Burn baby burn

I have noticed when I'm on the streets here in Vietnam that when it starts to get dark out a lot of people burn paper outside their buildings. In the ground outside some homes there are little boxes that are used for burning these papers. They only do this in special days in the year.

They burn fake American money for their ancestors to send them money when they are in heaven. If you drive around the Old Quarters you will smell a lot of smoke when they are doing this on special days during the year. I went up to this man above to see what he was doing and he had a bunch of 100 dollar bills. I became richer after meeting this man when he gave me some money. I guess some travelers will use this money in hotels or to buy things around Hanoi and some will take it as payment even though they know it's fake.

History

I came across a kiln in the ceramic village since we were working over for a week. Happened to see it as we were driving by and it is a very ancient and huge kiln. It was amazing! This specific kiln is over one thousand years old. Such an impressive way to build a kiln with so many rooms and vents. As you can see in the photos below it consist on four separate "rooms" where they would fire the ceramic pieces. It really is amazing how much we have evolved in the way do so many things now. They don't use this kiln anymore but is open for people to learn and explore. The entrance to the kiln is through the little arch ways on the side which is on both sides. I went inside and it was cool to see all the ceramic pieces they had inside and to imagine people working in inside of these kilns.

I went to an old church also which was in the middle of some homes in a village. The architecture is amazing with so much detail in the stone. There are so many catholic churches around Hanoi because of the French. I wasn't able to go inside of this church but the outside was beautiful.

Rice Paddies

I have found that Hanoi is surrounded by rice paddies no matter what direction you go. They are beautiful! I never knew or even thought about how rice was made and I'm still not 100 percent sure how the process works. The fields are made up of many small individual plants. Right now it's farming season. When I first got here the plants were very short, but as I have been here they have grown quite a lot. In the harvesting season the rice paddies will all be a yellow color. I have seen pictures of this and I would love to come back to see!

The workers in the field are sometimes pulling plants out, spreading seeds, or watching cattle grazing on the crops. All of these photos were taken outside of Hanoi about two hours out. In a village the fields are divided up by families. Vietnam has the richest agriculture region and is second in the world in its export of rice. It is also the seventh ranked consumer of rice in the world. I feel like every meal is made out of rice! You can tell from the photos that the rice plants are in neat rows; it's amazing! When I went to Sapa they were speading rice on what looked like a huge tarp; they were drying the rice to make rice paper. It is used in a lot of dishes here in Asia.

Banana Trees

I was queen of an island Saturday. I explored the countryside that I had seen everyday a few weeks ago, where would cross a bridge to get over to Long Bien, the other side of the Red River. Disclaimer: the river is not red, it's actually a brown, green color. There is an old French bridge here that is the original bridge from when the French ruled Vietnam. It's beautiful! You can get down to an island from this bridge on a ramp.

We walked around among the banana trees and the many vegetables. I have never seen a banana tree before and it's very pretty! They have a bundle of bananas growing and also have a banana flower. It is used in a lot of dishes here like salads. It was a perfect day with the sun shining and blue skies. It was beautiful and I absolutely loved this adventure!

As we explored the island more and went off the main path, we came across a little hut near the river. There were a lot of little objects that the Vietnamese worship and a path down to the river. I was like "this is exactly what I wanted, to go down to the river!" Then I see a naked man walking into the water...we learned that this was a men's-only swimming area!

 The picture below is a volleyball net! This is the first one I have seen in Hanoi and it's being used to hang clothes!

We walked the other direction and tried to make our way down to the river where there were no naked men. There was what I called garbage beach with a few graves that were hidden in the trees. Down by the river there was a family that lived on the river in a little house. She called out to me "Hello!" and was calling me into her house to smoke with her. I said no but she was pretty funny. There were two men fishing and catching pretty big fish! He showed us all of the goldfish they had caught; they don't eat goldfish. He will sell them in the old quarters, maybe for people to have as pets.

The other direction we drove down through all the banana trees toward the people who live on the river. This was amazing to see how these people live and where they live. The homes are floating on the river on what looks like water tanks. Some houses had two or three solar panels which I thought was interesting. There were three kids playing around the house and running between two homes by a piece of wood. These kids don't go to school but spend all day at home or helping their family on the island. It makes me sad that these kids are born into having the same future as their parents in most cases.

There was a playground that was made for the children in this area so they would stay out of playing in the dirty river. It was very colorful and nice to see that someone had made this for them

Before we left the island I tried to climb up the bridge...my attempt turned into success. I wasn't able to go farther out like I had hoped but it was cool! But I almost died because there were construction workers cutting down metal on the bridge. As I walked under the bridge a huge piece of metal came crashing down to the ground in front of me. It was scary!

We then went to the botanical gardens that are near the Old Quarters. In Hanoi they really keep up the parks; they are all very nice. I love how green and how much vegetation they have everywhere around Hanoi. This park was mixed with a zoo. It had a peacock, monkeys, and birds all in enclosures. The peacock opened up its feathers for us and we got right up to it! In America they have you so far away from the animals, but here it didn't matter. They had swings and other playground items. As I was swinging a grandfather came up to me with his grandson and put his grandson right in my lap. He then proceeded to swing both of us! Hahaha! It was so funny! The little boy was a little shy and didn't really want to do what his grandfather was making him do. He was super cute and he let me swing him; I loved it! A picture below is the most awkward picture I have ever seen - haha! He really didn't want to smile.

Around that part of town there was another big park around a lake. There were a lot of people walking, running, or playing in this area. I was south of the Old Quarters where not a lot of foreigners live or go and people were staring. A few little kids came up to me and asked all the basic questions: what's your name? where are you from, how old are you? They were all so cute and it's fun to play with them!