days 12-13 - Hanoi

At Hanoi's excellent Museum of Ethnology we were struck by the similarites between some of the 54 different ethnic groups in Vietnam to other native groups around the Pacific.

One hill tribe constructs houses similar to those seen in parts of the South Pacific, except these people build at height because they have elephants.

Another house design is likethose we found in Western Samoa, where each bulding acts as a separate room (a cooking house, an eating house, a sleeping house, etc.)

And there are artificats that remind us of BC's native groups, such as the woven baskets and clothing of the Coast Salish (here bamboo, there cedar) and the Kwakiutl. Even totem poles!











The museum outlines the four key elements: water, earth, air and rice - rice substituting for fire. It got us thinking - what would the four elements be for other nations? For Canada for instance - rain, snow, syrup and beer perhaps? Or for England: chips, beer, rain and lard?

We had to negotiate a taxi out, but decided on a rather unique hybrid cyclo/moto back. Maybe the fact that our disabled driver had on his helmet the images both of Che Guevara and Michael Schumacher inspired us. Being part of the trafiic is more exhilerating than just trying to walk across it.

On our last days in Hanoi we also saw the infamous Hoa Lo Prison (aka the Hanoi Hilton), now a museum, where political prisoners were kept by the French (brutally) and American prisoners were kept by the North Vietnamese (humanely), as well as Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum and the flag tower. Excellent street food (our systems have proved worthy of such indugent risk), coffe in a lovely lakeside cafe, where a large tree branch fell with a whump about 10 feet away from where we were sitting. Would that count as our requisite South Asia near death experience? Hope so, cause that means it's now in the past.