sapa, vietnam

I met up with a friend I had made in Maylasia, Stuart, in Hanoi, Vietnam and we decided to head north to Sapa (we heard was an amazing town!) We took the overnight train and when we got to Sapa, the temperature was about 10degree cooler...what a relief from the hotness of Hanoi. We found an amazing hotel with the best view $6 could buy and man, what a view! Sapa is set right in the middle of the tallest mountain range in Viet Nam and rice terraces are carved into the sides of all the mountains. It is truely an amazing sight and def something I have never seen before. Throughout Sapa there are tons of minority girls selling blankets, jewerly, purses and other stuff but the amazing thing about these girls was how good their english was! the best in vietnam! We met two lovely cousins Mee (13yrs old) and Pan (22yrs old) and spent three days chilling with them. They truely touched my heart and I wish I could do more for them bc they are so poor (mee sleeps in the market everynight) but yet they are soooo happy. It was such a great experience meeting them and hanging out with the locals. :) Of any place in vietnam, I think I would choose Sapa to go back to.

just two of the many girls that always bombarded me. they would literally cling on to me while i walked through town...i think stuart was a bit jealous bc they only did this to girls...haha!

i had no idea (until i got to vietnam) that people actually still use an ox and plow!

the awesome view from the hotel room!

a minority woman with her newborn baby, when the baby reaches about 3months, the mother makes one of her other daughters carry the baby each and everyday, basically becoming the "mother" for this child.

a local tuesday market....the villagers (ethnic minority people) are so colorful!

a vietnamese gas station....could this work in the states??

the tennis court in Sapa...kinda ironic that a ox is grazing grass right next to it. Mom- could this happen at the racket club?haha

Stuart being bombarded by the village girls....they all were so good at english we just couldnt get over it!

the chinese boarder

Sapa town

stuart and I drinking Bia Hoi- the cheapest homemade beer in asia (3000 vietnamese dong, about 20cents per mug)

our lovely girls....Pan and Mee. they were so sweet and happy even though they have so little. they agreed to be our guides for a day

rice terraces near pan's village

Pan's village

boys fishing in the stream

me and mee at Pan's village...what a beautiful place to live!

Pan directed us to the silver waterfall which took us an hour to get to bc we were driving half the time in a foot of mud but it was worth it! when we got to the waterfall it was pouring down rain so we parked our motorbikes and had some street food. Mmmmm delicious! bbq pork with chili sauce and sticky rice which was cooked in bamboo sticks

at the beautiful silver waterfall...pan was so happy to get to go bc it had been 7years since the last time she saw it.

"mee" on Stuarts motorbike. she decided that her cousin "pan" would be our guide for the day and she would be the tourist with us. She was such a character and her english (as well as all the village girls working in Sapa) was the best we have heard in Vietnam.

the best view ever! the last stop on our guided tour by "pan" we just sat here admiring the view while the girls made halo wreaths of flowers for me to wear on my head. they were pros!

they were such fun!

the rice terraces in Sapa

more rice terraces...I could only imagine what it would look like after the rainy season...so green and lush!

Hoi An, Vietnam

So, I stayed in Hoi An a little longer than I had anticipated (about 5 days longer!) It is such an amazing town and so different from the rest of Vietnam! I guess, during the war, the North Vietnamese army and the US made an agreement to not bomb the city so it is pretty much the only "old" city still intact-and it shows. The streets are a mixture of Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, and European influence. UNESCO declared it a world heritage site with many of the houses dating back over 400 years ago. I got stuck in the charm of the streets and variety of restaurants and shops. I could walk the same streets everyday and always see something completely new and wonderful. It is so different than the other cities of Vietnam, its so quiet and peaceful with the city shutting the streets down at certain times of day to cars and motorbikes. What a truly amazing city!

a fisherman out at sea near Hoi An

just outside Hoi An on the way to the beach

a typical road in wonderful Hoi An

the only picture of me in my favorite town of Hoi An

looking across the river in Hoi An

the famous Japanese bridge...it is built unusually sturdy, I guess the Japanese were afraid of earthquakes?

just a typical scene for Hoi An

Hoi An at sunset with all the lanterns starting to light up.

after leaving Hoi An (sadly) I drove my motorbike 83km to the city of Hue. It was a beautiful drive and would have been prettier if not for the rain and clouds. However, I had the opportunity to see the famous, China Beach, Marble Mountains (mountains made totally out of marble) and drive up a scenic mountainous overpass (however, it was too cloudy for it to reach its full potential of beauty)

China Beach- a famous beach during the Vietnamese War where the US soldiers and S. Vietnamese soldiers were shipped to to get a little R&R.

self explanatory

a fishing basket...fishermen sit in these baskets out in the ocean for days catching fish

the view on the way up to Tam Trom Pass, i guess a leper colony lives down by that beach?

a small town on the way to Hue

on the way to Hue

a farmer boy looking after his water buffalo

the view of the fishing nets in the ocean

the front of the citadel in the third largest city, Hue

part of the palace inside the forbidden city

inside the forbidden purple city

the ginormous flag outside the citadel.

a section of the town, Hue

view from my hotel window today, not much I could do since it was pouring down rain. would have been a good movie day.

view from my hotel window today

a motorbike road trip...

the great Mr. Jone checking my bike in Saigon before I venture off into the unknown.

here i go....

