I was quite surprised to see that Quong had turned up at 9am at my hostel to pick me up and drive me round Hanoi showing me the sights as we had planned last night. He had brought along a spare helmet and I jumped on the back of his bike and we set off around the city on these crazy roads.

Our first destination was the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum complex where we stopped at the One Pillar Pagoda which was built at around 1054 and designed to represent a lotus blossom, a symbol of purity, rising out of a sea of sorrow. I don't think that this is the original building as it was destroyed in one of Vietnam’s wars.

The pagoda was just outside the main building of the Ho Chi Minh museum, so this was our next stop where just inside the door you are greeted by a big bronze statue of Ho Chi Minh. Walking around the museum reading the descriptions (which were in English too) and with the help of Quong’s explanations it was, where the US Vietnam War was concerned, a very one sided view of what happened and how this leader of Vietnam reunited both the north and south parts of Vietnam as one country again after the war (although this is what the American’s were fighting against happening).

The third and final part of the complex was the mausoleum where the final resting place of Ho Chi Minh is a glass sarcophagus set deep within the monumental edifice. The only problem was that the mausoleum is only open 7-11am which was fine as we were there before this time, but because it was Monday, many of Hanoi’s museums including the mausoleum were closed. So I never got to see the man himself and the thing that I found funny from the guide book was that his final wishes were to be cremated and I assume that he would not have wanted to be displayed in a glass case, and that he goes off to Russia for three months (Sep-Dec) every year for "maintenance".

And for today’s lesson.....

Hồ Chí Minh, born Nguyễn Sinh Cung and also known as Nguyễn Ái Quốc (19 May 1890 – 2 September 1969) was a Vietnamese Communist revolutionary and statesman who was prime minister (1946–1955) and president (1945–1969) of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam).

Hồ led the Viet Minh independence movement from 1941 onward, establishing the communist-governed Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945 and defeating the French Union in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu. He lost political power inside North Vietnam in the late 1950s, but remained as the highly visible figurehead president until his death. The former capital of South Vietnam, Saigon, after the Fall of Saigon, was renamed Hồ Chí Minh City in his honour.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_chi_minh

We headed over to the war museum next, but as it was Monday, this was closed also.

So we decided to head 13km south east of Hanoi to a village called Bat Trang, also known as the ceramic village which I hope doesn’t need much explanation. On arriving in the village we stopped for a drink made from pressed sugar cane which is added to a glass of ice and also a squeeze of lime. It is very refreshing and not too sweet; it tastes a little like melon juice.

We then walked around the pottery market which was very quiet and I wasn’t really interested in buying anything as I have no use for some pottery for the next few months. Quong did make me buy a name badge for my bag, which was made out of individual pottery letters tied together in a chain. Walking out of the market we did come across a guy making some vases on a pottery wheel, he did ask me if I wanted a go but I said that I would be rubbish and didn’t want to show myself up.

Walking back through the town we walked passed a factory manufacturing vases and Quong said that we should go in. We just walked in and were greeted by the Manager there, who offered to show us around. We saw them making vases using moulds down stairs and then upstairs they were being painted. Some were being painted using spray guns and templates and there was one lady who was painting them by hand. We stopped and watched her for a while as she was really good and the manager told me that she was the best artist that he had. Then the Manager and Quong were talking and winding her up saying did she want an English husband but she said unfortunately she was already married, LOL.

On the way back in to Hanoi we stopped at the Ho Tay (west lake) and pagoda and then Quong drove down a road around the lake and let me have a go driving his bike. This was the first time every that I had driven a bike and even the first time that I have been on the back of one. The bike was easy to drive, it had four gears and no clutch too worry about, it was just the traffic that worried me in Hanoi as there were bikes everywhere.

Back in Hanoi we met up with Ha (also known as Summer), and we discussed a trip out tomorrow and agreed we would head out to a place called the Perfume Pagoda but it was 60km away and Summer said she didn’t want to drive all the way, so I said I didn’t mind driving as long as she got me out of the city a little bit, where the roads were a bit quieter.

As a thank you for taking me out and also for the trip tomorrow I bought the three of us tickets to go and see the Water puppet show and as it was only 120,000 dong (£4.20) for all of us, it was the least that I could do.

The water puppet show lasted for just over an hour, beginning with some traditional folk music by the live band there and then the puppets came out where there were about 12 different scenes all depicting different stories in Vietnamese history including the story of the giant golden tortoise at Hoan Kiem Lake where I went to visit yesterday. Most of the show was done to music, so you didn’t really have to understand the introductions to each scene which were in Vietnamese.