CrunchyTimes

        Today we started early to visit ho chi minh's masoleum and presidential palace. The grounds were really nice but the best part was seeing all the school children in lines each grabbing onto anothers shirt- they were so excited to see us and say "hello". In the afternoon we walked pretty far into the old city but today we didnt buy very much for all the window shopping we did. We took a cyclo taxi to the prison dubbed the "hanoi hilton" by american pilots captured in the vietnam war. It was cool though 2/3 of it had been developed over to make a new hotel. There were some pics of John McCain and descriptions of the excellent treatment the americans received (including christmas celebrations) after bombing attacking and sabotaging the vietnamese- needless to say there was some bias. In the evening we went to the water puppet show and afterwards a group dinner, after we got some drinks and now heading to bed for our trip to halong bay early tomorrow.