Hanoi

Events of Monday, 4th February 2013

The Hanoi guide, Joe, and driver picked me up at 8.30 a.m. from my hotel, the Metropole (Pictures). We first drove to the 'Hanoi Hilton' prison, now a museum. It was built by the French and was more widely used than I realised for suppressing dissent.


The entrance to the 'Hanoi Hilton'.

Its black humour title of 'Hanoi Hilton', of course, arises from the imprisonment of American airmen captured during the Vietnam War. Even allowing for some possible bias in presentation, I found it a moving visit (Pictures).

Next, we drove to the Ho Chi Minh Quarter. Ho Chi Minh (a nom du guerre, I believe) was born in the country and retained simple tastes but his success in establishing Vietnam as a viable state means that he is still widely revered and referred to as "Uncle Ho". A mausoleum has been erected and queues form on the days of the week when his body is displayed. My visit coincided with a 'closed' day.

The Mausoleum.

Once in power, Ho Chi Minh could have lived in the former French Governor's Palace but he refused and at first established himself in three rooms of the nearby servants' buildings before moving to a specially-built wooden 'house on stilts' in the form seen in the countryside.

The upper floor of the 'house on stilts'. The lower floor served as a meeting room.

This house was near a small lake, allowing Ho Chi Minh to pursue his love of fishing. He regarded Marx and Lenin as his 'Brothers'. He was given three cars, which are displayed in their 'garage'. He died not in his house but a few feet away in a small hospital with attached air raid shelter. Pictures.

The 'One Pillar Pagoda' was a bit of a let-down. It's famous for being built over water and suspended by a single pillar but the original was erected elsewhere, was larger and now lost. What we can see now is a reduced size replica supported not by one massive wooden pillar but by a concrete pylon! It has to be admitted, it looks very quaint and draws the crowds. Three people were worshipping inside, leaving no room for tourists, who had to content themselves with standing at the top of the access stairs and looking inside. Pictures.

The reconstructed 'One Pillar Pagoda'.

We made our way through the crowded, noisy streets to the peace of the Temple of Literature. This venerable site is now dedicated to Confucian worship but was the first university in Vietnam. Names of the 'Old Boys' are not signwritten in gilded letters on wooden boards but carved on stone tablets ('stele') carried on the backs of turtles. (Pictures).

The Temple of Literature.

Joe and I then took a walking tour of the Old Quarter. Hundreds of street vendors serve hot food in passageways almost too narrow to allow the customers come and go.


Narrow passageways are home to countless eating places.

Some of the streets in the Old Quarter had been temporarily taken over by 'Pop-Up' markets where vendors sold items associated with the Chinese New Year - decorations, fruit trees. Space is always at a premium in cities but I found many candidates for 'narrowest house in Hanoi' award. The winner had three (rather ramshackle) stories but a frontage only about six feet wide.

After the walking tour, I was returned to the hotel. Armed with not-very-good free map, I set off on foot to see Hanoi railway station, a walk of around 2 kilometres (as a former French-ruled country, Vietnam is fully metricated). To my surprise, I found the station without error, mainly because at road intersections the names of the two streets are normally provided on a post. Modern Vietnamese uses the Roman alphabet in conjunction with a mass of accents so it's fairly readable by an English-speaking Foreigner. The system was introduced by a French monk, I believe. There's a set of pictures taken around the city here.

A final attraction in Hanoi was a visit to the Thanglong Water Puppet Theatre. I'd no idea what that was. My car delivered me to a conventional-looking theatre building and Joe conducted me to my seat in a normal auditorium, along with lots of other people, many of them foreign tourists like me. When the show started, instead of a stage, there was a large pool of water. Puppets appeared on the water (sometimes lots of them) doing all sorts of things and the plot was explained in English on a couple of screens on either side of 'stage'. It sounds odd, but it was strangely compelling. At the end of the show, the puppeteers, standing up to their waists in water, appeared from behind the curtains around the pool to loud applause. There are a few (not very good) pictures here.

