Favorite Photos from Ho Chi Minh

Below are some of our favorite photos from our time in Ho Chi Minh/Saigon!  The first few are in the days leading up to Tet.  There were flowers everywhere! Then comes a night shot from a hotel rooftop and the view we saw every day from our apartment.  Last, a few food shots of our favorites!  Ashley's fave...Pho and Derek's favorite spring rolls...Nem Ran.  We decided we are printing shirts when we get back that say "I'm a Pho-natic!" (remember, it's pronounced fuh)  We loved Vietnam and could have stayed longer!  Great food and great weather...you couldn't ask for much more.  On to Bangkok: we landed on the 16th at 1:30 am and had a great day exploring our new surroundings!  Love to all, A&D

Yep, that's actual BBQ

A little gem we found in Nha Trang. Owner is from Memphis, Tennessee and take it from us southerners; his BBQ is the real deal!! He figured since everyone in the world seems to know of Texas, that's the "southern" state he should put in the name of the restaurant! Ha

Videos from Vietnam!

This video is of Ashley and me in a bike taxi going around in Hanoi. The traffic is even more crazy than this during rush hour. There doesnt seem to be any real traffic rules that we saw other than "don't get hit".

 

This video of us on the motorcycles that we talked about on the last blog. Here we are going through a town and next to a river.

 

A short video of us driving around in the rice paddies!

Vietnam Adventures

So more on our time in Vietnam....Imagine yourself on the back of a motorcycle, eyes closed, wind whipping past you as the driver goes down a back country road at 80 km per hour. You open your eyes and for miles all around the only things you see are rice paddies the most beautiful shades of green you have ever seen.  When we took a motorcycle tour to the Demilitarized Zone and through the back roads outside Hue, Vietnam, we saw the Vietnam we traveled so far to see. It was easily the best/most fun thing we have done on this trip so far and an adventure we will not soon forget.
From Hue, we continued south to the beach destination Nha Trang.  We were so happy to see the sand and sun....so we parked ourselves on a beach chair by the pool and ocean and completely relaxed for a few days.  Enjoy the photos below and check out our pile of beach loot!  Beautiful sea glass, coral and pottery remnants found on shore.  What we are going to do with them is yet to be determined!

 

Love to all of our family and friends!

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!)