northerly bound

Archived from the past, here is a little Vietnam stuff... un-proofread I'm afraid! I've got a bus to catch in a few minutes.

Vietnamese internet cafes were rough, the connections very slow and the computers extremely moody, so blogging was difficult. I had this archived for weeks. Here's a few photos, and an abbreviated timeline and trajectory through Vietnam.

(approx mid December)
SO we have made it a fair distance north up the coastline of Vietnam and now find ourselves in the lovely little ancient city of Hoi An. Nha Trang was a nice beach city that grew on us rapidly. Our first impression wasn't great, but we found the less touristy areas, and where we liked to eat and settled in quite nicely. We went on a fun boat trip, did a little snorkeling, made a bunch of new friends. We were in the first hostel we've found, they aren't common in Vietnam, so it facilitates making friends. Nha Trang was great ...but then the weather turned and became rather cold and stormy. Too cold and stormy to do any more stuff on the water, so we continued up the coast to Hoi An.

Hoi An is a UNESCO site and the old city is car-free, just scooters and bicycles. Beautiful old teak houses and narrow little winding streets, it's really quaint. There's about 200 tailoring shops and cute places to eat. Maybe my favorite market so far, they have beautiful vegetables and herbs here. This is our favorite place in Vietnam so far.

We seem to have gathered a little crew of people on the same route up the coast and on the same time line, and it's nice to have a group of people that we're hanging out with now. Jen (USA), Drew(USA), Carina (Norway), Marina (Russia) We'll continue on together to Ha Long Bay for Christmas. We have quite the bus ride ahead, we take an 18 hour bus ride up to Hanoi tomorrow.

Today we all got bikes and rode out of town to Cu Dai beach, known during the war as "China Beach". It's too bad the weather wasn't great, cloudy and a little too breezy, but we had a nice ride and it felt good to visit the ocean.

The Vietnamese are known as skilled tailors, and Hoi An is the tailoring capital of Vietnam, and I totally succumbed to the tailors and had some stuff made to be shipped home tomorrow. A silk-lined wool winter coat, 3 cotton summer dresses, a dressy silk top and a silk bathrobe. All for $120. Such a treat, I'm extremely happy with everything I ordered. I've never had the experience of verbally describing something I want, and having them draw sketches until we're on the same page, take a million measurements and tell me to come back in 24 hours. A couple fittings later, perfection, with excellent workmanship. There are also a lot of cobblers here within incredibly cool samples to choose from and beautiful leathers... Jon got his first suit made, a totally slick cashmere pinstripe, and a bunch of beautiful shirts.

After Hoi An we spent 24 hours on buses headned north, breezed through Hanoi and off to the astoundingly beautifiul Ha Long Bay, where we spent Christmas and a few days. Unforgettable.

We would have loved to do some climbing, there are amazing deep water soloing routes and a great company that takes you out by boat....and the routes aren't even that difficult. Deep water soloing means you climb with no rope or protection and just fall into the water. Unfortunately it's winter there, and while the water temperature isn't bad the air temperature was in the mid teens and we were chilly. So no water activity aside from a bit of kayaking.

As soon as the sun set we were unprepared and didn't have enough warm clothes! It was chilly. It really was an amazing place. It deserves so many stories, but I would really like to just cover the ground we made and get anyone who cares to follow our trajectory caught up.

By this time we were reunited with the crew we'd been on and off traveling with up the Vietnamese coastline, Carina, Drew, Jen, Tess and James. We then headed back to Hanoi for a couple nights, which was great fun, and then all took another epic long busride south. 21 hours later, and a totally surreal and bizarre dawn border crossing in the mountains of Laos and we arrived in Vientiane, the Lao capital.