Hoa Lo

After dropping our bags at a tourism office in Hanoi, we took a motor bike to Hoa Lo Prison (aka The Hanoi Hilton) where U.S. POWs, including John McCain, were incarcerated from 1967 to 1973. Unlike HCM, Hanoi has actually invested in traffic lights which made the journey much less frightening. After looking at many pictures of the Senator, including one of him being pulled out of Trum Bach Lake (sp?) after his plane was shot down, we left the prison to see Hoan Keim Lake and grab an early dinner.

We are supposed to leave on an overnight train for Sapa tonight, a small town on Vietnam's tallest mountain, where we will do a 28k trek and stay with one of the hill tribe families for a night. However, it appears that the gods are hoping we will stay in Hanoi since they have conveniently arranged for us to "lose" (regretfully throw away) all documentation from our travel agency (e.g. where the agency is and where we are supposed to be going.) We are hoping some beers and broken English will guide us back within the hour so that we can catch our train.