Souvenirs from Vietnam

I've done a lot of traveling and I usually bring back many many souvenirs. When I went to Thailand back in 2003 I brought back enough to open a small store, and in fact I drew some suspicion when I had a three day layover in Tokyo on my way home. Even though I left most of my luggage in storage at Narita, when I got on the plane bound for home I think they thought I was trying to smuggle something illegal because I had so much stuff. They inspected me with a fine tooth comb.

This time I didn't bring back as much. Of course the greatest thing I brought back is Henry.
Here he poses with Barney. One of the creators of Barney got her master's at the university where I work. The university has had a push over the past year or two to hit up alumni who have "made good", and we are currently hoping to get some "Barney money" for my part of the library--the teacher education collection and the children's collection.
Here is an authentic Vietnamese water puppet that I bought for $25 in Hanoi. It is the real thing--its blunted fingers denote many performances. The thing is around the size of a newborn baby and I think it would make a good stand in for the infant in a creche scene.

These are mere replicas of water puppets that I bought in HCMC for $2.50 each. They are only around six inches tall but they do remind me of one of my favorite scenes from both performances--the husband and wife gathering fish and frogs in the water, fighting either with themselves or with a fox.
I bought this wooden image in Siem Reap. It is a replica of one of the king's faces that adorn (in the hundreds) one of the temples at Angkor Wat. I bargained the vendor down to three dollars for this item, which is around a foot tall.
I don't drink alcohol, but I felt I couldn't leave without a bottle of the famous Vietnamese snake wine--I wouldn't drink it even if I did partake of spirits. I bought this bottle for just five dollars (and could have got it for less if I had wanted to bargain) and I've seen it for sale through US vendors for much much higher. It really creeps me out--thankfully the vendor wrapped it in newspaper but I was still fearful of the bottle breaking in my luggage on the way home. And I wasn't entirely sure it was legal to bring back. Most of the online commentary said it was legal but a few people said theirs had been confiscated.
My mother was anxious to have one of these wooden images of a woman in a conical hat. In the last day or two we were in Hanoi I bought one. They are everywhere.
These palm leaf baseball hats are supposedly only available in Vietnam. I bought two and my mother bought two--we rationalized that four would fit in a suitcase as well as one would.

This hat is the one I will most likely wear, a squared off baseball cap with the flag.
The green hat on the upper right is a Vietnamese army hat that I have added to my collection. I used to have a huge rack with twenty or more hats in the room that is now Henry's. My collection is now reduced to these few that will fit in my room. The top hat is from Venice, the hat directly beneath it is from Guatemala, the dark brown cap to the left of that is from Peru, as is the multicolor cap below it. The black hat is a children's bobby hat from England--I couldn't find the real thing.
I found this puzzle at a grocery store in Hanoi. I thougth it would come in useful in a few years when I show Henry the Vietnamese alphabet. Or maybe he can use it for show and tell (if they still do that in school).
My mother bought this story quilt in Laos, and it is hanging in Henry's room. We could have gotten one without the English narration of what I think is a well known story, but since we don't know the story I got the captioned version. They sold these in Thailand too, they are handicraft of some hill tribe that I think is spread around Southeast Asia.
Lastly is this lacuqered cover of a Tintin book. Tintin is a series of what we now call graphic novels by a Belgian writer who goes by the pseudonym Herge (from his initials, his name is Georges Remi).