Sunday, November 28, 2010

Finally back in Production: Updates on Vietnam

Unfortunately, I have not had the best luck at timing since I've been back in the United States. 3 months later, I'm finally getting to write about my amazing times in Vietnam, China and my journey back home.
Because there is so much to cover, I'm going to try and do this in the best way possible. I won't get to go into too much detail describing things like I normally do, but I'm going to tell you about all the exciting things I got to do!

So let's start with our travels from Laos.
The last you heard about was our tubing experiences in Vang Vieng, the blue lagoons, the "buckets," the friends (whom I still keep in touch with!) and the epic caving!
From there, we made it to the capital of Laos and stayed a night before catching our flight to Vietnam. I'm not sure if you remember, but we didn't get to Cambodia due to lack of time and our random decision to make our way to Laos instead, but we can say that we actually did step foot there during out layover to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

To be honest, Ho Chi Minh City was probably one of my least favorite places I visited on all my travels. It was crowded, industrial, too many scooters/motor bike and I wasn't a huge fan of the food (rice and soup was pretty much all I ate). However, the best part and most amazing experience was our trip to the Chu Chi Tunnels (the ones dug during the Vietnam War). But it wasn't only that, we took an entire day to explore outside the city, and if we had been able to stay around those areas, it would have felt more like a discovery of Vietnam and its true culture..
Brief Overview:

How we made it to our destination: canoes, canals and canopy hats!

Food:
Bizzare?

Yes.. I actually drink what was in that! Hint: those are snakes.


Bike tour around the villages:

How we made it to our destination: canoes, canals and canopy hats!




Boat rides with yummy coconut drinks :)


It's such a shame that we didn't get to make our way up Vietnam like we had initially planned, because I really think we didn't get to experience Vietnam like we wanted to. By this point it was towards the end of our trip and we began to get in that mentality that we would be going home soon, and being in a city made it feel like it wasn't the discovery we wanted. But we made the most of the time we got to spend there, exploring around Ho Chin Minh and outside the city. Our next stop - China!