Day 19: Wrap up Saigon and travel to Siem Reap, Cambodia

Joanna surrounded by Vietnamese fine art

Today was sort of a shortened day because we are traveling. We start off at the “Fine Arts Museum.” The building was a very classic french colonial building, that had seen better days. But, that added to the charm. While the art was so-so (I know I am not an art critic, but I think it was objectively so-so), it was good to see what they call fine art. Unfortunately, communism hasn't helped the creative arts. Much of the art was similar to the pictures, paintings, drawings and portraits seen in the museums. One pretty cool aspect was an exhibit from a Japanese photographer that tried to capture the essence of cites across the world in a creative fashion. For instance, for NYC, it was a photograph of a reflection of buildings off a pond in Central Park. We wrapped up with a tour through the art galleries on the basement floor, where we had the opportunity to purchase paintings if we felt inclined. It was all nice, but no purchases, although you felt bad leaving without a purchase. Next stop was a quick trip to the market. It was mostly cheap stuff, but we picked up a Conoco hat and some purses.

For lunch , we ate at the continental hotel (where A Quiet American takes place). We finished up our time in Saigon with more shopping. I was looking for more furniture, but didn’t find anything that I was ready to purchase. We had some interesting conversations with folks about trying to view their inventory online through a website. They said that I could email them, but they didn’t have a way to send me pictures. It was sort of funny, because that conversation took about 20 minutes. Me asking how I’d view the pieces and the girl going to various people to try to interpret what I was saying. Good times.

We arrived in Siem Reap and zip through passport control. There is a nice girl waiting for us at the airport to take us to our nice hotel: The Angkor Village. She tried to teach us Cambodian on the way to the hotel. We didn’t do well. But, we taught her: awesome and cool. She seemed pretty excited about it. The hotel is fantastic. All teek wood. The room is small and the toilet and shower are the same room (ala Halong Bay). Overall, it seems pretty classy. We have a quick dinner and hang out in the bar area. We see lisa, bob and ryan and hang out with them for their dinner. Have to go to bed early, b/c we're supposed to get up early.

Its small and dark in the tunnels

John can't fit in the tunnel
Joanna is practucally sitting, these tunnels are small

Day 18: The Cu Chi Tunnels

Leave early again, this time for the CuChi tunnels, which are both eerie and awesome. We stop at the Cao Dia temple - which is "a very important religion," according to our guide. Cao Dia is somehow made up of all the world religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, etc.). Once at the tunnels, we watch the ridiculous propaganda video about the American Devils and Satans, the Heroic American Killers and the American Lackeys.

Once the video was over, we were taken to see the tunnels, including some base stations, that served as headquarters, hospitals, etc. that might require more space. They are large holes about 6 feet deep, that were covered with brush and grass. Our guide showed us an actual tunnel entrance and allowed us to try to fit in. I…um…well, I’ve haven’t lost much weight with all the walking we’ve been doing, because I couldn’t fit my belly through the tiny hole. We were shown some of the booby traps that were set up (which were very freaky and a bit humbling) as well. Its amazing how resourceful the Vietcong were in using leftover explosives to create their own explosives as well as using simple things like nails and bamboo to create deadly weapons. It was scary.
While you are walking through the jungle, peering into the tunnels, which could not be more than a few feet high and a couple feet wide (at times that’s generous), and looking at other relics, you hear massive bangs and explosions off in the distance. That’s because there is a shooting range on site. I am sure that the shooting range was only created as another way to get tourist dollars, but it really adds to the whole experience of walking through jungle. Imagine you are 19 years old, away from home, its hot and sweaty, there are mosquitoes, bugs and a surprising number of ants all around you and loud gun shots are all you hear and everywhere you step there is the possibility of a booby trap. Scary, really scary.

We made it to the shooting range, which I had been looking forward to for a while. I immediately handed over $20 for 20 M-60 bullets and my friends bought M-16 and AK-47 bullets. BAM! BAM! BAM! The M-60 was fully automatic and was awesome to fire. I did a couple sprays and my $20 was quickly spent.

The highlight of the tour was the trip through the tunnels. There are three sections (the first two are 30 meters and the final one is 40 meters) that were recreated for tourists, meaning that they are larger. However, each section gets successively smaller, tighter and darker, and ends with you popping up through a hut. We did each section and the final section was ridiculous. There was a massive puddle we had to wade through pretty much on our hands and knees. Actually, we were pretty much on our hands and knees for the entire 40 meters. We popped up hot, sweaty and exhausted from all the crawling and our tour guide lets us know that most tourists do the first 30 meters, some do the second 30, but few do the last 40. . It was fantastic. Of course the trip ended with our tour guide pointing out all the great things we could purchase – including chopsticks.

Bob, Lisa and Ryan headed off for Phnom Penh; but our love for Siagon kept Joanna and I in town for one more day. We just didn’t feel as if we had the opportunity to explore it enough. So, we headed out for lunch. The first place, Annies Pizza, is supposed to be a “Saigon Institution,” according to Lonely Planet, but it was under construction due to new management and the second place was closed from July 15-Aug 1. So, we went to a third choice. On the way we found a little café run by a Aussie that had pizza and nachos, so we stopped there.

After a quick bite to eat, we spent the afternoon shopping. While we were shopping on the street we were hounded by a three year old girl trying to sell postcards. It was sort of cute, because she would repeat over and over, “one, two, three, four, five, six., seven, eight, nine, ten. One dollar.” I started counting with her and started laughing and then I tried to shake her, by moving back and forth again and she laughed more. But, she quickly composed her self and put on the hard sell and started telling me $1 over and over again. It was very sad, to watch this 3 year old girl push postcards, while her mother was watching from down the street.

