The last week

It's been awhile since we last updated, but it's been a great week! After the last post we spent 4 great days in Dalat. After wrapping up there (we were both sad to leave) we took a 6 hour bus to Nha Trang. We only stayed 2 nights there, party because we couldn't get in the ocean, but mainly because we only have 30 days on our Visa and if we don’t pick up the pace we’ll be cutting it a tad to close for comfort. So, at 7 pm last night, we got on an overnight bus to Hoi An.

An overnight sleeper bus is a thing to behold. They are behemoths on wheels... easily towering over every other vehicle on the road. They fit so many people on that it's unreal… the beds are 2 high (bunks) and are barely wide/long enough for your average Vietnamese person, much less an American (even I was slightly squished). Your feet slip into a small narrowing cubby that slides underneath the person in front of you. This is probably hard to imagine, and I never got a good picture, but you are essentially trapped up to your knees, so extricating yourself from your ‘seat’ is a process of wiggling and fidgeting. The bus sleeps three across, so you are also right next to other people. Two things came to mind as we rocketed down crummy Vietnamese roads packed in that sardine can: 1.) My Mom would absolutly freak out if she ever got into this situation. In fact, there is absolutely no force on this earth that could possibly hold her on this bus once she walked in and saw how cramped it was. 2.) I kept flashing back to the Seinfeld episode where Kramer has a bunch of Asian people sleeping in his chest of drawers (Carl Farbman drawers, I believe?). Michelle and I were both on the top bunks, so the swaying of this massive vehicle did a pretty good job of keeping us awake for the 11 hour drive. We didn’t get sick though, so we’ll call the trip a success.

Anyway, Dalat was fantastic and is our favorite place so far, although that might change for Michelle soon. The cool weather was great, and the look and feel of the city was slightly European but distinctly Vietnamese. We toured some great waterfalls and other sites and basically just bummed around for a couple of days… just like you should on vacation. Our hotel had Discovery channel and we had the good fortune of being there during Asia’s yearly “Shark Week”, so that was cool. Nha Trang was also nice, although it was extremely touristy. We easily saw more westerners there than everywhere else combined (thus far) and consequently the street vendors and salesman were much more aggressive and annoying. We ate more good food, sat on the beach, and walked a few miles to an awesome Buddhist Monastery. Now we’re in Hoi An, which is covered with tailoring shops where you can buy custom fitted clothes at dirt cheap prices. For example, a handmade, custom fit silk dress runs somewhere in the $15-$20 range. As I write this, Michelle is scouring the Jcrew and Athropolgie websites trying to find a picture she can print and show the tailors. You can buy fitted suits as well, which I’ve been considering, but I probably won’t end up getting one.

We’ve had a lot of interaction with locals over the past week, most of which has been great, and a few things come to mind as being particularly interesting (at least to me). First, we were constantly being approached by people who tried their hardest to start up conversations. Sometimes the conversations were just friendly conversations, other times they very abruptly turned into sales pitches. Either way, if there is no where to be the conversations can be a lot of fun, mainly because the locals have a tendency to blurt out everything they know about the U.S.A. right then and there. We’ve had people tell us stories (which may or may not be true) about relatives in the U.S. We’ve had people start randomly naming off U.S. cities and landmarks (New York, California, Sea World) only to smile and walk away when they finished. We’ve had more than a handful of people say something like “Barack Obama, number 1!” or tell us about how much they love him. And among the salesmen, the fact that they once served with the South Vietnamese Army during the war seemed to be a great way to try to get us to buy things. As we move into north Vietnam (we are in the middle right now) Michelle and I are very interested to see if and how the sentiment towards us changes.

The most interesting thing that struck me during all of this was a simple passing comment our hilarious and eccentric tour guide made a few days ago. He was giving us a simplified, broken-English version of Vietnamese history and said “Vietnam was ruled by minorities (the Vietnamese) for many, many years. Then the French ruled for 100 years, then the Americans for 20 years, and now the Vietnamese again.” I found this particularly interesting, because you’d be hard pressed to find an American anywhere who would say that the United States ever actually ‘ruled’ Vietnam as the French or Vietnamese themselves ever did. Even staunch proponents of the war, people who initiated, designed and executed it like LBJ, Nixon, or Kissinger would never say that we ‘ruled’ it: we were there for a purpose and never intended to stay. But it doesn’t seem like people here necessarily view it that way. Regardless of our reasons why, from their viewpoint the Vietnamese were not in control of their land, and so we were viewed as their rulers. This is a decepitivly simple concept and a gross diconnect between how Americans want to be viewed and how they are actually viewed. And sadly, 30 years later, we still do a poor job at representing ourselves correctly, as our two current wars will attest.

