Vegetable Tossing in the Mekong Delta

After a few days in Hanoi and Sigh Gone we were ready to head out to the Mekong Delta, a famous region outside of Saigon for floating markets and beautiful rice fields. 

We had.....a few....complications when first getting there. I'll take all the blame, but we went to this town Ben Tre, that was supposed to be really cool according to my LP (Lonely Planet), but....

There were a lot of tour buses? So there must have been something? There was supposed to be a cheap ferry to take you to islands, but it was nonexistent...But, we took a few pictures to prove we were there! Hahah. We soon moved on...oops.

Within two hours of our arrival in Ben Tre and discovering the dud, we soon painfully made our way back to the bus station with a 4 km walk in the pounding heat with our bags. Upon arriving at the Bus station, we only then learn that the bus we want next, is nonexistant, but to get on the back of motorbikes and they'll take us somewhere....

With a lot of hand motions and pointing to maps we reluctantly get on these guys bikes, I wasn't sure if they were taking us to a new bus station or if they were taking us all the way there, but it was our first experience on a xe om and it was awesome. Kelly and I had discovered the beauty and convenience of the xe om and from then on, we never walked anywhere over a few miles.

After arriving in our next town, Can Tho, we set up an early boat tour of the Delta. Here we are on the boat at 6:30 am.

All smiles!

Cool old bridge!

Sunrise, it's gorgeous.

Here we are at the floating market! The "famous" church is in the background. The market was...a bit different than we expected, but it was still beautiful.

Oh yeah, we went there. Beasts. 

Gorgeous. 

We ended up traveling to a few different towns and made our way to another bigger floating market.

Veggies!!

Empresses of Huế

Being bike addicts, Kelly and I woke up after our motorbike day and decided that after a hearty breakfast of eggs and baguettes (Kelly needed those eggs) we would rent bikes to ride and explore Hue. Although we had been in town for a day and 2 nights already, we hadn`t explored the town at all (minus searching for restaurants) So we headed off and ended up at the Palace. Where we went Royal!

Oh yes, we went there. 

Royal Kelly.

We paid 3 bucks to dress up in these and take pictures. We had to. We really did.

Here are more ruins to the palace.

We then biked to a sweet pagoda by the river.

Overall it was a lovely day exploring Hue and wandering around. 

Marble Cake

In between Hue and Hoi An Kelly and I jumped off our yellow little bus and ventured off into the Marble Mountains. Temples litter these four mountain tops that surround the Marble Village, that now imports their marble from China. 

We only hiked through one mountain, but it was gorgeous. 

There's the marble town and another one of the mountains off in the distance.

He looks so happy, right?

There were also these caves that were fun to explore. 

This particular cave served as a hospital during the American War. 

This is China Beach. Apparently it was a favorite R&R for American soldiers. (Also, the setting for some Vietnam related TV show)

Daibutsu! 

Oh, I also must add what BAMFs we were. We explored and hiked the whole mountain with our backpacking packs. Beasts.

A Tunnel to...

Cu Chi! 

After coming back from the Mekong, Kelly and I decided to go on a little day group tour out to the Cu Chi tunnels, tunnels where whole villages went underground to avoid US bombs. There are miles upon miles of these tunnels with different levels and areas for different purposes. 

Where'd he go?

This was a quick bomb cover hole and a way to hide during battle. 

Go Kelly go!

Gone!

bahahaha

We then walked through one of the actual tunnels (well, kind of actual, this is a real tunnel but they widened it a bit for giant foreigners)

We walked the length of a football field in this tunnel. It was tiring!

There were some huge tall Australians behind us that had to give up and take a side way out because they were too big. It was hilarious. 

The tunnels were a really cool experience to wander around the jungle and see all the traps, hidey-holes and tunnels. You also had a chance to shoot real guns from the war, but it was expensive so Kelly and I sat instead. Haha. 

Although it was a tour with a big group, it was a nice relaxing day not having to worry about anything more than falling in hidden holes.  

The Knight Bus

 After flying from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh and Ho Chi to Da Nang, we were already spending a fair amount of Dong (VND aka the $$) just getting up and down this gangly awkward teenage boy of a country. So there we were, in Hue, about an hour flight from to Hanoi, but $70 each in flight tickets. While seemingly not a lot, figuring you might pay that much to go from SF to LA, but Kelly and I, like all true college students, are cheap. Just as we were about to bust out the $70 to buy our ticket, our hostel manager walks in and puts a paper in front of us.

On said paper: "A sleeper bus to Hanoi, 6 pm to 6 am, 220,000 D"

Translation: "$11 each and no money is needed for a hostel or hotel that night"

I turn and look at Kelly. She gives me the nod, but adds in that it's my decision (Being that I have a bit of a fear of buses..). 12 hours. 12 hours and 22 dollars instead of 140. We went to lunch to "think about it", but we all know what happened. The Knight Bus was booked. We were set.

