Goodbye Vietnam...

Well this is it, my final blog entry from Vietnam, but I hope to have many more entries from travels in the future. We're already talking about next summer's adventure, perhaps a motorcycle ride to Alaska...we'll see. At any rate, this is our last night in Vietnam. We are back in Ho Chi Minh City after a whirlwind trip to Hanoi. I really did not care much for Hanoi especially after the bed bug incident but a two night trip through Halong Bay, one night on a Junk ship and one night on a private island called Monkey Island made the trip very much worth the trouble.
I did not know what to expect from our boat expedition, I had heard mixed reviews from those who had done it, but I was beyond pleasantly surprised, I was floored. The boat was beautiful, our room was comfortable, the food was amazing, and Halong Bay was mystical and gorgeous. We were taken out to the bay and then allowed to kayak around for an hour or so. We were then taken to an incredible and gigantic limestone cave where we explored for a while, and from there we went back to the boat for some swimming, diving, relaxing and eating. The food was almost the best part, these people fed us like royalty, bringing out dish after dish of delicious cusisine. We were only planning to do the one night trip, but we were enjoying ourselves so immensly that we decided to continue on for a second day on the Monkey Island for a whopping $40 more per person. Did I mention how cheap this place is? On our way to the island we stopped for a 2 hour uphill hike/climb into the jungle, where we topped off at a look-out point that included a giant iron tower to climb up on. I'm sure that the view from the tower was incredible, but I was not brave enough to climb up it after experiencing the rickety, corroding ladders that we got to climb on the way up to the look-out point. At the top we were not only met with an incredible view of the landscape but also of one of our fellow hikers. An extremely confident german man who I had failed to notice previously had somehow lost his pants and was hiking in a black speedo with his button up tee tucked in, a back pack, and combat boots. I am not kidding. Ray has pictures posted on his blog, you should definitely take a peek, we had to be pretty sly about getting the shots, but I'm so glad we did, proof was required. That excitement aside, the hike was exhilirating and the following day and night were spent relaxing on the island, sunbathing and swimming. Oh yeah, and we also looked at some demon monkeys. The island is aptly named because it is inhabited by some Langurs who live on the other side of the island, thank God. The troop of monkeys who live there are known for being incredibly aggressive. According to The Lonely Planet, "Many tourists have been bitten." We hiked over to see them, although I kept trying to talk Ray out of it, and once we got over there, I hung waaay back. Ray got right up close and got some great shots of them, but the human/monkey interaction was pretty appalling, I get why they bite. They were completely surrounded by a mass of people who were teasing them with food and making them jump up for it, as well as throwing it at them. I saw one monkey flinch several times as people chucked handfuls of fruit at his face. I was steaming and had a strong urge to start throwing food at these people's faces. Jerks. So it was not surprising when one monkey jumped at one of the worst teasers and took a chunk out of his leg. So, as I said, I understand why they are aggressive, I would be too. But with all of the sympathy I felt, I still had no desire to get close. Aside from that, the island was awesome.
We spent one last night in Hanoi and then flew back to Ho Chi Minh this morning. Strange how this crazy city has begun to feel like home. It's our third time back here and I think that the little bit of familiarity we have as a result of the time spent here has bred some comfort. I don't feel ready to leave. I feel as though I have just gotten my bearings in this country and I want to spend more time developing the little understanding I am beggining to have. I want to learn the language...at least enough to be able to read the giant propaganda billboards. And I want to try more food, there's so much I didn't eat. I miss home, I miss friends, animals,work, and Olympia so I am looking forward to coming home, but I also know that I could keep traveling for several more months if time, money, and opportunity allowed. I am not done with Vietnam, and I really want to see more of South East Asia, next time it will be Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and China as well.
Thanks to everyone who kept up with the blog, I loved reading your comments and knowing that you were with me on this journey. I look forward to seeing all of you soon.

Love,
Heather

Nha Trang - Hoi An - Hanoi

So we've covered some ground since my last post. We left Nha Trang several days ago and headed north to Hoi An via an 11 hour night bus ride on a "sleeper bus," which is basically a bunch of pseudo beds that are smashed together on a gi-normous bus. It seemed like a great plan to us since bus riding is so boring anyway and it was going to be such a long one that sleeping through it would save us the cost of a hotel room and keep us from wasting a day on a bus. We failed to factor in the primitive road conditions in much of Vietnam, likely excacerbated by the recent flooding. To say the least, it was a rough ride. We would barely doze off only to be jolted awake whilst catching air as the giant bus sailed over God-knows-what. This went on for the entire 11 hours. By the time we reached Hoi An we were so fried and exhausted that we promptly passed out at our hotel and still wasted the better part of a day. Oh well.

