Vietnam part 1

Admittedly, I am slow in posting this, but my mom says it takes one day for every hour of time difference in the recovery and since we were 11 hours ahead and only gone 10 days I figure I never adjusted and so instead of taking 11 days, it will be closer to 22 days before I feel 'normal' again. AND we've only been home a week.. so there you go. Anywho, here goes...
I actually am going to go in reverse-sort of. This is too cute to wait.
We arrived home about 3 o'clock on Saturday afternoon. The kids were VERY happy to see us ... or was it they were VERY happy to see what we brought them? I'm not sure. We made them wait for Josh to get home (he was on a scout camp out) Josh finally made it home about 6pm. We pulled out our souvenir suitcase and tormented them just a bit longer. We found these great shirts all over Ha Noi. The kids all love Pho (pronounced 'fuh')--a noodle soup that is everywhere in Vietnam. They eat it for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. We ate it a lot the week we were there.
We saw a lot of people wearing these hats or Nón lá as well. They wore them in the city as well as in the country while harvesting rice.
The girls are in traditional Vietnamese dress, called áo dài (Owi yi) . We saw many women wearing these. Not sure the name for what the boys are in, but we did see some men wearing them.

Alright- back to the beginning... we arrived late Friday night and were nervous --hoping our driver would be there and not quite sure what to do as far as immigration and such. We were able to get our paperwork filled out and get our visas and hallelujah! found our driver. You know all of the crazy pictures floating around on the web of people in Asia transporting crazy things on their motorbikes? Yeah. Totally accurate. It was amazing some of the things we saw being transported.
Saturday we spent touring around Ha Noi. It was especially trafficy and busy as Sunday was the 1000 year anniversary of the city. We were able to visit many pagodas and temples and saw where John McCain was shot down and captured as well as the prison he was kept in.
Bary is out side of the "Hanoi Hilton" where McCain was kept. The prison was originally built by the French and housed many Vietnamese prisoners. The sewer Bary is standing in front of was one way Vietnamese prisoners escaped. Crazy how small of a space it is.
This last one for today is something we only saw once (thankfully) and never had to use.
Stay tuned for part 2.