Day 2 - Presidential Palace, One-Pillar Pagoda, Litterature Temple and Water Puppetry

Hello again - Today we've been seeing some more specific things, pictures incoming :)

(Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum)

We went off at 8:30 to see the Ho Chi Minh Mauseloeum (from the outside) and the presidential gardens. The presidential palace is very impressive (it's a french-style one built by the governor of Indochina), but Ho Chi Minh himself never lived there while he ruled - he  built a "house-on-stilts" (which is, basically, what it says) in the gardens and lived there minimalistically while he lived.

The gardens are very expansive, and they also house the One-Pillar Pagoda - a wood temple on a stone pillar built to honor the goddess of fertility.

We went on to see the temple of litterature - commonly regarded as the world's oldest university, it was built in the eleventh century to honor Confucius. In 1076 it was repurposed into a royal school.

After that, we went to the Hoan Kiem Lake in the centre of Hanoi. A big, tranquil lake, it houses a temple to a folk hero (Tran Hung Dao) as well as a preserved turtle supposedly found in the lake (the rumor is that the government occasionally lets tamed turtles into the lake to preserve the myth that the turtles live there).

After that, we went to eat lunch, followed by a trip to a local market. Everything is very cheap, but we didn't buy anything there.

At 17:00 we went to see the Vietnamese Water Puppetry. It is unique to Vietnam and best seen in Hanoi.

Tomorrow, we're going to the Ha Long Bay, and we'll be back on friday - Ill post back then :) see you all, and thank you for your interest.

~Kristoffer