Marble Mountain 'Mazingness

Alright peeps.  Usually there is really great stuff to say about Vietnam, as well as some crappy stuff too... but Marble Mountain is AMAZING. It's the shiz. What else can I say? First, just feast your eyes on some of the sweetness:

A sweet stone gate leading to some of the more ornate pagodas.

A sweet view of one of the Marble Mountains from up on top.

Another great view of the neighboring Marble Mountains with the city of Da Nang sprawling beneath.

One of the coolest Pagodas on the mountain. Tourists are told to rub the belly of the Buddha. 

A cool flowering tree through a stone archway. That's the way they roll in Vietnam.

The entrance to the largest cave with the giant Buddha in it.

The entrance to the large Buddha cave.

The large Buddha cave. This is where I just about died from exposure to intense awesome.

A smaller cave with alters / carvings in it.

The entrance to the cave which leads to the top of the mountain.

The cave passage emerges into the top of the mountain. So adventurous! Look at that budding Mrs. Indiana Jones. 

A sweet open-air pagoda.

A pagoda carved directly out of the cave wall / floor.

The only thing that would make this cooler is if he was doing rock-horns with that hand.

So yeah... in short, the Marble Mountains (about 15 min. motorbike trip from our house) is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. It's not exactly "hiking" (which, I admit, was kind of disappointing to me when we first arrived), but it is SUPER cool. It's one of those places that makes you really feel the power of what people hold sacred. These statues and pagodas were carved right out of the cave walls and visited by monks for centuries. The feeling of walking into a huge spacious cavern, lit from holes in the rock above, illuminating giant stone carvings and temples... it's pretty awe-inspiring.

Like everywhere else in Vietnam, however, the place is crawling with shop-owners trying to hock their wares to tourists. Eh. Oh well - the poor people around here have to make a buck somehow... We bought some horrendously overpriced marble pendants from some of the locals because they were "hand carved by their family" - then we saw the same pendants at the local market where we live for less than 25% of the price!!! Ha ha ha. Oh well. I hope they enjoyed a good meal on us.

Speaking of not hiking... people don't hike here. Like - AT ALL, as far as I've seen. It's kind of like how they swim in the ocean. The Vietnamese really only swim in the designated "roped off" areas of the ocean where there is a lifeguard watching. I have a theory - and that is that people don't want to risk running into something dangerous... In the ocean there are poisonous jellyfish, and who knows what else. In the mountains I'm sure there are spiders, snakes, and all manner of things that can be bad for your health. Not sure, but that's my theory. Nevertheless, I'd like to do a little more exploring in the mountains / forests around here. There is a lot of beautiful terrain out there and it seems like nobody is enjoying it! Anyway - got a find a way to enjoy it safely... that's the ticket.

Until next time - peace be with you. The Nielsens are off to bed.

Food for thought?

So one of the most frequent questions we get from back home is "what are you eating?" So to respond to this question are the following photos of what we have been eating, enjoy :)

Here's Michael with his first meal in Vietnam - a bowl of crab/seafood soup that he says was possibly some of the best soup he's ever had with the exception of the small pieces of shell he had to look out for (a lot of the food here has shell or bone pieces in it). This was taken in HCMC and happens to be where he met the illustrious Mr. Tham or whoever that took us on the motorbike tour.

Forbidden fruit anyone? :) I couldn't get over how weird it was to see this fruit in person, let alone full trays of them at the roadside markets. They are called waterapples apparently and taste pretty good, but very surreal. And I don't think I know anything more now either ;)

Here's a classic dish here - Pho (pronounced fuh). People around here eat it all of the time, you can get it for breakfast, lunch, or dinner if you like - and some days we actually did that before we found the grocery store. It's actually pretty good, it's a broth based soup with rice noodles, some meat of your choosing, and then you can mix in herbs like mint, coriander, or some other greens I'm not sure of, as well as lime juice, chilis, or vegetables. The drink on the left is called (phonetically) Cha Dah - which is iced tea, the standard drink around here. It's usually green tea or jasmine green tea. Michael loves it, but I'm not sure I want to drink green tea. **As an update for any worried peeps back home, we asked our branch President about the Cha dah, and he said that they generally recommend against drinking it as it is a derivative of tea and should be treated as such, so we've decided not to drink it. It may be debatable back in Utah, but here we will follow what our local leaders recommend**

Here's what the typical roadside restaurant looks like, one place we ate Pho often before we moved into our house. A lot of places we eat look like this though.

