Goodbye Vietnam

When I am leaving a place, I often get nostalgic in those last days and so it was with Vietnam. When I was riding the bus "home" to Mary's the next to the last day, I was especially appreciating the music on the bus and knowing that this would be the last drive through the streets of Hanoi for now. I go back to the first day of coming in to the city and think about how overwhelmed I was and how cold I was!! Lots of memories.. and mostly because of Mary and her students.

On Wednesday, we went to Huy's house. He was singing the song that is the national song ( I took a video of it and Mary promises me that she will teach me how to download those on YouTube.. so you hopefully will be seeing the movies soon). Huy also talked about the elections and is for Hillary Clinton. Bill visited here when he was president, so if the Vietnamese were voting... Hillary would have the nomination sewn up! He talked about Bush. I knew he was on the same page as me when he referred to him as "violence man".

One of the sites of Hanoi that I had not seen was the Temple of Literature. It is a temple, but it also was one of the earliest universities. Started in 1070 and based on the teachings of Confucius, it had dormitories and awarded doctoral degrees. Stone tablets line the walls sitting atop the backs of stone turtles and list the names of people awarded degrees.

One other place I wanted to see before I left was the Hanoi prison where John McCain was held as prisoner of war during the Vietnam war. Much of the prison has been torn down and the huge Hanoi Towers are in it's place (very modern hotel!! and pricey!!). The prison was orginally built in the late 1800's and with old leg irons built into the floor which made it only possible for prisoners to sit or lay down it was pretty grim. They had a display case (with a updated sign that he is running for president) with McCain's pilot suit and also a picture of him when he visited the prison in 2000.

One of the unique things that is part of Vietnam is water puppet shows. They have a theatre for water puppets downtown and it is open daily for delightful shows. Water puppet shows first orginated as a celebration for the rice harvest. They used the flooded fields for shows with wooden puppet that would tell stories. This "setting" was brought to the city and there was a festival of water puppets. In the park, we were lucky enough to see one of the shows complete with children getting the upclose experience and totally entranced by the puppets.

The last morning Chien (Mary's student) was over and we were watching an episode of Columbo, correcting her immaculately done homework, and talking about the novel she is reading in English. I was trying to explain to her what "Old Faithful" is and what Yellowstone National Park is like. Later, Chien helped me get a taxi to the airport. A hug to her and to Mary , and I was off the Noi Bai Airport bound for Vientiane, Laos.