"The happiest place on earth"

Get email updates of new posts:        (Delivered by FeedBurner)

Friday, July 13, 2012

The Differences between Men and Women

Photobucket

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

N Vietnam 2012 - Day 4, Part 2 - Temples

N Vietnam 2012
Day 4 - 27th May - Temples
(Part 2)

Next I went to Quán Thánh Temple, "one of the Four Sacred Temples of the capital".

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
"下馬" ("Get off your horse")

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Memorial to Ly Tu Trong, là một trong những nhà cách mạng trẻ tuổi nhất của Việt Nam.
He died at 17, and I tried to find out more but the longwinded story in Passion, Betrayal, and Revolution in Colonial Saigon: The Memoirs of Bao Luong put me off

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Entrance gateway

I thought I might've paid 100,000 VND and only got 40,000 VND in change for a 10,000 VND entrance fee, but I wasn't sure.

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Plaque on Quan Thanh Temple

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Hall

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Vendor selling cookies for the gods

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Dragon design

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Altar

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Elephant statue

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Designs flanking door into compound

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
I didn't get this

I then headed to another temple - the Temple of Literature. Again (as with in the morning to West Lake) I took a taxi and he used the meter. He even turned on the aircon for me. Wow.

I was surprised the taxi driver put on a seatbelt so I did so too.

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Picture of eggshell helmets and helmet hole for ponytails

There was a place called "chocolate shop for boy & girl". Maybe it was a courting place.

There was some slight confusion in getting to the Temple of Literature, as my map didn't have its Vietnamese name and gave the wrong address so the driver almost dropped me off at the wrong place. In the end I looked at the Rough Guide which gave its name as "Văn Miếu" (Lonely Planet didn't pronounce on this issue, bah).

As the taxi driver dropped me off, he chuckled. I hope he wasn't thinking, "I'm cloning his credit card hee" (it's quite fun to pay taxi fares of about USD 1 by credit card).

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Temple of Literature

The name is slightly misleading as it seemed to be primarily an educational institution, though also a Temple to Confucius (now I realise why I found the place so familiar).

At the previous temple, I had been confused over whether I'd been cheated of 50,000 VND. At this one, the entrance fee was 20,000 VND. I tried to pay in USD, and gave 5 USD (100,000 VND) and the attendant tried to give me 30,000 VND in change (effectively cheating me of 50,000 VND). I complained but she refused to budge, asking me to pay in Dong. Bloody hell, even the ticket offices in this wretched land tried to cheat me.

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
I call this photo set "Occidentalism", or "the white folks won't give you any candy"

Considering it was Sunday it was strange how many school groups there were. Sad.

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Gate

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
On the Temple of Literature

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Path, at the end of which is la Grande Porte Mediane (Great Central Gate)

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
On studying here. Stangely they didn't condemn the feudalist reactionary regime. Not in English/French anyway.

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
On the architecture

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Woman posing at Pavilion de Xhue Van (the French sign was faded, and the English was illegible)

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Pond inside

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
"Stelae of Doctors"
According to a reliable source, these misleadingly named stelae list people who succeeded in the Imperial Examinations

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Yankee Money!

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
UNESCO certificate

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Stele

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Pond from other side

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Hall

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Lion

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Water Puppets

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
On Confucius

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Altar

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Statues of two guys

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Golden Turtles

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Apart from the obligatory souvenir stalls there was also an ATM. Very good.

Amusingly, one Vietnamese schoolgirl asked to take a picture with me. I was really flattered (the last time this had happened to me was in the Louvre in 2006, and it was just a picture of me with no French schoolgirl), so I also got someone to take a picture using my camera. In a few years time I'll look for her and she can become my Vietnamese wife.

There was a strange T-shirt worn by a school group: "16 ♂ + 20 ♀ = ♥". This seemed to be a class t-shirt.

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Another class t-shirt. At least their expectations of love are still at the bicycle stage.

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
My sausage (snack)

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Sausage prep

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
Strange Seafood
I asked the lady and guy at the stall to pose and they mimed attacking each other with the freaky seafood and a food scoop, and tried to push each other into my frame.


Not only were the attempts to swindle me more frequent in Vietnam, so too were the enormity of those attempts.


I'd asked how much the sausage was, and was quoted 10,000 VND on paper. At the end I was charged 15,000 VND. Meh.
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Latest posts (which you might not see on this page)

powered by Blogger | WordPress by Newwpthemes