Hoa Lo Prison Museum & St Joseph's Cathedral

Hoa Lo Prison Museum

• 1 Hoa Lo St, no website
• Admission : 10K dong per person gets you in and a glossy brochure in whatever language (English available)
• No website but see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoa_Lo
• ok, it's not quite Alcatraz but it's a pretty good show of the bad side of people & how you don't need sophistication in torture.
• Built & used by the French to hold Vietnamese prisoners (hence the French name at the entrance – “Maison Centrale” just means “prison”), then later used by the North Vietnamese to hold POWs of the Vietnam War.
• Nicknamed “Hanoi Hilton”.
• My educated guess : “Hoa Lo” = “huo(3) lu(2)” = stove.
• Interesting fact : Hoa Lo St is the only street in Hanoi to have one & only one address
• Interesting crest/logo – hmmm
• This sign is above many of the doors. Interesting – it refers to the atrocities by the French only.
• Guillotine – in the brochure it’s called a “head cutting machine”
• Scenes of torture

• An simple instrument of torture

• Mannequins – not quite lifesize. They’re in some of the cell exhibits to inject some realism in what you see.
  
  St Joseph’s Cathedral
• On Pho Nha Tho
• Bout 80% of Vietnam nominally practices Mahayana Buddhism. Bout 6-10% are Catholics (compare with S’pore’s 4%). Not surprisingly, there are less Catholics in the North than in Central & South Vietnam. There are 3 Catholic churches in the Hanoi area that is generally on most tourist maps. We didn’t visit the other 2.
• Surprise surprise : the government apparently allows Rome to ordain the bishops http://www.ishr.org/activities/religiousfreedom/christiansinvietnam.htm
  http://www.lavang.co.uk/raditruyengiao/Catholic%20Church%20in%20Vietnam-%20470%20years%20of%20Evangelization.htm
• If I remember correctly, the style of such churches is Gothic (the rose window is a hallmark of Gothic architecture)
• Looks very similar to the Notre Dame de Paris (even more so than the Notre Dame in HCMC)
• Could not find Mass times on the Net so here they are (obviously only correct as of Oct 2006!). I assume all masses are in Vietnamese. That sure is a lot of Masses!
• We entered by the “back door” (the altar end) and look at what greets us – I’m “professionally” amused.
• The sides are lines with stained glass portraits of various saints.

• We were there at around 3pm so the stained glass above the altar caught the sun very nicely. Unfortunately I can’t say the same for my photographic skills! Anyway, there were also some women to the right of the altar preparing lotsa flowers.
• Preparing for a saint-to-be or an incorrupt?
• Altar – the reddest altar I’ve ever seen – looks almost like they’re preparing for Chinese New Year.

When we walked past the church bout 2 hours later, some people had already hung these things – wonder what the occasion was. See the flag – we see it in a number of places (without the cross in the middle of course) but haven’t the foggiest idea what it means)