Into Cambodia

I spent a total of 24 days in Vietnam and I wish that I had another two weeks. I guess that I am just going to have to come back! ; )

I crossed overland into Cambodia yesterday. Crossing overland is always an interesting experience. Last time I did it was from Peru into Bolivia and there were wanted posters for assassins on the windows of the Bolivian immigration station. The crossing also tends to be especially interesting when you are going between two countries that have had, shall we say, an antagonistic relationship. Vietnam and Cambodia's relationship goes back centuries. Fortunately, my worries proved to be completely unfounded.

I left Vietnam through a massive stone faced building. Because all of the tour bus companies arrive at the border crossing at the same time there is this massive rush of people at the immigration station. This of course results in waiting in line forever because the place is understaffed. After exiting the Vietnam side I walked about 150 meters which brought me to the actual border. I knew that I was at the border because of the change in the quality of the road - Cambodia's being worse - and the change in the lamp posts.

(Vietnam's is on the right.)

Another 150 meters brought me to the Cambodia entry building. Well, at least to the one that is still under construction. The actual immigration station, a couple of small buildings, were off to the side of the construction site in a large dirt area. There were lots of officials milling around. I counted 5 Ak-47s and 6 handguns (I never saw a machine gun in Vietnam and only a handfull of handguns). Because I already had my visa I was moved right along and in about 5 minutes time I found myself having legally entered into Cambodia. I boarded another bus and headed off to the capitol, phonon Penh.

The roads were in much poorer condition when compared to Vietnam and the houses along the side of the road reflected a MUCH poorer rural population. It is still a beautiful country that I can't wait to explore.

Blackout

I awoke this morning to an extremely stuffy and hot room. The large ceiling fan above the bed was not turning. I could have sworn that it was on when I had went to bed. Uh oh, power outage... This as not the first one that I had encountered in Vietnam. In fact there has been about one per week as I have made my way across the country. The unique thing about this one is that I got to see the guys who were trying to fix it.

Now in the US, when the power goes out the electric company dispatches a big truck with a cherry picker on it to fix whatever might be broken. Here in Vietnam, they send out the... bicycle. Yes, the bicycle. Complete with the bamboo ladders.


Please note that aside from the hard hat and waist safety harness there is no other safety gear worn by the workmen. None of the rubber insulation that electrical workers wear in the US.



And just for laughs...


No McDonalds, yet...

Shopping?

I left Nha Trang alone last night. Joanne, my traveling companion for the last week or so is headed to Dalat. I will miss her company, but she might catch up with me at Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

I arrived in Saigon at 6:30 am this morning and after finding a hotel and getting about 5 hours of sleep I set out into a cloudy overcast city that refused to be deterred by the possibility of rain. Business was bustling along as usual with women selling books to tourists, touts asking you to come in for a drink at every cafe you walk by, and of course, the ubiquitous motorbike drivers waving their hand at you and calling "Hey! You need moto?" Determined to see the central part of the city on foot I ignored them all and kept on my way. Until it suddenly started raining. Hard. I sprinted across the street and ducked into the first opening I could find which turned out to be the main entrance to Ben Thanh Market.

Ben Thanh Market is a cavernous building approximately the size of four football fields where you can buy ANYTHING. Imagine a mall, mixed with a grocery store, a butcher, a fish monger, and two dozen restaurants. Now that you have that in your head you need to take away almost all of the empty space that you normally associate with each of those places. Instead of the broad promenades of your average mall you get...

For a tall broad shouldered American with a backpack on, there is no room to pass someone without knocking something off of a rack. Much to the irritation of the shopkeeper. The only limit to the use of space is the height of the Vietnamese. If they were taller, I am certain that the stalls would extend farther towards the ceiling.

What follows is a brief snapshot of some of the things that can be found within Ben Thanh.

Cologne and perfume.

A million and one hair clippy thingies.

Candies. They were about $0.03 each. I bought about 30 different ones. I instantly spit out about 75% of them. The Vietnamese ladies in the market were greatly amused.

Shoes, shoes, and more shoes.

The food court. Effectively just street food indoors. Lunch was $0.65.

Fruit.

White snapper. Alive.

Flowers.

I hope that you found the sheer number of pictures I included in this post a little overwhelming. That way you can begin to understand what it is like to walk through Ben Thanh Market.

