Heading south-Hue To HoiAn

I arrived to Hue via a night train from Hanoi and awoke to a completely different atmosphere. Hue is a small city, quite quiet and laid back in respect to Vietnam. It was the old capital of the Nguyen Dynasty, the rulers of which lived in their own version of a Forbidden City-pictured here. 

After entering the main gate I came upon this-the south gate, which is a bridge leading to the main hall. The flags you see on either side of the bridge are called the Five Elements flags. They can be seen in many different places throughout Vietnam, governmental, religious and communal areas. 

Although some reconstruction has been done, most of the Forbidden city looks like this. According to the video which I watched before starting my self guided tour-"due to the American B-52 bombers" most of the city was destroyed in the war. So it looks more like an ancient ruins site than anything. 

There was also a theater inside the palace which was completely reconstructed. I found these enormous masks and couldn't resist a picture. 

After touring the Forbidden City, I hopped on my bicycle (and despite the fact that it only one speed, a shaky pedal, and brakes that needed a lot of pressure) I rode out of town about 7 km to the tomb of the last emperor of the Nguyen Dynasty.

Inside the tomb I found this life size depiction of the king surrounded by some of the most beautiful mosaic work I've ever seen. Can you see that all of the walls, ceilings, and every detail is ALL mosaic?! I got lost there for a while going over every last inch of the place (oh and there were large fans at several points-key after a ride in the scorching sun).

Here is just one example of the beautiful work done there. 

Here I am with my two new Viet Kieu friends (Vietnamese born, but raised outside the country). On the left is a French guy who comes back yearly to help out in an orphanage and on the right is a fellow American (shout out to Philly!).

The next day we were invited to the orphanage to meet the kids and play with them. On the very right is the head Buddhist monk who runs the academic side of the orphanage. The entire orphanage is run by all female Buddhist monks. There are about 160 children (ranging from newborns to college age) currently living in the orphanage. Some of them were brought by their families because they just couldn't feed and clothe them any longer and some were just dropped off in the night. The kids seem to have a decent enough life-helped by donations from private people such as my new friend, as well as a restaurant they run, catering to tourists.    

This was one of my little buddies who I absolutely fell in love with. Every time I moved away from my backpack he would find it and bring it back to me. 

I also made a few other friends. I couldn't put this baby down and the other little ones wouldn't leave my sight. When it was finally time to say good bye I didn't want to go.  It nearly broke my heart.

Later we were invited to the main temple of the monks. As it turns out, we happened to arrive on the first anniversary of the death of the monk who had started the orphanage and therefore was seen as one of the most important days of the year. We lit some incense for her and then were able to enjoy both lunch and dinner with the monks.

This was only half of the dinner we ate. It was one of the most delicious meals I've ever eater AND it was all vegetarian! (there was one dish that we all thought MUST be made of meat but turns out it was from Jack Fruit). When we left, some of the girls gave me little coconut filled rice cakes and treats to take with me and "eat in hotel" as well as a HUGE grapefruit that had fallen from a tree-remember, these are kids who have so very little of their own and they were so gracious and hospitable with me.

The next morning, after a slight incident in which I left my passport at my hostel and had to have the girl from the hostel meet the bus on the road,  I headed to HoiAn, a cute, French-influenced city, where the buildings in the center of town are no more than 2 stories, the rivers cutting through the city are spotted with boats and the riverfront is lined with cafes and restaurants with lots of Happy Hours offers. 

Later that night I returned to the same area to see the impressive light show of traditional lanterns which are a huge sell here. 

You can take part in the lanterns by buying them from the vendors on the shore, hiring a small row boat from an old woman who looks like she couldn't possible get anywhere, and then setting them free down the river, as this bride and groom were doing as a camera crew drifted along aside them.

