Hey there readers, things were winding down, but I aimed to make the most of my ninth and final full day in Hanoi. This was also the only day that I had opted for a tour: Hanoi: Incense Village Hat & Lacquer with Options. As I wasn’t sure about how food would work, at 7:05 AM I bought a double chocolate croissant and salt coffee at 100 Grams. As is frequently the case with pastries, the croissant was pretty but not particularly tasty. Fortunately, the salt coffee was great.
Not having been particularly satisfied with the croissant, at 7:32 AM I headed back to the hotel and bought an egg sandwich at the Circle K which was right across from it at 7:40 AM. The egg sandwich was outstanding, which wasn’t really that surprising. I remembered that I had also eaten some incredibly delicious (and affordable) convenience store food when I had been visiting with my brother in Virginia in July. The food at these sorts of places is generally not that fancy, but it doesn’t have to be.
Shortly thereafter at 7:48 AM I was picked up in front of the hotel by the driver and our guide for today, Ji. By 8:22 AM we had done all of the pickups, and it looked like there would only be three of us tourists for the day. At this time Ji also told me that we would not be able to do the Lacquer village, as only I had been interested, but that she would give me the refund in cash at the end of the trip. The ride was comfortable and uneventful, but the scenery was pleasant.
We got out of the vehicle at 9:26 AM and it was a very short walk to the hat workshop. I thought it might have been nice to wander around a bit in the village, but I understood that we wouldn’t really have time.
I wasn’t really sure what I had been expecting, but this wasn’t it. It basically seemed like we were just in the downstairs part of someone’s home, with the important caveat that there were a ton of traditional Vietnamese hats.
We of course learned a lot about the process of making the hats. The master hat maker was eighty something but looked much younger. The frame of the hat has 16 rings due to some sort of symbolism which I didn’t understand. They use a heated plate to flatten the palm leaves before attaching them to the ring. However, whereas the first layer is palm, the second is bamboo shoot, then switching back to palm again. All of the hats here are hand-stitched, and it takes 8-9 hours total to make a “standard hat”. These are the hats which one sees being used by field workers, most of whom are women.
In addition to the standard hat, they now also make fancy silk and lotus leaf ones. For some reason, there is a slightly different style of hat which is used by fishermen. There are also these massive circular hats which are used exclusively by singers, but those take two months to complete. On a practical note, the standard hats are also frequently used as hand fans. Despite their light weight, they are quite firm, which contributes to another secondary use, moms whacking their naughty kids with them. With normal daily use, a standard hat has a useful “lifespan” of between five and ten years.
At 9:50 PM we were urged to choose a standard or fisherman hat to paint, with no additional cost. It was tempting to get a standard hat, but I knew that I would never wear it and it would also be a bit complicated to take it home. Fortunately, they also had mini-hats available.
At 10:30 AM we were back in the car, headed to the next destination, where we arrived at 10:57 AM.
This next area had more of a factory vibe to it. Once more, I learned quite a bit about something which I hadn’t really thought about before then. Bamboo is the center of the incense stick. After the pieces are completely dry, they cut them into thin strips that are then flattened by the first machine. Dust from the process (which causes lots of respiratory illnesses for the workers) is used to make paper and fertilizer.
But there is a lot more to the process. The sticks are then cut into different lengths depending on the country they go to; Vietnam uses longer ones. After it is cut to the proper length, the sticks go through a polishing machine which incorporates some sort of oil which helps to make it smooth and round. Here they use pink and red artificial color, but in other more expensive factories they use natural dyes. The colored part of the stick is to hold, and the other end is where the actual incense is applied.
I might have mixed up the process a bit, but after the sticks are dry (I think it takes a day in the sun), this other special machine is used to attach the incense. The incense used at this factory is a mixture of cinnamon and bamboo. The incense length used in Vietnam is always 35 cm, with 20 cm for the incense part, which takes one hour to burn. Interestingly, and they take this very seriously, incense sticks can only be given to people in groups of twos (I think that might not apply to large bundles which are handled to someone, but I might be wrong).
At 11:35 AM we moved on to the market area, which is where people also like to take pictures. As mentioned earlier, in Vietnam, they only use pink and red incense. These are used the first and fifteenth of each lunar month. Traditionally, these were only times for ancestor worship, but these days people also use the incense on these days for Buddhism and Christianity. The other colors at the market are only for the tourists to buy, and it is evidently cheaper to buy here then back in the main part of Hanoi.
At 11:50 we finished up with our tourist pictures, arriving back to the vehicle just 5 minutes later. Ji told us it would be 80 minutes for us to travel back to the Temple of Literature area. Interestingly, it seems that Hanoi is like Bengaluru in that it officially just goes on for forever, as evidently the craft villages we visited were actually part of Hanoi? The trip back was once again uneventful, with more of the same countryside views.
At 1:15 PM I was dropped off near the Temple of Literature, and I said goodbye to Ji. From there I just went out walking. I sort of wanted to get some higher quality popup cards in a bookstore, but the two which had been recommended were not open. I also had thought to check out a sort of famous frog restaurant, but it looked rather dingy and there weren’t really many customers either, so I decided against it. However, I still saw a lot of interesting things.
At 3:40 AM, I checked out a small temple next to the lake, then realized that I was next to a very well-known Pagoda: Tran Quoc Pagoda. They had the laws of karma up which I had seen in Tam Coc, so this is definitely a recurring theme. Architecturally, the site is very beautiful, but if not there to worship, it is a visit which shouldn’t take more than thirty-five minutes.
I finished up there at 4:28 PM and decided to walk over to the island on the lake which I had read is considered to be a sort of fancy area where a lot of foreigners live. Once there, at 4:55 PM I stopped at Phở cuốn Hương Mai where I ordered beef rolls, fried frog with spicy sauce, some sort of fried noodle beef thing and a Hanoi beer. It wasn’t fine dining, but it was tasty and filling, with a total cost of 304,000 VND ($12.90 USD).
I finished up there and decided to take advantage of the good weather to have a leisurely walk back to my hotel room. Along the way, now that I had stopped actively looking, I was able to buy all of the souvenirs which I had earlier wanted, and I also bought some of those rounded gemstone sweets I had seen earlier. I tried two of the beautiful sweets before buying them and found them to be sweet, but not at all overpowering. I also found out that they have to be eaten in 3-5 days, and they cannot be refrigerated.
Feeling very satisfied with my purchases at 6:55 PM, I then finished the twenty-five remaining minutes of the walk back to my hotel room.
Once back in the room at 7:20 PM, I packed away all of my various purchases and finished getting ready so that I would be able to easily head to the airport in the morning without being stressed out. Along with the time I had spent in other parts of Vietnam, I had been in Vietnam for 17 days. And for everyone who had told me not to spend so much time in Hanoi, you were wrong. I had a wonderful time here. I knew I needed to get back to work in India, but I was already missing this amazing city . . .
Travels with Jay 