Had a lousy sleep. Someone somewhere on the train was smoking, which is never good, and the people in my car were pretty chatty. In Hanoi, I searched for Marilyn, then decided it was futile and got a motorcycle to the hotel. Left my bag there, then went in search of some breakfast. Following breakfast, I went and grabbed a coffee at another cafe. I think I’ve become slightly addicted to putting condensed milk in coffee. At first it seemed a horrid idea, but it’s quite tasty (and sweet).
After breakfast I headed to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, to check out Ho Chi Minh on display. His mausoleum was quite cool, which was refreshing. I thought it might be a little more solemn, with a few people crying, or something of that sort, but instead we were just funneled through to the heat of the outdoors on the other side.
I checked out the Ho Chi Minh museum next, which was quite boring. Apparently there’s a museum in every big town, which doesn’t surprise me too much. There were a lot of curious art displays in the museum, which seemed out of place.
After the museum, I claimed my bag (no photos, no bags allowed) and hired a motorcycle to the post office. At the post office, someone came up and offered to help me get some stamps. I tried to get some padded envelopes too, but they don’t seem to exist in Vietnam. In the end I think the guy wanted some money for helping me, but I really couldn’t figure out what he was trying to tell me, so I just thanked him and walked off.
Back at the hotel, the internet wasn’t working, so I got on all fours and tried to fix the problem. I managed in the end, much to the delight of the owner, who said the internet had been down since the evening I headed to Sapa. In the end, the secret was to plug in the hub. With power, comes internet.
Now with two books to trade, I figured I should be able to get a new one in trade. I headed to a shop I’d been at before, to see if they still had a title I was after. They did, but since one of the books was a copy, I still had to pay a bit for the new title. After that I got back to the hotel in time to catch the taxi to the bus terminal. The bus to Hoi An was going to take 12 hours. Not something I was looking too forward to, but at least it was a sleeper bus.
The sleeper bus wasn’t that comfortable, but probably better in the end then a regular bus. I found out at the bus terminal that I actually wouldn’t be in Hoi An till about 5pm, as their was a layover in Hue. I met a French guy, named Philippe, who was only going about two hours away, but we discussed possibly meeting up again in Hoi An. At one point, I was awoken by a bang, and showered with what confetti, or something similar. Turned out in the end to be tiny bits of shattered glass – seems something had hit the window of the bus leaving a sizable hole. They patched it up with some tape, then swept the bus (and me) of glass.