Since my hotel was only 3km from the beach, I awoke early one morning with the intention of having a nice short run, with a quiet, peaceful walk on the beach at the midpoint. Imagine the surprise I felt when I arrived to discover hundreds of people enjoying themselves at the sunrise. But unlike the day before where it'd been all foreign tourists sunbathing, this time it was all Vietnamese.  It hadn't even occurred to me to go swimming at this time. But I made sure I didn't miss the chance again, and the next day I did my run and watched the sunrise from the water-utterly amazing, one of the best of my life. 

This is my $5/night hotel. I was lucky enough to stumble upon it and was told that I'd have a dorm (which in a backpackers lingo means anywhere from 4-12 bunk beds) but when they showed me to my room I had a private room, just no A/C (guess for $5/night you can't have EVERYTHING).

I decided that after a few days of beaches and cafes, I should do something productive. So I took a tour of Mi Son, a ruins site, built by the Cham people from the 4th-14th century to their goddess Shiva. This site is the most important in Vietnam and comparable to Ankor Wat and Macchu Picchu, although not quite as big.

And even less impressive and smaller now due to the "American B-52 bombs" this time, according to my tour guide. 

As evidence or proof, here are two duds that are displayed inside one of the temples along with multiple artifacts.  

Can you guess what these are? 

Lots and lots of incense. Since many people are Buddhists, they are in constant need of incense. People go to Buddhist temples much as they go to church as well as other random days in order to ask for special prayers. When they enter a temple, they make a donation, receive a few sticks of incense, light them, lift them to their head to allow the smoke the surround them, and after saying their prayers/wishes, they place the sticks into a mound of sand. 

Halong Bay-the sea of a thousand islands

Here is a shot from the window of my room while cruising out of Halong Bay (which means place of the ascending dragon).

I poked my head in to say hello to the captain and he immediately had me come in and have a try at it. 

Halong Bay is 600 square miles of ocean at the northern coast of Vietnam, containing thousands of island such as you seen here. They are all shapes and sizes but most are huge rocks that jut out of the ocean.  

So even though it looks like one long island, it's really lots of little ones that you're looking at now. 

You can't see too well but this is a list of the Seven Wonders of the Natural World and on it are: the Amazon, Table Mountain in South Africa, the PP Underground Rivers in the Phillipines, Komodo in Indonesia, Jeju Island (CHECK), Iguazu Falls (CHECK), and Halong Bay (CHECK). Three down, four to go!

This was inside Amazing Cave (that's the actual name of it). There are many caves in Halong Bay, and many of them were used by the Vietnamese during the war to store weapons and men. Now it's a place to walk around and as my guide said, "use  your imagination and guess what you can see"

Here's me at the exit of the caves, overlooking the water.

Wondering how people out at sea or on the various islands get their favorite drinks, snacks and  smokes? Talk about a convenience store.

I think the other one was a 7-11 and this one is a Wawa.

This is as close to the sunrise as I could get considering there are rocks in the way.

Since most of the islands are pretty hard to access and actually live on since they're just rocks, there are these floating villages

Sorry, hate to brag but take a look at my second night out in the bay-we stayed on a private beach in bungalows. There were about 20-30 guests and a few staff-otherwise it was all ours. 

This is a view from the private beach. The sand was beautiful and the water nearly bath temperature. On two different swims I reached two different rocks further out in the bay. Other than that, there wasn't much to do, and I'm not complaining about that.  

Just to brag some more: this is a view from my window. 

I was so surprised the next morning to discover that I could WALK the whole way to that large rock island, which the day before I'd swum to. The high to low tide was drastic and changed very suddenly. 

We stopped at a pearl farm of some sort to see how synthetic pearls are created. (They're not fake because they are still made by oyster, but the first step is helped along by these people in the shop.) Basically the oysters are artificially inseminated with a small bead and then after a few other cuts and snips here and there, they are deposited back into the ocean and left for up to 18 months. and abracadabra-you have a pearl.

I thought the advertising was priceless-on the left: "If don't buy, you will regret." on the right: "These pearls are unique in the world."

