Back in the ol' HCMC...

So we are back. Back to the humidity, the heat, the smog, the motorbikes. And guess what?? I rode one of Derek's motorbikes through HCMC TRAFFIC yesterday!! I was petrified, I wish I could have snapped a shot of what it looked like to bike amidst that many other people, but I was concentrating VERY VERY hard in order not to fall and look like a total ass (or more of an ass). All in all, I think I was quite successful...I only fell ONCE! haha, yes, okay, I did fall, but it wasn't due to my crappy skills; we had to bike through sandy construction and I went over some soft loose sand and got stuck in a way where I fell. Maybe I could've prevented it? Who knows, but when I got up and adjusted my helmet, sand came out from under it.

Besides that, much has happened. My parents arrived the day before Randy and I flew in to HCMC (Saturday), so we've been hanging out with them, going to fancy restaurants and shopping. Yesterday was my brother and Duyen's engagement party, which was interesting/crazy. Unfortunately I wasn't really able to snap too many shots, due to not having a clue when I was supposed to be included in the ceremonies.

It started out at 7 am, Randy and I were sleeping in the living room and there was a knock on the door. It was my mom and dad, and we were still sleeping. No fun. I got up begrudgingly and got dressed. People were showing up and we were still getting ready, taking showers, brushing teeth, and I wasn't even awake yet. Ugh. So we got ready, Derek's groomsmen arrived and we started the ceremonial events. It involved six ceremonial baskets that had to exchange hands from my mom to each of the groomsmen. Then they had to carry the baskets into a van which carried us to Duyen's house. We arrived at her house at about 8:45, and apparently we had to wait until 9 to walk out to take the baskets to her house. Her house was on a pretty major street so the guys had to dodge traffic a little, but they got across the street where the bridesmaids were waiting to accept the baskets. After that everyone went upstairs, and the families went into their altar room where the engagement ceremony took place. My lucky dad, he was unaware that he was going to have to say things in the ceremony, but fortunately our translator pretty much fed him lines of what to say...along the lines of "our family thanks you for allowing our son the opportunity to have a relationship with your daughter"...quite interesting. Also interestingly, engagement parties are typically held about a year before the wedding, and this one was only about 5 days before.

Anyway, after the ceremony we went downstairs to mingle and then we all walked down to a restaurant that I guess specializes in engagement parties. On the main wall, there was a neon heart with my brother and Duyen's names in it, and there was karaoke all set up. I ended up sitting with Randy and the rest of the groomsmen, and we immediately broke into the Heineken's that were put on the table. We ate a six-course meal and afterwards, lots of Vietnamese family members and friends of the family would come up to our table with beers, fill our cups, and make us chug our whole beer. We did this about six times over the course of the day, all the while karaoke was going on in the background. One of Derek's groomsmen, Ciaran, was the first of the English speakers to sing a song, Lionel Richie's Hello. It was a huge hit, with one of Duyen's friends going up to dance with him. He didn't even know her! It was hilarious and awesome. Derek sang a song too, which was a huge hit, of course, as the groom, and then a little later he forced me to sing Open Arms, which I hammed up in rare form. SO embarassing. Luckily, as I looked at my mom and dad, they were both holding up video cameras and iphones preserving my performance, so I'm crossing my fingers that I go viral on youtube soon. Anyway, there was more karaoke, more adult bevri, and it turned out to be way more of a party than any of us expected. It was all over before 2, and we headed back to Derek's house to rest for a little while. We grabbed some Mongolian food for dinner back in town, and then went back to Derek's house for the rest of the evening.

This morning, we were able to sleep in for the first time in a few days. We got lunch at a fancy Vietnamese place, and then went shopping.





We went to Saigon Square and I was able to bargain for four new pairs of RayBan Wayfarers for $3 each, in some AWESOME new colors. I got a normal one in a sort of cheetah tortoise shell color, then a light pea green, burnt orange, and one in royal blue. I was very excited to have haggled my way down from VND150.000 to VND60.000 each ($7.50 to $3)!

