Hoi An

Hoi An is one of the must-see cities of Vietnam. There is old french colonial architecture, delicious local food specialties, several blocks of walking only streets, and a lively night life. Hoi An is also world famous for its tailors and the city is swimming in clothes shops. Many people we met in Hoi An were vacationing there just to have clothes custom made for pennies on the dollar. A nice suit might cost between $40 and $70. Anything you can think up they will make with any sort of material, just show them a magazine photo or give them your favorite outfit, come back the next morning and like magic they will have the exact replica of what you wanted.

Not that we were clothes shopping though, we dont have any more room in our backpacks. We spent our time in Hoi An exploring the culinary delights of the city and taking day trips out to some nearby cultural sites. We spent one day at Marble Mountains, which are exactly as their name suggests. Large hills made of marble, riddled with caves and sprinkled with temples and pagodas and stunning viewpoints. On our way out we couldnt resist buying a souvenier from the lady who watched our motorbike while we were hiking around. We bought two small lions made of jade marble, with intricate hand carving details.

The view from the highest peak was breathtaking. And Erika's karate kid impression is pretty good too.

Several statues were carved straight from the marbles walls of the caves.

Looking toward the beach from halfway up the mountain.

Another side-trip we took while in Hoi An was to the Cham ruins of My Son. Pretty interesting, but not on the scale of Angkor Wat. And the place was crawling with tourists. We ditched our tour group as soon as the bus stopped, walked in to the ruins on our own, toured the entire area (rather than just one of 4 sites our group went to), and made it back to the bus before our tour group.

Overgrown ruins dotted the landscape, only a handful were well looked after.

Statue of Empress Erika

A quiet path far from the tour groups.

Ho ChiMinh City (Saigon) and Nha Trang, Vietnam

"Seems like everywhere I go, the more I see the less I know" - Michael Franti

These lyrics have played through my mind often in the last several weeks especially while exploring Vietnam and finding a much different country than expected. We crossed the border into Nam in one long 6 hour bus ride from the capital of Cambodia all the way to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). The transition was smooth since we rode the same bus and only had to get off briefly at both borders, a relief after our last border crossing into Cambodia where we constantly were approached by scamming locals with fake visas and currency exchanges at half the going rate. We arrived in HCMC on a Friday, the kickoff of a weekend long tourism festival that was being held at the city park 2 blocks from our hotel. We took the opportunity to indulge in Vietnamese fair food at least once a day Josh enjoyed green papaya salad while I preferred the artery clogging dishes (deep fried steamed pork buns, tempura shrimp, sweet marinated meats, anything battered and greasy). The weather was hot and humid so we spent a couple days touring the sights around the city and made plans to head to the coast. We visited the War Remnants Museum which consists of left over US aircraft from what the Vietnamese know as the American War, weapons and artillery and several displays on different American offenses. The most upsetting display for me to see was the images of mutated bodies of Vietnamese people effected by the use of Agent Orange, very graphic and disturbing. We also toured the Independence Palace which used to be the White House of Southern Vietnam before it fell to the communist regime in 1975. Ultimately the palace was a collection of big rooms with stale smelling carpets, polished wood furniture and a basement full of 1970's radio equipment where the president had his war room.

Independence Palace

Presidential Receiving Room

Helli-pad on the roof of the palace

Bomber jet at the War Remnants Museum

G.I. Josh

Sweet sticky rice and banana log purchased at the festival

The good view of the Saigon River

The ugly view of the Saigon River

Ho Chi Minh City Skyline

Seeking relief from the hot sticky weather of Saigon we headed Northeast to the coastal town of Nha Trang. It was your basic beach vacation destination complete with sunbathers, little Vietnamese women offering massages and rice cakes while you try to relax by the water and overpriced snorkeling tours to the surrounding islands - all of which we thoroughly enjoyed =)

Josh Hasselhoff =)

Palapas with comfy beach chairs to rent at 25,000 dong per day ($1)

We were the only non-Asians on our snorkel tour and for some reason they really wanted us to sing with the band. Josh serenaded them to the metallic version of Zombie upon their request, unfortunately I don't have a video.

