This was my last day of traveling, so I decided to make the most of it.  After breakfast at the hotel, I walked to the Reunification Palace.  (It was about a mile away, but the hotel workers were certain I wouldn’t be able to walk that far.  They tried to convince me to take a taxi.  Well, I proved them wrong!) 

The palace looked very boring.  It is basically just a concert block, and it looks like any government building in the US.  So, I didn’t bother with the tour.  I walked on to the War Remnants Museum.  The museum is mainly just very graphic pictures from the war.  It was really sad and depressing.  (At one point they had babies bodie, that were killed by Agent Orange foating in jars.  That was way too morbid for me!)  A few of the captions really made me mad though.  In one picture there were 2 white men holding heads from decapitated bodies.  The caption said something like, “This picture was taken to show US Soliders how to behave.  These are model soliders to the US.  They believe in defacing and brutalizing their victims.”  Obivously, many horrible and tragic things happened there, but I didn’t think all the propaganda was necessary.

After the museum, I walked to a market.  In the LP it sounded like it would be a good place to go shopping, but it was really just food.  Since it was about 100 degrees and there was a lot of raw-unrefrigerated meat there, I did a really quick walk through of the market.

Then I got my final massage of this trip.  (How sad!)  I went to a place called Chinese Traditional Medical Institute.  They have blind massuses doing Chinese massage.  It was a really nice massage, but she used a Chinese oil of my back that really burned.  (It honestly felt like I was on fire.)  But after a few minutes the burning feeling went away and I was totally relaxed.

After the massage, I went to another market.  This one was awesome!  It was full of silk, lacquer stuff, purses, shoes, foods etc.  I bought a few things and had a very fresh lunch (1 lady was butchering the chicken a few aisles away and another lady was making the noodles by hand a few stalls down).  

After that I had to say goodbye to HCM and head to the airport.  My trip was awesome.  I was really sad it was over, but I’m so excited to see my family and friends!   

Because I only have a few days left in Vietnam before I go home, I decided to book some day trips and see as much of Southern Vietnam as I can. (I can’t believe I’ll be home on June 6th. It’s crazy!) Anyways, on Saturday I booked a 1 day trip to the Mekong Delta. The van came to my hotel and picked me up at 8:00am. It was about a 2 hour drive out to the Mekong. (There are about 18 million people living on or near the Mekong. It is really important to Vietnam.)

Our trip started with a nice boat ride around the Mekong and some of the small canals. The canals were so beautiful. It felt like we were on a jungle safari ride at Disney World or something. We stopped at a place where they make coconut candie and honey. The candie was so delicious and it is basically 100% pure coconut made by hand. We also sampled some delicious tea. (It was jasmine tea with honey and fresh kumquat juice squeezed in. Yummy!)

We got back on the boat and drove around some more, and then stopped for lunch at a little restraunt on the river. It was pretty good, but the portions were tiny! (Good thing we had all those coconut candies.) Unfortunately it started raining while we were eating lunch, so we had a wet boat ride afterwards.

The next thing on the agenda was being paddled around in small canoes by some local people. (We even got to wear those pointed straw hats. How funny!) It was really pretty, but I was sure we were going to tip over and have a little swim in the Mekong. We stopped at one more place to sample many different kinds of tropical fruit. We had papaya, dragon fruit, pineapple, banana, a weird grapefruit, and some jack fruit. (I love trying all these different things!) Then it was just the bus ride back to town.

In the evening I did a bit of window shopping and had dinner at the same street restraunt as the night before (it wasn’t as good this time).

On Sunday, I went with the same tour group (Happy Tours) to the Cu Chi Tunnels. These are some of the tunnels that the Viet Cong used during the war. The tunnels go for more than 130 miles, and there are 3 levels in most places. I can’t believe they were able to live in them for 20+ years (from about 1948 to 1975). I don’t think I could have lasted 1 night!

It was very interesting to see how they lived, and all of the weapons they could create out of bamboo and shrapnal. (Our guide had been in the Southern Vietnam army for 6 years and had done some army training in the US, so he was very interesting to listen to!) At the end of the tour we got to go into one of the tunnels. It was so tiny, that I only made it about 3 feet in before clasturphobia kicked in, and then I had to turn around. At the end of one of the tunnels you can see the tiny cave/room that the V.C. general lived in for 26 years. It was insanely small!

