Trip to Hanoi, Day 4 (Sept 9, 2009)

Today, the vice president of the hospital is having an important event, the launching of ELSA 2010 website at 11 AM. There were several surgeries but they are urological cases which my surgeons didn't cover in Indonesia.

We went a bit late to the hospital, because it was just to attend the event.

The event was topped by opening two bottles of champagne. Cool.....
So, what to do now? The day was still early, the ceremony ended at 12.30 PM.

We stopped a van taxi, and one of my clients told him to take us to Military Museum. Too bad, it was closed because it was lunch time, they open again at 1.30 PM. Miscommunication happened with the young taxi driver. When we told him that the museum was close, he went berserk. He said he didn’t know that the museum closes. We said it was alright; we were okay and will wait. We presumed that this guy thought we wouldn’t pay for his service just because of that. We went to another museum, but it was close too.

Later on, we had conversation with our taxi driver. His name is Van Anh, 23 years old, he studies English at a course place. Sometimes when we laughed, he thought we made fun of him, he asked us why we were laughing at suspicious tone. The whole day, we rode his taxi. He didn’t mind to wait for us and took us from one place to another.

So, while wait for the museums to open, we went to Temple of Literature (Van Mieu – Quoc Tu Giam). Entrance fee is VND 20,000 and a brochure cost VND 3,000. It was dedicated to sages and Confucian scholars and used for training talented men for the nation.. We saw tombs with turtle heads as marker. In the middle of the yard, there is a big pond where live turtles too. At souvenir store, I bought Hanoi Map. The one we had from our hotel was not complete.



After visit to the temple, we asked Van Anh if there’s another mall in Hanoi beside Vincom Mall. He brought us to Tran Tien Mall. It was smaller than Vincom. My client was looking for money exchange place. He found a bank on the ground floor. An old lady outside the bank offered us higher rate, but it was too late. She was not official, same like my souvenir shop.
It was time to go back to Military Museums (address: 28 A Dien Bien Phu Road, Ba Dinh District). Entrance fee is VND 20,000 per person and to bring camera in we must pay VND 20,000. We left our bags with the officer at the entrance gate. Hmmm, don’t they know that we can still take pictures using our Blackberry and our cell phones? It was fascinating. We saw much stuff from the war, even plane wreckages, US helicopters, missiles, etc. The weather was very hot. It was 3 PM so 3 hours to go before we can break our fasting. We can do it!


We’d like to continue to Mouseleum while my other client would like to go back to hotel because he was tired. But then we changed our mind. We were tired too. Better spent the time resting in the hotel.

In the evening, I took them to a restaurant by the lake. It was in the same building with the café we went on the second evening, but it was on second floor. We were attempted by the dishes pictures they display on the wall next to the stairs. It serves Vietnamese dishes. We ordered vegetable spring roll, roasted duck, sautéed vegetable, fried fish Hanoi Style, water spinach and tofu. We canceled our steam rice because we ordered so much. They had live traditional music. The singer asked where we are from, then she sang famous “Bengawan Solo” song. She gave each of us a rose. Very nice (of course at the end we tipped her).