Viet Nam, Part 2

Wrapping up our time in Viet Nam . . .

Headed north on the overnight train from Ha Noi to Sa Pa.

One of the Mung huts in Sa Pa.  The Mung people left China 400 years ago to avoid persecution, and settled in the hills of Viet Nam.  China is just over a mountain range above the valley.  The Mung people dye their clothes black with indigo, and live in houses which have no plumbing, electricity, or anything we could consider a convenience.  This is the fire pit where they cook, and the side of the house where the women have to sit at meals.  I could hardly stand the smokiness inside.

This is how they hull their rice.  Water is routed into the larger log, and when it gets heavy enough, it pounds down at the other end and separates the rice from the husks.

Each day as hikers and tour groups head out to walk down among the rice terraces, the Mung women follow along hoping to sell bracelets or weaving.  Unless you tell them you're not shopping, they stick with you.  I bought a bracelet the first day.  The second day I told them I wasn't shopping so they could move on to another tourist.

 

The Mung people, and other tribes, have terraced the slopes throughout the valley in order to plant rice.

Back in Ha Noi.  Street "restaurants" like this are very common.  

Crossing the street is no small task.  Only a few intersections have traffic lights, so you just have to move slowly into the traffic and give the scooters time to move around you.  

Can you imagine being an electrician here?  We saw examples like this all over the country, Thailand too.

Ladies hoping to sell fruit and flowers.

One of many, many parking areas for the scooters.  Often the sidewalks are blocked by them.

A closeup -- fancy and modern on the bottom, but . . .

and, my beloved 'hardware store' truck from Mexico has turned into a 'hardware store' bicycle!

For a communist country, Viet Nam is incredibly capitalistic.  People seem to work long, hard hours and we saw many small businesses.  There are posters of "Uncle" Ho Chi Minh all over the city.  Nobody seemed to care that we were Americans, nor did anyone mention the Viet Nam War.  However, in the museum showing the history of Viet Nam's efforts to overthrow the French, and then the U.S., there are plaques referring to the "war of American aggression".  

We went to Hoa Lo Prison, aka the Ha Noi Hilton, where John McCain and others were held and tortured as POW's.  It's history was awful and bloody from the beginning.  In the late 1800's, the French destroyed a village, famous for its porcelain products, and built the prison.  Most of it has been torn down and replaced with a high rise office building, but the rest has been preserved as a museum, showing the ghastly conditions for Communist Vietnamese (women included) imprisoned for trying to overthrow the French.  

The photos portray the Americans' time there quite differently, filled with outdoor recreation, happily cooking holiday meals, and receiving letters from home.    Garvin said, "It looks like they were treated really well here."  I had just overheard a woman say her neighbor was a POW at Hoa Lo, so we talked to her a bit.  My knowledge of the Viet Nam War is limited, but I was fairly certain the prison had not been a model of prisoners' rights for American POW's.  She assured Garvin that those photos of happy American soldiers were staged.

That said, we were treated well everywhere we went.  People were friendly and helpful, and very eager to please.  On our last night in Bangkok we met an English couple heading home after 2 years in Viet Nam. They said the Vietnamese could take or leave the tourists and would be happy to go back to their closed society.  I found that interesting, but it wasn't our experience.