The restaurants here are nuts! Here's a pizza place, obviously. We didn't eat pizza here but we had it at a place across the street that was pretty good but didn't have much marinara sauce and our veggie pizza had corn on it, but all in all not too bad. Pizza is kind of a gourmet food around here, it's fairly expensive and only "rich people" eat there according to our Vietnamese friends.

Welcome to lunch! This is a squid dish with rice and some other veggies, which I think we got at a place for lunch where you can pick out 3 or 4 things from the various foods they've cooked that day and you get it served with rice, which is actually quite good and lots of food for 20000VND, a little less than $1.

Here's me eating something I never thought I would - my first squid - but how can you say no to a table full of Vietnamese people anxious to have you try the food? I made Michael eat the head/legs part, that was too creepy. It tastes kind of like a chewier chicken, not too bad but not my favorite either. That's Michael's coworker Minh next to me.

When we were out with Minh and the Gameloft guys they had us try the squid as well as these oysters  full of onions and garlic - my first oysters too, they were pretty good but only because they didn't taste like oysters - and the dish at the top is jellyfish (the clearer white stuff). The jellyfish wasn't too bad, but I got mine with some young mango so it gave it texture. Michael describes it as "wet gummy bears" texture, but he liked it I think.

We also got some fish soup at dinner with shrimp. They don't peel any shrimp here, you're supposed to eat them whole. Minh says the shell will "give you more calcium" - although at first he slipped and said cancer instead of calcium and we all had a good laugh. He's really nice. 

No, I didn't buy these, but I wanted proof that they have imported Kirkland brand food here just the same - totally nuts. And they cost the same as they would back at Costco too - around $12-$13, very pricey for here.

Here's another plate of lunch. I do love the stir-fried/steamed greens with garlic, so good! Michael loves the little crabs, which you are also supposed to eat whole and so he does, shell and all. He says it's very thin so it's easy to eat, but our French friends still peel them anyway and tell Michael he's strange :)

Not the best photo of me, I'll admit, but it was a great dinner. This is a fried eggplant burger from a restaurant owned by an American lady who's lived here for 15 years. It's called the Bread of Life and it has American, English, and Australian foods, but mostly classic American dishes. We even had pancakes there the first Saturday we were in town. Michael had a pulled pork sandwich and fries. The best thing we've had there so far though is that chocolate chip cookie I am eating in the photo, it was the most amazing thing ever after being in Vietnam for a while. Seriously, Grandma you would have been impressed, it tasted almost as good as yours. The message behind the restaurant is really neat, so I urge you to visit the website and check it out :)

Pictures!

So we just figured out how to get photos off of our phones, so here is a semi-random and not too timeline accurate assemble of photos from the last few weeks!

 Here's Michael and Thuy, our sweet Vietnamese friend we met at a coffee shop. We are on the Cau Thuan Phuoc bridge, the most north bridge in Da Nang. She's amazing, she's helped us a lot to find the different things that we need and she also cooked dinner for us last Sunday.

 Here's a creepy dead spider we found on our fence, I shrieked and had Thuy get it off the fence as I thought it was still alive. It's huge! Michael even freaked out a bit when he saw it.

 Here's a sight we welcome in our area - it's a lizard with a big cockroach in his mouth. I need to get me more of those...

 Here's a picture of Michael and some of his awesome designers that took us out for seafood the first week we were here. They were so awesome and ordered crazy things (to us) for dinner (in next post) and were so nice.

 Photo of our sandal tans! Mine's even worse now, I have a very distinct Z pattern on both of my feet, it's the most tan area on my body - totally nuts.

