Odyssey in Asia: Crossing from the South to the North

From Hoi An we took a short bus ride to the former capital city of Hue where we would spend just six hours before flying to Hanoi, the capital city. Hue was a fairly uneventful stop that really consisted of us walking around the Citadel, which is the moat and wall-enclosed historic one-time capital city. We then got a ride to airport and had a good short flight to Hanoi.

Hanoi was the capital of the North Vietnamese Communist regime during the division of the country into North and South in 1954, and then became the capital of the unified country of Vietnam after its victory over the South in 1976. We heard that some of the older generation of the North still holds hostility for the South and I assume the U.S. as well. Thankfully we didn’t experience any hostilities for being Americans, though the general feeling in Hanoi was not as welcoming as that in HCMC. The one war museum that we visited was the Hoa Lao (aka the “Hanoi Hilton”) to tour the area where American pilots, including John McCain, were held captive between 1965 – 1973. The prison was originally erected by the French to house Vietnamese prisoners centuries earlier. The first section of the tour is devoted to the inhumane treatment of the Vietnamese prisoners by the French; the second section tells of the five star hotel treatment that the Americans received from the North Vietnamese. Uh-huh.

While in Hanoi we also went to a water puppet show, which was a lot of fun despite not understanding the puppets’ language. All things considered Hanoi was an interesting city to visit for a couple days.