Day 9: Hanoi (Saturday, July 5)

Saturday was our last day in Hanoi; we flew down to Hue in the evening to start the next portion of our trip. The plan for the day was: Temple of Literature, Art Museum and Army Museum, plus any incidental shopping that we might stumble into... I guess now is as good a time as any to talk about the daily schedule in Vietnam. Everything is closed for lunch; a long lunch. Museums close sometime between 11pm and 12pm and open again between 1pm and 2pm. If you get a late start in the morning, this makes fitting everything in particularly challenging. For some reason, the art museum is an exception to this rule, though. So we started at the Temple of Literature and then went to the art museum while the rest of the city was on its lunch break.

The Temple of Literature is an impressive set of buildings, gates, and courtyards where students came to learn and take examinations. The temple has been around since 1070, and it has stele (giant stone tablets) on the backs of tortoises listing every student that passed the examinations in each year. The architecture is stunning, and it's sort of amazing that it exists right in the middle of hectic Hanoi. We enjoyed a casual stroll through the courtyards and buildings. If you're in Hanoi, it's definitely worth a visit. We also ran into some local kids... these guys were trying hard to impress their lady friends by playing with the giant bell - fantastic.

Next we walked just up the street to the Vietnamese National Museum of Art. The museum houses Vietnamese art dating back to a least the 11th century, including a statue of Kouan Yin (Goddess of Mercy) with a thousand arms and eyes. Most of the art, though is from the last couple of centuries, with a large floor dedicated to contemporary art (more or less since the war with France) in several different media.

We went back down towards the Temple of Literature to grab lunch at Pho 24 - a near ubiquitous chain offering some of the classic noodle soup of Vietnam. Clean, simple and good food - definitely a good place for pho, and the restaurants are everywhere!

Refreshed and ready to go, we ran over to the Army Museum to see as much as we could before we had to return to the hotel to checkout and catch our flight. The Army Museum consists of several buildings with photographs and equipment from Vietnam's struggle against France and America. There is also a large outdoor exhibit of American aircraft shot down over Hanoi or captured from American bases during the war. The museum was moderately interesting, and seeing the collection of military aircraft was impressive, but ultimately the museum fell short for us. The signage in English was fairly sparse - definitely missing any significant explanation or context for the exhibitions.

We grabbed a taxi back to the hotel, checked out and took off for the airport, and our first domestic flight on Vietnam Airlines. The flight to Hue was just an hour and relatively uneventful. We have definitely noticed that pilots over here tend to be pretty aggressive - ascending and descening quite rapidly, and not really caring to control turbulence. Once we got to Hue we decided to grab a bite to eat so we headed to the DMZ Bar (homage to Hue's location in Central Vietnam and the DMZ from the war with America) across from our hotel. As soon as we got upstairs who did we see but five of our Kellogg classmates... one of the Kellogg Corps teams working in Vietnam for a month this summer. We joined them (Amy, Becky, Chris, Cullen and Mike) for some drinks and a snack before retiring to our hotel for the night.