Friends, bikes, and trip to Lang Co

It's been a crazy weekend!  First of all, let me (Mike) tell you about our new friends. We had heard that a lot of Westerners (specifically Americans) liked to congregate outside a little bar called the "Golden Pine". So, Thursday we decided to stop by. Nobody was there, except one older guy sitting outside drinking some beer. On our way out, he waved us over, bought us some smoothies, and we talked for about an hour. His name is Richard - he's from California but is taking his retirement in VN and has lived all over the world. He's a super cool guy, and he invited us to go motorbiking with him and his Vietnamese girlfriend up over the mountains and to some great beaches. I'll get to that in a sec.  

Our other good friends here include Xavier and Geraldine - a French couple that both work at Gameloft with me. They speak pretty good English and have been primarily responsible for "showing us the ropes" here. They've shown us a lot of good places to eat, pointed us to the good supermarkets and hang-out spots, and most importantly they helped us find a good deal on a motorbike. On Saturday we spent about $450 on a pretty stellar motorscooter, and another $50 on some really nice helmets that might actually save our lives in an emergency (as opposed to the "helmets" most Vietnamese people wear). After spending most of the day in the hot sun, looking at dozens of motorbikes and haggling with everyone in view, they showed us this awesome resort right on the beach where they go to swim and chill. Apparently the resort never bothers them, even though they never stay there, so it's like a free pool, towels, and awesome beach locale with chairs and umbrellas! It's awesome. (Risa butting in - the resort pool and beach access is free to those who work in Da Nang, Xavier and Geraldine have passes because they showed proof that they work here but you can bring friends and family too if you like).

I should also mention that I've become pretty good friends with a lot of the designers that I am in charge of. They invited Risa and I to go "drinking" with them on Friday night (we just had Pepsi of course). It was crazy and really fun. We ate clams, oysters, shrimp (whole), squid (whole), jellyfish, and 2 other kinds of fish. It was sooooo good. Jellyfish is one of the strangest things I've ever had, but tastes much better than I would have thought. It's the jelly/meaty texture that's the weird part. After eating and drinking (their drinking cheer is "ba, hai, mot, yo!" which means 3, 2, 1, Yo!), we walked over to the beach and caught some "com com"s (little crabs that run all over the place) and built a sand castle. It was great. 

Today (Sunday) we spent the whole day motorbiking with Richard (55), his girlfriend Hai (36), and her daughter Ming (11). I could... not... believe... how beautiful the mountain pass was that we drove over.  Ocean views on both sides - tons and tons of trees and rocks and vines - some of the most amazing scenery I've ever seen. Then we arrived at a different beach on the other side of the mountain in a town called Long Co. It was super nice, but there were jellyfish swimming all over in the water. There were tons of people out swimming with them, and some of them were even catching them, so we figured it wasn't dangerous. I got some good pictures. And now we're totally pooped. We're going to bed. See the pictures below. (facebook hasn't been working so we haven't put up anything recently).

Love you all!

View going up the mountain pass.

Michael with his helmet hair - Da Nang City is in the background.

Jellyfish that were everywhere - Risa was totally freaked out but they didn't hurt too much, just itched/stung a bit for a moment.

Having fun on the beach. Ming was really shy at first but then opened up once Risa let her bury her in the sand for a bit, they had a lot of fun.

View coming back up the pass on the other side.

Some cows that were grazing on/around the road on our way home. Richard tried to pet one and she got rather upset. They were neat though.

Our new home: Da Nang

So after a very strange sacrament meeting by ourselves in our small, glittering hotel room (you never realize how many songs and prayers are involved until you have to sing/say them all with only 2 people and no music as everything we had was packed), we were off to the airport to travel to our new home in Da Nang. After freaking out some of the workers with our large luggage we met some of the awesome Aussie friends from the tour the day before on our trip through the airport (and we even found some M&M's there and we got them to celebrate, sadly they still look better than they taste). After a somewhat bumpy plane ride we were greeted with the best view ever - this is what it looks like outside our hotel window: 

Not so far from home, eh? The mountains and the beach are amazing, I only wish they didn't make me miss the horizon of Utah a bit every time I see them - the zaggy lines on the top just don't look the same. At the same time it makes it feel more like home. The weather is drier than HCMC and it is hotter I think, but it rains every so often and some days are more tolerable than others.

The trees here are huge and amazing. They are big and beautiful and we still don't know why they paint the bottoms white sometimes.

This is me on the Han River, which separates the city center from the peninsula on the east. The locals are out on the river every night to exercise and have fun with family and friends, but during the day it is pretty deserted (because it is hot!). 

Here's a view of the bridge at night. It is called the Song Han bridge and it is the main symbol of Da Nang. The lights at night change colors and patterns, it's pretty neat.