Anyway, after shopping, we went to a fancy mall with an awesome food court...It had Carls Jr and Popeyes...guess where we went!??! All I'll say is that they had really crappy baguettes instead of biscuits, but the mashed potatoes were almost spot on. The fried chicken was quite wonderful as well :)



This bakery had some pretty amazing stuff:





Okay, I don't think I'm capable of doing any more recap...It's exhausting! Tomorrow we head to Cambodia, Siem Reap to be specific. We leave HCMC at 11:40 and will be there for three days. Then we return for the wedding ceremony on Friday, and the wedding reception on Saturday. So much!!

Gnite all <3

Cat Ba Island

So yesterday we decided to motorbike around the island that we've been staying on for the past few days. We were initially planning on heading to, what we heard was, a nice beach very close to our hotel called Cat Co 2. Unfortunately we woke up and it was really overcast and windy so we ruled that out as a plan, so motorbiking it was.

We were heading to the Cat Ba National Park, but since we had no idea where we were going, we ended up taking a really circuitous route that was really fun to speed down on our bikes. I think I got mine up to around 75km/hr at one point, which I'm sure felt faster than it was in reality.

Along the way we found a pretty beach and stopped to take some photos:













Here are a few more from the day:











This morning we woke up to SUNSHINE. This is what this paradise SHOULD look like everyday (from our hotel window):





In a couple hours we are headed to Hanoi, hangin with some folks we met here, then heading back to HCMC to meet up with my parents, Derek and Duyen for the engagement party on Sunday...then we're off to Angkor Wat/Siem Reap!

HOLY PETRIFICATION!!!

I think this place can only be described through photos... but just for the record, falling from that high is really kind of painful. and scary. but AWESOME.





















I'm somewhere in this picture...I think I'm in profile...


This was about the highest point we would jump...






These are all from yesterday...Today we went out again and it rained all day. Kind of a bummer. Oh well! We still climbed in the AM and had a great day playing cards on the boat and making new friends. I <3 THIS PLACE!

OMFG SO PSYCHED!

YESSSSSSSSSS WE ARE HERE!!!! That was gonna be all I was going to post, but I'll show you the pics of our room in Cat Ba, and our VIEW for $8USD/night. Too bad it's overcast here, but it's still amazingly breathtaking!







This is the pricey restaurant we went to, highly recommended by both Lonely Planet and Lets Go Vietnam (on a Budget). Randy and I both got really excellent burger/fries...seriously...really really ridiculously good.



We've just booked our deep water solo trip for tomorrow morning...all day out on the water...CLIMBING!!!!!!!!!! SOOOOO FRIGGIN EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!

the road to Ha Long Bay...

SUCKS!! Yesterday we woke early in Hoi An, got some breakfast pho, and were on our way to the last two legs of our open tour. A short 5 hour bus took us to Hue where we were able to check our email and see that we could arrange a couple days of DWS (deep water soloing) before the tide gets too low to do it. Bummed that we can't have more days, but glad that we can at least do a little bit. Also the guy I was emailing with said that we could do some sport climbing in Cat Ba, and rent ropes, chalk bags, everything we need, if we still wanted to climb after that. We'll see how we feel; we may just wanna relax and cruise around on kayaks or something...

Anyway, Hue was a quick four hour stopover...Randy wasn't feeling very well (the bus was really cold and there were two vents on Randy the entire time) so we went to a pharmacy and got some meds. At that point we had killed the time we had left, so we headed back to Sinh Cafe to catch our VERY long bus (turned out to be around 14 hours). I took some sleeping meds and drank a beer and I was able to sleep a lot more comfortably than the first 12 hour bus ride.

Arriving in Hanoi, we immediately looked to get a bus/ferry ticket to Cat Ba island (the island where many Ha Long Bay tours depart) and found we had missed the last one by minutes :( Bummed, we bought our ticket for 11:20 am and got a bowl of pho for breakfast. Now we're sitting in an internet cafe, where use of their internet/computers is 4000vnd per hour (about 0.20 USD). Hopefully gonna waste the next couple hours here until our bus ride.

Unfortunately Randy and I have had our fill of city-life for the time being, so being here in Hanoi is not something we're too keen on. We got swindled on the taxi ride here, and when we asked about bus rides to Cat Ba, a guy lied and said there were buses every hour (hm...now we're waiting three hours for the ONLY bus to Cat Ba?)... Needless to say, we are really excited to get on our way to more island/beach life...and CLIMBING!!!

