Ha Long Bay

We just returned from an overnight trip to Ha Long Bay. This famous spot on the Gulf of Tonkin is truly incredible and it was recommended to us by family and friends that have been lucky enough to travel over here. The bay is famous because it is filled with countless karst islands - steep walls, tiny islands, and little bits of greenery clinging to the tops. I've never seen anything like it before - so we spent as much time as possible on the deck of our junk. Yup - we did an overnight on a traditional Vietnamese junk and it wasn't as junky as you would think our budget would have allowed for. It was quite nice actually, minus the rat and a few cockroaches! Ha. Really, it was a great trip. There were two highlights - the 4-hr steam through all the narrow island passes and a kayak trip this morning. During the passage through the islands we watched Vietnamese eagles fishing and heard loads of birds singing from the tops of the islands. Kayaks are the best way to explore a place like Ha Long Bay and we took advantage of the opportunity to ditch all the tourists and junks and get out there. There is nothing better than quietly floating on a tiny boat with sheer-walled islands all around you. Ha Long Bay seemed quite magical this morning.
Now we are back in Hanoi and planning on leaving tomorrow on an overnight train to mountainous Sapa, in the NW of Vietnam. I have been looking forward to Sapa for months because of the colorful ethnic minorities, their textiles, and the hiking!
And, to comment on the previous post from Jay, the rumors are TRUE! Yee haw! If you don't know what I'm talking about, read the previous blog and comments. We had plans to celebrate with some bubbly on the junk in the bay, but we couldn't find any. Maybe that was for the best though, bubbly on a misty mountain top in Sapa sounds grand as well. Write to us if you want details on the rumor, we are enjoying all the happiness right now!

To Hanoi

After about a week in Hoi An we are finally going to Hanoi today. We didn't expect to be here this long but we got the flu (not bird flu, don't worry!) and we're finally feeling better. So we haven't really done all that much for the past week except for going to tailors to get clothes made. This is what Hoi An is famous for--there are hundreds of tailor shops here. Among other things, Julie got a wedding dress made and I got a suit.

A different kind of fun

A few days ago we took a boat tour around to some of the islands off Nha Trang and it turned into quite the little experience! But before I go into that story I will tell you what we did during the majority of our time in this seaside town. We drank beer. Not a lot, that would be really bad for the dwindling budget, but enough to wake-up our long forgotten "good beer taste buds." We found a BREWPUB. Yes, you are reading the lines correctly. A brewpub in Vietnam. Ahhhhh. The best part? There were beach chairs, beach umbrellas, cooling waters from the South China Sea, and BEER. We literally spent 3 days here, sipping cool brews and reading and relaxing. A nice break from constant travels and moving.

Jay gets the big one

Julie and her jugs

The boat trip. We knew when we paid our small sum of $ to take this tour that there was some serious potential we might hate it. But it was inexpensive and worth the risk in case we liked it. Well - we liked it and hated it for many reasons but not the reasons we expected. The tour is sold as a party tour - you go to four different islands and you get to snorkel, spend some time on the beach, drink rice wine, use their "floating bar" and party to music on board. We decided to go because of the islands and the snorkeling. This was the cheapest way for us to test out what the reefs were like to see if we wanted to spend money on diving. Good thing we did because based on the snorkeling, we didn't think the diving would have been worth it.