Here's a view of the street outside our hotel on any given night. Going out for drinks with friends is a popular pastime, and little cafes set up a lot of chairs and tables and people are out socializing for a while after dark - which isn't too hard to do as the sun sets around 7PM.

Here's a sight you see at almost every little restaurant or even in a house, though we didn't see them in the hotel - it's a gecko! They love to sit under the lights and eat the bugs (so we love them very, very much). This little guy was in a yummy vegetarian restaurant our friends showed us. 

Here is what we ate for breakfast after making a crazy crazy trip to the local western-style supermarket - The Big C. I've never been so claustrophobic in my life as we went at the worst time of the day (right after work) and there were TONS of people there. It was hard for me as we had a hard time finding things and then there were lots and lots of people and not very much food that was recognizable other than Oreo cookies. (We have been there since and it was better, we just happened to be lucky this time). We got some crackers (it says whole wheat but there is a "whole" 3% bran added back into the batter :P), some amazing Guava french-style jam, some rambutan and asian pears, and some weird little yogurt drink things that tasted pretty sour so I figured they must have some kind of probiotic content :) It was good all in all and we were very excited to have some good food. We have also tried the local Phu (a noodle soup with a broth base usually with some meat and veggies in it) shops for breakfast and lunch. It's a different place to get used to but it more quiet and a little less crazy than the big city and it is much more beautiful.

Trip to the Mekong Delta

So 3 words about our tour of the Mekong Delta - awesome, awesome, awesome. It was much cheaper than Mr. Tam's tour ($30 for the both of us for the whole day vs $10 per person per hour), and man was it amazing. They also picked us up at the hotel at 7:00AM and we were off on a 2 hour bus ride north to the delta. The nicest thing about the tour was that it was very structured, something we don't get much of here in Vietnam. The tour guide was awesome too and was very kind. 

We had one pit-stop in this crazy little hammock place where we got a coconut to share. There were chickens in a pen behind the place and it was our first introduction to a more rural Vietnam.  

Here is the view from the dock where we got on a boat to go over the river and see different places. There were all different sizes of boats around - from small one person fishing boats to crazy huge boats. It was a nice day but rather hot so the speed of the boat was a welcome breeze. 

Our first stop across the river was a little shop where the family sells their home-made wines as well as the most amazing honey we've ever tasted. This gentleman is holding up an example of their bees, this slat just happened to have the queen - which is supposed to be a sign of luck.  

Here's what a bottle of snake wine looks like! It's kind of an herbal formula with a bunch of herbs in it as well as a small cobra and a scorpion. Some of the lovely Australian ladies we sat with tried it, and they actually said it was pretty good - at least better than the banana wine they tried before.  

The small boat ride down the river was simply beautiful. I've never seen such beautiful scenery and so much green! It was amazing. The Vietnamese who were paddling the boats were very kind and the young girls were very beautiful. Our head rower was an older lady that was an amazing powerhouse that beat out the people rowing around us.  

Here's us in the boat to go to the bigger boat and off to lunch and the coconut candy shop. 

The coconut candy shop was so good. They press the coconut to get the milk and then they cook it slowly until it caramelizes, and it is one of the best candies I've ever tasted. 

This is a dragonfruit tree that was on the path we were walking. It looks like a weird kind of cactus, very cool, and the fruit tastes like a mix between kiwi fruit and fresh peas - kinda good really. 

The last stop of the day was fruit tasting and traditional Vietnamese music. The instruments were very neat, and the music was great for educational purposes albeit I wouldn't listen to it everyday. They eat fruit with salt and spices here, similarly to the way some cultures in Mexico and Central and South America eat fruit with chili powder. All in all it was a wonderful day and we made some awesome Australian friends and a couple French ladies and one Finnish guy living and working in Shanghai. All of the young adults we met on the tour were very educated. All of the girls were studying for PhD's in various topics and the guy from Finland was a successful businessman. We were all only together for a matter of hours, but we all formed a fast friendship that was very wonderful and so much appreciated. 

Motorcycle tour with Mr. Tam

All right, so Friday afternoon Michael had set up to meet this guy, Mr. Tam, who said he did motorcycle tours of the city. Thomas and the others thought it might be risky, but Michael was really excited. Mr. Tam and his brother came to our hotel to pick us up. It took him a little while to find us as our hotel, The A&E hotel, has many locations, at least 3 on the same street as ours. I was really nervous but hoped it would turn out ok as we strapped on the little helmets they offered and took off into the craziest traffic I've ever seen. Seriously, I know I've said before that the lines on the road are purely aesthetic, but I really can't do it justice. If there's too much traffic, no problem! just use the sidewalk! If the road is one way only but you still want to go down it, no problem! you go anyway. I think I've described it this way on facebook, but in case you don't have facebook here's how I relate the traffic here in US terms - so take NYC before the noise ordinances and everyone was nice to each other (lots of horns and craziness right?), then take away about 85% of the cars and replace them with motorbikes, then have the lines only be for aesthetic value (complete free for all), with about 25% of the stop lights gone and another 30% consisting of roundabouts, and you might get kinda close to how it is driving here.

