Hanoi was great. I had loads of memories from our time spent in Hanoi 9 years ago, so it was great to see some of the places I remembered so well. The city is much more sprawling than Saigon, as you would expect from any capital city. Our hotel was in a great location, near to the central lake, which we walked around on our first day. The water puppet theatre and post office that we visited before are located here.
The lake is called turtle lake and there is a big pagoda in the middle which we visited. No turtles though. The lake is far too murky for them now!
A pomelo tree - i'm always amazed at how such big fruit can hang from such a spindly tree. Apparently, my buzz word for the holiday according to Matt was 'for perspective'. This is a fine example of that!
Another wonderful example of a tourist 'photo shoot' It really makes me cringe a bit seeing people have their photos taken staring off into the distance, or not smiling at the camera. Everything is for show now on Instagram. Our photo tour day photographer was telling us that there are such influential Koreans on Instagram, that their followers will order certain foods just to take photos of it and then throw it away. It's crazy how much influence people can have.
We went to the old citadel, which was the scene of some fighting in the American war (as it's known in Vietnam). The citadel was actually this huge flag monument, the Military Museum, which had a very we-won-the-war approach to things, and the old palace where the Emperors ruled from. The palace was decorated very nicely for Tet.
This is Hanoi's main station!!!
And of course the obligatory bunker. We do like a bunker.
We did so much walking over these two days. My feet were so sore!
Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. Last time, we went in to view his body. It wasn't an open day the day we visited, so no viewing for us this time. Not that you really need to see the same dead body more than once.
This tiny pond with a crashed B52 plane was something that was shown on the Top Gear Vietnam special 10 years ago, and we didn't make it there last time, so I really wanted to see it this time. It's just in the middle of lots of tiny back streets with houses and it's right next to a school.
It really was a wonderful holiday! We had such a great time.
We've done nothing at all this weekend, apart from have Becky and Andy over for dinner on Friday night after we got in at about 4pm. It was lovely to see them. We watched the Top Gear Vietnam special together, since they had never seen it, and they went to Hoi An at Christmas. Matt played football today and managed somehow to get sunburnt in 7 degrees February weather. How on Earth??? Back to school tomorrow, but only 6 weeks until our next holiday. We are planning on having a quiet week with the cats, before our friends visit the week after. Can't wait!
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