Today I was feeling a lot better. Unfortunately, everything is closed on Mondays so I wasn’t able to see Uncle Ho’s pickled corpse or his house or museum. I’m flying to Phnom Penh tomorrow morning. I ran into an Australian named Rich and his Fiancee Kish who gave me some good info on motorbiking around the south of Cambodia, so I’m out of here. As much as Hanoi was probably the low point of this trip, it’s a fascinating place and I would like to come back.
Tonight I went to see a water puppet show. It’s an old art form unique to Vietnam. It was really good. The 
stage is a pool with a screen behind it. The puppets are controlled by long underwater poles from behind the screen. Some of the puppets have fireworks built into them so they spit sparks and smoke. The music was really good as well, with some interesting instruments.
I also had some more lasagna. This time it was Hong Kong fast food lasagna. As bad as that sounds it was much better than last night’s, but Mom you don’t have anything to worry about. I also toured around the city a little bit and saw some war relics. I’m not sure what that thing is but I think it’s French. Maybe it’s a BOFURS gun.
There were also some sites that had relics from the war against the US. The Vietnamese government was pretty excited about shooting down B52 bombers. Part of this one crashed into this pool and they left it there and put up a plaque. Vietnam has such a young population that the war was over before most of them were born. I’d guess for the older ones it must be tough to accept American tourists, but I haven’t seen anything outward that would suggest it. 
Without understanding the language, I don’t really know what they think of me.
Here are a couple of random photos: nightime outside of the puppet theatre and the airport clocks at the Vientiane airport.