Feb 2. Evening before and after dinner
Last day of being a tourist in Hanoi – very ready to be back on the road. Took a short ride to nowhere today just to get my legs back and test out my butt. So far so good.
One pic is the One Pillar Pagoda near the HCM Mausaleum. Another is a Buddha from the same pagoda. The third and final is from the water puppet show.
All would have loved the one stringed instrument -a ancient one in Vietnam. Saw the same instrument being placed at the Temple of Literature and Learning (1000 year old university in the center of Hanoi with the teachers being venerated in exactly the same way as the Buddha). If one did not look at the statuary one would think that the Buddah was on the podium.
In 'ancient' times women were not allowed to listen to music from this horizonal one stringed gourdish shaped with vertical thin piece of wood to vary the pitch instrument. It was feared that they would be immediately and permanently infatuated with the player.
Tomorrow we cycle out the the Perfume Pagoda, full day ride. Finally back on the road. As I joined two trips not quite back to back there was an intérval between them.
In response to some general QB questions.
Mahayana with Boddavistas. From China via India.
Pho not yet really good. Hotel and local tourist places are not the best way to test out. Will know more after being on the road again.
Had a good lunch today with a wide variety of dishes, some I had not seen before. Pork in a sweet cream sauce, pineapple flambe, individual bamboo shaped clay pot filled with meat and onions and spices, as well as the usual veggies, lotus root with papaya salade, noodle soup, shrimp etc. Far too much food as you can imagine.
Getting to start to know the riders and their interests and histories. Suspect we will spread out quite a bit tomorrow. Some of the travellers are clearly real shoppers – shoes of course, but will in desperation buy anything.
Dinner at Four Brothers a good buffet.
Off at 7 am, yeah.
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