Day 85: November 13, 2014

After breakfast at the hotel, we met our tour guide to tour the city of Hanoi. Our first stop was the Museum of Ethnology, which featured information on all of the ethnic groups of Vietnam. It was very interesting, and very cool to see how different all of these groups of people are that live in the same country. The museum also had an outside portion, which had houses from the different minority groups that you could go in to see how differently they live from each other.

After the museum, our next stop was the Temple of Literature, which is where the Confucian Examinations used to be held to determine which students could have roles in the government. A bunch of university students were there taking graduation pictures, so it was very crowded. While there wasn't a whole lot to see since it was basically a park with a few buildings, I did learn that temples are places where people are worshipped (like Confucius) while pagodas are places where gods are worshipped. After about 45 minutes, we headed to lunch at a nearby restaurant where I had duck with cashews and steamed rice.

The next stop for the afternoon was the Presidential Palace, which is also where Ho Chi Minh's body is located. Unfortunately, the mausoleum is closed every year during October and November when they do maintenance on his embalmed body. Learning that we couldn't actually see his body was super disappointing, and instead we just toured the grounds and saw where the President welcomes foreign visitors. It was still very interesting, but I was definitely looking forward to getting to see Ho Chi Minh.

After a long day of touring, we only had one stop left, which was a water puppet show. This was very neat to see. The puppeteers hide behind curtains and control the puppets with bamboo sticks. Unlike puppet shows we are used to, however, these puppets are in the water. We saw about ten different short acts and it was nice to see a cultural art. Afterwards, we walked back to the hotel and got ready for our night train to Sapa, which leaves at 9pm.