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We got breakfast at our hotel this morning then went back to our room to decide what to do today. James had a few bits to do on the computer, we had booked this hotel with a PC in the room so that a few jobs could be done here. Then we started looking at where to go we decided on the Women's museum first, it was about midday by the time we got there. It was great, it had four floors of different parts of Vietnamese women's history, family life including their wedding rituals, fashion and their parts in the war. After this we stopped off for some lunch and a drink, it started to rain a little so we stayed in there a little longer than planned. We set off to The Hoa Lo Prison, on the way there I got cornered by a woman with her carrying pole forcing it onto my shoulder and her hat on my head and saying picture to James. We made sure we weren't paying for this so took a picture and walked off before she could try to sell us things! The prison told the stories of the people who used to be held in the prison, Vietnamese men and women and American pilots from the war. We really enjoyed the prison. We then knew we wanted to go to the water puppetry tonight, so headed there because we needed to buy tickets for whichever show we would be going to. When we got there a show had started five minutes ago so we bought cheaper tickets, went in when it had started and had fold out chairs in the aisle, this was great. The water puppetry was good, they told a story before each performance and then moved the puppets through the water to music and singing by three Vietnamese women at the side of the stage. It was impressive but for some reason we both expected more from it. Afterwards we went back to the hotel, it's becoming easier to negotiate the traffic and to work out which direction we should be going. We chilled for a bit after getting back then James fancied something to eat, we went to a local Vietnamese place. He ordered something with noodles, beef, pork and crab cakes. When it came, it looked, erm, interesting?! There were huge pieces of meat which were mostly fat, and bits of something which looked like chocolate but definitely was not!! James is still unsure what it was but he ate it! We went to a place to get a couple of beers, it was upstairs near a crossroads so we sat by the edge so we could watch the traffic, we were both mesmerized for ages, it's so good to watch. We then went on the search for local beer, you can buy it by the cup and apparently it's very cheap, also you sit on little stools on street corners to enjoy it. We found somewhere which wasn't too far away from our hotel, there were quite a few Vietnamese men outside sat drinking and then there were two Germans. We sat and got a local beer which cost 5000 VND which is around 16p!!! Crazy cheap, and the beer was very good! We sat talking to the German guys for a little longer before going back to our hotel. When we got back we did a few more jobs before going to bed as we are going on our trip to Ha Long Bay in the morning.
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