    Twenty four beds. One squat toilet. 12 hours. A 30 minute dinner break. Games upon games of cards. Snacks and cookies. And very little sleep.
No talking head. No changing shapes of the bus (though sometimes we did have a real squeeze passing a few truckers). And no Harry Potter.

   Although a bit rough at times and a bit tired afterwards, traveling by night bus is a great cheap way to get around and I'd do it again.

The Graves of the Motorcycle

Vietnam, the land of the motorcycles, lawless streets and a love of honking. Honking when you pass someone, honking when you cross a street, honking when you see someone you know...

It's a bit like Venezuela really, motorbikes and buses stampeding all about in Lion King like manner.

After being hit ourselves whilst on foot in Hanoi, surrounded in Sigh Gone, and being berated by constant honking the entirety of our trip, Kelly and I felt like we were ready for the impossible:

Our OWN motorbikes! We wanted to join in on the fun! 

 We were to join the herd! (Warning: While I may use the word "herd" I in no way imply that there was order and a pattern to the chaos that are the streets of Vietnam)

Kelly and I may be a bit crazy, but we decided to not sign our own death warrants and thus waited for lovely Hue of central Vietnam to have our first motorbike venture instead of the death traps of Saigon and Hanoi. 

We woke up fairly early on our first day in Hue and of course firstly made our way over to a cafe to get breakfast (My stomach then roared in approval while scarfing down moderately tasty backpacker cafe banana pancakes). 

After filling the beast, it was time to attempt to mount a different kind of beast. 

    Scary, right?

We returned to our hostel and told our little manager man that we wanted to rent two motorbikes. He thought we were crazy that we wanted no guide, that we didn't want to go on a tour, and that we were each getting our own motorbike. Hahaha. He doesn't know the bamfness of the Pearson sisters. 

So there we were in our little back alley of our hostel, Kelly had the manual bike and was receiving a quick 2 minute instruction while I sat there slightly freaking out...I know that I'd ridden a scooter before, but not a motorbike, and we might have s.t.r.e.t.c.h.e.d. the truth a bit to our motorbike experience...

I couldn't even figure out how to turn it on.

Although I was a bit nervous at first, once we got out on the road, we were good to go! A bit timid at first whilst in town, especially when I was trying to navigate our way out of the city center to our destination, but eventually I got it figured out. 

As we were making our way out of town, we decided to Miyazaki a bit as well. I knew that we were trying to make our way to this one Pagoda on the outskirts of town, but what we came across was so much cooler. We found this giant guy ^.^   There were cows just grazing right by his feet. He was awesome.

Then we hit the jackpot! We found this sweet lying down Buddha that I made Kelly imitate.

The ponchos are hot, right?

It had started to rain, and luckily our Momma had packed each us a poncho in our stocking stuffers. (Put them to good use Mom! =]  ) 

I don't really know about Kelly, but I was feeling like a superhero in my poncho. With the speed of the motorbikes and the wind, the poncho magically transformed into a cape of superhero proportion. 

On to the real destination (though I would say in full cliché form, it was more about the journey bahaha): 

The graves of these Emperors from the 19th and 20th century.

 These things were PALACES! We only paid to go inside of one (the tickets were steep man, 60,000D each (aka $3). I don't know what these guys were planning to do once they were dead, but they had hunting grounds, fishing grounds, places for people to stay who came to visit them...It was insane! Kelly was saying she would go hang out there if she was the Emperor before she'd die. I would too. hahaha.

I swear, palaces! 

There was all this religious meaning to crossing over these different houses and passing into different sections of the afterlife and crossing over bridges and lakes, but since we didn't take a guide (muahah) we didn't really understand that, but it was lovely to just wander and Miyazaki. 

The final gate in this picture leads to this forest-y area that is enclosed by a giant wall, that's the final resting place of the Emperor. Now there were about...7 or so of these big grave areas spread throughout the surrounding countryside of Hue. We drove by most of them, wandered around one that was under restoration, and explored this guy's fully! 

Hark!

I peed right next to this ruin. I feel kind of bad, but it was a Leaning Tower of Pisa kind of moment. 

Kelly and I spent the full day out on our motorbikes. It was probably one of my favorite days in Vietnam. It was nice to get out in the countryside and have the freedom of going wherever we wanted. We drove by beautiful rivers, wound around sharp turns in villages, and honked our way through the city (well Kelly was the real honker, I couldn't find my horn button...hahah). 

Eventually, we made our way back to Hue and while we had tamed two beasts, two others were down right barbaric. We had tried to find food for lunch, but we were just too far out and couldn't find anything, so literally as soon as we got back to our hostel we set out for a night of restaurant hopping and scarfing and ended the day with a bang.