Hi all So we were up with the larks once again, and off to see the Hoa Lo Prison Museum. This is a prison built by the French in 1896 and was reknowned later on for holding, torturing and killing Vietnamese revolutionaries. It was not a pleasant place to be. No hot and cold running sympathy for these folks. They were kept in really appalling conditions and the overcrowding was pretty severe. Built for 450 inmates, in 1953 it held 2000, but some did manage to escape. Through the sewers. I'd be lucky to get my head in the grate 100 or so of them crawled through (no not because of my ears), and once through it the pipe was about the same diameter - ie fookin small. And they crawled for miles through this. Being a sewer, I can't imagine it being any too pleasant. Fair play. During the war with the US it was used to keep pilots that had been shot down locked up. They renamed it The Hanoi Hilton. Propoganda aside, it does look like the US were treated a lot better, but then that's not really saying much. They still have a lot of the torture instruments that the Fench used, along with some rather 'tasteful' photos of people being tortured and beheaded. This was my kind of museum. Again, I think its something to do with the fact that it was all so recent, but possibly also because I've never heard the Vietnamese side of the story. Rambo was not a fair minded documentary. Even films like Apocalypse Now and Deer Hunter show what a terrible war it was, but only from the point of view of those 'poor American boys'. Truth is, I always love an underdog and this was true David and Goliath. 'You will kill 10 of our men, and we will kill 1 of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it' as Uncle Ho rightly proclaimed (albeit to the French, but it still rang true with the US. I think maybe they should have done their homework a little better). Whatever the reason, another museum I loved. Culture vulture or what!?! Next up, as the other two headed off to do heaven knows what, me and Mand went on a slight mission. Now I know I haven't mentioned this before, but that night in Vientiane when we all got trashed and I did my own personal form of head banging, I lost my fukckin glasses. My beautiful, beautiful glasses. I still wake at night calling for them. But hey, whilst looking for our non-existent massage place a couple of days before we had spied a couple of opticians. And though I knew I could never replace my old darlings, was already fed up of wearing my shades in doors. I looked especially t*** like in bars. Where it was already dark. Wearing my Ray Bans like I was Robbie Williams. Or as someone unkindly remarked 'Who have you come as, The Terminator?'. So it was with a heavy heart that I decided I must replace my old lovelies. My heart lifted somewhat when I saw the price of the glasses on offer. About 20 quid a pair or around 40 quid a pair for a designer pair. So I bought 2 lots (get 'em while they're cheap). The first a titanium springy pair that even I will have trouble breaking (you know, the ones that are like wearing a pair of springs - I keep expecting my eyeballs to pop out of the frames in a moment of pure comedy genius), and a pair of black Vogue ones. Both with the anti glare lenses and along with the free eye test it came to a total of 94 quid. And they had them ready in an hour. But we couldn't wait. We had bigger fish to fry. We were off to the Museum of Ethnology. This is exactly what it says it is. A Museum of Ethnology. And it was massive. I mean huge. And it was set in gardens that were also huge. What it contains are examples of all the different minorities' cultures (about 20% of the population) that go into making up Vietnam. Everything from traditional arts and crafts, to musical instruments, to weaponry (woo hoo), to clothing, to explanations about their language. There are videos, installations and above all Japanese tourists everywhere. We got lost in it. Several times. It is simply enormous. One of the things which most impressed me was they had an entire section dedicated to one of the failed ideals of the ruling party after the US war ended. I'm tempted to say it was one of Ho Chi Minh's ideas, but I'm not 100% sure. A quick tinternet search has yielded nothing. I might try again later. They attempted social engineering, in that it was decided that all goods would be collected by the Government then redistributed via outlets. All goods. Food, clothes, luxury items (like Camay soap). No money was needed, everybody got issued food stamps. The number of stamps you were allowed depended on what job you had, the size of your family and various other factors. The aim was to level out the disparity between rich and poor. It didn't work. Even remotely. There was never enough food to go round. The black market opened with a fanfare and just kept getting bigger. I'm not entirely sure what went wrong (supply lines meant that by the time the food arrived it was past it's best, demand outweighed supply due to the time delays again) but whatever went wrong (the museum is strangely silent on why it didn't work) after 2 or 3 years the government scrapped it and went back to the old system. At