Vietnam: Lots of Overnight Transportation

We arrived back in Hanoi early evening from Ha Long Bay and then took an overnight train to Sa Pa. On the train an Asian couple (not sure which nationality they were) slept below us and when they arrived in our room they brought us two ears of cooked corn. Not sure it was a tradition or what but it was good!

Sa Pa is in the Northwest mountains of Vietnam where many minority groups live in villages on the mountainside and in the valleys. Due to the elevation it was even colder in Sa Pa so the puffy jackets turned out to be a great purchase. It was also raining the whole day we were there. Once we arrived in Sapa, around 8 am, we walked into the first hotel we saw and booked a one day trek to see the minority villages. The trek was about 14 km with one stop for lunch.

Our guide was an 18 year old girl (I can't remember her name) who had learned English from the tourists (though it was limited but it worked). She was from the Cat Cat village which was right near Sapa, a much shorter hike away than what we were doing. She was also already married and her and her husband lived in Sapa. Married at 18... kinda crazy.

This is Cat Cat

There was also a group of women that would just stand outside the hotels with tour groups and then come along with the groups down the mountains. They were actually very helpful since the trail was really muddy and at one point we had to cross a river that was pretty intense due to the rain, however, at lunch they brought out all their stuff and asked us to buy from them, of course, and then left us. Though the hassling doesn't stop the women were actually very helpful and gave us some good information about the villages. All the rice paddies that covered the mountainsides have been there for a couple hundred years.

That's Lang and Me!

Crossing the River

The farm animals that the families own (ox, pigs, goats, chickens) aren't penned in, they just roam but one woman, Lang (my helper) told me the animals know who their owner is and comes back to them every night. I'm also assuming there's not a lot of wildlife that preys on the farm animals so the people just let them do what they want.

There were also these cool contraptions powered by the running water on the mountain that, I think, is used to crush the rice? or dry the rice? I'm not really sure but it was kinda ingenious I thought.

The trek was great, though is was wet, however the hotel had no heat so we dried all our stuff around a bowl of coals while we waited for our night train back to Hanoi.
We got back to Hanoi at about 4:30 am, and not really knowing what to do with ourselves, Rachelle and I and our new friend Idun (from Norway) went back to the backpackers hostel and played cards all morning. It was strange though, at that time in the morning the only people out were older to middle aged men getting their morning exercise. I felt safer in Hanoi at 4 am than I probably would in an US city at that time.

That day Idun, Rachelle, and I went to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. The mausoleum was a very strange. You could not bring in any large bags or cameras or water. To get into the mausoleum you have to walk on this red plastic carpet, 2 by 2, you can't step off it or the guards freak out. You walk into the place and can't really talk and you just walk in a square around the embalmed body of Ho Chi Minh and then walk out. Very strange. We found though that the people of Vietnam love Uncle Ho. His picture is everywhere, in every restaurant or store. They almost worship the guy. An Australian man we stayed with in Phong Nha later in the trip mentioned that if Vietnam were to have elections right now, Ho Chi Minh would still win, even though he's been dead for almost 40 years.

We also went to the war museum and the Temple of Literature. The war museum was pretty interesting. There were a few exhibits on the Vietnam war. One was just a bunch of pictures of protests from nations across the world and under each was a caption that read something like "Even ____ (insert name of country) wanted America out of Vietnam".

There were also a bunch of US bombs and torn up planes that had been dropped on Hanoi or shot down during the Vietnam war.

Traditional Music at Temple of Literature

Temple of Literature

Fun fact from the Temple of Literature: The 4 sacred animals in Vietnamese culture are the turtle, dragon, phoenix, and the unicorn

Our next stop was Phong Nha, a small town just north of Dong Hui. A friend of the Australian that owns the Backpacker's Hostel, owns a hotel in the small town and offers tours of the world heritage National Park Ke Bang. The guy is an Australian man named Ben who is married to a Vietnamese woman named Bick. He's lived in Vietnam for about 3 years or more and had some great stories.
So to get there we took an overnight bus that was headed to Hue but stopped and dropped us off in Dong Hui. The bus was miserable. It was so small and freezing, and our bus driver hit a motorbiker only 10 minutes into the trip! It was crazy. Then the bus dropped us off at a different location than what they told Ben they would stop and about a half an hour earlier. So Rachelle and I were stranded in this town at 4:30 am with motorbike guys asking "Moto? moto?" until our cab came and took us to Ben's place. It was a very strange morning.

