Vietnam - Hanoi

On arrival, we took a walk around Doan Kiem Lake in somewhat gloomy weather.  

Next day, we wandered the city, seeing Uncle Ho, who was back in his Mausoleum this time, having been missing, away on reparations in Russia, in 2007.  He looks like a wax effigy rather than a real body, but we were impressed by the reverence afforded him by the local people and the army guards.  

We popped into the Ho Chi Minh Museum afterwards for another look, but not much had changed in this rather ugly Russian style building.  

A tour of the Military Museum nearby featured a pile of US airplane wreckage, a bit cobbled together on the one hand, but making a point alongside the finely painted North Vietnamese tanks and other machinery.  

Then, it was off to the 'Hanoi Hilton', really only a piece of it remaining as a museum, but nonetheless giving a good portrayal of prison conditions in the French Indochina era for the political detainees, complete with guillotine, as well as those of the American pilots captured during the war.  Pretty grim they were.  Propaganda pictures portrayed an image of well looked and happy US prisoners, who had now seen the error of their ways, amid some diminutive female Vietnamese capturing the considerably larger pilots and hauling pieces of wreckage out of the lake waters.  Nothing was mentioned of the torture of course.  

Then we walked through increasing drizzle back to the hotel along, but mostly off, congested pavements as shop and house owners believe they own the piece in front of their premises and use it accordingly.

Reflecting back to when I first came to Hanoi in '94, there is now a minority of bicycles and many more motorcycles and cars to quantify the growth in prosperity in addition to the higher rise and new buildings.  The motorcycles continued to fascinate us and the rules for crossing are look ahead, not sideways or behind, and let the traffic flow around you believing you haven't seen them.  It's a bit like the rules of the ski slopes where you let others worry about you, not you about them!   However, we saw no accidents and I was impressed that no vehicles of any kind showed evidence of such either.  Jean found that using her umbrella to obscure her view of the traffic while crossing roads lessened her awareness of danger!