A Midnight Stroll in Rome

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Trevi Fountain, Rome, Italy

On Friday night we took off from LAX en route to Rome, Italy with a short stop in Heathrow to connect. Random comment, but while hanging out in the airport lounge we ran into Aaron Paul. Even Dan noticed him which is rare but maybe no surprise given all the Breaking Bad we've watched. Between LA and London we flew on the A380 for a second time. Pretty awesome plane, and this time around we sat upstairs. We didn't really have any time in Heathrow to explore since we bounced back and forth between gates and overall it was a rather short layover. Everything pretty much was on time and we landed in Rome (FCO) late on Saturday night.

We took the train into Rome Termini Station from the airport and from there it was a short 10 minute walk to our Airbnb. We dropped off our bags and then headed out for some pizza. We were pretty hungry despite two meals on the flight from LA to London. It was a little after midnight but we still had no trouble finding food open and lots of people out and about. We later found out that our neighborhood (Monti) was a cool, trendy place so no surprise there were a lot of people hanging out at night and things we open. We got two pizzas at a place called Trieste and still felt we had enough energy to go explore a bit. We stopped around the corner for some gelato and then took off to the Trevi Fountain. We knew that it got packed during the days with tourists so checking it out at 1am seemed like a pretty good idea. It was about a 20 minute walk. We were not the only ones there, but it was certainly less busy than mid-day. We got home around 2am.

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Getting dropped off at LAX!

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Pizza from Trieste

Our (temporary) honeymoon

Lake Agnes, by Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada. Wasn't the beach we had in mind, but the beauty of this more than makes up for our mental state.

For a few months, we planned our first trip where we would do... as much nothing as possible. So we booked a flight to Jamaica, and booked a hut/cottage at a resort, where our back door patio would lead right into the water, and a kayak would be waiting for us. We were excited.

But un/fortunately, we had to cancel it because Hurricane Matthew had reached to a category 5 level a few hours before our flight. The resort will let us use the deposit within a year, so.. we're going to try again next year!

In the meantime, what to do with a week off of work? We scrambled on every last-minute-deal website, and was about 2 clicks away from getting tickets to either Japan or South Korea. But then we decided we weren't mentally prepared for that. So we went back to the hunt and somehow, at 2am the day we were scheduled to leave for Jamaica, decided on flying to Seattle, then taking a roundtrip road trip from Seattle to Banff, Alberta, Canada. 

Our roundtrip Seattle --> Banff schedule looked like this:

Night 1: 

• Take the cheapest flight to Seattle
• Find the Airbnb and get it into your head that you're not going to be at a beach

Day 2:

• Wake up in Seattle, grab coffee at Slate Coffee, eat at Cafe Presse
• Drive to the US-Canadian border
• Stop at Bridal Veil Falls in Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada
• Stop at Othello Tunnels in Hope, BC.
• Grab pizza in Merritt, on the way to Kamloops. (In retrospect, had we known Kamloops was as big as it is, we would've eaten there. Kamloops is big enough that it has a Costco.)
• Stay at an Airbnb in Kamloops- this town is really developing, but we have no idea why

Day 3:

• Wake up in Kamloops, eat at Hello Toast (highly recommend!)
• Drive to Mount Revelstoke National Park in Revelstoke, BC, hike Meadows In The Sky
• Stop at Giant Cedars Boardwalk in Columbia-Shuswap, BC
• Hang out at Emerald Lake in Columbia-Shuswap, BC
• See a sunset at Yoho National Park's Natural Bridge 
• Get to Banff and eat at vegan restaurant Nourish because you were supposed to go to a pizza shop in Banff but got too tired of pizza from Merritt the night before
• Sleep in a hotel at Banff, Alberta, Canada

Day 4

• Wake up in Banff, grab coffee, pumpkin chocolate muffin, frittata from Whitebark Cafe
• Drive Icefields Parkway towards Jasper National Park, which I think is ranked the 2nd most scenic drive in the world
• On the way, stop at
  • Hector Lake
  • Crow Foot Glacier
  • Bow Summit and Peyto Lake
  • Mistaya Canyon
  • Num Ti Jah Lodge
  • Hike 2 hours one way at Parker's Ridge. One of the harder hikes BUT SO WORTH IT
  • Toe of the Glacier, Athabasca Glacier
• Sushi at Sushi Bistro, Fudge at Banff Sweet Shop- the night life in Banff stops at 10pm, so get everything you need by then

