On our return to Hanoi, which coincided with Mayday and Reunification day (both big yearly holidays in Vietnam – more so this year as the Vietnamese are celebrating 25 years since the reunification of south and north Vietnam) we stayed in a different area of the city by Truch Bach lake. Truch Bach lake is next to, but separated from West Lake. This enormous expanse of water stretches off endlessly, surrounded by the modern city of Hanoi.

The Truch Bach area, which includes a small island, is pleasant to wander around and reminded us a bit of Penang in Malaysia as we remembered it thirty years ago. Like the Vietnamese and other foreign holiday makers we took pictures of each other as the sun went down over the vast expanse of West Lake.

Truch Bach lake is where John McCain’s plane crashed after it was shot down in 1967. He was imprisoned in the notorious Hoa Loa prison, nicknamed the ‘Hanoi Hilton’ by the Americans. That has now largely been demolished and made into a museum, although Tim remembers it still standing on his first visit to Hanoi. There is a small memorial to McCain at the lake. Although he visited Vietnam after the war he had no part in the memorial and was reportedly bemused about why it was erected.

We followed our noses to a BBQ / beer garden but it was filled mainly with big groups and beer appeared to have to be ordered in enormous jugs, so we beat a retreat. We ended up eating Banh mi (bread and meat) at a street stall after doing some beer tasting at a bar that sold small batch ales.

The main Mayday celebration parades are in Ho Chi Minh City, but Vietnamese families were taking the chance to get out and see the city so the sights that we visited were packed. It was lovely seeing Vietnamese families out, dressed up and celebrating. Most of the kids had red star T shirts on and sales of hammer and sickle balloons were doing a roaring trade.

We started with the imperial citadel of Thang Long. None of the original citadel remains. Reconstruction of the citadel occurred in the 1800s but the French demolished many of the reconstructed buildings to make way for barracks. There are interesting relics preserved in several of the old French buildings as well as information about the area’s history. Archeological work is ongoing.

Scattered among old French colonial buildings and the remnants of the citadel is a bunker used by the Vietcong during the war with the Americans. We descended to have a look around, where there are the remains of old communications equipment and the strategy room where meetings took place. A hot water flask which the comrades used sits at the centre of the table. It is decorated with a picture of a fierce looking cat.

After taking a break from the rising heat to eat some noodle soup, we wandered around the Temple of Literature, dedicated to Confucius. The focus of the students at the university, which dates from 1070, was on literature and poetry. As I wandered I reflected on what we may be losing by such subjects dying a death in modern British universities.

I imagine that on a quieter day the Temple of Literature would be a tranquil place, but it is very popular with the Vietnamese on holidays. As well as being an ancient relic, it is still in use as an active temple where young people pray to the Gods to help them with their studies. There are stone tablets, with carvings of turtles at their base memorialising the most successful of the temple of literature’s students. Tim and I said a quick prayer for our two students before leaving.

That evening we ended up in a Mexican restaurant where we downed a few very strong but delicious margaritas. We chatted to two Americans, also drinking there, one with their Thai girlfriend. We skirted around the Trump issues.

The next day we were rather hung over and had a lazy time wandering the Truch Bach area where we discovered a cute backpacker cafe with perennial favourites like shakshuka and avocado toast on the menu. We spent the day drinking iced coffee and watching the world go by.

We also visited the Tran Quoc Buddhist pagoda. Even with the hoards of local and international tourists thus was a tranquil place. It was interesting reading the Buddhist teaching displayed (enlarge the photo below if you are interested).

We spotted another small local temple on the shores of the lake – Den Quan Than. Here we saw lots more of the birds that we had noticed on the island of Hoan Kiem Lake nesting.

On the evening of our last day in Hanoi we had booked a sleeper train to Sapa, a hill station in the north. We arranged to keep our room at the hotel until 5pm for a reasonable fee and spent the day at the Vietnam Ethnographic museum. This is recommended prior to a trip north as it provides lots of information about the different peoples of Vietnam including the tribal communities. It took me back to the days of my youth when I studied Social Anthropology.

Various tribal communities agreed to construct examples of their traditional homes in the garden of the museum and we spent a fascinating few hours looking around these. We also watched a traditional water puppet show. I have posted excerpts on social media. It was very entertaining, showing traditional village activities and beliefs. The mythic figures of the dragon, unicorn (that can look a bit like a lion), turtle and phoenix all featured.

The displays inside the museum were also very interesting, including a section on tensions around the use of elephants in tourism and developing elephant conservation in the Dalat area which we are also hoping to visit.

All in all it felt like a professional and inclusive project, very different from the ‘ethnic tourism’ we experienced when in China.

We arrived at Hanoi station in plenty of time and sat in the air conditioned ‘Highlands Coffee’ a big chain Vietnamese equivalent to Starbucks or Costa. The train operation to Hanoi was slick with foreign tourists being sold onward transit minibus tickets for use on arrival (Sapa town is some way from the nearest railway station) prior to boarding the train. It is these sorts of arrangements that make it so simple to travel in Vietnam – they set it all up for tourists, clearly believing (possibly with some justification) that they are all rather stupid and incapable. We waved to the tourists as we sped through ‘train street’ heading for the hills.