A Visit to Vietnam - Part Three, The Rest of Our First Day

 

The Temple of Literature 

Our next stop on our first morning tour was the Temple of Literature.  Along the way to this site, we passed the Mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh.  The two banners at the sides of the Mausoleum building translate into English as, "Long Live the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam!" and "The Great President Ho Chi Minh Lives on in Our Cause."

 

Think of the Temple of Literature as the University of Vietnam, founded in the year 1070.  During a thousand years of Chinese rule, Confucianism dominated as a philosophic basis for education and government in Vietnam.  Rigorous examinations were held to determine those qualified for government positions and the center for training and examinations was here at the Temple.  

 

The paper note on that sign above observes that admission is free, Feb 20-22, at this and sixteen other cultural sites in the city as part of a move to promote tourism.  (Announcement in the morning Hanoi Times, here.)  There was quite a crowd as a result.

The temple consists of five progressive courtyards.  The first two are more or less "green space" where scholars could contemplate their studies.  In the third courtyard lies the Well of Heavenly Clarity (Gieng Thien Quang.) The well is surrounded by 82 stelae resting on the backs of sacred turtles and recording the list of 1,307 people who obtained their doctorates between 1442 and 1779.  The stelae in the complex were recognized by UNESCO as a world documentary heritage site.

  

 

Guide Mike pointed out that a view of the well is found on the back of the 100,000 dong note. 

  

 

The fifth courtyard is used for various public events.  It serves as a site of "Human Chess" during Tet; a game was underway as we visited.  (Human chess here was featured on a segment of Amazing Race in 2013.)

  

 

Anyone looking for more details on the five courtyards of the Temple of Literature would do well to look at Vietnam Airlines webpage for the site or this travel agency's description.

Linda is always on the watch for interesting architectural details.  She found several examples of dragons perched on the roofs of buildings across the country including this one at the Temple of Literature.

 

Hoa Lo Prison Remnant 

Our next stop was the infamous Hoa Lo Prison museum.  Nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton" by United States airmen during the Vietnam War, the prison has a long history dating back to 1896 when it was built by the French colonial government.  (See Lonely Planet page for more.)  The long history of the prison is recounted in numerous photos with an accompanying audio tour available.  Much of the exhibit space is devoted to the prison's use by the French to suppress dissent during the French-Indochina wars.  The most notable French artifact is a 13 foot high guillotine just past the entry that sets the mood for visitors. 

Narrow passageways and prison cells serving as mini-lecture halls for the audio tour set the mood for visitors.

  

 

A good bit of space is devoted to the story of women imprisoned by the French.

 

The pictures of smiling American pilots reading letters from home and decorating their Christmas tree stand in marked contrast to the well-known memoirs of John McCain and other POW authors. Some might say that the smiling prisoners make their confinement seem more like a summer camp experience than a prison.

 

  

 

One of the stark reminders of the Vietnam War era is the picture of nearby Kham Thien Street after a B-52 bombing run in 1972.

 

One odd artifact in the museum is this copy of Ho Chi Minh's 1969 New Year's greeting.  The connection to Hoa Lo according to a few websites is purported to be that POWs assisted in the translation from Vietnamese to English; we don't recall seeing any such reference at the museum.   The English language version of Minh's poem actually appears at two different times in the western press.  On January 1, 1969 it shows up as being broadcast on Hanoi radio monitored in Tokyo and then on Feb 17 it is described as being printed on the front page of all Hanoi's newspapers and periodicals.

 

On the backside of the museum, there is a good aerial photo of the full site when the prison was in active operation; I have outlined the section still standing as a museum.  The majority of the block is now occupied by a 27 floor apartment building and 14 floor office tower.

 

Vietnam, especially the Northern portion, has a long and interesting history.  Wikipedia notes seven museums in Hanoi and lists twelve wars, many with neighboring China, from 214 BC to 1975.  Our hour at the Hoa Lo prison doesn't begin to cover the country's history.  Our two weeks served only as an introduction to the country. 

