Hanoi

Flew from Hue to Hanoi on Vietnam Airlines. Very nice airline. Efficient and on time. Hanoi is very different from other places we’ve been. We are in ‘old quarter’ which is jammed with people. Really jammed – very narrow streets packed with motorbikes, occasional cars and crowds of people trying to walk in between all the traffic because the sidewalks are either blocked with parked motorbikes or makeshift “restaurants” with plastic tables and chairs. There are many street vendors walking around trying to sell fruit, books, postcards and other souvenir items. This must be shoppers’ paradise because there is store after store with all kinds of Vietnamese stuff – silk, lacquer, wicker, silver, etc. Actually, every street in the old quarter was owned by some guild and only their items were sold there so streets still “specialize”. Our hotel has no elevator and we are on the fifth floor. We walked around the lake. Walking here is much easier than Saigon.This morning we took a walk through the French quarter – wide boulevards, beautiful buildings, huge trees making the streets nice and shady in this relentless heat. We also visited the famous Hoa Lo prison built by the French. Saw John McCain’s pictures there. He was captured somewhere not far from it.