Trip Pics Up!

So we really fell off the blogging band wagon toward the end of the trip. Sorry!  But, we really only missed the Angkor Temples, and around (and those are best described in pictures anyway, right?).

Instead, we've finally uploaded our pics, in chronological order. See below:

1. Bangkok

2. Krabi

3. Chiang Mai

4. Chiang Mai Trek

5. Hanoi

6. Halong Bay

7. Hue & the DMZ

8. Hoi An

9. Ho Chi Minh City

10. Angkor Temples

11. Coming Home

12. Best SE Asia Food Shots

Thanks for following along with us!  We might keep things going with our upcoming Europe trip!

Hanging out in Hoi An

If you're looking for authentic Vietnamese culture, don't come to Hoi An. If you're looking for a laid back, quaint, touristy walking-town, then Hoi-An is the city for you. Tourists of all sorts, even Vietnamese, seemed to enjoy Hoi An's shops, walks along the river and restaurants. However, the prices in this town came to a complete shock to us. We had grown accustomed to $2 meals and suddenly the prices had doubled or even tripled.

Eli and Dave decided to spend the day apart - Eli to cooking classes, and Dave to historic sites. Eli took a class at Morning Glory, one of Vietnamese chef Ms. Vy's (quite the incredible entrepreneur) 4 Hoi An restaurants. It was a packed class, with probably 25 students. The room was set up so that we could watch the demo and then prepare the same dish. If only we could do that at Whole Foods in St Louis! There were probably 10 staff members in the room clearing dishes, assisting with cooking, and passing out salads, etc. While the class was excellent, Ms. Vy also kept many secrets to herself, such as the dipping sauces. One great tip learned was how to make rice crackers from sesame rice paper. It's on the to-do list for when we get home.

Dave visited the 5 big city sites and enjoyed his day.  Here's the most famous, the Japanese-covered bridge:

After a nice dip in the pool, Eli went to another cooking class, to learn even more Vietnamese dishes. Dave joined her to eat her dishes for their dinner. Some hits, some misses. Too much fried food all around.

The DMZ

After a 3/4 day trouncing through Hue on bicycles, we made the decision to do a demilitarized zone (DMZ) tour. The typical (and inexpensive) tour bundles you up into a big tourist bus, whisks you off to a dozen sites, and sends you back home over a 12-hour period. We were hoping to find something a bit different.
So we found Mr. Trung. He was a South Vietnamese officer who basically worked for the US army for 8 years during the war in their intelligence department. His knowledge of the war and the operations surrounding the DMZ was incredibly impressive. We reviewed him on TripAdvisor, so we won't go into what we liked/didn't like about him here :-).
The trip overall was a difficult combination of impressive, depressing, and important. So many people died for what seems like absolutely no reason. The ingenuity, and lack thereof, demonstrated on both sides is what was most intriguing.
Our itinerary:

• Hue to Horrible Highway: this is where an enormous ambush on US caravans occurred. The subsequent airstrike killed countless civilians. There is currently a buddhist shrine at the site.
• Church: Because of pressures of the Catholic church, the US did not bomb this church, and as a result, they failed to take the church by small arms after a month of fighting. There is an incredible amount of visible damage to what remains of the church.
• Vin Mon Tunnels: Entire city under the ground, including a maternity area (around 15 children were born in the tunnels). Although the entrances are clear today for tourists, it's easy to see how these tunnels were kept camouflaged.
• Museum: Lots of crazy propaganda - and incredible artifacts that the fleeing US army left behind.
• Fire Base: Unfortunately nothing more than a rock pile, because the US blasted it away after the retreat.
• Ben Ha River: The dividing line of north and south. Reminiscent for Eli of seeing the thin line between east and west Berlin.

Of course we had to throw in some transport setbacks - our driver's car got a flat tire on the way home. 2 hours and another driver later, we made it back to Hue.

Halong Bay

We decided to follow the tourists on this one, on a 2 day/1 night Halong Bay cruise.

• After a 4-hour drive through rice paddies, and complete with hand swept highways, we arrived at Halong Bay, which reminded us of the touristy Fisherman's Wharf in SF.
• Onto our boat!

