Rockin' the "Cat Ba"

Today we woke up to less than favorable weather. It was drizzling, and cold and completely misty. It appeared as though it was going to put a damper on our plans once again. After an extended breakfast of apple/pineapple fritters we decided we were going to tough it out anyway and make the most of our day. (those fritters were not as good as they sound; especially since they were supposed to be pancakes...oh well.)

We rented a couple of motorbikes and headed into the interior of Cat Ba island to the national park. It's named, quite cleverly, Cat Ba National Park. The park has a 9km hiking trail through it, which heads to the ocean. Fortunately the weather fined up and we were able to enjoy a dry trail! It was a great way to see some of the rain forest here and the really interesting rock outcroppings and moutains. All in all, it was a great day. I think the pictures explain a bit of the fun we had en route.

...nice climbing shoes Craig!

Tomorrow we're headed out to sleep on a junk...a boat. We've hired a boat to take us around Halong Bay, and we're planning to spend the night on it. Should be good!

Vietnamese water puppet show

This was the same show that we saw!

Boat People

So, everyone wants to hear about the water puppets! We didn't take any pictures because you had to pay to bring your camera in, and we decided we'd rather enjoy the show without snapping pictures so, see above for a sample of what it was like. It was very impressive. It is an art that dates back 1000 years. People began puppet shows on flooded rice paddies. The show portrayed many different parts of Vietnamese culture including planting rice, legends of ancient kings, and fire breathing dragons. We really enjoyed it.

Yesterday we jumped on a tour bus and visited the Caves of Tam Coc. The morning started out with us driving around for 1 1/2 hours picking all 24 passengers up from their respective hotels. We were soon underway and arrived at our destination just before lunch. Before we got to the caves we had the opportunity to see some temples. They were built 1000 years ago and were part of the Ling and Ly dynasties. The details in the temples were very elaborate. Much of the detail was in Chinese style, due to the influences the Chinese had in the area during that time.

After a mediocre lunch included in the tour, we joined the throngs of tourists on a boat tour to see the caves. There are many Vietnamese and other Asian people travelling at this time of the year (due to the Tet holiday), and Westerners are far out numbered by them everywhere we travel. In all, there were over 200 boats plying the waters around the Tam Coc caves with us. The area is very beautiful with many rocky cliffs jutting out of the water....we just wished that we could have been there by ourselves. There is something that takes away from the beauty, when you're dodging paddles from the other boats, and listening to Vietnamese tunes from about 3 different cell phones around you.

The caves themselves were very beautiful. We were paddled right underneath 3 of them. The details in the rocks are quite spectacular. Unfortunately the lighting for pictures wasn't that great and they don't capture the true beauty of what we saw.

Today, we made our way to Cat Ba island. It is the only inhabited island in what is known as Halong Bay. It is a really beautiful area as well, and we're happy to be away from the big city again. We've got some good adventures lined up for the next few days.

Chuc Mung Nam Moi!

Happy New Year....again! Most people only have the priveledge of ringing in the New Year once a year, but we are lucky and have gotten to do it twice this year.

We arrived back in Hanoi early yesterday morning, just in time for the Tet (Lunar New Year) celebrations. The whole city had a buzz to it, similar to how things feel on Christmas Eve. Everyone was in the market,buying food for their parties, trees to decorate, and gifts to give. It was fun to walk around and soak in the excitement.

We spent some time in the morning browsing through some of the shops that were still open.


We're not sure what people do with these "bamboo trees". They were quite popular though!

A traditional New Years orange tree.

The hotel that we are staying in is great....actually, the family who runs it is really great! They cooked a traditional Vietnamese New Years meal for us and some of the other guests staying at the hotel (and they didn't charge us anything!) We had spring rolls, pork, and New Years cake. The cake isn't what you're thinking though. It was made of rice and filled with chicken and beans. A little different than what we're used to, but it was great being a part of a real Tet meal!

Enjoying some great hospitality!

After our dinner we wandered down to the lake to take in some of the New Year festivities. Despite the cold and the drizzle, there were a lot of people there to take in the sites. We were able to see some really cool acts on one of the stages. The pictures don't do it justice.

