No Public Holiday for Christmas Day in Vietnam. It's not a Christian Country, is it?
Up and out for a walk at 7am. Walked along the back streets where all the markets are - Wow, so busy everywhere but calm at the same time. Saw a group of school children waiting for the school gates to open - on Christmas Day! Despite there appearing to be no road rules, there are some traffic lights (very occasionally) on some intersections, and we did see a policeman booking a motorcyclist and attempting to stop another. The second motorcyclist just sped off, receiving a whack from the policeman's baton as he went. A bit of entertainment!
Back to the Galaxy for breakfast and then on to Green Bamboo, a travel agency someone had recommended to us. Spent about 1.1 million dong booking trips to Halong Bay and Sapa. We then walked to Hoan Kiem Lake (the Lake of the Restored Sword) for lunch, becoming millionaires once again, withdrawing 2 million dong from the ANZ ATM. Should keep us going for a few days.
We checked out the Opera House before crossing the Red Bridge to the temple in the middle of the lake.
.JPG)
Next stop, the Thang Long Water Puppets and definitely worth seeing even if we did have to pay an extra 15,000VND to use a camera and 60,000VND to use video (only about $6). It wasn't what we were expecting. It was in a theatre with a big square of water as the stage. The puppeteers were behind bamboo screens in waist-deep water, working the puppets on long poles that were just under the water.
Coffees and cocktails (pina colada - $5) at the Highlander on a 3rd floor balcony overlooking a busy intersection and the lake.
On to the Dinh Lang Thuy Ta Restaurant (Ancient Village's Communal House) for our Christmas dinner. A nice spot, overlooking Hoan Kiem Lake. The waiters wore varying traditional (colourful) uniforms and the musicians were beautifully dressed with not a hair out of place.
Dinner - the menu had lots of different banquets priced from $10US to $16US. The waiters suggested #1 and as it looked good we went with that - banana flower salad, cucumber salad (we hoped that that even the letuce would be safe to eat here), fish (this was a whole fish, river fish, hand fed, but didn't have the spine in but still plenty of bones) spread out with a net of carrot over the top. Not sure how they managed the net of carrot, but it was impressive.
Watched a man preparing the egg noodles on the way back to the Galaxy. A machine that he kept adjusting to roll the pasta thinner and thinner - fascinating. Another man was trying to get his little girl to give us the balloon she was playing with. Jennie handed her a tiny toy koala and she burst into tears.