Vietnam: Day 2 we went to Ha Long Bay

We booked this boat cruise in Ha Long Bay through the Backpacker's Hostel, so pretty much all the people on the cruise were around our age and were backpackers and had some amazing stories. We met a lot of really cool people, mostly Australians and Europeans, some New Zealanders, some Argentinians, some Canadians, pretty much no Americans. And since Rachelle is Canadian, I was pretty much the only American for most of the trip, kinda strange but cool at the same time. Throughout the whole trip in Vietnam, it was really cool to meet and talk to all the people, hear their stories, and many are coming back through Bangkok so we may see them again. We also collected a lot of their contact info and have kept in contact with a few.

So when we arrived at the dock with all the cool boats, the first thing we see is a large crowd of people and a big cloud of smoke. Yes, this boat had caught fire and was sinking in the harbor. Not a very reassuring sight when you're about to go stay on one just like it overnight. It was also very cold so Rachelle and I immediately bought ourselves some cheap puffy coats that we ended up wearing for pretty much half of the trip.

Boat on fire, sinking in the harbor

With our new coats!

We had 48 people on our little cruise so they tied two boats together and just cruised along and anchored like that. The landscape was amazing. The cliffs were all limestone which reacts with water I think so the rain and the ocean have shaped the cliffs to look the way they are. Once we anchored some people went for a swim, but it was freezing so abstained from that fun, but then a few of us did go kayaking. We saw a cave or two and some fishing villages. These people literally just live out here on the water. It was pretty cool.

Fishing Village

Cave we explored

Our boat was named after me!

This woman would paddle around the bay to all the tourist ships and hassle people to buy her stuff while they were on the boat. The Vietnamese would stop a no odds to sell their stuff to you. In other places on the trip we would be sitting in a restaurant eating dinner and people would come off the street into the restaurant and ask if you wanted to buy their stuff. And they were selling food! I mean seriously, I'm eating and you want to know if I want some of your food? It was a bit ridiculous.

Once we got back to the boat there was dinner and pretty much just organized drinking games already set up. It was a great time. But we had to wake up at 7:30 the next to head back to Hanoi, that part wasn't as fun.

Vietnam: Starting in the North with Hanoi

After cutting the check in and customs lines and sprinting to the gate, Rachelle and I caught our flight to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. When we landed, it was a lot colder than we expected and it was pretty dreary. This was kind of the theme for the weather in most of northern and central Vietnam...

Rachelle and I checked into the Backpacker's Hostel which is run by an Australian guy. There is also another Backpacker's Hostel in Hue, which is where we stayed when went to central Vietnam. We put our stuff down in the dorm room (this was my first real hostel experience and it was great!) and went to explore the city. Everything in Vietnam was decorated for Tet, the Vietnamese word for the Chinese New Year. Hanoi is a very busy place and walking through the streets was one of the most exhausting things we did on the trip. People, motorbikes, cars, shops, people hassling you to come into their shops, it was a mess. Crossing the street in this country was an art. You literally just have to close your eyes and walk at a steady pace and the motorbikes and cars just swerve around you. It's terrifying. There are no traffic rules in Vietnam, literally none. And car horns are built in so that when you press the horn once it honks five times in a row.

Anyway we saw some markets, pagodas, a mall, a lake, the Hanoi Towers, and the Hanoi Hilton before we called it a night and went to bed.

Pagoda in the City

Bridge to Pagoda on the Lake

Legendary Turtle

Pagoda on the Lake

Turtle supposedly found in the Lake

On this lake there was a pagoda with a red bridge from the mainland to get to it. In the pagoda there was this huge turtle supposedly found in the lake. The legend behind it was that there was a king who found a golden sword. Then this huge turtle came and took the sword from him into the lake. Then the dragon retrieved the sword and gave it back to the King. Now the dragon is the symbol for the emperor, so the palaces would be decorated with dragons to signify that it was a place a residence for royalty.
So when there are ripples or bubbles in this lake all the locals would crowd around and take pictures hoping they would see a huge turtle. We witnessed this, it was pretty funny.

We also went to the Hanoi Hilton which was a prison used for Vietnamese villagers during the French occupation and was also used for American POWs during the Vietnam war. It was nicnamed the Hanoi Hilton because it was rumored that the prisoners there (during the Vietnam war) were treated really well. There are a bunch of pictures on the walls of American pilots having christmas dinner and playing volleyball. In actually the place was pretty rough and I was told from a guy that we stayed with later in the trip that the pilots who were treated well were the ones that had agreed to sign a waiver stating that they did not believe America should be in Vietnam. The Vietnamese would then use these waivers as leverage during negotiations with the US. So there were a select few who were treated well, the rest not so much. So the pictures were kinda just propoganda.
This is also were John McCain was held as prisoner during the war. He crashed his plane into a Lake which was northwest of our hostel and was kept here. There are pictures of him coming back to the prison. I don't think he was treated very nicely when he was there.

