Hanoi, part 1

We spent about a week in Hanoi, the capital city of Vietnam, in the northern part of the country.  Hanoi is a huge city, population 6.5 million.  Walking around, it feels like there are about twice as many scooters.  The heart of the old town of Hanoi is Hoan Kiem Lake, a lovely lake and park.  On our first day waking around the lake we had a suspicious "student" studying English come up to us and ask for language help.  This scam is explained in detail in our guide book - a "student" asks you to join him for lunch to help him practice English.  You agree, chat over a meal, and then get a bill for hundreds of dollars, with scary bouncers that threaten you if you try to leave without paying.  Caryl told the guy, in perfect English, that we are Polish and don't speak English.  He tried to ask us prying questions for as little while, and then finally gave up, looking for other tourists to prey on. 

As we continued circumambulating the lake, one of our first stops was the Hoa Lo Prison which held both Vietnamese political prisoners as well as American pilots shot down during the Vietnam War (called the American War here).  The American prisoners referred to this prison as the Hanoi Hilton, because they were treated relatively well some of the time.  The prison museum showed pictures of American prisoners cooking chicken and playing sports, even celebrating Christmas.  They conveniently left out all of the torture and interrogations.  The museum included a picture of John McCain, who was held here for a short time before being moved to a different facility after his plane was shot down.

After the prison we checked out the Ngoc Son Temple in the center of the lake, first crossing over the famous red bridge.  After that, we treated ourselves to some water puppet theater!  My favorite activity in Hanoi.  There were puppets catching puppet frogs, planting rice, dragon puppets breathing fire.  Cool stuff!

The second to last picture shows the streets of Hanoi selling Halloween decorations - apparently this is now a popular holiday here.  And, the last picture is of our hotel "window".  The online description said "window with no view", they weren't kidding!  (We switched to a different hotel pretty quickly).