Mar 19, 2008
Hanoi
Took another night bus (I'm so sick of buses!) from Hue to Hanoi a few days ago. Carmen (the German girl I met in Cambodia) met me here with her Vietnamese friend, and I got my mp3 cable back!!! I was musicless for over 1.5 months...and I'm stoked to have it back. Also I met some Norwegian girls here, we got off the same bus and took the same free ride to a hotel. We saw Ho Chi Minh's body, the security was crazy, no pictures inside, no talking....no shorts...no nothing! It was a bit creepy, but cool none-the-less. Mmmmm, found a shoe market....and I bought two pairs of shoes....but ONLY because I bargained such a ridiculous deal :) Yeah, prety much I've just been eating pasta buffets (every day, same restaurant...I'm getting fat) and walking around the city.
Mar 14, 2008
Hue...and a bit from Hoi An
Not much blog action happening lately....but I haven't really been doing all that much.
HOI AN
In Hoi An I stayed at a 3 star hotel (oh yeah, I'm living in luxury baby!) but my room was only $10 as it had no balcony...and it smelled like mold. My main goal was to purchase a suit in Hue as I've heard that is THE place to do it...for selection and price. I looked around and was pretty disappointed....although there are a plethora (nice word Dave...thanks Dave!) of tailor shops here, they all SUCK! Poor displays and the only ones that looked ok were WAY too much $moola$. I was just about to abort my mission when I found a shop with decent material, nice display suits, and pretty good price. So the next few days were filled with walking back and forth from my hotel to the tailor shop for fittings....and I was having shoes made at a different place. Haha, that's it for Hoi An, it's a dinky little town...nothing else to do there.
Did you notice the tie that matches the handkerchief that matches the cuffinks??...yeah ya did :)
HUE
Hue is a cool city, I think it used to be the capital of Vietnam (don't quote me on this, just what I heard) before Saigon (HCMC), and Saigon was the capital before Hanoi. I rented a motorbike and drove around the city a bit, some guy saw my Cdn flag on my backpack so we talked while riding side by side in traffic. He showed me where a cool place called Imperial City was, then wanted me to come to his house and meet his wife and family (mom,dad,sisters,etc all live in 3 houses that are kind of connected). So he waited for me to go into Imperial City for hours. Imperial City was cool, lots of ruins and cool architecture, most of the pics on this blog are in there.
These were by far the scariest gold fish I've ever seen. When people would drop food they would fight each other and make a crazy amount of noise...and they were huge. I would be terrified to fall in there...
Buddah giving the rock on sign (at least I think it's buddah...regardless it's rockin out).
It was really beautiful in there.
Self-timer pics never come out perfect....oh the struggles...
Went to the guys house and had a beer with him, he was so excited to hang out with me as he used to live in Toronto for 1yr (his uncle lives there). He wanted me to come over for dinner that night and he was going to make me Vietnamese food. First he said he wanted to show me the city, and that I could follow him around....but I needed to put some food in my stomach. Tao (the guy), his wife, and I ate at a Vietnamese restaurant where the menu had no English...and no prices. I told him all I wanted was rice and chicken...cheap. He assured me not to worry, "everything very cheap". LIAR! The bill came and it was 333,000 dong...about $20. I would've paid the whole bill if it had been around 100,000 dong...but I didn't even have that much on me. So I paid 170,000 dong...he didn't have enough to cover the rest so he had to go to an ATM. I guess he assumed I'd pay for all of us to have an expensive lunch?? Whatever, needless to say I didn't go over there for dinner.
This was pretty gross...but I did eat it...it was some part of a chicken...although I'm sure it wasn't a normal part...gross texture!
The next pics are from a cool river boat tour I took in Hue. We went to different tombs and pagodas. Cool beans.
