Hanoi: First Impressions

My initial assessment:
1 1/2 thumbs way up. I know, I know: this may not exactly be a ringing endorsement. The hotel is good: I'm finally in my own room, and other than the facts that the tub doesn't drain and the shower's cold, it's the best hotel I've stayed at on this trip (the Sheraton in Addis excepted, obviously).

First meal: special pho. According to our guide, this meant beef, pork and chicken. In reality, it meant beef flank, cow stomach and cow intestines. Either our guide hates me or she has no idea what she's doing.

Second meal (breakfast): pho bo (plain old beef). Third meal: same. I think I may have committed to a pho bo only diet for the next 11 days.

After a race walk to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum this morning (our guide fails to grasp that we may actually want to stroll through Hanoi and take pictures, and has the bad habit of never looking behind her to see if someone's fallen behind, so stopping for photos, or the toilet, or because of having been hit by a motorbike, is not an option). As for the mausoleum, I don't know what's freakier: that Uncle Ho is available for viewing, or that so many thousands of people line up every day to see him. He WAS glowing, but I assume that's just the lighting.

Other highlights: visiting all of uncle Ho's houses (conveniently located in a park next to his final resting place), followed by a visit to the 1000ish year old Temple of Literature (no great shakes, but I'm glad I went).

My plans for the rest of the day: find a pharmacy (I seem to have a cold, or bird flu or something), go to the Water Puppet Theatre, and bid farewell to 3 of my fellow tourists (sadly, not the racist one). Tomorrow morning, we're off to Halong Bay, where we'll be spending the night on a houseboat...