Day 2 hanoi: reunion no.74736

Good evening ladies and gentlemen,

We got up chilled again at nine o'clock and then treated ourselves to breakfast.

After that, we tried to get up, not to lie in bed again and to 🚶‍♀️.

But it took us another 1.5 hours until we actually managed to get out of bed.

We felt like we walked 80,000 km, across the city - we saw really fucked up and run-down houses that served more as garbage dumps.

Then we headed towards Ho Chi Minh Museum and Mausoleum. Before that, a Vietnamese guy approached us, he actually wanted to offer us a tour - of course really cheap. Sureeee.

But then he found out that we come from Germany and suddenly starts speaking German. We've had a similar incident two or three times here. Well, we know now why.

When Vietnam was completely destroyed after the war (not so long ago), the "Young" were sent to communist countries all over the world. Especially to the GDR (e.g., he was in Dresden). There they should "learn" how to work, build houses and streets - and after 5-10 years they were brought back to Vietnam to rebuild the country.

Actually a pretty sad story, what the country looked like 20 years ago. And still, and we find that so crazy, especially the older generations here are incredibly nice and friendly. Even though they witnessed all of this firsthand...

Well, however, quite impressive. Many streets and schools here have French names due to the occupation. Even every museum has a French title.

Even more frequently than an English one.

Afterwards, we walked to Westlake, a huge lake in the middle of the city.

There we were stopped by two street vendors (there are endless numbers of them - annoying but friendly). They immediately put their hats and their weird transport things around our necks (see pictures). I have to admit that was a bit weird. Out of pity, we bought some bananas and pineapples from them after bargaining. 🤦🏽‍♀️😂

Then we continued, went to a coffee shop and had lunch.

Afterwards, we just stupidly lay in the hotel and binged on Netflix.🤦🏽‍♀️😂

But we got back up and went out into the city again.

Of course, we met our favorite Dutch people again.😂 Got something to eat. And then we had an incredibly heavy crêpe with Oreo, cheesecake, and strawberries.  Heeeeeaven🤤

Now we are sitting on the balcony in the hotel, picked up our laundry (we now have one more pair of pants, unfortunately an ugly men's pants😂😂😂🤦🏽‍♀️) and are still chilling.

Tomorrow we have to check out and in the evening our night train goes to Sa Pa in the rice fields😛