Late night walk with Luis & Chio
Hanoi Opera House and The Hanoi Hilton 
Fruit in the room. That's the Dragon Fruit on the left.
Scooters, scooters everywhere!
Ho Chi Ming Mausoleum
Street flower vendors
Mmm! Pho!
At the Hoan Kiem Lake with The Red Bridge of the Rising Sun behind.We're back from a 4 1/2 walk around Hanoi. No rain. It’s just a little chilly for Connie. She had gloves and I was sweating. Situation normal. We tried to see Ho Chi Minh and no dice (closed). These dictators must be busy when they die. First Mao in Beijing and now Ho! Connie just read that if you want to see Ho Chi Mihn you have to be in the queue by 11:00am. We obviously missed that. Gayle Rediker literally tore pages out of her book and left with us at the front desk. Sadly, the people there this morning didn't know about it. When we got back from the walk the afternoon crew gave us the pages.
Hanoi may be even nuttier than Beijing with the scooters, if you can believe that. Connie says the best way to cross a street is not to look at all! Just go. If you keep moving they miss you.
We meet up with Luis and Chio (our travel buddies from Ecuador) tonight around 8:00. It’s just before 3 in the afternoon here on the 16th and I’m going to play with the images I took on our walk. I also used my new GPS watch to track where we walked for the first time. I can load it into a program that shows you exactly where you walked with either a street view or satellite. I swore I would never get lost again after my embarrassing moment the last trip in Ecuador! No more “Where’s Harvey”.
More fruit left for us on our return. Bananas, lyche and Dragon fruit. We had no idea what it was originally. I had to go down and ask how to eat it. They had about 3 names for it - Dragon Fruit for the big dumb American.
Hanoi may be even nuttier than Beijing with the scooters, if you can believe that. Connie says the best way to cross a street is not to look at all! Just go. If you keep moving they miss you.
We meet up with Luis and Chio (our travel buddies from Ecuador) tonight around 8:00. It’s just before 3 in the afternoon here on the 16th and I’m going to play with the images I took on our walk. I also used my new GPS watch to track where we walked for the first time. I can load it into a program that shows you exactly where you walked with either a street view or satellite. I swore I would never get lost again after my embarrassing moment the last trip in Ecuador! No more “Where’s Harvey”.
More fruit left for us on our return. Bananas, lyche and Dragon fruit. We had no idea what it was originally. I had to go down and ask how to eat it. They had about 3 names for it - Dragon Fruit for the big dumb American.
Dinner at the Cay Cau restaurant in our hotel was just right. Luis and Chio have arrived at the hotel from Bangkok and we will be going out for a walk around the lake in a few. It's 9:45 here in Hanoi and for some the night is just beginning. We'll be back and in bed in an hour!
Tomorrow we plan to do the "proper" Frommer's old town walk with Luis and Chio. There are quite a few things that are supposed to be of interest that we missed on our wander around the best we could tour. The Redikers and Steingarts will be back to the hotel around 3 and we have dinner reservations for 5:00. Then it's off to the train station for our overnight trip to the Victoria Hotel in Sa Pa. We arrive in Lao Cai at 6:30 the next morning. We meet up with the guide from Handspun for transport to a place for more pho for breakfast. Then it's biking all day and our first night in the North.
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