After the lady with the basket incident we wandered some more and found ourselves in a local market filled with tons of different foods. not surprisingly they have every part of an animal you could possibly imagine for sale along with crazy fruits and vegitables. I saw a bucket filled with either live eels or snakes...im not sure, slithering around. i was a bit creeped out. after that alyson and i made our way back to the hotel. we then took a taxi to the next hotel, checked in, had some lunch at this really good restuarant around the corner called KOTO which employs poor young adults and gives them an education (english and hospitality) and a new bicycle. then we went back to the hotel and decided to take a short nap....well that nap ended up being 4 hours long and we woke up to a phone call from the intrepid tour guide asking us if we were coming to the meeting. there are 10 people in the tour, a bunch of really nice girls from australia new zeland and england,which will be a lot of fun, a crunchy old guy from australia who could possibly be the next steve irwin, and an older couple from new zeland who are a novelty i hope doesnt wear off to soon. the guide hai is vietnamese but speaks very good english and is really funny so i think he is going to be a good guide. after the meeting we went to dinner at a traditional vietnamese place which was very yummy and then everyone was so tired we went back to the hotel and right to sleep at 10 (I woke up at 2:30 thinking it was 7 with tons of energy).
today we went to ho chi minhs moseleum which contained his embalmed body (totally strange/cool) there were guards everywhere nd we werent allowed to bring in cameras or cell phones. on the walk to the moseleum we passed lots of people on the street selling different foods included goose eggs that were about to hatch... you eat the unbord baby goose. after the moseleum alyson and i went to the old city where each street is called what it sells...junk city. you could spend hours there walking through all the streets. while walking we saw the same woman with the basket and she tried her trick on us again...we knew better this time. apparently we've been learning everything the hard way haha. after that we went to the prison where they kept the american soldiers during the war (its nick named hanoi hilton) and there was tooooons of pictures of mcain.. including his uniform. tonight we are going to a water puppet theater show which should be interesting and then tomorrow we re off to Halong Bay.
lots of love,
Simi
