Finally...Heavy Duty Shopping and Water Puppets

We put off shopping for nearly the entire trip, picking up only the easiest, most lightweight trinkets, so that we would not have to carry them around. But we have finally arrived in Vietnam and I sense that our trek is pretty much over, so we are abandoning almost any sense of visiting tourist places and decide to indulge in ... shopping!

Old Town Hanoi is a lovely place to give in to the shopping bug. Our hostel is located on a busy, narrow street right near a giant night market. The room is large, clean, and filled with teak furniture. The floors are slick, marble tile. The bathroom is decent. It's a better room than you would think from the entrance.

We decide to stay for several days, and nearly immediately start to explore the shops. According to Lonely Planet, Old Town has small streets dedicated to different trades, so we set off in search of lacquerware and pottery. It turns out that things are a bit more of a mishmash than LP would lead you to believe, but the shopping is still fun. The quality is not exceedingly high, but the prices are pretty cheap. I made the mistake of changing money into Vietnamese dong. I later learned that it would have been better to buy in American dollars as merchants prefer the dollar. They will take the dong, but then you always have to calculate what rate they are giving you.

I march poor Kinsey from shop to shop, unable to decide what to buy. I end up buying a rolling suitcase for about $15 just for our extra purchases! Kinsey gets a cute red silk skirt with a black silk top. I buy a lot of silk sleep sacks for Christmas presents. The vendor is happy to sell me 12 of them for about $4 each. As I walk away, the vendor next door tells me she will sell me sleep sacks for $2 each (!) so I buy 12 more! Christmas shopping is done!

Somewhere along the way, we end up going to see the famous Vietnamese Water Puppet Show. The stage is set over a pool of water and the puppeteers stand in the water to manipulate the puppets. As a result, there are a lot of water-themed puppets, like fish, fishermen, ducks, and water oxen. The stories are really just short vignettes, but they are all clever and very charming. Kinsey ends up buying a dragon water puppet after the show.

And, with Vietnam having a French influence, we managed to find a nice French cafe, where we while away a few lunches and watch the Vietnamese scene scroll by...

This is what what the streets of Old Town Hanoi are like. Motorbikes rule the street. There really isn't much sidewalk room, so you walk in the street while the motorbikes whizz by inches away.

Little hole-in-the wall restaurants spill out into the streets everywhere. Hygiene looks questionable, but the social aspect is very appealing.