Hanoi is the land of motorbikes, yellow French-style buildings, and eating on sidewalks. We got in late, and were staying in the heart of the Old Quarter, near a lot of attractions and definitely the center of night life. We walked around and snacked, and the German curry wurst was a nice surprise. After way too many beers, we turned in to wake up early and tackle Hanoi.

Looking at our map, it was a sea of green dots that we wanted to check out. Hanoi has a bunch of museums and temples, an absurd amount for the size of the city. So to quickly go through some of the attractions we saw during our time here:

• Museum of National History - Nice, it focused on Vietnam's past prior to modern times. A lot of really cool artifacts and impressive stuff from the various Emperors they've had.

• Vietnamese Women's Museum - Pretty good, I really liked the different clothing they had from minority groups. They also had a "day in the life" kind of profiles of market workers, which was interesting.

• Revolution Museum - Boring, lots of old photos with no context.

• Vietnam National Fine Arts Museum - I don't get art. Ella liked it. There were pretty things.

• Vietnam Military History Museum - More my speed, although I was a little disappointed by the lack of actual weapons or vehicles. They had a few, but the one in Ho Chi Minh City was much better. Still, they had some captured American tanks and planes, which was cool to see.

• B52 Victory Museum - Small, free, and maybe abandoned? There were no other people there, and it looked like nobody had been in years. They have a shot down B52 as well as some other anti-aircraft weapons.

• Thang Long Citadel - The Emperor's pad when the capital was moved to Hanoi, also used as a bunker and military command during the war. Large and a cool place to get some photos, but nothing standout.

• Quan Thanh Temple - Ella said this was a temple with Toaist, Confucianist, and a bunch of other religious symbolism thrown in. Sort of like with Cao Dai, it's the "shotgun" approach to religion. I didn't have the context to enjoy it, still a sort of nice looking temple.

• Saint Joseph's Cathedral - Pretty cool, I liked the outside more than the inside because it was so dirty - almost like it was abandoned. Worth a look if you pass by.

• Ho Chi Minh Museum - This place must have been designed by Salvador Dali. It's a weird collection of quotes, letters, and various objects from HCM, but the layout is some sort of trippy drug induced mess. "This exhibit takes inspiration from the form of the human brain." Wonderful, please direct me to the human brain's restrooms and coffee shop.

• Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum - Wanna see a dead body? You line up surrounded by soldiers, and they escort you into a marble stone structure. You go upstairs and walk around a balcony on three sides, with an elevated glass box on the same level as you. Below there are guards standing at attention. Of course in the box is HCM, who doesn't look exactly like his photos. But I guess being dead for 50 years will do that. No photos, no talking. Kind of creepy and serene at the same time.

Phew! See, I told you there were a lot. And I'm sure there are a hundred other small little places you could check out. For the size of Hanoi, I'm really impressed at just how much there is to do. So let's talk about the places that deserve more than a sentence or two.

And let's begin by bringing everything back down - Hoa Lo Prison, AKA The Hanoi Hilton. I wanted to see it just for its infamous reputation. Most of it has been demolished, humorously replaced by luxury apartments and a shopping center. The parts they did keep are mostly the administration buildings and a few cells.

And to answer the obvious question, "Did they cover up how horrific it was?", Yes and no. They went into great detail about how terrible the French were to the Vietnamese when they were in charge. When talking about the American War though, they unironically said that the Americans called it The Hanoi Hilton since it was more like a resort than prison. They also had lots of photos of the prisoners doing different things like playing basketball, going to church, etc.. Always a small group of mostly the same people.

And I don't mean to tear down their argument, I imagine if the situation was reversed a US Museum would mostly focus on the same, albeit with some understanding of sarcasm. When we learned about the prison in school, I'd imagine western education focused more on the bad while Vietnamese education focused more on the good. Somewhere in the middle there's some truth, so I'm glad to get both sides of the story to try and parse it out.

Later we went to a neighborhood where a train passes between some houses, and a really chill guy came out of his house to welcome us. He went and bought a bench for tourists and offered them coffee so they could watch the train, all for free. We spoke a bit about the relationship with the US (TLDR: Vietnam doesn't care, it's ancient history) and some of the problems we face. (Vietnam has issues, but at least they don't have a gun problem.)

No disagreements there.

The train passing through was pretty cool, similar to the train in Thailand's Meklong Market. Except this train was reaaaally close. My back was against the wall and I could still reach out and touch the train. Good for a photo, but it's hard to get a sense for how unique this place is unless you go yourself.

Another place where photos don't do a good job is the Water Puppet show. A sort of traditional Vietnamese art form, it has puppets that dance around on the surface of the water. They control them with a long pole and strings behind a curtain, and it's actually really cool - better than I'd expect. The water hides all the workings so it looks very realistic. Combine it with some music and it's a good time, for only $3. There were multiple acts, that told stories about a cat that stole a fisherman's catch, a turtle who returned a sword to a king, and Three-for-One Taco Tuesday. (My Vietnamese is a bit rusty). The only disappointing thing were the tourists. This group of older western tourists spent the entire time recording with an iPad on full brightness, constantly standing up and leaving, talking, and just being a big pain in the ass. Am I back in China? "Western tourist" is a super broad brush to use, but that's just embarrassing. Have some class.

