VN 14: Maison Centrale, Part 1

Maison Centrale is known in the US as the Hanoi Hilton and is what the Vietnamese used to call Hoa Lo, "fiery oven". Much of it has been demolished, but just enough has been kept as a tourist attraction--as an important historical relic.

Hoa Lo has an established place on the tourist train in Hanoi, and it tends to be the place most Americans ask about when they hear I have been to Vietnam, the way Vietnamese are asked if they saw the Statue of Liberty after they visit the US.

Hoa Lo was built by the French to jail Vietnamese, something which many Americans do not realize. 

In addition to the experience of touring the prison  in the sweltering heat--a truly humbling experience--I can also recommend a view from the eighth-floor-or-so air conditioned Australian sports bar in the glass and chrome skyscraper across the street.

VN 12: Work Hard, Play Hard

This almost-divey bar is no more; the last time I was in Hanoi, I made a point of walking down "coffee street' in the Old Quarter, Hang Hanh, and it had been replaced by a hotel.

More specifically, according to Google, it has been replaced by one Lakeside Palace Hotel, a boutique hotel with "warm cherrywood furniture...silks and natural linen...Italian marble bathroom". The hotel  has seven storeys and a restaurant at the top. By Hanoi standards, at least on the website it doesn't look really, seriously, competitively  upscale--yet--but it is certainly not a earthy as the Funky Monkey was.

Funky Monkey was a dark and cool and well-located place to get a Tiger Beer. Whether or not karaoke ever happened there, I don't know, but my guess is yes, it certainly did.

VN 11: Copyright Violation: Everything Else

Let me put it this way: when I asked, a friend gave me directions to a neighborhood (an intersection, actually) where I could buy software to bring home to friends. When I found a shop and asked for not just one copy but for two, I got a quizzical look. But the woman did sell the two copies to me. Later I learned why: once you slide the software disk into the laptop, the first thing you needed to do was click "Crack". And then you could not only use what you bought but also make as many copies of it as you wanted.

These days DVDs of Slumdog Millionaire or Platoon or Mamma Mia! or pretty much any current movie are for sale in Ho Chi Minh City for a dollar each. The DVD may play well, may play for five minutes, or may not play at all. 

A book I was given for my Vietnamese class was a faint copy of a copy of a copy, nearly 300 pages  all stapled together. Some pages were crooked, some pages had darker print than others, and some pages were missing. Nobody seemed to worry.

With Vietnam's entry into the World Trade Organization, examples of copyright violation are lessening, but, tellingly, when Vietnamese visitors came to the US, they often chose to buy vitamins and upscale cosmetics to take home, in part to be sure of the quality and the brand.

VN 10: Copyright Violation: Art

On the bright side, one way of learning how to paint is to copy The Masters. And so, in select locations, at least in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, you see art shops open to the street where a painter paints, say, a copy of the Mona Lisa. Or copies a painting from a book.

Open-air, open-city painting.

I have heard that, as in the US, art majors are not always immediately successful or employable. And so I am told this is one place where art majors may end up after university.

I once had a professor in a graduate writing class who observed that the two ways of learning anything are imitation and practice. 

Maybe so.

VN 9: Water Puppets Walking on Water

Among the most charming of the routine tourist sights in Hanoi is the Thang Long Water Puppets.

Basically the Thang Long Water Puppets have taken a Red River (northern Vietnam) cultural activity--people living on the rivers entertaining each other with puppets controlled by dowels under the water rather than with strings--and made it a colorful and splashy indoor event. The puppets act out folktales and other stories: farmers harvesting crops, a student returning home, and a dragon dance, among others. It's a colorful and splashy event. Very plinky-plunky. The puppeteers are not visible until the end when they come out from behind the curtain that hides them, but the musicians are visible throughout. 

Whenever I have been to a performance in Hanoi, the audience seemed to be made up of mostly Western tourists, and when I asked (especially early in my visits), I was told the cost (maybe $%?) was too expensive for most Vietnamese. BUT in Ho Chi Minh City, the audience in the newer water puppets venue in District 1 (basically HCMC's Manhattan, give or take) seemed to be a mix of locals and tourists, possible evidence of the rising Vietnamese middle class.

VN 8: Slow Daytime Traffic in Hanoi

Until Vietnam remodels totally and unfortunately removes all the vestiges of their colonial history, going to Vietnam has moments when it is like visiting Paris. The architecture remains. St least dome. For the time being.

The street crowds are not Parisian, nor is the November craichin, dust rain.

VN 7: More Life on the Street

There are sidewalks but you can't always see them, and walking in the street in some places is perfectly acceptable.

You just have to manage not to get hit.

For a far more vivid explanation of crossing a street in Vietnam than I can ever give you, go to YouTube and search for "crossing street in Vietnam". Yes, there are many more brand new red-green-yellow streetlights in Vietnam than there used to be, and in some places the traffic does not always consider the traffic light as just kind of a loosey-goosey suggestion that can be ignored. These days sometimes cars and trucks, motorbikes and bicycles and cyclos do stop, even for pedestrians.

Really.

That said, it still helps to think of navigating the streets of Vietnam this way: as you make your way around, you have to help them not hit you.

And you also need to be aware enough to notice not just the new red light on the corner, but also the motorbike racing towards you--aiming towards you, it seems--going the wrong way up the one way street you are walking along.