Hoi An

Hoi An is an ancient coastal city that's been an international trading center for centuries. The architecture is a mix of Vietnamese, Japanese, and Chinese influences with a little European thrown in for good measure. It's a Unesco World Heritage Site and much preservation has been done to the buildings in the old town. It is truly beautiful. To make it more amazing, the town was under 6 feet of water two weeks ago from Typhoon Ketsana, and there's no sign it even happened! Hoi An is known for its tailors, it seems like every other storefront is a tailor shop offering customized suits, dresses, and even shoes. Give 'em a picture, you can have one like it in your size tomorrow! They also make Chinese silk lanterns several places here, and many businesses hang them in their storefronts along the water. At night, it makes for a spectacular sight.
Hoi An is also known throughtout Vietnam for some of its culinary specialties, including Cau Lao, fried wontons (not anything like you'd find at home), and wonderfully fresh seafood. I am officially addicted to squid, having had it for both lunch and dinner on Tuesday. Everything we have eaten here, from restaurants and street vendors, has been delicious, and I could happily stay here just to eat. And to drink- many small restaurants that cater to the locals have bia hoi (fresh beer) on the menu. It's brewed daily, is extremely light in flavor and alcohol...and is roughly 17 cents per 12 oz mug. It's easy to have several with dinner, especially considering the heat and humidity.
Fortunately, our hotel, the Phuoc An, has a pool. We have taken to returning to the hotel in the late afternoon for a soak in the pool before cleaning up for dinner. This is a lovely hotel: helpful and friendly staff, great breakfast including cooked to order omelets and banana pancakes (different from Colin's but good nonetheless), laundry for 50 cents/kilogram, and comfy, air conditioned rooms all for the low low price of.... 25 bucks a night. They also lend bicycles to their guests, and even though Colin said he'd never ride AND enjoy riding a bicycle, he did...TWICE. One day, we rode to the local beach, rented beach chairs, and had a great surfside lunch of squid and spring rolls. The waves were huge and rough, but the water was warm. On the return ride, Colin had a flat tire and pulled over to a scooter repair stand for air. The elderly man didn't speak any English, but he did speak French fluently (I don't), but we were able to get the tire fixed and I got to practice my French a little.
Today we took a trip to My Son, another holy place of the Cham. Much of it was destroyed during the American War, which is how the Vietnamese refer to the Vietnam War. There are brick towers that were built between the 7th and 14th century. It's amazing to me that any brick structure made without using any kind of mortar still exists. They were monuments to the Cham deities and obviously meant to stand the test of time. For part of the return trip, we traveled by boat past rice paddies and small villages. It was a great day!
Tomorrow we leave for Hue. We have posted photos of Nha Trang on the smugmug site and will upload Hoi An when we get a chance.

Last Day in Nha Trang and the Night Bus to Hoi An

So our last day in Nha Trang, we took off on foot (all the locals look at us like we're nuts for walking everywhere) for the Cham Towers of Po Nagar, which are about 2 miles outside of town. These terra cotta brick towers are a religious site of the Cham people which were built around the 10th century and are still used for worship today. On the way, we passed the finish of the Nha Trang half-marathon (who knew?) and walked through the residential and commercial districts of town, which were interesting to see just because of the dramatic range from scrap corrugated shacks to luxury homes. That's what we've seen pretty much everywhere so far, though. Anyway, after a slow, hot walk, we arrived at the towers, paid our admission fees, and walked up the steps to the site. At the entrance to the first tower was a sign with the dresscode for entry stating, no short pants. Now, Colin and I both know shorts are inappropriate temple wear, and yet, neither of us managed to think about it before we left the hotel wearing them. You will all be happy to know that we were respectful of the cultural norms (unlike a lot of other tourists) and limited our visit to the outsides of the towers. It is a beautiful and really peaceful place.
That evening, we took the night bus to Hoi An. The night bus is a sleeper bus with verrryyy short bunks up and down. You get in your seat, stow your shoes in a cubby under your head, and try to relax. It was an eleven-hour bus ride over a variety of road surfaces ranging from rough to "oh my GOD are we crossing the country via goat path or WHAT?!?!?!?" Needless to say, we've both had sounder nights of sleep, but we got to Hoi An safely, and what a lovely place it is!
We are adding more photos to colinandre.smugmug.com as we can, but the internet situation is less than reliable, and uploads creep at a snail's pace. Keep checking for new photos.

Next stop: Nha Trang

So after four days in Saigon, we took the bus north to Nha Trang,
which is a coastal resort about 450km from Saigon. The trip took ten
hours and was absolutely beautiful. Saigon sprawls for what seems
like forever, and the road system is pallid compared to our highways.
Sharing a two-lane road with oxcarts, scooters, bicycles, and semi
rigs is an interesting experience. We hugged the coast for miles,
riding past mountains and rice paddies, and yes, the women do wear
conical hats while working in the fields! It looks like an
exceedingly tough way of life to me. Nha Trang, though, is a great
place. Yesterday, we spent the morning lounging on chaises on the
beach, and in the afternoon walked the two miles to the National
Oceanographic Museum in the nice, warm rain. It's a pretty
interesting place because they have all sorts of live specimens of
indigenous species AND something like 80,000 aquatic "pickled punks" lined up on shelves for research. It would be a great movie set.
They also had a complete humpback whale skeleton that was found when digging drainage ditch several miles inland and a whole bunch of super sad taxidermized critters (they really do need to be kept in a climate controlled environment).
Today we took a boat trip to several of the islands off the
coast here. We got to do some snorkelling, sat on another beach, had
a great lunch on the boat, and we were entertained by our guides, the
musicians. The boat crew got out their instruments and dragged
members of the tour onto the tabletops to sing with them; I
participated as best I could, but I don't know the words to "Yellow
Submarine." Colin actually got up on the table with them and ....
danced. It really was a great time, and to top it off, we met some
funloving Aussie tourists who have offered their hospitality to us if
we get to their homeland. More to come!

