Today we walked around the Ho Chi Minh monuments and other sights to the west of the lake. The first place we visited as the Temple of Literature which was a large temple that was used as a university in medieval times. All the people who got their doctorate had a stone tablet put up inside the temple. They also had some traditional musicians inside the temple as well as the biggest drum we'd seen. Our next stop was the large flag tower opposite a park with ...

Today we went on our walk around the old quarter of Hanoi. Our first stop was the Hoa Lo prison museum, the old French colonial prison, or what remains of it. Had a bit of trouble finding it at first and joined forces with a couple of English tourists to track it down. Interesting displays on life in the prison with the expected dose of propaganda. Even the old French guillotine. Our next stop was at St.Josephs Church, we stumbled upon a small temple in the lanew...

This morning things between the host and us were still tense. He kept out of our way most of the time except for breakfast but neither of us ate much. We then set off back to the marina, about a 4 hour trip. Cool weather and again great scenery. We arrived at the marina to be greeted by the cheer squad again, we had a group photo this time taken by the host and then got in the car to be driven down to the office for payment. Our speed freak driver was back. We pa...

After arriving back at the hotel in Hanoi we unpacked then went out for lunch looking for a café listed in our travel guide. We couldn't find the place so had a toasted sandwich at a café near the hotel then went to another shop to buy water and coke before having a Vietnamese coffee at the hotel. We rested then went out to dinner at a restaurant called Quan an Ngon which is a restaurant with numerous food vendors surrounding an open air restaurant. Cheap f...

We got up at 5.30am and had breakfast at 6am then got ready for our trip to Halong Bay. We were picked up just after 8am for the 3 and half hour drive to the harbour where we would board our boat for the cruise and one night stay on Halong and Bai Tu Long Bay. The guy who picked us up came into the foyer of the hotel and asked around for us. He came over to us and shoved a mobile phone under our noses and asked if we were the people named on the text message he w...