After the tour we went back to the Happy Tour office and had lunch. I was exhausted, so I went and got a pedicure (only $1.25) did a bit of window shopping and than relaxed at the hotel for a whille.

For dinner that night I decided to use a recommendation from my Lonely Planet Book. It was a great restraunt supporting an awesome cause.  They take street kids and orphans and train them in cooking and waitressing.  They also make sure that all the kids get an education and they teach them English.  It was an awesome restraunt.  The food was great and it was probably the best service I have ever received.  You could tell that they really take their jobs seriously and take pride in their work!

I’m looking forward to seeing everyone in MN, in 2 days!

Today was another LONG travel day.  We left the hotel at 7:00am and set off for the border crossing.  The bus was 100x nicer than our mini-bus, so we were all happy.  (It even had working a.c.!  Amazing!)

It was about 4 hours to the Cambodia/Vietnam border, where we had lunch.  Then we had to carry our huge packs around for about 45 minutes, while we waited in lines, filled out paperwork etc.  (I think I’m going to need another massage!)  I’m glad we had Nak with us, because there were some con-men inside the Vietnam building.  They were wearing uniforms and asking for people’s passports.  About 10 people (not in our group) gave them their passports.  The men won’t give them back and demanded about $100 from them.  (Luckily Nak had warned us about that.)

We got to Ho Chi Minh in the late afternoon, and I just hung out at the hotel for a while.  (I get my own room for the next 3 days! Yeah!)  Then, I found a travel agent to do a day trip to the Mekong Delta with.  (There are 100’s of travel agents all around the backpacker area.  It’s really hard to choose which one to go through.) 

My group is meeting up for our final dinner tonight, and then I’m on my own for the next 3 days.  (5 members of our group stayed in Cambodia, so we said good bye to them yesterday.)  We ate dinner at a little restraunt on the street.  It was surprisingly good food!  And then we had a drink and said goodbye to each other.

Our last day in Vietnam was when we planned to see most of the tourist sites.  We woke up early, and after breakfast at our hotel we called our nice taxi driver from the night before to drive us to Ho Chi Minh’s Masoleum.  It was very interesting trying to talk to him on the phone, since he didn’t speak much English.  But eventually he figured out what we wanted. 

So first we went to the Masoleum.  (I have already been to Mao’s Masoleum in Beijing, so I sort of knew what to expect.)  They are very strict and regulate your every move. You need to have your bags checked numerous times, and leave your cameras and cell phones at a little booth before you enter the building.  This masoleum was basically like a big maze to get in.  First go to this building, then wind your way around a big path, next go to the next building to get checked out again.  But we finally got to the entrance, and of course the armed guards choose me to pull aside and search again.  Anyways, we got in and saw Ho Chi Minh’s body.  He has been dead since the late 1960’s, so it was surprising how good he looked.  He looked like he was just taking alittle nap in a glass case and would open his eyes any minute.  Creepy!

 Ho Chi Minh’s Masoleum

After that we walked around and saw the Presidental Palace, Ho Chi Minh’s house, the stilt house, and the one Pillar Pagoda.  It was pretty over run with tourists, but it was very pretty with lush tropical gardens all around.  The only interesting thing that happened was some random Vietnamese man told Shannon, Jen, and I that we weren’t allowed to walk by the Presidental Palace unless we bought a brochure.  Everyone around us was just walking in and he didn’t even try to stop them.  We couldn’t figure out why he had singled us out from all the other tourists, and we didn’t want to put up with his BS.  But while we were arguing with him, a super nice Korean tourist bought brochures for us, so that we wouldn’t have to put up with the stupid Vietnamese man anymore.  (Korean people can be so nice and generous sometimes.)

After that bit of sightseeing, we went to the Temple of Literature.  It was pretty with a bunch of interesting court yards.  But it had tons of tourists too, and we didn’t really know much about the significance of the buildings and statutes.  So I think alot of it was lost on us. 

After the Temple of Literature, we walked to the Old Quarter.  I was quite proud that we didn’t get lost, because it was at least a mile away, and the roads are so windy.  It’s pretty hard to navigate.  Anyways, we made it to the Old Quarter and had lunch overlooking the lake.  Then Shannon and I decided to try getting massages again.  We found a place that gave hour long massages for about $5.  We went in and sat in the sauna and then went for our massages.  It turned out that we were in the same room and they wanted us to lay there completely naked without even a towel to cover us.  So Shannon and I definetly don’t have anything to hide from each other now.  The massages were really rough and they didn’t use any lotion so it was a bit painful at times.  Also, we were quite weirded out when they sat on us to massage our backs (we were still totally exposed).  Very bizarre experience!  The massages only lasted about 20 mins instead of an hour, but that was ok with us since they definetly weren’t very relaxing.  But then the kept saying that we should give them tips if we liked the massage.  We didn’t like it much and we had paid for an hour, so we didn’t feel like we should tip them. 

