Vietnam Day 9, Why you should respect vietnam vets

When we were planning this trip, a visit to the mekong delta sounded like a good idea. Floating villages, unspoiled vietnamese countryside, getting away from the city for a while. It all sounds great on paper. It actually looks a little different in the execution. A small bus came to pick us up at our hotel, and that ride turned really weird when two old British guys got on with two young vietnamese girls in tow. It's hard to ride along with people that you can't really make eye contact with. We got out of our small bus and got into an already mostly full bigger bus, and we couldn't even sit together. So that was lame, and it was pretty damn warm on the bus. I sat next to a nice young lady from Japan, who was wearing jeans and a sweater. So I'm sitting there sweating my behind off, and she's wrapped up like it's a foggy SF summer day. It's a long ride down to the Mekong, You stop at a big Buddhist temple, and then you get out, ride in a few boats of different sizes, check out some coconut candy making, check out some honey making and then get back on the bus for the really long ride back to HCMC. We ran into some traffic too, and didn't stop to go to the bathroom on the way back. Which made the ride hot, long ,boring and uncomfortable. When we got back to Saigon, we got a shower and decided to treat ourselves to the Buffet at the Renaissance Saigon. We stopped on the way at the Saigon Beutiful shop (104 Nam Ky Khoi Nghia st dist 1 HCMC) and found some really cool purse for W. After some shopping, then we made our way to the Renaissance. Yes it says the dress code is casual, but don't actually take their word for it, Most of the other guests are European, and dress smartly for casual occasions. You will probably be the only grown man wearing shorts. The seafood at the buffet is absolutely fantastic. They have lobster tails and shrimp and crabs and oysters and clams on ice, and when you walk up to them, someone asks you how you'd like them done. Grilled, steamed, steamed with lemon grass., thermidor are among the many options. Same for steaks that are just resting on the ice waiting for you. We were seated at a table near the front of the restaurant, right near where the wine was kept. Since it's all you can drink (more juice from Chile) our location near the wine holder meant that we were constantly being re-poured. We really liked our waiter, and when he'd come to ask if we wanted more I finally trained him to know the answer was always yes. I got my money's worth that's for sure. So the lesson for the day is that our boys who came to Vietnam and had to fight survived absolutely garbage conditions. It's a hard country to be a tourist in, and friendly people welcomed me at every turn, I can't imagine being there on hostile terms.

Vietnam Day 8 Life's a beach

Day 8 was intended to be a lazy beach day, but if you're following along at home, you'll know we hadn't seen the sun since we arrived in Da Nang. Let's start with breakfast. My hope is that if I have lived a very good life, Heaven will have a Pho bar like the one at sandy beach. You get to hand select your meats and vegetables, and add as much or as little of the herbs and spices as you like. They have big pots of broth just waiting for you to show up and eat. Hoisin and chili sauce are also in plentiful supply. Let's just say it's a great way to start any morning. So as we were finishing our delicious breakfast, the clouds parted, and suddenly going out to the beach actually seemed kind of appropriate. We went far enough to stick our toes in the water. For the record you don't actually get to swim much there in the winter time, because the surf and the currents can be really strong. Since swimming was out of the question and none of the beach chairs were out. we decided to just sit around the pool deck instead. That was a far superior choice, since drinks and snacks were readily available. In the afternoon the resort runs a shuttle to Hoi an, so we took it to get some lunch, we ended up back at the Before N Now where for a change of pace we had some pizza, then we went back to the Be Be one more time to pick up W's stuff and then cought a cab back to the resort. We packed up, and for some reason our guide came with us to the airport, but we liked him so we didn't mind, and we were on our way from danang to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). The rule is you can pretty much call it whatever you like, as long as it's one of those two things, so have at it. We got in late but still had time to visit the Ben Thanh night market. We had a really fantastic dinner at a restaurant in the market as we tried to get used to the 10 degree warmer temperatures and the significantly higher humidity. It was finally our first meal in a plastic chair at a plastic table, which is how everyone else in Vietnam is eating. so it makes you almost a local. We settled in for the night at our really great room at the golden central saigon and crashed for another big tourism day to come.

