Hanoi - day three

Today we got up at 9am and had chocolate pancakes. Then we headed out to do a free tour from the tourist office and information centre we found the other day. We walked to where we thought it was and found it wasn't there.  Turns out we had completely misremembered where it was. We wandered around a bit before doing into another tourist information and asking them about free tours. They pointed us to a different office, which turned out to be the one we were looking for originally. We were only about 150m away, it had just been down a road away from the lake, instead of on the lake front as we had thought. And after all that,  when we got there it was shut anyway. So we didn't do a free tour. We found some WiFi and googled other free tours but the one we found was all booked up so we never got to do a tour.

We spent the whole morning just milling around and walking about before going back to the hostel. We stayed at the hostel for a bit before heading out to the Water Puppet show. It was listed as one of the top things to do in Hanoi and the reviews on TripAdvisor said it was worth it just once and was an interesting insight into Vietnamese culture and it wasn't expensive so although it probably wasn't something we would ordinarily go to we thought we'd give it a try. We went to the 3pm performance which started very promptly. There was a 6 piece orchestra (or a Vietnamese version of) on the side of the stage, which was predominantly taken up by a pool of water with a temple backdrop. Puppets came out the temple and danced around in the water. There was some dialogue that was all in Vietnamese but it was mostly music. For the most part we had no idea what the stories being told were but we did recognise one where that was related to the lake outside where a turtle stole a sword. There was puppets of people and turtles and birds also dancing round. It was quite strange. I wouldn't say I agreed with the TripAdvisor reviews. I had no greater idea about Vietnamese culture and it wasn't that amazing, but it killed an hour or so.

After the show we went back to the hostel and showered before going out for dinner to have a dish called Bún bò Nam Bô,  which had been mentioned in several places as worth trying. It was basically noodles, beef, beansprouts and peanuts. It was the only dish offered at the place we went and it was made at the front of the restaurant from big bowls of ingredients that were added to noodles that were mass cooked. I thought it was pretty good but Lauren wasn't a massive fan. But the meal and a drink came to less than £3 so it was nice and cheap. Afterwards we headed back to the hostel to chill and pack as tomorrow we're heading off to Ha Long Bay for the night. It's rained pretty much all day today and we had hoped to see Ha Long Bay in the sun but the weather forecast is not looking good.