Long Overdue - Vietnam Travels

I'm pretty sure I mentioned that I would get these pictures up about 2 months go...oops...but better late than never, right?

Vietnam was both wonderful and a little stressful.  Traveler's had mentioned that you either 'love it or hate it'.  I'm not sure that's true as I would say I experienced both loving Vietnam and really resenting it. Caitlyn, Matt, Steph and I met up in Bangkok and flew to Vietnam very early the next day. Our flight was pretty uneventful, if I remember correctly. I think we were all a little shocked when we left the airport in Hanoi (after a visa delay that we never truly figured out) because everything was sooo green. It was beautiful and not at all what I expected, though I can't really describe what I thought Vietnam would look like. Thailand was in the middle of their dry/ hot season and there wasn't much green around, especially in Bangkok. Vietnam looked like a different world.

Cau Lau (local vietnamese dish)

Vietnamese Coffee = awesome

Matt and Caitlyn waiting for their Pho - Vietnamese noodles

We managed to get to our Hostel in Hanoi, Hanoi Backpacker's Hostel, on a Sunday afternoon to find out that they had a free beer promotion on Sunday from 5 pm until the kegs ran out! Perfect. In any case, we set off to explore the city a little and then came back to the hostel to relax and meet people. It was a bustling hostel with people everywhere. I happen to like these places best while traveling as it's the best way to meet people and get travel tips, etc. The four of us decided to do a 3 day tour in Halong Bay with our hostel which turned out to be amazing. Halong Bay is on the coast of Vietnam, about 3 hours from Hanoi, and is a World Heritage Site. It covers about 1500 square km and is made up of about 1960 limestone islands. We spent a day and a night aboard a big wooden boat, sort of like a tiny cruise ship for 20 people. Then the next day, us and 4 others got onto a little boat to take us to 'Castaway Island', where we stayed for a day and a night. The third day was spent on the boats getting back to mainland Vietnam. It was gorgeous and unlike anything I had really seen before. We got to go sea kayaking, explore some caves, swimming, and rock climbing.

Our boat for one day and one night 

 Halong Bay

Top deck of the boat 

Castaway Island

Local floating markets in Halong Bay

 Sea Kayaking

Our beds on Castaway Island!

 rock climbing buddies!

Halong Bay, exploring caves

After Hanoi and Halong Bay, we decided to head down to Hoi An. It's about halfway to Ho Chi Minh city, which was our final destination. We had planned on taking the sleeper trains as they were supposed to be super comfortable and relatively cheap buut things like Vietnamese holiday's got in the way of those plans. We found out that our first class train tickets were unavailable and we would have to take 2nd class. Well, we figured it was no big deal and could just deal with it. Then we found out that actually, no trains were available, so we'd have to take the sleeper bus. Still, figured that was okay. Of course we then found out that in fact there weren't any sleeper buses and we would have to take the sitting bus for about 12 hours. Wonderful. We've done that plenty of times in Thailand though, so I thought it would be fine. I was very wrong. We had bought our tickets from our hostel instead of through the bus company or a travel agency. This meant we were regarded as less than those people who bought from the bus company. We were unable to pick our seats or even say anything about what was going out and were banished to the back of the bus. I have to admit, I hardly remember this bus ride but it wasn't comfortable. We stopped along the way in Hue, which we hadn't known about and then had to wait there for 3 hours until we got our bus to our actual destination. In all, it took us 2 buses 24 hours to get from Hanoi to Hoi An.  Hue is supposed to be a great place to visit, but I was not in the mood to appreciate it.

market in Hanoi

Market in hoi an

Above the market in Hoi An

Hoi An was great, very quaint and peaceful. After our bus ordeal though, we didn't really want to walk around finding a hotel so we just got rooms at the first one we could. We drew straws and Caitlyn and I got the basement room while Matt and Steph got the 2nd floor room (complete with wireless internet!). During our two day stay in Hoi An, Caitlyn and I roomed with cockroaches and saw rats scurrying around outside our door. We also had a window that opened up to a brick wall. It was just a couple of those days where nothing seemed to go right. But, of course, it's all a part of traveling. I will say that I loved the city and would go back in a heartbeat if I could. It's a little tough to get to from where I am now though. Perhaps one day.

sleeper bus!

