Vietnam: Sapa

Alright... (pant, pant, pant)  The backlog is almost finished.  It's time for (drum roll) SAPA.  The crown jewel of Vietnam's natural beauty. I've never imagined anything like it, and I doubt I will ever see it's equal.  The 2 days that Risa and I spent there sucked the air right out of our lungs in gasps of amazed wonder. Okay, okay, okay - enough with the drama.  We set out on a night train from Ha Noi (which was both a good idea and a bad one, seeing as you save hotel fare by traveling while you sleep, but it's ultimately pretty hard to sleep).  It took about 6 hours each way as I recall. The real challenge was the bus ride up the mountains after getting off the train... Swerviest roads you've ever seen, neck-breaking speeds, 2 inches of wiggle room between the bus and a plummet down the mountainside - that's Vietnam touring for you.

The real tragedy here is that we can't find ANY of the pictures that we took there. Not one. It grieves me, but I think their final resting place is on a crashed external hard drive that we have yet to try and repair. So, as visual aids to my log, we have shamelessly stolen pictures off of the internet. I will replace them with actual photos that we took the very instant that I find them. Rest assured though - I stole only the pictures that represent things that we ACTUALLY saw.

Let me begin with... the Town of Sapa.

Sapa is a nice little town in the northern mountainous region of Vietnam near the Chinese border. Unlike pretty much everywhere else in Vietnam, it actually gets kind of cold there, and the frequent mist and fog will send you running for a jacket. The view from our hotel was amazing, and we ate most of our meals near the balcony where we could look out over the valleys and mountains. The lake in the middle of town was quite nice and we walked around it and found a really interesting black beetle about 1.5 inches long, and almost as wide. This was the first of several super interesting beetles that seemed to flock to me on this trip. I wish I were joking, but no - really - there was an amazing metallic gold and red beetle that landed on me on a hike and after sending it away 3 times, it flew back and landed on me again every time. I was a veritable "beetlemancer".  +5 Willpower.

Despite the niceness of the town, it was crawling with really obnoxious panhandlers pushing us to buy stuff every 2 steps. At first it was fun, and their regional traditional clothing is super cool, but man... it got to the point where we stopped wanting to leave the hotel because we knew the "swarm" of vendors was waiting for us.  They even followed us down the street on several occasions.  Being American pretty much labels you as "wealthy and wanting to give away all your money".  Unfortunately, they know how to pull on your heart strings in the most unfair ways possible, so we ended up parting with more money than we intended, but... we got some really cool souvenirs out of it.

As seen above, it's also pretty sad that kids are put to work as soon as they can reasonably work a needle, or learn a couple English phrases (which is SURPRISINGLY young in some cases). It was pretty sad, but there are several good groups attempting to teach better methods of livelihood to the locals. I recommend donating to them generously if you get the chance.  http://www.idealist.org/view/nonprofit/nScjXNkX3w8d/

The coolest part of the trip, without question, was the hiking tour.  Some of the local peoples (also in traditional clothing, and wearing slip-on heels) led a hike down to one of the rural villages where the people work the terraced rice fields. It was mind-blowingly amazing. These pictures look unbelievable, but they really don't do the place justice. It was 10x cooler than the pictures make it look.

  

At one point along the path, we came across some dark green (almost black) plants.  The guide stopped and picked some leaves, then asked for a volunteer. Of course I raised my hand... of course. She explained that this plant was used to dye many of the traditional local clothing. I guess we would call it something like "indigo". She smooshed the leaves in her fingers then rubbed them vigorously on my palm.  My palm was stained a weak green. No big deal. She smiled. Then, about 15 minutes later down the path I caught a glimpse of my hand again - it was dark blue!  Whoa - color-changing leaf dye. No problem. An hour later, my hand was pretty much black. It was crazy. It took a couple days to wear off too. :)

There were also some really amazingly cute and lovable pigs with piglets along the way.  I prefer to delude myself into thinking that these are lifelong companions that are faithful to the end and will die of old age at which point they will be grievously missed.

Unfortunately, even if I did have our original pictures, our camera died halfway through the trip, so we didn't get everything we wanted to anyway. That was actually a blessing in disguise though, because for half of the trip, we weren't worried about snapping photos and instead just soaked it all in. (and there was SOOOOO much to soak in.)

And that's about all I want to say I guess. We weren't there for very long, but I often daydream about going back to spend a week hiking to all the various villages, hanging out with the rural natives, and scoping out every hidden inch of that magical land.  It will happen... when I'm rich and can fly back to Vietnam again. :)

Ha Long Bay

Hey hey.

So... it's been almost a year since our trip to Ha Long Bay, but... I figure we should still get some photos up and some brief explanations. It was a kickin' trip!  Actually, that's a bit of an understatement - it was one of the coolest trips of our lives.

