An amazing breakfast! If you’ve never had the massive buffet at a high-end Asian hotel it’s a bucket list item.
At 9am, with a decent night’s sleep, we walked for a couple of hours through the old quarter of Hanoi. We poked through street after street of clothing, vegetable, flowers and butcher stalls with colors, scents and strange sights too many to describe. Such variety.
Fun fact….when buying a fresh chicken, look at their feet. Dirty feet and gnarled claws indicate a free range chicken, clean feet means it’s been factory raised. Additionally, lift the wing to look for signs of injections. When it comes to chickens, the Vietnamese are strictly anti-vax!
While Q was explaining how to buy a chicken the vendor snagged the creature by the neck and quickly slit its throat collecting the blood to make pudding. Juju is not so sure she is open to trying the pudding.
We then sat for a traditional Vietnamese coffee (also tried a salt and a coconut coffee) with 3 times the caffeine of arabica. Rocket fuel. We learned that the South was a coffee culture and the North favored green tea. There was also discussion of a specialty coffee that was treated by feeding beans to “weasels” and harvesting their poop (something may have got lost in translation here)
Q taught us more history including the secret Indo-China war that occurred after America’s departure. In 1976 Pol Pot attacked a newly unified Vietnam from Cambodia (supported by China), China also declared a direct war in the north. Unified Vietnam, supported by Russian weapons and money was victorious in both.
A peace between Russia-supported Vietnam and China (really a detente between communist super powers) was eventually reached. As part of the settlement both sides agreed to purge the event from their history books. Q’s father was a young officer and was effectively awarded his Party membership in exchange for his silence.
Then Mr. Ang drove us to a tiny, narrow home for an appointment to see a renown professor of traditional Vietnamese music and a maker and collector of instruments – Mr. Khanh.
An education, a private concert (accompanied by his young student), and an impromptu lesson on the Vietnamese violin for JuJu followed. She was vibrating!
In the afternoon we visited a Mahayana Buddhist temple. This branch, the largest in Vietnam, is a hybrid of Taoism (ancestor worship) and traditional Chinese Buddhism. The temple was approximately 1,500 years old.
It was difficult to reconcile Buddhism and reincarnation, with the sacrifices for dead ancestors in paradise on every altar. The offerings were paper coins, cell phones, fancy suits and model houses – and the idea was that these would transfer as gifts in the afterlife through incense.
The building and the grounds were in disrepair and the cacophony of different styles, smells, colors and even forms of the Buddha made it difficult to find any of the promised sense of peace.
Our hotel, the Metripole was an effective U.N. during the American War with many embassies operating from its state rooms. We took a tour of the bomb shelter – horrible, dark and claustrophobic. The history review featured Politicians, Performers and Protesters, all of whom made appearances and continue to – Jane Fonda, Joan Baez (who recorded portions of ” where are you now my son” in the bomb shelter), John McCain, and Charlie Chaplin, were featured.
Most recently, the hotel hosted the meeting between Xi and our geopolitically confused POTUS – a summit communists around the world saw as a giant step in their victory over democracy.
Dinner was at Q’s favorite family restaurant. We had Green Papaya salad, crispy shrimp pancake, steamed morning glory, and char grilled steak with chili-fish sauce. Our treat – dinner for 3 with drinks, $40.
Mac and Juju explore Southeast Asia 