Rough Guide to Vietnam - Jan Dodd [267]
Hanoi and around | The City | West Lake |
Around West Lake
The east side of West Lake is now largely built up, but it does have a sprinkling of mildly interesting sights. On Yen Phu Avenue, halfway up the Red River embankment from the causeway, an arch on the left – inscribed “Lang Yen Phu” – marks the entrance to a narrow lane, down which Yen Phu Temple merits a quick detour for its massive entrance hall and a jolly group of statuettes making offerings before the altar. Continuing north, past ostentatious villas – fantasy houses combining a touch of Spanish hacienda with a slice of French château – you get an idea of the pace of development in this district, which for a while outstripped any attempt at planning or design controls. The most notorious example was illegal construction work just east of here, which caused cracks up to 200m long in the city’s 1000-year-old flood defences. After a much publicized enquiry, in which a few heads rolled, some offending structures were torn down. Ever since, there have been persistent rumours that all buildings between the embankment and the river will have to go.
About a kilometre from the causeway, the red-tiled roofs of Kim Lien Pagoda huddle in the shadow of the Sheraton Hotel. The pagoda’s best attributes are its elaborate carvings and unplastered brick walls dating from an eighteenth-century rebuild. Even if pagodas aren’t your thing, you could always come out here to indulge yourself at the nearby Zen Spa (see "Listings"). The surrounding district, Nghi Tam, was traditionally a flower-producing area and you’ll still find one or two pockets of chrysanthemum, peach or kumquat – depending on the time of year – between the encroaching buildings. If you’re an early riser, it’s worth venturing this way at sunrise when Hanoi’s flower-sellers gather on a dusty patch of ground to select their choice of blooms at the wholesale flower market(See "Shopping and markets").
Turning left onto Xuan Dieu, and then left again on Dang Thai Mai, takes you along the Ho Tay Peninsula through upmarket housing estates to a row of popular lakeside restaurants and Phu Tay Ho. This temple is dedicated to Thanh Mau, the Mother Goddess, who in the seventeenth century appeared as a beautiful girl to a famous scholar out boating on the lake. She refused to reveal her name, just smiled enigmatically, recited some poetry and disappeared. But when the scholar worked out her identity from the poem, local villagers erected a temple where they still occasionally worship the goddess in trances – as at Hon Chen Temple in Hué (See "Hon Chen Temple"). Phu Tay Ho attracts few tourists and the petitioners here are mostly women and young people asking for favours by burning their fake dollars under the banyan trees; according to Chinese belief, the bats depicted on the facades are symbolic of five wishes – for longevity, security, success, happiness and health.
Hanoi and around | The City | West Lake |
Museum of Ethnology
Although the Museum of Ethnology (Tues–Sun 8.30am–5.30pm; 20,000đ) is a bit of a trek, out in the suburbs of Hanoi on Nguyen Van Huyen, it more than repays the effort, particularly if you’ll be visiting any of the minority areas. Spread across two floors, the displays are well presented and there’s a fair amount of information in English on all the major ethnic groups. Musical instruments, games, traditional dress and other domestic items which fill the showcases are brought to life through musical recordings, photos and plenty of life-size models, as well as captivating videos of festivals and shamanistic rites. This wealth of creativity amply illustrates some of the difficulties ethnologists are up