We took some time to head to a huge department store to see what that was like. It was quite similar to a Bloomindales, with one major exception. The sales clerks are just standing (not slouched), very professionally, waiting for you to enter their section. When you do, you are quickly greeted and they stand by you as you browse through whatever you are interested in. It was sort of suffocating.

We headed back to the hotel for our massages. It was pretty sketchy and not very clean. But, hey, its $15.

We eat dinner at Le Fochette, another French restaurant where we had another steak and ended the evening with drinks at Saigon, Saigon with fantastic views of the city.

The boat ride on the delta. Notice how the rower is sitting.

Joanna holding the snake

Day 17: The Mekong Delta.

We started our morning semi-early again. We made a decision that we were just not going to have enough time to head overnight for the Mekong Delta, so we had to do a day trip. Overall it was so-so. Our personal guide on the Delta was awesome; she was a cute, sarcastic and witty 27 year old. She noticed that our friend Bob was not coupled up, so she let him know that she would be his girlfriend for the day. Our first stop involved walking along a path to head to a place to eat fruit. There was a family singing (I bought the cd), what sounded like some traditional music. This should have been a good hint that there were people selling local goods; because, that was the theme for the day. The whole, "some chopsticks?" thing in Hoi An has really become a theme in Vietnam. One neat experience that we had was a trip down a small little river in a row boat. It was a great experience, mostly because we had the opportunity to see locals rowing (or motoring) past us and to see the vegetation. It really felt like a jungle environment. The experience was sort of lessened when we trip ended and we got off our boats with about 20 loud, Japanese tourists. We did some more walking around the island to sample different candies, fruits and food. Along the way we also stopped by a honeycomb and a snake. We were all brave enough to pick up the honeycomb and wrap the snake around us. There was a long break for lunch where we had some local food such as elephant ear fish, some sort of sweet rice concoction, some fantastic barbeque pork (possibly the best pork I’ve had on the trip) and of course shrimp. After lunch we headed back to our van for a long ride back, where everyone crashed.

We had some time left in the afternoon, so we quickly headed out to the market, the major result of which was the purchase of about 70 dvd’s by yours truly. Part of the fun for DVD shopping is looking at the descriptions. For instance, Hamburger Hill is a “love story.” The problem is that we can’t keep the cases, to make it easier to bring them into the country. The entire dvd purchasing took about two hours, but its well worth it just to see locals buying their dvds, to read the descriptions and of course to get a dvd for less than $1.

We ended the day with steak – this time at an Argentinean steak house called Amigos. It was fantastic and included a salad bar and bread. I ate a lot of pasta salad at the salad bar, a couple pieces of bread, my 400 g Australian rib-eye steak and a crème brule. The key piece there is 400 g. We had to do the conversion on the gram- ounces thing and I still am not sure if ordered the right amount because it was a massive steak. I did finish most of it though. I did some stretches and took some breaks to make sure there was room. At the end the waiter said that he thought that I could join the 2 Kilo club – meaning that I could finish a 2 Kilo steak. I would be rewarded with a plaque and my picture. I checked it out on the way out the door and it was mostly westerners that had completed it. On my next trip to Saigon, I will definitely try for it.

We were exhausted and didn’t go out for drinks; we have the Cu Chi tunnels tomorrow.

The Rex Hotel, where we started and finsihed our tour.

Day 16: Saigon whirlwind tour

Another whirlwind tour day. We start off at the Rex hotel, famous due to the fact that Army officers used to hangout on the rooftop deck and watch the bombing raids across the river during the war. However, since its morning, we merely meet for our walking tour there. We see Ho Chi Minh City Museum, which is actually a pretty interesting museum that has two different aspects: the first, an all around history of HCMC’s history in terms of agriculture, architecture, art, and generally how people lived in the area through the ages. The second is regarding HCMC’s place in Vietnam’s liberation, both in terms of the French rule and the Vietnam war (what they call the American War). This was mostly just preparation for the War Remnant’s museum (which was at one time called the war crimes museum). We were prepared for the massive propaganda campaign. And, it was interesting. The bulk of the museum really focused on the impact of Agent Orange on the people and there was a section on journalists lost in the war, which was particularly interesting. But, there was a lot of anti-American that was both subtle and in your face. What the museum was missing was context regarding the situation. Also, the captions don’t quite fit the picture. There were two things that stood out to me. The first is that even without context, the guest comment book was full of a lot American resentment. The second is that I realize after thinking back is that there is a lot of talk about how there were a lot of civilian and women and children casualties, while at the same time, in other museums (and somewhat here), there is a lot of talk about the youth and female involvement in the guerilla war effort and how effective the Vietcong were in guerrilla war, including the fact that many were regular people.

We tried to find a place for lunch, but the first two choices were not available. One is literally not there (the building is not there, it’s completely knocked down) and the other is under construction. We consult our friend Lisa's book (Frommers) for another option and it rocks. Joanna has Vietnamese steak; I and two others have the steak pho. Pho is soup and it is awesome. We loved our meals. And, Joanna ate Vietnamese. After lunch we head to the reunification palace, which was the Presidential Palace, but got taken over during the war. It was eire and cool walking around the Palace. It is preserved almost as it was on the day it was taken over in April of 1975, when the Republic of South Vietnam ceased to exist. On the morning of April 30, 1975, the first tanks to arrive in Saigon crashed through the front gates of Palace (a moment captured by many journalists). It’s pretty amazing how well kept the palace actually is, there were maps, communication stations, phones and even desks, that were left as they were.

