So Hanoi has been relatively quiet thus far. Justin started getting sick as we left Thailand and it has slowly gotten worse. Nothing life threatening but living in a hotel and being sick in hot and humid weather kills your desire to do much. That and I don't think Hanoi has that much to offer. It is sort of like a Beijing minus all the historical sites to see. It is quite a bit noisier than Beijing though. We are staying in the Old Quarter which seems to be infested with motorbikes that honk non stop. I kid you not when I say that probably 5,000-10,000 bikes drive down our street everyday and every third bike honks. It also seems to rain almost every day in the afternoon. I guess the locals are more used to it and better prepared for it than us as every motorbike seems to carry a poncho. After getting stuck in the rain the first night we got caught in again yesterday as we were trying to find a place to eat dinner. Either the restaurants are not well marked or they are just marked in a way we are not used to. Either way we have resorted to eating in the hostel. The food is not bad, I even tried the pho and was adventurous enough to put in some hot sauce. And I survived the walk up the stairs to the bathroom without incident!
But Hanoi has not been a total loss. The first real day here we did not leave the hotel except to hit an ATM. But we were able to book our trip to Halong Bay, get train tickets down to Hue and get airline tickets to Saigon. So all that is left before getting to Africa is an air ticket to and from Cambodia which we will probably sort out in Saigon. Getting all that done was a huge relief (but we still have all of Europe to book and we now have to find a place to stay in Livingstone, Zambia for 3 days).
Today we decided to make some use of our time in Hanoi by visiting the Hanoi Hilton, aka the prison that housed John McCain. It really is kind of weird to think I walked through a place that held and possibly tortured our potential next president. The prison has been drastically reduced in size with only one small wing of the original being left in tact. The rest was destroyed to make way for 2 high rise hotels (but not a Hilton). The prison is really more about how bad the French were to the Vietnamese and how good the Vietnamese were to the Americans they held there. Can't say I agree with everything they say but I guess history is written by winners or at least the country fundin the museum. But I came, I saw and I got the t-shirt. Yes I paid 50,000 VND ($3) for a t-shirt from the Hanoi Hilton, although it actually says Maison Centrale, the French name for the prison before the Vietnamese took over in 1954.
So Hanoi was a bit of a bust for doing stuff. I don't think that was our fault as it seems to be a stepping point for other sites in the area like Sapa and Halong Bay. We leave tomorrow morning for Halong Bay for 1 night on a boat and 1 night on Cat Ba island in a hotel. We opted to not take the beach bungalow without AC this time. Been having a difficult time finding a place to upload pictures but as soon as I can I will.
