Our time in Tam Coc was a rollercoaster. It is a beautiful little city right next to the Ngo Dong River, surrounded by picturesque rice fields and staggering karsts that shot up from the ground. When we weren't exploring, we were indoors fighting the cold, rainy weather. Our hotel room on the 6th floor had an awesome view so we had no problem with the latter activity…often accompanied by popcorn after befriending the local vendor.

We visited three unique temples during our time here. The views from each were amazing and hard to describe, so I will leave the pictures here instead of struggling with words.

Between rainy days we snuck in a boat ride down the local river. An amusing part of the ride was the style of rowing by the local guides. The boat was row boat style with one oar on each side…standard. However, once they caught some speed the guide would use feet instead of hands to row. Some would row right then left offset and others would row like a frog. It was entertaining, and impressive to watch.

The ride was leisurely despite locals hassling us for pictures and products. All of a sudden a rowboat would bee-line it over to where we were and insist on taking our picture or selling us coffee. A firm no would send them on their way most of the time. Views of the surrounding valleys and karsts were worth the bit of hassle it caused.

Our final day in Tam Coc lead us to motorbike over to Cuc Phoung national park for exploring. The first thing we saw was a primate rescue center that served as a type of halfway house to release the animals back in their native habitat. The main issue is humans (of course). Habitat destruction and poaching are still concerns around Asia as a whole. We enjoyed learning about the different creatures and watching them swing around the enclosures. The gibbons were especially impressive to observe. We decided to visit a cave after this and it was kind of spooky. We learned that people lived there 7,500 years ago. We followed a rickety staircase up to the top where we…well Grant mostly, had to squeeze through stalactites/mites to see all the rooms.

The next day we were catching a quick bus back to Hanoi, then off to northern Thailand.

Cheers

Grant and Danielle

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During the first day in Cat Ba, we became instant regulars at the Dolphin Cafe and huge fans of any dish made with chili and lemongrass. We also started the Star Wars saga with hopes to catch the 7th movie three weeks later in Thailand (where they don't censor and edit their movies).

We also tried to rock climb in Cat Ba, but gear and guides are sold at western prices. I'm sure the experience would have been stellar, but we couldn't start dropping bills on this trip quite yet (still can't).

The next two days were filled with trekking. The first day we walked the whole town and found our way to the top the highest peak on the island for stellar views mixed with the usual shenanigans.

On the second day of trekking, we crossed the island from edge to edge. We spotted a collection of new birds, giant black tree squirrels, and a Taiwan habu pit viper. Danielle almost put her hand right next to it. It's was deadly and beautiful. The trail let out in a little village, and the only way back was by riding a little boat back to town that snakes through the karsts of Holong Bay.

I also got a haircut that day and let me say, that was leagues scarier than the snake encounter.

Thanks for reading!

Grant and Danielle

P.S. When in Vietnam, look for vegetables. When you're surrounded by all the food local food, you don't realize you've stopped eating proper vegetables. Not a huge deal, but a healthy regular body needs fiber, if you know what I mean.

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When we arrived in the city, we looked for a quick taxi ride to our hostel, but instead got a taxi with a fixed meter and got scammed out of $3 before we even knew where we were. Oh well, these are the lessons you learn quickly in every new city. In hind sight, we've learned not to trust any of the taxis in Vietnam, except for solid green taxis.

Day one was laid back. Besides dinner, we drank coffee and played cards till it was time to kick back with beer instead.

The next day was Danielle's birthday! We visited a millennium old university, a fine art gallery with some great silk art on the top floor, looked at the Soviet meets French meets Chinese architecture of the government buildings and The Ho Chi Mihn mausoleum, and finally went to a water puppet show.

The whole day was made complete with great food. Lunch was eaten on the ground with the local street vendors and dinner was a fine western meal at Green Tangerine.

The last day was spent eating and walking. That night we visited a collection of the local party hostels and rooftop bars for beers and merry making. It was Christmas Eve after all…

The food in Hanoi was absolutly unreal. Besides the normally absolutely delicious pho, bun bo, fried meat donuts, etc, we tried quite a few new dishes.

Bun Cha (a favorite of ours) is a dish that consists of individual plates of cold rice noodles, beef meat balls, fried spring rolls, greens, delicious broth, and a small personal bowl. You take all the ingredients, combine them in your bowl and add chili and garlic. Eat. Repeat. Enjoy.

If you ever visit this city, look up the local food and where to get it. We did our own unorganized food tour and it is worth the extra effort (walking from place to place). If you're eating fried rice here, you're doing it wrong.

Next up Cat Ba Island in Holong Bay.

Thanks for reading,

Grant and Danielle.

P.S. Sorry for the huge gap between posts with little communication. We post when we can (when Internet allows) and we are pretty far behind right now. I hope we can catch up during a rainy or laundry day soon.

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Let's start with the good.

Phong Nha is a awesome park that has some of the largest caves on the planet hidden underneath it. It has an great hostel called Easy Tiger that has good live music and there are a few nice restaurants on the main drag. The town is nestled in a little canyon surrounded by shear cliffs and karsts on one side and river on the other.

