Day 120: Hanoi (Hoa Lo & Puppets)

View accross Hoan Kien Lake
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Back in Hanoi for 3 more days, now having extended our time here, and time to start ticking off the various attractions in the guide book.

Friday morning sees us take a cyclo out to the slightly depressing Hoa Lo Prison (aka the Hanoi Hilton) to learn about how badly the French treated the Vietnamese resistance movement; and how well they in turn treated the Americans years later – no sense of propaganda here whatsoever, but the prison in colonial times did appear pretty grim.

Jail, then back on the streets

Water Puppetry
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In the afternoon we embarked on a walking tour of the old quarter, following a tour laid out in Lonely Planet which results in us seeing the same tourists at a variety of places also clutching their copies. Notable stops included:

- Ngoc Son Temple, sitting on an island in Hoan Kien lake and linked by the picturesque bright red wooden bridge ‘Huc’. Built to worship and give thanks for the giant tortoise which rose from the lake and took from Emperor Li Thai To the magical sword from Heaven which had allowed him expel the Chinese from Vietnam, and thus return it to its divine owners. Very King Arthur, and also very Loch Ness Monster as infrequent sightings occasionally with accompanying grainy photos are still reported – we didn’t see anything though.

Old Quarter by night
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- Pho Gia Ngu street market full of locals eating on tiny plastic chairs and the larger Dong Xuan market selling amongst other things fake balloons – fake because I bought some balloons suitable for making balloon animals and couldn’t even blow them up later.

- House 102 – our guidebook said not to miss house 102 on one the streets, so we briefly disappeared down an alley entrance here, realised we seemed to be in someone’s home courtyard, and quickly ran away.

- Bach Ma Temple, a traditional Buddhist temple currently undergoing renovations – so little to actually see although it was interesting to briefly watch pillars and facades being repainted (generally in bright red).

Ngoc Son Temple
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- A lunchbreak to eat the local Pho, a noodle broth generally with chicken or beef eaten for any and all meals of the day (it’s said Hanoi is a city built on Pho).

We also wandered the many streets of the old quarter, most of which are named for the items traditionally sold there. These days the names don’t necessarily equate any more (half of them aren’t called Pho Tourist Tat street or Pho Tour Booking) but the logic of having a street of shops all selling much the same thing persists. We saw shoe street, rope street, tinbox street, festival street (normally fake ‘ghost’ money for burning, but in December a street of Christmas decorations), mirror street, Buddhist altar street and our favourite - gravestone street, where one place had Britney Spear’s face on an example headstone.

Hanoi Hilton - looks surprisingly nice here
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That evening we ventured to the Water Puppet Theatre for a bit of local culture. Not a bad thing to have seen, it only lasted an hour, but not something we’ll be rushing to see again though.

Dinner was at Bobby Chin’s, pretty good food but more memorable for its menu littered with sarcastic comments and witty lines such as “this restaurant is an Abba, Kenny G and Gypsy King Free Zone. We also refuse to play any bands with more than one lead singer or matching sweaters. Female Teenyboppers dressed like whores with synchronised dancing are also banned”.  Pefect!