   

• Despite the dense cloud cover, the mist made the enormous limestone edifices look quick magnificent, if not a little ghostly.
• After a 10-course lunch (with many veggie options and lots of grease), we stopped at Surprise Cave, with just about every other tourist in tow. We kayaked around the bay and explored a floating village.
• Back to the boat for hot shower and more food! Dinner was all about presentation :) Unfortunately the beautiful carvings and veggie decorations were left off the veggie plates, but it was fun nonethless.
• The evening involved karaoke - more for the boat staff than for the tourists. Thoroughly amusing. We hung out on the deck and went to bed super early, for the first time in a week.
• Excellent sleep and a morning wake up call through the loudspeaker! Broken english announcing breakfast.
• Boat ride back through the Islands, amazing scenery and super ethereal due to the clouds.

Honk Honk

Traffic regulations seem to be nonexistent in Vietnam. While Thailand had tons of traffic, they didn't really use their horns. Welcome, Vietnam. Horns galore! The traffic system seems to be: honk when you enter an intersection, and hope no one else is coming the other way. This makes for crossing the road an interesting experience.

Vietnam is obviously much less developed than Thailand. Poor roads, concrete buildings and much dirtier. Not the swish international airport that Bangkok has.

Communism is still readily apparent in Hanoi - green and red uniformed army - one size fits no-one uniforms, and Soviet concrete edifices.

Our hotel turned out to be a total-gem. They upgraded us to a larger room and gave us a honeymoon cake, which Dave ate. They even lit the cake like a birthday cake - very sweet. Unfortunately, there was no electricity for the day, which made it even more romantic with candles. We booked our Halong Bay tour and a flight to Da Nang and went off to explore the city.

• Check out the itinerary for our 10-hour walking exploration of the city.
• Highlights include these photos:

 

In case you were worried, we found a phenomenal bakery for David in the French quarter. Could have been right out of Paris, except the prices were amazing. We got there just as the bread went half price, and bought 6 muffins, a loaf of whole-wheat bread and 2 mousse pastries for about $2.

 

Last day in Chiang Mai

Our last day in Chiang Mai involved eating delicious food (yet again...no complaints here!).

• First stop was Pun Pun, another amazing veggie restaurant run by Buddhists and tucked away in the corner of a Wat, or temple. Then onto Butter is Better, where American apple pie and cinnamon rolls made Dave very happy. Terrible bagel.

• We drove our motorbike east to find cool shops. Unsuccessful. Found the umbrella factories, ceramics factories and stopped at the Mandarin Oriental, or the shops outside. Not as much fun as we were hoping. Oh well.
• Back to food! Belgian chocolates for $1 each (amazing truffles), followed by more cake and bagel for Dave. Are you seeing a trend here?
• Found a cool street for window-shopping and then onto Eli's last foot massage in Thailand, at the Reflexology center. Dave read the guidebook and Eli got a someone painful foot massage, but also theraputic.
• Time for dinner! Back to Khun Churn for a final and quick Thai dinner - mushroom noodle rolls and Tom Kha, the delicious lemongrass, kaffir lime, galangal flavored coconut milk soup loaded with veggies and brown rice. Eli's in heaven.
• Off to the airport - Bangkok, then to Hanoi.
• Spent a quick night (5 hours?) at the Convenient Resort. Great name. Definitely convenient, not a resort.

Why so much smoke?

Dave finished work in Chiang Mai, so we decided to sign on for a much-anticipated "hilltribe" trek. The ethics of a hilltribe trek troubled us a bit, so we researched many options. In Chiang Mai the trekking is more about the people you see rather than the nature you explore, especially in the dry season. We ended up with the Eagle House trek, which has a special arrangement with two Karen villages west of Chiang Mai.

• Day 1:
• 8:30am - Begin two hour drive to local market to purchase food for the next three days. Smallest market we've seen in Thailand. Continue driving and driving in the back of a pickup truck (with seats) and stop at an elephant park for rides. We, along with the two other German-vegans declined to ride, and instead had a fascinating tour of the rice paddies and corn fields.
• Corn? yes, they are now growing corn in Thailand.
• Drive some more, and stop for lunch in an orchard - lunch was delicious - fried rice with tons of veggies, and more importantly - no waste! Wrapped in banana leaves, our whole lunch was compostable.
• More driving. Start hiking through small Karen villages. Dave even helps prepare rice for the animals.
• More hiking for about 3 hours, through many rice fields. Stopped on the way to make bamboo mugs and collect herbs on the way for our dinner (lemongrass, cilantro).
• Around 6 pm we reach our home for the night - a Karen village. The ladies try to sell us their handicrafts and the men prepare dinner by fire in a super-smoky house (without a flu). We eat a delicious dinner with many veggie options and attempted to sleep in a bamboo house on bamboo slats with a sleeping bag designed for 90-degree weather. It was about 40F.
• We learned how to prepare one of Eli's favorite Thai snacks - sticky rice and coconut milk cooked in bamboo over a fire. Yum.
• Dave was cold for the first time in his life and let's just say, no one slept very well.
• Day 2:
• Lots of hiking! 6 hours of walking through burning fields and mountains and through meandering streams. Stopped for yummy bamboo-rice snacks and eventually for another delicious lunch.

