Too tired to be witty

Sorry about that. But I am exhausted - again. In fact, it's tomorrow (my tomorrow not yours) now because I fell asleep with my fingers poised over the keyboard and this program shut down. Luckily Google somehow realized what had happened (aren't computers amazing? Hal, thanks for helping.) and saved the draft.
Anyway, starting to really look forward to eating french pastries and meditating with the monks in Laos in a couple of days, but first there was much to be done.
Caught our flight to Hanoi. The woman gave us exit row seats which was only marginally disturbing because in other foreign countries you have to be able to speak the language to sit in the exit row (so you can understand instructions if given in a crisis - makes sense) but nobody seems to care about that here. Good news, bad news.
Anyway, got to Hanoi. Caught a cab. Into town (about 35 KM). Pulled up at the Sunshine Palace Hotel and some guy jumps in our cab with us and explains that he is the manager of the hotel, that they have 5 hotels and filled up 'our' hotel with a big group so he was moving us to one of their other hotels for a comparable room. Cab driver tried to double our fare by asking us to pay for some permit/ticket he got at the airport so we had to tell him to get lost.  Then our manager guy shows us our room and then checks us in and then offers to book us our trip to Halong Bay. We are going to Halong Bay, of course, since when you see photos of Halong Bay it is what you think of when you think of Vietnam - big, vertical, pointed rocks sticking out of the bay - well, it's what you see in your mind's eye when you are not thinking of the impressive pine forests!
But our used-car-salesman like manager is running at a mile a minute....no we don't want a group tour that leaves at 8AM on a bus and gets to Halong Bay at nearly noon to have lunch on the water, kayak, and come back. My guide book said, if you can, to rent a private boat so you can go where you want (not just the crowded, standard places). So we asked about that....started at $335pp for 'deluxe', then $250pp for "Superior' and finally, when I suggested we think about it to $185pp for 'standard' with presumably the only difference being the size of the boat. Of course he had a picture of one boat and kept saying the next one down is 'the same just smaller' so there could still be some interesting turns in this saga. But given that the cab ride (based on the actual meter from the airport and the distance to Halong Bay) would be about $80 US each way we can live with that since this way we can leave at 6A and get there faster and stay as long as we like. ('The boat will be yours. You do what you want.' said the man.) So good.
After checking in and finding out where the heck we are (since we were not expecting to be in this location), we set off for: the market (3 stories high) so with real floors instead of dirt which was a nice touch; the merchant streets surrounding the market area and the lake. Basically navigated blocks and blocks and blocks of stuff. We talk about conspicuous consumption in the United States but this is just a different kind of conspicuous consumption. We have fancy cars and Nordstrom. But here they have one billion little stalls packed to the absolute gills with absolutely anything and everything FOR MILES. It's all crap, but there is a TON of it. I mean use one of the candy scales and weigh it all. I am sure I will be proven right.
Got to the lake. Walked to the end of it to see the 'beautiful examples of French Colonial architecture' at the Sofitel hotel and the Opera House. Returned to the north end of the lake right on time to buy our tickets for the Water Puppet Theatre Show at 3:30P and then went to have a beer.
Since we had time, we walked to the 'musical instrument' section of the massive shopping area. Nothing. Walked on to the knife maker section to find a guy who was actually featured in the on board airrline magazine for his craftsmanship.....nothing. Crap. Just rough hewn kitchen knives....no facas artisinale, that's for sure.
By then, we had to kick ass back to the puppet theatre in time for the show. We knew not to expect much. The puppets are pretty simple without a lot of articulation but they skim the water while being controlled by the puppeteers standing hip deep in water back behind the curtain. They do some interesting maneuvers given that they have to keep from tangling up the rods or whatever they use to control the puppets, jump through some fire rings that sort of thing and the music was very pretty. But it's like opera. Can't understand anything they are saying. Can't sing along to the tunes. And I was beat from running around town so I may have dozed off during some of the key parts but I think I got the gist.
By this point...having lived only on a beer and the candy we bought in the candy merchant section of town we were getting weak and dizzy so we headed back to the hotel more than a little concerned that we were not seeing restaurants. In all of our walking thus far the only one we saw was the place where we had our beer. Trudging all the way back we still never saw one. Got to the hotel. Still nothing. Asked at the desk and the woman said there was a nice place further down the road (yeah! further!) so we kept walking. Still nothing. Seeing nothing. Just more little shops. And then literally at the corner before the street number for the restaurant the world changed. Not hugely. We weren't all of a sudden in Manhattan or anything. By perceptively. Bam. There were actual stores...with store fronts and windows and real clothes. And a restaurant. A real restaurant. Actually fancier than anyplace we've eaten so far. We felt like we had reached the oasis in the desert. I think I even heard angels singing.
So in the end, we were not left to starve on the streets of Hanoi. We did find sustenance. Very good food, in fact. I even splurged on a glass of wine. The menu said it was Cabernet/Merlot and it was white wine that was awful but only $3US/glass so I had two. I mean at some point you just count your blessings and enjoy the moment.