Belinda isn't as old as you'd think!

I met up with my group at the orientation meeting. I'd already met my roommate Phillip, who is Swiss, about 45 (I didn't ask), and very nice. It is his first time in Asia and he is surprised at the humidity (40% apparently. Pathetic, Lima is 99% all the time!). Mostly people are older, a party of 5 from Canada are all around late 50s to early 60s, a couple from Australia are certainly 60s, and a lone German woman who is about 40. The only people round my age are Belinda (Belle) and Dave, who are Australian. Looking at the names on the sheet, I was sure Belinda would be 90! And Dave is basically an Australian clone of my cousin Lewis, enough so that I did a double take. Our guide is called Ngyuen Ngyuen (pronounced wen wen, the surname has an accent somewhere, and is the Vietnamese equivalent of 'Smith', with over 40% of people sharing the surname), and his nickname is Steven, like Steven Seagal. I have no idea why. 

Everyone seems very friendly, and we went out for a group meal after running through our itinerary etc. We all went for a sharing, banquet style meal which had more courses than I could count (something like 8!), including a make your own Vietnamese fish roll, and some amazing mains with chicken, prawns, and beef. I couldn't pick a favourite!

It was 10pm by the time we were done, so quite definitely bed time. I slept like a log, and somehow I seem to have dodged jet lag, so woke up at 7.30 for breakfast. The breakfast was pretty standard South East Asian hotel stuff; coffee, fruit juice, random fruits, random pastries, some cooked breakfast stuff, and some things that you wouldn't normally have for breakfast (rice, noodles).

We then went out into Hanoi, for a visit to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum, Ho Chi Minh museum, Ho Chi Minh's residence, and the One Pillar Pagoda.

For those who don't know, Ho Chi Minh was a revolutionary and communist who led Vietnam to independence (though the country split in civil war thereafter, and he died before it was finally reunified), and he is greatly revered by the Vietnamese, who call him 'Uncle Ho'.

Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum is like a cross between a Grecian temple and a bomb shelter. In fact it is a bomb shelter, it can withstand a 10 kiloton blast, an earthquake of 7 on the Richter scale, and is raised as protection against floods. The protection against bombs was in case the south tried to blow up his body in the civil war, to demoralise the North. It has Ho Chi Minh's body inside, preserved in formaldehyde (or similar), which the Vietnamese sent people over to Russia to learn the techniques for (they did the same with Lenin). Unfortunately they are currently performing annual maintenance on the body, so we didn't get to see it, but the building itself was fairly interesting. Apparently Ho Chi Minh didn't want his body preserved at all though, he wanted to be cremated, and have his ashes spread in both the North and South, to signify his dream of a united Vietnam. Tough luck Ho, apparently you don't get a say!

The Acropo... I mean the mausoleum

Next up was Ho Chi Minh's residence, and surrounding buildings. He had the option to live in a French colonial palace, but turned it down in true communist style for a 2 room house on stilts that reminded him of his youth, living in poverty in the jungle. He still used the palace for meetings occasionally though. Even his garage was bigger than his house! He had 3 cars which he drove, but didn't belong to him (communists, they belonged to the government, and he was loaned them). I actually didn't take a proper picture of his residence, kind of an oversight, but it really didn't look very impressive. I was more interested in the surrounding vegetation. There were a lot of pomelo trees around (they are like grapefruit, you can get them in the exotic fruit section of tesco), which look pretty inviting with all the massive fruits on, and a load of weird little wooden fingers growing up from the floor, which turned out to be the roots of a Buddha tree (so called because the top of the fingers look like Buddha's hat). The roots need to breath according to Ngyuen, so they just grow out of the soil.

The French colonial palace

The garage was more like a courtyard than your average garage

One of the 2 rooms in Ho Chi Minh's residence

A pomelo tree. Yum yum

Maybe if you squint it looks more like Buddha's hat?

The Ho Chi Minh museum is a huge, distinctive building with a big hammer and sickle carved into it. No prizes for guessing his political leanings (especially since I already told you). It pretty much told the Ho Chi Minh story, with a lot of memorabilia from his life, and very little culture etc. honestly the downstairs was pretty boring, a timeline of how Vietnam evolved politically, with a lot of old documents (yawn), and paintings, sketches, children's drawings, wood carvings etc etc of Mr Minh. There was one 'sand painting' which was amazing though, I thought it was painted, and well painted at that. Upstairs was much more impressive, even though, honestly, I have no idea what it was supposed to exhibit. There were a lot of carvings, glass sculptures, and such which seemed to have no purpose beyond making the place look impressive. It worked, even if I spent more time looking at carvings, and less looking at the actual displays. I particularly liked the fire breathing horse above a turtle with a sword (no idea what it had to do with Ho Chi Minh though).

It's a shame they couldn't find any red stone

100% sand apparently. Someone had too much time on their hands!

I have mastered the Ho Chi Minh pose

I don't know what the pretend lake had to do with Ho Chi Minh, but it looked nice

If you mess with the horse, the turtle will stab you. If you mess with the turtle, the horse will breathe fire at you. Say no to animal cruelty

Last stop for the morning was one pillar pagoda. The original was built in the 8th century, and made entirely from jade, and was in the middle of a jungle. Civilisation caught up with it, but it was preserved working Hanoi until the French got booted out of the country. Unfortunately because it was a Bhuddist shrine, the French decided to blow it up on their way out. A new one has since been constructed, but of wood and concrete. It maintains the form of the original though, that being that it branches out from a single pillar, probably something to do with uneven jungle terrain, and possibly flooding. You can pray at it still if you wish, though I didn't. I wouldn't know what to do, didn't have anything to pray for particularly, and there were a lot of keen looking Vietnamese, so I left them to it. Round here I picked up some great souvenirs for Kathy/Vicky, but I won't spoil the surprise.

Looks better in jade I bet

I wore my vibrams today (aka my horrible toe shoes to the uninitiated), and they seemed to provide an additional attraction for a lot of the Vietnamese guests. I have never had so many people stare at my feet. 

That was the end of our sightseeing until the water puppet show we are booked in for this afternoon, which left us a good few hours to kill. I went for lunch with Belle and Dave, which was at a place Ngyuen recommended, a block over from the hotel. 60,000 dong for a big plate of beef and noodles (which converts to £2), ridiculously cheap! Since we had nothing at all to do, we decided to look round for a French bakery Belle had spotted from the bus, and wandered all over for about half an hour looking for it. We finally found it, about 3 doors down from the hotel. In fairness the sign was very small. It was more in preparation for our overnight train than anything, but they ended up buying some cakes because we felt bad leaving without buying anything.

Now I have an hour to kill before water puppets, so I have ordered a coffee in the hotel lobby, and am taking advantage of the wifi.