In the evening we met with Thao from Couchsurfing. It was her birthday but she still managed to find time for us. We had a nice Vietnamese dinner together and a walk by the lake, talking a lot about:

• Hanoi - the political capital of Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh City which is the administrative capital, although the latter is much bigger
• relationships with the neighbouring countries, corruption and many wars that Vietnam experienced
• family responsibilities that are similar to the ones in China. Thao's two sons will look after her parents and her parents-in-law, there's no escape from this. She also has a duty to look after her brother who is a year older and has no wife or children to look after him
• communism in Poland and Vietnam. There are 5 remaining communist countries in the world and the similarity between PL and VN hit me a lot. In PL people couldn't think out of the box, the way of thinking was decided by the communist party.

Thao organises Couchsurfing meetings every Friday in a café in a street that is situated right on the railway line. Every 20 minutes the participants have to get up and let the train pass and then they can sit down again until the next train arrives 20 minutes later. It's a shame we were not able to go to the meeting because it sounds very interesting!