Very Full in Vietnam

   We'll go ahead and say it...the food in Vietnam is amazing!!  As soon as we arrived in Hanoi, we hit the streets in search of some Pho (pronounced kind of like Fuh); a delicious noodle/soup dish with beef or chicken and served with sprouts, basil, cilantro and chili sauce.  They love veggies here and we're happy to see that...we've been missing our veggies since we left the states.  We found a few great restaurants in Hanoi and gorged on good food before we left for Cat Ba Island/Halong Bay.
    Halong Bay, in reality, is exactly like the postcards! Beautiful.  We took a full day boat tour through the bay to see the insane rock formations rising out of the ocean.  While the boat was a little lack luster, the sights were not.  We went kayaking through some caves, saw a "hidden" lake and visited Monkey Island, which did not turn out so well for Derek!  Monkey Island is just that, an island full of monkeys that have, unfortunately, been spoiled by the tourists over the years.  As we were walking along a path, one of the head honcho males sees a candy wrapper we forgot to take out of the backpack....and jumps for it!  So now Derek, who despises monkeys, has one on his back trying to steal the backpack.  He slowly takes it off and shakes the monkey off only to have him hiss (teeth bared) at us.  (By the way: the other tourists are finding this much more amusing that we are).  Then one of his smaller minions jumps back onto Derek's leg and steals our water bottle! At this point, 6 or 7 monkeys have arrived to see what all the fuss is about and we take off back towards the beach as fast as we can pass the other tourists.  Finally safe, we return to collecting shells and sea glass on the beach....prettiest shells we've ever seen.
   Then we flew down to Danang and caught a train up the coastline to Hue, a cute town on the Perfume River.  We toured the city and sights yesterday and plan to visit the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) tomorrow.  We've only been in Vietnam for a little over a week, but we've learned a lot.  It's easy to get caught paying much more than you should for just about everything, but we do our research so we know the real costs (it sometimes works, ha!)

The Butter War

This is a blog post that I wrote when in China but was unable to publish it due to the internet restrictions: So, a little throw back to China!

So as Ashley and I walked around China I had one goal in mind. To find one object that said “Made in the U.S.A.” written on it.  Everything in the U.S. has “Made in China” printed on it, so I had hoped to find something that was made in the U.S. and sold in China as living proof that we still export something! Well….. That was easer said than done. After three weeks of looking I had found nothing. I started to think that we didn’t export anything in China with our name on it.

But all hope was not lost. One day, as Ashley and I were walking around in a grocery store trying desperately to find food we could identify, we stumbled upon one little gem. In a world where everything is made in China and almost nothing is imported into their country, we did find that one company is trying to break into the market. Not only are they spearheading the charge into this country with their product but they are also boldly printing “Made in the U.S.A.” right on the front! This was a shock because as I did find many American products sold in China, none of them would say “Made in the U.S.A.” Just take a look at the Coca Cola bottle with the Chinese Red star stamped into the bottle cap.

So what was this company that we found representing the U.S. in China? Well it is not electronics, not farming gear, not military gear, not even anything to do with cars, but instead………. Butter. Yes, that’s right; the only product that I found in all of China that would clearly print “Made in the USA” on their products was butter.  Though I have never heard of this butter company I tip my hat to them. Now, one thing to point out is that there was a very small butter section in this store and the only other butter was the very expensive French type you find in the deli section of American stores.  However, in the good old American fashion, we had our butter one dollar cheaper than the French butter.

So there you have it ladies and gentlemen.  All across the country of China you have a battle waging.  Not in the air, land, or sea, but in the butter isle.  France vs. America.  Mano y Mano. The stakes might be higher than anyone might think, for this just might be the chip in the armor for China.  If France and the US can have open, free capitalism in the butter isle of China, then what about the rest of the world? One day everything in China might say “Made in the U.S.A.”!............ That is at least, until China starts making their own butter and selling it one dollar cheaper than us!  We can dream though, we can dream.

