The free breakfast at our hotel is theater.  The toaster was broke yesterday and today also so I wonder if the Vietnamese get some quiet satisfaction from watching the Europeans constantly pop up untoasted bread.  The Vietnamese don't miss a trick and watch everything like a hawk and I find it hard to believe they missed the broke toaster two days in a row.  The egg-frying girl gave up on the eggs because her gas fry pan pooped out too. 

   After the breakfast theater we took a long walk to get a better feel for Hanoi. I found some plastic rain pull-overs at mammasahn's shop across the street from our hotel.  Heide took a look in the Metropole hotel.  It is one of those places here you can spend 200 hundred dollars a night for a room.  The Vietnamese are not picky.  The guy in the nice doorman suit opened the door for Heide and called her madame.  A hotel like that in American would toss a guy like me out on my nose.  It's happened.  I found roses for Heide at 25 cents a piece from a sidewalk vendor.  On our walk we saw some embassies.  They are in the wide boulevard French Quarter as opposed to where we are staying in the catacomb-of-streets  Old Quarter that we are staying in.  The Old Quarter is famous for having its streets named after crafts and trades which are still sold on them to this day - i.e. silver street, cloth street, paper street, etc. 

   We ate at the Hoa Sue restaurant which is a training school for disadvantaged kids.  It trains them in culinary trades.  The food was great (pumpkin soup and carmel pork).  The waiters dote over you.

   We tried to see the lights of the Opera House but being a government building someone must have forgot to switch them on.  The Apocalypse Bar Disco here in Hanoi is gone for the time being.  But, no doubt the bar with the same name in Saigon is alive and well. We will see next week.  There is a nice ice cream shop a couple of doors down from our hotel. 

Observations:

1.  Vietnam seems to be run by the very young.  Everyone doing all the work looks 19 years old.  That is probably why the American Vietnam War is ancient history to many here.

2.  It's good to bring another person on a trip like this.  Heide sees things and drags me places I would not normally go to.  She also has an eye for better pictures.

3.  Someday I will hire an interpreter for a half day and ask questions as I see them. Like: a) what's the deal with all the lottery tickets? b0 why are there cops in booths that do nothing but read? and, c) what is with the two-foot-long, three-inch-wide tobacco pipes everywhere the side walk sitting guys are using?

4.  Hanoi seems more Sunday sensitive - it seems quieter than Saigon's 24-7 rat-race.

5.  Surrealism abounds.  There is a Buddhist facility with a market here that focuses on Buddhist items.  Next to it is the Hot-Life-Cafe. 

6.  Food is abundant here.  You can find just about any thing to eat here. The social question is, are all the people able to take advantage of the mother-lode of goods and food everywhere?  I am guessing not.