Left wondering around Hanoi alone, checking out every caucasion face I come across (ever 5 mins) hoping I could find them. Hanoi's Old Quarter is made up of criss crossed narrow streets full of small shops and street stalls selling everything imaginable. Most of the building are 2 story french looking ones, beautiful plants hanging out the sides. Its almost Vietnamese Tet (new years) so lots of lanterns and red envelopes and special food on display. Motorcycles, bikes and cyclos hooning by at the speed of lightening, beeping horns like mad making it a chaotic ensemble of air pollution and noise pollution. Was offered a bike by the lovely guest house ppl (who gave me lunch cos I was almost in tears) but I turned it down, perhaps wisely. How could I compete with these naturals? I feel like I am being run over by a thousand Road Runners and Kayotes chasing after each other. Found asylum at the Hoam Kim lake with the Tortoise pagoda. Apparently giant tortoises has lived in there for hundreds of years, and only rarely pops up for a breather in the autum. And has the habit of doing so on Vietnam's national day (2 Sept, day that Ho Chi Minh passed away) So its quite auspicious to spot it when it does come up. No such luck today.
In the evening I attended an elaborate and fascinating Water Puppet show (traditional vietnamese theatre which puppets "perform" on a stage made with water) its scenes mainly of folk stories and show cases traditional agrarian life and Vietnamese wild life. Go the mating bird dance!! After returning to the guesthouse I finally got hold of Michaela. It appears that we have all been completely and utterly scammed by this con artist who posed as the guesthouse manager when she and Celia arrived late the night before. Saying that the guesthouse is full he took them to another family run guesthouse(with a on the spot commission) and promising that he will give me a message saying where they are. Yeah right. But only till Michaela got my distressing email later in the afternoon. God I am so pissed off right now!!!!!!anyway look its all a learning experience. But it means that our schedules aren't matching up - ie we booked out Halong bay and Laos travels seperately due to us not being able to meet up nor knowing when we would. This is really shit!##$#$^%$% I feel so cheated! This has really ruined my day and Michaela and Celia's days too. Oh well. Michaela did give a good earbash to the other hotel's manager and got some refund.
I am not going to let this ruin my time here, so am pulling out that plan B and C outta the bottom of the backpack.
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