Day 5

• Wake up in Banff, get the same stuff from Whitebark Cafe because they did no wrong, their stuff was delicious
• Drive to Lake Louise, avoid having chinese tourists in your pictures
• Hike 2 hours to a teahouse by Lake Agnes, get some tea, vegetable lentil soup, and an egg salad sandwich at said teahouse
• Drive to Calgary, eat dinner at Ten Foot Henry
• Walk to Saddledome and watch a preseason NHL game of the Calgary Flames vs Arizona Coyotes
• Grab some Alberta beef sliders at National

Day 6

• Wake up in a West Elm catalogue that was our Airbnb
• Grab waffles (pumpkin cheesecake and a ham and cheese) at Buttermilk, coffee at Analog- rated one of the top 25 coffee shops in the world 
• Drive to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, dinner at Collective Kitchen Public House
• Be reminded that even though the US is beautiful, Canada will always be more beautiful

Day 7

• Decide not to go into the town of Coeur d'Alene on account of the nonstop heavy raining, just start driving to Seattle
• Stop in Spokane for Vessel Coffee, and also get a ginger chai cider
• In Seattle, visit the Chittenden Locks in Ballard, watch a sea lion try to eat fish climbing up the fish ladder. That sea lion was ferocious
• Try to find dome hockey (the hockey version of foosball) at Add a Ball, but no luck :/
• Watch TheatreSports Improv at Unexpected Productions, next to the Gum Wall which they claim was from their patrons years ago!
• Sleep in Bellevue because Seattle is expensive

Day 8

• Wake up in Bellevue, grab coffee at Elm
• Remember that Seattle rains a lot.
• Grab coffee at Elm, check out Ebbet Fields Flannels
• Find out Seattle has a HUGE Vietnamese population, enough that there's a pho shop that sells homemade pho noodles. WHAT
• Grab another coffee at Victrola coffee and see the Starbucks Reserve
• Grab yet another coffee at La Marzocco
• Eat at Pho Bac, one of those really well established vietnamese restaurants that also has a hipster version of itself to attract the young folk.
• Land at LAX around midnight.

Our panoramic highlights:

We've moved!

Over the last couple months we had been in escrow for a condo in Los Angeles. In retrospect it wasn't the best timing, but we saw this place and knew it was the one. We've still got a bit of work to do to make it presentable, but we've got a home now :)

What it looked like when we got our keys. 

A letter from the previous homeowner (Leeza Gibbons and her daughter!!) congratulating us on our first home, as well as a very generous gift. 

All settled in! Thank you to Zeke and Rich for helping us during Memorial Day weekend and unloading all our stuff into the living room

Some of the inaugural bunch of friends who came over for our first game night.

Home

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Our LAX arrival photos :)

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Flight path for ICN -> LAX

We left our Shanghai apartment at 10am on Saturday October 4th and arrived back at our LA apartment at 7pm on Saturday October 4th. It could have been even sooner if we did not have a connection in South Korea and if we did not spend almost 2 hours sitting on the runway in LA. From what we heard, they had trouble finding us a gate at LAX since ours was occupied by a plane with a maintenance issue. It probably didn't help we were an A380 and only so many gates can take that plane. All was fine in the end, just took a bit to get out and home.

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Just bought our Dunkin Donuts Boba Green Tea Latte

Our trip back went well. We took a taxi from our apartment to the maglev station (we paid for a round trip, so didn't taxi all the way to the airport). We grabbed a snack at the airport and spent the remainder of our RMB since we were down to our last few yuan. We had a short flight to South Korea and a 3 hour layover to kill. We walked around the airport since it is basically just a huge shopping mall. We did make one discovery while looking around. We found a Dunkin Donuts at one end of the airport and saw a sign saying that they sold boba drinks. We had to try some since we've never seen boba at a dunkin donuts. It was ok (kinda expected, since we figured they would not put the required love into boba). Another cool thing was that the menu was totally different with lots of interesting Korean treats (ex bulgogi hot dog).

The flight from South Korea to LAX was only 10 hours, with an extra 2 hours of sitting on the tarmac. We got through customs with no issues. We were a little worries since we brought some food but we were good citizens and declared it all and they didn't seem to care. From there we grabbed a bus back to downtown and walked from Union Station back to our apartment. The weather was nice and it was a good way to enjoy our welcome back to LA.

