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So we grudginly left Nha Trang after our sad final night and flew our way up to Vietnams capital, Hanoi. We booked into a nice hotel and fell asleep straight away, sinking into dreams of our beloved second home :(
We awoke bright and early the next day, looked through our Lonely Planet guide at what to do in Hanoi and produced a list of the main sights to see. We flagged down a cyclo driver, who reluctantly took all three of us on his tiny little bike, and set off. Our first stop was the mausoleum where the body of Ho Chi Minh (an ex-leader type man of Vietnam) is kept, all nicely embalmed. The Lonely Planet says you may be lucky enough to see the changing of the guards and as we turned up at 12pm precisely we were in fact lucky enough to see it! Don't get too excited though, its not much to write about. And unfortunately for us, despite turning up at the right time to see tha guards swapping over, we were actually there at the wrong time to go into the mausoleum. Apparently they shut at 11am on a Thursday. And guess what day we were there. A bloody Thursday! So we didn't actually get to look inside.
Never mind, moving on to Hanoi's 'one pillar pagoda'. Our cyclo driver sweated his way to our next destination where we disemabarked our vehicle and went in search of the next sight. We found it hidden behind some trees - a 15 foot hight replica of the 'one pillar pagoda'. Great. Once again, we didn't read the correct information! However, there was a musem next to the pagoda that could prove interesting. Except for the fact it was also closed. Moving on.
We then decided to head to the Old Quarter market and have a look round. Hanoi's old quarter is really quaint and just walking through the streets is an absolute treat for your nose. There are so many amazing smells which makes a change from dirty old drains and old rubbish left on the side of the road. We decided to have noodle soup for lunch as we became slightly addicted to it in Nha Trang. And we needed to make the most of the delicious Vietnamese food during our last few days.
For the evenings entertainment we headed to Hanoi's Water Puppet Theatre. In the Lonely Planet it says that it is a puppet show where the puppets perform on water and it is so realistic it actually looks as though the puppets are walking on the water. Hmmmm. Cue the rusty puppets who flop around generally looking like puppets being pushed around in water. Still it was nice to see some traditional Vietnamese culture in practice. For the following day we booked a tour to Halong Bay so read up on how 'brilliant' that was...
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