Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to everyone. We will be continuing our blog once our travels continue in South America at the end of January! We hope to see everyone while we're back in the States this month.

-Drew & ATG

Bia HaNoi

Our overall experience in Vietnam was nothing short of amazing and Hanoi definitely didn't disappoint. We arrived to Hanoi to temperatures that were in the upper 60s. It actually felt nice after being in hot and humid climates for the last 2 months. The main part of Hanoi where we stayed and spent our time was in the Old Quarter. This part has the original setup of Hanoi with super old streets that are not on any sort of a grid. This made it confusing to figure out how to navigate but by the end of our 6 days we had it figured out. The setup of the city and all of the buildings were so awesome to stumble around throughout the day. The streets are still very chaotic just like a smaller scale of Ho Chi Minh. At this point in our travels, we are more interested in getting lost in cities and discovering the culture and how locals live rather than hitting up every museum and tourist trap possible. The first couple days we would just head out after breakfast and walk around all day up until the evening. The nights end quite early there (bars close by midnight) and everything else is shut down by 11pm. This was quite a change after Thailand and our time with Emily and Jim when we were staying up till super late. We loved what the nightlife consisted of here however. On every corner you people gather to have tea, street food, and most importantly Bia Hoi which is a very light beer. They sell it by the glass for 5000 Dong which is equivalent to $0.25. This starts around 6-7pm and they go until the kegs run out. The beer is only good for a day as it is not pasteurized so around 9-10 when they run out the begin serving bottled beer. Oh another part to add on is that all food stalls, Bia Hoi bars and everything that has you sit outside has stools that are meant for children's size. You can see the photo below. When you're in Asia for so long you stop realizing that the average person is much shorter than us, but seeing the photo below makes it quite clear that I'm a giant in comparison. On our 2nd to last day we decided to walk around to all of the monuments and such. It was great to walk to all of the places as the inner part of the city is super small. On our last day we were finally able to get a tour setup with Hanoi Kids Club which is a club in the university. The tours are free as the students do the tours to learn the English language better and to just speak to foreigners. This was by far one of the best things we did on this trip. We had 2 guides, Bach and Nougat. Their English was perfect and we learned so much from them. Since we did most of the touristy things the day before we told them we just wanted to hangout and talk with them. We went to 1 museum, the Museum of Ethnology and then we just walked around the Old Quarter asking them questions and learning more about them. They took us to a really cool coffee/tea shop that was through an art gallery and up 4 different spiral stair cases. It had an awesome view of Hoan Kiem Lake. After having a Vietnam type of tea here we took them out to a nice restaurant of their choice for lunch which was pretty good. We did find that our favorite restaurants were either street Pho places or other street stalls that found a building to throw a couple tables into. The Pho we had was so good as well as a dish called Bun Bo Num Bo. We had such a great time in Vietnam, the only downfall is that we didn't allot enough time there. We will definitely be back to Vietnam to completely discover the country. It's nice to be in an area that isn't completely saturated with tourists. A lot of people say that Vietnam is what Thailand was 20 years ago. Below are some photos from Hanoi.

 Aaron on the famous red bridge.

The red Bridge from afar.

They were celebrating while we were there the 40th anniversary of a battle in which they shot down a bunch of US war planes.  Surprisingly they do not hate Americans in Vietnam.

A temple floating in the main lake in the center of Hanoi.

Aaron eating Pho on a really small table.

The menus at each restaurant were really small.  Some even served only one dish.

Saint Joseph's Cathedral.

Me at the Hoa Lo Prison where John McCain was held as a prisoner along with other American pilots that were gunned down.

Our favorite tea shop.  If you look closely you can see Aaron on the balcony.

Aaron in front of an old gate.

This is riding on one of the cabs.  They will bike you around in these for a small cost.  This is in front of the Temple of Literature.

Dinner with our Vietnam guides.

French style streets.

Lake view.

They sold flowers everywhere for a very cheap price which made everything so beautiful.

Traffic was worse in Vietnam than anywhere else we saw.

The flag tower.

Climbing in the small alleyways.  Our favorite part of Hanoi was exploring the alleys and small streets and everything they had to offer.

Bum bo nom bo!  Our favorite dish in Vietnam and a Bia Ha Noi.

 Drinking bia hoi (not to be confused with bia Ha Noi) for 25 cents a glass in the street and people watching.  The charis are only about 8 inches tall and I am a giant in this picture. 

