Hanoi, Vietam

Well, hello all! I am finally actually blogging from outside the country! And my camera upload actually worked! Minor miracles, all!
So, at the moment I'm in Hanoi, having met up with my tour group yesterday. A great variety of people, though predominantly a bunch of Aussies, which is no particular surprise. I am sharing a room with a lady who is exactly one year younger than my mother (!) and at the moment I am using one of the most FAB things in the whole wide world - free Internet!
Now I am completely obsessed by food, so I hope everyone will forgive me if I tell you what I'm eating, just 'cos I find it fascinating. Last night we went to what I would describe as the Vietnamese version of Jamie Oliver's restaurant - the one for street kids (I can't remember the name of the series but you know the one I mean!) Effectively it does the same thing. So food was very expensive, but it was extra tasty and you got to feel very self-righteous and noble for eating there. Yay on both fronts. I had a claypot with pork and, of all things, lentils. Tasty! Breakfast was included (yay again) and I went traditional and had a deeee-licious bowl of pho (noodle soup), mmmmm. And for lunch we had a plate of Vietnamese noodles and veges which cost around $2 Australian. Noodles are great :))
Spent much of the day today schlepping around the typical Asian tourist stuff shops. Incredible how you can see the same souvenirs from one side of Asia to the other! And we saw the corpse of Uncle Ho, as our guide describes him - otherwise knows as Ho Chi Minh. Eerily similar to seeing the body of Mao in China, hey to be a philistine about the whole thing, seen one old dead guy, seen 'em all...!!! lol
So some impressions of Hanoi. for you.. very much a part of Asia with ten billion bicycles that somehow manage not to run you over in the street, lovely skinny buildings in the French style that are only slightly wider than your average phone box yet stand five stories high, people crouched over tending weeds with very small scissors and traditional hats, friendly people, confusing winding streets, insane quantities of all sorts of stuff from chickens to bonsai somehow packed onto bikes (see above piccy of balloons, there's a chick riding that bike under there somewhere, believe it or not!)... I love Asia!
Anyway, I should probably stop hogging the free internet and go. We're off to see the water puppets tonight!
x x Donna