We were able to sleep in (a tiny bit) and didn’t need to leave the hotel until 8:30. I’m feeling surprisingly good, the drugs are working! However Rick is coughing which he says is from the pollution (I saw an article online saying that Hanoi is the most polluted city in the world right now) but I’m wondering if he got what I had.
We drove to Bat Trang. Our first stop was to talk with someone affected by the controversial issue of land reform. In 1953 after the French left and Ho Chi Minh took control of the northern half of the country land was redistributed from the wealthy to the poor. Three years later he realized he’d made a mistake and returned some of the property to the original owners. The government does not speak of this today and the gentleman who we spoke to could get in trouble for speaking to us so I will leave the details of his story and pictures from our visit out of the blog.
After visiting Mr Nam’s (fictitious name) house, we went to Hiep Nhung Ceramic Workshop and learned how they make ceramics. The village of Bat Trang is strategically located along the Red River which is where the clay originally came from. The government is concerned about erosion so they now get the clay from elsewhere. To make the ceramics the clay is diluted and then poured into a limestone mold. The mold sucks the water out and causes the clay to harden along the clay/ mold interface. They leave the wet clay in the mold for 5-7 minutes, depending on how thick they want the pot. The pot dries some before they carve a design into it and then paint it. The final step is to glaze it before firing it.
After seeing the process, we tried our hand at making a pot using a manual wheel. Although I have taken pottery before I found it very hard with the manual wheel. I gave up and just had fun with it. Rick had better luck. We did a little shopping and then we returned to Hanoi.
On our way back we saw the Hanoi ceramic mosaic mural on the walls of the red river dike system. The mural is 4 miles long and it commemorates Hanoi’s 1000 year birthday in 2010. Many Vietnamese artists participated as well as foreign embassies and cultural centers. The ceramic for the mural came from Bat Trang, the village we just visited. The content of the mosaic represents the decorative patterns from different periods in the history of Vietnam. Also incorporated on the wall are modern art works, paintings of Hanoi, and children’s drawings. The mural is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest mural.
We went to lunch in Hanoi and on the way back to the hotel we stopped for egg coffee. Egg coffee is prepared with egg yolks, sugar, condensed milk, and robusta coffee. Rick liked it!
That evening we had dinner on our own and so I went out for avocado ice cream with my fellow travelers, Mingjen, Nancy, and Judy.