After the palace we took a long walk to see the Jade Emperor Pagoda. The long walk consisted of us crossing the most complicated and busy street yet. It must have been at least eight lanes wide and there was a constant stream of cars. There was no island in the middle, but we had to step over (actually for short people like Joanna and I, we had to step on a over) a massive guard rail. One of the things that we learned early is that you have to just have to walk (not run) and don’t stop and the motorcyclists won’t hit you. So, we made up our minds and just started walking. We cheered when we had finally crossed the street and the locals all laughed at us. It was well worth it. The Pagoda is not often visited by tourists, but is a regular place of worship for many locals. It was small, had interesting architecture, full of locals and a lot of small place to explore. The architecture has Chinese influences and was very ornate. There was a constant smell of incense in the air due to all the worshipers and for such a small pagoda, there were many small, almost hidden, rooms to explore with a new god to worship.

We ended our tour, taking a cab over to the Rex Hotel for drinks on the rooftop bar to enjoy some nice sights of the city. We had to end it early though, because we had to head over to the hotel to book our trips to the Mekong Delta and the Cu Chi tunnels.

We had intended to have dinner at Lemongrass, but instead went next door to Augustin’s for French food. We had great steaks, good wine, a nice dessert and great coffee. We ended the evening at the Sheraton Hotel rooftop bar for great views of the city.

Our view from our seats on our private beach

Day 13, 14 and 15: Hoi An

Essentially, we spent three days doing one of two things: hanging out by the beach/ocean/pool or buying suits. All told I think that I got 2 suits (a fantastic black and white pin stripe one and a basic blue light pinstripe), 7 shirts (including a pink one to go with my black and white pin stripe suit and a linen one), a smoking jacket (it looks straight out of Hugh Heffner’s wardrobe), a blazer (probably the worst purchase), and a long wool trench coat all for about $500. Pretty good deal. I think I’d easily pay that much just for my smoking jacket. The smoking jacket is so ridiculous that my really cute salesperson/tailor made sure that all my friends agreed I could buy it, she kept calling it a marriage jacket. Joanna got some cool skirts, a couple of cool pairs of pants and a shirt as well. So, we had some pretty good purchases

We also had an incident where we found some really fantastic hand painted pots to buy. We wanted to pay with credit card, but for some reason the store didn’t have their machine. We would have spent about $500 on the set of pots; so we wanted to make sure that we had the insurance of the credit card company in case anything happened shipping them to us. I just don’t feel comfortable paying cash for something that expensive, much less something that I am having shipped to me. The sales person took us to the first “bank,” where they said our credit card didn’t work and the second “bank” where we realized why it wouldn’t work. Their banks are currency exchanges, which is actually not that surprising since many developing nations use currency exchange places as banks. However, they were trying to do a cash advance on our credit card (including our debit). It worked on the debit, but I don’t think that the same rules apply on a cash advance as on a transaction so we opted to cut our losses and abandon the purchase. The girl was disappointed, but I don’t want to risk it. The main issue is that it took up a lot of time and resulted in nothing.

Other than that, we hung out on the beach and by the pool for a couple of days, it was a nice break from the hectic travel.

Hi everyone, I just wanted to make sure that everyone notices that I uploaded pictures for pretty much everyday, so scroll down and check out the nifty pictures!

Day 12: Travel Day Hue to Hoi An

No pictures, check out the link in the post!


Another day of driving, this time Hoi An, a beach town just south of Danang. I bring along like 15 crepes (which is my new favorite food). The ride is actually shorter than planned and very beautiful. We didn’t have a chance to make reservations and drove directly to the Resort – the Victoria Hoi An Beach Resort. Even though we don’t have a reservation, we show up and try to get a sweet deal. I got them from $130 a night down to some sort of deal “reserved exclusively for Vietnam residents and foreign workers.” For 2 nights it was 99 per person (so, basically $100 a night), plus free hand massages, a free candlelight dinner, VAT, Service Charge and breakfast. Oh and this place has a private beach out onto the ocean. Words or my photography can not fully express how awesome this place is, so I’ve attached a link to look at: http://www.victoriahotels-asia.com/txt/pictgal.php?scat=hoi_an

As amazing as it is, we don’t have time to hang out there today, because we have to head immediately to town to shop and get suits made.
Hoi An is a beach town that is also a great place for custom clothing. We start off with a fantastic meal of western food (I had something similar to a corned beef on rye), then decide to take in some sites. Hoi An has a punch card system. You buy a punch card and you can visit one each of a different type of site (museum, assembly hall, historical house). The first place we want to visit (the trade ceramics museum) has mysteriously closed early (at like 2 pm). The next place we visit is actually pretty cool. An assembly hall that has more a basis in Chinese architecture. So, I am not any sort of architectural scholar and really I don’t have much to base this on, but based on all the architecture I’ve seen in Vietnam and China and then seeing this place today, I think I really enjoy the Chinese architecture better. Its ornate, but seems more purposeful, rather than cluttered. I also bought some incense for the prosperity god. Mostly because I like incense. The next place we went was ridiculous. It was a “historical house.” At first it seemed cool. We came in and sat down and were give our own personal tour guide who spoke about the house. Then took us back to wear they worship/respect their ancestors and had us toss two coins for good luck. Then she took us to the backroom, where there all sorts of pottery was sitting in glass cases, but…also laying out were souvenir replicas of the good luck coins. All she did is ask us if we wanted to buy them. We said no and looked disinterested, so she took us to the next room, which was a full on gift shop. She must have picked up every piece in the room to ask if we wanted it. We said no to everything and she finally looked around and saw a pair of chopsticks and said, “chopsticks, you want chopsticks?” We all said no and then tried to get out as soon as possible. Then we head to the suit store. We get fitted for suits and shirts. I started off with just one suit and one shirt…although I was eyeing more. We had to come back later in the evening for our second fitting. When we got back, we feel pretty good about the suits and we all go nuts. I bought a black and white pin stripe suit and a bunch of shirts. I also have my eye on a smoking jacket.