Drinking and Diving

I have been in Nha Trang for a couple days now and I have to say that on the whole it is a rather unremarkable city. There are really only three main cultural attractions here. The first is the Long Son Pagoda, built in the 1930s, just on the edge of town and the second is a large white buddha above the pagoda on a hill. The Buddha was built and dedicated in 1963 to honor the monks who burned themselves in protest of the President Diem's repression of Buddhism. I already mentioned this in the Hue, Hoa's, and Hoi An post below.

In addition to these two recent additions to the city, there are the four small Po Nagar Cham Towers. These were built by the same people who constructed My Son. These four were built between the 7th and 12th centuries. Not surprisingly, since these towers were never bombed during the American War they are in much better condition than there more celebrated cousins to the north.

So, aside from these three things you are left with two things to do in Nha Trang: Drink and Dive. The town has approximately a dozen dive shops and at least twice that many bars and clubs. I spent my first day in Nha Trang canvassing the town's dive shops to find one that I liked. I settled on Rainbow Divers and after two days of diving have been very pleased with my choice. They are exceedingly professional, extremely safety conscious, and a riot of fun.

As of writing this post I have done two days of two-tank boat dives, or four dives total. It has been AMAZING! I have never seen so much color before. Nha Trang makes Hawaii, and even some parts of Tahiti look like a bland desert. There are tons of soft corals that gracefully sway back and forth in the currents. I have seen sea anenomes with clown fish in them that look exactly those from Finding Nemo. I have also seen some of the most incredible small gobies and blennies that practically glow with blues and pinks. Unfortunately renting a camera costs more than two dives so I do not have underwater pictures to show you. If anyone REALLY wants to see pictures and they promise to pay me $50 USD when I get back I will rent a camera for my next dives. ; )

So besides diving, you are left with drinking. The bar scene is great and the ones that are run by westerners play great music. If you ever make it down this way I recommend the Sailing Club and Guava. Joanne and I met up with Lucy and Don (mentioned before) and have been have a great time out sampling the various happyhours around town.

I am going to be in Nha Trang for one more full day and then am taking the night bus on the 28th to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).

Hoa's, again...

After two excruciatingly hot days in Hoi An Joanne and I decided to retreat to Hoa's Place again for two more days of relaxation. The place really is the nicest spot I have found in Vietnam so far. We also brought a couple other people (Lucy and Don) that I had met along the way at several different stops (Sapa, Hue, and Hoi An).


We also met up with Mark, and his 1960 vespa! He had finally gotten it fixed up by the guy he prchased it from, shipped it by train from Hanoi to Hue, and then ridden it from Hue to Da Nang, and then on to Hoa's Place. We were all very jealous and there was lots of talk of going out buying one as soon as we could. Mark had also only been riding the thing for about three days and he was already talking about keeping it when he gets back to England.



There was a bit of bad news though... It turns out that when Mark went to the police station in Hanoi to take care of the paperwork he somehow didn't get the piece of paper that allows you to export things out on Vietnam. He discovered this is Da Nang. Because he bought the bike in Hanoi he now has to go all the way back to Hanoi to get the proper paper work. So while Joanne and I have moved south to Nha Trang, Mark has headed back north to Hanoi to get the right paperwork.

My Son

My Son, another UNESCO World Heritage Site, is located approximately 30 km from present day Hoi An. The ruins were constructed by the Cham people beginning around 400 AD. At their peak they ruled about as much land as is in the Central Valley of California south of Sacramento. They were wedged between the powerful Chinese to the north and the equally imposing Khmer Empire to the south and west. Over several centuries the kingdom was eventually annexed by the larger states through both violent and peaceful methods until Vietnam became a French colony.

The Cham people were indianized people and worshipped slightly different variants on the typical Hindu gods. My Son was the Cham peoples' holiest site and is principally comprised of temples known as kalan. Each kalan is dedicated to a different god and as would be expected the most important gods get the largest kalan. The temples were constructed from fired bricks as well as large worked blocks of sandstone for the more important weight bearing elements and the detailed carvings. The Cham builders developed a special type of mortar (resin and mollusks shells) for the bricks. This left online a hairline crack between them.

Unfortunately, much of the splendor that must have been the site was destroyed during the American War (Vietnam War). The Viet Cong were using the location as a hide out and ammunition storage depot. This of course resulted in carpet bombing by B52s and the near complete destruction of the largest temple still standing before the war. There are still bomb craters visible in the area and there are signs warning visitors not to stray from the marked paths as there are still land mines occasionally encountered.