We just found out that tomorrow is CicLAvia! As of now we think we can get up and join in on the fun. We will see if we feel the same way tomorrow morning :)

photo from CicLAvia in 2011

Last Day of Vacation

Yvonne flying the kite.

Today was mostly filled with shopping but we did one unplanned thing, fly a kite!

Lane houses near our apartment 

We got up early to head back out to the fabric market to pick up Dans shirts. From there we went to the fake market that Eli showed us to do one last round of browsing and shopping. We had a lot of fun bargaining since you can talk some thibgs down as much as 80% the initial price. 

We also grabbed a late lunch near the market and then went above ground (the market is underground in the subway station) to see where we were. We found that we were at the science museum and there were a ton of people outside flying kites. We knew we had to buy a cheap kite and join in on the fun.

We flew our very cheap and very small kite until well after sunset and had a BLAST doing so. It was a nice way to close out our day. 

After flying our kite we realized that we had nothing to do with our kite so we gave it back to the woman that sold it to is. Surprisingly she wasn't confused or anything, she just took it back like it was normal to give back a kite that you bought.

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black truffle and pork dumpling

We went back to Eli's neighborhood (xintiandi)  to drop off our stuff and grab dinner at Din Tai Fung (same place that we have in LA). We wanted to try it here and we wanted dumplings, even if they were more expensive than the street :) After dinner we went for boba and just walked around the neighborhood.

Tomorrow we leave for the US! We've left all of our packing for the morning.

inside the lane house

Proud new owner of a kite

Testing the kite

Dan flying the kite

Back In Shanghai

People everywhere on east nanjing road

This morning we left Hanoi and moved on to our final destination before we head back to the states. We got a chance to say goodbye to Jon, Sam, and Sari before we took off this morning. We owe them a huge thank you for housing us for a couple of days, dealing with our coming and going (we used Hanoi as a base to get to Ha Long and Sapa), and all of their help in recommendations. They were great hosts!

maglev

Our trip to Shanghai was smooth. However we did have some issues getting to our apartment. It took us some time to change money, take the maglev, change subway lines a few times, deal with stations we needed to change at being closed, and deal with PACKED stations and trains because of the Chinese holiday. All in all we got to the place just fine, it just took awhile and we had to deal with tons of people everywhere!

top speed in maglev

We took the maglev train into the city which was pretty awesome. It is a train that takes you from the airport to the city nonstop and reaches a speed of 431 km/hr.

Eli is out of town so we got an airbnb place near his apartment since we are familiar with the area. It is an old Shanghai lane house which is a pretty cool experience. We will take photos tomorrow.

Once we got settled in we headed out to the fabric market to pick up our orders from when we first arrived. Only Yvonne's shop was open so we need to make another trip for Dan tomorrow.

After the market we headed towards the People's Park area for some food. Here we found hundreds of thousands of people in the street celebrating the holiday. Between this and the number of people we saw in the subway today, we are both pretty sure that is the most people we have ever seen in a day. It was insane.

yangs dumplings

We ate at Yangs for some delicious fried dumplings. After dumplings we got boba(haven't had it in weeks!) and just sat on the sidewalk to people watch for awhile before heading back to the apartment for the night.

Where Did The Time Go?

Sunset in Hanoi

Today was our last full day in Vietnam. It's has been a crazy but amazing 2.5 weeks traveling Vietnam and there is still so much we haven't seen (a lot of which we learned by being here).

We got in to Hanoi this morning at 4am and took a taxi back to Jon and Sam's apartment. Unfortunately we did not get as much sleep as we did on our night train to Sapa. this was probably because the train started a bit earlier and our cabin was freezing cold with no real blanket that kept us warm. So when we arrived back at the apartment at 5am we took some time to catch up on sleep.

Started our day at Dong Xuan market

We got up around 10 and went into Hanoi for some last minute shopping and good eats. We ate banh cuon and spring rolls for breakfast. Then we walked across the old quarter to find a coffee shop that Dan read about (reng reng cafe). We had some coffee here and bought beans from him. The guy grows, roasts, and serves his own coffee which is not something you really find in Vietnam.

Reng Reng Cafe

After coffee we walked around the old quarter to do some browsing and shopping.  It's a shame that we found so many cool places today and now know our way around Hanoi just as we are leaving. We enjoyed the afternoon of exploring and shopping.  

We headed back to the apartment at 530 to have dinner with Sam, Jon, and Sari. We caught up on our Sapa adventures and then played a board game (Ticket To Ride). Sam won.

