Super Monday
Well, we certainly have a lot to catch up on so, as I watch a replay of the Super Bowl in Saigon on this Monday evening, I figured I would start to fill you in on what we have been up to.
Kendall has already updated you on our rough ride from Hanoi to Hue so I will pick up where she left off.
After getting settled into our hotel we decided to have some lunch. We found a spot just down the road from our hotel that looked good and was full so we decided to give it a try. Turns out it was a little café that also did motorbike tours of the town and the guide came by to introduce himself. He was a middle-aged guy that spoke English pretty well and had been a lieutenant in the South Vietnamese Army. He was pretty interesting so we decided to take a tour for the afternoon.
Half way through we stopped at a house that makes incense—again the commission system—and Kendall even got to try her hand at it.
The next day, we went on an all day boat tour of the tombs (actually temple complexes) of the kings of the Nguyen dynasty that are scattered along the Perfume River near Hue. The first two were pretty interesting but after a while they got kind of old so we ended up just hanging out and reading in front of the tombs instead of paying the 110,000 dong entrance fee.
Our boat
One of the tombs
Me with a Mandarin statue at a tomb
After two days in Hue we woke up early the next morning to take the 13 ½ hour train to Nha Trang, a small beach town further south.
I made the following videos on our way…
In Nha Trang we spent the first day hanging out at the beach and exploring the town. Kendall laid out to get some sun and I decided to get a massage under some shade on the beach. On day two we went on a half day dive trip. Nha Tang is said to have the best diving in Vietnam with normal visability of 15-30 meters but they have been having unseasonably cool weather with strong winds and our visibility was less than 5 meters and the water was still pretty cold. Kendall did the first dive but after lunch decided that she would rather sit on the roof of the boat and sun bathe so I did the second dive alone with our dive master.
We took another short train from Nha Trang to Mui Ne which was not on our original itinerary but we decided to add after talking to some other travelers on our Hue boat tour.
Kendall wants to update you on Mui Ne--lucky you--so I will sign off, until next time.
4 comments:
I'm with you guys. If you've seen one Nguyen dynasty tomb you've seen them all. You guys have fun but keep your wits about you. When you get to Singapore, I’m buying the Singapore Slings at the long bar at Raffles Hotel.
Wonderful video of train ride and scenery, a little worried about he whole head out of the window thing!
Can't wait to see beach pictures. Hope diving gets warmer and better in Thailand.
Maybe rain will stop in Indonesia too, before the singapore slings.
Miss you and love you, Mom
Your face with your head out the window...huge dweeb. Leave it to Kendall to figure out how to get a tan IN a train.
cute pic of you two!
Post a Comment