The Bro Trip

Sooo, since we've got lots of english-speaking (or at least non-swedish speaking) followers on our blog, we thought we might give it a try to start bloggin in english. Though we don't wanna hear anything about the grammar or the vocabulary, all other comments are appreciated :)

We've been sightseeing in Hanoi now for two days, so we thought we'd tell everyone what we've seen and experienced so far! We started of yesterday by going to the Temple of Literature. This is Hanoi's first university and was founded in 1070 as a temple to Confucius (who's temple we've visited in Beijing). Six years later they did also turn it into a university and we've learned that their educational system within the university isn't very different from the one we use (in sweden at least). They applied, the students with the highest grades got in, they had ordinary tests, then national tests and so on. Pretty cool! The temple consited in five courtyards with different buildings. Within the last building, there was a statue of Confucius and on his side his four apprentices.


Outside Temple of Literature. The left pillar reads: Visitor, please dismount
from your horse. We did :P

After that we moved on to the Vietnamese Museum of Ethnology. This musuem shows different types of etnical groups in Vietnam,their lifestyle and culture. Luckily this wasn't an ordinary museum with small scale models of buildings, pictures and all that. No no, they had actually brought the some of the villagers from all of the groups and let them build their buildings in full scale! It was awesome! It was like walking into a small vietnamese society somwhere in the countryside. They had the big town house, forges, stables, gravesites ornated with various items and art and also the common houses where people lived. It was really interesting, and of course, we got lots of good photos too. We also took the chance to see a Water Puppet Show at the museum. This is a classical vietnamese form of art, especially for the northern parts and Hanoi. Kinda fun, but since they only spoke Vietnamese, it wasn't too easy to understand what happened.


That's one big ass town hall!


Christopher just had to sit down and think of life's great mysteries. Accompanied
by a wooden figure.

After that we went back to our "hood", the Old Town. In the center of Old town, there's a lake where they have a temple and a statue of a giant tortoise. The legend has it that emperor Le Thai To in the 15th century asked the god for a sword to defeat the chinese. God gave him a sword and with that, they fought the chinese and won their independece. One day after the war, the emperor was chilling on the lake with his bros and had a few beers (we think) enjoying the victory when suddenly a giant golden tortoise appeared. The tortoise took the sword from the emperor and disappeared into the lake. No one has seen neither since that day. People assumed that this were the gods who reclaimed their sword. That is why the lake today is called Hoan Kiem, whick means Lake of the Sword Restored. Cool story! But sorry, now I've bored you long enough with this. Point was, we walked around the lake and took a few photos, haha.


Strolling by the Hoan Kiem lake at night.

We went to a genuine Vietnamese restaurant for som genuine Vietnamese food later that night. We had Cha Ca, which are charcoal grilled fishfillets with lots of garniture. It was yammi! After that we headed back to our hotel for some sleep.

So that was yesterday... Today we visited Ho Chi Minh's museum. It sucked. Worst museum ever. Didn't see anything of interest, coudn't go into the mansion and couldn't see his embalmed body (cause sep-dec it's in Russia for restoration). Worthless! And it cost us like 15.000 dong each! (about 5 swedish kronor :P) Instead, we went to some bus companies to look for tickets out of here and we also visited the temple on the lake from last night. Wasn't really a temple, just a small building, more like a place of prayers (isn't that the definition of a temple, Christopher?) Well, it was just a really tiny building you couldn't get into! Anyways, we strolled around Old Town after that, just enjoying and experiencing the atmosphere. Narrow streets, people standing, walking around or selling food on every sidewalk and motorbikes as far as the eye can see (and hear - the horn is used ALL OF THE TIME here). It all has got a strange charm. We also took the oppurtunity to enjoy some massage (not with happy ending, guys). They had swedish massage 60 min for only $10. Worth it!


The crowded & narrow streets of Old Town

This was a very long update, sorry for that, but we're not forcing anyone ;) Hopefully next time, we'll be somewhere on an island in Halong Bay lying on the beach and enjoying life even more!