I started the day with some banana pancakes! Then I walked down tiny narrow streets to try and find the oldest temple in Hanoi. It appeared to be closed though so I went on round to the old city gate. I went to find the Dong Xuan market and that appeared to be the place that sells all the stuff for the tourist shops in bulk. It was a bit too crazy there for my liking so I left. I then just wandered all over the place seeing what I could find.

I wound my way up to the big lake at the top of the city and faffed around there for a while. It was really pretty there but the pagoda on the lake was closed. Think I'm gonna go back another day and see what its like as it looked really nice from the lake shore. Next I headed back towards the main road next to the river. On the way I stopped at a church and also some sort of temple on top of a massive brick square. No idea what that was all about as the guy there didn't speak much English and there were no signs there. It looked good though!

Next I got to the river and decided to go up onto one of the bridges over it. It was kinda crazy! The pavement consisted of slabs that appeared to have been attached onto the bridge as an afterthought. Some seemed to be coming loose and would wobble when I stepped on them. There were gaps between each one and there was a rickety handrail alongside. The land in the middle of the river was being used as farm land as far as I could tell and there were people who appeared to live on boats or in houses on the river. It looked so different to everything else I've seen - maybe because its not the city in that bit of Hanoi. I didn't walk all the way across the bridge as I knew that I had to come back too and the bridge was a monster.

Next I headed back towards the part of the city I know. I went to a cafe to grab something to eat then I went to yet another temple before going to the Hoa Lo prison museum. By this time I had walked for miles so I headed back to the hotel, stopping to buy some stuff to send to my sister on the way.I've not really done much shopping for tourist crap since I've been here but I got a couple of things for me today, mainly because I couldn't buy things for my sister without buying some for me too!

This evening I went to the post office to try and send the stuff to Bec. The amount of forms I had to fill in was astounding! Some random guy helped me out, pointing out all the bits I had to fill in but it was such a faff. The package was taped up several times and all the various forms were attached and it seemed to be such a long winded way of getting something into the mail!

My plan for next weekend if I have some time is to work out the bus network and go and see some stuff a bit further afield. I contemplated getting a bus today when I was up near the bridge but I couldn't decipher the signs at the bus stops I passed so I need to investigate that so I can go see some more things. I have also got myself another map that is in English as well as Vietnamese so that I know what things are. On occasions today I was looking at my map to work out what there was to do near wherever I happened to be and somethings would be on my map in Vietnamese but I had no idea what they were. Things like temples have symbols but there are a lot of things on my map that are just a circle with some Vietnamese words. This is no use to me! So this evening I invested in a tourist map. Its heaps bigger than my other map which is quite annoying but at least it tells me what everything is in English!

This week should be a little less intense too. It's the final week of the course!!