After recovering from our bus ride we managed to have a pretty good time in Hoi An. We visited some ancient ruins which Ray blogged about and posted pictures of so you should check out his blog, and we had some clothes and shoes made for us. Hoi An is famous for it's tailors, and you can quite literally get anything custom made that you could ever dream up. Ray had two pairs of slacks, three shirts, and two pairs of shoes made, one of them dress shoes, and the others were sneakers with his name on the sides (mostly ridiculous but pretty cute). I had a really nice fitted wool coat made and a pair of dress shoes made that are chocolate brown with green frogs sitting on lily pads embroidered onto the toe (completely adorable). In total we spent $110 for completely custom clothing which is pretty amazing. The process was pretty far from painless, especially considering that we were working with an 18 hour timeline and several fittings ended up being required. We both ended up taking something from the floor and having it fitted for us after the one that was made for us ended up being, in my case ill-fitting (coat), and in Ray's case lower quality(dress shoes). But over-all we made out pretty good considering what we were asking for.

So now we are in Hanoi. We flew from Danang which is an hour north of Hoi An and we arrived here last night. We have had an interesting experience thus far. We just evacuated from the hotel we checked in to last night because we found a bed bug after getting several bites that we thought were mosquito bites. I am still feeling fairly traumatized, it only happened like 5 hours ago, but we are in a super sweet hotel now, I just beat Ray at Scrabble, and we are heading to Halong Bay in the morning for an overnight stay on a mini-cruise ship around limestone peaks and caves so things are still pretty good. I am definitely praying that the bugs stayed behind in that awful room and that the experience does not haunt us. I think we're going to be just fine.

I am just posting some random pictures of the last few days in no particular order, they are mostly from Hoi An though.

Sunshine!!!

We took a bus out of Dalat yesterday and headed for Nha Trang which is on the central coast of VNM. It was a 3 1/2 hour ride, the shortest we've done yet, and on about a 15-seater (they call it a mini-bus) with only 6 other passengers, sounds alright, but it was by far the most challenging ride to count. The roads heading out of the mountains are winding beyond anything I've ever experienced and about 20 minutes in I was feeling a bit queasy. Apparently I wasn't the only one. Maybe 30 minutes in, this tiny little 20-something young lady sitting a few seats up from us started to toss her noodles and didn't stop for more than maybe 10 minutes at a time to break from being sick there-after. I was having a hard time keeping it together before then, so you can imagine the challenge I faced in keeping the contents of my breakfast down after that started, but I did. The fact that I did was really a triumph considering how I felt...and the fact that by the end of the ride, 3 out of the 6 other passengers had thrown up, yuck!

It took me a little while to recover from that one, but I had some excellent help in the way of a thrilling bike ride around Nha Trang, which, it turns out is not only absolutely gorgeous but also apparently boasts beautiful weather most of the year. The typhoon completely skipped the area, and all they had was some light rain while the rest of the coast got hammered.

I have been thoroughly enjoying myself since arriving here. The food is delicious, the water is an incredible clear blue-green, and warm, the beaches are clean, and there seems to be no shortage of fun activities to keep us occupied. This morning Ray and I went scuba diving and snorkeling. It was my first time diving and I really thought that I would have more anxiety over it then I did. I absolutely loved it! We talked about maybe doing a 3 day diving run and getting our certifications but decided to save the money since there isn't a whole lot of diving to be done in the ice cold waters of the Sound. Tomorrow we are going to take a sky car over to a little island called "Vinpearl Island" where there is a water park and a giant swimming pool (I know, hardly necessary with the ocean right there but we're doing it anyway).

All in all we are livin it up and fully enjoying the change of scenery and weather. We have plans to head to Hoi An on an overnight bus the night after tomorrow, and hopefully we will not run into any more nasty weather. We really want to make it to Halong Bay before the end of our trip so that we can see the limestone peaks.

Retrospective Dalat

So we did finally get some shots of Dalat before leaving. The last day that we spent there was half-way decent so we ventured out and checked out the "Dalat Crazy House" which is, as aptly named, a crazy-looking house designed by a Vietnamese woman who is a renowned architect from the north. Here are some pics of the house as well as some other shots of Dalat...