Hue, Hoi An, Nha Trang, and the Beginning of Da Lat!

Wow, we haven't posted in over a week! Shoot. We've done so much over the last week it's going to be tough to remember!

The day after we dropped my mom off at the airport we spent the day wondering around Hanoi and waiting for our sleeper bus to arrive at 6. When it finally arrived, we were the last ones on the bus so we got stuck at the back on the top bunk. However, a couple of sleeping pills later, the 14 hour ride to Hue wasn't too bad. We arrived in Hue at about 8 a.m. the next morning, sleepy, but otherwise o.k. Getting off the bus, we met two other backpackers named Will and Ryan and walked with them to find a hotel. We ended up staying in the Backpacker's Hostel in a dorm with 12 other people.

Our first day in Hue it was so hot we could barely move. There is a citadel there that we went to but when we got there all we could do was try to find some shade. At this point I had a splitting headache so melting in the sun walking around a hot citadel was not high on my list of things I wanted to do. We left the citadel, which was really cool besides the heat, and got a cyclo (bicycle with a carriage seat in front) to take us around the city for an hour and bring us back to the hostel. It was a nice way to see the city without having to strain ourselves at all, as awfully lazy as that sounds. When we got to the hostel, Dustin was starting to get a headache too and feel pretty sick so we got some dinner and went up to the room at about 7:30 to lay down for a few minutes. We ended up not getting up until the morning though!

The next morning we got up at 5:30 for a tour of the Demilitarized Zone and the Vinh Moc tunnels. This was a really cool tour. It was not too expensive and we got to see the tunnels, a few military bases that the Americans used during the Vietnam war, and of course beautiful views the whole time we were on the bus (about 6 hours total). There was a girl sitting in front of us on the bus that was from California. The tour guide was talking to the group on the bus about the things we were going to see and about the American war and this girl kept raising her hand and asking really simple questions. I don't remember any specifically, but we could tell that this girl was dumb by the questions she was asking. When the tour guide was done talking for a minute, he and this girl started talking just to each other about Vietnam. He mentioned something about communism and she said "But Vietnam isn't a communist country". I am not joking. Then when the tour guide sorrected her she had this look on her face of ernest and sincere surprise! What this girl was doing in Vietnam, besides making Americans look bad, I have no idea. It was hilarious. The higlight of the tour was the tunnels, where the Vietnamese would hide for shelter against American bombs. It was truly heartbreaking. of course I am quite a bit taller than the average Vietnamese person, but the whole time in the tunnels I had to bend over to walk. There were "rooms" that families would sleep in the size of a small walk-in closet. There was a room dedicated to delivering babies. 70 babies were born in the tunnels. It was amazing to imagine what it must have been like. Also disturbing were the bomb craters left above the tunnels. The Americans really did a number on Vietnam.

Hue was not our favorite city, so the next morning, we headed for Hoi An. Hoi An was incredible. We got there at about lunch time and found a hotel close to the center of town for cheap. We ate lunch at a street vendor and then rented a motorbike. The motorbike was a lot of fun. We spent a while just driving around the outskirts of town, enjoying the sunny weather. When our butts started to get sore from the seats we came back into town and explored the markets and what Hoi An had to offer. The market was really cool. It was mostly produce and meat, but we didn't get the impression that they were trying to sell to us and we were able to walk through the maret and look around without too many people badgering is to buy their things. One unique thing about Hoi An is it is a town full of tailors. Every other shop is a clothes shop. If you show them a picture of a dress you like in a magazine, they say ok, take your measurements, and will have that same dress made for you in two days. I didn't have one made because it didn't fit our budget, but if there was ever an amazing place to shop for clothes, it's Hoi An.

We had thought we were going to see the full moon festival, however we missed it by a day. But the riverfront was still lit up with lanterns and for a few cents you could buy a floating candle to put in the river. It was a beautiful place at night with everything lit up. One of the best parts was almost every restaurant sold draught beer for 4000 dong (20 cents), so we just went from restaurant to restaurant enjoying the riverfront. For dinner we ate on the river at a street vendor and asked a woman that was sitting by herself to join us. She was a Norwegian Woman the same age as my mom and she was very interesting company. We spent the rest of the evening with here going to a few different bars and restaurants for drinks and more food. She was traveling in Vietnam for 6 weeks by herself and seemed to be having the time of her life.

The next day, we got a bit of a late start. Our hotel informed us that they were booked for the night so we set out to find somewhere else to stay. By the time we had eaten, found a hotel, and gone to the bus station to book our tickets for the next day, it was early afternoon. We grabbed some lunch and headed for the beach. The beach was beautiful, just a short motorbike ride away. we got some chairs and sat out on the beach and swam for about an hour before we headed back into the city. It was very relaxing and the perfect temerature out. But we couldn't stay there all day because we had to be back for a Vietnamese cooking class! Now when we originally made our appointment for this class, the girl we talked to was fun and personable and the people that were taking the cooking class loved her. We were expecting to have this girl for our cooking class, but of course we got someone else. The class was still fun but we were pretty disappointed that it wasn't with the girl we had met the day before. We learned how to make pumpkin soup, Pho, and ginger and onion chicken. All the food was very good but the girl who taught the class was strange. This class wasn't quite worth the money we paid for it.

