Hanoi - Part 2

Arrived back in Hanoi early doors to an unusual sleeper bus experience. Normally, when u arrive at your destination, the driver or one of his mates will bellow out the name of the place so that it wakes everyone else up and because they seemingly can't wait to get you off the bus. Everyone is either fully asleep or half asleep so you just wait for the shout. These buses carry a lot of locals and drop them off all over so it's not unusual for them to stop several times before reaching the end. So we thought nothing of it when the bus stopped about 5am. Nobody gave a shout so we carried on sleeping. An hour passes and an English guy on the bus gets curious and asks the driver where we are, to which he replies "Hanoi". He wasn't too pleased and had a go - personally, I was quite enjoying the sleep. Was really weird though - god knows how long they would have left us on there!

Anyway, back into Hanoi with the day to kill and wondering what to do. In fact, it turned out to be my favourite day there. After dropping my bag off at a travel agency, I got a motorbike ride over to Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum so I could finally check it out. He's practically a god to Vietnamese people so I thought I couldn't really leave Hanoi without having a look.

The Mausoleum houses Ho Chi Minh's body, contained within a glass sarcophagus. I would describe the experience as.........brief! They line everyone up in a queue and it's basically a slow moving conveyor belt to check out the body. You can't take pictures (fair enough) but you also can't stop to have a good look. Maybe that's because sceptics claim it's actually a Madame Tussauds model and having seen the "body", I can see what they mean. I've no idea about maintaining a dead body though so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. I was in and out of the building within about 2 minutes. Brief but still glad I went there.

I then went to check out the war museum (the one I had seen previously was actually the museum of revolution) and this was the best museum in Hanoi. Lots of old war vehicles and weapons all really interesting. Bumped into Andreas in there and then hung around with him for the rest of the afternoon. Went to order some traditional Vietnamese food (easier because Andreas speaks it fluently) and we sat on the street-side toddler play stools they use out here.

Then went to check out the women's museum, which is also interesting and made me feel a bit bad about the women who had tricked me into a photo - didn't realise quite HOW poor they are. (she still tricked me though, which I don't agree with). Also interesting learning how involved the women have been in the wars that Vietnam has had in its history. Had a couple of coffees and some very addictive sesame seeds with Andreas. Then picked up for the night bus to Hue.