The first day of the tour got off to an auspicious start. We saw Robin at breakfast, but Mom and Dad never showed up. I went in search of them and found them in the wrong restaurant.

Following a hearty buffet breakfast that included everything from pancakes and made to order omelets to dim sum, we piled into our pink tour bus and headed to our first destination - the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum. You are not allowed to photograph "Uncle Ho," so our tour guide collected the cameras and waited for us. We wound our way across the front of the mausoleum and finally up the steps to see the great leader. He is kept in a marble room with guards at each corner of his display case. Behind him, there are floor to ceiling panels of red marble - one with the star of Vietnam and the other with the hammer and sickle. He is very well preserved and is lowered into a very cold storage chamber every afternoon.

Outside the mausoleum, we retrieved our cameras and proceeded to tour Ho Chi Minh's two houses. The first, where he lived and worked from 1954 to 1958, consisted of three rooms each spartan and focused in it's simplicity. The rooms were all very functional and the only adornments were pictures of Marx and Lenin. His second home, where he lived and worked from May 1958 to August 1969, was built on stilts near his first. This was the house he died in and it was furnished like his first one for working. Ho Chi Minh never married because he thought it would make governing difficult by allowing for a pressure point.

After we viewed the houses, we continued to the one pillar pagoda (Chua Mot Cot). The original pagoda was destroyed a long time ago, however, due to it's unique design, the government ordered it to be rebuilt. The shrine perches atop a single large pole and is supported by beams radiating from the pole. It is said to resemble a lotus flower and it is the only design of it's kind in the world. Built in 1049 by the Emperor Ly Thai Tong, the wooden lotus-shaped pagoda rests on a single stone pillar rising out of a lotus pool. It was constructed to celebrate the Emperor's marriage to a peasant girl and the subsequent birth of his heir.

Our next stop was at the museum of indigenous peoples (the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology). Vietnam can claim over 54 different ethnic groups and this museum is dedicated to preserving some of the customs and artifacts from many of those groups. We elected to tour the replica houses in the gardens first. This proved to be the most fun interaction of the day as we were swarmed by a school group. At first it was just saying hi as they passed but them Mom and Robin stopped to find out how old they were and the 8-9 year olds descended en masse and we were signing autographs like rock stars after a concert. It was a lot of fun and we enjoyed a good laugh afterwards.

Little did we know, the gardens and traditional replica houses provide a popular backdrop for wedding photos. We saw three brides posing for pictures. According to our guide, these photos are taken a month before the wedding and are enlarged and displayed at the reception.

Our lunch stop was at a restaurant where they served some traditional foods with a twist. We opened with a vegetable soup and followed with spring rolls. Then they brought out a salad of shredded vegetables with beef. The main courses included a tamarind pork and fish in sweet and sour sauce. They topped it all off with some bright red watermelon.

With a full belly, we boarded the bus to the Confucius temple (the Temple of Literature, Van Mieu). It is a well preserved site with three paths, on the right walked the Mandarin scholars and courtiers, on the left walked the military and the Emperor walked down the middle. In the second courtyard, there are plaques which stand on the backs of turtles. On the plaques are inscribed the names of the people who have successfully passed their examinations with the emperor. We moved further into the temple and explored the enormous drum and the many shrines to Confucius. Built in 1070, the temple is dedicated to the worship of Confucius and some famous Vietnamese scholars. It then became Vietnam's first National University in 1706 to educate the sons of Mandarins. The 5 central courtyard's represent the elements of nature accessed by a central path flanked by lotus ponds and sacred trees.

Our next destination was the temple (Ngoc Son Temple) of the Taoists in the heart of old town. This is a much smaller temple, but contains the preserved remains of a turtle who lived in the lake (Hoan Kiem Lake) that the temple was built on. The legend of this turtle is that it provided the only area for a phoenix to land over 400 years ago. We were a little skeptical. The temple, founded in the 18th century, is dedicated to the national hero Tran Hung Dao who defeated the moguls in the 14th century.

From the temple, we took a walking tour of old town. Each street specializes in products and we walked down streets devoted to eyeglasses, televisions, and a kaleidoscope of other products. The challenge was crossing the busier streets. We would cross as a group and the steady stream of motorbikes would pass around us like a school of fish swimming around an obstacle.

We elected to stay in old town and take in a presentation of the water puppets. This is a set of puppets on long poles that are dragged through the water to enhance their motion. The hour long show included dragons, fishermen, and rice harvesters. We had trouble following the story as it was in Vietnamese. A unique experience that I mostly slept through despite the shrill music.