Finally, this blog’s layout has been updated a bit, as I’ve added links to our pictures to the right hand side of this page. Each country will eventually have it’s own link and gallery. I will probably update those pictures more frequently than we update the actual blog, so check back occasionally.

That’s all for now.

P.S.- Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize? Seriously? Lol.

From Palms to Pines....

We made it to Da Lat! I have no idea how, as it was the most terrifying bus ride I've ever been on. We expected Vietnam to be rolling hills, but no, there is some serious elevation here. We also expected a 3 hour bus ride which turned out to be over 6. Six hours of winding up narrow mountain roads in a huge bus, precariously close to the edge (I saw one vehicle down there), often with other huge buses coming towards us. We kept thinking we must be close, because we were reaching the tops of the peaks, but then we would cross the pass and drive up higher peaks! I'm not sure what the elevation here is but will try to find out today. So far we LOVE Da Lat! The weather is beautiful, crisp and a little cool (probably like the weather you have in Missouri about now). We found an incredible hotel, $7/night for a private room with hot water, television, free internet access, and it's very clean. And the room is pink and white :) We think we might stay here 4 nights since we both slept the best we have since we got here last night. Today we plan to just explore Da Lat, and tomorrow possibly tour outside of town a bit, as there are supposed to be pretty waterfalls and lakes. We are both very happy with where we are right now!

Funny side note--the other day at the health clinic the nurse told me she thought I was Vietnamese when I first walked in! So apparently I really can blend in anywhere. At the same time another clinic worker slowly approached Jason's hair and gently pulled a curl and watched it spring back. He looked absolutely amazed, and told Jason his hair was "pretty and beautiful." He definitely will not be mistaken for Vietnamese.

Since we have free internet for a few days I imagine we'll be on here fairly regularly, so look for updates! This town is supposed to be very kitschy so hopefully we can get some fun pictures.

Minor Update

Since the 'incident' (which hereto for is how we will refer to the motorbike occurance) we haven't done much. We sat on the beach for about 6 hours yesterday, got tan, ate food, and have visited the clinc once per day to get re-bandaged. Today, since we're leaving the city, they were nice enough to give us brand new unopened bottles of some cleaning stuff, cotton, and bandages so we can do ourselves up. They charged us, but it was just under $3 so no problem. I'm also happy to say that despite the ungodly humidity, we're both healing up well. Today we head to Dalat... the city itself is at around 5,000ft of elevation, so the cool, dry mountain air will probably help even more. That's all for now.

Read Michelle's post first! (In addidtion...)

Hello... just wanted to add a few things to what Michelle said! To reiterate, we are both fine. The ordeal messed up our budget for a few days, but we can make up for that. Physically, it's nothing a few 65 cent beers won't fix, althought we did exhaust our gauze and some other medical supplies a mere 3 days into our trip. =0

The area we were in when we crashed was pretty much the middle of nowhere. It was a beautful drive out to a very small village. The road we were on was a very fine powdery red sand, so it could have been much worse. The camera that broke (not related to the crash, Michelle did it!) was my cheap Canon camera that I've had for a couple years, not my nice DSLR- so we'll still get plenty of pics. However, we were very dissappointed to have not gotten pics of the beautiful countryside, quaint little village (not a foreigner in sight, except the two of us sliding across the ground) and extremely nice people (but terrible drivers). We're in great spirits at the moment... everyone was so nice about it all (the people that drove into us on the wrong side of the road, the nurse, the mechanic that fixed our tire, even the owner of the motorbike) that it's hard not to be.

I'm sure everyone wants pics... so here has been our day thus far-

http://cid-fb8cc05f73293d8d.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Trip%20Pictures?uc=1

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We've gotten a lot of comments about the Tsunami/Typhoon that hit this part of the world. Just to clarify, the tsunami didn't hit here, it was primarily in the South Pacific. Central Vietnam DID get hit by a typhoon right as we were arrrving (we passed through some turbulance on the plane) but all we saw of it on the ground was some heavy rain. No worries!
We've got 2 more days here in Mui Ne, then off to Dalat!

Crash!!!

It's hardly noon and we've already had quite the day! We woke up this morning and watched the sunrise over the ocean, and both commented on how it was hard to believe we were in Vietnam, looking at the South China Sea. We were quickly thrown back into the reality of Vietnam once we rented our motorbike for the day and started off! The plan was to go to 2 different sand dunes, a waterfall, and just explore. As you know we owned a scooter and also drove one around Honduras, however, driving motorbikes here is a completely different experience for many reasons. 1) They are small and have small tires which Jason said made it more difficult, 2) They are manual transmission! Which took some getting used to, there were a lot of screeech/jerk forward moments as Jason got used to it. Also the rear brake is a foot brake, and the front brake is hand. 3) We're driving in Vietnam, which means it's a free-for-all. The road is divided into 2 lanes to be used as each individual chooses. Beyond that it's a maze of other motorbikes, trucks, bikes, people on foot, and animals wandering in front of you on the street. If someone is coming towards you or you hear a horn, you move right. And it seems to work in theory until.....

someone is driving right at you on a dirt road on the far right side and isn't moving!

