It's over!

And we're behind on posts! We've been done traveling and recuperating in Hong Kong for the last two weeks. I'm flying back to the US tomorrow. Janet is here for another three weeks. But we will definitely write our last few posts for the sake of closure.. hopefully sooner rather than later.

And don't forget: in Cambodia, the bars are open until close.

Ascending dragon

The capital of Vietnam. As frustrating as it is full of life. It's easy to love, and it's exhausting.


Hanoi. Home to some of the best beer in Southeast Asia.


Where a lack of street food rice dishes is made up by a glut of meat and enough phở to drown a whale.


Where the chillies are hot and the temperature's hotter.


Where toddlers ride motorcycles. No, really..


A hectic place...


Where the traffic is more tangled than the electrical wiring.

Notice that no one's feet are on the ground. Traffic is moving.. in every direction.

An awesome city, where women carry their stores on their shoulders.


Where the artists at the Creative Oriental Crafts Kingdom still have no idea why every tourist takes a picture of their shop.


A city that we really enjoyed. And after a few days, we couldn't wait to leave.

DMZ tour

From Hue, we paid for a tour of the former Demilitarized Zone, where much of the fighting in the Vietnam war took place. Aside for tunnels north of the DMZ, there really wasn't much to see.

The "rock pile". The US Marines had an observation and artillery outpost on the mountain to the left. The top was only big enough for a helicopter to touch down with one leg while resupplying and rotating troops.

This bridge marks the beginning of the Ho Chi Minh trail.

Khe San, "Hell on Earth." A former US military base that saw some of the heaviest fighting in the war. Now a museum on a coffee plantation.

The villagers living north of the DMZ lived underground for much of the war. The Vinh Moc tunnels go on for miles, much of it 30 meters deep. There are dozens of tunnels, one of which we went into on the tour. There are many side passages, and tt would be very easy to get lost down there.

Dr. Pimp

Good catch Rudy.. yes, that was an old picture. Did the Malaysian language on the sign give it away? We're almost done with trip, so we've been looking through old photos. Here are a few more randoms..

Room D, the headmaster's office at a senior high school in Malang, Indonesia.

Believe it or not, not all pickpockets are Thai.

In Thailand, the seating priority is monk, then elderly/disabled, then everyone else.

cynophobia

Those of you who know me, probably know that I am really not a dog person. They've chased me down the street while walking to work. One dog even leapt over a 7 ft fence to chase me down the street when he saw me coming. I'm not sure how, but news had spread to most of the dogs in Providence and possibly in the New England area that I wasn't their number one fan.

Well are you prepared to be surprised? Turns out I think drowsy puppies who were recently injured are pretty cute. He just curled up in a ball on our table and fell asleep.

Too bad he'll get big, bark a lot, and probably tell all his friends to chase me around.

Hue

WARNING: Long Post Ahead...

Vietnam couldn't have planned a bigger historical tourist attraction if it had tried. We've seen plenty of historical sites but Hue definitely takes the cake for number and range of historical attractions in one city. Although it only served as the capital of Vietnam during the Nguyen dynasty (1802-1945) it's chock block full of temples, pagodas, tombs and palaces. Hue even boasts one of the oldest schools in Vietnam that Ho Chi Minh attended for one year. Apparently, during the construction of Hue, eight villages were relocated and 10,000 people were employed to build more than 300 royal buildings.

On our first day we took on the sweltering heat and biked around the ancient citadel and palace grounds. Many of the buildings within the palace have been destroyed by fire and bombings during the "American War" but surprisingly the brick-defensive wall has survived. Here we are standing in front of the main flag tower.

Across from the main flag tower is Ngo Mon Gate which is the main entrance into the imperial city. The gate itself has five entrances: the central doorway that the emperor used, two doorways on either side for mandarins (not the oranges har har), and the doorways on the most outer edges were for the royal elephants.

Strangely (or maybe not) the area where the residential palaces, quarters for the "nine ranks of royal concubines", and "pleasure pavilions" stood is called The Forbidden Purple City. I'm sure there's some superstitious/auspicious/lost in translation meaning to this name but before seeing the now manicured lawn that has replaced the royal abode, I imagined this as a lost Beatles album cover: a photo of a giant pool party involving the Emperor and his concubines promoting one love, all against the backdrop of swirling psychedelic colours.

