Vietnam: Leftover Photos

So this final post on Vietman is not too exciting, but I wanted to add some more pictures that didn't fit in with the other posts.

Come to think of it, there is one story I meant to tell which I forgot:

While in Hanoi on our second night, Kelsey and I were heading back to the hotel. It's easy to find, but we would occasionally walk right by it because there is just so many other things to look at. That night, we walked right by it, but for good reason. A gate was pulled down over the front door. This presented a problem, that we couldn't get to our hotel room, and we had a flight the next morning. We searched all around the building for another entry and tried to pull up on the gate, but to no avail. This is one problem that we could not have possibly forseen. How can you plan for your hotel to disappear? You can't.

So we walked looking for other people, hoping that someone out there could help us. We walked to a cafe where a few people were eating, and finally a waiter at a restaurant was willing to talk to us. We communicated through a series of gestures, pointing, and noises that the gate was locked at our hotel. The guy, very polite says "oh, just knock on the gate!" Well he didn't actually say this, but he communicated it with gestures anyway. We went back to the hotel, knocked on the gate, and sure enough, it opened. We walked into the darkened hotel to find two sleeping mats where hotel employees were sleeping. I am guessing that this is fairly common in Vietnam.

I'll get to the photos anyway, now. This one is is a potato chip logo that I enjoyed. The man, Mister Potato, is very similar to another American tube contained potato chip mascot, but with a hat:

I have a few more photos of Halong Bay. It was a bit overcast so the colors aren't as vivid as I had hoped, but it's still pretty cool:

And another ship and mountain:

This is the houseboat where we went kayaking. On this boat lived both a cat and a dog. I'm wondering what the life of a houseboat cat is like:

Just the back of a hat that I liked on one of the bus rides:

A great sign, "Say no with smoking for your health!":

Riding in a taxi in Danang on the way to Hoi An:

This is a Vietnamese crosswalk sign. They were all blue and white, but every single one was a little bit different from the other ones. I'm not sure if each one is hand made, or what:

A chicken in a park we went to in Hanoi:

This is just a giant worm, nothing more:

I'll blog again shortly!

Hoi An, Vietnam

The only stop on our train voyage through Vietnam that time allowed was in Hoi An. More specifically, the train stop was in Danang, and then we got a taxi ride to the ancient city of Hoi An, which is now basically a tourist resort. We only had 24 hours to spend, so it was somewhat of a quick stop.

The city of Hoi An is very picturesque because the buildings are so very old and have a unique architecture compared to the rest of Vietnam. It's pretty small, but I didnt' have too much time to explore the area:

One of the features of this town is that a river runs through it, making it even more beautiful. For some reason we witnessed a boat crossing the river completely crammed with motorbikes, bicycles, and people. I have no idea where it was going:

The river also included many entrepeneurs who offer boat rides for a cheap price. Kelsey and I caught a boat ride during the sunset, though it was overcast and getting dark so quickly. At least there was a nice pink hue to the sky for a while:

Me driving the boat:

The boat ride was nice, but we needed to refuel. Seeing a bunch of restaurants, we stopped at a random one and got an order of duck curry and duck rice. Here is my duck curry with a Vietnamese-style coffee on the side:

Our restaurant seated us very close to the street, so many street souvenir sales-people stopped by to greet us. This kid sold his small clay animal shaped ocarinas for quite a bit more than some places, but he was just so charming. He kept calling Kelsey darling, and she ended up buying a bunch of stuff from him:

I also bought a few things from him, as well as a few souvenirs from a girl raising money to put herself through school. Overall, the gifts sold in this town tended to be quite a mark-up from the rest of Vietnam. Hoi An did offer some great taylored clothing, though. Apparently a suit made in Hoi An is only half the price compared to Saigon or Hanoi. Kelsey used the opportunity to get a custom made dress. She ordered a dress at 8 something the night we got there, and they had it ready for her by 11 the next day. Pretty ridiculous, actually, for only about 20 bucks a dress.

We spent that night at a club with some other travelers and some ex-pats living in Vietnam. There were some interesting people from Russia, Belgium, Australia, the U.S., etc.

The next day was booked with walking through this market and getting breakfast:

This was followed by getting an hour long massage, picking up her dress, checking out of the hotel, and then eating lunch and getting out of town. It was a really nice place to visit, but 24 hours was a little too short.

