Exploring Hanoi

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After a better nights sleep in our new hotel room (although we did watch South East Asia’s deadliest animals on TV last night which probably wasn’t a good idea because it has got us both a bit paranoid about snakes!) we packed up and headed back to the old hotel for breakfast. We were met with smiles and sat down to our baguettes with jam!

Today we planned to tour Hanoi and so asked our guesthouse to book us a taxi to Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum.

At the mausoleum we saw Ho Chi Minh’s preserved body inside a large glass monument which was guarded by men with guns. The room was dark and lit by faint light. Ho Chi Minh looked very peaceful and was very well preserved, he dies in 1969 but he just appeared as if he was sleeping - very eerie! It was a little sad because his last wish was to be cremated and for his ashes to be divided between north, centre and south of the country. We then toured the area local to the mausoleum where we saw Ho Chi Minh’s old house and the reunification palace.

When we left we got a cyclo ( resembles a big wheelchair attached to the front of a bicycle, where you take a seat and pay the driver to wheel you around by pedaling his bike) to Haon Kiem Lake to get lunch at ‘Papa Joe’s’ On our way we were molestered by a street woman selling pineapples. She seemed lovely, offering to dress us in her local wear for photos. However upon taking this photo she demanded ‘you buy, you take photo now you buy!’ Typical tourist trap, we just hurried away!

We then walked around the lake looking for a post office so Rachael could post her postcard. We looked in many laquerwear shops, because Rachael loved all of the bright colours, before going to a restaurant for Dom to have a mid afternoon snack. The food took quite a while so we had to rush back to the guesthouse afterwards to make sure we didn’t miss our bus to Hue.

We were picked up by taxi and taken to where the bus was going to depart. We boarded our first sleeper bus. The bus was a standard coach but with the back half of the coach converted to ‘Rachael sized’ beds either side of the walkway for 2 people. The Vietnamese sat at the front of the bus because they could not afford the sleeper seats. The open ended bus ticket which meant we could stop at any of the stops on the way from Hanoi to Saigon only cost us 32 pound.

Overall the overnight trip to Hue was better than our sleep train to Chiang Mai. We managed to sleep for maybe half of the 10 hour journey although the constant horn blowing and dodgy unpredictable driving was a little scary. There were rest stops every 4 hours so in that respect we were comfortable.

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