 

Lunch Break

It was approaching lunch time as we headed back to our driver and his comfortable SUV.  Our lunches on most days were prearranged by our tour company at very nice restaurants and were served from a set menu.  This one was at the Home Hanoi featuring a Tet oriented selection of northern Vietnamese cuisine.

 

 Those are not choices listed on the menu; everything on it was delivered to our table! We never went hungry. It was an excellent way to taste food we might not have ordered without a set menu.

Water Puppet Theater

One of the well known attractions of Hanoi is the Thang Long Water Puppet Theater located on the edge of Hoan Kiem Lake.  This was our last stop of the day.

 

This is a fun show, perhaps a bit long for those of us that don't understand the language, but definitely worth seeing.  The theater probably seats close to a thousand and a high percentage are using the video cameras in their phone to record the event. If you've not previously heard of "water puppets" as we had not, you can google it to help understand how truly amazing it is. 

 

Well, if everyone else is recording, let's just join in for a few seconds.

 The supporting musicians and singers on the sides were quite talented.

  

A Cyclo Tour Back to the Hotel  

The puppet theater is fairly close to the Silk Path Hotel and our day's tour included a cyclo ride through the Old Town neighborhood ending up back to the hotel.

The development of the Cyclo, a three-wheeled taxi operated with a bicycle drive mechanism and the passengers up front, is credited to French engineer Pierre Coupeaud during the 1930s who lived in Vietnam when it was known as part of French Indochina.  It's a fun way to get around Old Town and the French Quarter after you've walked a few hours and are ready for a ride back to the hotel.  The slow speed and open-air seating offers much better photo opportunities than shooting from a taxi or bus window. 

 

After a bit of rest, we were ready to strike out on our own for a walking tour through Old Town before calling it a day, but I'll leave that for later.

Many more photos, of course, for this post and the previous post at this Flickr album.

 

 

A Visit to Vietnam - Part Two, Arrival and the Tran Quoc Pagoda

Travel to Vietnam 

Our departure to visit Vietnam was scheduled for 1:20 AM so we headed to the Cairo airport at about 10:30 PM.  We were traveling on Qatar Airways with an intermediate stop at Doha, just across the Arabian Gulf from Iran.

It's about a three hour flight to Doha, then four hours between planes and another six and a half hours to Hanoi.  With five hours time difference, we would arrive at around 3:00 PM, Egyptian time - 8:00 PM local Vietnam time. 

Doha International Airport has a rather exotic feel.  Coming out of the long concourse passage we were greeted by a lobby filled with tall green trees and flowing water, perhaps intended to be reminiscent of an oasis in the desert.
  
 

After the long flight we were met at the airport in Hanoi by a driver from our tour company, Way To Vietnam, and soon headed downtown to our hotel.  Our first glimpse of the town came as we crossed the colorfully lighted Vanh Dai bridge  over the Red River.  In the distance a number of high-rise buildings were also lit with decorative colors celebrating the New Year.

  

Ms. Huong Bui at Way To Vietnam had arranged hotels, tour guides and drivers for us for the entire two-week visit.  She made excellent choices. Our hotel in Hanoi was the Silk Path Hotel in the "Old Town" section of the city. 

    

 

While checking in, I changed some money.  The exchange rate is approximately 25,000 to 1; handing the desk clerk two hundred dollars, I received five million Vietnamese dong in exchange - we were instant millionaires!  Here is the Hundred Thousand dong note with Ho Chi Minh's picture on the front.  He is also found on the front of the 500,000 200,000 50,000 20,000 10,000 5,000 2,000 and 1,000 dong notes.

  

We were glad to get to the hotel for some genuine rest after the long plane ride and agreed with our driver to start our tour the next day at 9:00 A.M.

The guide for our time in Hanoi was Mike (his real name is difficult for westerners) and we headed out for a whirlwind tour of several of the prominent tourist sites.  The driver brought along a 5G sim chip for my cellphone so that we would have Internet access anywhere we ventured in the country.

