Vietnam for Xmas

We have made it to Vietnam. Flight with Air Asia was uncomfortable, but we got to KL on time. The LCCT looks like an old shed, but there is a Starbucks and air conditioning. We got the bus into KL, spent a couple of hours having a quick look around. KL has lots of big new stuff, and seemingly derelict old buildings, but a lovely modern city.
We flew with Vietnam airlines to Ho Chi Minh City to connect to a flight to Hanoi. Nice flight with good food. But then the fun started, transit tipped us out onto the street, lots of confusion, bus to domestic terminal 50 metres away, then delay due to technical difficulties. Terminal was bringing back memories of Africa 20 years ago, they sell warm drinks and meat trays and strange looking brown wrinkly things that maybe they cook for dinner. One of the shops was selling big wooden furniture. We were there so long Mike was learning to speak Vietnamese from all the flight delay announcements.
Eventually we got away on a big plane, and was very pleased to see our pre-booked taxi I found on the internet was still waiting for us. Drive into Hanoi was nuts, traffic coming straight at us on the wrong side of the freeway. But they seem to drive expecting to avoid on coming traffic. He could have been taking us anywhere but eventually we arrived at the correct hotel, very relieved.
On Monday we took a day tour to the Perfume Pagoda. The traffic was nuts getting out of Hanoi, we would travel on a highway for a while then cut across a farm track to another on ramp to another bit of road somewhere. Eventually we set off down the bumpy Highway One towards Saigon. We turned off at a village that had about 50 shoe shops, then through countryside and more small villages. We came to a river harbour and clambered into small boats where women rowed us down the river towards the beautiful limestone carsts. After an hour we came to the Perfume Pagodas, a bit like Lourdes with lots of shops selling stuff on the way to a beautiful temple. The cable car was stopped for maintenance so we walked up 4km to the temple in a cave. There were stalls selling stuff all the way up, many more being built for the festival season in Jan, Mar, April when 80,000 people a day turn up. There were only around 100 this day. The temple is in a cave at the top of the mountain, felt like a scene from an Indiana Jones movie.
We got the boat back - apparently the rowing is done by women who are war widows or whose husbands were badly wounded and families take it in turns to spend a day rowing on the river. Very hard work. They expect to be paid about $2 per person, so $10 for our boat.
We drove back through more crazy traffic and went for a walk in the evening around the small lake. Crossing the road even lights is a life threatening experience, the traffic doesn't stop, it just goes around you. We were getting a bit lost in the streets of the old city - the map doesn't seem to bear much relation to the real thing. After a bit of back tracking we found a really great restaurant some Spanish people on the tour recommended to us, and had a really great meal and some of the local beer.
Tuesday - we took another tour out of the city to the ancient citadel of Hoa Lu, Vietnam’s first capital. Very beautiful, then we rode bikes for 12km through country roads and villages to Tam Coc where we took another boat ride through more stupendous scenery. The river went through 3 caves and we could see temples on the top of the limestone mountains.