Hanoi Cultural Centre. VIETNAM

My laptop has been breaking down lately. Every time, our IT guy will say that despite all the upgrading, there's just way too much photos in it, choking and slowing down the system. So, when I went through the old photos, I thought rather than cleaning up and deleting some of the photos which I do not need, I'd post them here before it goes to the bin. I have an external hard disk but am always too lazy to save them there. At times, I wondered why I had to take so many photos of the same items...I really had no idea.

We had a long holiday here and went up to Cameron Highlands for the cool air. Big mistake.
Too crowded and we left the next day. More of that later.

Meanwhile, here are the photos from the previous trip to Hanoi, Vietnam, at their Cultural Centre.
A long list of instructions awaited us at the entrance. See item no. 6.

At entrance. By the way, we had a personal guide during this trip. Lousiest ever, he kept asking where we wanted to go and I told him, if I did know where to go, I'd be his guide. Cost us a lot of money and not worth  it.

We saw this artist sketching the views inside. He was amazing!

Bonsai everywhere. Over here, they are expensive and sought after.

A shop inside selling puppets or dolls. Some are quite eerie looking.

There was a Chinese temple with a deity inside.

I was interested in these scallop-inspired tiles. We have similar brown tiles here but not in such shape.

Finally, back to the chaotic jam in Hanoi. There was really no rules there. Anything goes. Cross or walk at your own risk and if you sat on any of those rickshaws, you just need to put you hand out and touch the next vehichle and that could be the bus. When we went to Halong Bay, there were 8 of us visitors in one van. The journey was 3.5 hours and horrifying. Busses would toot their horn miles away, warning of their approach and smaller cars or vans would make way for them. It was a blessing that we even arrived safely at Halong!  More of Halong later...

Have a great week ahead.