We are running short of places to visit in Hanoi. This morning we walked to the French Quarter to the Vietnam History Museum. Vietnam’s history goes back 30,000 years and they have the now familiar Stone Age relics to prove it. We followed the history from the Bronze Age through regular invasions and occupations by the Chinese, feudal dynasties and revolutions until independence in 1954. Pottery, sculpture, Buddhist and Hindu religious artifacts, tapestries, and funerary relics gave us a good idea of the main events even though the descriptions were mostly in Vietnamese.
The ethnic exhibit at the Vietnamese Women’s Museum has been closed for nearly two years. What remains is mostly a tribute to the women who fought against the French until 1954 and more recently against the American ‘aggressors.’ That would be me! It was mostly the party line but it gave me an idea of what life was like for the other side and why America had little hope of winning the conflict.
The other exhibit was about the street Hanoi’s street vendors. No one wants to come to Hanoi from remote villages to sell produce or whatever but it is the only way many families can make ends meet. Most make less than 50,000 VND a day, hardly a living. In February of this year the government banned vendors from many locations in the city. Unfortunately they offered no options for making money so the vendors are forced to operate illegally or their families go hungry. When people are forced to rely on the government for their well-being and the government lets them down things can become ugly. I forgive the woman who overcharged us for bananas the other day.
