City of the Soaring Dragon

Dear all

.....& Happy 1000 years to Han Oi or Thanh Long as it was previously more romantically known - The City of the soaring dragon. It certainly is a city on the up! The place is swarming with motorbike's from dawn until dusk and beyond and they are constantly on their horns letting each other know that they are there! Thank god that most of the streets in the old quarter ban cars cos it would really be mayhem. We managed to get moved back into our original hotel today (had to hump our own bags through the throngs ourselves!!) & then went off for an explore of the area. We wondered back down to the lake and found ourselves a nice table overlooking the throngs of people. Hoan Kiem Lake in the heart of the old city and legend says that heaven gave Emperor Ly Thai a magical sword that he used to drive the Chinese out of Vietnam. The day following the victory he came across a giant  golden tortoise who grabbed the said sword and disappeared into the depths of the lake to restore the sword to its divine owners. Any way the whole place was still thronged with wandering Vietnamese so we didn't linger too long.

Next stop was the oldest temple in Hanoi, Bach Ma Temple, which has a very Chinese theme, next stop was a recreation of an old Chinese style merchants house, which was very basic, but beautiful. We were not able to visit the two most popular sites, the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum - Massive parade & the Museum of Ethnology - taxi issues returning to town! but still feel we managed to get a understanding of this growing vibrant city. The only point that did tickle us is that the 'official' date of the 'creation' of Hanoi was 10-10-1010 how lucky was that all those 10's !!! Me thinks someone has been using a bit of historical license!!

Next stop  Halong Bay ......

Thanks for looking

Hugs

Sara