Nha Trang

I woke up a few times thinking the cars honking on the street were my alarm clock. When I finally decided to get up, it was around 8:45am. Alyssa and Jessica had clearly been up for a while and seemed to hover around me as I got ready and started packing up. Check out wasn't until 12:00pm, so we headed down for breakfast before finishing up with our stuff in the room. Apparently Jessica had gone down to have breakfast at 6:00am, so just Alyssa and I needed to eat. Sadly, the restaurant at this hostel was nowhere near as good as the one at B & B hostel. We ended up with bread and butter, cold coffee and bruised fruit...this didn't put me in a very good mood.
After packing our stuff and putting our bags in the holding area, we ventured out in the city to walk around. We started by visiting the temple located in the lake. Once we had crossed the bridge and got a good look at the temple, it was really nothing special. We did get some information about the giant turtles that supposedly live in the lake and are a central player in the ancient lore of Hanoi. It is said that King Le returned the sacred sword he had used to defeat his enemies to a Ho Gum tortoise that lived in the lake and people still believe that the sword is buried somewhere beneath the water.

We then walked around the local street markets. Jessica had never had a lychee before, so we had to buy some of those for her to try.

Finally it was time for us to head to the airport. We had hired a private car to drive us there since the bus was much more complicated and I like to know that I'll be there on time. The cost for the ride was $15 USD but when we arrived and tried to give him USD that Jessica had from America, he said he wanted dong instead. So we gave him the payment in dong but apparently the bill was too large and he didn't have change. So we went back and forth do a few minutes before he finally agreed to take the $15. It was really funny because to us US money is all the same but in Vietnam, they don't like the smaller bills or any that are old, bent or discolored.
Once we had checked in and gone through security, we looked for somewhere to get lunch. There really were only two options and they both seemed to serve the same food, so we sat down to peruse the menu. We decided to all get chicken ramen as the other things on the menu did not sound appetizing. As we looked at the other people in the restaurant, we realized that they serve instant ramen (similar to cup 'o noodles). Although there were 13 people working at the restaurant, none of them seemed interested in working. Alyssa had to go retrieve a waitress to take our order. Since there were no other options, we all order chicken ramen and when we found out they were out of chicken we all wound up with beef. As we waited, the waitress dropped some wet towels off for each of us to use. After eating our ramen, we requested the check some could board our flight. They dropped off one check with just the ramen and then returned a minute later with a new check that charged us $3 for the wet towels. This was absolutely insane and clearly just them trying to rips off. Vietnam is notorious for that and I was in no mood. Alyssa tried to reason with them but I simply refused to pay it and left. They knew they couldn't make us pay for it so they didn't try to stop us from leaving. It's incidents like that which make people dislike Vietnam.

When we arrived in Nha Trang, our pickup driver was waiting amongst the crowd with a sign that had our names on it. He seemed so excited when we picked him out of all of the other people waiting which was really cute. He had a nice car to drive us to the hostel in which was welcome since it was about a 40 minute drive to the hostel. When we arrived, we were happy to see that Nha Trang was an adorable beach town with tons of nice shops and restaurants. We checked into our hostel which was less nice than the one we had in Hanoi, but still perfectly fine. The one annoying feature about it was that the shower did not have its own space; they had a shower head in the bathroom and a drain in the floor and you were supposed to use the entire bathroom as the shower which meant the floor was always wet and disgusting. Not a great design.

After dropping off our bags, we decided to head out for something to eat. We ended up at "Olivia's" which had. A ton of different options to choose from. We split a delicious veggie pizza and Mediterranean salad. Then we walked around the town for a while checking out the scene. We were happy that it was so much less crowded and more relaxed than Hanoi and decided to stay for four days to make the most of it.

Posted with Blogsy

Return from Halong Bay, Christmas Day

We woke up at 6:30am so that we could pack up things before breakfast at 7:00am. Once again, we had a full, multiple course meal but luckily less food than dinner the night before. After breakfast, we took the small boat over to the bay near where we were parked. We were then given kayaks and instructed to head through the cave and check out the bay behind it. It was pretty cold outside so we weren't going to get in the water and tried our best to stay dry in the kayaks. The cave was a tunnel that led into a secluded bay.

The cliff sides were very pretty surrounding us. At one point, we found a bunch of golden moneys eating down by the water. They didn't like us getting to close to them and a couple of times I thought they would jump on the kayaks and attack us. We kayaked around for about 45 minutes before heading back to the boat. Thankfully no one fell in and all cameras came back unharmed.

