Ho Chi Minh and giant fake fruit-a match made in heaven

Greetings to you lovely people who are pushing through the pain and sticking with me here, and welcome to my last night in Hanoi! It's been a very relaxed couple of days, which we have definitely enjoyed. First and foremost, I would like to tell the world (all, hmmm, 3 of you, maybe, who are reading this) that couchsurfing is a pure joy. We are here in a very cool flat in Hanoi, pretending that we also live here and lording it around the centre of town with noses in the air, cursing all the ruddy tourists who swarm the streets. We simply don't mention that we are secretly part of that terrible group. Seriously though, we have lucked out with the place we're staying in and the hosts-two great Dutch people from, ta taaaaaa, The Netherlands! So yes, goooo couchsurfing!
Otherwise, here is what else has happened in the last couple of days:
-we went to the cinema. "Pray tell, what did you watch?' I hear you cry. Well friends, I will tell you...'Protector 2'. A Thai film. Martial arts based. In Thai. All in all, like Christmas had come early for me. The plot was riveting to say the least: a man's elephant was stolen and he went on a bit of rampage trying to get it back from the bad guys. There was a 30 minute long bike chase scene with some inexplicable elements (when I say some, I mean all), then a guy from the Wu Tang Clan turned up in a trilby and at the end he was blown up by the bombs in the elephant's tusks. And that was what I dedicated two hours of my life to.
After that seminal life moment, we sort of hung around in the hostel until we had to set off to the couchsurfers' house. The walk took about a million years through rush hour traffic with rucksacks. Another highlight. But any negativity soon disappeared when we arrived and were greeted with garlic bread and BEHOLD, tea!!!!! Sadly the sweat from the walk did not disappear as quickly as the negativity, but I was too busy crying with joy into my cup of tea to care. We just spent the evening chatting to the surfers and it was very excellent indeed.
Today, twas chilllllll. Fin and I took ourselves off to the Ho Chi Minh museum. Amazing how such a huge building can house such an uninformative museum. I now know what Uncle Ho looks like from every angle, but what the heck it was all about was not made abundantly clear. I looked at a cup he used, and saw a hat he once wore, but ask me what his main ideals were and I'd be speechless for the first time ever in life. There was also a room decorated like Picasso's guernica and, naturally, a room with a giant table covered in giant fruit. We then decided that the museum was the weirdest museum ever. Fact.
We took a stroll (read:hike) into the centre and had a strange little food tour. We ate the following: peanuts, a sweetcorn fritter, a fried rice cake with maaaaybe egg in the middle AND a delicious surprise in the form of a little piece of unidentified meat with some hair on it, then some Chinese braised pork served with 'fried rice with dried onions and fat'. We assumed that last one was just a bad translation but, no no, that is a 100% accurate description of what it was. Luckily, dinner brought the day back from the brink of food disaster: little pancakes filled with shrimps, beansprouts and herbs followed by roll-them-yourself fresh rice paper rolls with BBQ pork, salad and herbs. I hear your sighs of relief.
Tomorrow we leave for Hue and I believe there is some nice rainy weather awaiting us. Hurah!