boopyourface

Our time in Vietnam was spent discovering the triple H’s: Hanoi, Hue and Hoi An (in that order) with an en route “one day only” special appearance in Da Nang and two days in Ho Chi Minh/Saigon (quadruple H?). The Hanoi Hilton (the REAL one) turned out to be quite a comfortable temporary abode, without any ghostly apparitions However, Will and I managed to pick up something on the plane so we weren’t feeling too great for the first couple of days in Hanoi.

On the first day there, Will stayed at the hotel to get some rest and I decided to spend the morning at the Women’s Museum (he was SO so disappointed not to go with me haha).Vietnam has a long history of war and this museum (as it was described in my travel book paragraph) was dedicated to the women who served in combat throughout Vietnamese history.

I don’t know what I was thinking.

Vietnam has a pair of ancient warrior queens (hai ba trung) who ruled somewhere in the 400s that I’ve been obsessed with for a while and I naively thought this museum would be dedicated to women in history like them. I arrived at the museum and the attendant had to run into the building and tell the curator to turn on the lights.

I was their only guest. That should have been a warning sign.
The museum honored women who fought for the communist/country against the “American Imperialist” in the most recent war, with a handful of exhibits on women who fought to break away from the French colonization. The images of combat were graphic and the stories were detailed and my American self was walking around in there feeling unsettled- to say the least.

There was no information on Hai Ba Trung or any other figures from the distant past. I walked the entire way back to the hotel scolding myself: “what was I thinking? I’m in Hanoi, the capital of communist Vietnam. I should have known better!”
This was before I realized my access to wordpress was denied.

My first museum experience did not detour me from visiting the Museum of History and the Museum of Ethnology and both of these, were actually very good. Look how happy Will looks here standing next to a huge pile of baskets on a bicycle at the Museum of Ethnology:

We spent the rest of our time in Hanoi wandering around the Old Quarter, eating ice cream four times a day (they have some of the most delicious ice cream I’ve ever tasted there) and checking out the major landmarks around the city:

We had to ride at cyclo at least once. Yea, we both rode in that, at the same time. I think the man deserved the 50,000 ($3) he charged us even if it was above the standard fare.

Flower peddlers in the Old Quarter.