When we got back on the boat, we began the journey back to port, taking a different route than we did on the way there that passed through tons of the islands. It really is amazing how many little islands there are! As we hung out on the top deck, the chef came out and taught us how to make flowers out of different vegetables. His technique was really interesting and when we got to try it ourselves, we realized it was much harder than it looked.

We then went inside to one of the lower decks and learned how to make fried spring rolls. Alyssa and I had made spring rolls once before back in LA and I thought my friends Te Tee and Jane were far better teachers than this chef. The spring rolls turned out ok, but I'm pretty sure he re-wrapped them in the kitchen before frying them.

After finishing the spring rolls, we all sat down for lunch. They had fed us more food on this boat than I thought was possible and I felt like I should never eat again. Following lunch, we took the small boat back to shore and piled into our bus for the 3 1/2 hour ride back to Hanoi. I'm generally not annoyed by bus rides but for some reason, I was feeling really anxious in this bus and just wanted to get there already.
When we arrived back at the hostel, the receptionist let us know that some Chinese people had left their bags in our room instead of checking out and that it was against their company policy to move them. As a result, they had no room for us. They had arranged for us to have a room at a hostel down the street. I was pretty annoyed at first, but they are so nice and the receptionist even insisted on carrying my bag and walking us down there. It's hard to be mad after that. The hostel they put us in was supposed to be nicer but I still preferred the B&B.

We got settled into this new hostel and got ready to go out for the night. We had tickets to the water puppet show at 8:00pm so we went to grab some street food for dinner beforehand. We really didn't know what we were ordering or even how to order, but the people working there just had us point to what we wanted andit worked out ok. We think they overcharged us prett significantly because it ended up being $15 for the meal it sometimes you have to just let that go because there's just no way to communicate. The food was good though.

We made it down to the water puppet show which I was really excited to see. Even better was the fact that tickets only cost $3/person! They had a small band with singers that narrated the show in Vietnamese and we had an English program so we could follow along. They had many different acts depicting their local culture and religion that were aimed at teaching and celebrating the Vietnamese people. I really liked it and thought the fact that it was only an hour was great because it could have gotten really boring if it was much longer.

After the show, we walked around the city. The light things up really beautifully around the lake so we made sure to take Jessica there so she could get the full view of Hanoi at night.

Posted with Blogsy

Halong Bay, Christmas Eve

We had decided that it would be fun to take a cruise in Halong Bay for Christmas. We signed up for the two day, one night cruise so that we would be on the boat for Christmas Eve. We packed all of our stuff into one bag so that we could leave the rest of our stuff at the hostel since we would be returning there for one additional night after the cruise. The van picked us up around 8:30am and we started on our 3 1/2 hour journey to Halong Bay. We stopped at one point for a 20 minute bathroom break, during which time we could wander around a huge local craft market. Unfortunately our bus did not return for about 45 minutes which was really annoying and put us behind schedule. Our guide apologized, saying they needed to take care of some business that took longer than expected, but we were all still pretty annoyed.
When we finally arrived, we took a small barge over to our boat. I thought it was hilarious that any time we were in a boat, we had to wear life jackets but we complied even though shore was about 30ft away from us and you'd have to be completely retarded to drown at that point.

We were staying on the "Marguerite Junk" boat which was pretty nice. We had our own three bed room which was good so we could all be together. The boat had been decorated for Christmas and even though the Vietnamese don't really celebrate Christmas, you could tell they were really putting in some extra effort for their foreign guests. There were about 25 people on the boat in total and though I think they could have fit more people on it, you wouldn't have wanted them to. The space felt limited as it was.

We spent some time up on the sun deck as we cruised through the bay. Halong bay is so picturesque because it has thousands of little islands all throughout it which make a really interesting landscape to boat through. It was a little chilly outside but it was nice to lay in the sun.

Our first outing for the afternoon was to go to "Sung Sot Cave" or "Surprise Cave". This is clearly what all of the tours do as it was absolutely packed. The cave is a dead cave so it is completely dry inside which was a little sad to see because the formations could have become so awesome if they continued growing. You could pretty much touch anything since there was no concern about stopping the formation growth which was different from the other caves we've been through.

Next we headed to a beach on one of the islands. The beach was man made which we found a bit ridiculous. Plus, it was way to cold to get into the water. We did hike up to the top of the island so that we could watch the sunset from the top.

