Sunday, Oct 30 - Hanoi Markets and Temples

Today we were up at 4:30am in order to catch our 5:00am ride to the Tay Ho district flower market and Long Bien wholesale market.  The flower market is the wholesale stop where shopkeepers and vendors come to get their day’s supply of flowers to sell.  There was an astonishing amount of flowers for sale and it was amazing to see how many bundles of flowers the buyers could put on the back of their motorcycle or bicycle.  Beautiful and amazing.

The Long Bien Market is primarily a fruit market where restaurants and street vendors buy their fruit for the day.  The market went on for blocks.  

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Watch video of the Long Bien Market
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Buyers were able to get even more on the back of their vehicles than the flower buyers could.  Astonishing.

There were also some fish and dried fish vendors...

and vendors who specialized in fake money and paper items like houses, cars, televisions and such.  The paper items are burned in the temples as a way to provide the items to the deceased.  Interesting.

Then it was a stop at a park near Hoan Kiem Lake to watch people practicing yoga, 

performing calisthenics, 

and dancing

There were even two men playing a combination of badminton and hacky sack.  They were kicking a weighted birdie over the badminton net.  Energizing and amusing.

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Watch video of dancing and hacky sack
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One lady was dancing with her little dog.  Too cute.

Our guides indicated that this time of year it is getting cold with winter setting in.  However, it has been unseasonably hot until today.  The weather today is actually very nice.  A little overcast but the heat has broken.  There were sprinkles occasionally but nothing bad.

After breakfast at our hotel we headed out through the city again...

More items being transported via motorcycle:

Including eggs

to visit the Thay Pagoda that we were assured was different than the seemingly dozens of other pagodas we have visited because it was on a pretty little lake.  Yes it was on a pretty little lake with a temple in it but it really was just like all the other temples we have visited.  By now we seem to be jaded about the temples and pagodas and are seeing them as same old, same old.

We then climbed the stairs to another hilltop temple.  More of the same.  However, a lady there convinced us that we should see a couple of caves in the area so she first escorted us to a small shrine that was in a shallow cave.  It was pretty but nothing really special.  She then assured us that there was a much larger and more interesting cave just a couple hundred meters away.  What made it special were the bones of people’s ancestors inside.  What she neglected to tell us was that it was newly opened to tourists and that the walk there was on a treacherous trail of slippery, uneven, and steep rocks.  Believe it or not...these pictures are of the "trail".

By the time we figured out that we had no business on the trail we were committed.  It was agonizingly slow because of the fear of falling.  We did not go into the cave, because it had more steps down into it, and did not seem special.  The guide was very apologetic.  A Bust.

We then drove to Chang Son – hand fan making village.  It was billed as a village that specializes in handmade paper fans.  It had been a couple years since the guide and driver had been there and they had to ask a lot of people for directions.

The first house we found specialized in fancy festival and décor fans…very large and colorful and totally impractical as an actual fan.  The second house we got to watch them perform the steps required when making silk fans. 

It was somewhat interesting and similar to how we made lanterns.  Turns out most of the village no longer makes fans…not enough money in it.  The up side was that there was nothing commercial about the operation we saw and the women were happy to talk about what they were doing. 

The village did have a pretty community reservoir that supplied water to the village.

And we had fun watching a young woman trying to handle several chickens that were on their way home...likely to be the feature for tonight's dinner.

On the way back to the hotel the guide decided to add a stop at a lacquer shop where they make lacquer ware…probably trying to make up for the unexpected hike.  Paul wasn’t able to go in because of the lacquer fumes.  Mary ducked in for a quick look and decided she couldn’t handle the fumes either.  Another bust. 

The markets at the start of the day were fantastic but after that we should have just come back to the hotel and gone back to bed.

We spent most of the rest of the day at the hotel resting and packing and working on pictures and generally trying to catch up.