We leave for Shanghai tomorrow morning and will have two nights there before the big flight home. We will certainly miss our time in Vietnam.

banh cuon for breakfast

standard Hanoi traffic

Stunning Sapa

View of downtown Sapa.

(Sept 30) - This morning we woke up early for another trek. We ate breakfast at the hotel and then hit the trails with a new tour guide. We were joined by the same two Scandinavian (Sweden & Finland) girls that hiked with us yesterday. We learned that our hike yesterday was classified as 'very hard'. Good thing to know after the hike :) 

rice paddies

Today's hike was an easy and tourist packed hike but it was still a great hike with a lot to see. The views were amazing. About 3/4 of the hike was on some sort of paved or well defined path and the other quarter was walking through mud, rice paddies, and grass hills. Yesterday I think it was 5% well defined and 95% the first non local  people ever to walk there.

View of the valley

We walked about 15km in total. We started at the hotel and then descended into the valley via a dirt path. On the walk down we had some great lookout points. Near the end of the trek we visited two villages; Lao Chai and Ta Van. We ate lunch at Lao Chai and then just walked through the two villages to then meet up with our ride back to Sapa.

When we got back into town we did some more shopping until it was time to get our ride back to Lao Cai Train Station. We were a bit late because we were wheelin and dealin at the shops. Proud to say we were successful in our harsh negotiations.

Our driver packed a ton of people and luggage into the van and quickly drove us back to the city (about and hour). Then at the train station we met a random guy who took our ticket voucher to another random woman on the street and she gave us train tickets. It all seemed to work and we are on the train now writing this :)

In all the rush leaving Sapa we forgot to eat. This left us with nothing on the train and an 8+ hour ride to think about it. Luckily there is a snack cart on the train which we have stopped twice already (they only come around twice). We ate 4 cups of instant noodles and two packs of jackfruit chips. We are all good now.

Tomorrow is our last full day in Vietnam :(

PS - while hiking today we came up with a new name for our blog: hoangBLOGski. We will change it when we get back home.

Hiking down into the valley.

Walking along the river towards Lao Chai

Crossing the river into Lao Chai

Walking through Lao Chai village

Yvonne feeding a water buffalo... Kinda

Leaving Lao Chai and moving towards Ta Van village

Trekkers

Taking in the view at Heaven Gate at the end of our hike.

Today was our trekking day. We started off with some breakfast at the hotel and then packed our bags for the hike. While packing  we saw that fog and dark clouds were rolling in and we were pretty sure we were going to get our first rain of the trip. We were right. We went downstairs to meet our guide (a local Hmong girl) and while waiting it started to pour. She seemed unfazed and said we should just go, so we left on our hike!

Our guide walking an irrigation system running between rice paddies

We got pretty soaked in the first 20 minutes and then it kinda rained on and off for the rest of the 5 hour hike. Our first stop was the Sin Chai village. Sin Chai is another Black Hmong village (like cat cat). It was also pretty small and turns out that they share the same primary and secondary school with Cat Cat. From there we walked across farms, forests, and trails until we came to a river. We even had to balance beam walk on some irrigation systems and logs to make it over some rivers and rice paddies. For this river we had to take off our shoes (except Yvonne since she was smart and had water shoes) and walk in the river to cross. We ate lunch on the other side and had some rest. 

At our lunch spot

After lunch we pretty much did a vertical climb for a few kilometers to get out of the valley so that we could make it to the Silver Waterfall. In total the walk from our hotel to the Silver Waterfall was 15km and it was pretty difficult at times especially with the rain and mud. 

Middle part of Silver Falls

At the waterfall we climbed a whole bunch of stairs (at this point, what was another few hundred stairs)  to get about half way up the falls for a closer look.

At the falls, a car was waiting for us to drive us up to Heaven Gate which is the highest pass in Vietnam. From here we looked out at the great view.  After enjoying the view we drove back into Sapa where we were dropped off at the hotel.

We cleaned up at the hotel and then walked around town to do some shopping and get some food. We ended up going for some pho and grabbed some banh khoai mon (taro and red bean mini pancakes). After eating we went to the street stall of our tour guide and bought a blanket made by her mom. We haven't bought much on the trip and we thought this would be a good memory and would help support her family.

View from our hotel room!

Tomorrow we are going to do another trek but this time it is an easier one and more popular. It will still be very nice. Hopefully the weather will be nice. Also, we leave Sapa tomorrow to return to Hanoi (via another night train), so probably no post.

