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 a giant statue of Lenin before we stopped for lunch. We then walked on to the suburbs of Hanoi to find the lake with the wreckage of the B52 in the middle. We found it easily enough and then wandered through the narrow lanes back to the main road. We only went down one dead-end road which a local kindly pointed out for us before we went too far down it.
 
We then headed across to the Ho Chi Minh Museum which opened at 2pm. We got there about 10 minutes early so had a rest and some water. Went into the museum and it was just plain weird. Had the usual statue of Ho Chi Minh and various photos of him greeting heads of state but the rest of it was like someone gave an arts graduate a grant and they just went nuts. Egyptian pyramids, giant fruit on a giant table? What?
 
We then tried to find our way to the One Pillar Pagoda but as the Ho Chi Minh museum is identical from all sides we got disorientated and went in a circle before finally coming out at the Ba Dinh Square and the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. It was closed as from September Ho Chi Minh goes in for his annual service and formaldehyde change for three months but at least we had reorientated ourselves. We walked up to the one pillar pagoda and then on to the Presidential Palace which had Ho Chi Minh's stilt house in its grounds. We did the circuit taking in Ho Chi Minh's car collection and a walk through the stilt house before walking back to the hotel for a well-earned rest.
 
We went for dinner back at Quan an Ngon which was again packed and the food nice and cheap. We then returned to the hotel to pack for our flight to Siem Reap tomorrow.