 Here's an awesome night photo of a gecko on a landscape ornament, these guys are really fun.

 These are awesome huge statues on the riverside walkway by a small sculpture park.

Another photo of the Song Han Bridge.

Here's me with our first motorbike. Michael drives this one primarily, and the one I drive is the same make only black.

Since we have a red and black one and our friend Xavier has a green one, we've jokingly nicknamed them Spiderman, Batman, and the Hulk. What do you expect from people who talk video games all day?

Nigh-time Visitors

The other night Michael was washing the dishes and I turned around to get something off of the table and just about screamed as I saw two large, black eyes staring at me over the windowsill. Turns out it was this guy:

Michael wanted to investigate so he turned the light on outside the kitchen window and the frog jumped about 5 feet away to the fence where he is sitting in the picture. He is about the size of your hand - so cool! When we opened the kitchen door to go look at him we saw this:

A toad! I tried touching him and it freaked him out and he jumped away, but stayed in the yard. I tried taking more pictures but it was dark so they all turned out fuzzy, but we sure had fun!

I must admit, while I was sitting in the house yesterday after running errands (yes, I rode a motorbike all by myself all the way across town!) listening to the geckos chirp while they wandered around on the drapes, I thought that this really is a dream come true - as a kid I always dreamed of having a house where lizards roamed around freely, and there are even frogs and toads in the backyard. 

Childhood dreams come true score 1.

Our new house!

So after looking for about a week we finally found a house to rent and we moved in on Monday the 30th. It is just 1 block away from the beach on the peninsula off of the main city, and we are starting to settle in. Here are some photos, I will update with more info in a bit:

 Here's the front

 Here's the living room

Here's the kitchen

Here's the only cupboard I will actually use because it closes tight to keep out bugs

Here's the stairs

 Here's the view from the front porch

 Here's the view from the balcony

 This is the master bedroom

Here is the second bedroom - we have been sleeping here as it was easier to find sheets for this bed than the bigger master bed at first.

Giant Buddha

So on Sunday we decided to take a drive to go see the giant Buddha statue on the far north end of the peninsula. And when I say giant, I reeeeaaalllyyy mean giant, probably about 2/3 the size of the Statue of Liberty, maybe? Here are some photos:

Here's the view from the road as we are traveling up there. The road is a little scary as it has corners, and we all know corners are just a place for taxis or buses to pass motorbikes, right? Everything went just fine though and the view was wonderful. 

Here's a view of Da Nang on the way up. 

These are the steps up to the pagoda where the monks live and the people come and worship. They were really weird to climb as they were slanted downward for the first half of the way. 

The dragon sculptures guarding the gates were really cool. 

Here's Michael at the gates looking touristy and sexy, gotta love my Mormon boy in his 

Sunday white shirt :) 

 The trees they have all over here are so amazing, we seriously have probably a dozen photos just of cool trees. They are so well taken care of and so intricate in the ways they grow. We even saw one that could be the inspiration for the sacred tree of the classic enviromentalist movie Ferngully.

This is the main pagoda on the site where people go to pray and light incense. It was a very solemn place and very quiet inside. 

Here is a view from right outside the giant Buddha - that's Michael at the very bottom to the left of the door. There is another temple inside the doors at the bottom of the statue, it is a bit small but also serene though it feels very weighty to have all of that statue above your head. 

 The view from the temple grounds outside the Buddha.

Here is another Buddha statue on site. You can see the little bunny statues on the left, they were neat. 

The ponds around were full of what I believe to be lotus blossoms, and the leaves were so awesome. This is a photo of either rainwater or dew that had collected in the leaf - they were about a foot across - and if you tilted the leaf the water would just roll around. The texture of the leaf was so smooth that the water wouldn't even leave a trace. 

Here's one of the beautiful flowers growing around in the ponds, there were many beautiful flowers everywhere. All in all it was a beautiful trip and a "a Sabbath to remember" according to Michael.

Love you all!