Finding Melbourne style coffee is hard anywhere in the world, and with my last decent coffee being Cambodia I was keen to find my caffeine fix. I found it across from a huge cathedral in a small cafe with two young waitresses, who pulled up a chair to practice their English with me. They told mce the cathedral was shut at this time of day, and it was boring anyway so not to bother. They were both stunned by the way I drank coffee (double espresso, two blocks of ice, no sugar please and thank you) And slightly horrified when I asked for a second. "Too much coffee, too much make you sick" I assured them it was pretty much my standard breakfast, and this only confused them even more. They spoke to me about studying (both doing commerce, both hating it). Finally caffeinated enough to start moving again I headed to the Vietnamese women's museum. Each level looks at a different aspect of history. Clothing through the ages, working the rice fields, marriage and childbirth, and of course, the war. The Vietnamese refer to it as the American War. This level was actually really hard to see. Listening to the stories of girls as young as 14 fighting and being sent into the jungle alone was heartbreaking, and I was in tears before I finished. The rest of my day was fairly uneventful. I got a massage, walked around the city a little, and had a nap before going out for dinner, then called it an early night. Getting motivated on my last day in Hanoi was a struggle, but after finally pulling myself out of bed and having some breakfast I forced myself to walk to the Vietnamese fine art gallery. I'm glad I did, and spent over three hours exploring each floor thoroughly. I've always been interested by old motifs and temples, so the first floor held me for a good hour. There were Buddhas, elephants, dragons, and my favourite deity, Guanyin. Moving up through the levels it was like walking through time. The techniques were developed, new ones started to appear, and you could clearly see when they were influenced by the French, when the war happened, and when they started returning to more traditional methods. I spent as much time there as I could, basically until I was out of water and so hungry I felt sick. I found a dive bar playing some cruisey jazz tunes for lunch, and got a beer bigger than me head to go with it before heading black to the hotel and then out to the airport.
