Tuesday March 27th, I woke up at 5:52 AM. I had an alarm set for that time on my phone. The first time it went off, I snoozed it and went back to sleep, but the second time it went off I woke up. We had eggs for breakfast again, and we had to be down to the car at 6:20 AM, so we had to hurry. Luckily I had most of my things packed the night before, we got out of the room very quickly and went downstairs to get in our car that would take us to the airport.
Our flight was at 8:45 AM, but last night they switched it to that time from 9:30 AM. Going through security was no problem, we even were able to bring all of our water through security, which we could never do in the US. We got to our gate and waited until we had to board. A bus took us to our plane and we boarded the plane. The flight was about 90 minutes long, a very short flight and after that we landed in Da Nang (a city in Vietnam). From there we had to take a Taxi to a train station, then a train to Hue (pronounced hwae), which is a city a bit north of Da Nang.
This is us waiting in the train station:
Since we had our flight changed last night from 9:30 AM to 8:45 AM, we were earlier than we expected. We had to wait about 2 hours and 30 minutes until our train came at 12:45 PM to take us to Hue. Once it came, we boarded the train, and found our room. It was a very small room, with 4 small beds in total. We only had to be on the train for 3 hours, but these trains also transport people for times such as 15 hours or so, so they have to sleep.
On the train ride, I watched some videos on my laptop that I had downloaded earlier in the week. I also took a short nap for about less than an hour. By the time it was 3:35 PM, we had arrived at our stop, which was the city of Hue. We then got a taxi from there to take us to our new Air B&B. We met the man who owned the house, how the house worked was there were 3 floors, on each floor was a house, and we were on the 2nd floor. We had 3 bedrooms, and 2 bathrooms it was very big. Here are pictures of it:
My Mom spent about 1 hour talking to a guy who spoke english on the 1st floor of our house, while Levi and I hung out in our room. We did not do anything for the rest of the day except go out to dinner at 6 PM. We took a taxi to a restaurant that was recommended to my Mom by the guy she was talking to. It was very calm and in the middle of a ton of nature stuff.
They had set menus that you could order, and we chose 2 to order and we would share them. We ordered a menu 3 and a menu 5. The first thing that came to our table was a bunch of mini rolls attached to a rooster.
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| These were called pancakes in the menu, but they weren't pancakes as we knew them. They were filled with meat, they were very good. |
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| These shrimp were garlic flavored, they tasted really good with the garlic taste with them. |
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| This was a little turtle made out of rice and the feet and head out of carrots. |
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| This is duck meat, and it came with a duck made out of tomatoes, the duck was very chewy. |
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| After the rice was finished, Levi made some sort of sea creature with the remaining carrot pieces. |
This was our dessert, each one of us ate one of the 4 flowers, they were edible. They were very different than what we had thought they would be, they were filled with some sort of bean, and tasted just like a certain bean. After we finished our dinner, we saw that they had a Piano, so I played some of a song I knew, then we took a taxi back to our house. Levi and I stayed alone while Oma and my Mom went out for massages.
Wednesday the 28th, we were in Hue. We had a driver this day also, he picked us up at 9 AM after we had breakfast at 8 AM. The people who owned the house made us breakfast, it had some fruits, and a delicious noodle dish that we all ate. We started our journey at 9 AM, and the first place we went to was the Tu Duc tomb. We had tickets for 3 tombs and the Imperial City:
Our first stop was the Tu Duc tomb. Emperor Tu Duc was the ruler of the Nguyen dynasty from 1848-1883. He started planning his tomb many years before he died, and it took 3 years to build in total.
The tomb was very large, and consisted of many structures. There were islands, and a large lake. There were places where you could feed the fish in the lake. Some places looked very old and in ruins, those were very fun to explore. After visiting the Tu Duc Tomb, we got back in our car and continued onto the Khai Dinh Tomb. For this next tomb, we had to walk up a lot of stairs to get to it, and we bought Oma an umbrella to shade her from the sun. She used it a lot after we bought it for her. This Tomb was much smaller, but seemed more organized and put together and all in one dark color.