On the way up, we saw a bunch of monkeys that had been caged for the tourists. I felt horrible for them; they clearly wanted to get out and were shaking the bars in an attempt to free themselves.

The view from the top was really beautiful. You could see so many of the islands and the sun turned red as it neared the horizon and sunk behind them.

When we returned to the boat, our guides had put together a Christmas feast for us. It was truly an insane amount of food that they served us and it just seemed to be never ending. They brought out three different plates of bread rolls for just the six people sitting at our table! Both Jessica and I began to get upset at the insane amount of food they were giving us as it just seemed wasteful and made me feel like such an asshole when so many people in that country don't have enough to eat.

After dinner, we had a Christmas champagne toast and one of the crew dressed up like Santa and gave us little presents. It was really nice that they tried so hard to make it feel like Christmas. There were a bunch of Germans on the ship who were signing German Christmas carols which was also pretty cute. Even still, it never really felt like Christmas; I am so used to being at home for the holidays that nothing else would be able to give me that feeling. I had brought American Christmas candy that I was able to find in Australia and brought stockings for my sisters but sadly I forgot the stockings in my bag at the hostel so I had to wrap their candy it washcloths, lol. Oh well, at least I tried!

Posted with Blogsy

Day trip to Hoa Lu

We had to wake up early since our day tour outside of Hanoi was picking us up at 8:00am. We had breakfast at our hostel and then our van was there to get us. It was a 2 1/2 hour drive out to Ninh Binh after which we would head out into the countryside to Hoa Lu (the ancient capital of Vietnam during the 10th century). When we arrived, we visited the Dinh Tien Hoang and Le Dai Hanh dynastic temples. In 968, Dinh Bo Linh declared himself as king of Vietnam. Hoa Lu then existed as the capital for the next 41 years (968 - 1009), of which 12 years was under the Dinh dynasty (King Dinh Tien Hoang) and 29 years later was under the Le dynasty (King Le Dai Hanh). In 1010, King Ly Thai To moved the capital from Hoa Lu to Thang Long – present day Hanoi. Hoa Lu became the old citadel. In Hoa Lu there are now 2 temples have been built on the ground of the old royal palace, one is dedicated to King Dinh Tien Hoang, the other is to King Le Dai Hanh. The temples looked very similar to us and we really couldn't distinguish one from the other.
It seems that all of the area around Hanoi is covered in water, so there is never any shortage of picturesque waterways.

We passed through the main entrance to the temples which was guarded by some fierce lions (and Jessica, haha). The temples themselves were very old but not as grand as we had been expecting. I did like all of the statues they have resembling different animals, those are always interesting to look at. Inside the temples, the local people come to pray to their saints. I was amused that they made offerings of chocopies (like an Oreo) and beer. I guess those are the things that they value, lol. We got a brief history about the temples from our guide who was trying his best to speak English but his accent was so thick we could only understand about 30% of what he said.

Following the temples, we drove from Hoa Lu to Tam Coc. Here we had a really nice buffet style lunch before taking our boat trip through Tam Coc. Ngo Doc is the river which passes through three limestone caves making up Tam Coc. It is a really beautiful way to get views of the mountains and countryside. After some debate, they let the three of us go in a boat together. Our guide was a very old Vietnamese man who spoke no English and really struggled to paddle us down the river. We had to a laugh because so many boats were passing us. The caves were interesting to pass through and it was a fun two hour ride there and back.

When we got back to shore, we were given some bikes so that we could ride through town down to a pagoda that was built into the hillside. This was definitely a different view of Vietnamese life as these people we living in a much more remote area and had a lot less to work with. Their lifestyle reminded me a lot of how people live in Mexico.

When we arrived at the pagoda, there were people there waiting to charge us to park our bikes. We refused to pay to park and after some arguing we walked our bikes back to a restaurant where they let us park them for free. The pagoda was nice, but there wasn't much to it, so we were a little confused as to why this was a tourist attraction. We then climbed the mountain stairs and found that there were many more pagodas built into the hillside. These were really interesting and we ended up liking them much more than the temple we had seen that morning.

After touring the pagodas, we biked back to the van and took the 2 1/2 hour bus ride back to Hanoi. Once back at the hostel, Jessica decided to forgo dinner and just get some sleep because she was a bit jet lagged. Alyssa and I ventured out into town and ended up getting some delicious kebabs from a street vendor which only cost $1.50 USD! I love how cheap the food can be!

Posted with Blogsy