Here I am getting ready to jump in the water off our boat. You wouldn't BELIEVE how many people they packed onto this boat. I am guessing around 40? The unexpected part that made the trip really interesting and fun was that the majority of the tourists were Vietnamese. Our experience in the other beachy towns of Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia is that the towns serve mostly Western tourists. But in both Dalat and Nha Trang, we have seen far more Vietnamese tourists than Westerners and it has been wonderful! I am guessing this is testament to the rise of the middle class in this country and to the economic prosperity that many families are beginning to experience. These folks are well educated and some even spoke a tiny bit of English. What they missed in their education was environmental awareness and conservation. And our short time snorkeling opened our eyes up to this gap. We didn't have high expectations for the snorkeling as there were a ton of tour boats, some fish farms, and a floating village nearby. This means that there is probably a lot of nutrient overloading and physical destruction from snorkelers. We saw this first hand. At first we didn't see too many corals and I thought it wasn't going to get any better but, of all things, as we entered the shallow water (< 7 ft.) we discovered a little swath of beautiful and healthy coral (see below). As we swam along marveling at the hardy beautiful corals, we came across this....
Ignorant destruction. I wouldn't say these folks are the strongest swimmers in the world. But with floats and life vests readily available, there was no excuse for this. Our tour guide also requested, before we got in the water, that people not touch "anything". Maybe that didn't translate to standing on the coral? My first reaction was to swim up to them and yell. But I held my ground and watched, hoping that they would eventually get off the coral because of the dirty looks I was sending their way. But they didn't move and I couldn't take it anymore...so I swam up to them and asked them to stop standing on the coral. I am fairly certain that they understood me because they excused themselves by showing me that they had a mask but no snorkel. I wanted to get them some snorkels from the boat, but the mass of stinging jellies in between me and the boat made me think twice. So I fumed and watched them chatter away with one another, showing no signs of movement from their coral floor. To make matters even worse, Jay and I noticed another family in the shallow water. One younger man exclaimed something loudly to his family in Vietnamese and lifted up above the water a big head of live branching coral. The two of us groaned. What could we do? As Americans in Vietnam, we felt like we really shouldn't be opening our mouths and bossing people around. But as advocates for the environment, this kind of blatent destruction is almost impossible to ignore. When the young man brought up another large head of live table coral, I officially lost it and could hold back no longer. The younger man had passed the branching coral off to an older guy (his father?) and the two of them were swimming on their floats with the coral back to the boat. I intercepted them and said, as kindly and sweetly as possible, that they shouldn't be doing this and that they need to care about their reefs. The older man just smiled at me and handed me the coral, which I happily took. As I tried to explain to them one more time why they should care, the younger man dropped his large coral head with a big grin on his face. This basically signaled to me that they KNEW what they were doing was wrong....but they were going to do it anyway. Only when they were called on their actions did they stop. In the meantime, I had the largest piece of coral I have ever held in my hands. I took a deep breathe and returned it to the bottom far below any depth these people would be capable of swimming to.

That was the bad part of the trip.

Lunch was another experience, but far more entertaining. All of the benches on the boat were turned into a lunch table that later served as a dance floor. After everyone ate, the crew members set-up a bunch of instruments and wham - we had a singing dance party. Now, I don't know if I need to remind anyone, but we are in karaoke land here. They love singing! So we were on this boat with maybe about 10 other Westerners and 30 Vietnamese....and they wanted all of us to sing and dance. The Vietnamese went wild - clapping (out of sync) with the music and laughing and singing along with the lead singer of the band. We had about 5 other boats of the same size rafted up to our boat and all the Vietnamese from those boats were cluttered around the edge of our boat to get closer to the action. Their sense of personal space is WAY different from ours and you could really see that difference here (this is the 13th most populous country in the world so space is a rarity). The lead singer tried to get some of the Westerners up on the "dance" floor to dance and sing, but I don't think they realized that you needed to be <5'5'' to participate without taking your head off on the roof! They also tried to get us Westerners to sing - but we are not from karaoke -loving places. So we all watched and listened to the fun-loving Vietnamese sing and dance. It was a riot and a real treat to see how they go on vacation!

Now we are in the town of Hoi An - right in the middle of the Vietnamese coastline. We plan on spending a few days here visiting the famous tailors (I can get a pair of jeans long enough for me made for $15!) and some of the Cham ruins. Then we head north to Hanoi and the mountains!

Dalat

Julie with Mr. Thai. The woman in the background was selling her river catch along the road. On the way back Mr. Hung bought some fish for his kids.

This woman has a boiling pot of silk worm coccoons, and with the chopsticks she grabs a strand and feeds it into the spooler which unravels the silk from the coccoon onto the spool. You can see all of the pupae on the floor...these go to the market for tasty snacks!

