Hanoi

We arrived in Hanoi by plane and were picked up at the airport by a taxi from the hotel we prebooked for 3 nights. When we got to our hotel it had a different name than the one we thought we booked at, but it had the correct address and they had our names so we checked in. The Hanoi Municipal Hotel was our least favorite of the trip, but it had a very good location in the city's Old Quarter.

We wandered around and booked a tour to the Perfume Pagoda for the next day. We wanted to go on our own but were convinced to go on a 16 person van tour with a guide. Since we had not yet been on an organized tour, we had nothing ready to say as to why we wanted to go by private car. We have things to say now, but we did have a memorable experience. It was about a 3 hour drive out to the boat to the pagoda. We boarded 4 to a row boat, and were rowed for 1 hour to the pagoda complex. All of the boats were rowed by women.







At the pagoda complex, we walked some of the grounds.









We took a cable car to the cave pagoda at the top, and then had a family style traditional lunch before being rowed back and loaded back into the van. It was so incredibly hot that we did not take many pictures.

My favorite part of the boat trip was all of the ducks. I guess they have to grow them somewhere.







We arrived back in Hanoi in time to catch a water puppets show. The next day we visited Ho Chi Minh's body, which was very air conditioned, and went to the Vietnamese Museum of Ethnology, which was sort of air conditioned. It was a good way to spend the day.

Dinner was such a disappointment in that we ended up at a restaurant which has so westernized its Vietnamese food as to make it totally tasteless. We gave up and went to Le Pub, an expat bar and cafe, and ate pizza and french fries with cheese and gravy, but we did drink local beer.