Choose another map, showing:

• Hong Kong
• China
• South East Asia
• Asia
• Eurasia, Africa & Pacific
• The World

Other entries in Hanoi

Lakes, history and the capital city

We are now in Hanoi the Capital city and we have been here since Tuesday. This is in the North of the country and it is winter here, so we left Hoi An with it being 30'C and landed in 13'C - a big shock, but I guess we had to find winter at some point. Hanoi is lovely, a city with real character and on our first day here we got out our guide book and went all touristy tramping the streets and exploring, after piling on the layers of course.

We found some history! We visited the Temple of Literature (- Vietnam's first Uni and it had a courtyard and fountain nearly the same as birmingham!!), the Ho Chi Minh Museum and his Mausolem with his preserved corpse inside and scary amounts of security outside - if you cross the wrong painted white line on the path lots of men with big guns start shouting at you as Ricky kept finding out!! We visited the single pillar pagoda, the presidential palace, we went up the hexagonal flag tower (the symbol of Hanoi and OMG the stairs nearly killed us) and we finished our tour with the War Museum, french and US wars, a pretty grim museum! That evening we had dinner at the city view restaurant overlooking the Hoam Kiem Lake which the city is built around, this was quite romantic until I had a paddy about being served Super Noodles in a posh restaurant in the capital of Vietnam- unbeleivable. We finished the evening by going to see a performance of the famous water puppets. This is in a theatre but instead of a stage there is a huge tank of water and the puppeters stand in the waist deep water and do the show- it was incredible.

We did a DIY walking tour of the Old Quarter of Hanoi and all the traditional streets selling exactly what their names suggests. Silk street sells silk, rope street sells rope and gravestone street sells yep thats it graves!! We saw some temples and pagodas and a cathedral - not a patch on Salisbury's but in the little cafe next door I found a cup real english tea!!!! first cup in a month was definately a treat! We have also got on a motorbike (mothers don't read!) and have filmed the chaos just for all of you who can't even begin to imagine what we are trying to describe. So this valuable footage which was highly dangerous will be something to show you all when we finally see you again whenever that might be!

Add to del.icio.us Add to reddit

Photos / videos of "Lakes, history and the capital city":