Our first stop with Mr. Tam was the Vietnam War Museum, which I must say was a bit different seeing things from this side, but it was reminiscent of my college class on the war in some ways. We didn't spend too much time inside as a lot of the rooms were on rather distressing subjects and we didn't want to be depressed for the rest of the day. Michael had a blast taking pictures of all of the weapons displays.

Outside they had a bunch of planes, helicopters, and tanks left over from the war on display. While looking at these we were sold a Vietnamese phrasebook by a survivor of the war who didn't have any hands, and even though I thought it was a bit expensive (we paid the amount printed on the cover and I'm such a stickler for buying books used cheaper but it was for a good cause) it has proved to be one of the most useful books ever.

This was a cathedral of some sort I'm assuming was built during France's occupation of Vietnam, but we really have no idea. It was quite the attraction with a fair crowd of tourists taking pictures. We didn't stay too long as we found after the museum that Mr. Tam charged by the hour, so we were on our way to the next stop soon. After the cathedral we were taken to a lacquer shop where they make lacquer boxes and artwork. We didn't take any pictures but it was really neat to see. They would make the most incredible artwork out of burned eggshell (browned to different shades of cream and brown) that was then crushed into small pieces and put together in a mosaic kind of way to make beautiful pieces of art that took months to complete. They were really expensive, but maybe we can get a small one to bring home.

After the lacquer shop we visited a couple of pagodas, which I believe are essentially Buddhist temples or they could be for another religion all together. There was a lot of incense burning everywhere and places for people to write prayers for blessings they wanted to receive. Sometimes they even had animals around like a little turtle pond or a fish pond. I must admit that LED lights don't speak religion to me, but it is popular around here to have some flashing lights behind the different saints or the Buddha statues. On the other hand, the intricate artwork is breathtaking and the dedicated worshipers are very inspiring.

The architecture and detail work at the pagodas was simply amazing though, and we had a good time looking and the buildings.

Here is a photo of me with Mr. Thu inside one of the pagodas. He was nice but the price kept going up when we would talk to him so we had to try hard to talk him into taking us back to the hotel early. We ended up paying him for 3 hours when we were only out 2 or so, but it was still fun and we learned a bit more about how things go with street vendors around here.

Our Days in Ho Chi Minh City

So we arrived in Ho Chi Minh City at about 12:35AM-ish local time without too much trouble traveling from Hong Kong. Our biggest problem was that there was  no one to really show us what to do after getting off of the plane, so when we saw some other foreign-looking people around a station we figured that was the way to go. It ended up being the visa station and a little bit of paperwork and $100USD later we were allowed through security with our temporary traveler's visas. Crazy, crazy stuff. Thomas, the department head over all of Vietnam design (and one of the only other Americans here) was kind enough to pick us up at the airport and take us to our hotel. It was hot and sticky even at that hour of the morning but we got to the hotel just fine with plans to meet Thomas for breakfast later on. What we weren't prepared for was this:

Welcome to our 10X10ft Sparkling Princess Cave. I (Risa) admit it, once we were in our room and the helper guys had left, I totally broke down and cried for awhile. It was a bit too much for me to take in after traveling for about 24hrs straight. All I can say is at least it had good cable - I was even able to watch some Phineas and Ferb on the crazy Asian Disney channel with strange shows set all over Asia. 

 In the morning I was feeling a little better and we had a relatively normal breakfast with Thomas at a French bakery nearby. Then we ventured out to the local market - which happened to be one of the biggest ones in town. It was the rainy season there in HCMC, thus the need for full body tarps to keep you dry. We've never seen so much rain before; Michael says that in Missouri it would rain like that for a little while, but definitely not all day like it did sometimes in HCMC. The market was fun but crazy and overwhelming with so many people, things, and smells. Just behind me in the photo is the meat area, the next day when we came there were all sorts of things from intestines to animal brains available, yum yum!