After our massages we did some more shopping in the Old Quarter and then went to the Water Puppet show.  The show was very interesting.  Vietnamese people have been doing this kind of performance for more than 400 years, so it was cool to see alittle bit of thier culture.  Also, the music was very cool.  They had a small traditional band there accompaning the show.

Next we went to the West Lake.  There wasn’t much written about it in our guide book, but we had heard that they have some great floating seafood restaraunts on the lake so we decided to check it out.  We saw a pretty temple/shrine thing when we first got there.  There weren’t any signs in English so we don’t really know what it was, but it had some beautiful buildings and statutes. 

As we were walking by the lake we saw tons of really tacky photo booths set up.  It was so bizarre!  Basically it was huge cut outs of things, and big dirty stuffed animals you could pose with and then pay to have them take your picture with these ugly, dirty, tacky things.  Who would do that?  And why were there hundreds of them?  (Obviously they must get some business if there are hundreds of them.)

We ate dinner at the Potomac floating restaraunt on the West Lake.  It was the perfect setting and awesome weather.  They had a really extensive menu, with almost every kind of seafood you could imagine plus a bunch of non-seafood options (which made me happy since I don’t like fish).  One of the pages was devoted to ”Wild” game.  They had cat, porcupine, and snake on the menu!!  Yuck!  Needless to say we didn’t order any of those.  We actually had a great meal and relaxed at the lake for a while.

(This is a picture of the menu, where it lists cat etc. Hard to read on the blog though.)

Our trip was coming to a close, so we went back to the hotel to pack up.  We had arranged it so our favorite taxi driver would come pick us up and drive us to the airport.  He was so excited and happy that we kept asking him to drive us.  He even brought little wrapped gifts for each of us.  (They turned out to be little plastic dog figurines, hair binders, and wrapped packs of gum.  Very strange, but it was extremely sweet!) 

 Us with our sweet taxi driver, Long.

Our flight back went well. We lucked out and each got 3 seats to oursleves so we could strech out and sleep.  (Which we needed to do since we got into Seoul at 7:00 am and we had to work that same day.)

It was an awesome trip!  And something interesting happened nearly every hour.  I’m so glad that we used our few days off and left Korea!  Shannon and Jen were great travel buddies too! 

We woke up early at our hotel on Cat ba Island and went to get our complimentary breakfast at the restaraunt where we ate dinner the night before.  Our breakfast was 2 pieces of bread and about a teaspoon of jam. (Really filling!)  We did order Vietnamese milk coffee and  it was delicious! (It is really strong coffee with a chocolate flavor to it.) 

Then we went back to the boat.  We had about a 3 hour ride back to the marina.  After we got off the boat, we went to lunch at a restaraunt in Halong City.  It was basically more of the same (fish, squid, spring rolls, rice, and french fries), but we had a nice conversation with a guy from South Africa that had joined our group for the day. 

It is so fun being able to talk with people from all over the world who love traveling.  On the boat we talked to people from Norway, Germany, Ireland, Korea, and South Africa.  (There were also some older people on our boat ride back from France.) So we were really an international group!  And everyone had done a lot of traveling so it was fun to hear their travel stories from all around the world.

Once we got back to Hanoi, we decided to go on bicycle ricshaw rides around the Old Quarter.  It was a really fun way to see all of the shops and narrow winding roads, but we did feel bad that the men had to pedal our lazy butts around. 