That Time at The Saigon Train Station

That was an interesting choice for a tile, wasn't it? Well a more accurate title for this post would be 'That LONG Time at the Saigon Train Station'. It started when Kelsey and I came back from the Cu Chi Tunnels and needed to catch a train. We didn't have any experience with trains in Vietnam, so our concierge tried to call for us. She probably tried to call three times and always got a busy signal.

With no other options, we headed to the station to pick up some tickets for that night. As I remember, we got to the station at about 5:30. There was no line at the ticket counter, so we walked up there and finally figured out that we needed to get a numbered ticket. The current call up was at number 630. We pressed the button and received ticket number 801. Duh Duh Duh.

What followed was an absolutely agonizing wait for tickets that took over two hours. There were only two clerks working and sometimes a group of people would spend over 10 minutes with a clerk. I cannot imagine what they could have possibly been doing for THAT long.

We did finally get our tickets, though, for the 11:00 sleeper train. That left us with another three or four hours to kill before the train. Our obvious first choice was to get some sandwiches and some beer. See Vietnam has these little French bread sandwiches called Bahn My, or something really close to that, and they are extremely delicious. They are one of my favorite parts, these sandwiches, because they are awesome and cost about 50 cents American. They look like this, by the way:

The sandwiches are loaded with vegetables, meat, and sauce. Although the meat sometimes looks like dog food, they are always delicious. Here's a closer look at the inside:

I also got a coconut milk that a small waitress hacked open with a butcher knife:

So we managed to kill another hour or so drinking and eating, and I caught this nice photo opportunity:

With a few hours left to kill, we decided to go inside the station again and use the free internet for a while. Unfortunately, two kids were using the two computers to play games on one, and use Microsoft Paint on the other. Kelsey and I then went and got some snacks. When Kelsey offered the boys these small bear shaped chocolate filled cookies, they surrendered one of the computers.

Another effect of giving up the cookie was that we made instant friends with one of the kids. We tested whether this kid knew rock-scissors-paper, and he did. The boys father, knowing that he had some free babysitters now, left for the canteen never to be seen by us again. We came up with new ways to play rock-scissors-paper, here he is up on a ledge playing against Kelsey:

I learned this kids name at one point, but I couldn't pronounce it and I quickly forgot it anyway. we tried to teach him a little English, but he refused to and just made some noises while we played games with him. We also played high five where he had to jump as high as he could, and then I tried to teach him the game Tetris on a cheap flash version of the game on the computer. We ended up spending over an hour with the kid, and he was pretty awesome:

So now it was almost time to board the train. We got the soft-sleeper class, which was really nice. There were four bunks in each room, so Kelsey and I shared with a Vietnamese couple who slept the whole time. The train ride was a great time because we played cards for a while, and then got to hang out with two Russian couples and two sons from a family of diplomats. So, you know, your average train ride.

Halong Bay, Vietnam

Our second day in Vietnam, Kelsey and I visited a location on the Northeast side of Vietnam called Halong Bay. This is probably my favorite part of the entire trip because of the amazingly beautiful sites that we had an opportunity to see.

Halong Bay is a bay. What makes it amazing is that there are dozens of island-mountain-rock formations spread out around the bay. We booked a half day tour due to time constraints, and set out bright and early at 8:00. Unfourtunately, the bus has to circle around the hotels in the area to pick up people which takes more than an hour. Then its a two and a half hour bus ride to get to the bay, in optimal traffic. It was a little longer for us, including a stop at a gift shop for a while. We didn't really need one, but I think the tour gets a kick-back for taking us there.

Finally arriving at Halong Bay, a great and beautiful land was in store. We first boarded a boat for a short ride to where we would eat lunch and kayak. Our boat was really nice, it had two stories and was easy to get a view of the bay. Our boat was similar to the one pictured below:

It was so great to cruise around all of these tall, craggly rock formations peppering the bay.

On the boat, we met some interesting people. A girl who we shared lunch with, Hannah, was a teacher in Japan. We also met a group of three girls who were good friends. One each from Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam, who all met while studying Japanese in Japan. We spent some time talking with them and learning about their lives. I also got a great photo of the Korean and Thai girl recreating a certain scene from Titanic:

Our cruise first stopped at a floating house where we could see some live seafood and buy from a mobile floating fruit vendor. There were two vendors there, and each had a cute little boy along with to help sell the fruit. Kelsey bought a few mangosteins from the lady in the photo. They tasted great despite the fact that the lady refused to give her the correct change:

