Cold to Hot Hot Hot

Mandy:

Our last day in Hanoi was actually sunny :O We took the opportunity to visit the Temple of Literature and the Women's Museum before heading to the airport. The Temple of Literature is where the elite Vietnamese students attended class and graduated back in the day. I think the graduates were known as Mandarins.

Record of the students

Twins

We can read some of the characters ;)

Nice garden

Graduates looking for good luck

The Women's Museum showed the role women played during the wars and in current society. There was a short video clip from a documentary of the women selling items off their backs illegally on the streets of Hanoi. It was very insightful and I was very sad to learn that a lot of the women's families are actually really far from the Hanoi city centre and they have to live in Hanoi on their own to earn an extra few bucks for their family. One women only visited home once every two weeks to bring back approximately $20 :( Definitely makes me realize that I am very very lucky.

Excuse the poor picture

Banh Mi 

The Hanoi domestic airport is one of the crappiest airports I have ever been to. The Vietjetair counter was very ghetto and the counter person used a lap top to check us in. It was the first time during our trip that I thought the locals were similar to Mainland China - no personal space and no real line up formation. Our flight was also delayed but not by long so it wasn't a big deal.

When we finally got to HCMC it was raining really hard. (I thought it was dry season!) We hopped into a trust worthy Mai Linh taxi and went straight to our hotel. It was pouring rain when we were looking for a restaurant so we had to settle with a touristy restaurant to have pasta and pizza :( Only good part was that they had an upstairs to people watch. The street off of the restaurant and our hotel is very very touristy. Full of massage places and grimey restaurants/bars. When it stopped raining we walked back to the hotel and called it a night.

View from the restsaurant