So, like past posts, I'm just going to let the pictures do most of the talking. You know... 1,000 words and whatever. Let me just say - the pictures don't do it justice.  It was overwhelmingly, devastatingly, breath-takingly, gorgeous.

I should begin by saying that this trip was not very well explained to us. We were in Hanoi before moving to Germany and decided to have one last mini-trip to Ha Long Bay. We just went to the travel place and ordered tickets, but we really had no idea what to expect. We kinda just closed our eyes and went where the bus took us (and boats).  It was a bit awkward, but luckily it over-delivered by like, 10,000%.

These are the boats that we took. Super cool.

Our friends Xavier and Geraldine - they came with us and kept us entertained.  We had a great time laughing at the super bad Engrish menus on the boat, featuring cocktails such as the "Mos-Mos Polito" (cosmopolitan), and the "Picolanda" (pina colada). 

So cool. I especially like the totally accidental, artistically flowing Vietnamese flag. 

The deck of our boat. Getting some rays, enjoying the scenes... amazing.  There were also some times when they stopped the boat and we got to jump off the side and go swimming. It was super cool. 

This lady was pretty awesome. She paddled her little boat around to all of the tourist boats, selling snacks and drinks. We totally bought some Oreos. :)

This was a little "floating village" that we passed during the tour.  It was right around here that we also stopped to go kyaking. It was sooooooo great. You could paddle the kyaks through little caves and around all the islands. I wish we had some pictures, but I don't.  Most of our "best" pictures from this trip are on a hard-drive that crashed. :( Maybe some day we'll get them recovered. 

We spent the night on an island called "Monkey Island".  For all you game nerds out there... yes I DID feel like Guybrush Threepwood, but despite my efforts, I couldn't find any pirates ANYWHERE. 

We passed through Cat Ba Island during the tour where they had all sorts of suprisingly edible sealife for sale, including these starfish. 

This is the bamboo hut that Xavier and Geraldine were staying in. Ours was a bit bigger / more luxurious, but it didn't look quite so "Indiana-Jones-style-cool".  

There was a cool (albeit short) hike to the top of Monkey Island where you could look out over the bay. It was pretty much amazing enough to make me barf rainbows.  

Sorry this picture is so crappy. I wish we had a better one. You can't really tell, but this Gecko is easily the length (and probably weight) of my hand. It was really beautiful. The reason we knew it was there because it made this super loud crazy-bonkers sound.  This video gives a pretty clear idea of what it sounded like. :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR9tn0yNqQo

The inside of our lovely bamboo hut. 

Risa sitting on the porch of our hut. It was really nice to wake up to the view. We sat out on the porch playing cards with Xav and Geraldine - they introduced us to a fun speed-style game they called "Madame Misure".

And I guess that's it!  Anyway - it was a super great trip, and I really hope we get to go back someday. I would recommend it to anyone. In fact, I command you to go. Don't argue with me - I don't want to hear it. You deserve to see the coolest things in the world, so just go.  And don't wait - go while Vietnam is still super cheap. Someday it might be expensive. :)

Anyway - much love!
Michael and Risa.

Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park

Totally the most beautiful place we've ever been.

Halfway through January we went on a trip with our Argentinian friend/co-worker Maxi Cadiz and our friend Spencer from HCMC, who has one of the coolest jobs ever - he travels all over Vietnam recruiting students for the University of Cincinnati.
So, we took a 6 hr train ride north of Da Nang, it just went on and on, but it was only 3 stops or so (not including the random stops at parts where there's only 1 set of tracks) - and as we brought a bunch of sugary snacks to sustain us, it lead to way too many Top N Top cupcakes...
We pulled into town about 7pm, got a hotel - where the owner asked us where we were from and replied "30 years ago I would have shot you" - totally creepy - and then when we went to look for food, there was nothing open - not a single store - but we finally found a little sidewalk stand selling sticky rice and chicken, and it was ok, not great but all right. The good thing about the hotel was that it had an awesome soft mattress (1st one in Vietnam, woot woot! - though our backs still hurt in the morning). After some uno cards we all headed off to bed.
We got up bright and early the next day to rent a motorbike to take into the park, and we took off with nothing but a general direction and Spencer's internet access on his phone, but, his phone did have the full advantage of modern technology and we had a live map showing us where to go.
I must say - it was one of the most beautiful drives we've ever been on, it was so incredible I can't even describe it.

I hope this panoramic gets bigger if you click on it, because it shows the amazing rice fields we drove through and the mountains in the distance are the entrance to the park. It was breathtaking.

