Viet Nam and what it means to me

More thoughts of Vietnam

Hi there;
I have decided that I should give you the itinerary of my/our trip before I tell you more about where we were and what we did. ( When I refer to 'we' I mean my friend Angie and I )

Our 1st day in Vietnam was in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City ). Our 2nd day in was in the Mekong Delta. Our 3rd day was in Nha Trang. Our 4th day was in DaNang. The 5th day was in Ancient City of Hue. The 6th day was in Hanoi. The 7th and 8th days in Ha Long bay. The 9th and final day was back in Hanoi.

To get from Saigon to Nha Trang, from Nha Trang to DaNang from Hue to Hanoi we flew Viet Nam Airlines. From DaNang to Hue we took a 'sleeping' bus, which I will tell you about a little later in the blog post

Now you have an understanding of the trip.

We always stayed in 3 star hotels which means we had 2 twin beds, wi-fi, television (once we even had english speaking t.v. and HBO) and mini bar and always a tea pot with tea bags. The accessories in the bathroom always included: toothbrush & tooth paste and comb along with the normal supplies that are found in hotel bathrooms almost everywhere.

Our rooms were adequate actually, they were rather nice and in most cases the beds were quite comfortable except our room in DaNang. This room was the largest one of them all which really surprised us so, when we opened the door we thought - This is great! I excitedly sat down on the bed only to discover how hard it was. Holy Shit - what is this? It turned out that we were going to be sleeping on box springs. You say to yourself - I'll call the front desk and have them bring up mattresses well, it is not quite that simple. The only person at the front desk who speaks English (sort of) certainly will never understand what a mattress is and why we need one. So we slept on our box spring beds.

Food is always important when talking about going to exotic places actually any place for that matter. How was the food? We loved it, as a matter of fact, we only ate Vietnamese food and it was wonderful. Breakfast was included in the price of our hotel rooms and it included:

baguettes - probably from the French occupation of VietNam along with food that you would normally see at dinner - sliced canned ham (well not at my house but maybe at some houses), rice soup (really tastes like nothing even loaded with salt), beef with vegetables, shrimp, cold noodle salad & hot noodle salad and french fried onion rings, of all things, there is always an omelet station and pho - something like hot broth with 'stuff' in it. Of course there were many more things on the buffet then this, oh yes, canned peaches. I included a photo of the buffet in our hotel in Saigon so you could see what the food looks like.

I thought I would loose weight on this trip but it is obvious I didn't, which, I blame on the food, it certainly couldn't be my lack of will power.

See you soon.

More 1st Impressions of Vietnam

1st impressions of Viet Nam

I am finally ready to tell you about my trip to Viet Nam. Got my laundry done and put away [not too difficult considering I took a carry on] Got my photos organized. Got my cold under control, that was huge

I went to Viet Nam without any pre-conceived ideas about the people, the food, the lodging and the transportation.

Just to give you a brief background of why we went to Viet Nam rather than any where else in the world. My friend and traveling companion, Angie works at a company that has an office in Viet Nam as well as other places in Asia. She has been talking about going their for 4 years so finally I said let's go. While we were planning this trip we learned that a friend of a friend is a travel agent in Saigon [Ho Chi Minh City]. This woman made our planning much easier. She helped us with our hotel reservations in the cities we wanted to go to and the flight arrangements within Viet Nam. She was really wonderful and she also wanted to spend the day with us when we arrived which gave us some insight into what we would expect once we left Saigon including navigating through the motorbikes as we crossed the street.

Keep in mind, we could have done this by ourselves but she made it much simpler and easier and a lot more fun.

We had a driver pick us up at the airport and it wasn't long before we came face to face with the traffic - holy sh.. i thought this is madness, absolute chaos but for the people who live here, it all makes sense. We would find out, as we traveled throughout the country, this is NORMAL!!!!!

Keep in mind there are 35 million motor bikes and 80 million people.

Looking at these photos you will see that people are the same there as here. Look at the girl talking on her mobile while driving her motorbike.

