Day 8 - Hanoi is free!

Today started off with a bang, but ended with a sputter. We started off with a short walk through our 'hood that took us to the most beautiful mosaic artwork by the lake. Though you can't tell, the sculpture Ryan is sitting on by the lake was created with tiny mosaic tiles. :-)

 

From there we walked another five minutes over to a outdoor market  that my parents had discovered earlier that morning on a walk. And oooh...I was enthralled. It's a perfect example of why it was very difficult to ever find a supermarket during our time in Vietnam- everything you need is available on the street. :-)

Even a narrow, cramped marketplace was not immune from the noisy scooters. They kept plowing right through us (you can see one to the left of Rich). It was a little unbelievable.

Snails, anyone?

We struggled to find a frog vendor that could understand what we wanted, but with award winning pantomiming...we did! There were many live frogs for sale (that were getting their brains bashed in by the merchant whenever a seller bought some). We decided to buy one and set it free at the nearby lake (which made Ryan's day). He was euphoric proudly carrying his frog back to the lake to set him free! Though we had originally thought the price posted was per frog, it ended up being per kilogram. So our frog ended up being quite inexpensive and we wished we could have bought more (but didn't have the heart to pantomime all over again). He named his little frog 'Hanoi,' and we made up a cute song celebrating Hanoi being free(d) in the lake! BTW...Hanoi was THRILLED to be free!

Rice!

I so badly wanted to buy tofu...but there were so many flies on them that I figured we'd better not.

Whenever you buy fresh fruit, a number of vendors will offer to cut it for you on the spot.

After cruising our 'hood, we walked about 20 minutes over to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. Because I I've already seen two frozen Communist heroes (Lenin and Mao...not sure what it is about socialists/communists and their preserving corpses for perpetuity), I declined to view Uncle Ho. Plus, it would have required donning long sleeves/pants in the 94 degree weather.

We did, however, cruise the massive complex dedicated to his memory. The famed One Pillar Pagoda was quite unique and something I'd never seen before.

He's excited that he spotted a frog (or was it a frog?) in the pond on the water lillies.

We stopped for lunch (pho) at a popular restaurant before cruising through a gorgeous botanical garden (we paid to basically walk through it) trying to find Uncle Ho's stilt residence.

The botanical gardens were a peaceful oasis from the usual 3.2 million scooters whizzing around you...I loved that there were the most amazing bird's nests, an exercise area, etc.

No pain, no gain, seniors.

So in love with the giant bird nests by the water! Happy, happy doves.

 After over an hour of fruitless searching in the stifling hear, and endless directions from strangers who would all point in the 'right' direction (we would have done a 360 if we'd followed them all), we never did find Uncle Ho's stilt house. It's rare that we give up on finding something, but honestly, it was way too hot, and we were tired from the previous day.

So we finally cabbed it back to the apartment (this man is directly in front of where we exited the cab to walk into our building). And who can resist a picture of a man on a bicycle selling colorful children's balloons all day?