16th April 2010
This morning we visited the ‘posh’ end of town. We had discovered this whole new area yesterday when we were dropping people off after our Perfume Pagoda tour. We were also searching for a supermarket where we could buy some peppermint tea bags, which happened to be in the same vicinity.
We walked past the Hanoi Opera House, an imposing building with a French style facade, not far from the Hilton and Metropole hotels. The cyclo drivers were lined up ready to pounce on unsuspecting tourists coming out of these big hotels. We managed to have a quick look around the foyer of the Opera House before being shown the door, but it looked quite impressive.
We searched in vain for our supermarket before resorting to asking the concierges at some of the hotels. They were extremely helpful and directed us to a local shopping centre with a supermarket on the second floor. We picked up some toiletries which we needed, but no peppermint tea.
Back at the hotel to drop off our purchases, we found mention of an ex-pat shop at the other end of town. This was another new area for us by another of Hanoi’s lakes, Truc Bach Lake. This is known outside Vietnam as the site where the US politician John McCain landed as a navy pilot during the Vietnam War after being shot down. It is located on the banks of the city’s largest lake, West Lake. It is among the most seriously polluted lakes in Hanoi.
We hopped into a taxi and hightailed it over to the shop. A completely different area of the city, feeling much more open and spread out than the narrow streets of the old quarter.
Success on the tea bag front too, although probably the most expensive bags ever at over five pounds for forty bags, but hopefully they’ll at least help to calm the stomach situation.
A nice coffee and cake at Highlands coffee, then a taxi ride back to Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum. This is only open from 7.30 until 10.30 in the morning, so we couldn’t go in and visit Uncle Ho, but we were able to admire his tomb and take some photos of it and the smartly dressed guards outside. We were also lucky enough to watch the goosestepping changing of the guard. It must be so boring for these guards to stand stock still for hours. Perhaps the many tourists are a welcome distraction.
Not far from Ho Chi Minh’s final resting place (despite his wish to be cremated) stands the One Pillar Pagoda. This small structure is actually a replica of an earlier and larger model that was destroyed (intentionally) by the French. Alongside the Perfume Temple, this is regarded as one of Vietnam’s two most iconic temples. The temple is built of wood on a single stone pillar 1.25 m in diameter, and it is designed to resemble a lotus blossom, which is a Buddhist symbol of purity, since a lotus blossoms in a muddy pond.
We also visited another temple, which used to be part of the same complex as the One Pillar Pagoda. Unlike the Pagoda, you could actually go inside this temple and see the now familiar shrines to Buddha.
The evening was spent getting ready for our three day trip to Halong Bay which starts tomorrow morning.