Sapa-land of mountains and rice terraces

My first experience on an overnight train. This is a picture from the doorway to my cabin. There are four beds in total. It's actually a pretty comfortable way to travel overnight-except another trip I had in which it was freezing cold! Otherwise, not bad.

                                     
                                      

I'm sure you've all experienced it-you book a tour after seeing these amazing photos of some beautiful place and then you arrive and are less then impressed with what you can actually see-either they've been photoshopped or you can only see such views from a helicopter. Well Sapa-a region to the northwest of Hanoi, close to the border of China did NOT disappoint!

After about 10 hours or so on the train, I took a 45 minute bus ride up into the mountains and saw this-how beautiful is that?

For three days, I hiked these mountains, following a river south and saw the most amazing rice terraces ever. This region is also spotted with small villages, each one home to a different ethnicity.

Sapa has a total population of 52.899 people, belonging to 9 different ethnics. Sapa is one of the few districts in Vietnam with Hmong people composing the majority: 51.65%, followed by Yao 23.04%, Kinh 17.91%, Tay 4.74%, Day 1.36% and Xa Pho 1.06%. (copied from Wikipedia)

These Yao women and girls unfortunately have taken to following the tourists ALL day (I'm not kidding) and hoping that by making friends with you during the day, you will feel inclinded to buy something from them at the end of the day. What makes it really sad, is that especially the young girls are starting to see this as a better option than going to school, so all tourists are encouraged to NOT buy from the girls.  

I could post about 100 pictures similar to this-but I know I shouldn't. So just enjoy the few that I'm showing you ;)

Luckily it is harvest season, which I think is the most beautiful of all. So the rice was starting to turn a golden yellow and we saw the farmers out reaping the rice. Over the three days I saw several methods of extracting the rice from the stalks: beating the stalks into a bucket; dropping the kernels in front of a fan to separate the shell and the kernels; using a machine that seemed to be shaking the kernels off; and sweeping the rice clean of excess leaves.

This was in one of the small villages. This village was proud of the fact that they DON'T go out looking for tourist to try and sell them their wares. Instead they set up shops in the village that you can pass through and enjoy at your leisure.

More beauty.

This was our guide on the first day. And those are the buffalo that surprised him a bit even though they're a common sight on the road.

Here our guide Chound, is showing us how they make their rice alcohol-using a barrel with 3 levels to distill the alcohol. It's not very strong for liquor, but it's not very good either (worse than soju I think).

The girl on the left was my guide the second day and on the right, a guide of another man that we met on the trip. Both are natives to the area, 19 or 20 years old, married and with a child. People here still marry very very young-about 14 or 15 is normal.

I hope you can read all of this. This was the welcome sign in one of the villages. It's a list of Dos and ......Dos???? haha enjoy

Here my fellow travelers and I are playing cards (it started at the insistence of one of the guides and I realized later-the Vietnamese LOVE cards and gambling). The man in green is Korean (I think I nearly gave him a heart attack when I spoke to him in Korean and then showed off my knowledge of proper drinking etiquette), the guy behind him, a Spaniard and the other guy, a Russian-so I got to speak all 3 languages I know in one day!

Just a picture of a family crossing a bridge along the way.

Back in the main city of Sapa after my 3 days of hiking. It's a cute little mountain town with lots of very European architecture.

I have never been in a country (besides my own) that flies as many flags as Vietnam. And everywhere that there was a red sign with yellow writing is probably government propaganda. I did hear that the flag flying is "encouraged" by the government and you can be fined if you aren't.

 These were just some kids enjoying Kids Day.

On the way back to Hanoi from Sapa, I opted for the slightly cheaper mode of transportation-a sleeper bus. I don't know if you get the full affect, but you slip into these little pods and can sit upright with your legs out long or recline and sleep .....if you are Vietnamese....if you aren't you might have to bunch up into a ball. Not my most restful night on the road.