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Tuesday : sunny
Big sleep in today, I actually stayed up late last night watching a couple movies. We ate breakfast and didn't leave the hotel until 11:00am.
We did another city walk today, but a big one, seven hours we were gone for. We headed back to the lake to grab another iced coffee and plan our route.
Hanoi's old quarter is a jungle of people, scooters, narrow lane-ways, filled with shops and market stalls. Pounding the streets we passed hidden temples and monuments, and smelt every smell the senses could register. Wish some smells didn't register, like the street butchers with the still jumping around, skinless, headless frogs, gutted pigs and chickens, but the next shops would be selling flowers or herbs, so that would cancel the not so nice smells out Right?? Ha love it.
With the shop awnings stretching across the width of most of lanes, and the netting of over head power lines snaking their way through the never ending maze. We explored our way across town passing through Hanoi's Citadel streets. Unlike Hue's Citadel this one was a Current Military area. Where there was a soldier with an AK-47 on ever corner and every gate.
Right. Out of there.. Next stop was the War museum. They had a room displaying every war that has been fought in and around Vietnam. Showing the weaponry, equipment and telling the story of each battle, a lot of the information was in Vietnamese though. This countries history is nothing but war, for like 3000 years. Wars have been fought with themselves, neighbors and Foreigners. Outside there were tanks, jets, choppers, all sorts of cannons, anti aircraft guns, huge missile launchers, all a bit to large for the building to hold. There also was this 210year old 38m high flag tower, amazingly it was not destroyed by all the bombing raids on Hanoi.
Not too far away was the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. Where old Uncle Ho's corpse is preserved behind glass for people to see. Unfortunately it was closed at 4pm. We arrived at 15:55, Interesting fact Ho's body gets taken to Russia for two months of the year for a bit of a oil change (maintenance). We got to see the changing of the guards which was cool though, the guards all wore white uniforms and did there thing with their rifles.
We went hunting for what appeared to be a botanical garden on the map. After walking around these giant walls for awhile, we realized the gardens were inside Uncle Ho's Presidential Palace. I tell ya these big boys here knew how to treat themselves. The buildings looked very grand indeed surrounded by lush gardens and lakes.
A Quick look in the book and we saw that we only had and hour to get back to the lake where we started to go see this temple before it closed. Made it took 45mins. The temple is on a small island on the lake connected by a timber bridge, and was dedicated to a general who defeated the Mongolians in the 13th century. The reason we wanted to go was not only because it looked nice sitting around the lake at sunset, but inside was a preserved 250kg giant turtle that died in the lake in 1968. Rumors say that there are giant turtles still living in the lake and it's good luck if you see one. Now we know why everyone sits around the lake.
Well it's our last night in Nam, and we always said we would try Lotteria. It's Vietnams version of Maccas. There was one nearby so in we went. Not bad they nailed the chips but the cheese burger needed some work, the chicken burger was very good though. They also did coke and ice-cream spiders which went down a treat.
Well that's it for Hanoi, unfortunately we didn't have more time here. It was nothing at all to what I was expecting, previous reports have not been good, goes to show don't believe everything you hear. I really enjoyed it, it was very different to Saigon but definitely in a good way, I'll be back.
We grabbed a couple of goodies at the bakery before we went back to our room and found our laundry all bundled up, so we packed up another early morning checkout tomorrow. Nothing on tele tonight so we tried finding a hotel for Hong Kong. HK looks ridiculously expensive, well their hotels seem to be, see how we go.
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