After having a look at the opera house at the posh end of town (and noting that Starbucks have sited themselves there, just down the road from the stock exchange and a Prada fashion store), I made my way to the Hoa Lo Prison museum. This was a really good, if somewhat disturbing way to begin to find out about Vietnam’s more recent history.

Most of the museum recalls the lives of the political prisoners who were imprisoned here when Vietnam was under French colonial rule 1858-1954. The prisoners were mainly imprisoned for their loyalty to the Vietnamese communist cause, and for the work they did as revolutionaries, trying to resist French occupation.

The prison was purpose built on the site of Phu Khanh village, which had been famous for its handcrafted pottery. The French moved all the locals (48 households) out to a different part of the city and dismantled and moved Chan Tien Pagoda too in order to build the prison, which the regime had dire need of to keep up with its punitive rule.

The museum justifiably waxes lyrical about the heroism, determination and ingenuity of the prisoners, who organised themselves incredibly well and managed to teach one another all sorts of useful things, even under the noses of the vicious guards. All while enduring horrendous conditions, inadequate space, food and clothing and lack of latrines and so on. Having escaped (there were a few successful escapees) or after French colonial rule ended, many of the ex prisoners from here became significant leaders in the communist party.

The prisoners organised protests to get better conditions – hunger strikes and even once staging a protest by not wearing their prison uniform, but performing all their tasks naked, as a protest that they only had one set of clothes so when they washed them, they had nothing to wear. After three days of this, some local bigwig was brought in to try and sort it out. He demanded they get dressed, to which the prisoners’ elected spokesman (who could speak French) said something like, “All that we require is that you treat us with the dignity that befits the nation of France”. The next day all the prisoners had a spare uniform as they were supposed to.

There were various horrendous forms of torture used in the prison. In the mid 1890s, the French brought guillotines over to Hanoi to use on the revolutionaries who were sentenced to death. They staged the executions in front of the main door of the prison which they opened just in time so all the prisoners (as well as the general population) could see what was happening to their fellow inmates, as a deterrent.

I couldn’t help wondering whether this was some rather warped, deep seated act of revenge on the part of the French regime against the communist revolutionaries in Vietnam. The revenge really being paid forward from the time when French revolutionaries had used the guillotine to avenge themselves on the French aristocracy a century earlier. Violence does seem to beget violence. It’s a thought, anyway.

There was one section of the museum devoted to the American pilots who were captured and imprisoned here during the Vietnam war (1964-73) too. It makes the point though, that then Hoa Lo became knicknamed “The Hanoi Hilton”, as the way the Americans were treated was a darn sight more humane (by the Americans’ ready admission) than how the Vietnamese communists had been treated by the French.

One of the loveliest things was the almond tree in the prison yard, whose branches, fruit and leaves were regularly used by prisoners to make medicines to heal each other’s wounds from the beatings and illnesses they suffered with. One prisoner who was also a musician managed to fashion a pipe from one of the branches another prisoner procured for him while the guards’ backs were turned. The almond tree is still flourishing now. Another example of how we wreak our havoc and destruction and yet the good earth endures.

I was impressed by the amount of information there was about female prisoners here, and by their incredibly brave and self sacrificing actions. There were stories of female prisoners who continued their revolutionary work from within the prison. One of whom had encouraged her husband to take up an opportunity to serve the Party in China, and consequently never saw him again. She remained in Vietnam, studied medicine, then later was imprisoned for years for revolutionary activity at Hao Lo, separated from their little daughter, and dying of typhoid having caught it from her fellow prisoners while she nursed them.

The end of the exhibition includes some stuff about the importance of working for peace, and the pride of some of those American pilots who have worked politically for good relations between the two nations since the end of the war (including Senator McCain who was imprisoned here and ran for President in a couple of elections not all that long ago, though he has since died). It also says the Vietnamese prize peace always.

But in the end, the take home message is really all about the almost deified status of the communist revolutionaries, as good examples of bravery, commitment to the Party and determination. Vietnam’s flag is still predominantly red, if my emojis are well informed. 🇻🇳

From Hao Lo I made my way to a recommended Vietnamese eatery, and indulged in this Hanoi speciality:

I searched the extensive menu fruitlessly for anything that was just vegetarian (I could’ve got a plate of green vegetables, but that was about it). As Shiv had said, I could have said “Today’s my vegetarian day” and they might have managed to give me something appropriate. I could have, but on this occasion I didn’t. Here was my delicious main course. The orange sauce was very spicy indeed:

Coffee. Vietnamese style. A relief after negotiating even just the first few streets of the morning.

To paint a picture of the café clientele:

A group of suited men and smartly dressed ladies just exited the café chattering and laughing (from some special celebration?), the ladies donning elegant white straw hats against the sun.

A young couple, she resplendently pregnant in a long flowing white dress with colourful pom poms above her extended belly and matching dangly earrings, he in fresh shorts and t shirt, pay avid attention to their mid morning noodle soup, dunking what look like huge churros into it, deftly wielding chopsticks in a manner I can only be envious of.