Early in our hike

Sin Chai Village

Intro To Sapa

The start of our trek into Cat Cat Village

Getting off the train in Lao Cai Station

We made it to Sapa via the overnight train from Hanoi. The trip ended up being a little longer than 8 hours but we were both able to get some sleep on the train. One big surprise was the extremely poor shape of the Hanoi train station. Everyone had to crawl over tracks and rubble to get to the train. Just kinda surprised to see such a major station in such rough shape.

At this point in the trip we've taken every form of transportation we can think of; plane, car, scooter, bike, tuk tuk, train, small boats, kayak, bus, subway, and ostrich. I don't think there is anything left other than the elephant we missed out on in Cambodia.

Climbing to the top

The train from Hanoi drops you off at Lao Cai. From there you need to take a taxi to Sapa. This is about an hour ride, and all up hill. You just keep on climbing until you get to the mountain village of Sapa. We are staying at the Cat Cat View Hotel since it is run by friends of our friends and is a very nice place. We found the hotel with no trouble.

Food at the Sunday market.

We got to the hotel a little early so we explored the Sunday market in the city center. We got some good street good here, banh bao and xoi. After exploring we went to the hotel for a bit of rest.

Hmong boy looking out into the valley

In the afternoon we went for a short (2 hours) trek down to the Car Cat Village.  This was a great walk where we got to take in some of the picturesque sites and explore a small village of the Black Hmong people. This region of Vietnam has large populations  of ethnic minorities and the Hmong are one of these groups.

Dinner at The Hill Station

After our trek we ate dinner at The Hill Station.  this resturaunt is right across from our hotel and has great food. We got to try local Hmong food here and we really loved it. We also tried some locally made rice and corn wine since it is a big part of the local culture.

Tomorrow we go on a much longer trek to see some more of the villages and scenery. 

At the river in Cat Cat Village

A small waterfall in Cat Cat Village

Night Train

Inside Sung Sot Cave

Sunrise 

(Sept 27) - This morning we actually woke up in time for tai chi! It was pretty cool to be on the sun deck of the boat for sunrise and practicing some tai chi, all while surrounded by limestone mountains and water.

View from one of the lookout points in the cave.

We grabbed another buffet breakfast and then headed out for our last bay adventure, The Surprise Cave (Sung Sot). This cave is one of the seven natural wonders of the world. It is huge and took us about 45 minutes to walk through and take photos. There were a lot of people there since it is the main tourist site in ha long bay but the site is not to be missed even if it is busy.

Our boat, Paloma Cruise

After the cave we boated back to the big boat for checkout and lunch. Once we wrapped all of that up we headed back to shore to catch our 3.5 hour van ride home. Continuing our streak of good timing with rain, it rained on the drive home but stopped as soon as we reached Hanoi when we had to get out.

At The Temple of Literature

We had the driver drop us off at the Temple of Literature in the middle of Hanoi. We spent a couple of hours here just exploring the grounds and killing some time before we had dinner with Sam, Jon (now back from his trip), and Sari. We ate at Koto which is a not for profit restaurant who trains street kids to cook and serve in a restaurant. The meal was great!

After dinner they walked us to the train station so that we could catch the night train to Sapa. We leave at 950pm and it is an 8 hour train ride from there. Thank goodness we have a soft sleeper car, now we just need to see how long the beds are!

Swimming In The Bay

Sunset

(Sept 26) - The boat offered Tai Chi at 615am this morning which we had every intention in the world to do but then we decided to sleep when we woke up at 610 :) Maybe tomorrow.

Climbing to the top

We did eventually get up and grabbed breakfast (a buffet with everything). Then we headed out for our day on the water. We took a smaller boat out to Soi Sim Island. Once we arrived we climbed to the top of the island (~200 steps) to get some great views of the bay. We broke a crazy sweat doing this (hot + humid + steps = lots of sweat). The reward was that we could swim at the beach on the island for about an hour. After swimming we got back on the boat and moved over to Lan Ha Bay near Cat Ba Island. We switched to kayaks here and took them out for about an hour. This was pretty amazing as we took the kayaks through some small caves that let out into some secluded bodies of water inside the islands. Yvonne and I decided to jump out of the kayak and swim in one of these totally enclosed lakes. We were the only ones in our group to jump out and swim :)

Jumping off the boat

We took the kayaks back to our smaller boat and went for a swim there too as we waited for lunch. We got to jump off the top of this boat as well which was a lot of fun. We earned our lunch.

