Hi everyone!
So today Laura, me, James, Tom, Jo and Emma decided we would like to go to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum....but so did a million other people. We arrived in a taxi and the queue was literally 1 kilometre long. I am not even exaggerating!!! Ridiculous! There was a queue to get to the queue to get to the queue!!
Who is Ho Chi Minh? Quinny told us that in 1858 the French started to occupy Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh led a revolution (he formed the Viet Minh) in 1945 to try and overthrow the French because they caused all sorts of problems, including food shortages by taking over the rice production and exportation in Vietnam which is the most abundant source of food for Vietnamese people. A lot of people died, and there was other unrest as well. Long story short the revolution worked temporarily, but the French came back in 1946. They stayed in Vietnam until 1954, when the Vietnamese led by Ho Chi Minh defeated them at Dien Bien Phu (Mum - the lyric in 'We Didn't Start The Fire' now make sense!!!). Even though Ho Chi Minh died in 1969, after the war in 1975 Vietnam became completely independent and it was all thanks to his hard work and ideas early on. As a result of all of this, the people of Vietnam hold Ho Chi Minh very close to their hearts. He is referred to as 'Uncle Ho', and especially with Tet/new year here, people were very keen to visit him for good luck. We saw the outside of the mausoleum from a distance, but decided it wasn't worth waiting hours and hours for a glimpse of his corpse!!!
So instead we ventured to the Temple of Literature. This was packed as well. Everywhere here is absolutely choccers, not my favourite city we've been to as a value my personal space!! The temple was the first university in Vietnam. There wasn't much at all in English here, so we just ventured around enjoying the dragon dances, courtyards and watching everyone buy their lucky calligraphy paper with symbols for the new year on it. We soon discovered that today the six of us were to be looked at and spoken to like celebrities by the local people. A guy came up to James and wanted a photo with him, and throughout the day all six of us were each asked at one point or another for a photo. One man told Jo she comes from the sun because of the colour of her hair, while apparently I come from the moon because my skin is so white. It's very strange being looked at, waved at and photographed all the time!!! A little kid pulled on his mum's skirt and pointed at me, grinning at me and speaking. I'm assuming he said something like "look mum, a ghost!!!". Hahaha.
Next we went to the Fine Arts museum and enjoyed a huge collection of different types of Vietnamese art. It was pretty good! We had lunch at a place called 'Pho 24' afterwards, and all had a bowl of pho, a Vietnamese soup dish with rice noodles and meat (in Laura's case, veggies!!). Yum yum. Something quite funny happened here. Throughout the trip, Quinny has taught us some local lingo, and when we are able to apply it in a real life situation it's hilarious. James went to sit down and his chair broke, and he yelled 'Oy choy Oy!!!' (Oh my goodness) and the waitress laughed so hard she had to catch her breath. Maybe it doesn't seem as funny now I type it, but it was quite funny to see him weave it into an actual conversation. It's fast become a favourite phrase of all of ours.
We walked to the same lake as yesterday and sat down and had a nice cream. There is once again a lot of traffic here, we're very good at crossing now though. I can't describe in this blog how crazy crossing the road is here, but I've been meaning to mention that people here beep to let you know they are there. So as a result there is just this constant beeping of people letting everyone know they ate there. It will be strange to get home and not have the beeping going on!!!!
Then we all went to a water puppet show. It was a really different experience! The stage was a mini pool, and the puppets acted out various scenes such as farming, a fox chasing some ducks, dancing etc. The puppeteers were very skilled, you couldn't see them at all until they came out at the end, and there were no mistakes at all!
Tonight we all went out after dinner because Leah and Nina leave our tour tomorrow :( we had a really great time with lots of dancing!!! Laura and I got massively ripped off by a taxi driver on the way home. I refused to pay what he was trying to charge us and ended up walking off. Yay me!!
Love to all
Claire and Laura
Xoxox
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