Day 56 Hanoi

After breakfast at Ladybirds cafe again we posted off all 11kg of our coats/thermals and couple of souvenirs(tea set might have been a few kilos). It cost US$45 and as Rachel rightly predicted the box we were given and tape we used had to be paid for but to some woman who provided it not the post office and it took a bit of haggling to get to a reasonable price.
From there we walked past the military area to Uncle Ho's mausoleum and the one pillar pagoda. The pagoda was a tad disappointing I was expecting a fine piece of engineering, but it was probably the smallest pagoda we had seen so far.
While sitting admiring the pagoda we watched a slow motion military exercise (see pic) where the officers would in perfect unison walk a couple of steps and hold the pose before being commanded to do so again, it looked cool a possible huge advantage in the next war.
Lunch/Dinner was in a French restaurant, the French influence is still alive in the food with lovely bakery's and women walking the streets from the early hours with baguettes and doughnuts for sale.