Hello Hanoi

Real quick from Hanoi because I'm not sure how much "interwebs time" I'm going to have in the next week or so:

Laura and I are in Hanoi which (thankfully) is both cooler literally and metaphorically than HCMC. There are TREES here, which is quite a welcome change. The traffic is still bad, but really doesn't have much on what we've seen. We spent the day wandering around the city with a girl we met from Pittsburgh named Emily (look we're social!). We went to Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum, but apparently its closed on Fridays. Didn't want to see his embalmed body that much anyway...Other highlights included getting angrily whistled at when we tried to take pictures of the palace through the bars.

In other news, we're staying in a real backpackers hostel for the first time, which is kind of funny because its so "backpackery" (I'm not sure a real adjective exists to summarize this, but anyone who's been backpacking knows what I mean). We knew we were in the right spot when every other person had dreadlocks. Also, there's a movie room here with a HUGE plasma screen TV (also where free computers that I'm currently using are located), a pool room and a rooftop bar. It's kind of easy to forget where we are in this self-enclosed little world.

Tomorrow we think we're headed out to Ha Long Bay (google image this! it's beautiful) for a 3 day trip ending on Cat Ba Island. Then hopefully we'll come back to Hanoi the day after and be in Sapa (in the mountains of North Vietnam) on the 18 and 19 before flying to Laos on the morning of the 20th. Of course we have yet to book these tours...

thanks for the continued comments!