The first photo is the first thing you see as you approach the main temple complex. The large kalan in the foreground was dedicated to Shiva. The second photo is of the outside wall of one of the kalan depicting several minor dieties. The third photo is of a temple for Skanda, and the forth is an example of the ancient script used by the Cham. This is a sandstone block in this case. I have no idea what it says...

(As an aside, the internet connections have been really bad in the smaller towns that I have been in recently. I will write a bunch of posts when I get to Saigon in a few days!)

Hue, Hoa's, and Hoi An

Sorry it has been almost a week since I posted to the blog. I have been moving a lot and the few small towns I have been in have either had very slow internet connections or no connection at all! This is just the way things work outside the US.

I left Hanoi by myself. Mark stayed behind waiting for his Vespa, which he bought, to be fixed up so that he could ride it south across Vietnam to Ho Chi Minh City. This was his replacement for the two of us not getting a jeep together. He is going to travel by vespa and train the equivalent distance of Weed California to LA California on the thing. He then wants to ship it to England and sell it for a profit. He tried to talk me into it, but I decided against it.

I arrived in Hue after a 15 hour excruciating bus journey through the night that included at least a dozen near crashes. The road rules on the highway at night are even scarier than those in the cities. Having gotten almost no sleep the first thing I did was pass out in a hotel room for about 4 hours. Upon feeling refreshed I set out to explore the Citadel and the Forbidden Purple City. The Nguyen Lords ruled from within its walls from about 1800 until the french took official control of most of Vietnam. The main entry gate to the Forbidden City is shown below. There are only a few large structures left because of the heavy damage the compound took during the American War (Vietnam War). It is still possible to find bullet holes in the masonry walls.




On my way out of the Imperial grounds I met Joanne. It was one of those we were both lost staring at our guidebooks on the street corner conversation starters. She is a Aussie now, but was born in the US and grew up in Paris because her father was an Australian diplomat. She has owned and operated a couple pet shops and after having worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for years she sold it all and has now set out around the world for a year. She is at the very beginning of her journey that is going to span SE Asia, South America, North America and Europe. That night we went out for drinks with a few other people we met that afternoon and some other that I had originally met in Hanoi. It turned out that everyone at the table had booked tours to go see the tombs of the Nguyen Lords, but we had all booked with different agencies.


Tours to the royal tombs are taken by boat up the Perfume River which flows through the middle of Hue. There is an aroma to the river, but I would definitely not describe it as any sort of perfume. The first place I stopped was at the Thien Mu Pagoda. It was built in 1601 and is the oldest pagoda in Hue. This pagoda is also famous because the venerable monk Thich Quang Duc, who was from the pagoda, travelled to Saigon and on June 11, 1963 burned himself to death to protest the repression of buddhists by President Diem. The photos rocked the world. Needless to say, his home pagoda is now firmly entrenched on the tourists circuit.

After visiting the pagoda the tour moved on to the royal tomb of Tuc Duc. By this point in the day, 9 am, it was already insufferably hot and really humid. It was probably the worst day of the tip to that point. At the tomb I bumped into Joanne again and on a spur of the moment idea I asked her if she wanted to ditch the tour with me, catch a motorbike ride back to Hue and jump on a bus for Danang and then scoot a little farther down the coast to Hoa's Place. She said yes, and off we went. When you are traveling, making decisions on the spur of the moment is a great strategy.

Hoa's Place is just south of Danang and right next to the Marble Mountains. It is run by, surprise surprise, Hoa, who might be the only Vietnamese person I have met that would turn away business if it was causing too much stress. He speaks great english and talks about chilling out and taking it easy like he was from Hawaii. All the drinks are available for anyone to grab and you are on the honor system to mark it down in a book he keeps on the counter. Dinner is family style at 7 and everyone who is staying there eats together. The best part about the place is that it is 100 m from Non Nuoc Beach, a massive expanse of sand that it virtually deserted except for a few small fishing boats. It won't be this way long however as the government has just built a big new road that screams massive resort development. It is very sad to say, but I think that the serenity of the place will be lost within 5 years. So go now!


Joanne and I spent two nights at Hoa's and then headed farther down the coast to Hoi An, a town famous for its tailors. Having already bought a suit, I deiced to have my favorite board shorts copied. I am having three copies made at $8 a piece. This is a great deal when you think about how much they cost in Hawaii.