Great views on the water

After lunch we boated back through the bay to meet up with the cruise ship again. This took a little more than an hour but was really relaxing with the great views. We took a little nap and then headed up for another night of sunset party, dinner, and hanging with Glen and Abby for some card games.

Anchored for the night

The whole day was great, maybe one of the best days of the whole trip so far. This has turned out to be a really unforgettable cruise. We've also been fortunate to meet some good people which makes it fun to share the experience with.

We made it to the top

Motivation to get down and swim.

Going for a swim

Hanoi -> Ha Long Bay

Bamboo boats traveling around Vong Vieng floating village

Starting out in Bai Tu Long Bay

(Sept 25) - We woke up at 630am to catch a taxi into Hanoi so that we could meet our transport van to Ha Long Bay at 8am. We met up with the van (12 people total)  and drove 3.5 hours to Ha Long Bay.

We arrived at Hong Gai Port which is a slightly less congested port with access to Ha Long Bay and closer to Bai Tu Long Bay. The big advantage (and reason we selected this cruise) was because this cruise spends most of its time in Bai Tu Long Bay (neighboring bay to Ha Long) and then we end with a quick cruise through typical Ha Long Bay.

Arrived at Vong Vieng floating village

As soon as we boarded we sat for lunch. The food was great! Every meal on the cruise is an 8 course meal with a mix of western and Vietnamese food. The boat cruised through Bai Tu Long Bay during lunch and we arrived at our first stop, Vong Vieng floating village. We all moved on to a smaller boat to take us from the cruise boat to a little platform at the floating village. Here we switched boats again to move into a kayak or bamboo boat (multiple passengers and rowed by a person from the village). We selected bamboo boat since we knew we had kayaking lined up for tomorrow. We spent about an hour rowing through the village seeing their homes, boats, and beautiful scenery. They also had a pearl growing farm where they practice a trade taught to them by the Japanese of inserting a starter peal into a live oyster and then keeping them in the water for a few years to see what they get. They only have a 30% success rate!

After the floating village we boated back to the cruise ship and did some swimming off the boat. This was a lot of fun and we got to jump off the roof of the boat!

We came back in for a sunset party with sangria, fruit, juice, and the setting sun on the bay. The boat drove through the bay to the area we would be anchoring for the night. While driving we had a cooking class and completion to make spring rolls. We both have experience in this area and neither of us won for best roll. Unbelievable. Dinner was served after (another great meal) and then we just hung out on the sun deck of the boat. We also tried our hand at squid fishing but nobody caught one since it is not the season, or so we were told to make us feel better.

British friends

We also met some really cool people today on the boat. The first people (Glen and Abby) are on a really long backpack on trip (6 months!) through Southeast Asia in support of their friend that recently passed away. He was planning to do this trip with Abby and Glen was his best friend, so when he passed away Glen and Abby thought this would be a great way to celebrate him. The second couple (Amy and Simon) were vacationing through Southeast Asia and were on their last couple of days of vacation. Simon is the lead engineer on developing the break system for the new cross-London subway line and Amy a psychiatrist. All four are from the UK and pretty much the same age as us. We all played cards and chatted most of the night.

Overall a great day and beautiful scenery!  

Boating around Vong Vieng fishing village

Sunset

On the boat

Boats anchoring for the night

Old Quarter

one of the streets in the Old Quarter

another street in the Old Quarter

Today we went into downtown Hanoi (Sam's place is about 6 miles from the city center). We took a taxi to the Old Quarter to get us started. This part of town is an old and lively commercial district. We first searched for a travel agent to book our Ha Long Bay cruise for tomorrow. We had good success with our first try (Classy Vietnam Travel) and they were able to book us on our choice #2 boat (Paloma Cruises).  The main thing we were looking for was a cruise that took us to Bai Tu Long Bay since we've received a few recommendations that this is much nicer, cleaner, and less busy. We are now booked and set for our 3 day / 2 night cruise around the bay.

lunch

We grabbed some lunch around the corner ​from the travel agent and got some more delicious good. The highlight may have been the fresh squeezed guava juice which came out green. We didn't expect that color.

