Good Morning Vietnam – Saturday 8th October

Made it to our temporary Hanoi home… midnight exactly. Long queue at Hanoi immigration, drove past the flower market in full swing

So breakfast on the 9th floor and then off to see Hanoi. Quickly decided that queuing for over an hour at the Ho Chi Minn Mausoleum wasn’t really our thing. Traffic on a Saturday in Hanoi is appalling but Alison & I agree still not as bad as Delhi though. Checked out the John McCain memorial and then walked round the two lakes (nice pedalo swans), picture stop at the One Pillar Pagoda and then on to the place of learning (pre-communist Confucius based, lots of exams). Then the infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’ before a lunch consisting of tasting sample of Hanoi local foods.

Post lunch (and a couple of beers) we walked around the old quarter and tried to get our bearings.

The wandering around came in handy as I managed to sit on my glasses and needed some emergency repairs – found a very nice man who replaced the anchor string and reshaped the frames for free.

As is the want with houses in Hanoi they only have very small frontages but go up & back a fair way. This is the case with our hotel – see picture

Spent the evening reliving our youth in the Skylight Bar (great rooftop views over Hanoi) whilst taking advantage of our 20% discount voucher so kindly provided by the hotel. Fireworks & Laser light show provided by the city for free.