The hotel we're staying at have been fantastic with recommendations of cheap local restaurants. We ate at one called Rainbow on our first night here - it's only about 100 metres from our
Hotel down the street which makes it a quieter place to enjoy a meal. The cost of dinner there is about half what we were paying in HCMC.

On Monday we walked along the street one behind us which is known as Hemp St and has shops selling silk clothing and handicrafts. There are some lovely trees left in between buildings in the street. We also walked to a street called Ma May which is on the other side of the lake from us and has a few good, cheap restaurants. After wandering along the street we came back to one called New Day and had a lovely lunch. We found a place nearby that has local music performances and went there on Monday night but the performance had been cancelled - we'll try another place tomorrow night.

On Tuesday we caught a taxi to the Ho Chi Minh Museum and One Pillar Pagoda - it would have been quite a long walk and we thought walking one way would do. One Pillar Pagoda is quite lovely in a small garden outside the Museum complex. We also walked through the Museum and saw many early photos of Vietnam and many of Ho Chi Minh with the people. We didn't go into the Mausoleum.

We walked from there to the Literature Temple and enjoyed the gardens there as much as we did six years ago. By now we were feeling the heat and humidity so decided to catch a taxi back to the hotel.

After a rest we walked the short distance to the lake and found a small street and a decent looking restaurant. Our lunch was small as we weren't very hungry and only cost us about $5 including drinks. We sat at the lake on the way back and ate some Donuts we had bought from a street vendor - they cost us less than $1!

Later in the afternoon we headed back in the direction of Ma May to go to the traditional Catru music concert. We enjoyed an hour of singing and various instruments being played. Catru is an ancient form of music that nearly died out. We also found a little bar upstairs near Catru, it was called Nola and was down a narrow passageway and seemed to be a number of houses joined together. We sat at the front of the bar and were able to look down into the street.

Tomorrow we leave Hanoi for a while and head by train into the hill area of Sapa near the China border.