10/10/10

Sorry the pictures are out of order, but you probably won't notice. Our group was asked to march in the final parade celebrating the 1,000 year anniversary of Hanoi. It involved a practice session on Thursday night (lots of waiting) and then the real deal on Sunday 10/10/10. We marched in front of the president, all the top communist party members in the government, the military, there were 1,000 drums. It involved getting up before 5am and lots of waiting. But it was so worth it. We especially loved the literally hundreds of thousands of smiling faces lining the streets as we marched 7 km. The formal part was first then the regular people along the streets. We must have had our picture taken thousands of times! People wanted to shake our hands and all we saw was smile and smile and smile on everybody's face. We were part of of a group of about 150 foreigners that were living or working in Hanoi. I think the international mix of people in the parade was really something to look at after all the Vietnamese groups in front of us.

Along the parade route with the usual demolition in the background. Buildings are either going up or coming down.

Watching the parade from the trees!

The crowds and the cameras. When is the last time you saw several hundred thousand different people in the span of 1 hour? I really think we saw, from this distance, the equivalent of more than the entire population of Vermont in 1 hour.

Entering the formal part of the parade with military and band etc.

Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. Ho Chi Minh is the equivalent of George Washington in U.S. History. The president and top government officials are in front of it under the red sign on left side of picture.

A group of Vietnamese women behind us in the parade.

Quick! Find Vietnam!

Waiting for the parade to begin.

Ted waiting.

The practice session at night, Yes that is a real tropical sweat "glow" and those are real plastic flowers.

Now when is the last time you got to march under a glowing hammer and sickle!!?(There is another in the distance) If you were born after 1989, or are not familiar with the cold war or Vietnam War (known here as the American War) you might not realize how strange this is for Americans. It was strange.

Awesome fireworks as seen from our balcony!!

Cool light show. Of course to get the electricity to do this, they shut of our power in the whole apartment building for an hour or so. When I saw this light pattern I was sure aliens were going to land in the stadium.

A street at night all decorated with motorbikes zooming by...

Street decorations in Hanoi.

Beautiful orchids and roses for sale. One of these would cost about 8-15 bucks.

Trip to Perfume Pagoda

So Lisa found yellow ones too!

We took the students to "silk village." We visited a family that made silk. Notice the spinning wheel made out of an old bicycle wheel. The silk is yellow because the worms were fed a certain leaf that made their silk this color.

Lisa and piles of raw white silk thread.

Silk worms hard at work, eating leaves.

Raw silk cacoons which are boiled and then spun into tread. This thread has been dyed purple.

The guy that silently rowed us to perfume pagoda, about one hour up a river that looked like King Kong territory.

Some of our students after getting off the boat and walking about 10 minutes. In the foreground is one of our students and her Vietnamese host sister that came along for the day. When we take day trips, it is common for the students to bring along a host brother or sister.

Whenever I post pictures to the blog they come up in reverse order! So, here we are arriving at the Perfume Pagoda, a temple in a cave. We walked up several thousand stone steps to get here. Pretty cool. It was great to get out of the city!

On the way up to the pagoda/cave.

A man carrying firewood down the stone path.

At another temple. Lisa loves these carved wooden fish. It is actually hollow and therefore a bell/musical instrument.

People checking their fish traps.

Striking mountains. Sort of like the Green Mountains...sort of.

Flowers for Me

I saw some very interesting flowers the other day in an arrangement on someone's desk. They were yellow and ball-like but not like an allium or other ball-like flower made up of many small flowers. These were like a ball of little petals! Well, the next day we were at the supermarket and there were the same flowers, but in white. So I had to get them! Plus, they came from Dalat, an area in Vietnam known for flower growing and they were all so carefully wrapped up in little paper twists.

I arranged them in my vase so that they were spread out and each flower can be seen in full roundness. The arrangement I saw had just a few of these with many other flowers and greens - so cool. I have not been to the San Francisco Flower Mart in years, so maybe these are a new variety that have arrived in flower arranging circles worldwide, but I have never seen them. I am thinking I must have them in my next garden (I would be thinking that!).

I am not going to give away the flower type - I want to see if some of my fellow flower nuts out there can guess! They are just fabulous!