Waking early, I lay in bed wondering if I will be able to cope with the local night life. I crawled back to my hotel after midnight. A mixture of beer, Hanoi Vodka and wacky backy created a blurry memory of a bloody good time. Staggering into the bathroom I had to manipulate the shower/bath taps to get water into the right pipes. Showers and thier workings are a constant source of wonder and new experience. Plotting a course to a lovely hot shower is always entertaining not always succesful but certainly interesting. My shower at the 3 B is a classic example. There are a series of levers, taps and rotating cylinders. There is not a separate hot and cold tap the machine seems to decide how you will have it depending on how one of the cylinders move. Shower managed I went for breakfast downstairs and had my first Pho Ga, some orange juice with an image problem and a coffee that is thick and tasting of hazelnuts. It was delicious.
Mr Thanh picked us up a 9:00 and took us to West Lake for coffee. We sat up stairs with a great view of West Lake, the smaller lake beside it and the road full of traffic in between. Watching the scenes below just heightens the feelings that this place is very home like. I could really get used to this place. After coffee we set off for the "Hanoi Hilton". For the vietnamese this place is a very chilling and morbid place. The French first built the jail to house political prisoners and revolutionary activists. They used the place to torture and brutalise the inmates. They had people locked into stocks so they could not move about for 24/7. All they could do is sit or lie down on the concrete bench in thier own filth. No toilets here chaps. People were kept in large rooms all together unless they were slated for execution where they were kept in solitary cells not much bigger than one human, dark unpleasant and a bit airless. I went into a number of cells and felt sick with the atmosphere. It was almost as if the experiences of previous tenants pervades the air. Horrible. Food provided to the inmates was deliberately left to rot before being given to the prisoners so they would get sick and die. On the walls there are photos and records of individual prisoners. The significant thing was that all the photos were of "death photos" taken just after death.
While the jail and it's story is about what the French colonial masters did to the people of Vietnam, it did also house American prisoners mostly taken prisoner after thier plane was shot down during the American War. They have lots of photos of Americans playing basket ball or recieving medical attention. An ill looking John Mc Cain is being adminsitered to by a Vietnamese doctor. There are exhibits of prisoner clothing and items of life; cups plates etc. The overall effect of the place is sobering. I don't know how french people see this place, but if I were them I would feel very sheepish. I did not take many photos here. I was emotionally effected and did not really think about photos rather focusing more on the subject matter and feeling quite outraged.
Thanh had to go to work in the afternoon. He dropped us back in the old quarter and we bid a fond farewell untill next week. We then went looking for lunch. I had adopted a policy of only "doing" one activity per day. This is so we don't get stressed and overdo things. The idea is to relax and enjoy the experience rather than cramming everything in as soon as possible. This is an "old man " strategy and works for me. We went for lunch at my favorite Bun Cha resteraunt not far from our hotel in the old quarter. It was lovely, so tasty and filling. The afternoon was spent relaxing in my room. If truth were to tell I had a good nap.
In the evening we ate across the road at the "New Day". A virtual banquet was had with Ernie and I selecting 5 dishes from what was on offer in the kitchen. It was delicious. After the meal we went for a walk through the old quarter to look at the night market. We ended up at the Irish Wolfhound. The rest of the night is a blur of alcohol and special smokes. Here we were consuming all kinds of things 4 meters from a passle of police. Crazy. We left when the police came to enforce the curfew. What a night!
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