Gr, power outages! Just lost a post. Here's the story again:
7 of us were standing around at the dock of this main island for our bus to pick us up. Dave had given up on wearing a shirt altogether, and a Korean tour bus approached us. A young man jumped out of the bus full of giggling girls, ran over straight to Dave and without looking at anyone else, said: "Excuse me, do you want to go with us? We have an extra bed in our hotel."
The rest of us felt a bit left out. What about us?!
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Ha Long Bay
We found out yesterday that we've been an hour ahead of everybody else here in Vietnam. It's not that we've been wrong, it's that the entire country doesn't care about daylight savings time, even though it's very much active here.
We spent two scorching days in Hanoi and were ready to hit the waters at the world famous Ha Long Bay.
After a 3 hour ride on a van with members of our tour group, we arrived at the port city of Haiphong, where we continued our journey to the bay on a huge boat. Much more luxurious than the first Ha Long bay trip I went on, but that doesn't say much, because when it's 200% humidity, and air conditioning won't get turned on until 8pm, nothing can be too comfortable. The first day was mostly about relaxing, but again, hard to relax when you are soaked in your own sweat and you have nowhere to hide. Dave took some cool pictures of our visit to the "Amazing Caves" (actual name), which I'd seen before but this time around, I got to experience a paradox - inside the cave was cool, as in, temperature, but we were more sweaty than we'd ever been. I didn't think you could sweat even more in a low-temperature area! 900% humidity, perhaps?
We were fortunate to have a great group of people onboard, in particular a couple from England that has been hilarious to hang out with - they have given us new perspective on how normal citizens of other countries see the United States: it's pretty easy to poke fun of us...
Other highlights:
We spent two scorching days in Hanoi and were ready to hit the waters at the world famous Ha Long Bay.
After a 3 hour ride on a van with members of our tour group, we arrived at the port city of Haiphong, where we continued our journey to the bay on a huge boat. Much more luxurious than the first Ha Long bay trip I went on, but that doesn't say much, because when it's 200% humidity, and air conditioning won't get turned on until 8pm, nothing can be too comfortable. The first day was mostly about relaxing, but again, hard to relax when you are soaked in your own sweat and you have nowhere to hide. Dave took some cool pictures of our visit to the "Amazing Caves" (actual name), which I'd seen before but this time around, I got to experience a paradox - inside the cave was cool, as in, temperature, but we were more sweaty than we'd ever been. I didn't think you could sweat even more in a low-temperature area! 900% humidity, perhaps?
We were fortunate to have a great group of people onboard, in particular a couple from England that has been hilarious to hang out with - they have given us new perspective on how normal citizens of other countries see the United States: it's pretty easy to poke fun of us...
Other highlights:
- Incredible seafood. It doesn't get much better than fresh crab, clams, and prawns.
- Kayaking the bay - being that close to the surface of the water, with nothing but huge limestone islands all around you is a memory we won't forget.
- Trekking the jungles - I didn't appreciate almost walking mouth-open into the biggest spider I've ever seen in the wild, but being scared for my life for a good 40 minutes was pretty cool.
- Cycling Cat Ba National Park - a bit rough at times on a single-gear mountain bike from 1920, but it was all part of the fun.
- Watching Dave and the other boys jump into the water from the top of the boat, and narrowly escaping jellyfish wrath every time. Don't worry mom! We hear these guys only "hurt horribly for about a minute", no actual neurological damage. But still. I can swim, maybe 30 seconds at a time, so I'm not sure I'd ever be able to survive getting hit by one of these guys (there are a TON of them everywhere you look this time of year). Getting a little nervous about "deep water soloing"...
- Sleeping on the boat was better than expected. You have to ignore the cockroaches a bit, and the fact that you have to shower over a toilet, but waking up to an early morning thunderstorm and realizing where you are is an incredibly peaceful experience.
Hanoi
Wow! After wrapping up our much anticipated and super-successful (I may be biased) wedding on the weekend of August 24th, Ngoc and I made the painful 24hr+ journey to Hanoi in northern Vietnam for the honeymoon. I say painful in light of the 4 hrs of sleep we were running on after we closed up shop on our wedding night at 4am after an awesome Monday morning of part-ay-ing.