Hai Ba Trung Temple

We continued walking the streets checking out the shops, Hai Ba Trung Temple, and Dong Xuan Market (oldest and largest covered market in Hanoi). 

our cyclo and driver

Since we were a bit tired we hired a cyclo (bicycle driven carriage) to get us across town. We haggled the price down but ended up paying him some more since he turned out to be pretty funny. He told many jokes an Vietnamese, Yvonne would laugh, translate, and dan would laugh 10 seconds after he first told the joke :) The driver seems to enjoy this took.​

St. Joseph's Cathedral

He dropped us off at ​St. Joseph's Cathedral and then took us over to the French Quarter. Here we saw a totally different side of Hanoi; different architecture, high end shopping, and some beautiful buildings like the opera house, Government Guest House, and Metropole Hotel.

By then we returned home ​to get dinner with Sam and stayed in after to chat and play with Sari.

Tomorrow morning we leave bright and early for the cruise​. There will be no internet so we are going dark for a few days. We are immediately traveling to Sapa after the cruise so that will be an 8 hour night train. All of this means that we will not have Internet until Sunday (Sept 28). 

Saigon -> Hanoi

flower shop in Saigon

com tam

Today was mostly a travel day but we still managed to squeeze in some good food. We asked to get com tam (broken rice + meat + egg cake) since that is one of our favorites and was something we haven't had in Vietnam yet. After breakfast we went to a nearby coffee shop that was recently opened by one of Hiep's friends. It was nice to have some coffee (this statement only applies to Dan).

After breakfast we retuned home to sing karaoke at the house with the family. They brought this up a number of times with us during the trip but we kept running out of time. Today they made sure we had time :)​

After we sang our heats out (Yvonne impressed all by beautifully signing one song in Vietnamese) we went down stairs for a huge lunch​. To our surprise, the photographer from our glamour shot session showed up. He ate lunch with us and he also had some of the photos with him for us to give our input on which we liked best. We could tell our tastes were very different from everyone else in the room as we tended to like the 'fun' or more natural photos and everyone else liked the staged/posed/traditional photos. We went mostly with the fun photos :)

Sending us off at the airport.

After lunch everyone piled into the car or scooter to go to the airport to send us off. No issues with our incorrectly spelled ticket!​

We owe a huge thank you to everyone that helped us out in Saigon. We were extremely well taken care of​, saw a lot of the city, and ate some great food. We get to return the favor when Hiep comes to the US.

The plane ride to Hanoi was smooth.​ our only issue was that we had trouble getting a taxi driver in Hanoi to use the netwr(we were instructed to do so since our friends place is closer to the airport than the city). Yvonne was very proud because she successfully argued in Vietnamese for the first time. This only one day after Yvonne said 'the one thing I wish I could do in Vietnamese is argue!' Success!

We had to walk a bit to get from the taxi to Sam's place ​since the driver dropped us off at the wrong building. Sam had dinner waiting for us and we got a chance to catch up and meet her 20 month old daughter, Sari. 

Tomorrow we plan to explore Hanoi.​

Asian Glamour

where we spent many hours today while frantic fixes were made on the spot.

Short post today since we pretty much spent the entire day (noon-11pm) at the ao dai seamstress checking the fit and making corrections since today is our last day in Saigon. We then rushed across town to take some glamour shots with our new kinda-done ao dai. This was a gift to us from the family for our wedding. Needless to say this was quite the experience and exhausting.

ong getting ready for some wedding photos with us

To finish the day we rushed back home to take another round of photos with ong since he too wanted wedding photos with us.

We won't post any photos since we don't want to ruin the surprise for next year.

Tomorrow we are off to Hanoi. Hopefully Dan makes it since his last name is spelled incorrectly on the ticket.

Sunday School

some happy students

Last night we mentioned that we haven't had banh mi yet, and sure enough when we woke up there were 4 banh mi sandwhichs waiting for us. Just as we polished those off we received a Skype call from Yvonne's family back in California. This gave her parents a chance to catch up with everyone here. 

autograph time

Afterwards we visited some classes to speak English with the students. We also had some Dragon2 toys to give away to the students that asked questions to Dan in English. One student asked what Dan's phone number was and all of the students grabbed their pencils and paper right away. (This is one of the 12 questions they can ask in English) In another class we gave out toys to the students that had the 5 best scores on their most recent exam. Both Dan and Yvonne signed many autographs.

rooftop bar at Rex Hotel

In the afternoon we went to church with the whole family. After church we grabbed the motorbikes and went into the city to see some sights. We saw the cathedral, post office, and a few well known hotels. We grabbed a drink on the rooftop bar of the Rex Hotel which had great views of the city and was once a popular hangout for western journalists during the Vietnam War. 

