Nice People

Today has been a wonderful day. We did a lot of walking again. We have seen pretty much everything there is to see in Hanoi and have done it all by walking. It is easy to walk everywhere here because everything is so close. However, you do need to watch your elbows because of all the scooters wizzing around. It is hard to imagine where all these people sleep at night because I dont know if this city can hold this many people.
However, one thing is for sure, the people here are super nice. At breakfast, our cute little waitress girl who works at the hotel tried her best to have an english conversation with us. There was definitely some difficulty, but she made it through. At lunch, we sought after a dish called bun cha. We found it in a little hole in the wall, family owned restaurant.  The food was great, but the company was better. We sat next to this old Vietnamese women. She kind of walked us through how to eat the dish, but did so by showing us because she couldn't explain it.
We met up with Ha Mon for dinner. Ha is a friend of our friend John. Ha owns her own travel agency. She helped us out with getting us to Ha Long Bay and our train tickets. She has been a great resource here in Hanoi. Ha took us to a place that serves very traditional Vietnamese food. The food was great. We had three different types of spring rolls, beef,  and stir fried vegetables. While at dinner, our waitress was enrolled at the local university and was learning English.  She would periodically ask us how to say certain words. You could see the joy in her face when she would get a word right or understand the meaning. In the picture, our waitress is with Shelley and Ha is with Spike.

A funny story from today.......
We went to the water puppet show in the afternoon.  Shortly after it started,  two fairly tall and big people can through the door. We knew it was trouble since the first time we saw them. This theater was only built for the small size and stature of Vietnamese people. To illustrate, my knees were touching the seat in front of me. If anyone knows about the Robinson genes I have, they would know that it is a rare occurrence for something like this to happen. The man sat down and immediately started saying the "S" word in german followed by what sounded to be a name. This man was probably 6'5" and weighed 280 lbs. He did not fit and Shelley and I found ourselves laughing with the guy and moving over to help make more room for him to sit. It ws just a funny site to behold.