Juan is our tour guide if we see police will get there slowly. I the ar no police we will get there more quickly. He comers it to Amrica and shows us the elaborate hand signals Vietnamese use to alert each other about police presence on the road. He tells us that he makes a good income but still can't afford a car. He says there are 10 million ( Read more... )

We wanted to actually take a tour of the coffee fields to see how it was picked and processed but the fields are a sensitive area according to the provincial police, requiring two day prior notice to clear the paperwork for Westerners to visit. We didn't know this ahead of time so we were kind of out of luck on that one.

Instead, we went to a ( Read more... )

After a bit of R&R our group met in the lobby and Karen asked the guy behind the desk for a dinner reservation. They talked for a long time and he drew out a map and gave us very detailed instructions how to walk the 2 blocks to the restaurant.

The host didn't want us to sit on the bar side where everyone else (all Vietnamese) were congregating so ( Read more... )

Our guide, Candy, met us in the hotel parking lot at 7:30. She was adorable in her skinny jeans and 1 inch heels. You'd think she was going to teach her English class (she just knows English really well, she is not a tour guide by trade and admitted to googling info about all the places we were going) instead of going to hike the highlands to see ( Read more... )

Jaclyn had warned me it wasn't a tourist destination. The Australian Hostel manager in Hanoi had never heard of it. Jaclyn said I didn't have to come with if there were other, more famous, places I wanted to experience.

I went anyway.

And I had the most genuine, albeit bizarre Vietnamese experience I've had to date during my weekend in Buon Ma ( Read more... )

I'm sitting on the luxurious balcony I paid an arm and a leg for, drinking a Bia Ha Noi warm (it's disgusting) and feeling quite a bit like Hemingway. I'm Far from the shores of Florida but the breeze blows and the stars shine and I haven't really spoken to anyone who's first language is English since Jaclyn went to work this morning. I am ( Read more... )

I'm sitting on the top deck of a junk about watching monkeys scamper around in the trees on one of the 1,969 islands in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam. The cicadas are chirping, the sun is setting and the breeze is blowing. My feet are up on the railing and I'm reclining on an chase lounge. This is the life.
Getting anywhere in Vietnam is not an easy task. ( Read more... )

The rice paddies line the bumpy interstate, if I dare call it that, intermittently.

I had imagined grand swaths of nothing but rice and water and oxen.
A Vietnamese version of the Great Plains with wheat, golden and blowing for days.

Instead the small plots of rows of green tufts pop up like roadside family farms.

Dogs and chickens run on the ( Read more... )

"You have to be the rock in the river and let the current flow around you"

Jaclyn is in the middle holding onto Nancy on her left and me on her right. We are crossing a 4 lane street in front of Jaclyn's house but as the vast majority of vehicles are scooters, it's really more like 12 lanes deep and there aren't many traffic lights or any stop ( Read more... )

My sleep is restless in Vietnam. My circadian rhythm remains with my heart in Chicago. The sun rises early here, in the 5 o'clock hour and my curtains leave a slit of sun on the hardwood.

I brushed my teeth with sink water accidentally. A quarter century of habit is a hard thing to break. I'm still alive and my stomach didn't explode. Win.

( Read more... )