Days 3 and 4 in HCMC

Tuesday morning we went to Ben Thanh market to try to find some pants for Rebekah as she only has two pairs of pants for the next six months. This was a short trip, however, as the sellers in this market are very high pressure. Both Re and I ended up fleeing for the exit within 10 minutes. We then walked the 2+ miles back to the lunch lady's pho stand. We were a little nervous when we saw that the soup
of the day included some odd sausage(?) and cubes of congealed pig's blood! We both decided that we aren't fans of congealed blood. While the taste isn't bad, the texture is. Other than that, the pho was delicious.
Later, we went to the History Museum. We both thoroughly enjoyed it, I especially liked the Cham relics. The Cham are an ethnic minority in Vietnam and have a unique style to their stone carvings. Re was impressed by stellae that contained both Sanskrit and Khmer writing,
apparently the subject matter concerned taxes, but it was beautifully written. We also were excited to see some portions of stonework from Angkor Wat, it made us even more excited about visiting there later this year.

Wednesday we went on a bus and boat tour to the Mekong Delta. After a two hour bus ride south to the town of My Tho, we got on a boat for a trip to some of the islands in the Mekong River. We saw the homes of some fish farmers that float in the river with their fish pens and visited an island where bee keeping is a popular vocation. We sampled
some honey tea and some banana wine and Re got to wear a boa made of a
real boa constrictor! The snake was about six feet long and looked
very stylish around Re's neck. (I promise we will upload more photos
to our Smugmug site soon). Next we took another boat to an island
where coconuts are the business. We toured a small coconut candy
manufacturer and sampled some delicious candy. Later we had lunch and
walked around a small village on that same island. Finally we took another boat back
to our bus and headed back to HCMC. It was a good day, especially
since our guide was a very fun and nice person.

Day 2 in Saigon

We woke up to a hot and steamy day on Monday. Sweating while eating breakfast is going to take some getting used to. We did a walking tour in the morning and ended up at the Lunch Lady's Pho stand! This stop was on our can't miss list and was worth the trip. There is a different soup every day and we had the bun Thai, and it was unbelievably good. From the broth to the miniature squid and fish balls, truly delicious! Even more amazing is that a bowl of this goodness is less than $1. We may go back today!
Later we went to the zoo and the botanical gardens. We had a good time but were a little sad at the conditions at the zoo. After the zoo, we toured the Reunification Palace. It is a strange slice of the sixties, the architecture and furniture is very retro. We took some pictures and will be adding them to our Smugmug page when we get a faster connection. (Michael will love them!) It was a good day all-in-all, but we are still acclimating to the heat, noise, and constant sensory input. Crossing the street in HCMC is an adventure every time!

Our first day in Saigon

We arrived in HCMC (Saigon) last night after a long, hitchless trip. After breezing through immigrations and customs, we got a taxi to the hotel. The taxi ride was quite an introduction to the cacophony of Saigon; I realized I had Colin's hand in a death grip at some point during the trip and had to let go so he could regain circulation in his fingers. There are thousands of people riding scooters in packs, buses and cars trying to make their way through the scooters, and pedestrians with tremendous faith in some higher power walking slowly out into traffic. And... it was raining. At several times, the taxi driver took us into oncoming traffic when the roads narrowed due to construction, but it was okay, everybody else was doing it too... . I believe people are supposed to drive on the right (same as in the US), but that may just be the suggested practice!
We made it safely to our hotel, which is a peaceful and cool respite from the steaminess. After a good night's sleep, Colin and I started the morning with a walk to Ben Thanh Market and learned along the way that if you stop to sit and rest, someone will convincingly suggest a riding tour of the city on one of the deathscooters. Yes, we took them up on their offer, suckers for adventure that we are. It was actually a lot of fun and not nearly so frightening as you'd think (we DID wear helmets). Saigon provides a sensory overload that I have never experienced anywhere else. The continuous noises, sights, and smells were a bit overwhelming to our tired brains midday, so we went back to the hotel for an hour nap and felt MUCH better afterward. Since there can't be a post without talking about food, we ate dinner at Banh Xeo 46A. Banh Xeo are Vietnamese crepes made with rice flour and coconut milk that are filled with shrimp, pork, onions, and mung bean sprouts. We've eaten them in the US before, and I make them at home, but these were absolutely SPECTACULAR! And, I provided great amusement for some of the other customers with my method of eating them. I'm sorry to say, I tried to eat the shrimp in their shells, and I did manage to down a few of them, but I ended up picking them out of my crepe in order to peel about half of them. The young woman and her male companion sitting across from us apparently found it funny. Always glad to be able to entertain!
We are adding our photos to colinandre.smugmug.com as computer access allows.

Waiting to take off!

We are sitting in the Portland airport waiting to take off for
Vietnam. We have spent the week packing up the house and moving all
of our stuff into storage. We were only able to get a 750 cubic foot
storage space, and surprisingly enough, all our worldly possessions
fit into it. We are now officially homeless! What a strange and
oddly freeing feeling it is, kind of a combination of excitement and
terror.