least they had the guts to admit it wasn't working, and do something about it. Some of the stories from peope at the time were pretty sad, but funny also. A guy who got a bar of soap from the black market, but was then too afraid to use it cos he'd smell nice and people would know. He put it in his jacket every day so his clothes would smell better. Surely people would notice that too wouldn't they? Apparently not. Quotes from people whose dream was to own a radio. In 1975. The exhibition itself was really nicely done, with the final room being a contrast of what people want for themselves today. Trips to the moon, a huge house, big cars. Some people are never satisfied.... We didn't get time to look round the whole thing, because we were meeting the girls at another museum later on. So we scooted round as much of it as we could and headed outside to the gardens to look at some of the houses. They have four or five houses there from different minorities, built in the traditional way and, this is the best part for me, they still have minorities living in them. For real. Like a human zoo. So while you're looking round one of the houses, you open a door and there's some bloke in there asleep. Or worse still getting dressed. It's bizarre. We couldn't decide if we were welcome or not. I mean it IS a museum. The houses were cool as. One was about 200m long, and one about 30m high (we never did find out why). I'm sure the pictures are on now, or will be soon. Maybe some of you can offer an idea. Having scooted round as quick as we could, we already knew we were going to be late to meet the others. And so we were. By the time we got there (about 20 past) we figured they'd either already gone in, or (and remember this is Kimberley we're talking about here) were even later than we were. We figured on the latter and sat down in a cafe over the way to have a Bia Hoi and some food and wait for them. When we'd finished and there was still no sign of them we walked over and went to go in. Just as they came out of the exit. Pants. They decided to go to another museum (that's the spirit girls) and we'd meet them in the cafe after. And off we went in to the History Museum. By this time, we didn't really have much time left to see it and had to pretty much rush to get round it at all. We didn't finish it (they just turned the lights out on us as a non-too-subtle way of letting us know it was time to go), but we did get time for Mand to realise that I was the missing link. The museum was a history of Vietnam from the dawn of time to the present day. Some of the art they were producing in this part of the world while we were still living in mud huts, still looks every bit as good today. Stone statues dating from 8th and 9th Century (around the time we were being invaded by vikings and s***) which are so intricate even now, you'd think they'd been carved recently. Beautiful gold leaved Buddhas Well, I was impressed anyway. But, as I say we didn't get the chance to get a real good look at it, and we headed back across the road to meet the other two. A couple of Bia Hois later and we decided to go pick up my glasses. And they were perfect. Woo hoo. No more Ray Charles impressions for me. At this point, Mand who was getting slightly jealous of all the attention I was getting suddenly decided that she might need glasses too, and demanded a free eye test 'becasue she though she might need glasses'. Attention seeker :o) Anyway, turns out she's got 20:20 vision (like we didn't already know). We decided to walk back around the lake, as the sun was starting to disappear and we'd heard it got really busy with people doing Tai Chi and yoga and stuff in the evenings. Hmmm kinda. What we actually got was a bunch of old people standing round swinging their arms. For ages. We watched for about 20 minutes and this was all they did. If only I could breakdance I'd have got up there and shown then what its really all about. I could've stood there swinging my arms before leaping into a windmill and a headspin before moonwalking past there amazed faces (perhaps to a rapturous round of applause) and off into the sunset. Trouble is, I'm not sure I wanted to have to explain to my insurance company that the reason I broke my neck was that I was trying to impress some OAPs. I'm pretty sure I'm not covered for that. So we continued on our merry way, and it suddenly occurred to us that we would be walking right past the Water Puppet theater on our way home, so maybe we should try and pick up the tickets for tonight's show now. Water Puppets are a traditional form of erm well...puppetry, that was started hundreds of years ago, and this company has won awards all over the world. France, Germany, Denmark, Holland, Australia....not England you'll notice. Can't think why. Maybe Punch and Judy smashed them up down on Brighton pier. When we got to the theatre, the queue was already 30 deep and the attitude coming back from the front seemed to be there weren't going to be enough tickets for tonight's show. Uh-oh. There was a family of septics in front of us, mum dad and two girls of maybe ten and twelve. And the girls were being, well, stroppy is