Hanoi Redux
Our last day in Hanoi and we’re off to a little less than auspicious start. In general, we’ve been quite good about getting out of the hotel room in the morning, but today it just wasn’t meant to be. By the time we talked to the kids, booked some airline tickets to Hue, and got ready, it was quickly creeping up on 11 o’clock. We argue a bit with the front desk since we have prepaid for breakfast, but they close the restaurant at 10:30 to change over for lunch and say they can’t cook us anything. By the time we give up and grab a cab, it is close to 11:30.
By starting late, we skip seeing Ho Chi Minh, as you have to be there by ten to get in. Since we also missed Mao Tse Tung in China, we are quickly running out of waxy, dead people to look at. Lenin is another possibility I suppose, but no plans to travel to Russia any time soon.
Instead we head back to the Old Quarter to look at a few of the paintings we saw yesterday. We’ve narrowed the list of favorites to just 3 or 4, but unfortunately, they are at three different galleries, so hard to compare. We also stop to buy a couple of knock-off backpacks (either that, or North Face is having a really big sale in Vietnam), for some unknown reason choosing to do this early in the day instead of on the way back to the hotel, ensuring that for the rest of the afternoon I have to walk around with a big empty pack on my back.
The other big mission for the day is to book our trip to Halong Bay and figure out how were going to get to Saigon in time for our return flight. There are literally dozens of travel agencies, and each seems to have its own mix of boats they represent, making it difficult to determine which is the right choice. This process we drag out until after 8 in the evening, finally settling on a 2 day, 1 night trip on what they call a 4 star boat (I let Ang flip a coin between that and a cheaper 3 star boat, and while she denies it, the “toss” looked more like a flop, with the outcome somewhat predetermined). In practice though, it actually works out better, as we get back to Hanoi a little bit earlier and are already cutting it very close for our flight to Hue.
We also have the same agent book some tickets from Da Nang to Saigon, as we are a little nervous that if we wait any longer, we won’t be able to get any at all. Unfortunately, the only ones we can get are on the night of the 1st, so it turns out we will be spending a few days in Saigon, where the original plan was just to fly in the same day our flight left to Vancouver. It also means a little less time than we hoped for in Hoi An, but I think there will still be enough to see what we wanted to see (albeit in a bit more rushed fashion).
With all the planning out of the way, we resign ourselves to the fact 
that it’s too late to really see the French Quarter, so skip that and head back to the last gallery to buy our picture. That mission accomplished, our day is pretty much complete, so we grab a couple of gyro/french bread sandwiches and head back to the hotel. Our bus to Halong Bay is picking us up at 7:45 in the morning, so definitely no sleeping in tomorrow.