Bia Hoi in Hanoi

We arrived in Hanoi on the 2nd to meet up with Lindsey's dad who is joining us for the Vietnam portion of our trip. He's interested in seeing the country as a tourist after serving two tours here as an Army Ranger. The city is packed with motorbikes, markets, and salespeople and most of our time was spent walking the streets, each of which specialize in the sale of only ONE type of product. It's amusing to wak down a street completely devoted to the sale of shoes or party-favors and I can't imagine how difficult it must be to make a variety of purchases. All the walking also taught us how you cross a street (just go for it) and to dodge motorbikes.



Our first site was to Ha Lo Prison (aka the Hanoi Hilton) which was built by the French and where America POWs (including John McCain) were held during the Vietnam War. The museum mostly focused on the attrocities of the French against Vietnamese, and their exhibits on the treatment of American POWs were intense propoganda: smiling American POW faces and videos of B52s dropping bombs on schools.



We also toured the Ho Chi Minh complex, which includes his mausoleum, a museum, and some presidential houses. HCM, or Uncle Ho as he is called, is basically the Vietnamese equivalent of George Washington, because of his leadership during their fight for independence from France and people take this place very seriously. Everyone walks in single-file lines as directed my military guards, and when inside of the masoleum you aren't allowed to even have your hands in your pockets. Inside the masoleum you can see his preserved body in a Lenin-like fashion and
it's obviously pretty creepy. We learned that two months every year his body is sent abroad for restoration!



We also toured the HCM Museum, which is one of the more bizarre museums we've seen. Here's one exhbit which we especially enjoyed:



Aside from museums, our favorite activity was sitting on a corner and enjoying bia hoi with
locals and tourists. Bia Hoi is freshly brewed beer that is made without preservates and it
eant to be enjoyed immediately. It's a pretty nasty tasting drink and we quickly switched
to canned beer, but people watching on small plastic chairs is second to nothing in Hanoi. The only downside to this are the street vendors which repeadetly bother you. Check out the album for pictures of the funny things that passed us by.



Although the pho could have kept us longer, we felt the locals weren't as friendly as those we'd seen in Thailand and we boarded an overnight train to SaPa in northern Vietnam.