the endless summer: Vietnam

I want to start out by saying that everyone in Vietnam has been SO nice & very interested in who we are & where we're going - so many know English, at least in the more developed, tourist areas. Andrew says he feels like Brad Pitt with all the people commenting & stares he gets. He does stand out, being at least a foot taller than everyone - I'm even tall, but I stand out cause I wear tank tops & everyone here covers any exposed skin, head to toe.

Once we hit Ho Chi Minh/Saigon after our 10-hour overnight bus from Cambodia, we immediately grabbed an 8-hour train to Nha Trang wasting no time at all to get to the beach! We got in around 1am - we both slept our best night's sleep on the train & the [nicer] hotel we splurged on. We were up with the sun & set out to explore Nha Trang. After some much needed breakfast, we went down for a dip in the very warm water. We grabbed some lunch, then rented lounge chairs with umbrellas on the beach for $1 each for the day! We bought some cold ones from the market down the street & had a very 'tough' day reading, relaxing & swimming!

The next morning we got up for a boat tour around the neighboring islands - we were the only white people on the tour, which was actually pretty awesome. We snorkeled, ate authentic Vietnamese food, drank homemade wine at the floating bar, jumped off the roof of the boat, relaxed, Andrew sang karaoke, we got way too much sun, and enjoyed every penny of the $7 tour!

We had planned to spend our last day in Nha Trang renting a motorbike, touring the outskirts & grabbing a train north that night, but after a long talk with the shop owner next door to our hotel, we decided a 3-day motorcycle tour through the central highlands of Vietnam was a better choice. So we immediately packed our bags & 'hit the road, Jack' with our Easyrider guides: Chanh & Teo. These guys have been friends & 'Easyriders', as they call it, for 10+ years. We quickly discovered that this is THE way to see the real Vietnam countryside. We had a laundry list of things to see & do with the short time allotted, but we got it done: saw rice paper being made, drank banana wine, celebrated Teo's forgotten birthday, visited the Honeymoon City [Dalat], swam in waterfalls, visited a silk worm farm & factory, coffee plantations, flower farms, drank rice wine, saw huge mosaic pagodas, rode & fed elephants, karaoked, rode through a huge lightning & thunder storm, held a 3.5 meter long python, drank scorpion wine, enjoyed truly authentic Vietnamese food, harvested rice with some locals, ate farm-fresh fruits right off of the trees at the dozens of farms we stopped at, and much, much more - all with our new friends Chanh & Teo. They made the experience of being out on the open road that much better - they know so much about their country & care so much, it would not have been the same without them! On top of it all, they're freaking hilarious!

The last couple days have been full of travel, trying to get to Hanoi for our flight back to Bangkok. Our motorbike guides dropped us at a bus station for our 12 hour bus ride to Danang, followed by an almost 20 hour train ride to Hanoi. We rolled in around 3:30am a day later looking for a place to stay. With no luck, we crashed in the dining room of a hostel waiting for someone to open so we could shower the last 32 hours of travel away. We finally found an available hostel & immediately booked our tour to Halong Bay. Another 3.5 hour bus ride out to Halong Bay was worth it! There are more than 3,000 islands that sit in the bay & are more than stunning! We kayaked around some of the islands & toured the inside of some caverns. The vistas were beautiful & the weather was perfect - no rain!

Vietnam is an amazing country that we are glad to have explored. Though our time was short, we think we got a good feel of the cities, beaches, small villages & countrysides. We can't wait to come back!

Now, off to Bali, Indonesia for a week!