We woke up in the morning and had a delicious breakfast in the hotel. Guy had eggs with hash browns and bacon, and I had a poached egg with banana pancake. Then we went out to explore our surroundings. We found out that our immediate surroundings (Ha Noi) are fairly hot. The temperature goes over 40 degrees in the day and it's damp so it feels like a sauna. You sweat instantly and constantly.
We found the silk sales street, which is right nearby. It was nice to see all the colorful scarves and clothes. Everything there is really colorful and pretty. All the streets in the Old Quarter are haphazard alleyways, and each street used to belong to a particular guild so they center on individual businesses: silk, toys, lacquerware, metalwares, clothing, etc. Outside of the old quarter Ha Noi has some impressive French colonial architecture, which makes it look a bit like the south of France, without all the french people.
We bought some essentials and after a short rest in the hotel, went to explore the lake and get some lunch. We had a nice cheap lunch of spring rolls, noodles, and crab meat and went on. The lake area had a group of teenagers working as volunteer guides and practicing their English, but we didn't think of many questions to ask them. Someone did ask us to fill a questionnaire about how tourists are finding Hanoi. It was too early for us to tell them much.
In the evening we went out to a water puppet show. That's what it sounds like: a puppet show on a stage flooded with water; a Vietnamese art form invented by rice farmers. It was nice except that the chairs were very cramped in the small auditorium, and about half the show was ruined by whole rows of Chinese tourists trying to film it on their cell phones.
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