Saigon floors

To conclude the series of Saigon interiors I present photographs of ... floors. Strange as it was, I fell in love with the intricate tile work and carpets in the city's older buildings. The French (the colonial overlords in Vietnam for over 100 years) are really good at integrating a strong design sense and influencing food culture.

Reunification Palace

The Reunification Palace used to be the headquarters and living space for the South Vietnamese president before the north communist forces invaded after America's departure, hence the present name . It's a very swanky place, with all the Sixty's latest trends and amenities. It was pretty weird and a little crappier than these pictures show. Good fun though :)

Below are pictures from the underground bunker. The bunker, right below the presidential mansion, consists of maybe 20 also very dated wood panel rooms with only desks and phones. some had giant communications radios, but they were otherwise completely bare and isolated feeling. The sexy red ribbon is not part of the original decor, it's there to keep out all the tourists.

Saigon Inside

some pictures of interiors in Saigon

a great corner shop restaurant

inside a hindu temple

above and below: inside some of the city's buddhist temples

the cao dai religion is a local religion that mixes hinduism, buddhism, chrsitianity, islam and some other things. it's an especially strange religion in part because the western ambassador of this religion was Victor Hugo. I dunno... so this is their largest temple in Vietnam, just outside Saigon

Random Vietnam

It's been hard to post in Vietnam, the connections aren't always reliable...or consistent. I've finally made it to Saigon, but these are photos from some of the stuff we've done in the last few days. Saigon pictures will come very soon. We all leave Saigon for the Cambodian capital on the 22nd.

Silvia and I jumping off the boat into Halong Bay (Paul's picture)

One of the many, many mixed French and Chinese/Vietnamese colonial residences throughout the country. This was in Hue, a central coastal city.

above and below: The small central highland city of Dalat offers a few fun things. That electric Buddha above is part of a big temple and pagoda. Below Paul poses in one of the corridors of the so-called "Crazy House" of Dalat. It's a hilariously Pee Wee's Playhouse style building with themed rooms. It's almost everything I've ever wanted in a home.

We slid, and ran, and jumped down the Red Sand Dunes in the beach town Mui Ne, our final stop before Saigon.

Halong Bay Caves

There are a few caves on some of the islands in Halong Bay. This is one of the caves made all pretty like a birthday cake to show throngs of tourists. The color lights make the space great! It's something between a sci-fi movie set an amazing place you'd want to throw a party.

Halong Bay

Halong Bay is one of the most beautiful natural settings I've ever been in. It's a huge complex of thousands of small islets and one of the biggest tourist attractions in Northern Vietnam. We left early in the afternoon on a small boat with 15 other tourists and went all day along and around the many rock formations. We ended the afternoon by anchoring and swimming in these really impressive waters! We later watched the sunset and spent the night on the boat. The next morning we woke up in a floating village in the site and rode around more before getting dropped off on the mainland.



Here's where we anchored, swam, and spent the night. It was too cool

Hanoi

A great place to visit, but wouldn't want to live there. Buildings here are incredibly French and overly ornate. There's a nice mix of Art Deco and Art Nouveau/Neo-Classical row houses and Southern Chinese bombast and colorful exaggeration. Bajillions of electric scooters loudly criss-cross the streets these dilapidated and somewhat romantic buildings sit on. There's crazy overgrowth and power lines everywhere and thousands of women in traditional conical hats selling lychee or other fresh fruit all over this tropical city of a couple million.

Hanoi sometimes feels like Miami (Hialeah specifically) and often like Latin America (Cuba is the most prevalent just because of the kind of architecture and current state of the buildings), but is all Asian. The food is really spectacular. It's hands down my favorite new food in the world. I guess it makes sense that the best Vietnamese food I've ever had would be here.

A 22 mile hike and an abandoned monastery

Ross read about an abandoned French monastery somewhere in the mountains surrounding Sapa, of course we went looking for it soon afterwards. We left town and hiked all day a total of 36 km. The trek was long and difficult but well worth it. The mountains are enormous and endless, the rice paddies almost mythological



The monastery floors collapsed at some point and the walls are overgrown with a bright orange moss. The small but imposing building felt like a giant haunting the wild countryside

Sapa, Vietnam

Today's our last day in the mountain town Sapa before heading by train to Hanoi. This little town set in a lush mountaintop was a French garrison during the occupation. It now exists as a tourist center with buildings in a semi-Classical French style and tons of hotels and restaurants. At a whopping $6 a night for a decently tacky room and all the French influenced bakeries with free wi-fi you could ever want, it's easy to get used to all this :)

above: both pictures are from the balcony in our hotel "Hotel Pinochio". It rains a whole lot apparently, and suddenly you'll realize you're in a cloud
below: the mountains surrounding the town are covered in rice paddies and little farm houses and roads great for hiking

above: Vietnamese coffee is the best thing in the world! it's a heavy espresso eerily similar to the Cuban coffee so familiar to me. What makes it stupendous is the bit of condensed milk on the bottom of the cup used to sweeten it. The metal bit above the cup is where the coffee and hot water are set then it slowly drips out into the cup through a filter identical to a Cuban "cafetera"

Kunming

First stop on this grand Southeast Asian tour was the city of Kunming (昆明) in the southern Chinese province Yunnan (云南). It's a very livable and sub-tropical city with a pretty nice central park and an amazing temple called the Yuantong Temple (圆通寺).

Southern Chinese art and architecture is pretty different from that of the north. The colors are brighter and more bombastic and the overall forms more exaggerated. In the temple live dozens of male and female monks dressed all in black.

The entire temple is covered with plants, trees, and flowers of all kinds. The monks seem to divide their day between study, meditation, and plant care.

We left Kunming by overnight bus to the Vietnamese border headed to the northern town of Sa Pa. It's a small tourist city in the middle of a million mountains and rice paddies populated by local minority groups called the Dzao and the H'Mong, where the woman are in full ethnic gear and offer you hand sewn bags and marijuana or opium along every street.

I'm having a fantastic time, but it's been strange and sad to leave China for the first time in 10 months.