Sunday with my sister

            Today was Sunday, and it was an interesting and also busy day. I went all over the place, and luckily didn’t get lost this time, because I had my sister with me.

I saw a few museums in the morning, and my host family took me downtown for the Mid-autumn festival at night.

            We started out the day by going to a few different museums, the first was the Vietnamese cultural museum, and it basically showcases all of the different tribes of Vietnam. There are 54 original tribes, scattered across Vietnam, some in the mountains, some by the sea, some in the plains, but they all came together to form what is now Vietnam. It would be an understatement to say it was crowded, because it was really crowded. There was a combination of tourists and locals, and they were out in force. Circling the museum were life-sized models of the different houses found throughout Vietnam. There were also different activities for the children to do, since it was the moon-festival. Next we went to the Hanoi museum, which was just finished recently, and is shaped like an upside down pyramid, which is pretty crazy looking. I was told not to go there, because it was so boring, but I was more interested in being inside a giant upside down pyramid. Alas, it was really boring; there was literally nothing in it, just a bunch of pictures of things that would have been interesting to actually see. It wasn’t even worth the price of admission, which was free. There are also many empty exhibits, and not because the museum just opened, but because they have nothing to put there. So following that we returned home, where I worked on some homework until, it was time to go to the mid autumn festival! We took a cab to downtown at around 8:30 pm and it was crazy! The entire place was packed, the streets are narrow and the crowds are big, there are also a lot of drunken college kids there too, running around blowing on horns. It reminds me of mardi gras in New Orleans. We walked through the streets, just taking in the scene, and it was hectic, there were horns going off, people everywhere, and, of course, motorbikes trying to push through the crowd. I felt really claustrophobic, even though I was outside. The video link there pretty much sums it up.

            So when it was all said and done, we left the madness behind and returned home, where I went to bed, ready for my second week of school.