Outside Hanoi Hilton

POWs having Christmas dinner

John McCain being checked out at the prison after crashing his plane into a Lake in Hanoi

Some other fun facts we learned right away when we got to Hanoi:
1. The main religion is Confucianism, however there are a lot of Catholics due to the French occupation

2. Vietnamese love Tiger beer

3. All the dogs and cats have clothing

4. Pho is a popular native Vietnamese dish but it is actually pronounced faa. We ate a lot of this

5. Don't let the women with baskets on their shoulders put it on you and take your picture. They just want money. We unfortunately had this happen to us and had to pretty much run away from these two little old women. It was pretty scary actually.

Arriving in Bangkok

This is a little delayed since I decided to start this blog a little after the fact, but I figured I should start from the beginning.
So after over 30 hours of traveling from the east coast of the US to Bangkok, Thailand, Rachelle (my roommate) and I grabbed a cab from the airport to our hotel/apartment
This picture was on the window of our cab, I'm not really sure what all the symbols mean but apparently this cab company has had some issues

Once we settled into our amazing apartment, serviced apartment actually (how convenient), we walked around the area a bit and explored the huge mall that is right down the street. The area we are in is pretty touristy and has a lot of shopping, including MBK and Siam malls. MBK is by far the most confusing place I've ever been. We went to a restaurant and bought some groceries but I would never be able to find my way back to the places we went. no way.

The day after we got here was orientation, where we found out that we actually had the next two weeks of school off because the first week there are games where all the universities in Thailand come to Chula and compete in all kinds of sporting events and the next week the smaller teams within Chula (kinda like the intermural sports at home) play each other. We also picked our classes and what not and then a Thai student named Mo took the 11 engineering exchange students to MBK to get our uniforms. Rachelle and I are the only girls in our exchange program and since Rachelle is Canadian, I am the only American. There are a couple guys from France, Finland, Singapore, and Hong Kong as well.
We got our uniforms, after they searched the store for the largest sizes possible. Turns out im an XL in this country. Also for the girls uniforms you have to cut off the buttons and replace them with silver buttons that have the crest of Chula on them. Kinda cool. 

So the next few days we went to a few classes. The classes here seem to move a lot slower than at Dartmouth and the students act a lot differently. In my biochemistry class the professor gave us a 10 minute break. So after ten minutes me and 4 other students were in the room out of the 40 that were in the class so he just started teaching and people just came in probably 20 mins later, no big deal. It was strange.
Life here is a lot less stressful than in the states or at least at Dartmouth. People just kind of go with the flow and if stuff doesn't happen the way its planned, not a big deal. It's kinda nice, very different though. So far I like it. 

Most of the exchange students are staying in Evergreen Place, as well as about 50 other business exchange students so its nice we all have a central location. A few of us went out the first week to an area called RCA to a bar called Route 66. It was a funny experience. The bar was pretty much all Thai on one side, with live Thai music, and the other side was all Western music and a lot of Westerners. We also got to see a few Muy Thai fights outside MBK (muy thai is the national sport here). The sport is very respectful and the locals love it so it was really cool to watch. These guys look small but they're so strong.

Since we had no school for the next two weeks. Rachelle and I planned a trip to Vietnam for 10 days since it was the farthest away of the places we wanted to see and this would probably be our longest break. But right before we left for that I got to practice with the university volleyball team at Chula. There is a women's and men's team. The women's team has about 9 girls, one head coach, and about 3 other coaches who I think are all graduates of Chula and played while they were there. Everyone was so nice and it was pretty good volleyball. I played for about 4 hours... I was a bit sore the next couple of days. One of the first drills they did was the pit drill, where the coach just throws balls in every direction, on of my favorites, I went last and was diving and stuff, they were all yelling for me and whistling. It was pretty comical. Afterwards the team took me out to dinner too which was such a cool experience. They ordered everything and would just kinda watch me eat to see my reaction. I'm pretty sure they all just made fun of me in Thai but whatever. They invited me back. One of the girls, named Eye, is studying English and Thai so I'm going to help her improve her English and she's going to invite me back to play volleyball :)


So far I'm in love with Thailand haha the people have been so nice and did I mention its so warm! A nice break from the winters in the States.
So that's the beginning next is 10 days in Vietnam!


ps this is our apartment!