Next on the itinerary was Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and we managed to score tickets on the sleeper bus this time! It was absolutely amazing.  I have never seen anything like these buses before. It's a 'normal' sized bus with three rows and two stories of actual BEDS! you got a blanket and a little pillow and were able to aly down almost completely flat. It was paradise. For some reason though, the bus manager guy had it out for me. I'm not sure what I did, but I think I offended him and he just yelled at me in Vietnamese for a while. All the other people on the bus were trying to help me out and told me to just move seats, but it wasn't the most comfortable of situations. Then every time we were at a rest stop (these buses stop about every 3 hours for food or bathrooms, even at night), he would yell at me to get back on the bus. Again, couldn't tell you why. I was glad when we arrived at our destination. It was something like a 16 hour trip becuase we took the bus overnight from Hoi An to Nha Trang (which again, was a surprise) and arrived at about 5 am. Then we had another bus from Nha Trang to HCMC that left around 7 am.  Nha Trang looked awesome and I wish we had had more time there. We arrived super early in the morning and I looked at the street at there were just thousands of people flocking to the beach! I thought it was some sort of road race or holiday or something and was literally blown away. I looked it up online later and found out that no, this is just what happens every morning in Nha Trang. The whole city wakes up and goes to the beach to swim or play soccer and then heads back to go to school or work, all before 6 or 7 am.

Sunrise in Nha Trang

People exercises on the beach at 6 am!

Really, the beach was packed. crazy.

Ho Chi Minh city was great too and we spent more time learning historical information about Vietnam than just sightseeing and shopping. We went to the war remnants museum which was pretty well done and also very sad. There were a bunch of photography exhibits that were pretty tough to walk through.  One of the major differences between museums here and back in the USA is that almost nothing was encased or locked up. So you had these old missiles on display just laying out in the open. Someone actually knocked one off the display and it rolled around the floor making a ton of noise (everyone ducked, myself included...) until a guard came and hauled it back to it's place in the display. 

Post office in Saigon

We also walked by the Reunification Palace a few times and went to a few of fair-trade stores. They had beautiful things in Vietnam.  Okay, so I did still do a fair amount of shopping...

Fall of Saigon poster...we missed the anniversary by just a few days

Oprah House

(lack of) Adult Supervision

This morning I looked out my window to see two of the boys on the volleyball team hanging out next to the girls' bathrooms, which are a mere 50 feet from my house. This isn't that unusual, as the girls' bathrooms are a hangout for many students before, during, and after class.  However, the boys that hang out in this area are generally the ladyboys who say 'ka' (for women) instead of 'krap (for men) and identify more as a girl. After I notice the kids, Kara comes to my door asking if I've got any food, as the boys are hungry....

This year, our school has decided to have a first class volleyball team, which means we had to recruit students from other schools. Since we weren't here this time last year, I'm not sure if the volleyball team is a new thing, or if we are just improving upon the old one. In any case, there are about 20 boys who have been recruited for this team who live on campus in a classroom - with no adult supervision. I believe the coach is supposed to be around, but even so, he is only one guy for 20 students, aged 13 - 18.  Some weekends he is away for one reason or another, sometimes traveling to Bangkok and getting back mid-week. While this seems utterly unthinkable in the USA, it's fairly common here. So much of the time you see small children taking care of even smaller children. If they 5 year old is the oldest of a family of three, that 5 year old will be taking care of their younger siblings while the parents work, eat, or even nap. They will watch out for the kids, get them ready for dinner, feed them, and even go as far as going out to buy food. A lot of young kids here are already selling food on the side of the road at their families establishment.  There is a food stand near my house that I go to fairly often and the 8 or 9 year old is always counting out the money and getting me what I need. As far as I have seen, it seems to work out well enough. Adult supervision just isn't something that is a priority here, but the kids don't know any different so they all work together to make sure everyone is okay.

Usually, this lack of supervision works, and it works well here in Thailand. However the two boys this morning demonstrated how hard it can be sometimes. They are the youngest of the group of boys living on campus and were either left behind  or didn't want to hang out with the older boys, who left campus for most of the day. I guess their old coach has come to campus and is trying to recruit the boys to go back home. In theory, this sounds okay. In reality, the boys are pretty scared of this coach and spent most of the morning hiding from his as they were afraid he would hit them. They wandered over to our place at around 1:00, driven by hunger since they had no money and no way to get any food. I had tutoring, but Kara and I were able to scrap together enough food to give them a decent lunch. She stayed with them until she had to head out later, and they told her that it was okay, they would just hide somewhere else on campus.

What's sad about this situation is that it's unlikely to change. The kids are away from home for the first time, living in a classroom, and being sort of stalked by their old coach. Of course, all of this has been spoken in thai and then translated into English so I'm sure there are some things that are lost in translation. I was under the impression that the school was trying to find an actual house for the kids, but that could take any amount of time. In the meantime, I suppose our house (kara's and mine) will be a sort of safe place for them, assuming we are home. It's these kinds of things that are so different from life back home and we get used to because they seem to work okay, until they don't.