Sharon and Jacques’ Excellent Blog

I goofed up today.  I know, say it ain’t so. (Items in bold edited by Jacques)

We booked a tour of Hanoi City today.  We got up bright and early, had breakfast and waited in the hotel lobby for our bus.  A bus shows up, some guy walks up to us and shows us a piece of paper saying tour.  Jacques looks at it and says no because there is nothing that looks close to our names and it says trip to HaLong Bay by boat and we are going on the Hanoi city tour.  I look at it and imagine our names on the paper and say “let’s go”!  Having been told several times that day that Sharon is omnipotent and I should stop questioning what she says, I follow. We got on the bus. 

We then proceeded to pick up a couple of German ladies of Asian decent, and a few more Asians.  Then the bus driver’s phone rings.  There is yelling in the front of the bus, then the German ladies are told they are on the wrong bus.  Seems this bus is heading to a tour of some bay.  Some bay?  Wait a minute…

Then the bus driver’s phone rings again.  More yelling.  I think we are on the wrong bus.  Yup!  Seems our tour is waiting for us back at the hotel and they can’t find us.  We then head back to our hotel and get dropped off.  Jacques is not impressed and is muttering something about “so much for being omnipotent”.  Whatever.  We got a tour of the city, just not what we wanted!

Here’s the photo gallery about the tour:

Current Album: 0703 Hanoi City Tour
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We finally met with our tour group and managed to see Ho Chi Minh’s tomb.  One must be very reverent. 

Some guy got marched off for taking photos with his cell phone. He was forced into a little room by an extremely irate guard. His wife was trying to follow him and she was pushed back into line. I would not want to be him.   We also saw the Temple of Literature, some pagoda’s, heavenly gates and the Museum of Ethnology. 

On our way back to the hotel, I think we got scammed.  We paid $5.00 for pineapple and the privilege of wearing a conical hat and carry the balancing baskets.  In all fairness, it was my fault that we got scammed. This cute little Viet girl says we can take pictures, I felt sorry for her and decided to buy some fruit. I pull out my wallet and she says this one note (100,000 Dong) and give us back 50,000. Exchange rate is about 14,000 Dong per dollar. Serves us right.  Some days you should just not get out of bed!