Even the chickens...

...are brave enough to ride the scooters. We're not, though. Which is a shame, as that's exactly what we're going to be doing in a couple of weeks. Maybe we'll have got used to the mayhem by then.

An incredibly tourist-y day. We wandered around a locals' market area in the city and passed by B52 Lake, containing the remains of a crashed American bomber which didn't make it back from a raid in 1972.

And then it was a visit to Ho Chi Minh's house and gardens, with a very impressive koi pond. If four of his fish disappear, no-one's going to notice.

Afterwards, we went round the Hanoi Hilton, the former French colonial prison that later housed US pilots during the war. There's only a chunk of it left, but that's enough to give you a sense of what life was like. The last major site of our tour today was the Temple of Literature, a Vietnamese university founded in 1070 and based on the teachings of Confucius. Judging by the offerings(?) on the altar, Confucius in his wisdom is fond of a particular brand of cheese cracker. I've never tried them, but they must be good.

This evening, we braved the still-insane traffic and went wandering again. After discovering that the 12-year-old girl child has bigger feet than, literally, anyone in Vietnam, we gave up on shoe shopping and went for a bite to eat. It was DIY BBQ chicken and beef, very tasty but quite painful. When we rose from the table an hour or so later, we were all covered in red spots from the spitting fat. That's 'Nam, man. You can't understand if you weren't there...