During the rest of our stay in Saigon, we started off by visiting a Banh Xeo restaurant recommended by Anthony Bourdain (delicious!), visited a pagoda (known as Turtle Temple for its numerous turtles outside), passed by the Reunification Palace where Don and Sam made amends, visited the War Remnants Museum (heavy on the propaganda, but also very disturbing at parts), and drank some bia hoi (fresh beer), met with some other travelers and enjoyed the night life.
The next morning, we traveled to the Mekong Delta and did a tour of the area which included visits to a honey farm, fruit farms, coconut farms, floating markets, land markets, coconut candy factories, rice paper factories, and the largest town in the delta area called Can Tho. While the entire trip was pretty touristy, it was still a lot of fun. We stuck our hands into the bee hive and pulled out fresh honey (scary for me since I think I'm allergic to bees, or least I was as a kid. Don and Sam handled it like champions), listened to some traditional live music (Don stopped clapping along as soon as they started singing about Ho Chi Minh), ate grilled rat (much more delicious than you would think), ate snake (chewy, but still good), held snakes, cruised down the river and relaxed.
After briefly returning to Saigon, we jumped aboard a night train to Nha Trang, a coastal city known for its beautiful beaches and islands. We arrived at Nha Trang at 5:30am in the morning and after dropping our bags off, we headed to the beach to find it absolutely packed at 6am with locals. Children played in the water as parents looked on, enjoying the cool morning air from the beach. The water was a vibrant blue and islands dotted the horizon everywhere - truly a great view. The water is much cooler than in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, but it is still relatively warm and enjoyable. For breakfast, we met up with Alex, a friend from SF traveling from Hanoi to Saigon and then headed to the beach to soak up some afternoon sun. However, by the afternoon, all the locals had left and the beaches were sparsely populated with tourists. We enjoyed the day, worked on our sunburns, played in the ocean, and enjoyed refreshing Pilsners from the local, beach-side brewpub, the Louisiane.
Unfortunately, we also saw the dark side of Nha Trang, when late at night (after drinking probably a little too much) we were headed to grab some late night Banh Mi sandwiches when a group of girls pulled up on motobikes, accosted Alex and stole his watch, and then came at me. I pushed two of them away pretty hard, and they ran away giggling and jumped back on their motobikes. When I reached down, I found that one of the girls must have came up from behind me while I was pushing the other two away and snagged my iPhone from out of my pocket. All this happened in about 8 seconds. At least they didn't get my passport or bank cards! Being the good friend that he is, Sam sat watch at our hostel door to make sure no burglars raided our room during the night (well, he sat watch for about 5 minutes before heading to bed).
The next day we headed to VinPearl, an island with an amusement park accessible by a 15 minute cable car ride across the ocean. All four of us expected to be bored to death at the amusement park but were pleasantly surprised to find all the free roller coasters we could ride (with no lines!), free bumper cars, free arcade games as far as the eye could see, dogs riding bicycles, an aquarium, and a bad ass water park. At one point in the water park we met a family traveling and went down a ride on a huge yellow raft which whipped around turns so quickly that Sam went flying about a foot and a half airborne at one point. If we had to describe VinPearl, we'd describe it as the place where amusement park rides that don't meet American safety standards go to continue living. There was even an amazing ride where you whip down from the top of the island (with amazing views) and have to control your own breaks around curves in order to make sure you don't hit the person in front of you or go flying off the rails (but don't worry, there were some nice 3 foot tall metal nets to catch us if we did).
On our final day in Nha Trang, we went scuba diving off of one of the islands and saw some of the clearest water any of the three of us had seen, populated by moray eels, lionfish, box fix, pipe fish, and a ton of other specimens. It was a great way to end Nha Trang, and the best of our two scuba trips thus far. Hopefully even better trips are still to come!
From Nha Trang, we took the night train to Hoi An - the land of tailored clothes and peaceful evening river bike rides. And we did just that. Sam had two linen shirts and some slick boat shoes made (marina ready for when he gets back), while I had a silk shirt custom made. After I put on my silk shirt, I immediately regret not going for linen, as it is HOT in Vietnam (and Cambodia, and Thailand, and everywhere else we are going). We took a guided motobike tour through the Hoi An countryside where we saw farmers hard at work with their water buffalo and local kids run up to our motos to give us high fives as we drove past.
