Adventurous Day!

Well, the adventurers have retreated from the noise and traffic to our hotel room for R&R to reflect on the day. Our 24-hour transit here truly went off without a hitch. We watched countless movies, ate too much airplane food and chatted with a lovely old man headed to Cambodia to fetch his much younger fiance.

This morning we hit the streets early and spent most of the day on foot--checking out temples, a cathedral, the old city gate and the old city. Hanoi's streets are chaos--thousands upon thousands of motorbikes continually stream through the streets. Crossing the street takes courage--you just have to walk and the motos flow around you. But if you hesitate, it causes trouble because the moto drivers can't guess what you're going to do. This was pretty stressful stepping off into traffic with the kids in tow and having to hope that we'd live to see the other side.

All that said, people are very friendly, the food is cheap and amazingly tasty and we have fresh free fruit in our room each morning. We saw some lovely Buddhist temples, visited a quiet cool Cathedral and saw -- but did not go in -- the famous Hanoi Hilton prison museum where John McCain was held during the Vietnam War.

Tomorrow is communist appreciation day--we're off to see Ho Chi Mihn's house and take in a few Vietnamese history musuems. Later in the afternoon, we've got tickets to see the water puppet show--not really sure what it's all about, but it's supposed to be a very unique Vietnamese art form.