On our way home we grabbed some ice cream in a coconut and stopped for some bun bo hue, another soup and noodle dish.  

Notre Dame Cathedral

security guard at the General Post Office

Back In Saigon

streets of Mui Ne

Pretty uneventful day today since most of it was spent traveling by bus from Mui Ne -> Saigon. Although if you recall our bus ride from Saigon to Mui Ne, an uneventful bus ride is a good thing. 

We got breakfast in Mui Ne from a street vendor who was selling mi hoanh thanh. We are pretty sure we got the tourist price from her but we let it go since it only added up to $2 USD. 

We then went back to the hotel to pack, return our scooter, and play some pool (Yvonne won). 

The rest of the day was pretty much the bus ride. We have been very lucky so far with the weather. It has only rained two or three times, all of which we were indoors for. It rained for a short part of our drive this afternoon.  

We were happy to be back at the house in Saigon. A big dinner was waiting for us so we say down right away to eat and catch up. We learned that Dan is teaching another class tomorrow morning. This time for 8-10 year old students. We will be handing out some How To Train Your Dragon 2 toys that we brought with us for the kids. Should be pretty fun!

Scooter Day

Fishing beach in the morning.

Mui Ne Market

Our day started with a walking tour of the waterfront, fishing area, and market. We also walked through some of the back streets of the village which gave us a unique view into the local life. The market was packed with fruits, vegetables, fresh fish, chicken, and all sorts of fresh made food. The only tough part was that most of the market was covered with tarps that were only 5ft off the ground, so both of us needed to bend over while walking.

Passenger view

Once we were done at the market we came back to the hotel for breakfast. We rested a bit and then walked across the street to rent a scooter. We took the scooter out all afternoon to explore the city and drive up the coast for a few hours. On our ride we stopped at some sand dunes and they just so happened to have ostriches there that we could ride. We both rode an ostrich... Kinda weird. Since we had to off-road a bit to get to the sand dune, Yvonne got a chance to drive in a safe area. Today was filled with firsts for Yvonne. First time driving a scooter, first time riding an ostrich! 

Fishing boats

We brought some food back to the hotel so that we could eat while watching the sunset. Later in the night we took the scooter (we have it for 24 hours!) outside the city to find a super remote resturaunt. Probably not a good idea in retrospect and on top of that the food was not very good. Today was actually a sad day for food, our second best meal was the mentos and water we had for desert :) Tomorrow we plan to stick to street food since that has not done us wrong in Mui Ne.

We head back to Saigon tomorrow. So probably a morning scooter ride into the village for some street pho, and then most the day on the bus. 

Yvonne & ostrich

Yvonne & scooter

Dan & ostrich 

On the road

After a long day of scooter riding.

Arrived in Mui Ne

Mui Ne Beach

This morning we got up early and raced down to district 1 by scooter (in rush hour traffic!) to catch our bus from Saigon to Mui Ne. Mui Ne is a small fishing village east of Saigon that is now being built up into a beach resort area. The area is big for Russian tourism, so much so that signs and menus are in Russian, Vietnamese, and English.

getting comfortable

Our bus ride was quite the experience. First we got on the bus to find out that it was double decker sleeper seats. Kinda cool but these seats were not exactly made for 6ft tall people. Needless to say, Dan sorta fit the seat.

glass repair

The trip ended up taking longer than expected (took us 6 hours) because our bus driver caused an accident somehow (still are not sure what happened). At one point another bus caught up with us and demanded we pull over. A bunch of guys ran out of the bus to come to ours to yell at our driver. Turns out our driver somehow caused this bus to hit something that smashed a good portion of the side glass near the rear. There was a lot yelling and everyone poured out of the buses to repair the glass with cardboard. This all ended with the two drivers getting into a shouting match with the other driver slapping our driver right across the face. This was the slap heard around the world! Can't say we've ever seen a slap that hard in our lives. Turns out that slap solved everything and both buses went on their merry way.  Just to top the day off, during our transport from the bus to the resort in Mui Ne, on older woman puked right next to us into a bag.  Then we arrived at the resort :)

We spent the afternoon walking the beach, exploring the area, and figuring out what we want to do tomorrow. We ate dinner at the hotel. We tried a few more Vietnamese dishes. We were most excited to finally get banh cuon!

We start with another early day to visit the fishing boats and market in the morning. 

Mui Ne Beach