HOI AN
In Hoi An I stayed at a 3 star hotel (oh yeah, I'm living in luxury baby!) but my room was only $10 as it had no balcony...and it smelled like mold. My main goal was to purchase a suit in Hue as I've heard that is THE place to do it...for selection and price. I looked around and was pretty disappointed....although there are a plethora (nice word Dave...thanks Dave!) of tailor shops here, they all SUCK! Poor displays and the only ones that looked ok were WAY too much $moola$. I was just about to abort my mission when I found a shop with decent material, nice display suits, and pretty good price. So the next few days were filled with walking back and forth from my hotel to the tailor shop for fittings....and I was having shoes made at a different place. Haha, that's it for Hoi An, it's a dinky little town...nothing else to do there.
Did you notice the tie that matches the handkerchief that matches the cuffinks??...yeah ya did :)HUE
Hue is a cool city, I think it used to be the capital of Vietnam (don't quote me on this, just what I heard) before Saigon (HCMC), and Saigon was the capital before Hanoi. I rented a motorbike and drove around the city a bit, some guy saw my Cdn flag on my backpack so we talked while riding side by side in traffic. He showed me where a cool place called Imperial City was, then wanted me to come to his house and meet his wife and family (mom,dad,sisters,etc all live in 3 houses that are kind of connected). So he waited for me to go into Imperial City for hours. Imperial City was cool, lots of ruins and cool architecture, most of the pics on this blog are in there.
These were by far the scariest gold fish I've ever seen. When people would drop food they would fight each other and make a crazy amount of noise...and they were huge. I would be terrified to fall in there...
Buddah giving the rock on sign (at least I think it's buddah...regardless it's rockin out).
It was really beautiful in there.Self-timer pics never come out perfect....oh the struggles...Went to the guys house and had a beer with him, he was so excited to hang out with me as he used to live in Toronto for 1yr (his uncle lives there). He wanted me to come over for dinner that night and he was going to make me Vietnamese food. First he said he wanted to show me the city, and that I could follow him around....but I needed to put some food in my stomach. Tao (the guy), his wife, and I ate at a Vietnamese restaurant where the menu had no English...and no prices. I told him all I wanted was rice and chicken...cheap. He assured me not to worry, "everything very cheap". LIAR! The bill came and it was 333,000 dong...about $20. I would've paid the whole bill if it had been around 100,000 dong...but I didn't even have that much on me. So I paid 170,000 dong...he didn't have enough to cover the rest so he had to go to an ATM. I guess he assumed I'd pay for all of us to have an expensive lunch?? Whatever, needless to say I didn't go over there for dinner.
This was pretty gross...but I did eat it...it was some part of a chicken...although I'm sure it wasn't a normal part...gross texture!
The next pics are from a cool river boat tour I took in Hue. We went to different tombs and pagodas. Cool beans.
Mar 6, 2008
Nha Trang
Came to Nha Trang with Cory and Mike a few days ago. It's a beach town in Vietnam...but the weather has been crap. We rented motorbikes on the first day and saw some sites, then we went and found a spa...stop laughing. We had so much fun there, and it was so cheap. We got a mineral mud bath, then a bunch of other stuff to do with "mineral water", then we hung out at the warm pool for a while. All this was only $5...can't go wrong, gave us something to do for the day.
Next day we took a gondola to a nearby island; the whole island is an amusement park. There are rides, a waterpark, an arcade, a musical water show...etc. Again, a blast! There were hardly anyone there as it's not peak season here...and it was the middle of the week. We'd have the whole ride to ourselves...so we'd just get the guy to run it again...and again...and again! The waterpark was the best part, we hit every slide. The best slide was the "family" slide with a 6 man tube. Oh man I don't think they were ready for us....we fought the whole way down. At some points I remember laughing so hard I was actually crying. Good times.
Today we didn't do much, found a breakfast buffet...and gorged ourselves...hung out by the ocean, found a hotel and pretended to stay there so we could use the gym and the pool for free.
All good things must come to an end, Cory and Mike took off tonight to continue North, they were a ton of fun to hang out with.