The fun times started without delay, as we were picked up by our hotel, the Sofitel Metropole, by their car service. Fresh cold towels, purified mineral water, today's paper, and an ipod plugged into the stereo from which we could make our music selection for the ride back (we rocked out to Elton John and "Benny and the Jets", by the way).
Immediately the magnitude of just how different this country is from the States hit me. Traffic laws are basically non-existant. The lower class is essentially the entire country, and everyone is trying to sell ANYTHING they can just to make money for basic necessities...things sold on sidewalks and street corners range from bottled water to cages of ducks to packaged rice crispy treats to 750 ml bottles of liquor. Also, there must be 50,000 motorbike taxi drivers in Hanoi! At literally every corner, there would be 2-4 guys sitting on parked scooters calling out to us "hey! moto-bay-ek?!"
Our hotel was just about the opposite of all this. It was a good place to stay the first few nights while I made the transition out of my "comfort zone" and adjusted to crazy vietnamese life. The hotel manager had arranged for a bouquet of flowers, a box of chocolates, and a note for Ngoc and myself giving his sincerist wishes for our honeymoon. What a stand-up place, that Sofitel...even though they charge a ton for any sort of amenities beyond the standard set of services (we washed an armful of laundry and it cost us $46!)
Our time in Hanoi involved some basic sightseeing and eating, along with shopping around to book our Ha Long Bay tour on day 2. We would have tried to be more ambitious, if not for the jet-lagged sleeping at 8pm and waking up at 3am. If you're ever in Hanoi, eat at Club Opera and order the Lemongrass Chicken. It's this restaurant across from the Sofitel that is pretty much as classy as you can get in Vietnam, with excellent food, drinks, and service. Oh yeah, and did I mention your bill will not exceed $30? Besides Club Opera, I don't think we paid more than $10 combined for a meal while in Hanoi. Yay for the dollar!
Next up, Ha Long Bay and our trip to Cat Ba!
The fun times started without delay, as we were picked up by our hotel, the Sofitel Metropole, by their car service. Fresh cold towels, purified mineral water, today's paper, and an ipod plugged into the stereo from which we could make our music selection for the ride back (we rocked out to Elton John and "Benny and the Jets", by the way).
Immediately the magnitude of just how different this country is from the States hit me. Traffic laws are basically non-existant. The lower class is essentially the entire country, and everyone is trying to sell ANYTHING they can just to make money for basic necessities...things sold on sidewalks and street corners range from bottled water to cages of ducks to packaged rice crispy treats to 750 ml bottles of liquor. Also, there must be 50,000 motorbike taxi drivers in Hanoi! At literally every corner, there would be 2-4 guys sitting on parked scooters calling out to us "hey! moto-bay-ek?!"
Our hotel was just about the opposite of all this. It was a good place to stay the first few nights while I made the transition out of my "comfort zone" and adjusted to crazy vietnamese life. The hotel manager had arranged for a bouquet of flowers, a box of chocolates, and a note for Ngoc and myself giving his sincerist wishes for our honeymoon. What a stand-up place, that Sofitel...even though they charge a ton for any sort of amenities beyond the standard set of services (we washed an armful of laundry and it cost us $46!)
Our time in Hanoi involved some basic sightseeing and eating, along with shopping around to book our Ha Long Bay tour on day 2. We would have tried to be more ambitious, if not for the jet-lagged sleeping at 8pm and waking up at 3am. If you're ever in Hanoi, eat at Club Opera and order the Lemongrass Chicken. It's this restaurant across from the Sofitel that is pretty much as classy as you can get in Vietnam, with excellent food, drinks, and service. Oh yeah, and did I mention your bill will not exceed $30? Besides Club Opera, I don't think we paid more than $10 combined for a meal while in Hanoi. Yay for the dollar!
Next up, Ha Long Bay and our trip to Cat Ba!
Monday, August 25, 2008
Hello!
We're back from our big weekend! We hope you all had a wonderful fantastic amazing time with us up in Tahoe, and if you weren't able to be there with us, we'll be sure to post some pictures as soon as we have them.
We have four hours until we need to begin our journey to Vietnam and have about a million things to take care of first - but we wanted to start a new blog so any interested folks can stay in touch and see what we're up to the next 3 weeks.
Stay tuned!
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