Back to the Beach Beach Nha Trang

As the post says we are back to our favorite part of traveling abroad....the relaxing lifestyle of being on a beautiful beach. We rented out a condo that was very nice (3 to 5 dollar cab ride from town)and we were the first people to stay in the entire building. The beaches in Nha Trang were pretty, not quite as pretty as those in Thailand, but they were much more calm and relaxing and the atmosphere was more suited to what we prefer. Jim, Emily, Drew and I spent our days lounging on the beaches, playing cards, eating fresh fruit, swimming in the ocean and just relaxing. Here are some photos from our excursion to the beaches on Vietnam:

Drew and I at a really good Italian restaurant on our first night. The name was Olivia and we ate here several times as they used real cheese and it had a great ambiance.

Us playing in the ocean on the main beach.

Sunset picture. The sunset was beautiful but it was weird since we are on the east coast and the sun sets over the city and not down behind the ocean.

Jim had some suits made at one of the local shops.

We had looked on tripadvisor for some restaurant recommendations and the top restaurant in town was an Indian place called Ganesha. The food did not disappoint, until Drew ordered his chicken spicy....

Playing pool with the local hustlers. We played for beers and they were much better but they scratched and had to get us beers, we paid for them anyways since they were under 50 cents a piece at the bar. They also play that if you scratch, the next person gets two shots.

The view from our condo that we woke up to every morning.

Obligatory panoramic view of the beach.

Emily and I doing handstands at the beach....well one of us succeeded.

The best thing we have done on this trip so far was renting out a boat. We rented out a boat for about 90 dollars, I am sure we got ripped off but it was less than 25 dollars a person for 10 hours in the ocean with just us. Almost all of these photos are from our boat trip starting with a view of the city.

Our boat was a small speed boat but our driver docked up to a larger boat and let us jump off. In fact most of the day was spent diving off docs and boats and floating fishing villages. One thing I want to mention on the blog so I don't forget but that we couldn't catch a photo of was that we saw a school of jumping fish. We couldn't figure out what it was but it was one of the coolest things i have ever seen.

I love this picture. Emily is jumping into the water off of a doc but it actually looks like she is jumping out of the water to me.

That is our driver Dot with the guys (Emily was definitely out numbered). He spoke very little English, and by English I mean he knew beer. I think we were his favorite clients ever because he let loose and had fun with us and I don't think he had ever done that before. He kept calling his boss to communicate with us when he wanted to say something.

The beautiful sky scattered with clouds.

The water was clear in parts so we were able to do some minor snorkeling and photo taking under water.

It was nice to have no itinerary so a lot of the time was spent just sitting out in the ocean and having drinks while listening to music. A lot of our pictures looked like this from the day.

We saw an old dock made of wood and tires and had to get a photo on it.

Also a boat that they use to shuttle people from boats to shore and is also used as a fishing boat.

Emily wanted to get in on the action.

We stopped by a fishing village and got out to check out the fish farms. This is a picture of the shore in the village.

These were not your typical fish farms. As you can see they had sharks in nets as well as lobsters, tropical fish, blow fish, box fish and almost any other sea creature you could think of.

Including these guys.

Here is a man fishing in one of those round boats we took photos in earlier in the day.

Playing cards.

Doing flips off of the farm. At first we did not know if our driver Dot could swim. But once we offered him beers and he realized we weren't pushy tourists he got in on the action and basically became part of the group.

Back flips.

Hand stands.

At one of the spots Dot dove down and caught sea urchins. He caught about 30 and asked if it was okay to keep getting more. I think he either sells them our eats them. He let us try them and well it was terrible. He did get poked by an urchin and nurse Emily had to remove the prick.

Things started to get interesting, as you can see this is the four guys in the back of the boat....

Because Emily became our driver.

We set down anchor to watch the sunset as the day was coming to an end and took a few more pictures.

The sunset was much prettier from the ocean than it was on the beach as you can see from this photo.

This is from the beach on our last day in Nha Trang.

Drew and I just before leaving for the last time.

Our last night in Nha Trang. We stayed in a non touristy part of town and no one spoke English. We decided to go down to the street below our house and sit with the locals. None of them spoke English but they were very nice and tried to help us.

In fact they made Drew some fresh spring rolls with fish and all the fix ins for free.

I am sad to see our time here on the beach come to an end. We will not see Emily and Jim for nearly 6 months which is the saddest part but I the trip with them could not have been better. I am making this post from Hanoi which is the capital of Vietnam and we are about to get our day started. I leave you with two last photos from Drew's iphone. One is of a lady named Fu who sold beers and water on the beach and she absolutely loved us. It is illegal for them to sell on the beach with out a license and cops come to the beach to confiscate their merchandise but she would just leave beers in a bag with ice and come back at the end of the day to collect her money. The other picture is of our last lunch right before we went to the airport. We went to a restaurant, no one spoke English and the menu was in Vietnamese. We told them One chicken with noodles and one beef dish with noodles. The beef dish came out correct. The chicken was plucked from a cage alive, and served to us below....we gave it to the locals to eat.