After a good night’s sleep, we woke feeling refreshed. The air con helps. Our room is clean, comfortable and cool. Everything I want and need.

We’re staying at La Dolce Vita Hotel, in the old quarter of Hanoi. It is not fancy, but it’s nice. The people running it all seem helpful and friendly. We were able to check in early, for a nominal fee.

Breakfast is included in our stay, and it puts any Best Western or Holiday Inn I’ve stayed at to shame. There’s an array of options available, both Western and Asian. Eggs — hard-boiled, fried, or as a made-to-order omelettes — toast, pancakes, bacon; as well as fried rice, fried noodles, bok choy, and pho. There’s also a variety of fresh fruits, cheese, marmalade, yoghurt, and sliced ham. Excellent coffee, tea, orange juice (more like Tang, actually), and water.

We arranged a tour of Hanoi through the hotel. After lunch (included in the tour), we went to the train street and watched the train trundle by much more slowly than any train I’ve experienced in Canada.

From there we made our way to Maison Centrale — also known as Hoa Lo Prison, or as it’s known in America, the Hanoi Hilton. The place has a grim history, beginning in the years of French colonization. Most of the place was destroyed, but they’ve kept about 20 percent of it as a museum.

After that we were off to the Temple of Literature, built in honour of the writings of Confucius in the 11th century. Coming from a country in which literature is generally considered to be a disposable luxury, it was fascinating to see another culture take it much more seriously.

From there, we made our way to Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, which was unfortunately closed, and then to a thousand-year-old pagoda. Vietnam is home to some 15 million Buddhists — about 15 percent of the population.

The tour was great, but the heat was oppressive. About 44C with the humidity. When we arrived back at our hotel, I quickly jumped in the shower, and then we switched off the lights and lay in the air-conditioned dark until it was time to meet up with our tour group.

We booked our trip through G Adventures, a Canadian company we used years ago when we went to Morocco. We liked how they work with local communities in the places where they operate, and that they only have small groups.

Our “chief experience officer”, Yang, is Laotian, and has been conducting tours of Southeast Asia with G Adventures for several years. A little over half of our group are from Australia and New Zealand. There are another half dozen of us from Canada, and there are one or two Brits.

We all went for dinner together after the meeting, and then came back to the hotel to prepare for the real start of our tour. Tomorrow we’ll be off to Halong Bay for an overnight cruise. It looks beautiful there, and I can’t wait to see it in real life.

That’s all for now. More tomorrow.