After a delicious seafood lunch, we were taken to another floating house where kayaks and kayaking equipment were stored. This was the exact moment where I knew that I loved Vietnam. I managed to take some photos and video while Kelsey was paddling:

One of the other kayaks

A view of the bay, with Kelsey's head

This is a video I took while kayaking through a tunnel in one of the rock formations:

An interesting part of the experience was at the end of our kayaking. I was paddling again, and suddenly the paddle broke in half in my hands. I continued to paddle with one of the halves, and upon reaching the house again, I was demanded to pay for the paddle. I insisted that a paddle failure is due to many, many uses and routine wear; not one single use. They still insisted that I pay for the paddle. I was already sick of having every dollar sucked out of my pocket that I made a fuss and the tour guide payed for it. A minor victory, but I felt bad that it may have come out of his or the tour's funds.

With that occurance behind us, we set off toward a massive cave located within one of the rock formations. The group of girls, Kelsey, and I decided to sit on the front of the boat with our legs hanging over the ledge. On the left side is me, next to me is the Vietnamese girl, and then Hannah:

The cave was amazing, though I didn't like any of the pictures that I took of it. I guess if my readers are interested they will have to go and see it for themselves.

After the cave, we cruised back to the bus and then had a sleepy ride back to Hanoi during the sunset. Another fun part of the trip was when we stopped at the gift shop for a second time and found these kittens. I held on to this absolutely tiny little kitten who was the youngest kitten I had ever seen. I had to snap a photo of it because it was ridiculously adorable:

That night we went out for some pho, and had a fairly quiet night in preparation for our flight to Ho Chi Minh, which will be featured in the next post.

The Road To Vietnam

Over the period between Christmas and New Years, I spent an action packed week in Vietnam with my sister. Somehow, one of the most action packed nights was on the way to the airport in Korea.

It started with poor planning. I booked tickets through a travel agent and I thought that our flight was leaving from Busan, in the South of Korea, and flying back into Incheon, closer to our town. Instead both flights were to Busan airport, and I did not forsee how hectic of a travel time Christmas Eve would be. Kelsey and I tried to book a bus ticket to Daejeon so that we could take the train to Busan, but the tickets were sold out for that night. Even worse, all the train tickets going to Busan from Seoul were sold out as well. Oops.

So we were in a pretty big jam with no way to get to Busan and a flight leaving at 10:30 the next morning. Luckily, our friend Michael had told us that his girlfriends car was being kept at his place while she was out of the country, and that we could borrow it for a short trip. I told him about my predicament, and he told me that the car may not be reliable enough to make it 5 hour trip to Busan, but that we were welcome to try if we wanted. Lacking any better options, we were on our way by about 9:30 that night.

We finally got to the airport at 3 in the morning after being lost for a while and almost running out of gas. With nothing to do until the flight, we spent a pleasant night of sleeping in the car while periodically running the heater to warm ourselves. We finally went to the airport at about 6 in the morning, and we were once again on our way.

We did have a nice stop at a rest area. Korean rest areas are top notch. They have restaurants, convenience and coffee shops, and sometimes batting cages. We were lucky enough to find one with a Santa, and took this photo just as midnight and Christmas day were upon us:

So from there the flight was comparatively uneventful, and we made it to Hanoi, Vietnam. Another weird speedbump was when we tried to change our money at the airport, and it turned out that the banks did not take Korean Won. I took some money out of an ATM to have enough for a minibus to a hotel where we could change over some Won into Vietnamese Dong. Somehow, I managed to leave my card inside of the ATM so that it sucked it back in and I lost my American ATM card within a half hour of being in Vietnam. Nice going.

It turned out we found a giftshop that would buy some Won at a semi-reasonable rate so we had enough money to pay for two nights of hotel and two plane tickets. From there we didn't really have any money problems because we could just change over money at the hotels.

The minibus ride was nice into Hanoi, and then I took a few photos of our first time walking around:

Some kids playing ball

An awesome church

The top-notch electrical infrastructure of Vietnam

I thought the money was really cool. It's called Dong and it has a tiny clear window on it

The rest of the first day was relaxing. We spent some time exploring and made some friends who were graffiti artists from Ho Chi Minh City while drinking at an outside cafe.

We were walking and this lady was aggressively trying to sell us fruit. She put her hat and carrying stick on us for a photo without even asking. So we got some nice photos:

Kelsey

Me

After she pretty much forced us to buy some bananas, so I picked up four bananas for a dollar. Not really a great deal, but the photos were nice I guess. It was a nice end to a long day.