Okay, it's been hard to keep this blog up! Since my last blog post we have gone through 4 cities before landing where we are now - Ho Chi Minh city. I'll do a separate post for HCM, since we did a lot here, but here's an overview of the other four cities!
Hoi An
After our overnight train to Da Nang, we got in a taxi to head to our hostel in Hoi An called Cococha Hostel. It was pouring rain when we arrived, but we were famished, so we walked a bit to find some dumplings. Here's me in my cute rain coat resisting the urge to start jumping in the puddles:
The thing that Hoi An is most known for is its abundance of tailors who will make custom clothes of any kind for you overnight. Instead of the typical Vietnamese tourist market where they sell souvenir trinkets and off-brand designer bags, they had a Cloth Market where nearly every store was a tailor. I chose a sundress design and fabric and got my measurements taken, and picked up my dress the next day! We also found a custom jewelry store and ordered a few pieces for ourselves as well.
Then we found a store that sold these funny banana clothes (actually, we found lots of stores with them - they are very popular amongst tourists here!). Since it was Halloween, and our hostel was having a party that night with a costume contest, we decided to buy banana clothes from head to toe! It was the perfect costume, and we saw lots of other travelers who had the same idea!
The next day was November 1st, which is the anniversary of my Grandma Helene passing away. It's always a hard day for me, but being in Hoi An made it easier because I felt that she would have really loved both this city and the fact that I am in it. At night, we went to the Night Market to buy lanterns and go out on a small boat on the river. Charlie and I each released our lanterns in her honor.
The next day we got on our train to Deau Tri (about 5 hours), which is the closest station to our next destination, Quy Nhon, which is a small beach town. Our friend Lea has been working at a hostel there called Life's a Beach, so we were going to visit her and relax on the beach for a few days. However, because of the monsoon that had started up, Life's a Beach was having bad power outages and some of their roofs had blown off (they are located outside the main city, pretty much isolated along a road on the beach), so we had to get a hotel last minute in the city.
Quy Nhon
The next day, Sunday, we finally made it to Life's a Beach. There wasn't much to do because we were the first guests to arrive after the storm passed and they fixed the roofs and regained power. We mainly just relaxed, and I got to hang out with the sweet hostel dog named Sandy:
On Monday, it started raining again and didn't stop all day, so we just took lots of naps, watched Netflix, and took the day off from adventure. The next day, though, it finally stopped raining, and there was even some sun!
The roads had dried up enough that we could rent motorbikes and go into town. Lea, Charlie and I went to get massages from a place that employs blind people only. Then Lea took us to a Korean BBQ place where you have a little fire at your table and cook your own food. It was delicious!
Nah Trang
Leaving just in time to escape the next monsoon that was headed for Quy Nohn, we headed back to Deau Tri to get another train - this time to the beach town of Nah Trang. The train got in at night, and we got a taxi to our hostel called Senkotel. When the taxi pulled up to an alley on the main street, I checked the address on my phone and told him no - what I saw on my phone was a mile or so away from the main part of town. He drove us to where my phone said and we got out, only it soon became clear that our hostel was not there. I looked it up again on Google Maps and found a different address, in the opposite direction, and got a taxi there. But our hotel wasn't there either!! Long story short, we some how figured out where it was - and it was back where the first taxi driver originally took us! We realized that no one really uses Google Maps here (the location that the hotel was actually at said "Senko Hotel" not "Senkotel" and there were multiple addresses listed), but at least we finally found our hotel.
On Thursday we hung out on the beach for most of the day. It was sunny but not too hot or humid - the perfect weather!
Later, we went to the mall to watch Maleficent. At this point we were starting to feel travel fatigue, so we stayed in all day the next day (Friday). We had actually been planning to leave on Friday to go to our next city, but the busses were all full, so we took the day off to rest.
Da Lat
Saturday morning we took a sleeper bus to Da Lat - an inland city midway between Nah Trang and Ho Chi Minh. The city was really pretty, and reminded Charlie a lot of Germany (the hills and square houses made it feel very European). And there was a pretty lake in the middle of the town:
We went to the night market that night, hoping to find even more fun banana clothes, but every single shop had started selling sweaters, jackets, and even big puffy parka coats! We thought it was funny - while 67 degrees at night was cold for Vietnam, it wasn't actually cold. Then we went to a place called Maze Bar, which is a bar that is 5 stories made up of very intricate staircases and nooks and crannies. You could get lost in there, finding new places to sit and talk, or looking at the weird design of the place (it kind of looked like the inside of a tree) and all the random artwork its walls adorned. We made it to the top eventually, and had a great view:
We wanted to do some fun exploring on Sunday - there are lots of cool mountains to climb and the famous Elephant Waterfalls - but it was raining too much for us to safely ride a motorbike! So, we opted instead for checking out this beautiful silk embroidery museum instead.
The museum is a feature of the preservation efforts of the XQ Su Quan historical village. Apparently, this community is made up of women who partake in the traditional art form of silk embroidery, and their products are gorgeous! I wish I could have bought one, but they were (understandably) very expensive.
