HANOI

This is the view from our window on the Song Hong (Red River). It was hot but overcast and a little rainy. The hotel was once State accommodation for international guests but these days its fading seventies charm services sandal-clad tourists and local conferences on administering aid. It had an old pool next to the river. I have always found waterfront pools to be such an odd extravagance but there was certainly no chance of us having a dip in the Song Hong muck.

Museum of Ethnology

This was quite a good museum nad you can’t have guess that the it was funded by the French government (Chirac). The exhibits reminded me of Branly in Paris. They had an outdoor exhibition and an indoor one full of artifacts. I discovered that two-thirds of Vietnam was once occupied by the CHAM people. (Cham being a word I wouldn’t allow to be used in a game of Facebook Scrabble.)

Some scarecrows ominously protecting what looks like a patch of weeds.

The residence for single men in one of the matriarchal ethnic minorities of Vietnam. I couldn’t think of anything worse to decrease one’s chances of finding a woman than sharing filthy living quarters with other single men.
Speaking of strange practices, another interesting sight at the museum was watching a group of ape-like Australian adolescents grope the phalluses of the traditional statues whilst snapping these memorable moments up on their digital cameras. I wanted to take a photo of their bizarre ritual myself but out of respect for their age, I refrained.