Set break

We visited the local Aquarium with this cool gaping Lion Fish entrance.

Moray eels were one of the many aquatic species at the aquarium.

Hawk beaked Turtle

Giant pouting groupers

Videos!!!

In Saigon they have computers that are fast enough to upload videos to YouTube. So here is a link to my channel where you can watch five different videos I uploaded today. The videos are of the bamboo train in Cambodia(this is real, and now here is the video to prove it), bamboo rafting in northern Thailand, fire sword dancing at a night market in Chiang Mai, views on the island of Ko Tao, and also a video of the giant Tokyo fish market from our visit to Japan way back in February.

Click this link: http://www.youtube.com/user/jsingular#p/u
The videos are off in the right column.

Also, if I can get it to work, video updates will show up in the "video sidebar" on this blog (look over on the right side).

Life in Cambodia

Our last couple of weeks in Cambodia we spent in Batambang and Sihanoukville. Batambang is off the tourist path and was a great experience. In Batambang we took a day long journey to some local sites, including a bamboo train ride, viewing the Killing Cave and nearby temple, and an old hilltop temple dating back to before the construction of Angkor Wat. The bamboo train was super fun, and really sketchy. They put two axles on the tracks, set a bamboo platform on top, and run the thing using a lawn mower engine and foot brakes. The killing cave is the site of an old prison from the Khmer Rouge genocide, where prisoners were executed and thrown through a skylight down into the cave. Needless to say, this was a very sad and intense place to visit, especially because it has a memorial inside containing many bones from killed prisoners. The ancient temple we visited later in the day was in fairly good condition, but I'm not sure it was worth walking up several hundred steep steps to reach the summit. We were completely exhausted, both emotionally and physically, by the time we made it home that night.

The central market was right outside our hotel in Batambang, and the people watching was excellent.

They call this a bamboo "train"
Here is our train, disassembled to allow another "train" to pass.

In this situation, our direction had two trains, so the other guys had to get off the tracks

An ancient hilltop temple, predating Angkor Wat

In Sihanoukville, we thoroughly enjoyed having some beach days and relaxing on the balcony in our hotel room after a week of sweaty muggy days in central Vietnam. Our daily activities in Sihanoukville were mostly reading books and going for bike rides. One of the highlights of our stay was going sailing on a Hobie Cat we rented for a half day. We were able to sail around a few nearby islands and had lunch on a totally deserted beach. Come to find out, Erika is a natural sailor and did quite well piloting our catamaran around on the open ocean. Here are a few pictures of our days in Sihanoukville.

Having breakfast on our balcony...our room was only $9 a night!

We had lunch at this restaurant one day, the plane was quite a surprise.
Bike riding along the coast.
Captain Erika at the helm of the Hobie CatJosh taking his turn as captain.
Our lunch break on a deserted beach several kilometers out of town.

Our last stop in Cambodia was 2 nights in Pnom Penh, arranging our visas to Vietnam, which you are required to obtain before arrival at the border. Pnom Penh was fun and we stayed at a nice guesthouse on Boeng Kak lake. The views were decent, and the breezes at night delightful.

Having an iced glass of fresh sugar cane juice, perfect with an added shot of Bacardi.Locals out collecting plants for dinner in a tiny canoe.

Angkor Wat

Our first sightseeing trip in Cambodia was to the Angkor temples just outside the town of Siem Reap. The most famous temple is Angkor Wat, most people may recognize the name of this World Heritage Site, but there are dozens of other temples scattered throughout the surrounding countryside. We hired a tuk-tuk driver for the day, and spent about seven hours touring the main sites. Here are some of the photos we took that day, and trust me, the pictures dont even come close to doing this place justice. The Angkor temples are breathtaking buildings, and even more impressive since they were built around the year 900AD.

Many of the temple stairs were so steep you had to climb them like a ladder, not so bad until you are 200 feet up. Kids selling stuff were everywhere, but this guy was shocked when Erika gave him her Raybans. And they looked sweet on him too.

Back at the hotel, we ordered Fire Mountain for dinner. Self BBQ at the table... and Josh even tried the beef!