The next day, I was to go to Halong Bay by car, to return to Hanoi on the 7th February and fly back to Bangkok.

Photographs

Hotel Metropole, Hanoi.
The 'Hanoi Hilton' Museum.
Ho Chi Minh Quarter, Hanoi.
One Pillar Pagoda, Hanoi.
Temple of Literature.
Around Hanoi.
Thanglong Water Puppet Theatre

These, and other pictures of Vietnam, form a Collection here.

[Revised 27-Feb-2013]

Railways in Vietnam - Part 1

2-aspect plus 2-aspect plus subsidiary colour light at the approach to passing loops.

The French built Vietnam's metre gauge railway which links Ho Chi Minh City (which still seems to be called 'Saigon' by the railway) in the south to Hanoi in the north with some branches in the Hanoi area.

I travelled by road from Hoi An to Hue and the single-track main line accompanied us for part of the way, so I naturally started to look at the features of the line. There are some serious mountains on the route and the railway is tunnelled for part of the route. Whilst we were stopped for lunch, I watched a long southbound passenger train emerge from a tunnel and slowly make its way towards Da Nang. The train was too far away to get any details.As we got nearer to Hue, we travelled on a flat, coastal plain pierced by rice paddies. In this area, the railway was raised on a low embankment and looked in very good condition with solidly-built sloping walls to the embankment supporting ballast in good condition and fairly high-poundage flatbottom rail.

A reasonably well maintained open-wire telephone route, using mainly wooden telegraph poles, kept close to the track. Bridges over the numerous waterways were either of simple deck girder construction or, for the widers channels, one or more through girder trusses. It all looked in good condition and a spotted a number of staff apparently patrolling the track. Road-rail intersections were almost all level crossings, often with flashing lights and with motorised or hand-operated barriers. All had a neat crossing-keeper's hut and were staffed.

I did some 'drive by' shots of the arrangements at passing loops but its clearly difficult to gather details without stopping. All the signals I spotted were colour light, either a simple 2-aspect or fitted with two 2-aspect heads and a single-light subsidiary aspect. Some distance before each loop I found a 2-aspect signal which I presume is a yellow/green warning signal. At the loop points, I always spotted the 'four aspect plus subsidiary' type. Sometimes, there were 2-aspect signals leaving loops which I think must be red/green starting signals. I think this sort of configuration is typical of Russian and Chinese practice. I was surprised that all points appeared to be hand operated from single-lever frames fitted by the 'toe' of the points. Each frame had what I assumed was an electrical contact box to control signals but a lever lock is also possible.

In one town, I glimpsed the coaches of a southbound passenger train and shortly after we passed a slow-moving northbound passenger train, presumably re-starting after letting the southbound pass. The merest glimpse of a big diesel on the front suggested Chinese manufacture and my guide confirmed that both Russia and China have supplied railway equipment.

Once checked in to my hotel at Hue, I walked to the station to see what could be seen. My guide thought I should be able to purchase a platform ticket but I was on my own and my request totally baffled three girls in the ticket office and the station master or supervisor. In any case, they appear to keep everybody in the waiting room until they're ready to board. The main building is a nice French design but doesn't appear to be used for its original purpose. Instead, ticket sales and a waiting area are in a much simpler building alongside. By walking along public roads, I was able to find level crossings at the station throat at both ends of the station where the single line fans-out into a series of loops.

Hue Station: Pointwork at north end of loops.

At Hanoi, I found a similar, if larger, arrangement. The large station building is utilised, although, again, the platforms are closed until required. The rather nice French architecture was somewhat spoiled by the Americans bombing the centre section. The Vietnamese cleared away the rubble and built an awful, modern centre section to rejoin the two remaining 'wings' and carried on regardless.

Hanoi Station: Pointwork at the south end of the loops.

More when I can.

References

Vietnam Railways (Wikipedia).
David Gurnett's 'Railways in Vietnam'.

My pictures

Railways in Vietnam.
Hanoi Railway Station.