Amusingly, Phong Nha has been finding a new biggest cave every couple years for the last 8 years, and now hosts the largest known cave on the planet. One of the ex-biggest caves, Paradise cave, has been rigged and lit by the park service and anyone can visit, no guide needed. It goes back over 7km, I think (The biggest goes back something like 35km). When we dropped by, it was nothing short of awesome, and our photos will do it little justice.

We also rode to a trail for Gio Waterfall and some monkey spotting. Success.

Despite the thin mist and light rain that I'm almost use to by now, our motor bike ride was gorgeous. We rode through farm land, over canyon bridges, amongst huge karsts and through cow herds.

What an awesome place.

Now, the bad, the worst accommodation I've ever had the displeasure of experiencing…

Remember that we were showing up to the national park sick with body ache and a cold. We were aiming for a private room and a days rest with pho and tea. The night we arrive, we quickly find a room, but we are next to a bar with karaoke and rest doesn't come easily. To boot, the next morning we are greeted to hammers and saws.

Fair enough, this is the life of travel, so we hiked down the road and found a place away from the noise. Unfortunately, we end up finding the worst accommodation cesspool in the history of accommodations.

The pain comes on slow. We show up and they take us to a room in the back corner of the hotel. It has one window that opens to a brick wall with a pile of trash beneath it. All good though, the bed looks clean and it's quiet. A place to recover.

But then we smelled cigarettes, and then we found cigarettes, and then the kids started yelling and stomping and crying, and then the hammers started, then the saws, and then we switched rooms and the staff are jaded and apathetic to our condition, and then Christmas music, then toddlers music, all at full volume, then random children were barging into our room and doors slamming…As it drew cold, I went down to ask for real blankets (apparently not included) and recieved nothing but glances from the staff/family as they ate dinner in the other room. I looked around and found both of our passports sitting out in the open, not in a safe, ready to be stolen, so I stole them back.

Eventually it dies down just in time for bed and we think our awful hard spring beds were the end of it… How wrong we were….

…I woke up at 3am covered in hives. HIVES. When was the last time these sheets were washed? I slipped into my silk liner for protection, and try to go back to sleep, but just to add insult to injury, at 4am, I'm greeted to Christmas carols on full blast from a loud speaker downstairs. (Who listens to Chistm- it doesn't matter.) We luckily didn't catch anything permanent from that cesspool, but Danielle came out with 40 bed bug bites and turned into an itchy mess for the next two days. Hammers, trash, bed bugs, hives, Christmas carols… I hope that place burns to the ground. I hate that hotel with passion.

Fin.

Phong Nha was still awesome and I still recommend it, just be careful where you stay.

See you in Hanoi!

Grant and Danielle

P.S. As a reminder, our full res photos are in Dropbox. Find the link through either of our Facebooks.

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First up was Nha Trang. We had 7 hours between bus rides so we walked to an ancient, 600 year old Cham temple. The temple was interesting, but slightly belittled by the six gift shops on the temple grounds and it's location in the middle of a city with high rises well above its little hill.

The charm of Nha Trang came from a friendly local Easy Rider tour guide who sparked a conversation with us at a cofee shop. After the standard topics, he let us in on his view of the government, the facade of success put in front of tourists, the corruption keeping shops in and out of business and people in and out of jobs. Despite fractured English, this guy was a wealth of information from a local perspective. Thank you, [name removed].

After snagging a copy of East of Eden by Steinbeck from a mobile bookstore (shoutout to Aaron), we were off to Hoi An.

Hoi An is probably the quaintest city I've ever seen. Boats are wooden and colourful, storefronts are paneled and old fashion, and the streets are small with bright lanterns. Despite a continuous drizzle, the walk around the small town was refreshing and delicious as we snacked on fresh donuts and ate a local favorite called Cao Lau. Apparently it can only be made here because it requires a special noodle to be cooked in a water that can only come from a specific local well. I don't care if any of that matters, because it was legit. So good.

Since it was raining, we kept to indoor activities: cafes, Bahn Mi Queen, chicken rice, 10¢ beers, blind massages, and shop tours. All good and sometimes interesting.

After two days stuck indoors, however, I wanted to explode with all the stored energy I possessed. My god, I would hate to be an indoor cat. Once we got to Hue, we found things that guaranteed at least 8 miles of walking / day.

First we went to the Imperial City. A citadel built in 1804-ish. The outer layer of the wall surrounds half the current city. Within that is an old, ancient fortified castle, and within the citadel is the forbidden purple city. The old emperor's fort came complete with 5 temples, a lake, a garden, and a separate area for housing his mother and wife.

That night we had a nice meal on the river front and hung out with the family running our homestay. Southern Vietnamese say Northern Vietnamese people are colder and less friendly. I guess we aren't far enough north yet.

The next day, we ventured through the country by motor bike, in the rain to an old temple, a gorgeous cemetery, and two dramatically large emporer tombs. From one story, it seemed as though the emperors during the 1800s were simply French puppets, so they had time to build these awesome tombs and live there as a quick get away from politics. After seeing them, I'd like to go back for a get away too.