Next day we took a gondola to a nearby island; the whole island is an amusement park. There are rides, a waterpark, an arcade, a musical water show...etc. Again, a blast! There were hardly anyone there as it's not peak season here...and it was the middle of the week. We'd have the whole ride to ourselves...so we'd just get the guy to run it again...and again...and again! The waterpark was the best part, we hit every slide. The best slide was the "family" slide with a 6 man tube. Oh man I don't think they were ready for us....we fought the whole way down. At some points I remember laughing so hard I was actually crying. Good times.
Today we didn't do much, found a breakfast buffet...and gorged ourselves...hung out by the ocean, found a hotel and pretended to stay there so we could use the gym and the pool for free.
All good things must come to an end, Cory and Mike took off tonight to continue North, they were a ton of fun to hang out with.
Mar 1, 2008
Dalat
Near Dalat
I've been hanging out in a super cool town called Dalat for the past few days. It's inland and in the mountains....so it's much colder here than anywhere I've been so far. In fact I've started wearing my polar fleece jacket and a toque in the evenings! I met a couple of guys from Vancouver Island (on the bus here, so we've been hanging out, renting motorbikes and checking out the sites.
First day we drove out of town and saw a waterfall, so touristy and ridiculous. The best part about the waterfall was a sweet rollercoaster type cart on the way down, it was crazy fast! We almost caused a huge accident on the rollercoaster track though, I was filming it...no braking....and didn't see that Mike had come to a complete stop in the middle of the track (we caught up to the people who went before us....even though we gave them a riduculous head start). Would've been a crazy accident, but those things stop on a dime! At the waterfall it was riduculous...you can have your picture taken with a Vietnamese cowboy and his horse....so I did :) Then we saw other random things, including "chicken village" ...a small village with a large chicken statue....strange.
Yesterday we hiked a mountain. I had no idea what I was getting into...so I wore sandals...bad idea. We started hiking @ 10am, finished around 3pm. We took the wrong paths a few times, pretty much animal paths that would disappear, then we'd bush wack. There were thorns that cut us up pretty bad, crazy Vietnamese mountain! I realized how out of shape I am, couldn't keep up to the youngins. The view was amazing though, 360 degrees of beautiful country-side. We ran into some wild horses on the way down, that was cool. That's it, that's all.
During our offroading adventures...our poor bikes....
Super fun rollercoaster
Me, the Vietnamese cowboy, and his horse. Classic authentic Vietnamese culture.... hehehe
Cory's thing.....rear choking fake animals...it was pretty funny
Starting the hike
Amazing view
I've been hanging out in a super cool town called Dalat for the past few days. It's inland and in the mountains....so it's much colder here than anywhere I've been so far. In fact I've started wearing my polar fleece jacket and a toque in the evenings! I met a couple of guys from Vancouver Island (on the bus here, so we've been hanging out, renting motorbikes and checking out the sites.
First day we drove out of town and saw a waterfall, so touristy and ridiculous. The best part about the waterfall was a sweet rollercoaster type cart on the way down, it was crazy fast! We almost caused a huge accident on the rollercoaster track though, I was filming it...no braking....and didn't see that Mike had come to a complete stop in the middle of the track (we caught up to the people who went before us....even though we gave them a riduculous head start). Would've been a crazy accident, but those things stop on a dime! At the waterfall it was riduculous...you can have your picture taken with a Vietnamese cowboy and his horse....so I did :) Then we saw other random things, including "chicken village" ...a small village with a large chicken statue....strange.
Yesterday we hiked a mountain. I had no idea what I was getting into...so I wore sandals...bad idea. We started hiking @ 10am, finished around 3pm. We took the wrong paths a few times, pretty much animal paths that would disappear, then we'd bush wack. There were thorns that cut us up pretty bad, crazy Vietnamese mountain! I realized how out of shape I am, couldn't keep up to the youngins. The view was amazing though, 360 degrees of beautiful country-side. We ran into some wild horses on the way down, that was cool. That's it, that's all.
During our offroading adventures...our poor bikes....
Super fun rollercoaster
Me, the Vietnamese cowboy, and his horse. Classic authentic Vietnamese culture.... hehehe
Cory's thing.....rear choking fake animals...it was pretty funny Starting the hikeAmazing view
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