The inside of the Tomb was decorated very complexly, it looked very beautiful.
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| The Khai Dinh Tomb |
It was much cooler inside the tomb than it was outside, it was very sunny. I had also bought a blue hat that I could wear to protect my face from the sun, its much better than having to wear sunscreen. There were fans inside the tomb, and we walked down all the stairs again after we were done inside the tomb. Here is Oma and her rainbow umbrella:
Once we finally reached the bottom of the stairs, I went to find our driver because he was no where to be found. Once I found him, we got back in our car and traveled to our next destination, which was another Tomb. This one was the Minh Mang Tomb. Minh Mangs reign was from 1820-1840, but this tomb was planned by successor Thieu Tri. The tomb is cool because it is in the middle of a forrest setting.
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| Online picture of the Minh Mang Tomb |
We were helped onto the boat, and were sat at this cute small table. This is where we would have lunch, while on the boat.
There seemed to be a family of 3 that owned this boat, a Mom, a Dad and a child. Food was brought to our table, and it was all cooked on the boat. We had a variety of food including fish, noodles, rice, vegetables and some other food that we had never tried but we ate and it was delicious. They brought us so much food that we were having trouble trying to fit all of it on our table. I ate a ton of rice during that specific lunch. I liked all of the food except fish because I do not like fish that much.
At the end of our lunch, our table was filled with bowls and plates.
I noticed that on the 7up and Coke cans that there were designs on them, and they were much cooler than any designs on soda cans I've ever seen before.
After we finished our lunch, we were able to enjoy a long boat ride to our next stop. We were on the boat for about another 90 minutes just sitting and enjoying the ride. It was a very nice day, and the boat had all the windows open and Levi and I sat on the front of the boat sometimes. They brought us 4 bananas after our lunch as you can see there is 1 more on the table in the above picture. I ate 3 of the 4 bananas in total. Our next stop was a Pagoda, and we were to get off the boat and take a look then go back to the boat.
This was the Thien Mu Pagoda, or the Pagoda of the Celestial Lady. The Pagoda sits on the edge of the Perfume River of Hue, which is the river we had been sailing on. It was built in 1601. There was a legend that a Celestial Lady or Thien Mu, sat at the site dressed in red and blue, rubbing her cheeks. She said that a lord would create a pagoda on the hill to pray for the country's prosperity. Directly after, construction of the pagoda on the hill began.
It is right off of the river, so I did not have to walk far, just climb some steps to find it.
I started out walking with my Mom and Levi, but soon I got to far ahead and just continued to tour the Pagoda by myself. Oma waited for us down by the boat to take a rest, and I walked around. There was this huge 7 story tower that is the main feature of this Pagoda, but it goes far back if you continue to walk back.
Here is the view of the Perfume River from the Pagoda.
After I was finished looking around the Pagoda, I went back down to find Oma. She was sitting by the water waiting, and Levi and my Mom were not there so they were still looking around the Pagoda. Once they got back, we all got back on the boat and continued our boat trip to the Citadel A.K.A. the Imperial City. The boat dropped us off on the shore next to the Imperial City, and we walked to a gate so we could enter it. We entered via a bridge and a tunnel. There was barely a sidewalk on the bridge but we made it in.
Once we made it past the huge wall, we had to walk a ways to actually enter through the main gate. This is what the entrance to the old city looks like.
We gave a man our tickets and walked inside. It was an ancient city, and we explored all around. We found a little shop and got some ice cream for all of us. It is such a large city that you can walk forever in any direction. There was so much to the inside of the citadel, including a huge grass field, and many buildings. We found a garden that looked fairly new and it looked very organized. There was also a part where there was a river around an island that we did not know how to get to.
