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16 July: Hanoi

We were up early, heading by motorbike taxi's to the Chinese Embassy to try and get a visa enabling us to tour China for 2 months without having to exit the country. We currently had a 2 month visa, but it required us to exit the country and then re-enter, a problem with a country the size of some continents. We arrived at 07h30, only to find they only opened at 8h30. We were the first, but as time passed it became evident that we would definitely not be the first to gain access. This was confirmed by an American who also informed us that when the gates open all will push and shove to get in ahead of one another. He had been working in Vietnam for the past two years and was fluent with the language, seeing as we had experienced problems in the past communicating and considering this would be even more technical to explain, I asked whether he would be able to explain my predicament to them in Vietnamese.

The gates opened and although I was the fist in line, I ended up behind some people, the guard wouldn't let us pass and sent us to one corner to fill in forms, lucky for us the American spoke with him and he allowed me to enter, Leanne had to wait outside. The American tried to explain to the consultant that we needed to get a visa for 2 months continuously rather than one month, having to exit China and then another. No luck, she said she could do nothing and that we needed to try a immigration office in China itself. That settled we headed out to the next stop on our itinerary, Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum. It was only open on certain days of the week and only for certain months of the year, it housed Ho Chi Minh's corpse, which had been embalmed and preserved by the French or the Russians, I'm not sure.

We arrived at the memorial, where we were greeted by hundred of others. They had made herding people into this mausoleum into a fine art. We left our bag at the security, no bags were allowed, next we passed a check point where we were told to leave our cameras at that check point. Then we were pointed into a long queue and moved with the crowd into the mausoleum. Inside the building was built from solid granite blocks a red plastic carpet pointed the way to old Ho.

After some twists and turns through the hallways, with guards standing in full uniform every 5 meters, signaling the passers by to be silent, we arrived. Ho Chi Minh was lying in a glass sarcophagus, dressed in black shirt, the bottom half of his body covered with a blanket. We were hurried on and no sooner had we seen him, than we passed him heading outside. The whole event had transpired in less than 5 minutes, we waited at the camera check point for another 10 minutes before we had our camera and could walk on to the one pillar Pagoda.

One pillar Pagoda was built in the 11th century. The King who ordained its construction, received a dream where he saw Buddha with a child, upon his return to home, he was informed by his wife that she was having a child. The Pagoda is constructed in the form of a Lotus flower rising up from a pond with small fish.

After having seen the sights we headed back to the hotel, map in hand to find the way, stopping along the way for a huge rice, chicken and vegetables meal we shared between the two of us. For desert we stopped at a small ice cream stall, buying some or other coconut flavored ice cream. It started to rain minutes after we arrived back home, leaving us to retreat to either our books or checking mails and other admin.

Heading out again we purchased the tickets for Halong Bay tour, we had decided to take the Deluxe tour, $13 more expensive than the standard, but the food and other amenities were apparently significantly better and it was our 1 &frac12; year anniversary. We stopped along the way for a bowl of noodle soup each, before walking further to the lake where we shared an ice cream (it's so cheap here that we cannot resist it!) and watched people exercising or just collectively gathering to chat. Back home we packed a small bag each for the trip to Halong bay which would be leaving at 08h00 tomorrow.