It's been a Dong Time

Halong Boat
Originally uploaded by PhoJones

Once again the lure of being a luddite has made this post impossibly late and likely laking.

Since the Vang Vieng adventure, we took a bumpy, winding bus down to Vientienne, the capital of Laos full of old French architecture. A mixture of being further south and closer to the summer made this the hottest place we've been so far. The city itself was gorgeous but our activities mostly consisted of watching movies and trying to find breaks from the heat. We were once again blessed with a shopping mall food court.

After a few lazy days we took an overnight bus to Hanoi, which was our first foray into sleeper cars. They are much like coffins on wheels especially when we arrived at the border to Vietnam 4.5 hours before it opened and they turned off the A/C. The 8 am crossing was pretty uneventful for us sans a Spanish couple that momentarily lost some electronics.

Upon arrival in Hanoi we immediately saw a representative from The Drift hostel, which happened to be the place we found a buy one night/get one free flyer, so we hopped in their cabs and skipped over the negotiating and opted for the easy $5/night rooms. The hostel was a well-oiled machine for young backpackers with food, travel booking and a very calculated "cool guy" vibe (they featured a beer-pong night!)

The next day we walked over to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. Luckily we got there 15 min before it closed for 3 days and still had time to march past him. He requested to be cremated but the Vietnamese people opted to put him on display and send him to Russia for three months out of every year to be serviced. This is one of many other confusing contradictions we've seen in Vietnam. Another is that nearly every person you pass says "buy something?" before any other phrase. Communism alive and well?

The afternoon filled up with hot markets, and eventually Alex and I found a six story place by the river and decided to eat at two of the restaurants within a few hours. The next few days we hung out in Hanoi checking out the Temple of Literature and some nice nightlife.

The next natural step for backpackers is to head to Halong Bay, which is in contending to be one of the new wonders of the world. It's a formerly limestone mountain range that's now huge rocks and caves jutting from the Gulf of Tonkin. Our research with booking trips had reviews ranging from "skip it" to "I saw this lady who lost a finger" and "5 people died," so it seemed really confusing on who to go with. We decided to go with The Drift's well-oiled travel machine and booked through them/AST Travel. The boat was beautiful, everything ran on time, the small group of travelers with us were delightful, the cave tour was thorough and hilarious (our guide talked like a south park character), and sleeping on a boat is always a treat. The next morning we were immediately whisked to do a "trek" which turned out to be about 100 people climbing up surprisingly difficult steep, slippery cliffs. The view was worth it but I looked like I'd jumped into a pool by the end of it. Next we were carted over to Cat Ba island and ended up sleeping for 4 hours in the middle of the day before trying and failing to find any nightlife so watching Moulin Rogue instead (though I remember liking it, I do agree with Alex that it's just one long, big Pepsi commercial).

After returning to Hanoi we hopped on another overnight bus down to Hoi An. It stopped right on time at 10 am but we were only as far as Hue. Going from a deep sleep to being hassled to take taxis in a city you didn't know was fairly shocking. We figured out where to get the 1 pm bus to Hoi An and walked around Hue for a bit managing to catch some of the Imperial center and seeing a lot of artifacts for sale from the War (I attempted to look up some of the American names from the dog tags for sale but failed to find mention of them).

Hoi An is known for being the cheapest place to tailor clothing. Much like the decision for Halong Bay, there was so much confusing info on who to go with, so we ended up sort of arbitrarily going into one. Alex and Todd had suits made (which apparently is very hard?), and I ended up having a really hard time making any decision about anything. The crisis of choice was alive and well, but I managed to get a few perfectly fitting shorts, a nice dress, a formal dress (that I really have no use for), and some clones of a skirt I already wear a lot made. The experience of having something perfectly tailored is certainly worthwhile, but I wish I brought more pictures of my mom at my age or Betty Draper to have a nicer guide of something I'd like to have made. Instead I now own a pair of shorts that look like they are from the sound of music.

With our backpacks about twice as large, we caught a bus to Nga Trhan, which is where I currently write from. The first day's pure beach laze turned into some movies, sleeping in and finally doing some sight seeing yesterday. And by sightseeing, I mean the best amusement park in the world!

Vinpearl Island can be reached from the longest cable car over a sea or ocean in the world. Once we arrived, there were endless waterslides and roller coasters with no lines, an arcade where every game was free, a 4D movie theater, an aquarium with a conveyor belt, sharks and turtles, ridiculous kitschy sculptures, a musical fountain show and a circus with monkies riding bicycles and dogs doing a conga line. If you are ever mildly close to Vinpearl Island, go to Vinpearl Island!

We followed up the day of amusement adventure with some drinks at the Why Not Bar? where I once again talked about England with some English girls and headed back with Alex when things started to get too young, drunk and weird. Unfortunately Todd stayed with the party fodder and ended up without his wallet or our bus tickets to Saigon by the end of the long night.

Today was another lazy beach day, and in a few hours we catch another overnight bus to Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City.

Happy Birthday Uncle Ho,
Janelle