Meanwhile, a table of three men all dressed in black, sit opposite me with tiny coffees, discussing things that sound important. One of the middle aged ones does most of the talking, the other middle aged one concentrating on his phone rather than the conversation, the other older man nodding silently, perhaps sympathetically.

The one on his phone has left. The other younger one now has a little boy sitting on his knee. Three generations at the table. Maybe they own the café.

After coffee I wandered on through my plans for the day. I saw this building and thought it was a temple but actually I think it was a shop? Or maybe several shops and a residence?

I wandered down a street known as “hemp street” for all the clothes etc sold there:

Aha! So here at least they were trying to repair/improve the pavement

This is what a Hanoi lull in the traffic looks and sounds like 👇🏼. I reckon this was the longest period of time I experienced all day without any horns honking. 6 whole seconds! Wow!

In the cordoned off square next to the lake in the city centre there always seem to be things going on for children and young people especially. This lady was waving a bubble wand about:

It was tricky to get a picture of this ancient temple in the middle of the lake that can only be reached by rowing.

According to Wikipedia:

According to the legend, in early 1428, Emperor Lê Lợi was boating on the lake when a Golden Turtle God (Kim Qui) surfaced and asked for his magic sword, Heaven’s Will. Lợi concluded that Kim Qui had come to reclaim the sword that its master, a local God, the Dragon King (Long Vương) had given Lợi some time earlier, during his revolt against Ming China. Later, the Emperor gave the sword back to the turtle after he finished fighting off the Chinese. Emperor Lợi renamed the lake to commemorate this event, from its former name Luc Thuy meaning “Green Water”. The Turtle Tower (Tháp Rùa) standing on a small island near the centre of lake is linked to the legend. 

These are the devil’s dumplings! Foisted on me unexpectedly by a lady who thrust them in my face saying, “You wanna try? Try them” and then gave me one. I was caught unawares and of course as soon as I tried one then she was shovelling loads of them into a bag and charging me too much money for them. But “too much money” is a whole conundrum here anyway, as the currency is worth so little.

You’re supposed to haggle by offering half whatever street sellers ask you for. I’m not very good at that, but by the end of the day I did manage to give the lady below 60% of what she asked for, but she asked for a lot. Especially given I didn’t really want a whole bunch of bananas and a bag of prepared pineapple! What I wanted, which she knew and took advantage of, was a photo of her! Well good on her. She balanced her wares on my shoulder so I could feel how heavy they were. (Really very heavy.) She looked crestfallen with what I gave her, but it was still more than I’d pay for something like that in the UK.

I spent most of the day confused about currency (but finding the XE currency app super helpful – thanks Antonia for that recommendation), and increasingly having to say “No” very firmly to lots of people trying to sell me stuff or offer me a ride on one of those motorbikes (😳 the way people drive here makes the jet boat ride in Queenstown, New Zealand look like a safe option!).

I also had a bit of a scare when I tried to use a dodgy ATM and although it seemed to think a transaction had been completed it didn’t give me any money. In one of the bigger tourist info places nearby, I asked the lady about that, and she was not sure what might have happened. So I asked her where I’d find a bank that was reliable, and she pointed me to an HSBC, which was reassuringly familiar. With my new found “Nothing is too cheeky when you’re in need” attitude, picked up in NZ with the help of Tash, I asked the lady whether they had WiFi in the tourist info place and whether I could cadge onto it. She gave me the password. So I was able to check (and recheck when I came back later in the day) via my banking app that there was no suspicious activity going on, which so far there hasn’t been thank goodness. If anything does happen I can freeze either of my cards. I know it’s sad that banks are more faceless and rely so much on automation now, but I’m very thankful for being able to check what’s going on constantly from a device I own, especially in a country where I am unfamiliar with how things work.

I’ve also felt very conscious of not wanting to flash money about, but actually all the market stall holders constantly carry a huge wadge of notes about with them, and it’s not uncommon to see one of them standing by their stall counting through a fistful. The thing is, the notes are mainly in tens or hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese Dong (VND). To give an idea, 100,000VND is worth about £3.32. It cost me just under £5 to get into the Hoa Lo Prison museum, and another £1.66 for an excellent audio guide in English that took me through a lot of the history of Hanoi and the political history of Vietnam in the 20th century.

I was very impressed when I put a 50000VND note into a vending machine in the museum for a cool drinks can, and it managed to give me my 30000VND change in notes with no problem. I’ve never seen any coins here. It’s all notes. I suspect that it does mean that the lower denominations of notes are barely worth the paper they’re printed on.

I normally feel a bit trapped by plans if they’re too, well, planned, if you know what I mean. And the making of plans does my head in! Especially in the travelling situation as, until you’ve been there, how can you really know what to plan?? You can end up flicking through trip advisor and lonely planet guides (very grateful for both, but…) for so long you miss the getting out, wandering about, absorbing the atmosphere, noticing what this place seems to be reminding you of or challenging you with.

But this morning, as I only really have today in Hanoi, I am engaging with the merits of planning. While keeping an open mind and open eyes and ears, of course…

Here’s my view from the rooftop restaurant in the hotel:

This fruit 👇🏼 was a welcome follow on from the omelette. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be able to steel myself for veggie pho with chillis first thing in the morning?? The white thing I’ve taken a bite out of is some kind of delicately flavoured pear. And the orange with the green skin was deliciously sweet and juicy. Good to know, as I’ve been looking at those pear things and green oranges and wondering what they were!

