Two Museums and a Bus Ride

When Ken and I first decided to go to Viet Nam, we got all excited and booked our flights without actually counting the days on the proposed itinerary. As a result, we ended up staying in Ha Noi for almost 2 days longer than everyone else.

So, on our first day after everyone else had begun their long flights home, we decided to visit a couple of museums. The Viet Nam Museum of Ethnology profiles the country's recognised ethnic groups. The Kinh (or Viet) group constitutes about 86% of the population; 53 groups make up the remaining 14%. The museum does a great job of profiling some of the customs and rituals of each group, and concentrates on the unique pottery, woodwork, basket weaving, and textiles of each group. Some of the weaving patterns are incredibly intricate (we'd had a chance to see it woven in person of one of our earlier stops); one group uses batik to leave a detailed white pattern on indigo cloth. Outside of the museum building, there's a large area featuring examples of domestic structures from a number of the groups. From the traditional Kinh family home to massive communal stilted longhouses (with springy bamboo floors), there is a wide variety of types of architecture and uses. Most of the houses featured had either been donated by families who had actually lived in them or constructed on-site by members of tribal groups, using traditional building techniques.

Entry of Museum of History

Not quite museumed out after that, we found the National Museum of Vietnamese History. Housed in a spectacular French colonial building, the displays trace Vietnamese history from ....well, prehistory to Vietnamese independence in 1945. There were quite good displays of artifacts from the Dong Son  (northern pre-300 C.E. culture, famous for its bronze work), Oc-Eo (same era, but in the south and thought to be the predecessors of the Khmer people), and Sa Huynh (mid-country, and had burial jars large enough to have contained inhumations) cultures. Then, the displays moved on to the Champa kingdom, and on to the various Vietnamese ruling dynasties. The museum was logically set up (I always appreciate being able to follow a distinct timeline), with well displayed artifacts. The building was formerly the home of the Ecole Francais d'Extreme Orient, which had organized some of the early archaeological excavations to My Son and other sites, and had "collected" many of the artifacts.

Stone axes and adzes, with accompanying skull

Pre-200 C.E. wooden Buddha (Oc-Eo culture) - remarkable preservation

17th-18th century ceramics

Parrot on the back of a turtle -Nguyen dynasty (post 1802)

Mandarins' footwear -later Nguyen dynasty

Nguyen Emperor's headdress

Gold hairpins -late Nguyen dynasty

The Ethnology Museum is about 12 km west of the Old Quarter, so too far to walk even under less hot and humid conditions. Given our earlier experience with taxis (see earlier post re: sped-up meters), we just didn't feel like potentially having that fight with anyone. We decided to take a public bus over to the museum, since there was a stop relatively close by. This is not uncommon for us; we usually end up taking public transport at some point during our trips to various places (I'll tell you about the rasta bus in Barbados some other time. Oh, and the time our bus got stopped by the police. Also in Barbados).

The bus we just got off - and there was much rejoicing

On the way to the Ethnology Museum and back, everything was fine - we paid our 5,000 dong each (about 25 cents) to the fare collector, sat down, and enjoyed our tour. Trying to get from near the History Museum to closer to our hotel was....interesting. Nothing untoward - it was just that it was now getting to be rush hour, and the bus we needed seemed to be a popular route. The role of the bus conductor now extended from simple fare collection to strategic packing of riders. As I stood, someone's backpack firmly stuffed into my left side, leaning over a seat with 3-4 people sitting in it, and trying not to elbow anyone in the head, I hoped that people were staring at me because of the novelty of seeing non-Vietnamese on the bus, rather than because I was the sweatiest person present or because I was committing some sort of heinous bus etiquette faux pas. We got off the bus waaaay before our actual stop; the only thing preventing me from having a claustrophobic incident was the fact that I was tall enough to see over everyone crushed around me.

Turtle Tower on Hoan Kiem Lake

One of the iconic images of Ha Noi, and also one of my favourite areas, is Hoan Kiem Lake. This lake, surrounded by a small park, is at the edge of the Old Quarter and an oasis in the midst of the busy streets. According to Vietnamese tradition, Le Loi (who became Emperor Le Thai To) was granted a magical sword, with which he drove the Chinese invaders out of the country. After the fighting was over, the Emperor was walking on the lake's shores one day when a giant turtle swam up, grabbed the sword, and dove back into the lake. The belief was that the turtle then restored the sword to its original heavenly owners. There is still one giant turtle in the lake today (he was captured in 2011 to receive medical treatment), thought to be the descendant of the sword-restorer. It's considered lucky to see the turtle, which our tour leader did on the day the rest of us were in Ha Long Bay! Hoan Kiem Lake is a favourite place for locals to relax, practise tai chi in the early morning (not that I was ever up that early to see it), and gather for photos.