Hanoi is a village masquerading as a city. The streets are narrow and confusing, and there is no downtown.  In fact, we're still wondering where the "city" is.  We rode motorcycle taxis out to the US Consulate to get pages added to my passport (it's filling up--what a delightful problem!) and got an informal tour of the city since it was quite far away from our guest house. We also wandered around the old quarter and went to what's left of the "Hanoi Hilton" and saw where John McCain and others were imprisoned during the war.