Rice – who would have thought there was so much to learn about rice?  Varieties, planting seasons, length of time to germination, seed formation and harvesting, yields, and so on.  We met with Professor Pham Van Cuong of the Hanoi University of Agriculture who waxed eloquent on all of the above.  He made a point that’s hard to dispute: if you put $1in the bank today you will have about $1.01 by the end of the year.  If you put $1 into rice seed and plant it, you will have 3,000 kernels of rice for each little plant you sow.  Sounds like a pretty good return to me! 

We walked around the working fields of the University and watched two women seed a small plot and then transplant seedlings into a water-filled area.  They moved with amazing speed but it looked like back-breaking work.  Viet Nam now leads the world in rice exports, but the application of fertilizers has brought the yield to its maximum point.  By 2030 at current population growth rates, Viet Nam will no longer be able to supply its own needs.  In addition, climate change is starting to affect harvests.  Warmer weather doesn’t change the rate of plant growth but it seriously increases the reproduction capability of insects, and farmers are already using too much insecticide.  Professor Cuong is working with other countries to find a solution.

This afternoon we visited the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, a beautiful building containing exhibits on the 54 ethnic groups in the country.  In addition to the usual photo and clothing displays and so on, there was an outdoor exhibit of houses and common buildings used by different ethnic groups.  The Museum paid artisans from the various tribes too come to Hanoi and build the structures so that they would be authentic.  More steep stairs – how many flights is this? – led to a Bahner communal house.  The Ba Na live mainly in the central highlands.

A Giarai tomb was … interesting.  It was surrounded by sexually explicit wooden figures of men and women showing each other their private parts, and also pregnant women.  These fertility symbols are intended to accompany the deceased into the afterlife.  At the corners of the tomb are less-than-happy figures who must either miss the decreased or disapprove of all the show-and-telling going on.

On the way out the Museum Shop caught my eye and I again contributed to the welfare of the Vietnamese economy.

We stopped briefly to tour the Hoa Lo prison dubbed the Hanoi Hilton by US soldiers and airmen who were imprisoned there during the Viet Nam war.  The prison was built in the late 19th century by the French imperialists to house prisoners who had dared to demonstrate too loudly for an independent Viet Nam. Men if they behaved themselves spent the day – when not at hard labour – with one leg shackled but the other free.  If they had acted up, they spent the day with both legs in irons.

The women appeared to have it a little easier but journals indicate that there was serious crowding and almost no sanitary facilities.

There is a display of tools of torture used by the French who went so far as to behead the “worst” offenders and display their heads in baskets on the street.  I suspect one reason the ghoulish  Hoa Lo was on our itinerary is that John McCain who ran against Barrack Obama four years ago was imprisoned here for five and a half years, over two of them in solitary confinement.  Most of the prison has been demolished with the remaining part converted into a museum.

Our final stop before dinner was the highlight of my day.  We went to a performance of water puppets, an art that originated in the late 10th century.  These wooden puppets are manipulated by people behind wicker screens who themselves are immersed to about their waists.  The puppets told a basic love story mixed with some ethnic education for the tourists, all accompanied by live musicians.

It is impossible for me to describe the show other than to say it was great fun, so please enjoy the small video here.  I sat in the third row; a couple of heads and someone’s camera get in a way occasionally but I think you will still be able to get the sense of what a spectacle of light and sound and whimsy it was.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/64513024@N07/20513182274/in/datetaken/

Tomorrow we leave for a night on Ha Long Bay where there will be no internet access.  See you in a couple of days!