Days 4-5: Back to Hanoi

After Halong Bay, we went back to Hanoi. We are staying at a nice little hotel on a side street in the Old Quarter. We have been able to navigate all around here and get to tourist attractions, shopping and food. Our first day back we wandered around the shopping district. Each street has it's own speciality of shopping - there is a silver street, paper street, pharmacy street, candy street, etc. In modern times, we also found a sunglasses row, shoes row, etc.

The next day we visited the Temple of Literature, which was established in 1070 to honor Confucius. One of the first courtyards is filled with Tortoise Stele, stones mounted on tortoise pedestals with a brief history of the scholars who passed the examinations - basically it's a big stone college diploma. It was another spot of quiet in the middle of the noisy city.

After the Temple, we went over to One Pillar Pagoda. It's a small pagoda in a lotos pond standing on just one pillar. The area around it was beautifully gardened. We then went back over to the Hoan Kiem Lake area to wander the streets and shop a bit. We went to an area known for Bia Hoy - Fresh Beer. The beer is like a home brew and only cost us 25cents per glass! There was a corner filled with these beer places and you sit out in plastic chairs on the street corner and drink beer!

We spent the evening at a Water Puppet Theater. This type of art dates back one thousand years and it is a authentic Vietnamese expression of culture. The themes relate to rural life. The puppets are controlled by puppeteers behind a screen standing waist deep in water. It was a lot of fun - we didn't understand a word, but the puppets get the point across.

We had a nice dinner and headed back to our hotel. Today we are going to Hue, our next stop in Central Vietnam.

Stone Stele - large diplomas of scholars

Confucius

One Pillar Pagoda

Water Puppet Theater

Beer on the corner!

View from our beer corner

We like our Fresh Beer!