Hanoi: First Exposure

An Intense Day – and Just theFirst One

Before I can describe anything, I'lljust list the places we went.

After breakfast we walked around thelake near our hotel, the Hoan Kiem Lake in the old center of thecity.

Then our guide took us to the Ho ChiMinh mausoleum, to the area dedicated to his memory, to a pagodanearby,

to the Temple of Literature,

to lunch,

to the Ethnographic Museum,

to a shop where they manufacturelacquer ware,

to a shop that benefits the disabledchildren of Vietnamese soldiers who were exposed to Agent Orange,

to a performance of the water puppets(something you can't imagine until you see it),

and for an hour's rickshaw ride aroundthe old city. We skipped (to his evident disappointment) the prisonwhere US pilots who were shot down were kept, and to see the B52bomber that was shot down.

I would have skipped the Ho Chi Minhmausoleum, but we quickly realized that it's obligatory, like YadVashem. Our guide clearly worships the memory of Ho Chi Minh, andthere's no way for him to imagine that back in the sixties we(Americans at the time) regarded him as an arch-enemy. The visit tothe mausoleum has a surreal atmosphere. About thirty soldiers inimmaculate white uniforms were guarding the approach to the site aswell as the site itself, and we were required to pass through it intotal silence, hatless, with our hands pressed to our sides. Ho ChiMinh is lying in a glass case, very waxen looking, and ratherindifferent to the crowds.

The Vietnamese seem to be very proudthat there are 54 ethnic groups in the country, and most of them,aside from the majority Viets, are quite exotic. In other words, ifVietnam in general is, for us, exotic, the ethnic groups are exoticsquared. The museum is excellent by world standards, informative andrespectful of the people whose lives it is depicting. The textiles,basketry, and other artifacts are sophisticated and beautiful. Outside the museum they have rebuilt typical houses from thevillages.

The water puppets are a crazy idea:large wooden puppets, operated from behind a screen, in waist-deepwater, accompanied by live Vietnamese music.

The rickshaw ride scared the daylightsout of me. I was in the front rickshaw, and the driver used me toforce our way through cars and motorcycles (of which there arehundreds of thousands, whizzing recklessly around, sometimes againsttraffic), and I couldn't believe that I was going to survive it –though apparently the fatality rate among rickshaw passengers is verylow. On the up side, it was fascinating. We pedaled through streetafter street of small stores, restaurants, people busy buying andselling: life. Before the trip, when I was thinking about Vietnam, Ididn't imagine how crowded Hanoi would be, and how intense thetraffic would be.

As I was pedaled along, I felt like aprivileged colonial, which made me terribly uncomfortable, though Icould console myself by saying that at least I was helping myrickshaw driver to make a living of some kind. The people in thestreets look energetic and vital, but many of the ones you can seeare working at low-paying jobs, selling cheap things in small shops. People can evidently save enough money to buy a motor scooter, theyare dressed adequately, the food seems abundant, and we can't tellvery much about their housing. But here's an indication: on our wayto the water puppets, we drove down a street full of stores sellingbirdcages and birds to put in them. I asked Tiem whether he has abird. No, he answered, my house isn't big enough. Think about that:a house too small to keep a birdcage in!