Hoi An is also famous because of the Chinese Merchant Houses and Assembly Halls that have been put on to the UNESCO World Heritage list. There is also a summer festival going on and so in the evenings the old part of the city closes down to motorbike traffic and the street lights are turned off and replaced with giant paper lanterns. Everyone comes out and wanders up and down the street, eats sweet pastries, and has drinks at the various sidewalk cafes and bars.

I also went to My Son, some incredible Cham Ruins near Hoi An today, but I will save that post for tomorrow.

Foreign Concepts

In all cultures there are little things that are simply unheard of, not done, or do not exist. At least in the main stream aspects of the culture that is. Here in Vietnam I have discovered one thing that if said to a Vietnamese person will make them come to a dead stop and simply stare at you as if you had just asked if you could take Ho Chi Minh's body home with you. In other words, something completely and totally impossible. It is of course perfectly reasonable to understand why the Vietnamese would never let anyone, especially and American, take Ho Chi Minh home with them, but the thing I have discovered is a very simple thing in the western world and all of us have done it in multiple countries.

Rent a car. Without a driver. If you tell a Vietnamese travel agent that you want to rent a car without a driver they simply stare at you like you have asked them to book you a bus ticket to the moon. Mark and I have gone to at least three dozen travel agencies over the last week as well as having the very well connected and exceedingly helpful staff at our hostel in an attempt to find a jeep that we could drive to Ho Chi Minh City.

As a result I am now headed south tonight on the bus. A much less glamorous method of travel to say the least. I am leaving around 8 pm and should be arriving in Hue around 10 am tomorrow morning. While an old russian army jeep would have been an awesome experience, the traffic fatality statistics quoted to us by the hostel staff put a heavy dose of reality into us. More than 40 people a day die on Vietnamese country roads in traffic accidents. This statistic, coupled with the apparent complete lack of traffic laws has led to me to believe that maybe it is better that western style car rental remain a foreign concept here in Vietnam.

Hangin' with the Hmong

Mark, Niamh (pronounced Neeve), and I headed up to Sa Pa on the night of the 12th to go trekking in the mountains. Niamh is another Irish girl who has been good friends with Sarah for years and traveled with her for much of the time that they were India. Sarah had such a good time with Mark and I that she recommended to Niamh that she join up with us. Niamh works for the Mars candy company doing customer research.

Sa Pa is located in the far northwest corner of Vietnam and is now the tourist gateway to visiting the minority hill tribes such as the Zao and Hmong. The three of us were booked on the night train in soft sleeper compartments. We left the train station in Hanoi at around 9 pm and were supposed to arrive in Lao Cai at 6 in the morning on the 13th. There we were supposed to get picked up by a driver and taken to Sa Pa. As often happens when a person goes traveling, things don't work quite as planned. We awoke at around 7 am in a town called Pho Lu. After extensive investigation and a lot of funny hand gestures we determined from the local train station officials that there had been a lot of rain the night before that there was a landslide across the train tracks between Pho Lu and Lao Cai.

This of course means that there are now several hundred train passengers pouring out of the train station and dozens of mini busses scrambling to pick them all up. There are also of course dozens more people trying to act as handlers and trying to talk you into taking a mini bus to Sa Pa. If they take you up to a mini bus you get charged a higher amount and they get a cut of the price. Pretty much everything works this way here. Fortunately because we had booked our trip as a package tour our company sent the van down from Lao Cai to Pho Lu to pick us up. Unfortunately this took about an hour and we had to endure 73 offers for a ride to Sa Pa. Yes, I counted.

Sa Pa is a small town perched on the ridge of a mountain that has exploded due to the demand for trekking adventures. After a brief bit of repacking of our bags we set out from Sa Pa into the Mung Ha Valley. We began by walking about a half mile down the road leading out of town until we turned off of the main road and descended down to the bottom of the valley. The valley was shrouded in mist so thick that we could not see the mountain peaks. The entire landscape is an incredibly lush green color. Principally comprised of wet rice pond fields. Both sides of the valley are completely covered in them. The terraces are fed by complex water systems and irrigation ditches the collect water from the natural streams that descend down from the peaks above the valley.


The valley is populated by Hmong and Zao people. While there are multiple groups within both the Hmong and Zao people the Mung Ha Valley is made up of the Black Hmong and Red Zao. Small clusters of houses and agricultural fields, and animal pens are scattered across the hillsides. Each family owns the rice paddies around their home and there is no communal ownership of property or livestock. This is a stark contrast from the communist mantras of the Vietnam.