 

At its heart, Hanoi is a very old city officially founded in 1010 although the area was settled much earlier than that.  From a population of about 260,000 in 1950 it has grown rapidly to its current population of 8.5 million. (you can find just about any number from 6 million to 10 million in various sources)  It is very much a city of lakes with two of them, West Lake and Hoan Kiem Lake both within walking distance of our hotel.

 

The Tran Quoc Pagoda 

Our first stop on the morning tour was a small island on the edge of West Lake to visit the Tran Quoc Pagoda, the oldest Buddhist pagoda in Hanoi, dating from the sixth century.  This pagoda is a popular stop for local Buddhists during the Tet new-year celebration so it was very crowded.  Guide Mike gave us a brief introduction to religious customs and temple offerings as we toured the temple.

 

Inside the pagoda, there were numerous offerings including food, flowers and small Buddha statues left in honor of departed ancestors. 

 

A well-worn brass plaque details the pagoda's history including famous students and visitors.  It also explains the history of the nearby Bodhi fig tree.

In 1959, the President of India, Mr. Rajender Prasad visited Vietnam.He brought a seedling of the Bodhi tree (taken from the Bodhi tree where Shakyamuni Buddha attained Nirvana over 25 centuries ago) and planted it in the Pagoda. 

Circling the Bodhi tree or meditating beneath it is part of Buddhist practice.  To find a Bodhi tree near you, check out this Wikipedia page.

 

Perhaps the most notable and certainly the most photographed feature of the temple site for western visitors is the towering stupa dating from 1998.   

 

  

 

I freely confess to not having encountered the term "stupa" previously.  Browsing the Internet didn't help much.  I only encountered references to domed structures such as this:

The tower-shaped stupa seems to have evolved in Vietnam and China without much documentation or historical context.  (see note at the bottom of this post for another interesting example of the style)  Fortunately, Vietnam Airlines gives us a bit more insight into this particular example:

The 11-storey stupa was built in 1998, which is the most striking feature of Tran Quoc Pagoda, standing tall at 15 meters. Its symmetrical design, adorned with intricately carved lotus motifs, symbolizes spiritual enlightenment. Each of its 11 tiers features six arched windows, each housing a meticulously crafted Amitabha Buddha statue made from precious stone, totaling 66 statues.

Crowning the stupa is a nine-tiered lotus pedestal, also made of gemstone, symbolizing spiritual ascension. Positioned in harmony with the sacred Bodhi tree gifted by Indian President Rajendra Prasad in 1959 and propagated from the original tree in Bodh Gaya...

Vietnam Discovery also has an entry for the Tran Quoc Pagoda which includes the following observation:

Due to its beautiful and peaceful scenery, Tran Quoc Pagoda was mentioned in a lot of poems and parallel sentences of Vietnamese kings and mandarins, especially under Nguyen Dynasty. Until now, there are many poems preserved in the pagoda. You will have a chance to get to know Vietnamese literature style in the past and the country’s history also.

Several poems appear posted around the Pagoda.  I can't vouch for the accuracy of Google Translate's interpretation but here are a pair of them. 

Perhaps the leaves swaying in the breeze have had an adverse effect on the translator!

 

More photos at this Flickr Album, of course.

 

Notes:

Another example of a tall stupa in a Vietnamese temple is found about sixty miles south of Hanoi in the Ninh Binh province.  The Wikipedia entry for the Bai Dinh Temple complex includes this photograph of a tall stupa under construction;

 

The usually comprehensive Wikipedia has an entry for Stupa that begins, "a stupa is a domed hemispherical structure containing several types of sacred relics..." The accompanying photos don't include any stupas like the ones seen above. 

 

We were curious about the religious orientation of the Vietnamese.  Browsing several Internet sites seems to validate the Wikipedia numbers of about 75% irreligious, 13% Buddhist and 7% Catholic.  The 75% irreligious, however, is also interpreted as containing a large cohort of "folk religion" and ancestor worship.  Throughout the country, there is a lot of incense being burned in honor of ancestors, at least during Tet.