We started coming down with a bad cold at this point so we limped on the bus to Phong Nha that night and loaded ourselves with Advil, vitamin C, and B12, hoping for greener pastures. First time I've been home sick so far. There's nothing like a warm bed and not having to worry about travel when you're sick.

See you in Phong Nha for caves and hikes.

Cheers,

Grant and Danielle

P.S. How to get over a cold in 24 hours: Advil, Vit C, B12, copious amounts of super spicy pho, and even more hot, ginger-lime tea.

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The first stop we made in the city was at an establishment called 100 Roofs Cafe. There we ordered an artichoke tea (delicious), but most importantly, wandered through an eccentric maze of various art pieces, staircases, dank rooms, and thresholds hardly big enough for me to get through. It was a labyrinth of the owner's mind and was overwhelming to get through at times. See pic below for an example of what was covering the walls.

After about a half hour of meandering around the cafe, we finally made it to the rooftop garden. We gulped fresh air and celebrated our success of finding the top.

We also stumbled upon a flower park which was pretty enough to walk through, but we couldn't help finding a tad creepy due to the lack of people. Oh, and the weirdo Viet-Mickey statues. Lay off the dope Micky!

One of the highlights of the time we spent there was eating traditional meats at a self-BBQ restaurant.We ordered chicken, beef, frog, goat, crocodile, and ……chicken feet! Our waiter kept asking us if we actually meant to order what we had said…pointing at his feet and waving his arms around like a chicken to get the point across that it was actually chicken feet. Once we had the dish in front of us he watched us grill it, and helped us out after we burnt the first one. He and some friends then stuck around to watch us eat it. It wasn't bad…although there is zero meat on it whatsoever. I think our friend Anna's face says it all. Our group closed the place down, and the waiters gave us each a couple shots of rice wine on the house at the end of it all. I think they liked us.

We also decided to hike up to Lang Biang mountain – 2 miles up a paved road and 1.5 miles out and 600m up a dirt trail. The view was completely worth the steep climb up the mountain. We enjoyed victory Oreos and bahn mis at the top with some locals, and then trekked down a random side trail to avoid pavement. One huge descent later, we found ourselves in a scene that reminded us of home.

The next day was full of pagodas and views. We even found a maze depicting hell at the bottom of one of them. We also visited the Crazy House, a sister establishment to the 100 Roofs Cafe. Apparently a couple built both of them. It was as strange as the former place we visited. We even spotted a vine lady having too good of a time with herself in public.

The final day in Da Lat was spent motorbiking from the main city through a few towns to visit a waterfall. The view of the fall was nice, but the ride there was killer.

After, we are off to travel north. As always, thanks for reading!

D & G

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We made it in one piece and decided to wander for some food. Our friend was meeting us way later for dinner and drinks (shout out to Connor for being such a great guide!) so we had an afternoon to kill. We headed over to the War Remminance Museum (use to be War Crimes Museum) which was quite an experience. Mostly photos and stories, it painted a picture of the brutality of the French occupation of Vietnam as well as the aftermath from the “American War” as it is called over here. Especially intense is the reality of agent orange victims, and how multiple generations of people are still affected today.

Then we decided to head over to an open market for something authentic to eat. We ordered bahn mi sandwiches and some weird sweet milk gummy thing. The sandwich was delicious; the drink was….interesting. It was the first time either of us had beans in our milk ha.

The rest of our time in the city consisted of exploring and learning about food, history, culture, and the some inner workings of the city itself. One mesmerizing activity is to sit and watch the chaos of the traffic circles around town. I had flashbacks of the madness at UCSB that was created by freshman utilizing the bike paths for the first time. This was similar, but much busier and more deadly. We never saw a single accident however.

When we wanted to relax and weren't watching traffic circle madness, we were most likely people watching in the park. Usually at some point, a group of Vietnamese students would wander up to us and ask if they could practice their English. This turned into a lively back and forth – Grant and I asking about different phrases, local food to try, and scams to avoid. Them asking about grammar, pronunciations, and our backgrounds. We came out of it with local insight and they caught a glimpse into the lives of two Americans. It was a very pleasant experience.

One thing we loved, as per Connors recommendation, was a banana, avocado, soursops smoothie. It was delicious! Much better than the sweet milk thing we had before. Now I know that sweet avocado is something I will recreate.

The final morning in the city, we ended up taking another cooking class. We created fresh spring rolls with prawn on top, sticky rice dumpling things, and BBQ beef wrapped in betel leaves. Yum!

On the final night in the city we saw the AO show at the opera house. It was a cirque du soleil style performance that portrayed daily village/farming lifestyle of Vietnamese people. Only native instruments were used for the live music. The stage and props were built with things that village folks would use in everyday life. Structures were created and broken down in front of our eyes with long bamboo poles and scarfs used to tie it all together. The performers were amazing athletes. At one point, every performer was holding different sized bamboo pieces in place vertically so women could walk along the top of the pieces as easily as if there were stairs below her. It is difficult to convey how awesome the show was.

After the show, we walked back to our hostel, grabbed our bags, and caught a night train to the next city: Da Lat. Such is the life of a traveller.

Danielle and Grant

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