2/13–Hanoi afternoon–Museum of Ethnology

This is our second foray into the vast Hanoi city center.  The Museum is about a 25 minute drive away, in the Cau Giay district, which is quite urban and contains neighborhoods that are fast becoming the commercial hub of the new city, along with towering skyscrapers that dominate the skyline.  I had originally wanted to come over here for the Lotte Center, the 2nd tallest building in Hanoi, and its observation deck. We nixed that idea after the first day here, when we could see the Lotte tower from our balcony – but only barely through the smoke and the smog.  It would be a total waste to pay the admission fee for an observation deck in these conditions!  But on our cross-city ride, we at least got to pass by the Tower on our way to the museum. That counts for something I suppose. 

The drive did indeed take about 25 minutes, but through lots of traffic – the scooters are out in scores!  Nonetheless, we made it to the museum, paid our entrance fee and began our tour.  We arrived just in front of a huge group of really loud Asian tourists, so while we got stuck in the first few exposition areas with them, as soon as we could, we went in the opposite direction in an effort to more fully enjoy the museum experience. 

The museum is a fascinating study in all the different tribes and ethnicities within Vietnam, along with their associated work, crafts and lifestyles.  One of the first things we see, though, is a water puppet display.  While the actual show wasn’t all that interesting, the displays here actually are.  You can see the puppets up close, plus the placard next to the puppets explains about the performance, so now we understand that all plays are the same with the same acts.

 

There are other interesting displays with tools and accessories used by different tribes, photographs (we love this one with the guy taking his fish traps to market) and actual pieces (like this odd cloven hoof knife, Hunter’s animal fur bag and cool clothing made of tree bark).

They’ve even built full scale, and model, replica houses to show how the different tribes lived and how they all built houses differently.  It’s really all quite fascinating – and way too much to try to explain between each ethnic group (or even remember).

We take our time covering the two floors full of artifacts and information, along the way successfully avoiding the rude Asians and a large group of what are probably Americans.  We're about done inside, when I spy this tri-level box that looks surprisingly like the box  my maternal grandmother, Boo Boo, had and that I ended up with, used for years as my sewing box.  The placard says its a box given at betrothal, hmmm…..

Now that we have completed our inside explorations, there is an entire open-air exhibition with actual life size houses built by artisans from the actual villages in which they are used.  It’s turned out to be a really nice day, so walking around the outside park is the perfect way to end our sightseeing day.  Not to mention there is a water puppet show going on, so we can hear (but not see – it costs way too much) that the acts are exactly the same as what we watched at the Yen Duc Village.

We spend the better part of an hour – or maybe even more – wandering around these houses, climbing up the carved ladders to explore the interiors. 

Then we come to the tombs. These are some wacky tombs, let me tell you. And we can’t figure out the phallic thing going on here – it’s all around the first tomb – and no explanation (at least none in English!). So we’ll leave it to your imagination!  The second tomb is much more traditional (at least in our mind) with the deer, dragons and other sacred animals.

At least Sunny enjoyed some of the statuary!

As we make our way toward the front of the park, one of the last structures we come to are water powered grinders.  These things are great. We are captivated by the way the trough fills up then suddenly overflows, bringing the grinder/masher up and then down fast, smashing whatever would be in the bowl.  You can tell we are intrigued – we took enough pictures and video!  

Leaving the outdoor section we wander into the “Craft Link” gift store, which has a dizzying array of gifts from each and every different ethnic group within Vietnam.  There are so many lovely (and touristy) things, you could spend a good deal of time in here, just trying to parse through what you might like to bring home. Even though we are weight challenged, a vase of unknown origin (or I should say unremembered) catches our eye.  It’s fairly light weight, and really attractive, so we decide we can add it to the luggage.  It only costs a little over $4 USD, how can we resist?  Into the back pack it goes, and we saunter out to the main gate to await our Uber ride home.