Dinner is fantastic, at a restaurant across the street from our lunch place. We also witnessed a westerner getting hit by a moped. The moped stopped and ran into her slightly. She landed on her butt, mostly she was just really shaken up. Dinner was again fantastic. I love eating.

Site of the Marine's "Rockpile" base during the war

Living quarters in the tunnels

In the tunnels

Day 11: The DMZ

In addition to its historical significance in terms of Buddhists monk protest and as an old capital city, Hue is also very near the DMZ and in fact played host to one of the bloodiest battles in the war. We booked a private tour guide through our hotel that we would pick up about an hour up the road. It’s important to note when we talk about riding in the car for hours. Its not as if, we hop in a van and drive 60 miles an hour on some highway. We are usually driving about 30 miles an hour (maybe less) on a road. Highways in the western sense don’t really exist here. So, the town in which we were going to pick up our guide was only about 15 -20 miles away. When our guide arrived we were initially a little unsure about how the day was going to go. He opened up our Lonely Planet book to the page which says that we can go to the DMZ bar and café (yes, my favorite bar) to get guided tours of the DMZ and emphatically stated, “Lies, all lies.” So, the DMZ guy must be taking some business from him. J He also showed us some pictures of some locals that were affected by agent orange. So, we started off sort of concerned. However, he turned out to be fantastic and very informative. He had done tours for various vets and could add some personal stories from them at certain points of the tour.

At the beginning of the tour, we basically follow Highway 9, which runs south of the DMZ and was home to a few key US Bases. The bases are mostly gone, replaced by some sort of farming. So, it was really nice to here the stories from the Vets. Some had even sent him pictures, including pictures of the bases during the war.

We took a brief stop at a “minority village.” This was nothing less than weird. Basically, we showed up at a village, where people were living and were told to walk around. Other than the fact that the we saw a woman smoking while breast feeding and witnessing total poverty, its unclear what the value was. I asked a girl if I could take a picture of her and she nodded yes and then bugged me for the rest of the visit for money. We frustratedly asked to leave early.

The end of the first part of the trip was a visit to the Khe Sanh memorial museum. This museum was basically put up do to the tourist demand to see the sight of one of the more famous battles of Vietnam. And, of course it was full of very thick propaganda. Khe Sanh was on the cover of Newsweek and Life as well as many other newspapers due a 75 day siege that occurred in 1968 and the fact that many people, including President Johnson predicted a massive battle similar to a French battle years earlier. President Johnson even had a mock up of Khe Sanh in the Whitehouse to follow the battle. According to our guidebook, it some think that Khe Sanh was merely a massive diversion, intended to attention away from South Vietnamese population centers in preparation for the Tet Offensive, which started a week after the siege began.

After a quick bite to eat (actually, it wasn’t super quick because my appetite is back and I actually ordered two crepes), we headed up to the DMZ. It was interesting to see the wartime bridge over the Ben Hai river. However, the highlight of the day was a visit to the Vinh Moc tunnels. Our guide said that the tunnels were built by the local people to protect them from bombing. While it is true that the locals lived and worked in the tunnels and that 17 babies were born there; our guidebooks said that they were used for military purposes. It was amazing to see how small they were and how little space was allocated for living (really about a 4 x 4 feet). On our way back our driver ran out of gas and had to hop a motorbike to get some more gas. Our tour guide was upset with him. So, we had to wait...outside. We were reminded to "watch out for landmines."

We headed back to Hue for a dinner at Tropical Garden, a cheesy, touristy restaurant. The highlight of the meal was when we asked for ice cream for dessert. The said they had two types: vanilla and chocolate. However, we were served a green and pink ice cream that turned out to taste more like pistachio and strawberry.

We finished off our stay in Hue with many beers at my favorite bar: the DMZ bar and café.

John and The Imperial City

Day 10: Cultural Sights around Hue

After waking up early and moving hotels, we visited the imperial city and citadel. Hue was the capital of Vietnam until 1945 when Emperor Ba Dai abdicated his thrown in 1945. However, before that, Hue became a famous center of arts, scholarship and Buddhist learning. The imperial city is really based on the Forbidden City in Bejing. It is massive and ornate. It was here that the emperor actually abdicated his thrown. We spent the morning exploring the imperial city and then headed on a boat trip to explore sites off of the perfume river.

The boat trip lasted about five hours and we spent most of that time just sitting on the boat going from site to site. Some highlights were watching the many, many boats that had families digging the sand up from the bottom of the river and piling it into their boat. They were strung all along the river. We also saw lots of other families using the river for fishing or other activities and you could tell that the boats were in fact their homes. At the end of the day, kids were everywhere in the water playing and splashing around. We saw Thien Mu Pagoda, Hon Chen Temple and Minh Mang’s Mausoleum. Two specific highlights: Thien Mu Pagoda was very beautiful and had monks living, working and training there. It also has a lot of historical significance. During the 30s and 40s it was renowned as the center of Buddhist opposition to colonialism. Its most famous pop-history artifact is the display of a powder blue Austin car. It was driven by the Venerable Thich Quang Duc, who drove the car from Hue to Saigon and pulled over at the intersection of Cach Mang Thang Tam and Nguyen Dinh Chieu. There, he sat down in the lotus position and meditated as a few monks doused him in petrol, and then set him on fire. He burned himself to death in protest of the repression of Buddhists by President Diem. As the flames engulfed him, the western press corp cameras rolled and the next morning it was on televisions and news papers across the western world (and was alos the cover of the first Rage Against the Machine album). The famous picture was also on display with the car.