Everyone seems to be out, from a tiny wizened old lady I saw who must have been at least 85 years old I think if not older to loads of little children, too.

This paints a picture of my first night in Hanoi. Pictures can’t convey how busy this place is though. Traffic comes flying round corners at you every which way, honking wildly. Hundreds of motorbikes, with 2, 3 or even 4 people crammed onto them weave around pedestrians and cars like shuttles on a loom. And there are loads of cars too, all merrily honking away. The traffic lights must be purely for decoration, I think. No one pays attention to them.

At one point, I was stuck trying to cross a really not very wide road along with a young British couple. All three of us were being typically apologetic and cautious, until we all simultaneously realised it was getting us nowhere, so we just stepped out into the traffic hoping it would stop for us. This seems to be the way it’s done here. The young lady grinned and giggled at me as we made it across, and I saluted them saying, “Teamwork!” Travelling is full of these momentary little challenges. Every time I manage to step up to one, it feels like a massive achievement! It’s lovely to experience moments of camaraderie with fellow travellers, too.

The pavements everywhere are ramshackle and broken, or made up of tiles slippery with rain. Everywhere, there are people sitting on tiny children’s plastic chairs outside cafés, homes and market stalls, eating dinner with chopsticks. Between all those people and the motorbikes stacked along the pavement, there’s really nowhere to walk. Just progressing through the streets seems to involve taking your life in your own hands!

Once I reached the night market it was a relief as they’d cordoned off some of the road, to stop the traffic. But even then sometimes an enterprising motorcyclist would appear from a side street and come hurtling through! The market was incredibly long and still going strong at 10pm in spite of the rain. A lot of the shops were still open too. I would’ve taken photos of the market but I thought I’d probably either get run over or slip or trip up or something!

At one point I noticed this temple peeking out opposite a load of market stalls:

I bought myself a baked sweet potato piping hot from one of the stools. Filling comfort food in this strange place that’s quite unlike any place I’ve ever been before.

Then I wandered back to the hotel via a different route that was less frantic and had wider pavements, and to my delight, stumbled across this series of street art on the arches under what I think must be a city centre railway or tram line:

One last traveller’s triumph I had this evening was getting from the airport to the hotel. The hotel had sent me an email offering to book me a transfer for $18USD. I managed to walk onto an express city centre shuttle bus and pay the equivalent of $1.50 instead. Well, not quite that little as I had to change some money at the airport as none of the cash points were working, so they gave me a less good exchange rate. So let’s call it $1.80. To give you an idea, that was 35000 Vietnamese Dong for a 45 minute journey.

Baggage ach! So much baggage! 😕

My flight was delayed by an hour. I must have decided to make my way to the boarding gate just as they marked it open. I’m not sure how this happened but I was the first one on the plane for the first time in my life!

I was in a kind of dazed stupor I’m going to call the “Changi airport chill out factor” due to the gentle jazz, smooth, quiet efficiency, prevalent greenery, lovely air conditioning and comfortable furnishings of Singapore’s extraordinary airport. My inexperience with domestic flights shows. I marvel at the ease and simplicity of it all. (Although Singapore is a different country from Vietnam, this 3 hour flight definitely has the laid back feel of a domestic one).

Despite Shiv’s excellent help with reducing my baggage contents, it was still over 2kg more than it should’ve been (9kg instead of 7kg), so I asked the check in desk lady “What can I do?” Another moment of vulnerability faced, owned and acted upon. (It’s all good practice for me!) The cost of putting my bag in the hold was only £20. I wished I’d just booked it in in the first place.

I have one more flight on this part of my trip but my attempts to navigate the booking systems of Air Asia to change my baggage allowance have been futile. I’ll just hope I can pay at the airport again as I did this time.

This is one of the things I’ll not miss about flying. Though once my backpack was checked in I did feel remarkably free and easy with just my shoulder bag. This was how I’d imagined it would be!

Baggage. We carry so much of it these days. One is not immune from accumulating ridiculous amounts of material stuff just because one is a vicar. Being conscious of the huge gaping vortex of consumerism waiting to suck us all in and spit us out is a good first step to living more simply, but it’s not enough. I think the only thing to do is to really try to practise not accruing stuff. I have to say, although I still brought too much stuff, it has been quite releasing to live with fewer clothes and possessions around me.

I like this cartoon by Michael Leunig that we have on our loo wall at home:

I notice this flight is far from full. They’ve probably got room for 50 bags the size of mine in the lockers and another 50 in the seats. (I’m wondering whether there’s enough people on board to stop us from flying off into the ether! Maybe other people voted with their feet when the flight was delayed by an hour? Or maybe this is normal for VietJet? Of which, worryingly, Shiv and Jamie had never heard. I think I might be travelling on the Vietnamese equivalent of Aeroflot!) But anyway, that’s beside the point. Just because you can fit so much stuff into your bag doesn’t mean you need to cram it in to the hilt. And yet we do, don’t we? Hmmm.