Travels

One of the funny things about visiting Vietnam is the fact that if you are looking for a place that is listed in the Lonely Planet guide book, you will find about a dozen copycat places with the same name on the same street. The tourist trail here is well-defined and everyone hits pretty much the same places. When flying into Vietnam, I met a traveler from Holland, and then Larry and I proceeded to randomly run into her and her sister in about 10 different parts of the country. We even ran into them on kayaks in the middle of Halong Bay!

Even though on the tourist trail you encounter so many people who depend on you for their livelihood (which can make you suspicious about motivations sometimes), the friendliness and kindness of the Vietnamese people shines through. I will always remember the restaurant owner in Hanoi who saw the Larry’s oozing motorbike wound and offered to clean it up and bandage it, which he did before serving us a delicious meal of cha ca (grilled fish).

The everyday encounters with locals have made me feel so welcome here. Yesterday I met a teenage girl named Hang who walked beside me on my way back from the park, practicing her English and helping me cross the streets of Ho Chi Minh City (where the traffic never stops and the local method is to step out in front of traffic and walk slowly across while motorbikes swerve around you). Venture out of the tourist areas and soon every child you pass runs out to meet you with a huge grin and a cry of Hello!, which I have found is often followed by a fit of giggles when you answer.

Tonight I am savoring one last night of food and frenzy in Ho Chi Minh City before heading off to Vientiane, Laos tomorrow.

The perfect ending to an almost three week, whirlwind tour of Vietnam – a boat/bicycle/kayak trip through the mighty Mekong Delta. The trip included boating on several of the large rivers that wend their way to the South China Sea across the lush, flat delta lying South of Saigon. Boating on the river on a 25 foot boat, bicycling along the river through hamlets and villages and kayaking on the canals and waterways that nourish the diverse crops (coconuts, bananas, Jackfruit, and others I couldn’t identify). We (there were 6 of us on the tour, including our guide) were a big hit with the children who waved from the docks while we kayaked by, or from the front, open living area of the houses facing the bike trail as we pedaled. “Hello!”, “Hello!” “How are you” – they all shouted a greeting and melted our hearts with their smiles and waves.

We spent the night at a “farmers” house, sleeping in an open air hut, on canvas bunks, enclosed with mosquito netting, and fortified with a couple of frosty Saigon beers. Lots of good food and conversation with our new-found traveling companions. Everybody has a story.

I have a ticket for Los Angeles on a plane leaving Saigon tonight, which tells me this trip is over. I am grateful to Rachael for getting me out of my comfort zone to make the trip, and for being a great traveling companion and an excellent resource in restuarants that don’t have anything printed in English on the menu.

And I’m grateful to Susan for keeping the home front together while I’m vagabonding. Home, garden, work and my business were all on her plate for most of March. Thanks honey, I promise I’ll be good when I get back.

And lastly, I’m grateful for the passage of time, which softens hard edged memories so a new day can dawn.

We have been making our way steadily down the coast – tonight is the first night we have stayed more than one night in the same hotel since Larry arrived!

Da Nang is really off the tourist map, and we had our first experiences ordering meals without any English on the menu. We got lucky and ended up with roll-your-own spring rolls with the best peanut sauce I have ever tasted, barbequed pork, and steamed fish with herbs and chilis. Yum.

We arrived in the quaint touristy village of Hoi An on the night of the full moon celebration by complete accident, and enjoyed a lovely evening with music and street performances in the lantern-lit Old Town.

Now we are in the beach town of Nha Trang and today we went out to a nearby island for some scuba diving. Tomorrow we head inland to Dalat, which is in a scenic, mountainous area famous for producing Vietnamese wine.

While in Danang we took a motorbike out to the Marble Mountains. Here’s a clip of Larry in one of the caves:

Just finished a whirlwind tour of Hué – we spent a day and a half visiting a slew of palaces, pagodas, and mausoleums. Hué is a former imperial city and capital; a river splits it in two and at its center is the old citadel and Forbidden City.

After spending over a week on foot dodging the millions of motorbikes (or not dodging in once case – Larry had a run-in with a speeding motorcycle in Hanoi that took a nice piece of skin off his arm!), we finally decided to join ‘em, renting a motorbike the first day and bicycles the next for our touring.

Now we are in Danang for a couple of days. I’m planning to spend some time relaxing at “China Beach”, and we will do some planning for some more serious bicycling in the area.

Larry and I just returned to Hanoi from a two day trip to Sapa, a small town in the mountains near the China border. The scenery was spectacular, although for most of our trip a dense cold fog covered the area. We hiked out to some nearby Hmong settlements perched on the mountains among terraced rice paddies and stayed warm with electic blankets and pho (noodle soup). Tonight we will board another overnight train to the central coast.

Now there are 2 Gilgs in Asia! Larry and I met at the airport in Hanoi, Vietnam a few days ago. We just got back from a misty 2-day boat trip on Halong Bay and now we are heading North to the mountainous town of Sapa.