Our final stop was the mausoleum. The most striking fact was that it took the king 14 years to find the right spot for the mausoleum. It was a very beautiful and serene environment, full of symbolism. We enjoyed drinks outside of our hotel on the banks of the perfume river as we watched the sun set over the mountains. For dinner we headed to Little Italy and had some fantastic pizza and so-so pasta. The pizza was really amazing.

My friend Bob, and I before our kayaking trip in Halong Bay

Day 9: Travel Day and Hue

After a quick kayaking trip to explore some more of Halong Bay, we hopped a water taxi to take another 4 hour drive back to Hanoi. At the airport, we got ripped off by some girls at one of the stores/restaurants in the airport. Their scam had a few different aspects: First, there was a small price tag on the item (coke, water, candy, snacks), that you might not have noticed, so the customer asks them for the price of the product. They typically quote something higher. Then, when the customer brings it to them to ring it up, they quickly take off the price tag (there are about 10 girls working behind the counter). Of course, it doesn’t really matter what the price is, because they punch in random prices. Finally, they tell you at the end that they don’t have enough change, so they want to give you pieces of “candy” in exchange – 1 piece per 1000 Vietnamese Dong. The thing is that they do have enough change, the candy is actually cough drops and they sell 30 for about 5000 dong. We arrive in Hue and are hounded by folks claiming to be able to take our group of five and all our luggage. Of course, when we reach the car, they try to explain that they want to put us in separate cars. This is an unacceptable option because we aren’t sure if they will take us the right place and we can’t get separated. Once on the road (all in the same vehicle with me sitting on the floor), the driver pulled off at a gas station and started unloading all of luggage. We started freaking out, but after a while realized that he was merely rearranging the luggage so I wouldn’t have to sit on the floor. Later, along the way, our driver apparently almost hit an older couple on a motorbike and they drove up next to him and started freaking out on him. Then, at an intersection, they both got off the bike and started yelling more. It was pretty exciting. We arrived at our hotel and it sucked. But, we quickly headed out the door to go to Carambole for dinner. We had to wait a half hour, so we walked over to what has now become my favorite bar of all time. The DMZ bar and café. The manager or owner (more likely manager, because I think everything in Hue is government run), was talkative and fun. There were all sorts of graffite on the wall and we had the chance to have our new favorite beer – Huda. I love that bar. Carambole was fantastic, and I am happy to report that my appetite is back in full force. I had a set menu that included about four main entrees. I also had dessert. We returned to our crappy hotel with massive rooms, so big that the air conditioning was effectively useless. That’s not all though, our room came equipped with cockroaches (not one, but many) and some gekkos (the gekkos actually don’t really bother us at this point). The bed itself was a hard piece of foam. It was fantastic.

While this is a bad picture, i thought it was important to place the picture of John McCain's flight uniform that was displayed at the Hanoi Hilton.

Looks like I forgot Day 7.

And, again, its really difficult to upload the pictures...

Day 7: Shopping Day and Hanoi Hilton.

First off, starting last night, I started having my first issues with the food, that plagued me throughout the day. I took some Cypro though in the morning and by the next day, I felt fine. But I spent the majority of the day just feeling bad.

We spent most of the day shopping, but started off the day with a sobering trip the Hanoi Hilton, where John McCain was jailed for five years. The prison was used by the French before the North took over Hanoi. The descriptions were mostly focused on the harsh treatment that the they faced while in the prison. Again, the propaganda was pretty thick. They had a large room dedicated to the American pilots that were there and tried to contrast the brutal treatment under the French with their claim of hospitable treatment of Americans. They had John McCain’s uniform, showed pictures of US Soldiers and had the propaganda information they used during the war to show how well the soldiers were treated. It was very interesting.

We headed over to the markets to do shopping. We spent some time on the cds and dvds but spent a good portion of the day buying silk, bamboo dishes, pictures and other goods. Our big purchase and something that we’re pretty excited about is the purchase of an all wood bar. Closed, it just looks like a cabinet, but you can open the doors, which have space for liquor bottles, and inside there is space for alcohol supplies, wine bottles and glasses. The top folds out to become a table. I think it will go great in our new place. We also think we got a good deal on it and if it turns out that we like it we have an email address of the shop and we can ask for other pieces of furniture. We purchased a couple of other things and as a gift, the owner gave Joanna a little lacquer box.

After a full day of shopping, we headed out to dinner at the Emperor. The Emperor was definitely more upscale and more expensive than Indochine, but it was amazing food and presentation. It was also the only place that we’ve been where we actually had to ask them to turn down the fans because we were cold. A few of us had the soft shell crab and it was fantastic.

We said goodbye to Thanda and her friend; as we are off to Halong Bay tomorrow.

John and Joanna on the boat in Halong Bay

The beauty and floating cities of Halong Bay

Day 8: Halong Bay.

