum's primary intent is to showcase the colonial-era of the prison's history as opposed to how most American's saw it -- a hellish detention center for American pilots that were shot down.When we finally got to the "American War" section of the prison we were disappointed to see such a ridiculously one-sided approach by the Vietnamese in their stubborn insistence in re-
writing the history of the war. According to the party-line, all Americans were treated extremely well and played sports (there is one photograph showing some guys playing basketball) all the time, and, in general, enjoyed a healthy, happy life while serving time here! Unbelievable! How anyone could write this with a straight face is beyond us. Click here for a different viewpoint altogether.Photographs of some of the more famous Americans held here -- John McCain, James Stockdale, etc., were shown along with several photos of anti-U.S. demonstrations all over the world. It was a very interesting experience but somewhat perplexing -- is it really that difficult for the Vietnamese to come to terms with the fact that they weren't exactly angelic creatures during this war? While the U.S. openly acknowledges the abuses, anti-war sentiment, criminal mishaps, etc, it is doubtful that any negative mention of mistreatment perpetuated by the North Vietnamese will see the light of day anytime soon. A strange, childlike, stubborn attitude...
We walked back to the hotel and napped for a bit before our evening's activities. First off we went to a large marketplace to purchase bathing towels which we supposedly needed to bring with us for our Halong Bay boat cruise. Finding a place where they sold this sort of merchandise wasn't exactly easy but our front desk clerk drew us a map on where to go and also wote out the word in Vietnamese so there was no confusion. Very cool. As it was around dinner time there was rush hour traffic everywhere -- again we did the "suicide traffic walk" and, surprisingly enough wound up without a scratch (We ended up getting bruised more in Disneyland last month than anytime in SE Asia!). Most of the stalls were closing but the shopkeepers looked happy to see Western tourists...Charles showed one lady the paper with the word "towel" on it and she brought us up a winding staircase then back around some labyrinth of tiny stalls to a woman who was closing up her shop. She wanted about $10 USD for two flimsy towels. So sick of these corrupt idiots trying to bilk us. "Forget it" we said, p*ssed off, and started to walk away. We ended up paying $3 USD for the cartoon-character towls (that's all they had!) and exited, again fighting traffic, successfully finding an ATM, and -- best of all -- finding the LE CYCLO BAR AND RESTAURANT!
We had passed by this place the night before and were determined to check it out as it looked so incredibly cool. The restaurant's main gimmick, (as you can tell by it's name), is that the furniture is entirely made up of old, refurbished cyclos! (Click here for a funny review of the food and decor by actual cyclo drivers) Yes, you are served food while sitting in a cyclo. Well, take a look...Anyway, over a plate of duck breast with goat cheese (Charles with the better meal this time) and one of Laura's all-time faves, stuffed crabs, and a couple of "333" beers we enjoyed the ambience of the restaurant. The owner of the place was a young, effeminate, Eurasian French-speaking dude who we saw gliding around the restaurant talking to various French tourists. We hoped to try our French out on him but he must have had his American radar going full blast and seemed uninterested in conversing with us. (Picture above shows us in our recently purchased, trendy Vietnamese duds!)
Off next to the world famous Thalong Water Puppet theater we go. This turned out to be a pretty wonderful experience and it was justifiably packed with tourists from all over the world. Charles paid a measly $5 USD for "video rights" and has almost the entire show taped. According to their website:Puppetry is a traditional art form closely connected with the long-standing spiritual life of the Vietnamese people. There are many kinds of puppet-shows in all the corner of the country. Puppets of different kinds can be found all over the country. However, puppetry art has been developed and diversified as well as popularized mostly in northern midland areas and the plains in Vietnam. The word "roi" (puppetry) has become part of the proper name applied to villages, to pagodas and even to ponds found in many places. (Puppetry villages at Y Yen, Nam Dinh Province; puppetry pagodas at Phu Xuyen, Ha Tay province...)The performance was amazing with musicians playing exotic instruments on the sides of the huge stage and a multitude of performers manipulating the marionettes to perfection. Laura did not purchase a "photo pass" because of the low light and distance from the stage, and Charles had already purchased a "video pass." Here is a good representation of the stage taken from another traveler's website:
As you can see, no expense was spared in the creation of the sets. Someday we'll add some video to this site, showcasing the skilled puppet-masters in action. The skits performed by the puppets all told Vietnamese folk tales dealing with farming, fishing and supernatural creatures like fairies and unicorns.
The show ended and we departed for the hotel, our long day finally at an end. We were looking forward to our Halong Bay adventure starting the next morning.
2 comments:
We would love to see what you had on tape for this puppet show. Sounds interesting.
Well sure...I think that might be the tape I couldn't find but I'll try again. But aren't you there in a few days? You and James should go!
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