Vietnam Day Seven: The long haul to Hue

We got up early on day seven to take the really long trek out to Hue. Unfortunately for us, the travel agent recommended going out to Hue and spending the night there, so you don't have to make the long trek both ways on the same day, or flying from Hue to Saigon, but both of those suggestions came after we'd already booked our flights, so we were in for the long haul. The best part of the drive is the Hai Van pass a beautiful winding coastal road that makes the road from Monterrey to San Francisco look like childsplay. Like most of southeast Asia you spend a decidedly uncomfortable amount of time on the wrong side of the road passing other cars and trucks and mopeds and animals and children on bikes, but eventually you arrive in Hue. We had the same tour guide and driver as the day before, so by this time we knew what to expect, which meant probably a little too much time in the little details of imperial successors, a good bit beyond the scope of our collective attention span. But it was mostly interesting and had just enough of the royal intrigue to keep W entertained. The best news was that the we at least drove ourselves off to somewhat better weather. After the Hue Citadel we had a little lunch at the tropical garden restaurant, where we randomly bumped into another American couple from our cruise. It's noteworthy here that we didn't run into that many Americans on our travels, which, given some of the reactions I got when I told people where I was going, isn't all that surprising. After a really tasty lunch we took a little drive up the hill to the Tomb of Khai Dinh, which was the the more visually impressive of the two sites. If you gotta die, I guess I'd recommend building yourself something like this so that people don't forget you, since even a guy like me still knows about Khai Dinh, these many years later. To be honest though, I hope someday if my life warrants a wikipedia entry, it's a little more flattering than his. We took the Hai Van tunnel back into Da Nang, which makes the trip a good deal shorter. We had our guide take us back into Hoi an for a fitting, and ended our night with dinner at the Cafe Can 74 Bach Dang st Hoi An. Of course we managed to make some more friends from down under there, who we promised someday to come visit. How did we meet them you ask? The night before when we were in the Tailor shop a lady grabs me and says will you try this on, you're about the same size as my son. So I try it on, and tell her what I think of it, and ask how much she'd sell it to me for. We laughed for a while about it and assumed our paths would never cross. The next night as we're wandering around looking at menus, trying to figure out where to eat, someone seated at a table says the food is really good, you'll like it. I look up instantly recognize her as the crazy lady who made me try on her leather jacket, and say ok we know we like your taste, we'll come eat here. We chatted with her and her group most of the night and warned them that they should not invite us to visit, because we would take them up on their offer someday. We eventually made it back to the hotel and had a drink at the bar with one other person this time, still mostly convinced that there was nobody else fun staying at our resort.