All I can say is beautiful. We said goodbye to our contact at An Tours and hello to our Halong Bay tour guide: Hung (pronounced Hon), apparently it means Hero. So, we called him that too. After a late start and a four our drive to Halong Bay, we finally made it to our boat. Our group of five was on a pretty big boat with two other couples from Australia (actually one couple is working in China). The boat’s top floor had a place for hanging out on the boat deck with nice relaxing, wooden lawn chairs. Two large tables with chairs, a fridge, a very large cooler, and a bar occupied the inside. The first floor housed our cabins, which were small but comfortable. Of note was that toilet sink and shower were in one room. So, if you wanted to you could shower on the toilet. We were surprised at how well it worked. It’s still very hot in Halong Bay, so we were happy to see that there was an air conditioner in the room that kept it quite cool. We didn’t spend much time in the room though, because the views were so amazing. Halong Bay is full of large rocky formations that jut out of the water, probably up to 1000 feet (check the picture!). We started off with a great lunch of crab, shrimp, soup, squid and fish. It might be one of the best meals we’ve had. As our boat took us on a slow ride out to the first stop, we realized (through Lisa’s guidebook), that our boat is the best boat in the Bay. In addition to the beautiful scenery, we noticed actual fishing villages in the middle of water. There were clusters of about 15 or so boat houses. Our tour guide told us that the Vietnam government and the UK (actually aren’t sure if that’s right, he may have meant the UN), are providing additional funding and incentives for the children to go to school (which is out in the water as well).

We arrived at a massive cave that was only discovered in 2000 and then climbed up 436 steps to the top of one of the rock formations. I told my Ned and Ed joke to my friend Bob, who didn’t hear it when we climbed up the steps to the Great Wall a year ago. The view was so pretty nice. We had another awesome dinner of the same food mentioned above, cooked in different ways and spent the evening drinking beers and hanging out on the boat. Rough life!

John and Joanna at the Mausoleum

The Hanoi Traffic

Day 6: The Whirlwind Tour of Hanoi

By the way, I am having trouble uploading photos. Unfortunately, the internet in Vietnam is slow and difficult.

We started the day somewhat early, as we had a lot to do and some of the sights close early. We started off at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and Museum. A long line of mostly locals stretched for quite a while. There was a very strict process of first dropping off your bag sans camera and cell phones, the grabbing a bag in which to place the camera and cell phones, the giving them a bag. We fortunately got to see a changing of the guard. Once inside, we were quickly ushered through and past Ho Chi Minh’s body. Very weird. The next step was a tour through Ho’s house and office. The most interesting piece was the museum. The museum described the life of Ho, focusing largly on his work in building the communist party, the war against the French and the war against the Americans. It was our first experience with the propaganda machine regarding the Vietnam War. However, it was somewhat air-conditioned.

The next step was the War Museum, a full on, propaganda machine. It was largely focused on the war with the French, but there were some pieces regarding America, including a monument of shot down American planes.

The final step of sightseeing was the temple of knowledge. A place where many people came to study Confucius. While it is beautiful and would have been nice surroundings to study, I think it would have been too darn hot to learn anything. Exhausted, thirsty and a bit hungry, we headed to a café for lunch.

We ate at the KOTO café; KOTO stands for Know One Teach One and they take kids of the street and teach them the culinary arts. Bill Clinton even stopped by when he visited. We were hot, sweaty and tired when we arrived and initially disappointed when it looked as if they were full. But, fortunately, they gave us each a foot high stool to sit on, a cold, wet rag and a drink menu. We were able to refresh ourselves with a cold drink while we awaited a seat. The food wasn’t bad and the service was very friendly. We definitely took our time before we headed out for our walking tour.

During the walking tour, we took in the Hanoi experience: shops and food stands, walking across a busy intersection as mopeds and motorcycles zip past (you can’t run or stop, otherwise they will hit you, you just have to walk and know they will avoid you), constant bombardment from people wanting to give us rides (they must have thought us crazy for walking). One of the things we noticed was how different categories of merchandise are allocated to different streets; a street for hardware, a street for auto parts and repair, a street for baby supplies, etc. We even found a few places for shopping the next day. One purse store gave all the guys seats and told Ryan that he was handsome. We ended the day booking a day trip through An Tours to Halong Bay. They’ve been so great to deal with through the Visas that we felt good using them for our trip to Halong Bay. While we’re all not big fans of using guided tours, it seemed to make sense for something like Halong Bay. Our contact also got us a good deal on tickets to Hue.

We met up for dinner at Indochine with another friend from school and her friend. Indochine came highly recommended and was fantastic. We ate a lot of great food for pretty cheap (thanks Neil!). After dinner we headed over to Apocalypse Now, because I thought it was supposed to be good. I’m sure on the right night it would be great, but we just weren’t in the mood for loud ridiculously thumping techno music. Without even having a drink, we headed over to Bobby Chins. A cool chill atmosphere with Hookas. We lounged in the back for a beer and a Martini.

Joanna and I on an Elephant

Day 5: Travel Day and Elephants

Today we had to travel back to Bangkok where we’ll meet up with our friends, Bob, Lisa and Ryan and then to Hanoi. Just a little background on the trip to Hanoi: we didn’t think to get our Visas until about a week before we left, which was not enough time. So, our friend Bob found a tour company based in Vietnam to help us out. In order to make this happen, we had to book flights to Hanoi when we sent in the paperwork to the tour company (when we were back in the States). We weren’t able to do e-tickets, so we figured we would just pick them up at the airport. A few days into the Bangkok trip we discovered that I needed to confirm the tickets. I of course did not do this right away. When I called, I found out that I could not pick them up at the airport and that I had to go to the office. Long story short, we weren’t exactly sure when we were going to have to leave Chiang Mai, how we were going to get our tickets to Hanoi and once we arrived, if we were going to have a Visa to enter Vietnam. We made some calls and discovered that we might be able to get our tickets at the airport before the flight (although previously we were told no). We arrived at the airport and went to Air France, which was closed. So we went to the ticket desk and they found someone to open the office. There were some issues because we didn’t have a Visa. After promising them that we had one and they needed to trust us, they gave us our tickets. We met our friends and got on the plane.