 This is a photo of some of our favorite fruit so far. The good thing about HCMC downtown is that there were vendors everywhere so you never had to go really far to find something to eat or drink. We bought some fruit for breakfast and lunch every day. The spiky looking red fruit is called Rambutan - shout out to my friend Loli for telling me about it in the states (love you Loli!) and the one on the left is called Mangosteen. Inside the 1/4inch purple-black peel are some awesomely sweet white segments of fruit. They look like tangerine segments kind of but they aren't so stuck together. The fruit here is much sweeter than back home, but it is really really yummy.
Our first meals in Vietnam ended up ok actually, though maybe a bit more expensive than we were planning on at first as we ate in a restaurant instead of a small shop. Michael went out to eat first as I was falling asleep by 5pm, and he got a seafood soup that he really really loved. He said it was awesome except for the small pieces of shell you had to watch for. I had a bowl of Phu (pronounced fuh), the traditional soup dish here that has a broth base, rice noodles, some veggies like onions mostly, and some meat. I didn't eat a lot of the meat but it was really good soup, just what I needed to relax my nerves.

 This is a statue in the middle of a huge roundabout on the other side of the market, we should have taken a picture of the streets because it really was death-defying trying to cross. For those of you who aren't aware, street lines are kind of just for looks here in Vietnam and there aren't many stop signs, and with the large population of drivers it can get really crazy. On Friday we were going to take the bus to the Gameloft offices in HCMC to meet Thomas and the other managers for lunch, it was quite the journey trying to figure out how to navigate the bus system but we made it just fine.

 Here is the interior of a Vietnamese bus. The good thing about the bus is that it only costs like $7000VND, less than $.50USD, and they are everywhere in HCMC. Through hand signs and landmarks we were able to communicate with the lady who handled tickets on the bus and she helped us find our way just fine, though I was a bit nervous. After calling Thomas like 4 times about where we needed to go after the bus we realized we were just across the street from him, but it all went well in the end and Michael got to meet the managers at the two offices in HCMC. They took us to lunch which was an adventure - a little shop full of people with little metal tables and stools. The hardest thing for me (R) is that there was food and garbage all over the floor, something I've heard is common in Vietnam but it was quite intense for our 2nd day in country. Lunch was some rice with some pickled vegetables and either chicken or other meats by request. It was okay but my stomach still had disagreements with my choice to try and eat meat again, plus Thomas told us they cut meat differently than we are used to so there are a lot more bones in the meat and you have to be a bit careful. None of them could believe we didn't drink any coffee, alcohol, or tea, it was quite the surprise for them as they are fairly standard practice here (and probably everywhere outside of UT I'd imagine). After some hot (and cold) chocolates while the other guys drank coffee we headed back to the hotel for our crazy motorbike tour Michael arranged with some guy he met at the restaurant the night before, but that is another story.

It may be hot and muggy in the city but one of my favorite things was the fresh coconut water you could get at any of the vendors on the street. They just used a giant knife to cut a little off of the top for you and they they pop in a straw and voila! The best drink for a hot day anywhere, especially when they were nice and cold. Coconut water is full of electrolytes so it's especially good when you are sweating through 2-3 layers of clothes, like we were (honestly I don't understand how the pioneers made it with petticoats, dresses, and g's). So good!

We Made it Across the Ocean

We have made it to Ho Chi Minh! It is 1:44AM here and we are tired, and I (Risa) have already had one breakdown of culture shock, let's see how many we get before we get settled a bit. The flights were ok, the vertigo is subsiding, but it does look like a lot of the supplements (and the shampoo!) I tried to bring over were confiscated in our checked luggage :P Ah well, everything will hopefully work out fine. It sure is sticky, we are going to try to figure out the shower/tub thing in the hotel they put us in (our room is like 10ft by 10ft with a little bathroom off the side), and for $1US you can buy a little snickers bar - it is 35 grams - about half the size you would get in the states. What an adventure! We still have faith that this is a good thing, but my brain is sure getting in the way with those "What the $#@#$#@ was I thinking?" moments, though Michael feels differently - to him "it's all sunshine and miracles". 

We love you all!

Adventure Time with Mike and Risa

Adventure Time,
Come on family and friends
We're going to Very distant lands.
With Michael Brooks,
And Risa Niels-en
The fun will never end?
Adventure Time!
And thus it begins.
8 weeks ago we decided to change EVERYTHING and accept a job offer in Da Nang, Vietnam - how's that for something else in life? Over other various methods to adopt/have a family/move out of state/continue with our generally even-paced lives we decided this sounded like more fun. For the last 8 weeks, every time someone has learned of our decision to move they have said the exact same thing: "What an Adventure". I think I've heard the words at least a hundred times now - hence the name of this post (also - we TOTALLY love the show Adventure Time. For reference, see Risa's pictures of her Halloween costume last year). We hope to be reviving this blog to help stay in touch with friends and family.  More updates to come! We are currently trying to get things sorted out at the SFO airport before we travel for 13.75 hrs and 6914 miles to Hong Kong. Wow. Let's see if I (Mike) can finish a whole book before we arrive in our first Asian destination ever! Wish me luck.
We love you all!