Vietnam

This blog is for my friend Mollie who reminded me I haven't written on here in quite some time. ;) The past week has been pretty uneventful. Once we left Hanoi, we took an overnight bus to Hue. I think the rain followed us the entire way and stuck around our entire stay there. In a way, it was a good thing. Because it was so cold and wet outside, we did nothing except stay in our hotel room for 2 days watching movies. Sadly, the only time we left our room both days was to go eat. One time we ventured a little farther across the river to a book store but quickly walked back to dry off and warm up. Even though we saw nothing the city had to offer, it was nice relaxing for a couple days.

From Hue, we took a 4 hour bus trip to Hoi An where we had 5 hours to waste before our overnight bus to where we are now. In Hoi An we walked around through their market, stopped and had a pizza and then hung out at the bus station for our bus. What was suppose to be a 12 hour bus ride to Nha Trang ended up being 21 hours. We thought we were being smart with purchasing a sleeper bus tickets but when we saw the seats that were suppose to be a bed I was like "you're kidding me, right?!?" I think they were meant for the small framed Asian person who designed them. Not a good situation for someone with a bad lower back. I think it was around 5:30 am, the bus came to a stop. My first thought was we had arrived early but when the bus never moved and we watched the sun come up, I knew something wasn't right. We sat for over 5 hours. Word was there was an accident up ahead. Finally after 3 1/2 hours, the emergency vehicles passed by us and all I thought was 'thank god I wasn't the one in that accident!' It was so frustrating. No one said a word about what was going on, when we'd move or even how far away we were from our destination. Once we started moving, we made it maybe 1/2 a mile and had to stop for another hour. Anyway, we finally made it 21 hours later.

Today we spent island hopping. Our first stop was at an aquarium which was pretty decent for the $2 we paid to get in. Then onto our snorkeling site. But now is the worst time of year for snorkeling around here. Some girls said to not waste our time, they didn't see anything the water was so murky. They prepared us a great Vietnamese lunch that we had to eat with chop sticks. It was interesting, I still don't think we used them right but we managed! After that we had some free time to swim and enjoy their floating bar where they served red wine. I got some pictures of it, pretty funny. That was pretty much the end of the day. Tomorrow we're heading to Da Lat where we'll see a silk village, coffee plantation and maybe go on an elephant ride through the village.

We wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving, please eat some turkey and mashed potatoes for the both of us. Oh,and don't forget the pumpkin pie, with extra cool whip!