But on to Hanoi itself! After a super breakfast buffet in the Bamboo room at the hotel (with ALL the fixings you could ever want) we headed out to walk the city. We circled the hotel and first headed for the International Post Office! (for those of you who know me.....I ensure I get stamps from every country I visit for my Mum who is a collector and of course, to send post cards to my friends and family). The post office was on a beautiful boulevard across from the Lake of Returned Sword - a beautiful lake with the Ngoc Son Temple in the middle. I must first however, tell you of the need to negotiate the "crazy" drivers and moped users! Each road is crowded with them all and to cross it, even at a pedestrian crosswalk, you must watch carefully and then simply venture out and hustle across the road! It is an experience and if you are timid, it's not for you!
After enjoying a beverage (had to try the Vietnamese Tiger beer 5% lager) we continued on to the far side of the lake, heading for the famous Hanoi Hilton. We got to the historic prison used for many years including incarceration of American Pilots by the North Vietnamese. It was as sad and morbid as one would expect, but interesting to see the struggles the people have gone through to gain liberation and freedoms they now have. 
From here we returned to the lake area and enjoyed lunch at a roof top, cityview cafe. The food was excellent and we enjoyed the light breeze - the day had soared to 37C, thank goodness it was overcast.
The next adventure was to the Water Puppet Show, which was the highlight of the day! The puppets, wooden figures on long sticks, perform on a water pool with a classic theater style backdrop. The figures depict traditional rural people and animals and each scene tells a story. Accompanied by a 6 piece musical troupe playing traditional instruments and 2 singers telling the tales, we saw waterbuffalos fighting, farmers planting rice fields, fishermen catching extremely large and lively fish, drummers doing festival beats, ladies dancing and last but not least, dragons!! They swayed and dipped and dived all around and on the whole - it was absolutely fantastic! I'm so pleased we will have the chance to see this all again tomorrow!
I'm only putting up a couple of pictures as it was so tricky to get them. The puppets moved so quickly and blurred easily! But what a fabulous show! (and by the way, I DID pay for the privilege to take these pictures - not an uncommon practice in museums and in this case, well worth the effort!)
There has been so many more fun things to share about today - from the small cultural differences we saw to the wonderful people we met and the interesting sights everywhere! We could have bought literally anything from the many street vendors or taken tours from the numerous moped, rickshaw or bus owners!
I'll just have to leave something more for tomorrow! (and sort out the computer hiccups I had tonight! always some little thing...)
All for now....
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