Following our breakfast at the Lotte hotel on floor 63 , in Hanoi, we had a morning briefing for the 76 people in the Group.
Our Tour director and guide was Lee, who had overall responsibility. we were broken into 3 groups, being A,B and C. We were in Group B and there were 26 people in our group. Most of our group was American.
There were 3 Australian couples with ourselves and one other from Melbourne and another from Brisbane. We had an Australian dinner for the 6 people towards the vend of the Viking Saigon Cruise segment.
The group of 26 got along well, there was a group of 8 Americans from San Diego who kept largely to themselves.
We did a tour around Hanoi and the following pictures reflect that..
Our introduction to Hanoi included this visit to the Museum where we were faced with the 4,000 year history of the Khmer and Vietnamese peoples and their fight for independent life against many invaders including numerous Chinese assaults and then other occupiers. But their resolve has never diminished , their culture has always prevailed and even after the massive bombing operations from the US forces in early 1970’s before the Paris accord , they maintained their rights and reflected on history and its trials.
We dined at a restaurant and tried the “Egg Coffee” and it was quite enjoyable.
Tomorrow afternoon we fly with Vietnam Airlines to Seim Reip to begin our process of understanding the Khmer people and visit several temples.