Back in Business

 Hello all!  Since we couldn't give you a lot of info about our China segment (other than the Great Wall and Hong Kong pics), here's what we've been up to since the last post.  In Hong Kong, we took the Peak Tram to the highest point in the city....a hill used as a vantage point during WWII....also ingeniously named "The Peak."  It was foggy, but the view was pretty incredible and really shows the size of this massive city!  From there, we took a train to Guangzhou and decided to stay for 2 days before heading to Guilin.  We were amazed to find out it's almost as large as Beijing..20 million people live here!  We found ourselves at the top of the Four Season Hotel (located at the top of the second tallest building in the city) on the 70th floor and had another amazing view.  Unfortunately, we managed to forget all of our 4 picture taking devices! We stayed in a hostel located in a family home and were invited to eat dinner with them.  Rice, thin potatoes, stewed duck (spicy!) and cabbage was on the menu and it was wonderful.  Ashley also got her first haircut on the trip!  Only $5 and it came with a lovely scalp/shoulder massage!  Next came the overnight train to Guilin (another first for Ash) and that was an experience.  Apparently it is socially "OK" to smoke and spit (not just on the train-everywhere).  We arrived in Guilin and first impressions were not so great.  But, after walking around and finding the scenic area, the town started to grow on us.  We rented an apartment- ignore the mess in the pictures, we were packing to leave!  It was a small studio with a lofted bed and once we figured out how the heat, hot water, washing machine and hot plate worked, it grew on us too!  Most exciting was the hot water...which worked through a battery powered gas heater. Yeah, weird.  You turned the gas tank on, then turned on the water faucet.  I guess the water flow ignites the flame in the water heater and it goes BOOM!  Seriously, a small explosion occurred every time we needed hot water.  One time it even rattled a window upstairs off of its hinges!  The city of Guilin is in a beautiful part of the country, but we suggest not going in winter.  The fog and rain made it difficult to see the gorgeous mountains and rivers that you see on the post cards.  Nevertheless, we saw Elephant Trunk Hill, the Prince's Palace, and Solitary Beauty Peak which were great!  There was also a fabulous food street/alley where we found a great Indian Restaurant! On Tuesday we took a 6 hour train to Nanning to catch the 10 hr train to Hanoi, Vietnam.  We sprang for the soft sleeper this time!  Our sleep was a little interrupted because of customs/border checks at midnight and 1am, but we made it to Hanoi at 4:30am!  We checked into our hotel and explored the city, but those adventures will come later!  Enjoy the pictures from our China Adventure!


Who would've guessed this was at the top of The Peak in Hong Kong?!

                                                                                                                      Pagodas in Guilin

Out of China, back to real internet!

Hey everyone! We have made it out of China and are now in Vietnam. China has a very strict social media block on all internet servers so we have not been able to update the blog for about two weeks. Vietnam has no such block so get ready for lots and lots of blog posts about China! Just a heads up and we hope everyone had a great New Years!
Ashley and Derek

Not Quite China, but Close: Hong Kong

Hong Kong is crazy... Crazy cool, crazy fun and definitely crazy expensive. But, we are still managing to have some fun! Today we saw both The Hobbit AND Les Miserables... For those of you who haven't seen them, go! We strolled around the largest mall (on that side of the bay) and I (Ashley) bought a new shirt from H&M! We found a great (and cheap) breakfast place that serves a soup made from onion broth, macaroni noodles, egg and ham.  Sounds weird, but it's good.  Even McDonald's serves it!  We saw the sun setting over the bay last night...almost blinding when it reflects off the thousands of skyscrapers lining the horizon.  One of the most humbling moments hit us the other day in Beijing:  The population of the city of Beijing is over 22 million people. The population of the entire state of SC is 4.6 million.  Pretty wild.  Welcome to China, the land where everything is over the top and larger than life!