Going to Pot.

We've been in Vietnam for a month now, and we still haven't seen much other than the streets of Hanoi because we're too busy working. Granted, that's a huge improvement over our situation in the states, but still.

So we decided to use our one day off to get out of town and chose as our destination the ancient pottery-making village of Bat Trang. We could have taken a guided tour in an air-conditioned bus, but it was $55 - $110 depending on the elaborateness of the tour. Instead we took a cab to the Long Bien bus station ($2.50) and hopped the next bus to Bat Trang. (less than fifteen cents per person each way. And it was even air conditioned!)

The 47 bus starts at Long Bien and ends at Bat Trang, making it very easy for neophytes like us.

The bus is not in great shape, but it runs, and it's cheap.

Along the way we got a good look at the Red River and
various little villages. Lots of student piled in and out of the bus.

We arrived just after noon, hungry, so we grabbed some delicious bun cha and an iced beer in the parking lot. Yes, the beer is iced. No one has big enough refrigerators to hold the quantity of beer a restaurant would sell, or the money to power them, but they do have freezers full of ice. And when it's 96 degrees and 96% humidity an iced beer is pure ambrosia.

The pottery village was a dusty, unremarkable little town, fairly deserted. Most of the shops were shut, either for lunch or because they aren't open Mondays. We headed for the main shopping complex.

There were rows and rows of little stalls, mostly all selling the same stuff, very little of it of any interest--old-fashioned Chinese designs (dragons, peacocks, grinning sages), Roman kitsch (nymph with water jug, peeing child), Japanese kitsch (Hello, Kitty), etc. But we did manage to pick up a pretty vase and a couple coffee mugs. (Actually, since we moved into our house, we have had nothing to drink our morning coffee from but a pair of Hello, Kitty mugs left by the owner, so a nice pair of coffee cups was much needed.)

Still it was great to get out of town for a day. We are looking forward to future excursions, especially around Tet when everything shuts down for two weeks.

P.