We spent a good couple of hours in the citadel, and after we came out we took a taxi straight back to our Air B&B. For dinner that night, our guide guy Lam recommended us a local restaurant to go to. It was about a 10 minute walk away from our house, so we just walked there. We had to cross some busy streets, but we eventually made it there. It was very crowded when we arrived, tons of local people eating there. We ordered some spring rolls, some pork on lemon grass sticks and a pancake. Its not like the pancake we think of, its a small circle made of rice, its crunchy and contains some meat.
The food was very good, and at the end of our meal we ordered these banana leaves that had a rice paste with some meat inside. It is suppose to calm your stomach. I did not like it very well.
After we finished our meal, we were told by our guy Lam that we had to go to a pharmacy if we wanted to purchase sunscreen. He told us the nearest pharmacy was fairly close, so we walked there and bought some sunscreen because the next day we would be going to the beach. After we got the sunscreen, we walked the same way back to our house. On the way back, we stopped at a small shop on a corner of a street and bought some snacks we had never seen before. We also somehow found some allergy medicine from Kirkland which is the Costco brand, and i'm pretty sure they don't have Costco in Vietnam. We were also surprised because my moms company makes this stuff and we are pretty sure Perrigo made them.
These are the snacks that we bought. The one on the left was literally just a small piece of bread in a package. It had some raisins in it, it was not to bad, I did not like the corn chips, they tasted bad and the chocolate wafer rolls were pretty good also.
Walking the rest of the way home, there were a ton of very bright and colorful signs advertizing for karaoke. It was a fun street to walk down. Once we got home, my Mom and I had to book an Air B&B for Thursday night because our last Air B&B backed out on us, so we had to find another one. They probably overbook and then have to cancel guests. Luckily, there were many choices for Air B&B's in Hoi An. We picked a very nice place next to An Bang Beach, and it had 4 rooms!
Thursday the 29th of March we were traveling from Hue to Hoi An, but this time we were taking a car not a train like we did when we traveled to Da Nang to Hue. We ate breakfast again at 8 AM Thursday morning, and at 9 AM a car was here to start our journey to Hoi An. It was not going to be a straight car ride there, because on the way we were going to stop at many places such as a beach and a place for lunch.
The first place we stopped was at a bridge in Hương Thủy, which is just outside of Hue. It was a Tile-Roofed bridge, and was right next to a huge local market. It was really beautifully decorated. It was built in 1776 by Ms. Tran Thi Dao who was the wife of a great mandarin. Its purpose was to make walking around easier for the people living around that area. During the reign of King Khai Dinh in 1920, an altar was created on the bridge to honor Ms. Tran Thi Dao.
We walked around inside the local market also, it was inside this big old building. There were all sorts of things for sale, shoes, tools, and a lot of food.
We got back in our car and continued to drive. We drove for about 70 minutes until we arrived at our next stop which was at a resort that was right on the beach. The name of the beach was Lang Co beach, we all walked down to the beach. Levi and I changed into our swimsuits. It was a very sunny day, so we put sunscreen on. My Mom and Levi walked down the beach a long way, but I just went back with Oma to wait inside. I got an Ice Tea and Ice Cream with Oma while we waited for them to get back. Here are some pictures from their beach adventure.
After Levi and my Mom got back to the car, Oma and I were waiting in the car with our driver. We drove on and it was around lunch time. For lunch we stopped at this restaurant that sat on stilts elevated above water. There were many blue and red plastic tubs of sea creatures ready to be made into food.
It was one of the local places where there are a ton of people there each at their own table. We had a table near the corner of the restaurant. We ordered some spring rolls, noodles, rice, chicken for Levi and Oma got Squid. While we were eating we met this couple from Johannesburg, South Africa. We invited them to our table to eat with us, and we talked to them and shared all of our food, we had a lot of food.
They said that they were traveling around Vietnam on the back of a scooter. We asked them where they were staying tonight and they told us that they did not know but they would find a place to stay. It sounded quite adventurous and fun. Right when we were leaving, a guy at a table behind us asked me where I got my shirt that said "go green". It turned out that he was a teacher that taught in Detroit and was Vietnamese-American. It was his first time coming back to Vietnam and he was with his family.
