Our last two days in Hanoi have been enervating. The heat, the noise, the aggressive salespersons, and general urban rancor have left us longing for a more relaxing rural environment, which we hope to find tomorrow when our night train arrives in Sapa (NW Vietnam near the Chinese border). Here we hope to find cooler weather and more contemplative outdoorsy activity.

As for Hanoi, we spent the last two days here eating, sightseeing, fighting with a recalcitrant hotel staff, and dealing as best we could with the oppressive heat. Yesterday we visited a neo-gothic church (St. Joseph's Cathedral) erected by the French in the late 19th Century. The exterior was in charming disrepair and in the little square just outside entrance Vietnamese children played soccer. Soccer is in the air here as southeast Asia is currently host to the AFC Asian Cup (the finals will take place this Sunday, Iraq vs. Saudi). The inside of the church, like most neo-gothic 19th-century churches, was a little kitschy and overly insistent -- trying to be religious is a way that clearly failed (Nietzsche and Schopenhauer called such churches tombs for an embalmed God). The church only recently resumed services in the early 90s. Many churches in Vietnam faced state persecution after the revolutionaries united the country in 75. This prompted the thought that maybe it's better for the church to be persecuted by the state than to receive its sanction. While pursuing persecution is obviously sinful in the same way pursuing martyrdom is sinful, one must remember that Christianity's original mode of being is religion under siege. So who has done Christianity a greater favor, Constantine or Lenin?

After the church we visited the infamous Hoa Lo Prison, better known by the moniker Hanoi Hilton. This was a prison first designed, built, and used by the French to imprison and torture unruly colonial subjects. It was a pretty horrible place. Although it had been converted into a museum, it did not take much by way of imagination to see just how nasty things were. While the museum did a great job documenting the crimes inflicted by the French on the Vietnamese, it was less than honest when exhibiting the way American prisoners were treated. The rooms dedicated to documenting the lives of American POWs were clearly fabricated. There are staged pictures of GIs receiving letters, eating bountiful Christmas dinners, playing card games, etc. We know, however, some prisoners were tortured. There were pictures of McCain, including one showing the Vietnamese rescuing him from the lake into which he parachuted. In addition to this they also showcased his flight-fatigues. McCain apparently visited here in 2000. Pictures of this visit hang on the wall.

The prison also exhibited photos of protests that took place in France during the 50s and in the States during the 60s and 70s showing the respective domestic war resistance movements. This acted as a historic prompt. S and I looked at each other -- the Iraq war was at the fore of our minds -- and said simultaneously 'we have learned nothing from history, absolutely nothing.' And on that rather sad note, we left the prison.