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.

36 hours later....

We left Beijing last Thursday evening by train bound for Kunming (昆明) all the way in the south of China. It was a long ass train trip, 36 hours in all, but well worth it for the scenery alone. Kunming is completely different from Beijing in that it's elevated but also very tropical. The air is humid and there are palm trees. It's already starting to feel more like back home in Miami.
The guy in the photograph all the way to the left is our friend Paul from Newcastle in the U.K. We leave China this afternoon and arrive in a town called Sapa in Vietnam tomorrow afternoon. Check for constant updates over the next few weeks...

Beijing's Parks

Beijing is a city full of parks. They help bring loads of green to the cityscape and the climate is perfect for all kinds of flowers this time of year.

above and below: this is Yuangmingyuan Park (圆明园) in the northwest of the city. Once the location of a splendid mixed European Baroque and Chinese palace, it's today ruins and well-kept greens and gardens. It was destroyed by the French during the Opium Wars. The little girl above is my favorite student. Her family has become my adopted Chinese family and they took me to this park one afternoon.

a picnic with friends at Chaoyang Park （朝阳公园)

Ross and I went to Tiantangongyuan (天坛公园) the Temple of Heaven Park. This is the temple emulated in the China section of Epcot Center. This one's more impressive.

Smelling the flowers at a park who's name i forgot right next to Tian'anmen Square (天安门) and the Forbidden City (故宫)

Sichuan Earthquake Memorial

In schools across China, students made thousands of paper fold birds in memory of the students that died in the Sichuan Earthquakes a few weeks ago. These are from a school i frequent in the west of Beijing.

The kids placed the birds along the school's courtyard on long expanses of fence and wall