About 12 miles away from where we were staying we were exploring a small town and driving down a dirt road, when 2 guys on a motorbike were on our side of the road coming at us. It was unclear what they were doing or if they would move, and got close enough that Jason made a sharp right turn. Moments later we were skidding across the gravely road on our sides. Once we and the bike came to a halt we were surrounded by locals coming to help and make sure we were ok. One women had some type of green ointment she was putting all over our gashes and the guys that almost hit us were picking up our bike. Before we knew it we were each on the back of a bike heading to the local clinic where they fixed us right up for less than $2! We're ok, but kinda beat up. I have a pretty deep gash in my right arm and a good scrape on my leg, along with some road rash. Jason's injuries were wider-spread but not as deep, with a big scrape on his hand, and scrapes down his right side, elbow, and knee. We were pretty embarressed (even though it was not Jason's fault!), but everyone was so helpful! The guys who took us to the clinic brought out bike to the shop to get air in the tire and then sent us on our way. We barely made it home because of the busted tire, but are only having to pay about $30 to fix the bike, and less than $4 to fix ourselves :)

Unfortunately this means we can't get in the ocean any more, so we'll spend the next few days sitting on the beach with some beer. Oh and the worst part is our camera broke! Not from the crash, it just stopped working, so we have no pictures of the crash or clinic or people that helped us. Don't worry though, we're fine!!! Just a little embarressed and beat up :-/

We're here!

Well, we made it! The flights were long both smooth, with no major hiccups and minimal jetlag. Saigon was great, we spent a couple of days there meandering about and getting adjusted, and then this morning we caught a bus to a beach town called Mui Ne (about 5 hours). Travel has been extremely easy so far, much easier than was thought it would be. The people are nice, and everything is cheap! For example, today we've booked a basic beachfront bungalow ($7, $3.5 per person), had a meal consisting of drinks, fried rice, red snapper w/ garlic and chilli ($5 including large tip) and breakfast of huge banana pankakes ($3ish). We've come in right at our 12 month travel budget every day, even in the most expensive city, which is great

We haven't had any huge problems so far... but we've madea few rookie mistatks. Most notably, we took our anti-malaria medication this morning at 6am (on an empty stomache) right as we walked out to go get breakfast. Apparently that stuff works fast, because by the time we got to the restaurant 15 min later we were both throwing up. Alas, it passed quickly and we're great now!

We purchased what's called an 'open-bus' tour in Saigon, which is really a pretty neat deal. It was just under $40/person, and it allows us to take a bus from Saigon all the way up to Hanoi (approx 1000miles) and get off at any of the stops we'd like to. Mui Ne is the first stop. In a few days we'll head to a mountain city called Dalat, then on to Nha Trang (another beach town), Hoi An, Hue, and then to Hanoi. The buses are very nice, with air-con, nice seats and on the longer rides even sleeper reclining seats. Not a bad deal! Feel free to Google any of these places, pictures should be easy to find.

Tomorrow we'll probably rent a scooter and go check out the huge sand dunes that run into the ocean just outside of town. Beyond that, we'll just be lounging around.

That's all for now, take care!

Taking Off!

So the day is finally here....we fly out at 9:20 tonight out of Springfield! We fly from Springfield to LA, then LA to Taipei, Taiwan, then from there to Saigon (the flight from LA to Taiwan is 14 hours!). We arrive in Vietnam at 9:50 am Tuesday morning, which is actually 9:50 pm Monday night in Central time. Hopefully we can update pretty quick once we arrive! Thanks to everyone for all of your support and well wishes, we're pretty stoked! Here's our actual flight itinerary:

China Airlines flight #7
Los Angeles International (LAX) to Taipei Taoyuan Airport (TPE)
Departure (LAX): September 28, 1:15 AM PDT (morning)
Arrival (TPE): September 29, 6:10 AM CST (morning)
Class: Economy

China Airlines flight #781
Taipei Taoyuan Airport (TPE) to Ho Chi Minh City (SGN)
Departure (TPE): September 29, 7:30 AM CST (morning)
Arrival (SGN): September 29, 9:50 AM ICT (morning)


Talk to you from Vietnam! :)