Good Morning Vietnam!

Hanoi street scene
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The never ending saga of getting from the Chinese border to Hanoi.......

Our taxi driver handed us over to a minibus headed for Hanoi... seemed OK even though the price was a little higher than we expected.   We leapt aboard with the luggage piled high in the back and our feet up around our necks as the floor was fully loaded with supplies for Hanoi (forget the Ho Chi Minh trail these days!).  Our departure was delayed somewhat as we had to trawl the streets looking for more and more passengers until no one else could possibly fit into the minibus.  At the halfway point we got out to stretch our legs and experience Vietnamese toilets at first hand.  Apparently we got it right - Keith headed for the Nam section and Wendy went for a look at the Nu department.... another highlight of the trip.... only an open drain... no such thing as cubicles, let alone doors... (Oh for the organisation of the Chinese in the toilet department!)

Hanoi water puppets
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We arrived in the bustling Old Quarter of Hanoi after a bit of a revolt from the other European couple and ourselves!  There is obviously a bit of a deal happening between the minibus driver and the hotels... we were dumped right outside a hotel.  It was all a bit of an effort to start walking through the streets of the Old Quarter at rush hour (with our suitcases in tow!) so we took a room. We did decline the first room though, pleasant though it was with a balcony overlooking the street.  We would have got absolutely no sleep with the constant blowing of horns from the incredible traffic!

Temple of Literature
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The girl had another hotel just down the street, and though the room was a bit poky we decided to stay - it was dinner time and we hadn't really eaten all day.  At least this room was near the back away from the traffic.  Apparently land prices in Hanoi are very high - all the buildings are extremely narrow - one room wide!

Next morning (Wednesday) we wandered the streets of the Old Quarter - an amazing maze of streets and alleyways.  In the old days each street was allocated to a particular guild - silversmiths, incense merchants, spice shops etc.  The tradition continues but is updated - several streets dedicated to the tourist trade!  We've learnt to navigate by "hardware street", "bamboo street", "spice street" rather than try to cope with the actual street names.

The wander happily filled in most of the day.  In the evening we went to see a Water Puppet show - an old Vietnemese tradition - the puppeteers are hidden from view behind a screen waist deep in water, with marvellous puppets out in front controlled by poles and strings hidden under the water.  It was a great show (Keith particularly enjoyed the music, right up his alley!)

The following day was spent looking at the more formal side of Hanoi - the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum (he was feeling poorly and not up to receiving visitors by the time we got there in the early afternoon!), the Ho Chi Minh Museum, the Ho Chi Minh house, the other Ho Chi Minh house - you get the idea.  We also checked out the Temple of Literature - marvellous old buildings which originally housed the first university in Vietnam set up in the 1400s.

A delicious dinner and the local draught beer later, we headed back to the hotel to freshen up before catching the overnight train to the next destination - Sapa.