Part of the trekking adventure is the constant bombardment of requests from children for you to buy the handmade goods that the people produce. Mark was particularly good at bantering with them while managing to not buy anything. There are government built and operated schools scattered throughout the valley and attendance is mandatory for children. Going to school is free as well. Because of this many of the children speak surprisingly good english. Many of the crafts they made were ok, but it was disappointing to see that they did not sell anything that they wore themselves. I never saw a single person wearing any of the stuff that they were selling.

After about 5 hours of trekking and a stop for lunch we arrived at a Black Hmong house where we were going to spend the night. We relaxed and played with the family's children and learned the Hmong words for colors, and things like eyes, ears, and nose. Dinner was a wonderful spread of various stir fried dishes that we ate over rice. I was impressed at the amount of food that was put forth. There were beef, chicken and pork dishes as well as numerous types of vegetables. We also got to sample the locally made rice wine. I imagine that it has to be about 90-100 proof. Fortunately were only sipping it out of tiny little glasses.

Because of all of the tourism development has rapidly increased in even these rural areas. Some of the houses had satellite dishes and most of the houses had poured concrete floors,a dn mattresses to sleep on. However, despite the massive increase in tourists the people living in the valley still primarily rely on rice farming as their main form of subsistence.

The next day we hiked for about another 5 hours farther down the valley and eventually made our way back to the paved road along one edge of the valley and caught a jeep ride back up to Sa Pa. We explored Sa Pa for a few hours and then headed back to Hanoi on the train.

We wanted to head south to Hue on the night of the 16th, but is now looks like we are going to have to wait until the 17th because the trains is full on the night of the 16th. This is more time than I really want to spend in Hanoi, but what are you going to do? This is international travel...

Hanoi Part II

Mark and I ventured out into the Old Quarter of Hanoi yesterday morning to get lost and see what we could find along the way. We left the guidebook behind and walked with cameras at the ready for any interesting thing we might encounter.

The Old Quarter of Hanoi is a maze of streets arranged in no clear pattern what-so-ever. Most of them are so narrow that you would be hard pressed to get two cars to pass on them. Because of this, and for what I am sure are many other reasons, everyone here owns a moped. There are MILLIONS of them on the streets here. Traffic laws, if there are any, seem to be very lax to say the least. The driving mentality in Asia is very different from the western world. In the west we worry about where we are going and what all of the other cars on the road are doing. Here the only thing that concerns each driver is getting ones self from A to B. Each driver worries about themself and does not care what any other vehicle on the road is doing. This stands in stark contrast and at first thought seems to be totally insane. But, for some reason it works, and there are surprisingly few accidents. I am sure that if I got on a moped I would cause a ton of trouble because I would drive like a westerner and worry too much about everything else around me.


So, with all of that being said I am sure that you are curious as to how you manage to cross the road when there are no traffic lights, mush less walk don't walk signals. You simply step out into the traffic, stand up tall, and walk with a deliberate steady pace and the mopeds miss you. Not by much most of the time, but they do miss you. It really takes some faith to step off the curb, but I promise it works. At least it has so far anyway.

I also took my first ride on one today. You pay about 50 cents and they take you anywhere in the Old Quarter. It is a rush to say the least. I was supernervous at first, but how I am super chill with it and even made a video with my camera while I was on the bike. I do not know how to post video, so a regular picture is going to have to suffice for now.

The streets are full of shops that specialize in one type of item. There is a toy street, a woodworking street, a flower street, multiple vegetable streets, a funeral banner street, etc... On the narrower streets yu are often forced to walk down the edge of the street because the sidewalks are totally taken up by parked mopeds. This results in getting honked at a lot by moped drivers.




All over the city there are also tiny plastic tables (sized for kindergardeners) and chairs that match. Behind one of the tables is a woman who squats and will surve you a cold soup lunch with vegetables, grilled meat, and rice noodles for what equals out to about 50 cents. Between a $6 hotel room, you can now see how little it costs once you get here.

I am off to Sapa tonight. It is a hill town in the NW of Vietnam. The Hmong people live in the surrounding areas and we are going to get t do a home stay with them while we are there! Mark and I are taking the night train to kill both the accomadation and travel birds with one stone. I will be sure to put up a long post in a couple of days about it.

