The sleeper bus last night wasn't particulary comfortable and the driver was a bit crazy but I arrived in Hanoi at 8am which was quite reasonable. Quite coincidently the Irish couple I met in HCMC were also on the bus, but I only managed a quick hello as we were getting off before they disappeared in the crowd rushing to get their luggage.

My flight out of Hanoi is booked for Thursday morning which means I have 4 full days in Hanoi. I thought this might be too much so once I'd found somewhere to stay I looked into day trips outside of the city and ended up booking one for Halong Bay, despite all the negative publicity it has got recently. I figure that after the disaster that happened a couple of weeks ago regulations have probably been tightened up, but just in case I didn't book the cheapest one and went for one that is supposed to be of high quality.

My first sightseeing stop was the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum Complex. The mausoleum itself is free, and it was such a surreal experience queuing up with the Vietnamese masses to see Uncle Ho's embalmed body. They really treat him like a god here, and the amount of people going to pay their respects was incredible - I swear half the population of Hanoi was there! After having my bag checked I joined the end of a very long queue in which everyone had to stand in two lines. After going through security akin to that at an airport all food and water was confiscated and cameras had to be checked in at a booth as photography is strictly prohibited. We were then literally marched, still in our two neat lines despite the fact that there was a whole roads width to walk along, by soldiers in white uniforms until we reached the mausoleum entrance. Inside there were even more rules - no hats, no hand in pockets and no talking. The room with the corpse was chilly (as you'd expect I suppose as the room is a variation on a morgue) and Uncle Ho was lying in a glass coffin in the centre surrounded by guards. Personally I thought it was really creepy and very strange, but the Vietnamese flock to him, and apparantly he did only want a simple cremation. Within the complex is Ho Chi Minh's stilt house, another building where he lived and worked, a garage of his cars and a museum. By the time I got to the museum I'd had rather enough of the guy though, so I made my way through it quite quickly.

I walked back to the Old Quarter past the Flag Tower and stopped at the Municipal Water Puppet Theatre to buy a ticket for a performance. They're all sold out for the next couple of days so I bought one for Wednesday and then spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing.