good morning, Vietnam!

Literally, this morning, we touched down in Hanoi around 8:30 am and after getting our very cool visas, headed to our hotel in the heart of the old quarter. Immediately we began to see differences in neighboring Thailand (kind of neighboring) The architecture here is very New Orleans, french style, and very colorful. The buildings, some so old or in ruins, others just the face is fixed up and still others are brand new.

There are motobikes EVERYWHERE and they drive on the right side of the road. The landscape is more tropical and guess what, they do wear those pointy rice hats.

We checked into the hotel and fell asleep for a few hours (the 3 am alarm caught up to us) then we  put on our walking shoes and hit the streets.
The people here are less aggressive in selling things to you, the silk and kitchenware are so beautiful...If we were going straight home I would have dishes bought already.

We were lucky enough to stumble on roadside barbers and Adam had a full on barber hair cut and face shave. It took the man about an hour and I sat there, wrote postcards and smiled at the dedication of this professional barber.

We discovered a very pretty lake in the middle of the city and are now back in our room resting up before getting dinner and heading to bed early. Tomorrow we are going to hopefully see the Ho Chi Minh Mummy and the museum.