   Jen and Shannon on bicycle rickshaw

We decided to go back to the hotel to freshen up before dinner, so we jumped in a taxi.  We just decided to pay the meter price instead of negotating beforehand.  That was a BIG mistake.  He definetly was a crook.  he had a meter that didn’t even make sense.  The numbers didn’t really correspond to Vietnamese money (which would have been in the 100,000’s and it definetly wasn’t in US $ either.)  So when we pulled up to the hotel, we just assumed it would be about 30,000 Dong like it had been the last 3 times we went there.  He told us it was 100,000 Dong.  We obviously didn’t want to pay him 3 times the going rate, so we told him we knew that price wasn’t right and gave 50,000 Dong and got out of the taxi.  He jumped out after us and started screaming and yelling at us.  Then he grabbed my arm and tried to pull me back into the taxi.  At this time a Vietnamese woman came over and just calmly watched while he screamed in our faces, and kept grabbing my arm and scratching it with his long pointy finger nails.  We told him to come into the hotel and we would straighten out the problem.  That made him even more mad!  He acted like he was going to hit me, so we just threw the other 50,000 Dong at him and ran away.  What a complete jerk!  That whole experience really set us on edge and made us notice all of the bad and annoying things about Vietnam.

After calming down in our hotel room, we decided to brave the taxis again.  We got one at the hotel parking lot, and we totally lucked out.  He must have been the nicest taxi driver in all of Hanoi!  His name was Long and he was studying English, so he was really eager to speak to us.  He was super sweet and even seranaded us.  (We grabbed a business card from him, and called him the next day.)

We went back to the Old Quarter and ate dinner in the the Kangaroo Cafe.  It was a great meal!  (I think the best I had in Vietnam. I had a chicken, veggie, and cashew stir fry.)  Shannon and I still really wanted massages so the 3 of us wandered around the Old Quarter looking for an open massage place.  But it was getting to late and a lot of business were still closed for the holiday, so we didn’t find one. 

Then we just went back to the hotel and crashed early. 

We woke up really early in the morning (we actually woke up by 7:00 every morning to make the most out of our short trip).  And ate a decent/free breakfast at our hotel.  Then the tour company picked us up for our 3 hour drive out to Halong Bay.  We drove there in a small van and it was packed with people and big backpacks.  Not a comfortable ride, but I did have a nice conversation with a girl from Norway who was in our group. 

The boat was pretty nice. (I was expecting the worst after paying $30 for a 2 day trip.)  It was a 2 floor Chinese Junk boat.  The bottom floor had all of the bedrooms, the middle floor had the eating area, bathrooms, and kitchen, and there was a nice sun deck on the roof where you could relax and really see the beautiful bay.

It was a little chilly, probably in the 60’s and a bit windy (so we didn’t get to do any swimming or snorkeling) but it was still a nice ride around the bay. And the landscape was absolutely amazing! 

Our lunch (and actually all of the meals on the boat) wasn’t that great.  We had some fish, squid, cabbage, rice, spring rolls, and french fries.  (For some reason they served us french fries and spring rolls at every meal!  I’m sure it was just to make sure that us Westerners would eat sometime.)  I found a long hair in the cabbage, so I basically just ate rice for lunch. 

In the afternoon we went to Amazing Cave.  It was a lot bigger than I imagined it would be.  There were 3 large caves linked to each other. The biggest one must have been about a 1/4 of a mile long, the roof of it was at least 2 floors up, and it was very wide.  The guide told us that there were lots of interesting rock formations that looked like other things.  There was a chicken, a budha, and a penis. For some reason they had a big red spotlight shining on the last one just to make sure everyone noticed it! 

 This is the view from the entrance of the cave. 

We went back to the boat and rode around the bay more.  Then we stopped at a small floating village so some of the people could kayak.  (I wanted to kayak, but the tour leader said I wasn’t allowed to go because I was staying in the hotel for the night instead of sleeping on the boat.  Which made absolutely no sense!  Because we just sat on the boat and waited them to finish kayaking before we went to the island. Whatever. There were so many bizarre things that Vietnamese people said to us on our trip, we just had to relax and go with the craziness.)

 Here’s 2 houses in the floating village.

After sunset we went to Cat Ba Island.  It is a small island (population 7,000), and half of it is a national park.  Shannon, Jen, and I were the only ones who choose to sleep on the island and we definetly lucked out!  The people staying on the boat didn’t even get to go to the island, and there was nothing to do on the boat so they all went to sleep at 8:00 while we had adventures on the island.

Jen, Shannon, and I ate dinner at a restaraunt (which was included in our package), so we didn’t get to choose what we ate.  It ended up being shimp, cabbage, rice, and more french fries and spring rolls. 

Then our tour leader took us to our hotel, which turned out to very nice and really clean.  We even got a view of the ocean!  Our guide even told us not to tell the people on the boat how nice the island and hotel were, because they would be angry that they paid more then us and then had to sleep in the tiny rooms on the boat!

