Hanoi in Pictures

Okay. So it's been a while since we put anything up. But I've got close to a thousand pics to process and this thing called a job. Anyway, I thought I'd do this in batches, city-by-city, keeping the copy to a minimum. Hopefully there will be some video coming, too (it takes a while to edit, add audio, save for the web, etc.). Post a comment or send an email if you want to know about anything you see.

A note on the photography: sometimes you and your camera get it right the first time. Other times, the images need some attention. Mostly it's in between. There's a mix in here of raw stuff and things I've worked on. I'll leave it to the reader to decide what they like. This is a good example of what I mean:


Remember, you can always click on the pics to embiggen.

And now, onto the good stuff.

Xmas decor in the streets.

Almost every attraction or site features topiary with, I guess, the Confucian version of action figures. Great for photos. The following are of the Temple of Literature, which amounts to a really, really old university.


Water Puppets.





Have I talked about the food yet? Karen had to steer me away from this.

It's amazing what you can put on a bike.

Uncle Ho's plaza.



The Ho Chi Minh museum defies description. The whole thing is a weird conceptual mix of dreamscapes, ideology and dilithium crystals.







We got charged money for the privilege of doing this.

One Pillar Pagoda.

Hanoi by night. There's a lake in the center of town that serves as a kind of waterfront/rallying point/wonderland.

Water puppet theater musicians.

Interesting theater. It's like the muppets, but with the characters attached to bamboo poles operated from behind the set.

When we left the show, Vietnam had just trounced Singapore 4-1 in the quarter finals of the SE Asian Games football match. We didn't know it at the time. For several minutes I thought a revolution might be taking place.

Crazy video of this to come. Stay tuned.