A big Tet Coke Ad. See if you can see the latern in the middle of the picture. People were lighting fires under the laterns and like small hot air balloons they were floating up into the sky. It was really pretty, until they caught fire and started falling to the ground onto houses, trees and people's heads.

The area around the lake. You can see the laterns lighting up the sky.

The night climaxed with fireworks around the lake at midnight last night. Unfortunately our view of the fireworks was obscured by couple of trees and we found it better to watch the reflection of the fireworks in the lake. Afterwards, we joined the millions of celebrating Vietnamese trying to escape the area around the lake and the cold temperatures!

We woke this morning to quiet streets. There was almost no one out walking around. It's quite a change to the normally bustling city. Most of the stores, restaurants and attractions are closed today, but we did manage to get tickets to see a water puppet show that we hope to enjoy this afternoon.

A bit of missing information....

So, it obviously didn't affect Brian as much as it affected me...he didn't mention this in his last post. There were a lot of great things about the climbing trip! Obviously the scenery was incredible, the challenge was rewarding and the food was excellent. However, the accomodation was lacking a little bit. We spent our two nights on the mountain in what was called a "cabin". It was an a-frame building built out of bamboo and sheeted with large tarps. They made the floor (which we slept on) out of bamboo and planks of wood. It wasn't actually too uncomfortable. The uncomfortable part is that it was infested with mice.....not just one or two squeaky little critters, I think there must have been a couple dozen! (Although I must admit I didn't see any, I only heard them running above my head, and under my bed, and scratching in the tarp. I also felt one touch my arm! Now, most people of the female variety would be disgusted (as was I) about this, but I only made Brian get out of bed to investigate after hearing what sounded like an elephant sized mouse chewing on something a little too close to me for comfort. Although he didn't see anything during his investigation, he assured me it was a mouse and I didn't need to worry. All in all, I only lost a couple hours of sleep over it...so, perhaps it wasn't too bad.

Tonight we're back on the train heading to Hanoi for the New Years Celebrations. We'll ring in the New Year for the second time this year!

Fansipan

The adventure that took us to the top of Vietnam's tallest peak began in Hanoi for us. We didn't have to catch our night train until 9pm so we had the day to kill. We used the time to orient ourselves with the city by wandering the streets and we had the chance to get our visa sorted out for our uncoming entry into Laos. When it was time to eat dinner we found an amazing street stall (perhaps our favorite to date), serving kabobs of all sorts. They'd grill 'em up for you there on the street and give you a plastic stool to sit on while enjoying them. Since we love BBQ and meat variety we had a little trouble deciding what to pick. After sampling skewers the likes of goat, shrimp, mushrooms, and pork, we all concluded that the bacon wrapped peppers were #1.

After our meal we headed back to our hotel (which had arranged our train to Lao Cai), at the instructed time of 7:oopm. Since our train left a 9pm and was merely a couple of kms from the hotel we thought it was a little early. We we arrived we found that dinner was included in the trip. So not wanting to be rude, we sat down to a huge spread of excellent Vietnamese food. We were so packed!

The surprises didn't stop there. When we got to the train station we found that the train had been overbooked. Oh no! Well, contrary to what you, (and us) might have thought was about to happen, we got bumped up, to first class. First class, or "soft-sleeper deluxe, meant 4 nice beds to a cabin instead of 6 crummy ones, and some really cool wood paneling on the walls. We were super happy with the upgrade, and it came as quite the surprise, since we've become quite accostumed to getting less, and not more, than what we've payed for. We all slept like babies.

can you read the note in the top left of our ticket?

After a quick trip from Lau Cai to Sapa, we had breakfast and we ready to start climbing. Our walk into the mountains began with grey skies and cool temperatures; perfect for keeping cool but not so good for views. After walking just a short time through the mossy trees and bamboo forest, Craig's trip started to go downhill faster than we were going up. We're still not sure whether it was something he'd eaten or what but he quickly got a severly upset stomach. Everything that he had in him came back out into the light. Common sense says that nausea, and dehydration, are not ideal conditions under which to tackle a multiday climb on a fairly big mountain. Craig, however thought different, and made the tough choice to stick it out and sleep in the cold on the first night and see how he felt the second day, rather than return to a warm bed in Sapa with a group that was headed off the mountain.