We went first to Phong Nha cave, which is partially filled with water and you have to take a boat to go inside. It said it was a "3 hour tour"... kind of ominous, but most of that is spent in the boat going along the river. The boat really crawls, but at least it was good scenery.

Here's a view from the boat along the river.

Here is where the boat enters the cave, it was pretty intense as the women rowing the boat are actually ducking down to avoid knocking their heads on the ceiling in the first part.

Here's me, Maxi, and Spencer inside the cave.

After the boat ride they have you get off inside the cave. It was pretty awe inspiring, but I admit I had a lot of Batman thoughts with the colors they had everywhere.

Here's a photo of the entrance to the cave.

After that we went on the craziest most awesome drive of all time to the next cave. It was A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. 

The mountains were so incredible; we couldn't believe our eyes.

And then, against all mind-blowing-ness, it got even more beautiful as we got into the canyon and were surrounded by rich greens, misty mountains, and dark earth of such color intensity no photos or screens could ever do it justice. Here's a link to a video in another attempt to capture the moment.

It was the experience of a lifetime. I think it will always be one of the best things I have done my entire life, and I must say I've never seen anything so beautiful, anywhere.
So, once we picked our jaws up off the ground, having dragged them the entire way to the cave in a smiling, slack-jawed stupor, we reached a newly (within a few years) discovered cave - Thien Duong Cave, also known as Paradise cave. We purchased our tickets and took the long, long walk up to where you hike up to the cave entrance, and Michael just HAS to point out the CRAZY SCARY SPIDER IN THE TREE ON THE WAY UP TO THE CAVE, seriously, I took one look at it and never wanted to enter a jungle ever again.

Duh duh DUH!

Michael seriously has to have a scary spider radar or something.

It was at least the size of an adult hand (including your fingers), hanging about 12ft off the ground in a large web in the tree branches.

We continued our walk as Spencer told us of his LDS mission to Australia "a place designed to kill humans" according to him. He said that there are giant spiders all over the place and they jump. Jump people {shiver}. Totally not my idea of a good time. But, he loved it and loved his companion's arachnophobia-induced attempts to keep out said giant spiders by taping closed all spaces in his room, leading to the inevitable in-escape of one spider who took up residence in the poor guy's bed. Hilarious yes, but creepy.
At Paradise cave you have to hike up 500+ steps to reach the top, then you walk down through it and back up to where you started. All I can say is that it was the most amazing cave we've ever been in. It kind of really puts Timpanogos Cave to shame... in an incredible Grand Canyon-versus-small-river-sized kind of way.
Here are some highlights:

Due to it's fantastical appearance and ability to defy gravity, this was one of my favorite formations.

This was one of Michael's favorites - it was ENORMOUS, somewhere in height like a 3 story building or something, HUGE.

This formation was amazing as you could see where it had fallen over who know how long ago and then kept growing in it's new direction, really really neat.

Here's a link to a video I took inside the cave to try and capture the sounds there.

After the caves we took a long, cold drive back to the hotel. On the way there was the weirdest thing ever - frogs were jumping across the road to their doom like a live version of Frogger. You would see them jump in your headlights like some desperate amphibian suicide, we might have squished one on accident, so sad...
We got back to town really late and after some entertaining exploits at dinner (everyone wanted to buy Spencer a drink, but the food was really good), we went to bed after a while of trying to figure out room space with the hotel. Then we got up even EARLIER the next day to catch an early morning train (5:00AM) back to Da Nang in time for Spencer's flight back to HCMC. It was a long, long day, but totally worth it. Here's a picture of some Bun Bo (noodles with beef) we had for lunch between the two caves, good times :)

At Hue for the Holidays

The weekend before New Years Eve Michael got it into his head that it was time we visited Hue, the old Imperial City of Vietnam. We had heard a lot about it, and he figured, we have 2 days, let's take the bus! That was the first interesting part of the trip...

The bus was an experience all in itself. We got to the bus station amid confused looks from the locals, there were no other tourists there, and it was kind of a scary place. We tried to buy tickets inside, but they said we had to purchase them at the bus, but when the bus finally came they tried charging us double the price, so we had a lady from the ticket station buy them for us. Sadly, in the minute's time it took to have the lady work things out, the bus had already filled most of the way, leaving just the very back part of the bus open - it's a shelf behind the back seats, no leg room and we were kind of squished in there with about 4 other people. To our amazement, when we thought the bus was full it turned out that it wasn't - they started to put stools between the seats in the middle of the bus and they kept putting more and more people on, even 4 or 5 stools around the door, plus additional packages for shipment. Plus, the bus made regular stops along the way like a regular bus stop, and even more people and packages got on. We rode with our knees under our chins this way for about 2 hours, it was crazy.
In the end, we finally made it to Hue in one piece and we able to get a taxi to our hotel, and it worked out all right. Our hotel was interesting, maybe $10 for the night, and the reviews were great that the staff were really kind, which is always a big plus. The funny thing is as the hotel was inexpensive we reserved the "Deluxe" room instead of Standard thinking it would be nicer amenities, but when we got there it just turned out to have 3 beds instead of 1.