The next day we traveled to Ho Chi Minh, where we saw the Vietcong tunnels from the war, the War Remnants Museum, and I saw a very familiar face - I'll tell you all about it in my next post!
Hoi An
After our overnight train to Da Nang, we got in a taxi to head to our hostel in Hoi An called Cococha Hostel. It was pouring rain when we arrived, but we were famished, so we walked a bit to find some dumplings. Here's me in my cute rain coat resisting the urge to start jumping in the puddles:
The thing that Hoi An is most known for is its abundance of tailors who will make custom clothes of any kind for you overnight. Instead of the typical Vietnamese tourist market where they sell souvenir trinkets and off-brand designer bags, they had a Cloth Market where nearly every store was a tailor. I chose a sundress design and fabric and got my measurements taken, and picked up my dress the next day! We also found a custom jewelry store and ordered a few pieces for ourselves as well.
Then we found a store that sold these funny banana clothes (actually, we found lots of stores with them - they are very popular amongst tourists here!). Since it was Halloween, and our hostel was having a party that night with a costume contest, we decided to buy banana clothes from head to toe! It was the perfect costume, and we saw lots of other travelers who had the same idea!
The next day was November 1st, which is the anniversary of my Grandma Helene passing away. It's always a hard day for me, but being in Hoi An made it easier because I felt that she would have really loved both this city and the fact that I am in it. At night, we went to the Night Market to buy lanterns and go out on a small boat on the river. Charlie and I each released our lanterns in her honor.
The next day we got on our train to Deau Tri (about 5 hours), which is the closest station to our next destination, Quy Nhon, which is a small beach town. Our friend Lea has been working at a hostel there called Life's a Beach, so we were going to visit her and relax on the beach for a few days. However, because of the monsoon that had started up, Life's a Beach was having bad power outages and some of their roofs had blown off (they are located outside the main city, pretty much isolated along a road on the beach), so we had to get a hotel last minute in the city.
Quy Nhon
The next day, Sunday, we finally made it to Life's a Beach. There wasn't much to do because we were the first guests to arrive after the storm passed and they fixed the roofs and regained power. We mainly just relaxed, and I got to hang out with the sweet hostel dog named Sandy:
On Monday, it started raining again and didn't stop all day, so we just took lots of naps, watched Netflix, and took the day off from adventure. The next day, though, it finally stopped raining, and there was even some sun!
The roads had dried up enough that we could rent motorbikes and go into town. Lea, Charlie and I went to get massages from a place that employs blind people only. Then Lea took us to a Korean BBQ place where you have a little fire at your table and cook your own food. It was delicious!
Nah Trang
Leaving just in time to escape the next monsoon that was headed for Quy Nohn, we headed back to Deau Tri to get another train - this time to the beach town of Nah Trang. The train got in at night, and we got a taxi to our hostel called Senkotel. When the taxi pulled up to an alley on the main street, I checked the address on my phone and told him no - what I saw on my phone was a mile or so away from the main part of town. He drove us to where my phone said and we got out, only it soon became clear that our hostel was not there. I looked it up again on Google Maps and found a different address, in the opposite direction, and got a taxi there. But our hotel wasn't there either!! Long story short, we some how figured out where it was - and it was back where the first taxi driver originally took us! We realized that no one really uses Google Maps here (the location that the hotel was actually at said "Senko Hotel" not "Senkotel" and there were multiple addresses listed), but at least we finally found our hotel.
On Thursday we hung out on the beach for most of the day. It was sunny but not too hot or humid - the perfect weather!
Later, we went to the mall to watch Maleficent. At this point we were starting to feel travel fatigue, so we stayed in all day the next day (Friday). We had actually been planning to leave on Friday to go to our next city, but the busses were all full, so we took the day off to rest.
Da Lat
Saturday morning we took a sleeper bus to Da Lat - an inland city midway between Nah Trang and Ho Chi Minh. The city was really pretty, and reminded Charlie a lot of Germany (the hills and square houses made it feel very European). And there was a pretty lake in the middle of the town:
We went to the night market that night, hoping to find even more fun banana clothes, but every single shop had started selling sweaters, jackets, and even big puffy parka coats! We thought it was funny - while 67 degrees at night was cold for Vietnam, it wasn't actually cold. Then we went to a place called Maze Bar, which is a bar that is 5 stories made up of very intricate staircases and nooks and crannies. You could get lost in there, finding new places to sit and talk, or looking at the weird design of the place (it kind of looked like the inside of a tree) and all the random artwork its walls adorned. We made it to the top eventually, and had a great view:
We wanted to do some fun exploring on Sunday - there are lots of cool mountains to climb and the famous Elephant Waterfalls - but it was raining too much for us to safely ride a motorbike! So, we opted instead for checking out this beautiful silk embroidery museum instead.
The museum is a feature of the preservation efforts of the XQ Su Quan historical village. Apparently, this community is made up of women who partake in the traditional art form of silk embroidery, and their products are gorgeous! I wish I could have bought one, but they were (understandably) very expensive.
The next day we traveled to Ho Chi Minh, where we saw the Vietcong tunnels from the war, the War Remnants Museum, and I saw a very familiar face - I'll tell you all about it in my next post!
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