DAY 5--HANOI


Our bus ride to Hanoi took 3 ½ hours but we stopped once for the “happy room.” as our North Vietnam guide called it. Also, at this rest stop was a gigantic store with many things to buy. Young people sat at tables doing intricate embroidery. Looking out the window at the countryside and small towns was fascinating. Most of the land is used for growing rice. Every rice paddy had bent over workers in their coolie(sp?) hats pulling weeds, fertilizing and tending the crop. The fields are bright green. In the small towns I saw no evidence of any trash cans or recycling. Trash disposal is wherever you want to throw it. Where is Al Gore? Each town had many small stores selling mostly the same things--food, drinks, plastic items and t-shirts. The peopls sit in front of their stores on plastic chairs talking and passing the baby around. Babies are held at all times because the road comes right up to the stores--no sidewalks. The generations live together in tall, skinny houses. The store is on the ground floor, the grandparents have the next level and when the children marry a floor is built for them. The houses have a Chinese look to them and are brightly painted but only in the front. The sides are grey concrete. Some are quite ritzy; others are not.

When we arrived in Hanoi motor scooters flooded the roads. There were some fancy cars on the road but mostly work trucks, buses, bikes and scooters, scooters, scooters. We went to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum but didn’t go inside. The line to get in was at least ten blocks long. Ho Chi Minh is revered by the North Vietnamese just as Lincoln is for us. Our guide really gave a pep talk to us about their ”great” former leader. Our visit to the Hanoi Hilton, on the other hand, left him rather speechless. The part of the prison where John McCann and our other POW’s were held was left for last. First we had to see other parts of the prison which we didn’t care about. When we finally got to the section with artifacts of the pilots --guess what?--the guide said there was no time and he hurried everyone back to the bus. We did see a few pictures of our pilots decorating a Christmas tree and as the text said “enjoying themselves and reading letters from home. There was McCain”s flight suit on display, the bed he slept in(springs and a grass mat on top) and a look inside a cell. The explanations of the war were anti-American(shocker!). All on our buses were insulted and felt the trip to Hanoi was not worth it except for the look at the interesting countryside.