After we finished lunch, we said goodbye to our new friends from South Africa and went back to our car. Our journey continued, and we started to drive up a mountain, and there were a lot of twists and turns. We got to the top of this mountain and stopped at a place called the Hải Vân Pass. It is very beautiful driving on the mountain because you can see down to the beaches and the forrest below, but also is quite dangerous because one small mistake and you could drive off of a cliff straight down.
This pass was a physical division between the Champa and Đại Việt Kingdoms. In Vietnams history this pass was a boundary for any land army that tried to move between the northern and central regions of the country. Also on this pass there has been a couple rail accidents, and at least one air crash. The one air crash was by a US marine corps helicopter in 1969. The helicopter had been having radio problems and at night, all 10 died in the crash. Part of the tail of the helicopter is on display at the National Museum of the Marine Corps.
At this place that we stopped, there were a few shops and some ruins of some old buildings. It looked like a few people lived up here at the top of this mountain pass. This one building had a second floor that looked like a look out tower, but there was no way to get into it except a hole in the ceiling that I could not reach. One guy came along though, and he helped me get up by letting me step on his hands and he pushed me up to get into the top of the building. It was pretty cool, just a look out tower.
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| This is what I found in the second floor of the old building. |
Levi and I went off and explored the old ruins of the buildings, and we also found many paths leading more up into the mountain. We followed a path that led us to a small shrine.
Before we left, we went to one of the shops that was on the mountain pass and got some Ice Cream. I did not want Ice Cream so I got a drink. We got back in our car and continued to drive towards Hoi An. We drove through Da Nang, and our last stop before getting to Hoi An was at a place called the marble mountains a bit south of Da Nang. It is a cluster of 5 marble and limestone hills, each mountain is named after the 5 elements. Kim (metal), Thuy (water), Moc (wood), Hoa (fire) and Tho (earth). We walked from our parked car to the entrance. There was an entrance that had an elevator but we chose the stair entrance because it seemed more exciting and it was. We started to climb the mountain by climbing some steep stairs.
At the top of the stairs was a small garden, a giant buddha and a lot of sculptures made out of marble.
We walked and the first main thing that we entered was a giant cave. There was a staircase leading into a hole in the side of a mountain, and it was a huge cave. We walked through the cave and found a small hole above us that we climbed to get to a place where we could see a ton of the city below us.
We continued to walk through the maze in the mountains. We stumbled upon many buildings, and we even went so far in the wrong direction that we had to turn around and back track just to find our way back to the marble mountain again. I think we had gone so far that we were in somebodies house / farm area. We did find a cute little meditation area though.
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| Cute little meditation place. |
We saw many more caves, and after a long while we finally were finished and walked back down to the bottom and went back to the car. Between our car and the entrance there were many shops that had a ton of statues for sale, all made out of marble of course. We got back in our car and finally we arrived at our Air B&B about 30 minutes later.
Our place had a pool on the 1st floor, and we had floors 2 and 3. There were 2 rooms for us on each floor, so we each had our own room which was nice. Also, my air conditioner worked very well which I was happy about because I love my room to be freezing when I sleep. Lily was the name of the owner of the house, she lived on the 1st floor. She was very nice, and recommended that we go to dinner at a place called the Salt Pub. It was right next to the beach, we went there for dinner, and everybody spoke english. All of the waiters and people working there spoke english and sounded like they were from Australia. Probably because there is a huge resort across the street from the Salt Pub.
I got a chicken burger thing with french fries, it was very good. My brother just got a regular hamburger and fries.
The Salt Pub was about a 5 minute walk from our house, and on the way back we stopped at a massage place and got massages. Levi and I each got 30 minute back massages and Oma and my Mom got 30 minute foot massages. They were very good, and we walked back home after we were done. I was very ready for bed, so I went to sleep after I had my room freezing cold.
