day eleven: dec 26 Hà Nôi

On the morning of our eleventh day we took a tour of Bat Trang - a pottery-making village. We now have a real appreciation for hand-painted pottery. Once, I would have been dubious if I'd seen identical pieces and they'd been described as hand-painted but the artists at the studios create beautiful designs - over and over and over. One studio we visited made thousands of teapots each day. Each one had to be sponged so it didn't dry out too quickly, and crack. Bat Trang artists make (and sell) everything from crockery to coffins to vases as tall as a tall person.

We stopped for lunch not far from the Museum of Ethnology and tried, something I wouldn't have naturally attributed to Vietnamese cuisine, Bít Têt. The meal was served on a steaming hot plate - steak, meat balls, potato chips, onions, tomato and an egg. It was the perfect meal in the cool, drizzly weather. Here's a great visual menu (and written, if you can read Vietnamese).

What an amazing teaching tool the Museum of Ethnology is. The gardens of the museum have been transformed into a display of various forms of housing in traditional Vietnam. They include the use of original materials, design and layout suiting the purpose of the tribes of people who would have inhabited the houses and the environment in which they lived. The kids particularly loved running around this display and climbing the pole ladders attached to houses perched on stilts.

Bánh mỳ bít tết

54 Hoàng Quốc Việt, Cổ Nhuế, Cầu Giấy

Hanoi, Vietnam
Vietnam Museum of Ethnology
Nguyen Van Huyen Road, Cau Giay Street, Hanoi, Vietnam
Telephone : (+84-4) 37562193 - Fax: (+84-4) 38360351
http://www.vme.org.vn/aboutus_history.asp