We decided to explore the island.  We thought it would be fun to either go on a scooter ride or get massages, so we walked down the main road and tried to see if anything was open.  (It was Lunar New Year’s Day, and most of the stores were closed all over the country.)  The first thing we saw was a restaraunt that advertised scooter rentals, so we went in.  In the back of the restaraunt they had 6 or 7 gig glass jars with a clear lidquid in them.  Jen and Shannon inspected them and told me that they had small animals like baby goats and puppies in them.  Disgusting!  I didn’t even want to look.  (The next day our tour guide told us that it is wine.  They drink it to be stronger. Definetly no Vietnamese wine for me!!)  They ended up not having scooters available, so we kept walking down the road.

 The next interesting thing we saw was a massage place with a bunch of girls outside.  The gave us business cards and told us they had openings.  Shannon and I really wanted to get massages, but we thought something was very off about the girls.  They were wearing red dress and high heels and didn’t quite look like ‘legal’ massueses.  But we decide to ask them if they would do just feet massages only.  They said that was fine, and it would be about $3 for an hour.  They told us to follow them upstairs to the rooms, so we followed them up 3 flights of narrow stairs.  As soon as we got into the hallway, I knew that they definetly specialized in “special” massages.  There were 3 bedrooms on the floor, with red lights glowing in them.  As soon as I saw it, I just said “No, No,No.”  And Shannon and I turned and ran back down the stairs and out the door.  (Luckily we hadn’t paid them yet either.)  It was definetly a weird expereince!!!

 The “massage” place

After that we just decided to play it safe and we went to a cute little bar next to our hotel called the Green Mango.  It was so adorable.  We had some amazingly fresh Pina Coladas (made with fresh coconut and pineapple).  And we smoke a hookah. (It’s a middle Eastern pipe thing, and we had grape tabacco in ours.)  Don’t worry, I haven’t started smoking.  I have tried this only 2 times in the last 9 months. 

Then we just crashed on our amazingly comfortable beds.  (They were so soft and comfortable.  It was a huge change from the Korean mattresses, where it feels like your sleeping on concrete.)

I just got back from Vietnam a few hours ago, and I can’t believe how much stuff we were able to see and do in 4 days!  It was an amazing (and sometimes very bizarre experience)! I am so glad that Jen, Shannon, and I were able to go! 

We had a great flight over from Seoul.  It was a nice new plane with the little tv’s for each seat, so we watched movies and planned some of our activites on the way over to Vietnam.   When we got to the airport at 1:00pm they were basically shutting the whole thing down for Tet (Chinese New Year) there wasn’t a store or bank open, so we couldn’t exchange our US Dollars to Dong (but luckily US $ is widely accepted).  (We did change it later at our hotel.)  We got a taxi to our hotel and we were amazed at the amount of horn honking they do.  Instead of using a blinker they just honk their horns constantly while they switch lanes.  It was a little unnerving at first. 

We checked into our hotel fine and were quite happy with our rooms, even though the hotel was alittle bit away from the busy area of town.  We meet with a tour guide and set up a 2 day-1 night trip to Halong Bay.  ($30 for 2 days on a boat, with all meals, and a nice hotel room on Cat Ba Island!  It was insanely cheap!!)

Later Shannon, Jen, and I went to the Old Quarter to explore.  We soon had another shock when we saw how you cross the busy roads in Vietnam.  Basically you just step out into busy traffic and hope that all the scooters, taxis, and buses will swerve out of the way so you don’t become roadkill!  It was such an adreline rush, standing in the road while traffic zooms by inches away from you.  (And I heard Saigon is even worse, so it will be interesting to see if I make it home after my trip there in June.)

We basically just walked around the Old Quarter, which was surprisingly touristy (with tons of travel agencies, stores, and restraunts catering to all the tourists.) 

We ate dinner at a little cafe in the Old Quarter.  We ordered fresh spring rolls, a pork dish, stir fried veggies, and a rish dish.  We also tried a few Vietnamese beers.  The spring rolls and veggies were good, but for some reason they decided that they didn’t want to make our other food (and they never even bothered to tell us).  So we sat there for 2 hours waiting for our main course, but it never arrived.  (They kept telling us it was coming, but really they never cooked it.)  So we left still hungry, and ended up eating some dessert right by the big lake.