While sitting by a fire trying to keep warm at close to 2000m the skies cleared and we got to see an amazing sky full of stars before retiring for the night. The forcast was wrong and the clear skies held until morning, and Fansipan was under clear blue skies for the first time all week, and this was the day we were to summit. Craig was feeling a bit better and decided he'd give it a go...we knew he would!

After a breakfast of noodle soup, we made our way up the hard steep trail to the summit at 3143m. It was extremly windy and cold, but we had clear skies and views were amazing. I'll let the pictures say their thousand words and save me the trouble.

We returned to our base camp by late afternoon for the second night and were in bed by 8pm. With a long day of climbing in our tired legs and another amazing meal in our stomachs we slept for more than twelve hours despite the chilly temps. We woke to a very heavy mist that covered the entire mountain....we really had a perfect summit day. We had a really great time! It's always so refreshing and inspiring to enjoy a beautiful piece of creation!

We're back in misty Sapa. Although he's a bit better Craig continues to feel ill, so a prayer for him would be appreciated.

Back to Blogging!

Hey folks...ya we know...it's been a while. For some reason we wern't able to access our blog in Hoi An. So now that we're back at it, we'll give you two posts at once...or the "double deuce" in the words of Nirks. So make sure you read both.

After leaving Saigon, we went way up the coast to Hoi An. It's a neat little town on the central coast. We weren't exactly sure what we'd be doing there, but we'd heard it was a charmer. We thought maybe we'd hit the beach and try to catch a wave or two, but the rain and the cool weather put a damper on our plans. We had three days to kill, and ended up having to problems passing the time.

We spent a lot of time strolling the streets of the old town. Hoi An has a much slower pace than the other cities we've been to in Vietnam, and while walking around though the old buildings it's not hard to picture how the town would have been 100 yrs ago or so.
We'd also heard that Hoi An was a great place to get some customs duds made, and it turned our that there were no shortage of places to do just that. Basically there are dozens and dozens of custom tailors in town. All you've got to do is decide on a shop, and then pick something out of a magazine, or have them copy something that you like and they'll make it. Really they'll make anything...the quality of the work, and the quality of they're namebrand copying is really good. As you may have guessed Erin had a tough time deciding what to get made. Our obvious concern was how will we carry all the new clothes; but with Craig flying home in a few weeks we were able to send some stuff home with him. So Erin didn't really try to hard to restrain...and I can't blame her. I'm certain you'll think I'm exagerating, but for the price of a single dress at home, she was able to get 2 dresses, 2 shirts, a pair of shorts, and 4 pairs of leather shoes. It sounds nuts...but I said "if there's anything you need for the next 10 yrs...get it here. Craig and I had way more self control. I simply got a jacket made and Craig got a 3 piece cashmere wool suit made for $80. He's normally a pretty studly guy, but when the young lady who was helping us at the tailors saw him in his new threads she was very quick to ask him his age and marital status. Satisfied with the answer, she replied with, "you be boyfriend with me"...needless to say Craig is still in Hoi An. :)

The other thing that made the town so great was the food. There were a few local specialties that we had the priviledge to try. We had Cao Lau (noodles, greens, bean sprouts, pork, and fried pieces of wonton in a tasty broth), Fried Wontons, White Rose (big steamed rice noodles filled with shrimp and pork...better than it sounds) and Fresh Beer (or Presh Beer as a sign said). Fresh Beer is just some homemade beer that was not too bad but pretty watery...you could get a glass for under 25 cents.

cao lau in the market

not sure if you learned how to cook fido or not

it's widely known that you have to go to Canada to get milk in a bag...well here you can get any drink in a bag; even lemonade.

Since we had a bit of rain and cool weather we were kept away from the near by beach. We pretty much just spent our time wandering the the streets, playing cards, and getting our bodies measured. Erin and I caught a few good 8pm movies on the tube, but with the jet lag Craig was sawing logs by 8:15 everynight; perhaps he needed to get his rest so he could run away from all the single ladies!