Hanoi, Water Puppets, Train

Enjoyed the morning walking around the old quarter and taking photos. The sites, sounds and smells are amazing!! Erika and I had lunch at a local pho restaurant. When I say local I mean local. We were the only tourists in the place. Very authentic! In the afternoon we saw a water puppet show. Water puppets told the stories of daily life of the older Vietnam, when people traditionally worked the fields. After the rice harvest, farmers and the local community celebrated and entertained each other with musical tales using puppets they held up as they stood up to their waists in the water of the harvested rice paddy field. Then we went to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and his House on stilts, One Pillar Pagoda, and Tran Quoc Pagoda. Later we enjoyed dinner at Ngon Restaurant, a delicious local restaurant. After dinner we went to the train station for our overnight train connection on the Victoria Express Train to Sapa, a Northern Vietnamese town in the mountains very close to the border with China. There were four bunks in each cabin. I had an upper berth. Needless to say, it was a real hoot!