probably the nicest way of putting it. Brattish in the extreme is probably a better way. They kept going up to the counter to hassle the woman. Constantly going on about how they wanted to go in. About how when they were in Paris they'd missed out on something or other. Then the mother joined in. I s*** you not, she was as bad, if not worse than the kids. They hassled the dad. They hassled each other, they hassled the woman at the counter. It was terrible, not to say relentless, but fascinating (not to say entertaining) to watch, as the dad just kind of stood there taking it all. He never said a word. He was cool personified, and I couldn't help wondering if he was a closet serial killer. You know 'such a nice quiet man, never any trouble to anyone, always very polite. I can't believe he's suddenly snapped and killed his family with a chainsaw.' Trust me, I could. But anyway, after about three quarters of an hour we got about 10 from the front (they were directly in front of us remember), and the f***in place sold out. Up goes the sign. All performancces for the next two days. Except for the 21.15 showing the following night. I waited for the explosion. The girls took it fairly well to be honest. The mother less so. How could anyone expect her little cherubs to stay up so late? This is ridiculous etc etc etc. She was going for it. big style. Still, the guy was calmness personified. I fell a little in love with him to be honest. He murmurred something to her about 'I'll see what I can do' which he and I and everybody else in the queue knew to be f*** all. But it appeased the wife for long enough to get to the front of the queue (although she stood there hands on hips and huffing and puffing like she'd just chased Kimbers for the last slice of cake). I was trembling with excitement by this point, just to see what happened next. I just knew it wasn't going to be pretty, and they did not disappoint. Only it was all a bit unexpected. They got to the front of the queue and the guy went through the motions 'None left for tonight?...OK, what about 6pm or 8pm tomorrow?...No?...OK just 9.15. we'll take four',. At this point the woman jumped in....or at least tried to. He obviously anticipated her next move, and very gently and slowly leaned over to her and whispered something in her ear. The explosion was gargantuan. She went absolutely, off the walll, ballistic in as an impressive display of fireworks I've seen since they New Year's Eve 1999. She screamed, she railed at him 'WE DO NOT LIKE BEING WITH YOU WHEN YOU'RE LIKE THIS' was about the only intelligible thing I got out of it. Mainly cos I was doing my absolute best not to show how much I was laughing (not too good at that), and having to resist the urge to put my arms round him and give him a man hug. Or maybe a rather more English pat on the back old boy. She stormed off with the kids, he coolly and calmly paid for the tickets and walked over to where they were standing. Here, the torrent of abuse continued. Pure screaming at him. And just in case no-one was too sure, her last words, shouted at him with her face about 3 inches from his 'I AM SO f***ING ANGRY WITH YOU RIGHT NOW'. Really hun, but you're hiding it so well was all I could think of, making me laugh even harder. By now pretty much everyone in the queue was laughing openly, the ones who'd been there longer explaining to the newer arrivals what had been going on for the last hour or so), but as the wife and kids stormed off, he just seemed to shrug and then strolled after them like he didn't have a care in the world. Beautiful. I wanted to run after him there and then, tell him he was my hero and ask him what he'd said. Just for future reference. It can't have been more than four words. It was that quick. Now I've said some horrible things to people in my time (no, really?) but I have never produced a reaction of that magnitude with so few words. Not even when I'm drunk. It was truly amazing.A master of his craft. We turned back to the counter and the ticket lady was just staring after them, her mouth wide open. Women simply don't talk to men like that in Vietnam. Men don't talk to other men like that in Vietnam. But she recovered enough to sell us 4 tickets for the friday night showing at 8pm (my birthday - woo hoo) and off we trotted, with me swearing that if I ever saw that bloke again I would HAVE to shake his hand and find out what he'd said. It's not just what he said, it's how he dealt with the whole situation. He didn't look angry, not once. He looked serene. Like the eye of the storm. Fantastico. Back at the hotel, we told the girls we had tickets for Friday, showered and headed off for a few Bia Hois, with me wildly speculating as to what this guy must have said (nothing I can say on a family show). Four words. Five max. What was it?Anyway, we had dinner an a few more Bia Hois. And a few more. And a few more. It didn't matter if we got trashed tonight, tomorrow we were off to Halong Bay, which is essentailly two days sunbathing on a boat. Beautiful. Laters all xxxxxxxxxxxxx PS If anyone has any ideas as to what this guy said, please email me them. I might even set up a website for it.