Will post again once we've established a home base in Cat Ba...

Hoi An, what a surprise!

Wow, this place is amazing! We arrived this morning around 6:45 am after a slightly miserable 12 hour night/sleeper bus. As usual, we didn't know what our plan was, but we were pretty exhausted and didn't feel like doing a tour/sightseeing. We found a hotel in our guidebook and took off. As soon as we walked about 5 blocks we realized we were going in the wrong direction but we happened to stop in front of another hotel (you really can't escape them in any of the towns along the open bus tour) and for $10USD we were sold. We had to wait a little while for a room to be cleaned but we were able to use the internet and book our return flight to HCMC from Hanoi. Mom, dad and Derek, we will be arriving into HCMC around 8:30am on Saturday the 18th, so if mom and dad get in on Friday they can have the sleeper sofa, or whatever. I think we're just gonna catch a taxi to Derek's from the airport, but let us know if you guys have alternate plans and we'll meet you wherever.

Anyway, so we met an American while we were waiting for our room, Dan, and he joined us on all our adventures. FIRST, Randy got a suit made IN SIX HOURS!!!! That was by far the highlight of the day. But before I get carried away...we had to get breakfast, so we roamed the already-bustling streets and got a bowl of pho at a street restaurant:





The meat was absolutely delectable! By far the best meat I've had since I've gotten to Vietnam, and you can see what kind of restaurant we were at! Anyway, we sat at the table with an older VN lady, who quickly started chatting us up in quite good English. She said she had a clothing shop down the way where she could make a suit for 80-150USD, so when we finished our bowls of soup we followed her to her shop. (Hoi An is known for making excellent clothing, tailored to fit your exact specifications)

Randy and I were sat down and we perused some books of photos of suits and dresses. He picked a very dapper looking suit and then selected the fabric, a charcoal pinstripe.





As he was being measured, the lady pulled me aside and told me she would make me an Ao Dai (traditional Vietnamese dress) for $40 instead of $50, as I had been resisting for the duration of our time at the shop. She had been very hospitable, and I was actually considering getting one for Derek and Duyen's wedding, so I gave in and was measured as well. The ladies told us to come back around 3pm so we decided to rent bikes for $1USD and venture to a nearby beach.

And OH BOY was it beautiful. First, the bike ride proved to be absolutely amazing, as we were able to check out more of the town and ride over several bridges that crossed some really pretty rivers. As we neared the beach, the streets became more palm tree-lined and the houses turned to ornate resorts and street-side cafes. Check out my janky rig and some pics of the river:









Once we neared the water, we were instructed to park our bikes and walk the remaining distance to the beach. More cafes and dress/suit shops littered the sidewalks as we approached, to find a truly gorgeous beach:





More warm water and clean, soft sandy beaches welcomed us as we sunbathed/burnt for a few hours, passing the time until we were supposed to go try on the suit. After we visited a market and ate lunch at a riverside cafe:









We ordered a couple traditional Hoi An dishes, White Rose and Fried Wontons...I don't really know what was in either...fish? meat? deliciousness!





Okay enough putting it off, we went back to the tailor and Randy tried on his suit. This is what it looked like without any adjustments or anything. This is amazing (by the way, this is after SIX HOURS):



Pretty amazing right??? I forgot to mention that the shopowner promised to take us to lunch when we came back. She told us this dish, Cao Lau (pronounced KO-low), was really tasty, and we found later that it is a local Hoi An specialty. We were taken into a little kitchen where we were treated to a seriously delicious bowl of noodles, with lettuce, sliced pieces of roast pork, fresh pork rinds, cracked rice paper, bean sprouts, and a small amount of broth and spices, tossed together in a bowl:



Now we are resting, and we're going back to the shop so I can be fitted in my Ao Dai. Tomorrow we are heading to Hue, briefly (four hours), before continuing on another 12 hour sleeper bus to Hanoi. Then HA LONG BAY!!! Soooo excited!!!! Til then, hakuna matata :)