There was nothing purple in the whole city. Actually the emperor's colour is yellow. Everything royal is painted yellow.

Anyway, we were probably most impressed with the nine dynastic urns. Cast in bronze, each urn is dedicated to an emperor. The largest weighs in at 2600 kg and is dedicated to Gia Long (the first Nguyen emperor).

The next few days we spent visiting the royal mausoleums and Thien Mu Pagoda. Although previous Vietnamese dynasties buried their emperors in ancestral villages the Nguyen built royal mausoleums. Sometimes it took years to find the proper location and even then, lakes and hills were added to "improve" the location. Restricted by time, heat, money and mild waning interest we only managed to visit two of the seven mausoleums.

Emperor Tu Duc's Tomb (fourth Nguyen emperor). Fun facts: He was the longest reigning Nguyen emperor and had 104 wives but no children. He had a pretty impressive mausoleum (that he apparently enjoyed for sixteen years before his death) that included extensive grounds, man-made lakes for fishing, and gardens to inspire his poetry.

Ari hiding in the shade

Interestingly the exterior wall of the tomb is decorated with shards of broken pottery.

Minh Mang's mausoleum was more well preserved/restored. More fun facts: Although his Queen died at age 17, he fathered 142 children with 33 wives and 107 concubines. The mausoleum is located in the middle of a forest – a location that took 14 years to find.

To round out our Hue historical experience we visited the Thien Mu Pagoda. Built on the site of an ancient Cham temple, it became well known after one of the resident monks protested against President Diem's regime. Thich Quang Duc drove to Saigon to protest the regime's repression of Buddhism and upon arriving, he took the lotus position and set himself on fire.

the makings of an unplanned fishing flashmob

It all started with "I wonder what's at the end of that rope?". And off Ari went to help a local fisherman and fisherwoman pull in their net. NEARLY the beginnings of a pseudo-flashmob, three middle-school aged girls came running over to help, followed by the only other tourist sitting on the beach. (If you're wondering where I was, clearly someone had to document this entire event) Struggling against the tide for over an hour the net slowly emerged from the ocean.

Disappointingly the entire two hour process (not including casting time) only yielded about twenty hand-sized fish and one shrimp (which they threw back).

However, they still seemed grateful for the extra hands and Ari made a new friend.

To quote Ari "They (the fishermen) were strong as sh*t"

a lesson in Cham

Having stopped at so many different Cham sites we felt compelled to head to the Cham Museum in Danang. Though it's one of the largest collections of Cham art, it's a relatively small museum. We sadly learned that 1. it started off as a Frenchman's dream of starting a garden of statues – hence all the statues were rounded up from Cham sites all over the country, instead of being preserved on site 2. many of the best statues are no longer in Vietnam, but exist in European private collections.

Huge stone slabs had been moved from their original locations and brought to this museum. However, the carvings no doubt been better preserved than many of the scattered Cham temples we've seen on our trip. Some of the carvings are somewhat similar to Khmer/Angkor Wat carvings (I'm getting a feeling of deja vu here...) – a mix of Hindu and Buddhist images with an array of lingas and breasts.

Yes, those breasts go all the way around.

Here we are admiring the incredible details and beautiful carvings...

Mobile stores

Flowers or hats, anyone?

Ho Chi Minh Highway

North of Kontum is the Ho Chi Minh Highway, one of the most beautiful roads in Vietnam. It winds around mountains in roughly the same way that the Ho Chi Minh Trail once did.

Fran & Fil's Russian-made Minsk motorcycle takes a mixture of gas and oil. This makes it quite possibly the least environmentally friendly motorcycle ever made, and they are followed by a cloud of smoke everywhere they go. Below, Fil smokes out some local kids at a gas station.



Along the way, we spotted a waterfall and stopped to check it out. Fil and I decided that it would be fun to climb all the way to the top. When we got up, we found a few friendly locals about our age drinkng a case of beer. Before we could politely decline, they had opened two beers and shoved them in our hands. Fil and I had an awesome time up there while Janet and Fran sat on the road in the sweltering heat. Needless to say, they weren't too impressed by our story when we got back.


It took us two days to get back to Hoi An from Kontum. We stopped off in a small town (the biggest town for 100 KM), at possibly the worst accommodation we've stayed at since August. We left early the next morning.