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Published: December 29th 2010
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Well yesterday was a big day, we got up early and went for a walk around Lake Hoan Kiem. The lake is the centre of everything that happens in the old quarter. At 630am all the old people were out doing their early morning exercises. There was one group of women doing dance with bat and ball and another group using red fans. We walked past a group that had formed two lines and instead of doing the Conga they were all massaging each others backs, I wanted to join the que but thought they might find that a bit strange lol. As we were walking we couldnt resist to partake in a beautiful croissant, got to love the french influence in the city.
At 8am we met out guide Lan and we were off on a whirl wind tour of Ha Noi. started at HoChi Minhs Mausoleum, and this was were we found all the other westerners!!!! We were walked past him in military style precision one at a time. You had to keep your hands by your side at all times. There were over 20 guards in the area and 4 standing beside the crypt. He looked pretty
good for a guy who has been dead a long time.
We checked out the Presidential palace and Uncle Ho's house, then off to a number of Pagodas. As these are religious structures you are not supposed to take phots but leave it to the westerners to forget that and go camera clicking. We had lunch at a restuarnt called Koto, which is run by an Aussie women who has worked to get the street kids into employement in the restuarant. The food was devine, brought a T shirt and got the photo (a must experience!). (Peat - I have the photo of me having my first traditional Vietnamese meal just on normal seats lol!) Saw a 500 year old tree in the Centre for Literature (Confusious) ... a 1000 year old temple - kinda puts things into perspective. When did James Cook discover NZ again lol
We met Mrs Huong (Tonkin Travel) the wonderful lady who organised our Viet Nam trip. We were all very excited to see each other and exhanged gifts. She gave us beautiful silk scarves and we'd brought her a glass fantail. We only had time to say a quick hello and photo
as we had taken a detour to a lacquer shop to buy a wall hanging made the traditional way (we hope!). The water puppets were cool and funny all at the same time with about 15 people under the stage controlling the puppets - they must have been really cramped under there! Worth the experience and to top it off the toilet was unisex - no not just cubicles but a combo urinal and cubical set up wasn't sure what to do or where to not look and suddenly discovered I didn't need to go anymore whew! We did a video of our cyclo ride around the old quarter (just for you Brenda) cause you have to see it to believe it - fast and furious doesn't start to describe it .... and we were wondering if we'd also be "gone in 60 seconds" lmao! Having a driver and guide for the day is the way to go - there's no way we would have got around to as many sites and learnt soo much about the city and history otherwise.
Way too tired to blog last night we started counting down to "sleep time" from about 6.30 pm
- the sad individuals that we are! Feeling great after 10 hr sleep though and had my first bowl of Pho this morning - beef noodle soup that taste's wonderful.
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Nicola
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I'm impressed
I'm not only impressed that you are blogging so regularly but also that you now consider yourselves locals as well! Superb :)