Hanoi

phew... made it to Hanoi. I have a big long post recapping my thoughts on Laos, but it's stuck on my lap top until I can find some wifi.
Yesterday was totally insane. We had a 13 hour journey from Lak Sao, Laos to Hanoi, Vietnam. About half way through we ran into this huge down pour. (It had been raining for the last 3 days.) It started raining really hard and it was thundering and lightening and everything. We were driving through this little town and the water just kept rising until the streets were like rivers. At first there was about a half foot of water on the roads and it was still raining and people were still out in that riding their bikes and their scooters. It was nuts. The water was starting to creep up to the shop doors and stuff. And then we got to this point where we were driving up hill and the water was just raging down the street. At this point it was like at least a foot deep and up to the car bumpers. The bikes were gone and people were having to push their motor scooters. Then we saw people pushing a couple cars and vans, and they even had to get out and push a bus. It was really freaky! I was just hoping our little bus was going to make it. But we had a really good driver and a pretty decent bus. The traffic slowed to a crawl and it took us about an hour to get out of that mess. It was scary. But we made it. Then the driver had to pull over to check out the bus, but I guess it was fine and we pushed on and finally made it to Hanoi at about 8pm, after starting the day at 7am. ugh!
Today I just wandered around Hanoi. I did some shopping in the morning and got a bunch of cool stuff for really cheap. Then had lunch over looking the lake. And then spent the afternoon visiting a bunch of different art galleries. It was really nice! Tonight we are going to see the water puppets or something. Gotta run. I'll try to post my Laos recap soon.