30 hours after leaving home we arrive in Hanoi, the capital. Lucky for us its evening and after crashing out wake up to sounds of early morning traffic. Nice room at the top of a tall, long but thin hotel. We even have a balcony.
Most of the buildings are narrow (3 metres) due to an old taxing system. They are called tube houses.
After breakfast we explore. Find the Hoan Kiem (Sword Lake) and have a strong cup of Vietnamese coffee. Take a trip to a shrine which pokes out onto the lake. The story about the sword given to Emperor Le Loi, is as per Lancelot, but involves a giant tortoise not a lady. Also he gets the sword from a dragon, so not out a stone. All in all not like Lancelot at all (apart from the sword/lake bit).
Get tickets to the cities main water puppet show for the following day. Turns out to be a lot of fun. Puppeteers work really hard and can suffer from foot rot.
Hanoi is clean, practically dog and cat free (the Chinese get the blame, apparently they ate them all, but Mike and Yvonne are a wee bit sceptical).
Mike was a tad disappointed at the extravagant and outrageous price of 'beer hoi' at 5,000 dong a half pint (15 pence). Apparently bloody tourists have inflated the price. Beer hoi is
brewed all over Vietnam as a kind of home brew, and sold informally on the street for pence. It tastes like a light beer and is about 3% proof. It is very drinkable. The cost goes down as one moves south!!
In Vietnam almost every house has a shrine in honour of ancestors, and the Vietnamese take the reverence of their ancestors very seriously. This is important for one observation, and one reason, which will become apparent later.
Leave you with some pictures of our hotel, our room is at the very top!! Yvonne having a drink, Mike having a drink, water puppets, and a tree on a bike.
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