Travel Companions

I realized that I have been dropping names of people who I have met traveling into my blog and haven't told you much about them. So I have decided to change that. I originally met Mark, who has been mentioned several times now, in the Bangkok airport. He had the Rough Guide to Vietnam and I was reading my Lonely Planet section and we were comparing notes. He is English, 28, and a computer salesman from Portsmouth. He has been traveling since the beginning of the year and has spent three months motorcycling through India, trekking in Borneo and scuba diving in Thailand. He is slated to be on the road until the end of the year.

He is a loud mouth irreverent asshole who talks way too much. In other words, just like me. Needless to say, we get along perfectly. He is also the inspiration behind the crazy idea of renting a old russian army jeep and driving ourselves the entire length of Vietnam. We want a soft top so that we can drive in the sun while wearing green army pith helmets. The whole idea is completely insane, which is why I am totally inclined to do it. We figure that the only hard part will be getting into and out of the major cities. Once we are in the rural country areas it should be no problem at all. Yeah right... We'll see if we can pull it off and I will be sure to let you know how it all turns out.

Sarah, is a 27 year old Irish girl who, before setting out for 18 months of round the world travel, was a software developer. She has also spent time in India and pretty much every other east Asian country and taught english in Korea for a year. Mark and I think she is the best because not only can she put up with us, but she can dish it back just as hard. She also tends to be one of those people who decides that you are going to have another drink and simply gets you one. Unfortunately she is nearly at the end of her travels and will not be able to join Mark and I on the possible jeep adventure. She is headed off to Laos on her way back to Bangkok before heading home.

The both of them have proven to be excellent travel companions. Mark provides the spark of spontaneous insanity and complete adventure, while Sarah has proven to be a bit more of a level head and making sure that we do not get totally out of hand. Honestly, I am a little scared of how much trouble Mark and I are going to get into after she is no longer with us.

Halong Bay

Halong Bay is a UNESCO World heritage Site in northern Vietnam about 3 hours outside of Hanoi. Mark and I decided to head out there for a three day two night tour starting on the 8th. It is why I have not put up a new post. We booked the tour through our hostel - Hanoi Backpackers Hostel - and headed out first thing in the morning. The tour cost us $52 and included everything but alcohol and sodas. We were picked up by a tour bus and started by driving all over the old quarter of Vietnam and picking up more people. In all we ended up with 16 total. They were all young and came from 8 different countries. I was the only American. We all got along fabulously. For the most part, despite all having come from different places we bonded extremely fast. There was no weird tension or even the odd man out to make things uncomfortable. Within an hour of two of meeting we were all teasing each other and laughing like old friends.


The first day we got on the boat around 11:30 and headed out into the bay. Halong is all tower karst topography which is upraised limestone. The softer sections have eroded away leaving the tale spires of rock sticking up out of the ocean that are covered in lush green vegetation. There are over 3000 islands in the bay. It is not possible to describe how amazing the bay is that these pictures BARELY do it justice.










The bay is permanently inhabited by fishermen who live on floating docks with small houses and fish raising ponds around them. Some of them also own fishing boats that they use at night.







The first day we went to an enormous cave which had been thoroughly developed for tourism - destroying any interesting archaeology that may have been there at one time - and lit with color lights for added effect. It was amazing nonetheless. It was enormous. It had to have been 200 yards deep, 125 yards wide, and up to 50 yards tall.



After that we went kayaking and swimming at a spot a little ways a way. We got to Kayak through this cave into a lagoon that was entirely surrounded by rock. It was exactly like something out of an old pirate movie. After about 2 hours of playing in the water and jumping off of the top of our boat, which was about 25 above the water in the highest place, we motored to a location where we docked for the night. We got to sleep on the top of the boat and watch the stars.

The next day we headed for Cat Ba island where we were put up in a posh hotel that had a great view of the harbor and outstanding air conditioning - a rare thing in Vietnam. That morning we went into the inland of the island for a bicycle tour though some of the super lush tropical valleys. There were only two small up hill climbs, but there were several excellent downhill descents.



Mark, Sarah, and I turned out to be the fast bikers and managed to beat the chase van to the end of the 10 mile ride. Our guide was very surprised. He said that no one had ever done it before. This did not really come as a shack since I know how people drive in this country. Scary is an understatement.



After the trip we all were getting along so well that most of the people who were on the trip decided to change accommodation to my hostel. I am getting a couple free nights of accommodation for bringing in more business. We are now back in Hanoi and are going to head out into the old quarter of town tomorrow to explore because all of the museums are closed on Mondays.

I will post more soon...