• Around 5 pm, arrived at raft-camp, also maintained by a local Karen village. No roosters to wake us at 4 am. Bathed in the freezing river and hung out with our German friends (we were the only Americans on the trip - Eli's German came in handy).
• Late dinner, but also yummy. More stir fries with tofu and lots of veggies, and popcorn for dessert. Unfortunately no movies :)
• We figured out a better sleep system involving stuffing wool blankets inside the thin sleeping bag. Worked much better.
• Day 3:
• French toast for breakfast! (Rice and scrambled eggs for Eli)
• Time to go rafting! Our guide built bamboo rafts for us that morning! Questionably sustainable, but later we discovered that another village would take apart the rafts and use the bamboo for building.

• Due to the incredibly low water level, our rafts sustained substantial damage, and we all got cut up. It was a fun adventure. Dave used a bamboo rod for paddling - quite different than canoeing.
• A bit more hiking, and we return to the truck. Driving through tons of burning fields, right next to the road. Yuck.
• Stopped for lunch - our only terrible meal of the trip. Topped with a heavy sprinkle of MSG. Pineapple for dessert - which is much more flavorful than pineapple we get in the states. Less acidic and more complex.
• More driving until we reach a waterfall - freezing! Our guide takes a full on shower and we watch.
• Back to Chiang Mai!
• Dinner with our new-friend - someone we met at Chabad of Chiang Mai, who turned out to be connected in the Adamah-Teva community. He and Eli probably had 50 friends in common. He took us to Aum, a delicious vegetarian restaurant.
• After dinner we met up with our travel-partners, the two German-vegans, at iBerry, our hands-down-favorite ice cream shop in Thailand and had more delicious ice cream and sorbet. Eli was super happy with pandanus leaf and red bean ice cream. This made up for not having black sesame ice cream. This place is crazy!
• Back to our home-away-from-home: The Green Palace. Not a palace. Not green. But cheap and clean.

Some insights Dave took down while trekking:

• Bamboo: fence lasts 2 yrs. Siding lasts 30 yrs. Grows to adulthood in 4-5 yrs.

• Slash and burn: guide denies need to take more land. Evidence suggests o/w: villages only intact x 2 generations max, need for more land (guide says o/w, but they are obviously but burning new land w 50+ yo trees, even thiugh he says there are laws that prevent people from doing so). Hypocritical of us to say this bc even though they're not living sustainably it's not like we do either. Cities consume much more per capita.

• Men v women: men cook, build, and hunt. When men hunt, women take over. Women often plant and harvest rice.

• Water buffalo v cows: buffalo better bc give more meat and eat the same.

• Cultural tourism: interesting exchange, or lack thereof bc of language barrier but we got to ask most o what we wanted.

• Women are marrying later (25yo) than previoussly (14yo) 2/2 school (now req'd until 12th) and 2/2 to moving to city for work.

• Guide claims people not moving to city, in fact they're coming back from the city bc life is too hard. Not sure.

• Countryside: not particularly beautiful. Mostly bc so much is burning and so much cut down. Rice fields are dry/pretty and remind us of terracing in Andes.

• Rice: stored after each season in a family store room (kept for drought season). Most still farming by hand on a subsistence basis. Some have started selling and planting by machine. These villages have two plantings, which requires pesticides and fertilizer (if planting only once per year, can be dine organically). Pests include snail, water bug, and rat, good guys include fish, algae, and snake.

• Corn: newly introduced 4 years ago on almost only cash basis. Must buy seed and must use synthetic fertilizer/pesticide. Interesting that u doubt they know what it's going to do to their top soil.

• Subsistence vs cash economy: most villages are in a hybrid situation. They have a weekly market that gives access to town goods for cash. Most are still farming to eat, nit to sell. Tourism seems to have minor effect: 1 group of 6 comes weekly ( and did family gets to cook for them and make the dollars).

• Trash: 5 years ago, almost no plastic. Now there's significant microtrash all over 2/2 plastic refuse. There is no disposal system. Sine people bury their plastic, others burn it. That said a lot us still biodegradable: our lunch has been in banana leaves each day.