It was a joy to have truly hot showers this morning,a kettle for an early morning cuppa and a decent breakfast. It may only be an hour away by plane but the service in the hotels are light years apart between here in Lao.
First item of the day was a walk through the old quarter towards the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum . some of the colonial buildings are a joy with Provençal type shutters and faded yellow paintwork. Flower sellers were about on their bicycles as were the householders and restaurants doing the washing up and preparing food on the pavement as the buildings are so cramped inside.
When we got to the mausoleum it was clear from the length of the queues we were not going to get in even with 2 hours standing in line in the humid heat so we decided to just walk around the outside and visit uncle ho's house. A nice rooftop meal at a restaurant that trains street kids to work in catering and a quick look at a temple that is a 1000 year old university with plenty of new graduates getting their photos taken in their glad rags. An old be medaled oldies shook our hand when he heard us speaking English. We hailed a taxi who promptly screeched across 3 lanes of traffic for the fare so he got a good tip for that when we got back to the hotel. There was time for a Vietnamese brewed carlsberg before we went to see a water puppets performance which was cultural and a whole lot of fun too,surprisingly. Then it was another rooftop dinner with our old tour mates and some new ones for the Vietnamese leg of our tour and a lovely nighttime view of Hanoi. We were dreadful stop outs too as we went to a rock bar by our hotel for a final beer.