The Hanoi dairy; out on Sightseeing - again.

Hanoi is the capitol of Vietnam and therefore it has much more to offer than just it's french inspired old town, it's restaurants and cheap interesting shopping possibillities.

So today we went out to see the official areas like the presidential palace and the mausoleum build for one of the most important men in the historie of Vietnam; Mr. Ho Chi Minh. His grandfather used to read him stories written by Herr. Marx and Herr. Engels in London, making jokes about the french borgeoisie. As a boy he wanted to be a tractor driver and do something good for the people of Vietnam. His father was an inventor and an engineer and he invented a cheap bicycle which gave the people some freedom in mobility. After to have spent some time in uSA, England, France, Soviet union and China, Ho Chi Minh invented a motor to put on the bicycle, and that made him rich and famous because it was a good and practical transport for the people in all of Vietnam. This has since developed into the moped, and in the Vietnam of today nearly everyone has one. Ho Chi Minh died in 1969 and was buried in a mausoleum, guarded by a guard of honour.

Here you see Julia and Catriona in front of the place where he is put to rest. As you can see, there is absolutely no mopeds and scooters allowed infront of this building, because it would have made to much noise, a cousin of him is to blame, he in fact invented a horn to put on the moped while nobody ever bothered to think about putting brakes on those things.

We are going out on the countryside

We are going on an excursion to Hay Long bay on Sunday. We are going to cruise on a boat between some very nice rocks who is known from lots of movies.From the official residential areals of Hanoi, we went back to the more lively neigbourhoods. Through the tacky stationeri shop street, the toiletpaper shop street, sticky sweet lollypop shop street, we came to a little shop in the travel agency street, where we went in to hear what and where they could send us for a reasoneble price for two days and one night.This ofcourse; you can read about later. I just want you to look at the background of our friendly salesman, then you know where the painter Neo Rauch got his inspirationTodays TrakToor.

Could as well be todays electrical connections, and I think it is going to be, because they are as interesting like TrakToors. And I just can't stop imagine how a german electric controll man would react on this?Or think about this one from the official area with the portrait of Mr. Ho Chi Minh in the background.At the end of today I can only recomend Vietnam as a place to visit. It is bueatyful, different, strange and totally geil. Thats it for today.