That night, after the class, we hit the bars again and met a really nice australian gay couple. they got us really excited to go to Laos, telling us about their travels there. They also told us that they had gotten haircuts and shaves and ear cleanings done and suggested that we do the same. We ended up finding the place they had gone and got our ears cleaned. It was a very stranger experience. They used tools that were probably not clean, kept in an empty Heineken can. They used a little straight razor and shaved our earlobes. Then they went in there searching for wax and whatever they could pull out they wiped on our hands for us to look at. Very wierd.

That same day we took a day trip to My Son temples. Some say this is like a mini Angkor Wat but it ws very small. There were about 20 temples left that the Americans hadn't bombed in the war. It was a very good tour though with a very clear English speaking guide. We have heard that My Son is much more impressive if you see it before Angkor Wat, so we were glad to have seen it when we did.

We got on another sleeper bus around 6 p.m. we tried so hard to secure spots in the front of the bus, but once again, we ended up in the very back. At least this time we were on the bottom bunks. Being at the back of the bus, we could feel every vibration and sway. The bus was very top heavy and took the corners a little too fast and there were times it swayed so much I thought we would tip. I took some sleeping pills again, but kept waking up in sheer terror for the bus swaying. I convinced myself that the bur would surely tip and kill everyone in it. However, we made it safely to Nha Trang at about 7 a.m., just in time for breakfast.

Nha Trang is a nice beach town with a decent bar scene. The first day we spent some time at the beach before walking about 5 km (we didn't know it was going to be that far) to the National Oceanographic Museum. It was a really cool place with aquariums of all different kinds of tropical fish and a huge collection of crustaceans and coral. it took us about an hour to complete and at the end we were very glad to have made the trip. We decided to take a taxi back though, as it was very hot outside and we had already walked so far to get there. When we got bac, after dinner and naps, we went bar hopping to a few good bars with cheap specials and had a nice evening just enjoying each other's company.

The next day we decided to catch up on our sleep and rela at the beach all day. We spent about 6 hours on the beach reading and swimming. Dustin has some decent sunburn on his shoulders and I got burned pretty bad on the bad of the legs, but nothing to painful.
The waves at this beach were huge, breaking right at the shoreline. They were fun to float on if you could get past the initial wave that would break at your feet and have a tendency to knock you over. At one point, I was swimming by myself because Dustin had thrown his shoulder out swimming (ouch) and was ready to get out before me. I got hit by a huge wave. I meant to dive under it but it completely ignored my intentions and swallowed me whole. All I could do was hold my nose and wait for it to spit me back out. I got quite a bit of water in my ear from it and had a bit of a headache from being tossed around so hard.

Before we left the beach, a gay man from Germany who was very drunk came and sat on Dustin's chair with him and talked to us for a while. He told us about his Thai boyfriend who skis in France and he kept touching Dustin every time I touched Dustin. It was... interesting. It wasn't the gay part that was weird, he was just so drunk and so forward that we were ready to leave when we did.

We had a nice seafood dinner and hit the bars again last night. Didn't meet anybody except the gay German fellow in Nha Trang, but it was still a fun town and we had a great time. This morning at 7 we got on a bus to Da Lat. This time we were on the very front of the bus on the bottom. They were good seats and the views out the bus windows were undeniably the most breathtaking I have ever seen. The only problem was that we had to drive on very windy roads, many of them with a mountain on one side and a cliff on the other. Being in the front seat, I had a clear view of the windshield and needless to say this made my recently-developed bus anxiety even worse. Again, I was very happy to arrive safely in Da Lat.

We got here today at about 1. The water I had gotten in my ear from the wave that swallowed me has now developed into a full blown ear infection. I got some drops and used them but so far, it seems to be getting worse. But, trying to ignore my earache, we set out for a late lunch at about 2. We found this place a few blocks from our hotel an read in the lonely planet that we should try food cooked in clay pots there. Dustin got fish in a clay pot and I got venison on a regular plate. There are not words to describe this food. It was by far the best food we have had in Vietnam. Every bite was packed with flavor, especially the fish, and because it was in a clay pot in the hot juices, it stayed hot until the last bite. Food will never be the same after this meal.

After lunch, we decided to take a motor taxi to the cable cars just outside of town which go to a monastery and a beautiful lake. The drivier turned out to also be a freelance tour guide and for $10 a piece, he took us around to two different waterfalls and a back country village. It took 4 hours and we both had a great time the entire time. The guy was very pleasant and, although his English was rough, he knew the best places to take us. One of the waterfalls we visited had an optional rollercoaster you could take down the the falls and back up It was cheap so we did it. On the way down it was twisty and turny and we got to control the speed, so it was a hoot. The waterfall was breathtaking and the ride back up was fun too.

When we finally got back to our hotel, it was about 7 and while looking for dinner, we stumbled upon a huge night market with food vendors everywhere and tons of people selling everything from shelfish to sweatshirts. It was a great way to end the day. We are taking it easy tonight because of my ear infection and for the sake of saving money.

I know this post was very long but I hope you enjoyed it. Although there is a facebook ban in vietnam, most computers we have access to had a different IP address downloaded that allows us to get on facebook. So if you want to contact us hit up the facebook, email us (mm1293@ship.edu)(d.lowry11@gmail.com), or comment on the blog!

We love and miss all our friends and family and hope everyone is having a wonderful time at home!