My Vietnam Vacation

I think the title is fair enough warning of what is about to come. This way if you don't want to scroll through someone else's blog, reading about their adventures while you yourself had been stuck trudging through another, and from what I heard, brutal, Chicago winter, you can go ahead and skip this post altogether. I figured I would finally write a bit about my vacation, since I am now using a computer I can upload photos to.

I suppose I will just pick up from where I left off, I will try to be brief :)

From Hanoi (which now seems like an entire lifetime ago, as I'm watching the snow fall outside my window), we took a short flight to Hoi An. It's a small town with a couple touristy temple like things to see, but it seems its biggest draw are the tailor shops. There are literally over 500 of them. No matter how strong the resolve is to not have something made, it's no match for Hoi An. Missy and I started off slow, but by the end of our stay there we walked away with 3 pairs of pants, 2 coats (matching of course), 2 pillowcases, and a dress. That doesn't include the 4 scarves, 3 tee shirts, 2 ties, and 1 vegetable peeler that we didn't actually have made, but purchased regardless. We were only there 2 days. We spent the rest of our time, eating, taking a cooking class, walking around on the only day of the entire vacation that it sort of not really rained, avoiding the motorbike people who we promised we would rent bikes from and getting our nails done. That pretty much sums it up. It may not sound like much of an endorsement, but we both really liked Hoi An and I would confidently recommend it to anyone who happens to find themselves touring through Vietnam. We also stayed in a super cute room overlooking some paddy fields.

After our two days in Hoi An we got back on a plane and headed to Nha Trang. We were told that Nha Trang is a bit too touristy and that we should go to Mui Ne, which is a "quick" 5hr bus ride. We got to Nha Trang in the early afternoon and didn't book our bus until 8pm or so. Which gave us the whole afternoon lay on the beach, roam around, and eat. This was the first place that was really very warm. We both fried ourselves relatively early and just bummed around for awhile. Not all the interesting. We got on our bus, which was "slepping bus" (seriously - there are so many people speaking English, could that not be corrected??), popped some Dramamine and fell asleep before the bus left the town. We got to Mui Ne around 1am or so and just crashed, on possibly one of the most comfortable beds I've ever had the pleasure of sleeping in.

We stayed at the Mui Ne Sailing Club and it was amazing. We didn't always have hot water to shower, but that was only a minor detail. The place was beautiful and the staff were all very nice. We literally did nothing. We started each morning with breakfast on the beach (a Mai Tai for Missy and a Mojito for me) and pretty much settled in until mid afternoon when we toured the one street, stopping for snacks and beverages. It was perfect and relaxing and I would like to spend the rest of my days there. Well, so I thought until I got to Thailand, but that's for later. It seemed that most people did exactly what we did, except for the immense amount of kite boarding. I really wanted to try, but in order to actually get in the water it takes several lessons and a whole bunch of money, so I opted out. Looked cool though. I think there may have been a couple sights to see, but Missy and I couldn't really be bothered. The only negative was trying to mail all the crap we bought home. It involved several wrong post offices, several different cab rides, 1 to the farthest ATM the cabbie could find, and a language barrier. Plus Missy was feeling like total crap at that point. BUT it was a great part of our trip.

From Mui Ne we took another bus to Saigon, this time not a "slepping" bus, and sort of more annoying. We got to Saigon, which is crazy busy, found our hotel and headed out to explore. By this time it was already 9pm or so. Missy was feeling worse so we got some food, not so delicious food, and sought out the Western type foreign hospital. I have now been to hospitals in Korea, China, and Vietnam. They gave her some stuff, and she began feeling better relatively quickly. I was not so lucky on the other hand. I woke up the next morning with some sort of stomach thing and could not really leave the hotel room. At one point I tried, when we went to book our airline tickets for the next day, but barely made it back before more puking ensued. It didn't help that it was about a billion degrees and super humid. Missy took off by herself that day and I stayed in the airconditioned hotel room, watching recaps of the inaugauration and a rerun of Ellen. By the time she got back she was hot and sweaty and slightly crabby. Plus she showed me all her pictures so I pretended like I went along as well. We met her friend Erin for dinner, I was feeling slightly better by this point, and drinks (I stuck with Coke). We were only there one day, but Saigon was not my city.

The next morning we got on a flight to Bangkok, but I will tell those stories another day. This is getting a bit lengthy for one post, and frankly I'm getting a bit tired of writing.