What the Pho? It's Viet-NAM

So its been a while since I last updated but that is only because every time I got on the internet in Hanoi, the annoying hotel owner would bug me about writing a stupid review for his hotel. The place was really nice, spacious, and offered free breakfast for about $5 a night. To give you an idea about Hanoi, its freakin' crazy! There are over 2 million motor bikes in the city according to our tour guide, and not one of them obeys the the traffic laws. They are more of a suggestion apparently. For a mere $6, a Vietnamese person can pay to get a drivers liscence without actually taking the test. They just hand over the liscence since you pay a little more. This made crossing the streets nearly impossible, especially since there were hardly any stop lights. Given this, we decided to sign up for an organized day tour of the city. A van picked us up at every site and drove us to the next. We saw Ho Chi Minh himself, just chillin out in his mosoleum. I say this literally. The room has to be cool in order to preserve a guy who has been dead for 38 years. He looked really creepy, but they love him in Vietnam. He is the equivalent of China's Mao, so you could say Ho is "Mr. Vietnam". The military guarding Ho was very serious though, correcting me for walking with my hands behind my back and making me walk with them at my side. We got to see the first university established in Nam which was founded in 1048 I believe so it is very old. The city of Hanoi will actually be celebrating its 1000 year aniversary in 2 years, so I assume a big party awaits. Hearing our guide talk about Vietnamese history and how they have fought off the Chinese, the French (twice) and the United States was interesting. It was very weird to hear him talk about the "US enemy". But the Vietnamese are very proud people, and hold no grudges. They just look to work together with us now and build a positive future, so that was nice to hear. And Dad, Vietnam surprisingly has great bread. I think it comes from the French influence after they tried to overtake Vietnam a couple of times. Anyways, we saw pretty much everything in about a day and then headed to Ha Long Bay, about 3 hours outside the city. Ha Long Bay was absolutley beautiful! Almost 2,000 limestone islands make up the bay. We slept on a boat, went kayaking, and swam in the 80 degree water. It was like swimming in a bath tub. I've never felt ocean water so warm. We also visited a floating village and explored a giant cave. After returning the next day, we flew to Bangkok, Thailand.