So my first venture out into Vietnam completely on my own started a bit rocky. I had to navigate through the outrageously crowded streets of Saigon and then hop on the even more crowded highway. To get an idea of how crowded it is, i was averaging about 20km/h (at the begining) which i think equates to roughly to about 12mph! But honestly, I would have been frightenend to go any faster- i opted to just go with the flow! In addition to the craziness of motorbikes and cars on highway 1, it started to pour down rain. I put on my bright blue poncho and toughed it out but in the end i was drenched. So as I was continuing (slowly & carefully with alot of honking- thats how the vietnamese signals to pass) I couldnt find my turn off to the mountain town of Dalat bc the road signs are in vietnamese and are very inconsistant ( i later learned how to navigate fairly well) Just when i was giving up hope to find the Dalat turn off I lucked out and stopped at prob one of the only shops with an english speaking family!

Here if my "Vietnamese Family"

When I stopped off to grab a drink and try to figure out where I was, this lovely family who owned the shop wanted to practice their english with me and therefore asked me all the same questions that one learns in like high school spanish/german class. "whats your name?" "where are you from?" "how old are you?" "how many brothers and sisters do you have?" "what do you do in your free time?" and so on... however, their vocabulary and english did extend beyond the typical questions. As it turned out, I had arrived on their daughters 21st birthday and they extended to me an invitation to her birthday dinner. I decided why not, i thought it would be cool to see how the vietnamese celebrated birthdays. So for the rest of the day I hung out at their shop/house and it turned out that they have relatives in Texas and Florida and they LOVE America (everyone here wants to go to America which I find strange since we basically destroyed their country only 30yrs ago) Dinner with my vietnamese family was great...they taught their 90yr old grandmother to say "you eat" and she kept putting food in my bowl and insisting I eat more and more. The birthday girl ordered about 12 different dishes and we all ate from each family style, delicious! We then went back to the house and ate birthday cake...it didnt taste as yummy as our birthday cake but it was pretty good. They then insisted I stay the night in their home instead of a hotel. What generous people! I almost got tears in my eyes when saying good bye. It was a great experience with the local people.

I finally did make it to Dalat and hired an "Easy Rider" guide to guide me through the mountain roads for five days eventually taking me a town called Hoi An. On the five day ride I learned about so many of the different ways vietnamese people earn a living (mostly doing something with agriculture- silk, pepper, rubber, bricks, coffee, tea, flowers, veggies, fruits, rice and on and on and on...) I also had the amazing opportunity to visit many local ethnic minority tribes on my way. Each tribe has different customs, buildings and language. We always brought candy for the kids who came running when they heard our motorbikes enter their village. I also drove on the Ho Chi Min trail (a famous trail during the war for the viet cong) through the mountains. It sure was a different experience driving on mountain roads by motorbike than by car. Firstly, its easier to stop and take pictures and secondly it is unreal how much more you can see on motorbike! i highly recommend!

Dalat, a town in the mountains where the air is cooler and its less crowded and busy, although you wouldnt be able to tell that from the picture.

here is the "happy" budda, it is different from the budda's in cambodia since vietnamese buddism comes with chinese orgins and i believe cambodian buddism come from indian orgins??

typical buddist shrine

they always have some crazy stuff at buddist temples. who would have thought a horse and bugy would be part of a religion? anyone want a ride?

a rice field in the mountains

going to one of the many flower greenhouses. all the flowers are grown in the mountains and then shipped to Saigon (where the rich people live) this how many vietnamese women look with the face mask to keep out the dirt and pollution, the cone hat to keep the sun and the rain away and totally covered from head to toe (white skin is beautiful in vietnam)

learning how the vietnamese make silk. the red basket is filled with larva which is later sold at the market and then fried up with garlic and onion. (i have yet to be brave enough to try it)

a glimpse of the mountanous countryside.

these were the first ethnic minority kids i visited, arent they cute? It was actually sad bc it is custom for them to burn fires inside their huts thus filling them with smoke. so they live and sleep in a constant smoky environment.

I got to try on their backpack baskets and hold their knife thingy. I guess they hold it behind their back because then the Tigers wont attack them with the knife pointing outward? I wonder if thats really true?

I thought this was a cool but somewhat disturbing picture.... a lady smoking while carring her newborn.

I learned the whole process for making bricks...the govt wont allow the people to build their houses with wood anymore since the forrests/jungle is diminishing (that was very evident during my drive through the mountains, whole hillsides of trees were cut down) so brick making is a good way for some to earn a living although its very primative...they still do everything by hand.

I had the fantastic opportunity to spend the night in one of the ethnic minority villages. This is how they earn some extra money to buy goods they cant make on their own. They sell rice, here is how they dry the rice before they put it into bags to go to the factory so it can be shelled.

this is the longhouse where I stayed the night. it was an interesting experience. the cows and pigs and chickens sleep under the house so I woke up to the sound of pigs squeeling and cows mooing! that sure is a different wake up call!

the village also had "pet" elephants. they were basically ginormous! here the villager is taking the elephant for a bath in the lake. (here's your elephant jen)

an old lady in the ethnic minority village where I had the opportunity to spend the night.

a common occurrance...stopping for cows to cross the road

during my 5 day mountain drive, in front of some rice fields

bananas anyone? these little guys are sweeter than our giant bananas

saw some amazing waterfalls along the way and got the chance to cool off in them as well!

another beautiful waterfall in the vietnam jungle. as i was walking to this waterfall i was on a path alone in the jungle and i heard a loud noise, i was so frightened thinking it was a tiger but it turned out to just be a huge family of very large monkeys. it was so neat watching them jump from tree to tree like it was the easiest thing in the world!

nope, i didnt chance swimming in this monster of a waterfall!