On the 29h of October, truthfully and in fact, your honour, we did leave the hotel room.
Quick reference to the Hanoi guidebook chapter we downloaded, and the map within, proved useful in deciding to walk West to the Literature Temple, then up to the West Lake, and back through our old neighbourhood, where we used to buy our pineapple on a previous visit to Hanoi, to the hotel and the train to Hue. I can’t work out how to type the accent which is supposed the be present above the ‘e’ in Hue; but if anyone is saying it like ‘Hugh’ in their head as they read this, please cease doing so.
We walked no further than the same restaurant as last night for breakfast, and left quite well fed.
It’s not very far across town to the Literature Temple, along the footpaths covered in motorbikes, under the low-hanging clumps of electrical wires, and it’s the same route as the way we came back yesterday, except that you don’t turn right to go up Dien Bien Phu. And once we came to a big wall that went a fair way in both directions, we knew we were in the right place. An old man was kind enough to be asleep in his hammock on the footpath, presenting a perfect photo opportunity; I seized it.
The Literature Temple is actually something much more like a University; Confucianism was bought down from China, and at that time (1050 AD?) the Temple was founded as a place for people to learn about the same. Inscriptions adorn the stone front gates, and they’re in Chinese. Mandarin or Cantonese or a grandfather of either? – I couldn’t say which. There are five or maybe six main buildings, spread out quite widely, and to reach these buildings you go first through a small garden with two ornamental rectangular lakes lined by stone balustrades; and then through a large gate, in which there are tablets informing you about the age of the buildings and the reasons for their existence; and then you reach the turtles.
I guess they might be tortoises.
It used to be that at the Literature Temple people learned about and were examined upon certain things, and the people who passed those examinations had their names inscribed on tablets. Turtles (tortoises?) being a symbol of wisdom and learning (and oldness), somebody had a brainwave and set up the stone tablets, with names engraved, ornamentally on top of huge stone turtles. Lots of turtles. Eight rows of at least 10, maybe 15 turtles, and just as many in the other rows on the other side of the courtyard.
After the turtles, and through another stone gate, you reach the main lake, where the people who studied at the Temple used to get part of their afternoon meal from. It’s not really a lake; it’s a very large square pond, something like 20 metres long each side, and deep enough that we couldn’t see the bottom leaning over the engraved stone balustrade, watching the fish dart about. And finally after that, under another high stone gate, built into another red brick wall, you come to the main courtyard and the main buildings. And the gift shop.
In the main buildings, in the parts you can go into, there are several very large wooden statues of scholars in the seated position, looking wise. From the next building came music, and in there, the biggest of the main buildings, we found a traditional folk concert in progress. The final building is H-shaped, and the musicians, in their bright costumes, sat in the end of one of the legs of the H. Standing in the middle part of the H looking east and west, along red brick paths, were small pagodas housing a huge drum and a huge bell. We sat on the stone seats, with gardens all around, but 15 minutes later the rain began, so we moved underneath the bell tower.
The rain got heavier, and then lightened, and then got heavier, and we sheltered under the Bell Tower for more than an hour; and it was very pleasant indeed.
By 2.30pm the rain became a tenable proposition, and we walked back through the courtyard, past the turtles and the lakes and the gardens, and turned left out the front gate of the temple, intending to acquire lunch. The rain returned slightly, and we were set upon by a lady selling plastic panchos, which we didn’t really need. She wanted 10,000 VND for two, so we offered 6,000 which she wasn’t having, but that excited the interest of another pancho-lady, who then also followed us up the street for a while, insisting that 8,000 was OK, but she wouldn’t go as low as 6,000 either, although the second lady gave up eventually, which left the first lady free to pretend to give up and then turn around and follow me again for another 50 metres or so, trying all manner of things like standing halfway in my way and pushing the panchos into my hands.
In the meantime the rain had softened again.
At the north end of the block we turned left, and walked along to the other corner of the Temple wall, looking around for a restaurant. We had seen a French cafe/restaurant on the Eastern side of the Temple, which looked good but a bit expensive, and rather than sally around in the rain we took ourselves back that cafe, and had a very satisfying lunch. Almost all Vietnamese houses, and shops, are as thinner or thinner than the terraces we know, so almost all restaurants have an upstairs, and in the upstairs of this one we, in our wet shoes, and clothes needing a proper wash, felt more than a bit out of place.
The walls were cream, and the roof a yellow-white, and they had huge light-lime lamps, and very nice photos on the walls, and some huge white couches as well. Not to mention the excellent service and the filling vegetable lasagne and eggplant pizza. And there were actual French people eating at one of the other tables. By the time we thought of venturing outside the rain was more or less absent, and the humidity was already beginning to return vengefully.
On the way up to the West Lake, we passed the Mausoleum again, which was still closed, and walked into an altogether different part of town, with parks and a fountain, and a vast roundabout, and wide leafy streets, and a notable lack of street-level chaos. The West Lake was every bit as vast as it appeared on the map; we had no hope or inclination of walking all the way around it. On the bench we sat and watched some people wheel their swan boats back to the rental place, and then walked back towards our ‘old neighbourhood’, where our previous hotel was, looking for the pineapple lady and for something to have for dinner. Pineapple we could not find, but fresh pears and half a bunch of bananas proved a cheap and adequate replacement, but the deep-fried battered banana we thought we were buying from the street-lady proved to be something else; Cassava, perhaps.
From our previous hotel we knew exactly how to get back to the Old Quarter and our new hotel, and had a great fun walk dodging on and off the footpaths as required, and stopping to video the motorbikes synchromeshing through a three-way intersection.
After a little wait around at the hotel, we checked out at the time specified on the note in the lobby by Tuan; 6.57pm. Or at least our clock said 6.57pm, but as we were putting our bags on he called our room to remind us, and somehow managed accidentally to call me George. Which became funnier as we went along.
No time to delve into that now, though, for we had a train to get on, and banana sandwiches to eat. Well, banana buns, really, because almost the only shape of bun available from many Vietnamese bakeries is long, thin and white. This train wasn’t all that nice, really, but for no obvious reason I was dead tired by 9pm and went to bed then.
Greg