I guess, somewhat surprisingly, there was someone waiting for us in front of the Passport line, just as they had said in the email. He walked us through the process and we were in Vietnam.
During our cab ride to the hotel, the driver asked us about every 3 minutes if we had already booked at the hotel that we were driving to. Literally, the guy never stopped asking. And then he asked if we wanted him to take us to another hotel. Along the way, we had the chance to drive through the old quarter, which was amazing. Hanoi was such a stark contrast to both Chiang Mai and Bangkok. A busy and bustling city with even more people driving motorbikes and scooters, without all the tall buildings that make Bangkok seem very Western. The streets were lined with the locals sitting on foot high stools eating dinner at some local food stand.

We quickly checked in and headed out to dinner at Bar 69. It was an interesting hole in the wall, frequented by backpackers in the Old Quarter. We chose this bar because they were open later than other restaurants. Hanoi (or Vietnam) has a rule (that is somewhat followed) that says that restaurants and bars can’t stay open past 11. So, as we sat down, they waiter let us know that we had a half hour to order and eat. We ordered some cheap beers and cheap food. It wasn’t bad. Although, the Hanoi beers were probably not the best beers we’ve had. While we were eating we saw a cockroach, which was exciting. Overall, all five of us ate and drank for $15, which is a pretty good deal.

John and Joanna at the Cooking School

Day 4: Experience Thailand

After getting up early and switching to the Sheraton hotel, we headed of to a day of Thai cooking school. The Thai Cookery School was fantastic. After picking us up at the hotel and bringing us to the office, they gave each person something to purchase at the local market. I had to purchase potatoes and Joanna had to purchase mint. Once we had our ingredients we headed out to the secluded and beautiful school, in a gated community that included an equestrian club. We had class inside and cooked outside. Which was nice, because as I’ve mentioned, it’s hot in Thailand. So, we would learn how to cook a dish, and then we would go outside and cook our individual dishes. There was some pressure not to mess it up, because you were cooking for yourself. We cooked a fried noodle with chicken dish, chicken curry, minced fish in banana leaf, peanut chicken, a chili shrimp salad and banana in coconut milk (we may have cooked more). I couldn’t believe how easy it was to cook everything and we’re excited to try out our new cooking back home (especially the curry).

Cooking was exhausting and filling, but we fortunately made it out to the Antique House for dinner. We ate outside, serenaded by a thai singing western tunes. The Antique House is frequented by tourists, but it was a fun place with great cheap meals. We ate food out of a coconut and drank the “Antique Special” out of a pineapple (I think it was just a mai tai in a pineapple).

We headed over to the night bizarre again where we picked up a few things.

While in Chiang Mai, we haven’t encountered many Americans. We’ve definitely run into our fair share of Westerners and Aussies. But, there really haven’t been many Americans here. I think that is because many other countries have longer vacations than we have here. A four week trip is nothing for them.

John with the Monks

Day 3: Travel to Chiang Mai.

After a morning spent figuring out how exactly we’re going to get to Hanoi, we headed to Chiang Mai.

We arrived at the Imperial hotel and realized that we should have been staying at the Sheraton. The Imperial is about $12 per night cheaper, but it was not that great and the people didn’t really seem to either know anything about Chiang Mai or want to help. We didn’t have too much to think about it though, because we had to quickly head over to the Monk Chat. That’s right, a monk chat. For free, a temple where Monks are studying (I don’t know if its quite a monestary) offers westerners the opportunity to come in a chat. It supposedly gives the Monks an opportunity to practice their English and the Westerners an opportunity to chat with monks. It sounds cool on paper. Well, in practice…it was interesting, but the conversation was a struggle. The first Monk that we spoke with was not very knowledgeable about Buddhism, didn’t speak English very well and really wasn’t that interesting to speak with. He invited his friend over later in the conversation and he spoke a bit better English and was also able to explain a bit more about Buddhism. There were a couple things we learned:
Essentially, these guys can’t marry or get jobs unless they leave the country to get educated, study to become a monk or go into the military
The two that we spoke to, although very into the Buddhist faith, basically said that it was a free way to an education. That they couldn’t afford any education in their home country (Cambodia) and that studying to become a monk was free…which leads to the third.
The first four years is essentially a liberal arts/theology degree. There is some focus on Buddhism, but the bulk of their studies are in math, science, history, philosophy, and other world religions.
In this initial phase, they have 10 “precepts” they have to follow, I think these are them:
No Killing (they emphasized this a lot!)
No stealing from people you don’t know
No misusing sex
No lying (they also made a big deal out of this one)
No singing (there wasn’t really a good reason for this)
No stealing from someone you know; but I think you they meant that they can’t take anything unless it is given to them.
No make up
They talked about meditation and what not, but you have to understand it was a very difficult conversation since they didn’t speak English well (that is the purpose of this; to practice their English). So, its possible that some of this was a language barrier. Overall, it was neat, but not a highlight.

We had dinner at restaurant recommended by both Lonely planet and the rough guide for very authentic Northern Thai food. We were disappointed. It was mostly dead, and the people there were westerners. And, the food was not really that great. After the dinner, we headed to Chiang Mai’s well known night bizarre. At first we thought it was just a bunch of crappy stands selling cheap clothes and souvenirs. It turned out that inside the main building, there were some nice, higher quality items to be purchased. We walked around a bit, but got tired (I think from the malaria pills, that we took at dinner).

