Puddles with Piercers, Puppets, or Planes

Water, water everywhere. Fear not, there's plenty to drink. Tourists are told not to drink the tap water in Hanoi, but there is plenty of filtered water and bottled water available. Regardless, I wasn't really thinking of drinking water when I wrote "Water, water everywhere."

Dragon Boat on West Lake

Hanoi is on the Red River. Ironically, I had a tough time even getting to the Red River to see it. But I did find a way, and, hey, it's a river. But it isn't one of those rivers that is the central feature of the city. There's no riverwalk district. The walking districts aren't too far from the river, but not on the river. But those walking paths and districts are on remnants of the Red River.

Sorry to disappoint you, but the Red River isn't red

Over the course of history, the course of the Red River has moved. And when it changed, it left lakes behind. Today, these lakes are all within solid manmade walls so that homes and businesses can be built along them without fear of flooding. The largest of these is Hồ Tây which translates to West Lake. Its surface is about 500 hectares (roughly 1235 acres.) We live just a block or two from this lake. I've walked some of its perimeter, but it is 17 km (over 10.5 miles) around. I haven't yet set aside enough time in a single day to walk the entire perimeter.

One of the dragons guarding West Lake

It has dragon guardians, Buddhist temples on its shore, and a stretch of road in which there are four coffee shops, one beside the other. I think my favorite part of that is that the two on the ends are both Highlands Coffee. (Starbucks is a relatively minor coffee company in Vietnam. Highlands is the equivalent. We see Highlands Coffee shops everywhere!) Highlands has a cooler history than you might think. It was incorporated in 1999 by a Vietnamese American named David Thai. David grew up in Seattle, home of Starbucks, and he saw its meteoric rise. Inspired, David started Highlands Coffee in Vietnam. This was the first time in the country's history that an overseas Vietnamese person was allowed to register a private company.

The Ho Tay Temple (on the shores of Ho Tay or West Lake)

While West Lake might be the biggest lake left behind by the river, it isn't the heart of the city. That would be a much smaller lake called Hồ Hoàn Kiếm, or the Lake of the Returned Sword. Sounds like a wild name, right? Well, it comes along with a legend.

Alrica at the Lake of the Returned Sword but lacking a sword to return. Or did she already return it?

In the 15th Century, Vietnam was ruled by the Ming Dynasty of China. The Vietnamese didn't like that. And there were rebellions. But the Chinese were tough. However, that's when a rebel leader named Lê Lợi emerged. He was a great warrior, a great strategist, but most importantly, he had a magic sword.

The Turtle Tower in the Lake of the Returned Sword

According to legend, a fisherman found a long piece of metal in his fishing net. He pulled it out of his net and threw it back into the water, then cast his net somewhere else in the water. Lo and behold, he drew out his net and once again, he had caught that same long piece of metal. Once again, he threw it back. A third time he cast his net, and a third time he caught that same long piece of metal. Deciding this had to mean something, he took a look at it and discovered it was the blade of a sword. It wasn't the whole sword, just the blade. So he kept it. I mean, if it was so determined to be in his net, why not?

Years later, the fisherman joined the rebels. One night he was visited by the general: Lê Lợi. When Lê Lợi entered the fisherman's hut, the sword blade began to glow brightly. Lê Lợi picked it up and beheld the words Thuận Thiên which means The Will of Heaven. Even though a sword blade without a hilt wasn't much use to him, it was glowing and it had a name: the Will of Heaven. You don't ignore that. The fisherman said the general could keep the blade, so Lê Lợi took it.

Good thing, too! The blade itself didn't turn the tide of the battles. Lê Lợi still lost a lot. But one day, while he was running away from the Chinese, he saw a weird light in the branches of a banyan tree. Had this been me, I would have just ignored it, because I am allergic to banyan trees. But not Lê Lợi. He climbed right into the tree and you know what he found? A hilt for a sword, a hilt encrusted in gems. Naturally he thought, "I wonder if this hilt will fit that blade I got from the fisherman." In case you are dying of suspense, let me tell you: It did!

It is said that when he fought with this reunited sword, The Will of Heaven, that Lê Lợi was the size of a giant and had the strength of many men. He rallied the Vietnamese people and they drove the Chinese out of their land. The Ming gave up their imperial hopes in Vietnam and Lê Lợi declared himself Emperor of the newly-independent land.

The Turtle Tower lit up at night

One day after this, Lê Lợi was out boating on a lake. (This is Hồ Hoàn Kiếm, the Lake of the Returned Sword, but it couldn't have been called that yet. It's about to get that name.) A golden turtle surface and swam toward the boat. It spoke to Lê Lợi, telling the emperor to return the sword to the turtle's master, the Dragon King (a demigod.) With no hesitation, Lê Lợi drew the sword and threw it out of the boat. The turtle caught it in his mouth and swam under the surface of the water with it. That's when Lê Lợi named the lake Hồ Hoàn Kiếm. Today, there is a tower in the lake called Turtle Tower to further commemorate the occasion when Lê Lợi returned the sword.

Thang Long Water Puppet Theater

On the north side of the Lake of the Returned Sword is the Thang Long Water Puppet Theater. We went to a show, and it is pretty amazing engineering. The audience faces a shallow pool and you can't see the whole pool. Part of it is behind bamboo screens. On either side of the pool are raised platform with musicians. The puppeteers are behind the screens. But they aren't holding the puppets on their hands. Instead the puppets are at the ends of long wooden rods that stay in the water and the puppets can move along the surface of the water, or dive beneath it, or even jump above it.

The empty "stage"

The show is a series of short vignettes. Some involve intricate dancing. In one of them, boys were swimming. In another, a man on a boat was fishing. And somehow they are able to have him catch a fish (meaning somehow the fishing line part of the man on boat puppet connected to and stayed connected to the fish puppet.) What's more, the man and the fish fight, and eventually, the fish pulls the man off the boat and drags him around in the water. So they are also able to detach the man puppet from the boat puppet. And one of the scenes was Lê Lợi on his boat, meeting the golden turtle, and tossing the sword to him. The Lê Lợi puppet was able to draw a sword, toss the sword, and the turtle puppet was able to catch the sword. I don't know how it is done, but it's impressive.

Our narrator

One more lake that we visited is often called the B52 Lake. Not because it is fifteen miles to the love shack. Not because it if filled with rock lobster. (By the way, if you don't get those jokes, well, you might have grown up in a different era than I did.) It is called the B52 Lake because there is a piece of an American B52 in it. Today, there are residential buildings all around this small lake. But during the Vietnam war it was agricultural land there. The Vietnamese shot down an American B52 and a big chunk of it landed in this lake. And its been left there to this day.

The B52 piece in the B52 Lake

The lake itself isn't that impressive to see. It is a tiny lake with a piece of a plane in it. But the panel that told the story, that was great. The victor gets to write the history, right? The tale of the scrappy but noble Vietnamese who took down the aerial instrument of death sent by the American imperialists was fantastic. I'm sure it is exactly analogous to the way the United States would have written up the story if they had won, except it would be the Americans who were glorious and the Vietnamese who had impure motives.

Bonus picture: I love the Avongars to inftitiy and back

So instead of ending, "Water, water everywhere," with "and not a drop to drink," let's change it to "Water, water everywhere, and a lot of fabulous stories." Slaking my thirst for knowledge.