Friday morning, my Mom and I had a tour but Oma and Levi were going to have a chill day and just stay home and walk the beach and do stuff like that. At 8:15 AM we were picked up by a van to go to the My Son world heritage site. We learned a lot about the Cham Kingdom. The heritage site is filled with hindu temples constructed between the 4th and the 14th century AD by the Champa kings to worship the god Shiva.
The entrance was very cool, and the first thing that we did once we got there was watch some traditional dancing and music.
We started to walk among the temples and the ruins of what was left from the Champa kingdom. We walked by many bomb craters from the Vietnam war.
We had 15 minutes to walk around alone after our guide finished talking to our group. After that we continued to explore the area. Once we got back to the van we went to lunch at a place that people took cooking classes at. We all sat at a long table and had a bunch of food.
After that we got dropped of back at our house. There was a lantern festival in the old town in Hoi An this night and it started at 6 PM. All of the shops and restaurants turned off their lights and instead they had lanterns all over the walking streets.
We had a dinner reservation at 7 PM at a restaurant in the old town called "Morning Glory". We arrived there at 7 PM and we were sat at a table outside. I ordered some ribs, we also got the famous pancake and some crab meat won tons. Those were probably my favorite out of everything we got, and Levi got a dish with noodles and meat ball things. My Mom got a fish.
After we finished our huge meal, we continued to walk around the old town and see all of the lanterns and shops. At one shop we saw a little table where they had put a lot of things out for the gods like foods, fruits, candies and money. There was also incense burning.
This store had everything made of leather.
We walked down by the Thu Bon River, and there were boats with lanterns giving people boat rides. We decided to take our own boat ride, we also got some candles that we set off in the water once we were in the boat. The boat had a single lantern attached to it, and we could see all the other floating candles in the water.
Saturday March 31st, we woke up around 8 AM to get ready for our tour today which started at 8:30 AM. We had a scooter tour planned for today, as you know most people in Vietnam drive around scooters or mopeds as we would call them. At 8:30 we walked downstairs and were met by 4 people with their scooters ready to take us around Hoi An. It was Oma, my Mom, Levi and I and each of us sat on the back of a scooter and we drove off.
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| This was my scooter driver for the day, he was very nice and his name was Tam, which means "Heart". |
We started to drive away from our Air B&B. We drove a while through Hoi An and we drove through a small local market on the edge of the water and stopped at a small wharf. There was one main woman out of the 4 people that were driving us who told us all of the information at each stop. She told us at our first stop that this was a fishing village, and this was where the local fisherman would go out to catch the fish and bring them back into the local markets.
We moved out of the way so 2 men could push this cart of fish past us towards the market place. There were lights on some of the boats that we saw and we were told that they were used to attract squid so that the fisherman could catch them. They go out around midnight to catch squid, its harder to catch them in the daylight, and they use the lights at night time.
We continued our journey, we passed over a massive bridge called Cầu Cửa Đại, or the Cua Dai Bridge in english. It is a very large bridge, in the background of this picture, you can see the long bridge in Hoi An.
Here is a picture of us all at the top of the bridge. We all had yellow helmets except Levi, so we called ourselves the banana team.
It was a very hot day, especially at the top of that bridge, so I put sunscreen on my arms. When I got back on my scooter, the seat was very hot since it was black leather and black absorbs heat from the sun. We continued our scooter journey and our next stop was at a water coconut village. This village was located in Cẩm Thanh which is a province within Hoi An. It is right on the Thu Bồn river and a lot of small streams also.
We went through some alley ways to get to this place.
When we arrived we sat at a table on a floating platform on the water. Levi and I rode in a thung chai or "basket boat" as we call it. Paddling one of these basket boats is really difficult because you have to do it in a certain way or else you will just spin in circles. Luckily our paddler was very skilled.
He even made Levi and I a little sea creature out of the water coconut leaves.
Once we got back, we got back on our scooters. Here is a picture of all 4 of us on one scooter.
After we visited the water coconut village, Oma was not feeling to well so her scooter driver took her back to our house, while my Mom, Levi and I continued on our adventure. We next visited an organic vegetable farm in Cẩm Hà. This vegetable farm is very famous and supplies vegetables throughout Hoi An.
