He Didn't "Read My Lips!!"... but we had fun anyway

Our last two days in Vietnam turned out to be two of the best and we had no plans. With no tour planned we decided to walk to the Museum of Entomology. The Lonley Planet clearly states that when you get to the edge of the map you keep going right. Well, we did that, and by the time we asked for directions we were thoroughly lost. The directions we recieved clearly pointed us in two distinct directions. Uh oh!! It was now past 1:30 and we had tickets for the Water Puppet Show at 4PM. Now what? Just when you need it our guardian angels pitched in and found us a taxi driver with some English skills. He chuckled a little, turned the taxi around and drove us 6Km in the opposite direction to the Museum of Entomology. The walk wasn't a total loss. I actually love getting lost. The first part of the walk took us past Uncle Ho's tomb.... don't know if he was in or not. Apparently he goes often to Russia for a new wax job. It wasn't something we wanted to see. The tourists in front of the tomb were pretty interesting though. That whole area was teeming with tour groups. It's sort of like being in a zoo. You can sit there and watch the flock follow the little flag person to the next spot. Some of them had that vacant information overload look on their faces. One I can relate to.
After Ho's part of town we headed to the unknown where we passed lots of surprised people and an amazing area that sold mostly bonsai plants and air plants. Beautiful! Would never have seen this if we hadn't become lost. And of course, at the end of our adventure, we did experience the Museum. This is possibly the best maintained museum I have ever seen. The information on indigenous tribes of Vietnam is clearly stated. The artifacts are well displayed. There are life size homes on display which include different types of kitchens as well as clothing, beddings etc. It is a museum where you could spend half the day but of course we only had a short time.
Decided to take a taxi back where we managed to grab a bag of cashews before the puppet show. It had been a long time since breakfast.... snacks just don't cut it.
The water puppet show was pretty cute. It is different than anything I had seen before. The fire breathing dragons were my favourite though those little swimming kids came in a close second. The puppets are attached to rods under water and all the action is done behind a screen. Don't know how they get them to jump over top of one another without getting all mixed up. The experience was worth it.... and the music was pretty good too.
Now on to the tour........
One more tour........... we have tried to get to the area around Ninh Binh for a while now. It is not easy to get a bus and when you're there it isn't easy to get to the areas we wanted to visit. That added to the rains and you get the idea. We thought of hiring a car but it would cost us over $60 when all is said and done. So, the tour. This actually turned out to be one of the highlights of our time in Vietnam. No kidding. Yes we did follow a little man who had information overload, but after we were done with the ancient capital of Hoa Lu (968AD - 1009AD) we got on bicycles and toured the area around Tam Coc. This has been called the Halong Bay of the inland area. It well deserves the title. Beautiful limestone mountains climbing straight out of the rice fields. We could have spent the whole day here. Even watched them making a movie near an old pagoda. There were only 7 people who opted to take bikes (the rest went with the masses on river boats). With fewer people we were able to stop when we wanted for pictures. It was truly magical. At one point we climbed to Jade Grotto Pagoda (Bich Dong) where you could see across the fields to mountains in the distance. The visibility was much better than what we had in Halong Bay. All in all it was a great way to finish our time in Vietnam. The next day it absolutely poured.... all the way to the airport we could see only a few cars in front of us.
Here, in Bangkok, we have warm (read hot) temperatures. We are possibly planning a beach trip in the next couple of days. Maybe to Ko Chang. We're working on that. Don't fly out till the 5th. Chaing Mai is having problems with forest fires so it is best to avoid that right now.
Will update in a couple of days.