The sun broke through the morning mists of Hanoi, light radiating out across the sleepy city, and life started to move again, as mists rose and the sun took dominance over the landscape once more I was still a sleep and well to tell the truth I did not drag my sorry arse out of bed till the sun had taken its dominance over most of South east Asia.
After crawling out of bed and managing to shower I headed down for free breakfast and see what the day would bring. Although the sun takes dominance early the clouds had still came in a bit later and it was looking like rain by the time everyone of the fellowship was up. Zach had taken off early and was organizing extra pages for his passport and then we were going to check out Ho Chi Min and have a bit more of a look around Hanoi.
Once Zach arrived back we headed towards Ho Chi Min Memorial, But by the time we got there it was closed for the day only open from 8am till 10:15am, we would be back tomorrow, well what do we do now, and bugger the rain had started, only soft at first but then progressively harder, we made a decision head to the war museum have a coffee there and then look around that, Zach would head off at 3pm to pick up his passport and meet back at the hotel.
The rain was coming down pretty hard by the time we got to the museum so we sat, played cards and drank coffee. So that’s what we did, and we waited for the rain to stop, By the time Zach left we had been waiting a for a few hours, it was time to head off and back to the hotel. Zach came back later on with passport in hand and would have to go to the Chinese embassy the next day. It was still drizzling later when we went for dinner, this was not looking good for Hanoi and the weather.
The next day we were up and out and off to Ho Chi Mins Memorial, a Trio of French had arrived the night before at our hotel and we were going to met up with them for dinner that night and swap stories. We all pilled on our bikes Zach had arrived back from the Chinese Embassy with the news they no longer do Visa’s at the Embassy in Hanoi, but lucky for him a guy from a travel agency said he would be able to get it done, it would mean another night in Hanoi, which to tell the truth I did not really mind.
Ho Chi Min’s Memorial is a interesting place, first you have to leave your bags and take cameras etc with you, then at another place further down the line you leave your camera and mobile phone, snuck my phone in, did put it on silence. Anyway that was my bit of rebelling, after leaving the camera behind we again joined the throng of Vietnamese in the line to see Ho, I’ll call him Ho from now on. We moved into his mausoleum.
The locals were shooshed by the guards and we moved through, I had my hands behind my back and was told to put them by my side, not sure why but any way, silence prevailed as we passed Ho, to tell the truth Ho looked like a waxed copy. Not sure if that is true but he looked to good for a guy who had been dead for 40 years. We left Ho and headed back out into the sun, spent the day riding around and then headed back for the coolness of the room and only a wee bit later we would meet up with the French.
The French consist of Siedrick, Elise and Ann. Siedrick and Elise had been riding since they left France and Ann had meet up with them in Lao and cycled with them from there to Vietnam. So Ann had it pretty hard, she was even riding a bike brought in Lao, crazy. Dinner was very pleasant and we headed back to the hotel around 10:30pm, that’s right a late night out, well it was for me. The next day the French were heading off to learn Esperanto, for those that don’t know what Esperanto is, here is a brief explanation:
Esperanto is a language created to facilitate communication between the various people of the world. More than one hundred years of practical use has made Esperanto a living language, capable of expressing absolutely any nuance of human thought. It is international and neutral, because it belongs to all people and makes possible the communication between all people of the world, with absolutely no tendency toward any cultural, political, religious or economic hegemony. So that is Esperanto.
The next day was a lazy day for me, got up late, had breakfast late, everything was late, tomorrow we would be heading east towards China and into the hills around Sapa, it would be a 5 days to get there with a rise in Altitude of over 1500m, and that rise would be mostly on the final day to Sapa. We meet up with the French again that night for dinner it seems they had a good day and picked up some of the language. It would be interesting to catch up with them in a few months and see how much they use Esperanto.
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