Had a good and busy day in Hanoi yesterday....In the morning had a visit to the Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum Complex - in the tradition of Lenin, Stalin and Mao the final resting place of Ho Chi Minh is a glass sarcophagus set deep in the bowels of a monumental edifice. And quite oddly despite his will requesting cremation Ho Chi Minh's embalmed corpse gets a three month holiday to Russia for yearly maintenance! Urgh. There was a lot information to take in and it makes you wonder just how much bias the Americans have on our view of the Vietnamese....? Anyway we also managed to see the Vietnamese equivalent of the 'changing of the guard' at the doors of the Mausoleum which was cool. Then after some lunch we hit the bowling alley - yep managed to find another one in Vietnam and at just 15,000VND a game (thats about 30pence!!) we decided to have a few games (will not reveal the scores incase Glenn reads this - he'll have a heart attack. Embarrasing is not the word! Will definately need lots of practice on my return!). So then hit the sauna and had an hour long massage! Now before you think this whole travel thing is all saunas and eating and massages etc I can tell you that everything has a way of balancing out (zen, ying yang blah blah) in life and thats exactly what happened last night....took the sleeper train from Hanoi to Lao Cai. We were informed that it was a nice train with beds, air conditioning and food. What a blatent lie! It was a prison cell!!! Infact it was probably worse than a prison as at least they have tiolets - yep thats right a 14 hour journey with no stops and no tiolets. With bars on the windows, plastic covered matresses and a pathetic fan to keep 3 people cool in the stinking heat I didn't sleep a wink. So have arrived in beautiful Sapa, high in the mountains, feeling very exhausted and a little 'snappish'. O well, the hostel is nice and the view from the room is stunning...will probably do a trek tomorrow.... Thats about it for now, hope all is well xx