Wanderings

I meandered around town today and here are a few things that happened. First off, Hanoi is great for wandering because everything I want to see (well most of it) is pretty close and very walkable so you can have the pleasure of breaking all the moto drivers' collective heart.

A slow wander over to the HoCHi MInh mausoleum resulted in disaster. Well not disaster, but it's only open from 8-11AM and all the accompanying buildings (HCM Museum, HCM Stilt house etc) were closing for lunch. So I'm going back tomorrow because there no point in coming here if you don't have a look at the shrivelled up corpse of a communist leader...then onto Lenin and who knows (is Mao embalmed?)
Wandering around in front of the mausoleum, I was of course not paying attention and got yelled at because I nearly stepped onto the sacred sidewalk (a sidewalk surrounded by blue signs telling me not to step on it).

The Canadian Embassy is about as close to UNcle Ho's Mausoleum as you can get. I find this oddly amusing for some reason. Go CANADA! cough cough. It also has a guard box out front wiht a coupke of those lovely Vietnamese soldiers. malaysia didn't have its own guard box...losers.
These guys are everywhere, or at least they have similar uniforms for them all. It's the same uni, but with different shade of green (or yellow, those guys SUCK) and various more or less tassles, ropes and ribbons.

After that I went to the Army Museum, but I didn't know it was that. I saw a big old tower and went looking, apparently I went in a way that wasn't the entrance. I was lookuing around the old guns and piles of crap (rocket engines, mortars, a tank) that they are in teh process of setting up when I heard a screech. The girl from the ticket booth had hunted me down to tell me it was 20000, but inb an hour because they were on lunch break (lunch break to them was shivering in their tiocket box but not eating food). I ended up not paying because it looked like shit and a guy I was talking to later confirmed this (you couldn't even go up the tower, so what would the point have been?)
While contemplating whether to go or not I had a conversation with a guy who at first was trying to sell me postcardsn and his moto friends. Pleasant enough, my favourite moment being when I told the guy who had one pound sterling a four quarters that the pund was worth about tqo dollars. He lost his mind and drove off to try and sell it or tell someone. People seem to get random coins (I've seen twoonies and loonies and US and british) but no banks will exchange them so whoewver gets them has to try and sell them to foreigners for the local whatever.

Temple of Literature. Cool place where you studied for the civil service exams (read chinese and Vietnamese government history). It was nice. I wish my university looked like this one\, with all its lovely gates and courtyards. Oh and if you get a doctorate you get a big cement slab that stands on teh back of a big cement tortoise and you get all your academic claims to fame written on it. That's way better than a diploma.
It was here I met my three friends. Vietnamese kids 8 years old I'd guess. We talked for a good 20 minutes and they had nothing beyond hello. They just prattled on regardless. I especially like the smallest one who was smiling while he was telling me some long and elaborate story about his pet donkey Ronaldo (or something)...every time I'd say something like "No idea what you're saying" he'd smile more. They weer really interested in my almost full notebook, so I had tehm all write their names, I t\aught them my finger tricks.,,it was a grand old tiem had by all.

Also saw the cathedral today. It's a big one. Sat at the back in the dark and listened to some woman's cconversation with God in Vietnamese. I think she was asking for a porsche.

What else did I do today?? Ate and stuff. I budgeted $23 a day here and spent $8 today, Heh, money in the bank for when I need to buy my way out of jail. ANd internet is cheaper than anywhere else we've been, which coincides nicely with my desire to write like afiend.