The Hoa La Prison Museum - Hanoi Hilton

The Hoa La Prison Museum is an astonishing mix of horror and propaganda.Built by the French administration in 1896, and named Maison Centrale during the French rule – the original sign still hangs over the entrance - most of the prison complex was demolished in 1997. What remains is the the Hoa Lo Prison Museum. The prison was used by the French to hold Vietnamese (largely political) prisoners. Originally intended to hold around 450 prisoners, by the 1930s the number of detainees had soared to almost 2,000.
When you read any westernized tour information, the emphasis is on the incarceration of US pilots, who nick-named it the Hanoi Hilton. A smaller section of the museum is devoted to the American period and the pictures show smiling PoWs washing and eating and playing cards. Videos play movies about the atrocities committed by the attempted (US) invaders. No mention is made of torture or starvation of PoWs. Walls are covered with images of how other countries (France, UK, Russia) helped Vietnam in its very poor, dark days.
Much of the museum, however, concentrates on the horrifying treatment of the Vietnamese by the French - shackles, whips, and other instruments of torture, as well as tiny solitary confinement cells, which date from the French-colonial period.
Also on display is part of the sewer system -  more than 100 prisoners escaped in August 1945. At the back of the museum is the guillotine. Not the oppressive size I was expecting, but still terrifying. It was difficult to remind myself that this was not the medieval period but the turn of the 20th Century.

The Ho Chi Minh Complex

I'd heard about a group called HanoiKids. This is a group of young students who take tourists around Hanoi, showing the sites for free. I booked them up before we left as I knew that they needed as much time as possible in advance.
The top photo shows our two guys, Bách and  Tùng, who are uni students. One is studying International Business and the other is studying Economics. They volunteer with Hanoi Kids to meet new people and to make friends as well as listening to different accents and to show off their city of which they are very proud.
http://www.vietnam-beauty.com/cities/86-ho-chi-minh-complex-the-heart-of-vietnamese-people.html
It is easier to read about the Mausoleum on the link. There is a complex which includes the brilliantly yellow presidential palace, which was the home of the French governor. Ho Chi Minh wouldn't live there as the people were poor, so he had a small 3 roomed house built in the grounds instead. There is very simple furniture and a radio.
We walked through the mausoleum, which was eerie. The lighting is low and the experience moving as the Vietnamese pay their respects (quickly as guards in resplendent white uniforms move everyone along).
In the photo you can see Heather, Bách and  Tùng, then Alexandra who were looking at the fish.
The gardens are beautiful and each tree has some significance. The shade and the breeze were very welcome and in total contrast to our experience so far in the noisy Old Quarter.

Red Rain!

Red Rain is falling in Hong Kong.

"This means that heavy rain has fallen or is expected to fall generally over
Hong Kong, exceeding 50 millimetres in an hour, and is likely to continue. 

Further heavy rain could cause, if not already caused, serious road flooding 

and traffic congestion and could disrupt normal school hours. " 

What it really mean is that someone has taken a huge heavy cloud and had 

ripped apart the front end allowing all the water that was in the sky to 

torrent to the ground. 

What you get is impressive rainfall that soaks you through to the skin in

seconds and serious flooding. 

The temperature drops, ah coolness at last. 

The past 24 hours

During the past 24 hours the temp has varied between 27 and 34 degrees.

Th humidity dropping to 60%.

Guess which time both my cats chose to climb into bed with me and cuddle up?

16:00, yes, just when I needed two furry hot water bottles.

The sky was lit up constantly and flickered...

Hong Kong Hit By Record 13,000 Lightning Strikes in One Hour

By Nick Gentle - Sep 9, 2010

The Hong Kong Observatory reported 13,102 bolts of lightning struck ground across the city in the hour after midnight. Photographer: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images

Record lightning strikes pounded Hong Kong today in its most violent electrical storm, which caused flooding and left people trapped in elevators.
The Hong Kong Observatory reported 13,102 bolts of lightning struck ground across the city in the hour after midnight. That’s the most since such data was first collected in 2005, said David Hui, a scientific officer at the observatory. The storm raged from 9 p.m. yesterday to 4 a.m. today.
Wind gusts of more than 100 kilometers an hour were recorded in Tai O district at 12:40 a.m., according to an observatory weather bulletin. More than 40 millimeters of rain an hour was recorded across the territory during the storm, according to the observatory website.
Police and firefighters responded to flooding in a village in the northern New Territories shortly before midnight, said a police spokesman who declined to be named citing government policy.
Five reports of people being trapped in lifts were received, according to a spokeswoman for the government’s Information Services Department.
The weather was linked to Tropical Storm Meranti, which is moving north through the South China Sea, according Chan Sai- tick, acting senior scientific officer at the observatory. The weather pattern ahead of Meranti caused high temperatures across Hong Kong and southern China yesterday.
“That led to a large accumulation of energy and very unstable conditions during the afternoon,” Chan said in a phone interview. “That energy was subsequently released last night.”

Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport (1925 - 1998) 香港啟德機場

Kai Tak Airport VHHH (1925 - 1998) VHHX (since 1998) "traditional Chinese: 啟德機場" was the world's busiest international airport. The growth of Hong Kong put a strain on the airport's capacity. The airport was designed to handle 24 million passengers per year but in 1996, Kai Tak had already handled 29.5 million passengers, plus 1.56 million tonnes of freight, making it the third busiest airport in the world in terms of passenger traffic, and first in terms of cargo. However extremely busy Kai Tak was located in the city center, the Kowloon City "九龍城" (The city of nine dragons "city surrounded by nine mountains"), around by high density buildings, numerous skyscrapers and rugged mountains reaching an altitude of 2000 ft. with single narrow runway (13/31) very close to taxiway jutting out into Victoria Harbour, and further less than 10 Km is Hong Kong Island, another densely populated area with hills up to 2100 ft. The only way approach to Runway 13 was a sharp 47-degree right turn before and of the same level with the checkerboard (a small hill painted with red and white checkerboard at 1:18) at about 100-meter altitude then align with the runway. Often with strong crosswinds, the airport was infamously difficult to land at. However, due to the same reasons, only experience pilots were chosen for the challenging approach and air crash incidents rarely occur.

The low altitude manoeuvre was so spectacular that crowded streets of people, multi-storey buildings, vehicles and pavements can easily be "touch". I can hear "WOW" or "My God" from passengers when they aware of the home decorations through apartment windows which is of the same level with the aircraft like flickering of televisions even children say "Hi" to them before landing. In this video, you can found the most extremely landing, but these happened several hundred times per day, and was just the real daily life of Hong Kong people.

Thailand

http://thailandholidaynye.blogspot.com/

Before we came to Hong Kong we had a month in Thailand. I kept a paper diary at the time and will gradually transpose it to the Thailand holiday blog above.