Vietanam Day 6 Insert My Son Joke Here

Day six was really about survival tourism. The weather was completely uncooperative, but we'd already paid for a full day tour and the guy showed up in the morning so off we went. We took the drive out to My Son, and my shoes were dry for about 10 minutes before a day of trudging through the mud around and ancient temple caught up with them. The tour guide we went with was a heck of a nice guy, but got the strangest growl in his voice when saying certain words in English. Particularly interesting was the way he'd say Champa People, a phrase that still induces a solid bout of giggling if I do the accent around W. I of course was in no position to make fun of anyone's pronunciation on this trip since I'd learned exactly 5 Vietnamese words before showing up in the country. Two of them were Choi oi, an expression of surprise or flabbergastedness that my mom taught me in the airport. There are a couple of ways to do this tour, either with a group or with a personal guide, and while you get more interaction with your personal guide and you get to see what real Vietnamese life is like a little, if the guide is really into it, he'll keep talking about stuff long after your attention span has checked out for the day. We spent 3 hours there, when an hour would have been more than sufficient. The take home message: the place probably once rivaled other historic temples, but using it's high points for communication towers during a war will get the crap bombed out of it. We have all missed out on something pretty cool because of this, but that which remains is still beautiful to look at and interesting to learn about. On the way out or on the way in you catch the "authentic" Champa style dance show, where it's pretty easy to see the Indian influence. We showed up just as it was beginning and had to stand at the back of the little covered area, but I don't really think we missed anything but the opportunity to get close up photos of a thing we weren't terribly impressed by anyway. So my advice is don't waste your time getting there early to get a good seat, there's plenty to see elsewhere. The second half of the day we spent touring the historic town of Hoi An. Hoi An is a beautiful little town, with lots of old buildings and about a hundred tailors and shoe makers, but also lots of fun little restaurants competing like crazy for your tourist dollar. We had lunch in a place where we got our first taste of the tourist set menu. It sounds bad, but actually leads you to try somethings on the menu that you might not normally try. It's how we first discovered a local specialty the white rose a shrimp dumpling served with dipping sauce. .We subsequently ordered them with every meal that we could. Restaurants like Tam Tam where we had the 7 course tasting menu are the reason we came back heavier than when we left. 7 courses for 2 plus a few Beer Hanois, and suddenly you're bringing home some extra "baggage". Our tour continued for a little too long once again, but we eventually found our way to a great little bar and coffee shop that we went back to a couple of times called Before and Now, they had good snacks and pizza as much as I hate to admit it, and free wi fi. We eventually settled on a tailor shop recommended by old traveling buddy Dave, who had been here a mere two weeks before us. We got lots of dress shirts and pants for me at Be Be Design. Someone there even recommended a place for us to eat dinner, so we ended our night in Hoi An at the Mermaid Restaurant. We had a cool table right outside the where a bartender was working. He took really good care of us mostly because we were right there under his nose, and there was no place to sit in the bustling indoor area. The food was great, and you can be sure we had a big plate of white rose. We managed to stay out in the crap weather the entire day, and I was pretty sure I might never see dry socks again, but we managed to be strong all day and finish off a great day of tourism.

Vietnam Day 5 Power shopping, and heading south

Day 5 started out with me learning a lesson the hard way. The first rule of travel to Hanoi is simple: Wear a nice pair of shoes while walking in the city, or buy yourself a new pair upon arrival. I wore an old pair of shoes that I intended to only be making a one way journey, and was constantly hounded by an army of guys carrying a plastic shoe repair kit with glue. Sometimes if I stood on a curb too long I'd look down and see one of them trying to super glue it while I was standing there. I must have waved off 50 of them in my 2 days spent in the city. So I had decided I'd finally say yes to one, but I shouldn't negotiate and do currency conversion first thing in the morning because I agreed on a $10 dollar shoe repair job for a pair of shoes I'd paid $20 for in China. Lessons Learned (To be fair he did hand stitch them back together pretty nicely, it was my poor negotiation that was the problem). After my shoe error we found W some really lovely dresses at Ngoc Anh Fashion (92A Haing Gai Str. Hanoi) . The lady managed to turn them around quickly enough for W to order them and have them delivered to the hotel same day. We never actually agreed on a time with our travel agent, so there were some nervous moments in the lobby when the car hadn't arrived yet, and then traffic sucked so we got to the airport about 30 minutes before departure and weren't sure they were actually going to let us on our flight. They did and were actually pretty cool about it, but we decided we'd be a little firmer about times with the travel agent for our two remaining airport trips. We flew Vietnam airways, which was mostly underwhelming service/airplane wise, but it was safe and on time, so who's to complain. We arrived in Da nang to warmer and more humid weather, and by more humid I also mean pouring rain. We were staying at the Sandy Beach Non Nuoc Resort which is kind of a long cab ride from everything but really a nice little place to stay. We were picked up at the airport and delivered safely to our hotel, and the driver let us know it was him who'd be picking us back up in the morning. We ate a late dinner at the hotel restaurant which was quite enjoyable, and then went out to the patio bar, which was even more enjoyable. We were the only guests we saw at the hotel that night, and relished in the off season travel glory of it all. No camera use this day, so a short post for day 5.