Day 2: Bangkok Culture

The word for the day is appetite. As in, I don’t think I have one. Its not the food. What food I’ve eaten has been fantastic. I really like the food. And, I like eating. Typically, I eat when I am hungry and stop eating when I am full. Well, the thing is that I am not hungry. A few people think that it’s the heat. Last night we had dinner with an old coworker of Joanna’s, who has been in Bangkok for over a year, and she said that she didn’t eat much at all for her first two months because it was so hot. Its weird, I’ve never not had an appetite.

Anyway, yesterday we started off the day with a trip on the skytrain (a light rail system), to Siam Square for some shopping. The sky train is new, nice and most importantly fast. It took us about 15 minutes in air conditioning to get to the square. Before the sky train, a taxi would have taken about ½ hour to 45 minutes and we can’t be sure that it would be air conditioned. It dropped us off in the center of Siam Square, the center of Bangkok commerce.

The square is full of teenagers and 20-something buying the latest fashions, latest cell phone gadets or cheap jewelry. It’s organized in 7-10 small blocks. Each block has a new sound system or tv screen blaring the latest in western pop-culture music or music videos. We spent most of the day walking around the shops and even bought some stuff. We also found a place to get Japanese Facials (including facial massage), it was about $10 for each. After the massages, we checked out MBK, Bangkok’s largest shopping mall. It was huge and had a nicer selection of clothes and accessories.

In the middle of our shopping extravaganza, we checked out the Jim Thompson house. Jim Thompson worked for the CIA and then got involved in the silk trade. He had studied architecture and built a fantastic, traditional Thai home with some Western twists. The tour was nice and the house was really interesting. The best part was that it gave us ideas for traditional Thai items to purchase that might fit into our place.

After a short break, we headed to dinner with Joanna’s old co-worker. The dinner was outdoors and there was a ton of sea food. But, as I mentioned above, I didn’t eat anything because I haven’t been too hungry.

After dinner, we met our friends Ryan and Lisa out at a bar in the Pad Pong area. This are includes a Night Bizarre and the famous sex bars. We started off at a bar called Reillys, an Irish pub with live music and good drink specials. The liver entertainment involved a guy with a guitar singing American classics (including a lot of Neil Diamond), reading lyrics from a laptop. It was like this guy’s karaoke dream come true.

After a couple drinks we headed out into the Bizarre and walked through the Pad Pong area. It was very…enlightening.

More later.

The Reclining Buddha

Day 1: First of all, it’s hot. Second of all, it’s hot. Third of all...well, it’s hot.
This is probably not a very exciting post; I promise that they'll get more exciting as things move on.

We visited the Grand Palace, the Emerald Buddha and the Reclining Buddha. I don't have very good pictures of any of these, but I'll post what I have. We also got a 45 minute foot massage, got lost 2 or 3 times and met a friend out for drinks. We started off the day with a very good western/Thai breakfast. It included bacon, eggs, shrimp fried rice and lots of fruit and fruit juices. The fruits here are amazing. Very tasty. And I don't even like fruit. Joanna had about 10 glasses of the pineapple juice.

After our filling breakfast, took a water taxi to the Grand Palace and the reclining Buddha. We actually got on the wrong water taxi and got off a stop too early. Either way, the stop is in the middle of the two sites we had to see. When we were outside of both temples, people would come up to us and tell us the temples were closed. Both the hotel folks and our guidebooks warned us that this would happen, so we just said that we were going to check them out anyway. It’s unclear why they do this. Really, it’s not like they offered to take us anywhere else.

Here is a link to a description about the Grand Palace:
http://bangkokmag.infothai.com/gp_palace.htm
Here is a link to a description of the Reclining Buddha: http://www.thailandguidebook.com/watpho01.html

After some site seeing, we searched for about an hour for a specific massage place. We walked up and down and back and forth. Finally, we saw the cardboard sign. It was good times and felt really good. We grabbed a late lunch/early dinner of, you guessed it, fried rice at a side restaurant and then headed back to the hotel.

After a short nap and a shower we headed out for drinks at a couple of hip clubs with Regina, a friend from school, who is working in Bangkok this summer. We went to the Met for a couple of hours. Regina tried to get us free drinks because she works for Diagio. It didn't work. Either way, it was a hip bar that didn't seem to be happening because, well it was a Monday night.

My impressions so far:
Thai folks are always smiling; they seem to be pretty good natured.
It’s hot. Our clothes were drenched in sweat.
As some of the pictures show, the temples and everything in them are very ornate and detailed. It’s amazing that so much detail was apparently put into something as seemingly insignificant as a box.

I'll try to get better with the pictures. We'll have more later.

Here are a couple pictures from outside our hotel.

A picture of the city and a picture of the river, with all the river taxis.

Well, after about 24 hours of travel, we arrived at our hotel in Bangkok last night at about 11.30 pm. The hotel is nice and is supposed to be one of the best in the world. Here i the website: http://bangkok.peninsula.com/iflash.html.

The travel was long- espcially Chicago to Tokyo. Coach was not fun. We had a three hour layover in Tokyo, in which nothing exciting happend. when we went to get on the plane, we got a surprise though; they upgraded us to Business Class. I have never been so excited about upgrading. It just hit the spot. Joanna and I hit the chairs and crashed. It was fantastic. Then, when we arrived at the hotel last night, they letus know that they upgraded our room as well.

So far, no major impressions.

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