Hanoi

Water Puppet Theatre







Saturday 19th continued ...
Arrived safely after our close to 4 hour coach trip back from Halong Bay. Check in to the hotel and off to the Water Puppet Theatre. We had great seats, but it was impossible to take decent photos, so many heads moving about, generally just as I clicked the shutter button. This was an excellent performance. We caught the early show so off to dinner, and as with most of all means we went out as a group. Another great end to the day.

Sunday 20th
We started the day travelling by Cyclo seeing the sites in the old quarter.

Street View from my cyclo, with my personal aircon. I spotted this one and only with the fan, and grabbed it.


Now if anyone had said that I would queue for an hour to view the embalmed body of Ho Chi Ming in the mausoleum I would have laughed. But that is what we did queued and it took us just on an hour to go past his body. Well to me it looked like it may have been a Madame Tussaud creation, and that he had his ashes scattered about the three areas of Vietnam (South, Central & North) as per his wishes. One of the highlights apart from averyone trying to push past in the queue if you gave just an inch of space, was the little kid who had an up and under about 10 metres before you enter the chamber where Uncle Ho is resting. It was a good power chunder, and it got about 3 of our tour group, not too heavily, but a reminder of the visit nevertheless, he also had a second go, as his mother was desperately trying to take him back out. My thought that he was utterly sick of standing in that heat for an hour, and although it was now air conditioned, the damage was done and he didn't want to go any further.

Now off to the Hanoi Hilton, to see where the French kept the political prisoners, and in later times where the North Vietnamese kept the US pilots that had been shot down.

This guillotine was used at the prison originally, but not in recent times, it is one of two brought to Vietnam by the French













After this back to the hotel, and we had the rest of the afternoon for retail therapy to bag some bargains.

Tonight the final night out for dinner as a complete touring group, as a few were flying out later tonight and early in the morning, as was our Tour Guide who is enjoying the night discussing our experiences over the last few days. Onya Jeff