Vietnam Day 4 Back Cruising Back to Hanoi

We were awake early on the fourth day mostly because we didn't believe what time our guide said the sun rise would be, so we didn't wan to miss it. You won't believe this, but we were the first people out of our cabin on our boat, and on the two other boats we could see nearby. That gave us some really lovely quiet time in the bay by ourselves, and we sat quietly and watched the sun come up as others slowly made their way to the upper decks. A reasonable breakfast was served that included a pho, and then we got ready to go out to a floating fishing village. That's got to be a strange life, living in a floating village, watching the crazy tourists wander in and out all day. They even had little fish farms where a net would hang below the floating wooden platform and the people would catch small fish and feed them until they were big enough to eat. The more active species would really get after bait thrown into their cage. They also had pearl farming demonstrations and pearls and artwork to buy of course. A little Vietnamese lady rows you around in a boat for a while, which was almost as nice as the kayaking, especially since you weren't doing any of the work. The trouble was you did have to deal with the guilt of an impoverished old lady rowing your fat butt around for an hour. The boat serves an a la carte lunch while cruising back, and you get some time to sit out on the deck and have a few beverages while you make your way back to halong city. We had to wait a little bit four our travel agent's bus to come back and pick us up, but eventually it did and we made the long trek back to Hanoi (with a stop midway at the same tourist trap). Oddly enough the bus didn't even bring us back to our hotel, when he got close he unceremoniously dumped us out about 2 blocks away and left us to fend for ourselves. Fortunately the walking tour left us familiar enough with our immediate neighborhood to get back to where we belonged.We did some more wandering about town and mostly just had a lazy evening out, and a stop in for a beer at the little cafe across from our hotel turned into a stop for several beers and eventual dinner at a place we were referred to by our new ozzie friends. Our friends on the boat talked non-stop about a place called New Day on 72 Ma May in Hanoi. I don't always buy tripadvisor.com reviews, but in this case (it's the #6 restaurant in Hanoi) it earns the lofty billing. The food was cheap but fantastically delicious, and the service was great too. We even sprung for a bottle of wine (Chilean imports are common for some reason) and didn't feel gouged by its price. We left stuffed, and waddled all the way back to our hotel.

Vietnam Day 3 Cruising Halong Bay

We were up early for breakfast on day 3, since the bus for our Halong bay cruise was coming for us at 7. A tour guide came in and grabbed us from the hotel lobby and we jumped into a bus headed for Halong city. There were a few others on the bus with us, but none headed for the same boat we were. They drive for two hours, take a little break at a super touristy gift shop. then another hour or so to the docks. The bus dropped us off at the docks and we sat around kind of awkwardly for a while until someone gathered us up and, explained what the plan was and then put us on a little boat out to our junk, Indochina Junk's Dragon Pearl. The boat starts to cruise almost immediately and they sit you down for a welcome dring, check in, a briefing and then a really amazing 9 course lunch. The seafood was incredibly fresh and delicious, and it is well presented. We made fast friends with the other English speakers on the boat, including a really fun group of 6 from the land down under. We went on a short cave tour of the Thien Canh Son Cave and then took a really great little kayaking trip around some of the rock islands. It was the most relaxing and beautiful part of the trip. After Kayaking we spent some chill time on the beach watching the sunset, then headed back to the junk for drinks and dinner. Dinner was even more impressive with multiple courses, and detailed food sculptures. We stayed up for a long time drinking and chatting and then went to sleep in our really cute little cabin.

