Today we took it a bit slower. Leon got up at 11:00 AM, and Malte was already awake in the living room. As a morning exercise, we completed the diary entry for the new day of our trip and then headed out to our usual café, which is kind of boring. There, we had our morning caffeine intake, albeit rather uneventfully, and continued on to have breakfast at our favorite Phô place. The music from the concert across the street was almost unbearably loud, and the mood of the shop owner was understandably down. Nevertheless, the soup was delicious!
In the shop, we made the decision to travel to Bat Trang today. It was a place we had on our list since our arrival in Hanoi. The day before, we hadn’t gone due to Leon’s digestion issues. Today we didn’t have anything better to do, and Leon felt ready for the journey. We headed out as soon as we finished our soup, traveling over the Long Biên Bridge once more.
Bat Trang is known for its traditional pottery. First, we visited the pottery museum, which, thanks to its very striking architecture, is an attraction in itself. However, despite what one might think, there were almost exclusively Vietnamese people around, rather than tourists from Europe and Asia. It appears that the 30-minute drive by scooter is too far for most tourists.
Our first stop was the museum’s rooftop, where we enjoyed a coffee with a magnificent view.
The exhibition is quite nice, although very little is explained. Occasionally, films from old Vietnam were shown—presumably from the 1960s. Watching these films triggered what Leon would later read about in a newspaper article: Solastalgia. The article described it in these words: “The sense of loss in the face of the painful realization that the Earth is destroyed and will never be the same again.”
The films depicted Vietnam before industrialization, when the areas where people lived weren’t completely littered, when you couldn’t buy mass-produced junk from China at every corner, and when the streets weren’t paved. Life must have been considerably harder back then, but one might still wonder if people today are genuinely happier. This also briefly led to thoughts about how recklessly companies act when they export their goods made of plastic and packaged in plastic to countries where the disposal infrastructure cannot keep up with the flood of waste. The pollution of the environment seems to mean nothing to these companies in light of the impacts.
Well, back to the topic! On the ground floor of the museum, several pottery shops are located, and one can even observe some artists painting their vases. Leon and Malte checked out all the shops and then drove into downtown Bat Trang.
It turned out that not only was the ground floor of the museum entirely dedicated to selling pottery. In fact, in the entire town, there were hardly any other shops on the ground floor. Particularly striking were the life-sized vases with golden decorations, but tiny ceramics in the form of keychains were also sold, and everything in between, in every conceivable shape and color. It was overwhelming when you don’t really know what you want. In the end, we limited ourselves to a few smaller items and headed back to the museum, where Leon had set aside some items a few hours earlier.
Well packed, we finally hopped back on our scooter and headed home. We actually needed to return our scooter by early evening. After Malte got his beard trimmed, the rental shop contacted us to give us the scooter for another couple of hours. This allowed Malte to fulfill his wish of going to “Go” or “Big C” to run some errands with Leon.
The mall was, as usual, completely overcrowded, and Leon was once again plagued by his cramps. He had initially thought it would be tolerable, but it wasn’t. At the same time, we hadn’t eaten anything for ages, and our mood was sinking low.
Solution: Food. Leon decided on a restaurant in the mall, while Malte grabbed something to eat in the food court directly in the mall. Leon waited in the restaurant for Malte to finish his errands. He wasn’t really in the mood to shove through the consuming crowds that were starting to pile up in the supermarket. Especially not after how he had felt in the museum in Bat Trang just before.
When Malte finally finished his errands, we hopped back on the scooter and headed towards the apartment, going over a pothole that sent Malte sitting behind me flying through the air, feeling like he broke three vertebrae in the process. We passed the festival, which, by the way, had been open day and night for three consecutive days, and the drunk people who were streaming out of its exit aimlessly into the street. For a moment, we thought about joining them tonight, just to not miss out on this event. Arriving home around 9:30 PM, we unloaded our purchases, and Leon went to the scooter rental to return the bike, only to find out that the owner had just gone to eat. So he went back to Malte’s apartment. We sat down on the sofa and started relaxing with a game of chess. Half an hour later, in the midst of an exciting match, we received the message that we could now return our scooter. So we made a plan to go together and stroll through the festival to see what was happening there. On the way there, we discovered it had finally come to an end. For a moment we were disappointed, but then also somehow glad that we wouldn’t have to deal with that anymore.
We walked the few hundred meters back to the apartment but couldn’t end the day just yet. The beer garden near our apartment wasn’t taking any more guests… Surely, there had to be somewhere to get beer? We quickly sat down in a restaurant by the lake, ordered two beers and a water spinach dish, then fetched a juice from our usual juice place, returned to the apartment, finished our chess game, and suddenly it was already 01:45 AM.
We had ordered our taxi for 03:15 AM, but of course, we hadn’t packed yet.
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