Today is the actual beginning of our AIA/MIT pre-tour to Hanoi and Ha Long Bay.  There are two more couples, John & Paula from New Smyrna Beach, FL, Doug and Connie from Minneapolis, MN, our tour manager, Velma, and her sister, Faith, and our Hanoi guide Anh (pronounced Aing).  We started at 8 am and had a full day.  We felt sorry for those who had only arrived yesterday.  Our first stop was at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, where his body has been preserved since his death.  It’s re-embalmed every 20 years.  The lines were enormous, and we were lucky because we got to bypass the worst of the lines.  We were also in time to see the changing of the guard.  After entering the mausoleum to view his body (no photos), we then walked through the botanical gardens and his old residence.  We saw the more important government buildings, such as parliament and communist headquarters.  The last stop in the area was the one-pillar pagoda.  It was 1000 years old (except for the concrete post).

Then we went to the infamous “Hanoi Hilton”, where John McCain and other American pilots were imprisoned.  It had been used for horrible torture by the French for years before.  Most of the prison has been destroyed and high-rise apartments have replaced it, and a museum, “Maison Centrale”, is maintained inside the original walls.

We continued on to the Temple of Literature (for more photos, see our Nov 2 entry) where dozens of young people were there taking graduation photos because it was on the weekend.  Lunch was at a cooking/training school and then back to the hotel to freshen up.

We then each had our own cyclo driver to take us on a long tour of old town where each street seemed to have dozens of shops of the same thing – shops of shoes, or locks, or fruit, or threads, or metal, or socks, or …  Our last stop of the afternoon was a walk around Hoan Kiem Lake followed by a traditional water puppet show with music from traditional Vietnamese musical instruments.  Dinner was at Club D’Orientale, and to bed for an early departure the next morning.