I am going to make a post every few days and I share with you my thoughts and photos of my experiences of this trip. I hope you will enjoy this and think about going to this wonderful almost untouched place

Enjoy

the first few days in vietnam

well, we made it just fine. actually it was no problem what so ever. what seemed like a long trip turned into a very short one with snoozing, watching t.v. on our personal computers, eating, a little and some reading. you know, the normal stuff you do on an 18 hour flight.
my very first impression of vietnam is - mexico with a different language.
what have we done so far? ho chi minh city (saigon to the people who live here) and i mean a city of motorbikes, the mekong delta area - a little touristy but fun, nha trang-beautiful beaches, pagodas, mud baths(a highlight of ours) and good food, danang - actually we spent our time at "marble mountain", china beach and hoi an and then back here for dinner at this rather unusual restaurant near the hotel.
since we have to get going to catch a bus to hue, this morning, i will write more about each of the stops when we get there.
this has been a BLAST! - do people actually use that terminology any more? traveling with angie is really fun and it makes it easier that we like the same kinds of things.
so far the best part of the trip has been hoi an and the beaches between here(danang) and there. the beaches here are amazing - white sand and really unoccupied. HUGE resorts are being built on the beach just north of here and almost all the way to hoi an. this is going to be like cancun - ugh!!!!!!!!!
i will write the details and send photos later today when we get to hue
have a wonderful day and do think about coming here.
l,j

musings from a some time alaskan

when we first arrived in early june from arizona i thought i would be spending much of my time inside working on the business and not be too affected by the weather considering it is so unpredictable here. so i settled in for a summer of observing my immediate surroundings from the inside out which, as it turned out, was a good plan.

unlike last year, this has been the rainiest summer most people can remember. we have been here for about 2 months and cumulatively there have been a total of 5 sunny days.

but to be honest, i have been warm, dry and hooked up to the internet but i can easily see that we are growing moss and grass at an unbelievable rate of speed. which, i guess, it isn't too difficult for everything to grow considering the amount of rain and the nearly 24 hours of light. it is amazing how quickly all of it grows with no dark or very little dark. and speaking of no dark, i don't have any trouble sleeping here, in the light but at home it has to be completely dark for me to sleep. what is that all about.

that said, i decided i couldn't spend the entire summer inside so i decided that i would have to embrace at least some of what happens here and much of it continues even with all of the

rain. fishing, camping, walking/hiking, landscaping.

interesting how adaptable i have become in such a foreign land. who would have thought?

julie

musings from a sometime alaskan

Traveling with a Cat

Hi there;
Well, have you ever thought that you might like to take a trip with your cat and then the idea occurred to you that it would be impossible. Actually that isn't true. The difficulty comes when you decide to take a 4,000 mile trip with a cat and 2 dogs. Difficult but not impossible.
We had to figure out a routine -
where to keep the cat food so the dogs to get it,
where to put the litter box so the dogs don't get into it,
where to keep the cat so she will actually use the litter box,
where to keep the cat during the traveling time each day.
Either we are slow learners or it just simply takes a week or so to get the system in place, i think the later of the 2, but we finally, about a day away from arriving at our cabin, were completely comfortable with the entire process.
By the time we unloaded our stuff at the cabin she, Precious, was exhausted . . see final photo!
Now, believe me, if we can do this you can do anything!

Traveling with a Cat

Once again at Liard Hot Springs

We have been traveling since May 21st. Driving, driving, driving.
The trip has been very interesting. We have run into, rain, snow, rain and sunshine - more about that later.
We arrived in Liard Hot Springs Provincial Park a couple of days ago and then decided to reward ourselves with a 2 night stay. With this Provincial Park comes the most perfect camp sites, water that we pump ourselves, outhouses, and bear proof trash cans.
Oh, hurray for the rest and relaxation! The hot springs were fabulous! Beware of going there in July or August - not only are there mosquitos but there black biting flies that are the size of your thumb.
Note, in the upper left photo, the little dots in the water, are actually John & I.
Next posting - Camping at Toad River.