Hanoi Civility Hotel

... Hanoi as the capital.

On Saturday morning we eagerly awaited the arrival of Alex who turned up safe and sound, and very jet lagged! So we decided it was best to keep her awake for as long as possible. We walked all around Hanoi (including visits to the French Quarter, Hoa La Prison and Saint Joseph Church) and watched the Water Puppets show. In the evening, leaving Alex to sleep, the rest of us joined Lotte and Emilie from the China trip for dinner and a 'few ...

... was more of a local one selling everything from wash brushes to silk. We headed back through town and around the lake to Hoa Lo Prison. This place was built by the French during colonial times and then used by the VietCong during the war to house shot down US pilots - they nicknamed it the 'Hanoi Hilton'. Nowadays the prison has been converted into a museum, and a very interesting one at that. The first section showed how the prison was run under the French rule, the middle ...

... it seems Ok - ish.

Ho Chi Min's Mausoleum and simple residence is Number 1 and we then move through a set of Buddhist and Confucian temples and later finish with a walk down to the lake through the market area learning how best to negotiate the sea of motor bikes and other city traffic, but with Ulanbataar's traffic experience under my belt, it's almost a piece of cake.

Later that evening we have a meal in "Little Hanoi ...

... night I was so tired I had some dinner and a couple beers, did some reading and called it a night. Today I am planning on walking around the city some more, and possibly taking a night train back to Hanoi, where I can start working my way down to south Vietnam.
All in all, Sapa is a great place to visit. The weather, people, and scenery are incredible. I am glad I made the trip up here that so many people passed on.

... I was not fully prepared to complete my blog as I would have liked.
Our Guide Vung and Driver Zoung in Sapa could not have done more for us. Mr Tom from Trails of Mountain has done everything within his power to make our stay in Vietnam memorable.
The guides and drivers from Yunnan Travel in china have been exceptional. Especially Sarah ...

... and 4 or 5 major ones, which on reflection seems remarkably low. Suzanna and I also had to forget everything we thought was correct about crossing the road. There’s an unwritten rule here, that size matters. Trucks give way to no one, buses only give way to trucks, mini buses only give way to trucks and buses and so on, so, us tiny people give way to everyone, even on the pavement and at pedestrian crossings. We were even warned by the guide book to take extra care at ...

... breaks for the driver: a grumbling brute of a man, more to follow on that) for what we suspected was a break, not lunch. We we're hungry so just got off to stretch our legs. After half an hour of trying to hide in the shade of the bus, which was almost impossible as the sun was directly above us, we walked over the road and sat outside a house-cum-shop on some benches. I braved the toilet here and after fighting my way through the chickens and dogs outside ...

... junction before you hit town. The thing to do here is to stay at one of 2 villages, Lac or Phu Coong, in a Thai stilted house, but we had already decided our preference was for a hotel/guest house in the town. There are several hotel/guest house options in the town itself which we decided to explore first. We had pretty much the same experience as we had yesterday, asking silly prices for rooms that aren't worth it. Only one of them ...

... your aura, see a gap approaching you, dive through it to the safety of the pavement. There are more conical hats here than anywhere else in Indochina I have been so far, they are everywhere, its great to see them, not in rice paddys, but set against a backdrop of industrious progress and Blade Runner smoke, Vietnam will be a middle income country by 2020, they are developing faster than anywhere else in Asia (except China), 10 years ago Vietnam had 2 ATM's in the entire country, now they ...