Hanoi 2

I mentioned the mopeds.  The millions of them.  We found out that an average new moped costs around $1200, which is about 4 times the average office worker’s salary for a month.  So buying a moped is a major investment.  But it turns out that the mopeds can be used to lugging around all sorts of things.

The other day when we told the people in the hotel we wanted a Xe Om (moped taxi) to take us across town, there was just a flicker of a smile before they went out to the corner to round up a couple of guys to give us a ride.  (They also negotiated the fare, by the way, which we were completely incapable of doing.  $1.25 seems to be the going rate.)  Anyway, off we went, getting stared at quite a lot.  People use their mopeds to carry a lot of things, but  two giant Americans…not so much.  I could almost hear my driver muttering about the heavy load.  His little 150cc engine was working as hard as it could but still the driver could not roar away from the stop lights the way he did normally.

Random other things we have seen being carried on the back of a moped:  a complete family (wife, 2 children); 5 big bags of wheat; a mature tangerine tree; and a 3 foot by 3 foot by 3 foot wire cage packed with 50-60 chickens piled on top of each other.  But the absolute tour de force of moped deliveries was two guys on the major road to Ha Long with a 4 foot by 4 foot sheet of glass balanced between them.  The driver had to keep his head way back so that his helmet pressed against the glass.  The passenger had his head inclined forward, also pressing against the glass.  And, of course, the passenger had both his hands on both sides of the glass, not hanging on to the moped.  This was all speeding along at 30 miles per hour.

The place we were headed on the Xe Om was the Vietnam Art Museum.  There were several beautiful things, but the one that just took my breath away was a room of near-lifesize lacquered wood carvings from the late 18th century.  Here is a sample.  I’ll bore you with more pictures when we return.

Next stop was the Temple of Literature.  Over the centuries it was one of the main Buddhist temples in Viet Nam.  The first Vietnamese university was establishes here in 1045.  (Take that, Harvard!)  There were several courtyards and pagodas but the thing that caught my eye were the postings of the exam results from the years 1442 to 1480-something.  The names of the men who passed the exam are inscribed on 6-foot stone tablets that are being carried by large sea turtles.

The final “must do” Hanoi adventure was to go off to visit Uncle Ho – the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum.  The queue waiting to get in was hundreds of people long but it moved very quickly.  At first we sort of stepped into the middle of a large group of school kids and I had a great time talking with one – I’m sure he was the cheekiest kid in the class.   The kid was clearly thrilled to speak to anyone who actually understood this strange language, English.  Unfortunately, our conversation was cut short as Ralph and I were removed from the line until all the kids got in.  The grounds of the mausoleum were incredibly elaborate and beautiful, suitable for someone who is the combination Washington and Lincoln of their country.  The actual main event – the embalmed body – was sort of (forgive me) “ho hum” but the rest of the visit was interesting.

On our last day in Hanoi, we met our friend Joe once again, this time for lunch.  After we ate he took us to the most out of the way coffee shop you’ve ever seen.  To get to the entrance to the coffee shop, you had to walk through another shop that sold CD’s, I believe.  There, at the bottom of the stairs, you gave your order.  Then you climbed the 4 steep sets of stairs to get to the roof garden.  It was nice to be high enough to catch a bit of a breeze.

A quick trot back to the Hotel Elegance, where the staff had already retrieved our luggage from storage and called the driver to take us to the airport.  We walked in and they said, “You’re ready to go.”  So off we went, to Laos and our next adventure.