Hanoi Vietnam-Walking Long and Going High

Yesterday, I left the hostel a little later and decided to take a walk to the tallest building in Hanoi, which is called the Lotte Tower, which has an observation deck. The walk was a little over 4 Kilometers, or 2 or 3 miles.

I followed the directions using Google maps, and walked through the immense heat past the usual small shops, restaurants consisting of just small footstools as seats and wooden planks as tables, and crowds of motorcyclists and rickshaws asking me for a ride. After what seemed like two hours in the extreme heat. I finally reached the tower. it is a large complex called Lotte Center, which is based on Lotte's Department store. I had some fast food, and some dried mangos from the underground supermarket-called Lotte Mart, and took an elevator to the top of the observation deck, 65 stories up. Unlike other observation decks around the world, there we're no doormen in the elevators-I just had to press the button and go up. There was nobody else in the elevator either-just me. I got to the observation deck, and once again, there we're few people up there wandering around.

The views we're nice as expected, mostly of small ramshackle sections of town. I continued walking around. There we're plenty of places to sit-so I sat on a large chair and took a nap. I napped for a long time it seems, then continued to walk around the tower, and then took the elevator to the ground floor to walk back. First I bought some stuff for the trek back at the supermarket, some tropical fruit and bottled water, and I walked back. I took a short detour, and actually went past the area with Ho Chi Manh's tomb as I did before. i wanted to go to the Military Museum this time-but I was there too late, and it just closed (at 4:30 pm). So I continued to walk along. I walked along the railroad tracks with some girl who had the same shirt I had. i then kept walking along, until I made it back to hostel around 5:30 or so. It was hot still, so I went and took a nap.

After the nap, i went out for dinner. I stopped at a place with the normal footstools as seats and a crates or longboards as tables, and has some po/or thick soup. i then continued walking along. I walked past all of the brightly lit shops on the way to the lake, and past a shop selling belts in it with a cat. I admired the cat, and started talking to the woman working in the shop, who's name is Dau. She told me the shop was her parent's and she has been working there for 2 years, and since it was slow season, sales we're down. She also mentioned she has a brother in the US, who missed Vietnam and wanted to come home.

After speaking to her for a while, I stopped and looked at the shops, found the church we visited the day before, and took some pictures. Then I kept wandering around and went to bed.