As it was the rainy season, it was raining - note the water coming through the wall of our room :)

It rained THE ENTIRE WEEKEND, but we did have some fun amid the storm. 

Hue is a total tourist city, there were a lot of tourists everywhere, and the town center is primarily made up of hotels, tourist-geared restaurants, and tourist shops. Michael was even offered drugs and other shady things while we were walking the streets, a first for us in Vietnam. 

On our journey through the streets on a particularly cold day we were approached by an older Vietnamese woman carrying a large pole with two box-like things on either end, and a shop owner came out to tell us it was hot/fresh tofu. It looked really good, so we got some. The lady got out a bowl from one of the boxes, and then got the tofu out of the other box, then she added lime and sugar. It was hot and one of the best things we've ever had. 

There was a really cool night market along the river, and there we found the best cookies EVER. We saw some tourists buying some and since they were like 50 cents we decided to give them a try. It was HEAVEN.

They were made up of two thin wafers that tasted like ice cream cones, and in the middle was fresh shredded coconut and a large serving of what we think was coconut candy/taffy. We went back for more before we left the market, it was that good. And get this, they were sold out of what looked like a  briefcase on the back of the guy's bike:

This photo was taken when we had all sought shelter from the rain under the bridge. Most of the food stalls were under there and Michael bought some really tasty Bun Thit Nuong, one of our favorite dishes with noodles, fresh herbs, and grilled meat, and it was awesome until rainwater from the bridge dripped into it - ewww.....

Hue at night was cool though, here's a photo of a floating restaurant and it's cool neon lights. Everything in Vietnam uses colored lights, it's awesome.
We ate some really good Hue food, and we bought a crazy painting depicting Vietnamese food just for the occasion:

At the end of our trip we left said painting in a taxi and thought it was gone forever, but we were really lucky Hue City isn't too big because we called the taxi company and were able to get it back, an awesome trip highlight as we are notorious for leaving/losing the cool things we buy in different places.
Other than tofu and cookies, we wandered around town mostly, seeing the Imperial City of inner Hue that is still surrounded by a large wall. The palace was neat, but as a lot of the more impressive parts of Hue were destroyed in the war, it was not the most impressive place to us, but it was really cool to see a glimpse of Vietnamese history.

Here's a cool statue at the Palace in Hue.

A cool pathway along the palace grounds.

The palace grounds in the rain was really cold, but it made for some really awesome shots.

This was the theater at the Palace where they would entertain the Emperor.

We also visited 2 tombs of past Emperors, the most awesome of which was the tomb of Emperor Tu Duk, who was apparently very small in stature but huge in presence. He had a harem of like 200 concubines (never had any kids), hundreds of servants died building his palatial tomb that he used as a getaway or office before he died, and the 200 servants that buried him were all decapitated so that no one would ever know where his treasure was as it was buried with him.

The grounds of his tomb were amazing and beautiful, especially the area shown above that looked like something out of the movies. There was even a large forest-like area with tons of trees, it was really breathtaking.

Here is a detailed shot of the archway in the previous picture, can you see what critters are looking at you? Totally fascinating artwork.
It was really fun until we tried to get back to town, as the tomb of Tu Duk is about 5 km south of town there were no taxis, and we were hounded relentlessly by the locals to rent a motorbike, but we wanted to use our taxi vouchers so we ended up waiting around for what felt like a long, long time in the cold and rain but we finally made it back to town.
As fun as the bus was, we decided to try our luck with the train for the ride home. Due to the weather conditions, we ended up waiting at the train station for 2.5 hours as all the trains were delayed, but the mattresses in the sleeper car we got were more comfortable than anything we've slept on so far.
About 5 hours later than we expected and a little freaked out by crazy taxi drivers, we finally arrived home after our weekend adventure early Monday morning, and luckily we could both sleep in as Michael had New Years Eve off.

Speaking of New Years, I was sick New Years Eve from being out in the rain all weekend and some local food, so Michael spent some time out with our friends eating more Foie Gras. He did come home before 12 though and we spent some time dancing to our favorite songs until midnight and we were asleep by 12:30, woohoo for getting old!
New Years Day we went and saw the Hobbit in 3D at the theater (it was the only English version available), found lots of crazy things at the new Lotte Mart in town, and chilled the rest of the day - it took some of our friends about a week to recover from the parties they went to, yay for holidays!