Vietnam Day 2 A long walk through Old Hanoi

We were up reasonably early for the Quoc Hoa hotel breakfast, and W was pumped that they had Chinese style congee. The breakfast was passable, and was included in our room rate, so you might as well eat up. We then took the walking tour of Hanoi Recommended by the Lonely Planet Vietnam. The streets are organized by what was originally sold on them, so blocks are often consecutive stores of shoes, or metalwork or purses or hand crafts. The streets are mostly narrow 2 lane roads that have "sidewalks", but there were usually so many motor scooters parked on them that walking on the sidewalk proved impossible. Most of the stuff you just wander by and look at, our first major stop was the Nhà Thò Chinh Toa, a really beautiful little cathedral in the middle of town. We made a long stop at the hilltop coffee, for a snack, a shot of caffeine, and some easy wifi access. We saw someone else order a fresh coconut that looked fantastic, so we tried one too. It was, in fact, just as delicious as it looked, a whole coconut cut open served with a straw and a spoon. Since we were close by, we detoured to the Hanoi Hilton, which was really a weird experience. You start in what's billed as the colonial French section where the French held dissenters and political prisoners and treated them horribly. Then you go into a vietnam war section where the righteous Vietnamese allegedly treated all american prisoners even-handedly and with dignity. Pictures of prisoners playing sports and enjoying themselves are displayed so you know just how well they were treated. Needless to say I didn't buy much of that narrative. But the fact that we faught a war against the vietnamese people with B52s and Agent orange and Napalm doesn't exactly make us real innocent in this either, it does, it turns out, take two to tango. Our side trip there got us really close to the office of our travel agent, so we decided to drop by and settle up with them so we could get on with the rest of our vacation. We learned at that point that street numbering in Vietnam can be really strange, as one side can count up really quickly, but the other side can drag well behind, so you could be in the 400 block on the even side but only in the 100 block on the odd side. Eventually a concierge at a hotel in the neighborhood was nice enough to walk with us until we found it, and after we paid we decided to go back to that hotel for lunch. We were rewarded with a fantastic view from the top floor restaurant of the flower hotel. It turned out to be a nice little find, where we had nice views of the city and some good food. We strolled around Hanoi for a while longer, eventually ending up near the lake. While there we bought a bootleg Vietnamese phrasebook for an intensely low price, met a nice Vietnamese couple, snapped some pictures. and continued our slow shopping journey around the city. We made a mid shift stop at the Gecko Bar and Restaurant ( the one on Luong Ngoc, since there are several places called gecko all over Vietnam), for a cheap beer. and a snack, along with gathering some more tourist information there. We liked the guy in charge, and on a future trip would consider their guiding services. We made a brief visit back to our hotel to freshen up before dinner out at the Com Ga Hoi an. (Hoi an Style Chicken Rice). They had a really great upstairs outdoor terrace that we ate on and really enjoyed the cooler night air and the relative peace of a night a few feet above the din of the streets of Hanoi. We retired a little early since we had to be up at a stupid early time in the morning the next day.

A little journey through Vietnam

I planned a lot of trips in the last twelve months, most of which we never actually went on, but we finally managed to get ourselves on a plane headed west, with Vietnam and Korea as the destinations of choice. As usual I worked my behind off the week before getting work stuff in order, and finally finished the last work task about 2 the morning before our flight. We grabbed a flight to Incheon first and were fortunate enough to grab 2 really great seats (1 A and K) and settled in to eat, enjoy the wine and some movies. I can strongly recommend the Tarlant Brut Prestige 2008 Champagne, and the Ogier Chateauneuf-Du-Pape Les Closiers 2007 that was being served on board. I finally got a chance to see Dinner for Schmucks, A*team and Centurion, none of which I was really very excited about. When we landed in Incheon, we had to go find the transfer desk to check in for the partner airline we were flying on, and we had a few hours to kill anyway. The airport is about what you'd expect, more modern than is absolutely necessary, and an automated voice in multiple languages for every piece of moving equipment possible. We got some really tasty Korean food, that you ordered on one floor and then went upstairs to collect and eat at the Food Capital. We had a pretty easy flight from Incheon to Hanoi, sitting in coach, but for the length of the flight it was tolerable. Our pre-arranged driver was waiting for us at the airport with a sign with my name on it. (Doesn't that always feel good, to get to a strange place and see your own name?)By the time we arrived in Hanoi it was late, so the streets were as quiet as we'd see for the rest of the trip. I saw a lot of places during the drive that we'd eventually pass or stop at on foot, since the trip into town is made difficult by random one way streets that made going past our destination necessary before actually getting there. When we arrived at the Quoc Hoa Hotel, we were tired, it was late, and we decided to play it safe and crawl into bed. It would be a while before our schedule allowed us much time to rest.