This farm does not use any chemicals while growing there vegetables. Each type of vegetable is sorted in its own rectangular row, this is to help separate each type so if bugs eat a certain row, they will not eat others since they don't like the other types of vegetables.
There is a sprinkler system throughout the farm, they stick out of the ground and water the vegetables from above. There are many types of vegetables here including Pomelos, Cilantro, Basil, Mint, Lemon-Basil, Lemongrass, Peanuts, Chives and much more. Levi also got pushed around in an old wheelbarrow by Tam.
Before heading to our next destination, we went to a local coffee place. We were given a nice tea and we also tried a popular dessert called sticky rice pudding. It tasted like yogurt with other small things in it. It was very delicious.
We got back on our scooters and continued on to a pottery village. Right when we got there, there was this dog that wound not leave us alone. He was so cute, and we were told that for some reason he loves western people but when the Korean tourists come to visit, he barks at them a lot.
This one house that we went to was owned by this women who made a lot of pottery. She started making pottery when she was 11 years old, and she was very good at it. Here is a picture of everything that she has made.
She let Levi and I try to make some pottery after she finished her current one. It was much harder than it looked.
We each made our own piece of pottery and she let us keep them to take with us. We let them dry in the sun while we explored the rest of the pottery village. The village had many houses, and all of them had many pottery items that they made. We were shown how they used to make pottery where one person would spin the big plate with their foot and the other person would use their hands to sculpt the piece of pottery, but now a days they have motors to spin it. We came to a building that had many small clay figures that were also whistles, and we each chose one to take home, they came in many different animals.
It was finally time for lunch, and it was 1:30 PM. We had a private lunch at somebodies house, it was just us 6.
For lunch we were brought rice paper, some fresh vegetables and a plate of cucumber slices and un-ripe banana slices. We were taught how to roll our meat in the pieces of rice paper along with some fresh vegetables and a cucumber slice. This is what it looks like.
After we made each of our rolls, we had peanut sauce to dip into. It was very good. I had a ton of food during that lunch. One of our guides told us that many people do not like eating vegetables on their own, and their parents force them to eat vegetables to be healthy and if you roll a lot of the green vegetables into a sheet of rice paper and dip it in the sauce then eat it, it tastes much better than eating vegetables by themselves. She also said you can tell we are done having lunch because there are a lot of green leafy vegetables strewn all over the table. I had a ton of food at that lunch and after lunch we went to see how rice noodles were made.
We entered into a persons house where they were making rice noodles. First they would take the rice and mix it with water and put it in a machine that would squeeze the rice to get the rice milk out.
Then they would take the rice milk and pour a bit of it on a stove like thing, and then add one more layer to make it stronger and let it sit for some seconds. Then you would take the stick and pick it off of the stove and put it on a table to dry out in the sun.
Then to make the noodles, she would use the knife to cut the noodles, or put it through a machine that would quickly cut all of them at once. Then they would bag the noodles and sell them. Our guides told us that the people would come here to buy the noodles because they know they are better quality then anywhere else since they are made in their own house.
We next stopped by another home where they made floor mats out of reeds. They would take reeds from the fields, then dry them in the sun for about 3 days. Then they would do a special weaving process where they put the reed through this machine then pull it back to make the mat.
She is taking each reed, and quickly wrapping it around the top of this stick, then putting it through the reeds, and the man pulls back the wooden object and switches its position. This is the process.
We even tried it ourselves, they say that they make about 3 mats in 1 day, and it takes about 2 hours to make each one. It would probably take Levi and I 8 hours to make one mat because we were so slow compared to how fast they could do it. That was our final stop, and we had to get back to our Air B&B so we could get our car at 3 PM that would take us to the Airport.
We said our goodbyes once we got back to our home, I took a picture with Tam.
March 27 - March 31, 2018
Wow! You managed to do quite a bit in a short time. Nice photos, too!
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