We also took a fabulous cooking class at the Morning Glory Restaurant, where we started off with an 8am trip to the local market (which puts any farmer's market in the US to shame for sheer size but lacks entertainment and prepared food) to check out the various ingredients that we would be using. There are a plethora of fresh fruits and vegetables here in Asia that you can't get in America (at least not fresh). We continued back to the restaurant where we prepared, and subsequently ate, a 5-course meal consisting of shrimp wonton soup, a fresh spring roll, banh xeo (crispy egg pancake), chicken skewers, and a mango salad. While everything was delicious, my personal favorite was the banh xeo which was absolutely amazing. Now that we know how to cook them, we're bringing them back to the states!
When Don and I went for haircuts in Hoi An, we expected only the finest from a city so well known for it's custom tailored services. Unfortunately, "a little shorter" apparently didn't translate very well to Vietnamese, as we both ended up with military style buzz cuts. At least they keep our heads cool in all this heat! We enjoyed our time in the quaint old town, where they periodically close down the streets to motos and cars allowing for a relaxing stroll or bike ride. We followed another Anthony Bourdain recommendation and got delicious Banh Mi sandwiches near the market, but boy were they spicccccy. Our mouths burnt for a good 30 minutes afterwards. Just thinking about it makes us want to go back and get another one just to torture ourselves so good.
The "night" train from Hoi An to Hanoi took a gruelling 17 hours, eating up a full day of activity as we didn't arrive until 4pm on Sunday. After checking into Hanoi Backpackers, the first European style backpacker hostel we've found in SEA, we mingled with other travelers in the hostel lounge over free beer and bbq. In fact, this was the first hamburger we've eaten since leaving the States and Man oh Man! was it greasy and delicious. After a night of crawling the streets of Hanoi with fellow backpackers, we took an early morning guided tour of the Old Town. While just as busy as the streets of Saigon, the traffic in Hanoi is much less chaotic and cars and motos tend to keep to their lanes, instead of using the entire road. After the tour, we stopped for some Vietnamese coffee next to Hoan Kiem Lake, which was interrupted by thunderous lightning and torrential rain. We tried to wait it out for an hour, but gave up hope and ventured onward to the Hoa Lo Prison (sarcastically nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton by American POA's), where John McCain and other American pilots were held captive during the war. The Prison, much like the War Remnants Museum in Saigon, was a house of propaganda and displayed photos of American POA's playing sports, celebrating Christmas, receiving medical care, and getting souvenirs as they were released.
Later that night, we took a trip out to Snake Village, where Matt and I (Sam) were "killers" and Don was a "biter". Basically, the killers are responsible for gutting a live snake and the biter has to bite out and swallow its beating heart. After the snake was killed, every body part was cooked in a 5-course dinner, which included ground bone pate, meatballs, bbq ribs, fried meat, and skin salad, with snake blood, bile and plenty of rice wine to go down with it. Not everything was tasty, but it was at least tolerable and made for a fun night.
Matt and I then escaped the big city for the cool, peaceful mountains of Sapa to the north, near the border with China. We took a two-day trek from Sapa to Ban Ho, passing lucious, green rice paddies, tiny villages, raging rivers, and towering waterfalls. We spent a night at a homestay with a local family in the village of Ta Van, who were very friendly and hospitable. Having not slept on the train from Hanoi to Sapa, we were exhausted after a long day of trekking and crashed shortly after a delicious dinner of local small plates and rice wine. However, we were unable to sleep late as the roosters were eager to wake us at sunrise for another full day of trekking.
We're now back in bustling Hanoi for a day before setting out on a three-day Halong Bay cruise. Our friends Nick, Brandon, Aaron and Ryan from SF will be joining us in Vietnam, Laos and Thailand for the next two weeks. We'll be sure to update you on our adventures in due course.