The story might end here, but no, not even close.  It takes a while to get our Uber, but once we do, the adventure begins.  We’re 2 days away from Tet and the streets are crazy crowded with people shopping for – yes, you guessed it – Kumquat trees and cherry blossom sticks. Not to mention people heading home for the holiday. So our Uber driver starts out in one direction, then changes course and heads another way – but to no avail.  Every street is crazy packed with cars and scooters.  It takes us almost an hour to get back to the hotel, but during the course of that hour, we had the best entertainment anyone could ask for!  And here are our awful pictures from the back of the Uber as we are surrounded, swarmed and ground to a halt by scooters, pedestrians and any other type of road and vehicular obstacles you can imagine.  The pictures can’t even begin to impart the crazy madness we encountered on our ride home, so, please just try to use your own imagination!

Finally back at the hotel, we gave the Uber driver a big tip because the ride took so much longer than it should have on a normal day. Then we proceeded upstairs to begin packing for our departure to Laos tomorrow.  Tonight we were breaking one of our cardinal rules (dining in the same restaurant twice) and going back to Bun Cha Ta for diner – we can’t get enough of Bun Cha, and there is NO WHERE to get it outside of Hanoi that we have found. Fortunately, we first went out to their website and found that they were closed for the holiday. Darn it.  Plans foiled.  We quickly did some searching and found a suitable replacement for dinner at the Garden House.  It looked like it had a cool vibe, with a downstairs dining room and neat upstairs sofa and coffee table type venue. 

We made a booking through the website, but when we arrived, it was apparent there was no need for the booking.  We were shown to a booth in the back of the first level (no sofas for us tonight) and began to peruse the extensive menu.  I settled on spring rolls, because once again, I wasn’t that hungry, but the waiter, who turned out to be the manager, convinced me to have the Vietnamese Sizzling cakes, which he said was another Hanoi specialty.  Ok.  I’m game!  They actually had Bun Cha on the menu, so of course, Ed ordered that.  And I decided to order the appetizer version of the crispy fish – but made the regrettable mistake of telling the waiter that I wanted it for my main course.  Duh.  I should know better!  Just point to what and let them figure it out.  Long story short – he gave me a main course portion – and there was far, far too much food on that table to even begin to eat!

First off, the Sizzling cake.  It was a crispy, empanada like dish, filled with all the best Hanoi spring roll filling.  It arrives on the plate, looking like a colossal turnover, accompanied by lettuce, basil, sauce and inexplicably, rice paper.  The waiter/manager comes over and indicates we should open up the crispy shell, take the stuffing out and place it in the spring roll with the lettuce, basil and sauce. Ok. What do we know?  As we are dismantling the cake, another waitress, An, comes over with scissors.  She gives us this confused look as we are taking the stuffing out – and we say, hey, they other guy told us to do it!  She just rolls her eyes, takes the scissors and cuts the empanada thing into 4 slices, then tells us to eat it in pieces, and roll it up in the rice paper like that.  Oy! The sparring wait staff! Regardless of how we ate it, the cake was delicious and certainly all I needed for the evening.

But the outcome of the sparring wait staff was that now An was our best friend and she continued to visit us all throughout the evening, giving us her background, explaining she was new, the restaurant was family owned and they were giving her a trial period, and if she succeeded then she would eventually become manager if the family hired her.  I won’t go into the details (suffice it to say we were there for at least 2 hours and talked to her constantly) but we made a note to for sure leave an excellent TripAdvisor review for her!

As we chatted, the rest of our food was delivered. The Bun Cha was nothing like the Bun Cha we had previously. This was just perfectly seasoned and roasted pork, served with lemongrass stalks, rice noodles and an excellent dipping sauce.  (When I’ve researched Bun Cha recipes to recreate at home, this is what I’ve found – the pork with a “dipping” sauce, not the soup that we were served at Bun Cha Ta.)  My fish was also excellent, a nice mild white fish and perfectly fried, but entirely too large for my quickly filling stomach.

We did the best we could, and finished as much as possible along with our wine and beer. By the time we were done, we felt like we should walk the circumference of the Old Quarter just to try to digest all this awesome grub.  We did have at least a 10 minute walk back to the hotel, so that satisfied us a bit, as we navigated the crowded sidewalks filled with food, retail and scooter obstacles.

Back on our patio, we relaxed, watching the never ending traffic below us, and staring at the night time skyline, while being serenaded by the constant cacophony of horns.

Can’t think of a better way to end a totally enjoyable stay in Hanoi.