Couldn't get enough of that syrupy coffee.

Here are some photos from a little trip we took yesterday into the countryside around the cool highlands town of Dalat. We had two great moto drivers, Mr. Thai and Mr. Hung, who were really knowledgeable about all sorts of stuff and taught us quite a bit...how silk is made, coffee grown, rice wine fermented, mushrooms cultivated. We even tried some booze that is brewed from whatever seems to be lying around. There are lots more new pics in both albums, some from Saigon as well. Now we are in a totally different place--Nha Trang, which is a very popular beach town.

Where to go in Africa

Hey there friends and family!
Jay and I are in the midst of researching what to do while we are in southern Africa. We have, basically, the entire month of October to explore the region (the last week of September will be with our friends Nickie and Carole in Cape Town). We have found some neat overland tour companies that can cover a lot of ground in a short period of time. And we know that a fair amount of you have been to Africa - or that you just might know more about it than us.... so give us your opinion on these trip ideas please!

Here's #1:
South Africa and Mozambique trip that includes the following stops: Johannesburg - Hlane Royal National Park - Praia do Tofo - Vilankulo - Bazaruto Archipelago - Inhambane - Maputo - Kruger National Park - Blyde River Canyon - God's Window - Bourke's Luck Potholes
This trip means lots of water time, whale sharks, dugongs, and wildlife at Kruger NP. And maybe an extra flight for us because I want to see Vic. Falls (Jay has already been there and done that).

Here's #2: Cape Town, Namibia, Botswana, Victoria Falls that includes the following stops: Cederberg - Orange/Gariep River - Fish River Canyon - Namib Naukluft NP - Sossusvlei - Swakopmund - Himba Tribe - Etosha NP - Kavango River - Okavango Delta Excursion - Chobe NP Activities - Victoria Falls NP. This trip means more desert time on big sand dunes and more wildlife time, less saltwater time...more famous views of the classic Africa.

Suggestions?? Thoughts? Email us or comment below!

Finally....

We have arrived into a big city with good computers (Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City)....and we were able to upload our photos from Cambodia. Enjoy! There are even a few old pics added to the Thailand album (Jay) and some new pics added to our Vietnam albums!

The Killing Fields

Today we arrived in the Vietnamese town of Chau Doc via the Mekong River from Phnom Penh. We started out from Phnom Penh in a mini bus with a race car driver who couldn't get enough of the horn, then got on a great little boat that took us to the border, where we switched to an even better boat. An enjoyable ride which gave us an idea of the typical Vietnamese river life: rice fields and floating fish pens. The minute we crossed the border almost all the women had those great conical hats and we knew we were in Vietnam.

Arriving into Vietnam after the past few days in Cambodia feels wonderful. We really loved Cambodians though and we will miss their easy laughter and smiles. But the days we spent in Phnom Penh were gut wrenching at times because we spent a lot of time learning about the horrific past of the Khmer Rouge days. We visited the Toul Sleng Museum and the nearby killing fields. Toul Sleng was once a high school that the Khmer Rouge used as a prison where they performed unspeakable torture on their victims before taking them to fields to be murdered and thrown into mass graves. We also watched the movie "The Killing Fields" and now I'm reading First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung. I think I will be done with my education after reading the book because it is so sad to read and listen to these first-hand accounts of Pol Pot's regime of terror. Estimates of the number of Cambodians that died during the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979) range from 700,000 to 3 million people depending on if you count the number of people that starved to death or were killed by American carpet bombing of the border regions. No one really knows, but it equals roughly 1/4 to 1/3 of the population. Pol Pot wanted to create, overnight, a communist agrarian society where people worked the rice fields and no class system existed. In reality, they drove people living in urban areas out into the country and made them second-class citizens to the rural peasants, so they really just inverted the class system. They split up families and killed anyone suspected of having any sort of education. Almost thirty years later, Cambodia is still recovering and doesn't feel nearly as prosperous as neighbors Thailand and Vietnam.