Originally written on October 28, 2004

After getting up early, we walked to Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum to see his mumified body. Too bad he had a previous engagement in Russia. Apparently, about this time ever year he makes a trip over to Russia to see the master technicians who keep him from turning into dust. Still, his place is pretty swank. We watched the changing of the guards (kind of pointles when he’s not there). The changing is supposed to be as good as London’s, however we thought that if you liked seeing a few guys in white ‘march up and down the sqaure’ then this was your thing, otherwise a yawner. Good thing we just happened to be there. We also visited the museum dedicated to his life and writings and the struggle for workers rights, democracy, and a free Vietnam. Full of arts symbolism that is hard to interpret it is perhaps the strangest museum I’ve ever been to. No pictures allowed here.

Next to the Botanical gardens which although nice had very little flower action, but it did have monkeys picking each others bums. Who doesn’t like that? Very quiet here and full of people making out, which normally is frowned upon in public. This place must be lovers lane.

After that we headed towards Duan Xuan market in hopes of finding a couple towels and a knife. By this point in the day we were pretty much pooped and couldn’t deal with the insanity of an asian market so we promptly left heading for ‘towel street’. Here, the towel sellers have set up several shops. Lots of towels but very expensive and no one seemed to want to smile or bargain so we high tailed it out of there too.

A chocolate banana shake, a chocolate cookie (not good), and pineapple mango shake later we were back on the road to go to the ‘Din PIN’ (you must empasize the PIN or you say something else in Vietnamses) which is a supermarket. We found towels here were much more reasonable (2 dollars each as opposed to over 4 each). Then we found a bar on a balcony overlooking an insane traffic circle and orderered two half liter glasses of beer. We took lots of pictures and in our 30-45 minutes of being there we saw two minor accidents (there may have been more its hard to keep track).

A quick dinner and now bed, off to HaLong Bay tomorrow for three days, no emails on the island where we will be staying.