Dead Unkle Ho, the night train and a wet wet Sapa!

Hello

This time from a rather wet Sapa, it seems to just rain here meaning that you can't see a damn thing!

Any how on our last day in Hanoi we though it would be a good idea to go and see good old Uncle Ho in his huge mausoleum! It was certainly interesting. We some how managed to enter the site via the tour/ pre booked appointments point. Before you even enter the site you have to hand your bag into security and walk through a metal detector! Any how we were in the line waiting to go through the detector and I got talking to a S Korean spacial needs teacher who was on a tour. They were all very nice and asked to have their photo's taken with us! Well as we walked through the detector towards the que, some 400m long, a guard gestured to us to return to the rear at which point the Korean spoke out and said that we were part of their tour group! This meant that we managed to get right to the front of the line, much to the disgust of the rest of the tourists in the line!

Telling the truth its not all that impressive [a sin to the Vietnamese] you get chaperoned through rather quickly just getting a short glance at Ho Chi Minh. The way it is set up with the lighting you would have no idea that the person was real, it looks like a wax figure at Madame Tussuad's. I can still say that I have seen Ho Chi Minh in the flesh!

After seeing Ho we went to another pagoda in Hanoi and then pretty much sat about for the rest of the day waiting for our train. The train is quite possibly the best way to travel long distances, so comfortable that I actually managed to get a full nights sleep!

Sapa, what a disappointment, not because of the town just for the pure fact that its constantly cloud shrouded! I can't see anything and these are meant to be the best mountain views in the whole of Vietnam! We ended up renting moto's and driving up the the highest pass in the country 1920m but just ended up getting totally soaked and not seeing anything. I did have tea in a shack with two hmong girls. Today I think we're going to walk down the valley and see if we can go to some of the villages.

Adios

Jared