Birthday Cheeseburgers and Sacred Caves

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As many of you may know, Brian has a penchant for pizza and hamburgers, and what my baby wants, my baby gets! Brian's birthday was last week, and we had a great day off from work at the Hanoi Waterpark. It's actually a pretty fun place, and great to beat the heat for a bit - we miss being able to swim so much! The bus up there is one of the tiny, old mini-buses with the door flying open every time you go over a bump, and Brian's knees up to his chin, which was a great time. For 10 cents, you can't really complain. We dug the wave pool and the views from the top of the slides over the lake and the city. Remember when you were little and at the playground there were the rungs that you hang from and go hand over hand across? Well, Brian thought he'd give them a try over this big pool of water, and show up the Vietnamese boys who could only get half way. He swung out with one hand...and promptly fell into the water pretty much as close to the start as is possible. That got a good laugh from all the people standing around watching, and from me! We also had our pictures taken with the locals - "Hey - look at those giant white people!" so we got to brush up on our modelling skills. The day ended off with a trip to a swanky deli for authentic cheeseburgers with ketchup and draft beer - oooooohhh yeah! We also had a night out for overpriced drinks at a swanky hotel overlooking the lake from the 20th floor with a couple of Brian's colleagues, so we had a real Western celebration.

On a different note, I'm attaching a couple of pictures from my trip out to the Perfume Pagoda, a big pilgrimage site about 60 km (and a 3 hour trip) outside of Hanoi. From the bus, you take a TINY boat crammed with people and about 3 inches from being submerged down the river, and then hike up a mountainside on rocks worn smooth by hundreds of thousands of feet. Luckily, this is not pilgrimage time, so we pretty much had the place to ourselves, especially on the walk up when only 2 of us from the tour walked, while the rest took the cable car (I did the reverse, which was great because it started to rain on the way down)! The Perfume Pagoda really describes a region with many pagodas and shrines, all of which are serene and beautifully decorated. There is also a sacred cave at the top of the mountain and I've now bathed in water from heaven (a drip from one of the stalactites) so I should be lucky for the next couple of weeks at least!

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Photos

Festival Preparations
Last week was a festival during which you burn paper copies of all the things your dead relatives might be in need of.

Awwww
There are baby animals EVERYWHERE right now.

Cook your meat!
There are posters like this all over, about washing hands, proper cooking, etc.