The unclassy western tourist train kept on going, because one day we stopped in to see a pagoda on a lake called Tran Cuoc. It was a bit of a walk to get there, but nothing too bad. Apparently one person thought it was pretty terrible though. For whatever reason, when we got up to the gate, it was locked. Maybe because Tet (Vietnamese New Year) was so close, they decided to close up and go home. Oh well, we said, shrugging our shoulders and walking back. Then this middle aged man and a woman sporting a "I want to speak to the manager" haircut came up, saw the same, and the lady had a temper tantrum. She channeled her inner Eric Cartman, and let out an amazingly loud...

"Shyiiiaaat! SHYIT!"

I don't know how to spell it. It is a sound more befitting of beast than human. It was "shit", but drawn out and accented in such a strange way, I would swear they were trying to mock someone. Clearly the classy thing to do around a temple as people, you know, prayed. As we were walking back, although out of earshot, she kept fussing. Yes, that's right lady. Vietnam owes you for not letting you take photos of some graves of people you don't know. Anyway, another inside joke to add to the list!

Overall, I was impressed by Hanoi. I was really surprised at how much there is to do. It reminds me a bit of Taipei, in that you could easily spend a week here and not run out of stuff. It's one of those rare places that is just packed full, both of things and motorbikes. When I got here, I was thinking "Yeah, I could see myself living here." And then even after getting used to just throwing yourself in traffic and knowing that people will bike around you, I changed my mind. I like Hanoi, really. But I think living here would be a bit difficult. It doesn't change the fact that I really enjoyed Vietnam overall. It reminds me of a hard working Thailand. The people still know how to cut loose and have fun, and are overall a very happy bunch of folks that I really enjoyed interacting with. And at the same time, if you need something, you don't have to wait for them to wake up from their nap or get to a save point in their game. It's sort of like the best aspects of Thailand and other... more industrious places rolled into one. With delicious, cheap, and comparatively healthy food to boot.

We got some food and coffee and then went off to the airport. For fun, we decided to make our dinner a bunch of Vietnamese snacks (because we're healthy like that), and make a video at the airport of us trying them all. So here we go!

So we arrived in Hanoi, after some delays with our flight and terrible traffic. That's a big post that is taking some time to sort out, so in the meantime I'll talk about a day trip we took to Hoa Lu and Tam Coc. Despite what you think, Hoa Lu and Tam Coc are not the latest Vietnamese Pop Duo Sensation, although wow, that would be a good band name.

Rather, it's a region about 2 hours south of Hanoi, a sort of canyon and river that is featured in a lot of photos. It admittedly looks quite beautiful, so we decided we wanted to go. There were no shortage of tour groups offering packages there, but man oh man. We found day trips priced anywhere from $20 to $60. I couldn't really figure our what the difference was, as they all had pretty much the same itinerary - even often operated by the same company. We mulled over just going independently, since Ella's Vietnamese is pretty solid. But given the remote nature of the place, we decided on a $20 package. When we were on the tour, one of our traveling companions showed us his receipt and asked if we booked this tour - it was the same, but his price was almost double.

So, I guess it's just opportunity cost? Some groups position themselves near fancy hotels, and hope people don't shop around, know any better, or see $40 a person as chump change. Either or, we got the best deal we could find.

So the main reason to go to Hoa Lu and Tam Coc is the boat ride - more on that later. But it seems that just riding a boat doesn't seem enough, so they also squeeze in some temples and a bike ride. The temples are... fine. The only notable thing is that Hoa Lu used to be the capital of Vietnam a loooooong time ago. Now it's just a few small buildings in a rice farm. After lunch, we went for a bike ride up the road, turned around, and came back. Why? I'm not sure. To make the tour seem more worth it I suppose. At one point we did have a great view, but it would be the same view we had on the boat. Seems like filler to me, but at the same time there was nothing better to do.

But lets get on to the main attraction, the boat! This was super cool and definitely worth the time if you're in Hanoi, as evidenced by the large amount of tourists doing the same thing. But don't let that stop you, because this place is really beautiful. Like... probably top 5 most beautiful places I've seen. And all you do is sit in a canoe while a native rows you up this river. But this river goes through a giant canyon, through caves, and is surrounded by rice paddies on both sides. Occasionally you'd see a farmer walking around, waist deep in the mud, preparing things for the next growing season. Most of the photos you see are in the summer when rice is green and growing, but it didn't really diminish the experience at all. The canyon was massive, and it really looked like we traveled to some place in a video game or movie set. And we sort of did, because apparently is where they filmed King Kong a few years ago.

After about 45 minutes of rowing, we turned around and went back for another 45. Around the turn around point, a boat appeared that sold very expensive snacks and drinks, but I still had to buy a beer. Something about selling stupid indulgences in unusual places makes my wallet really loose - like the kids in Cambodia selling beer on the lake, or the golf balls on that volcano in The Philippines. Anyway, for $1.50 it's still a cheap beer by comparison. They also suggested we buy a drink for our trusty rower, and recommended a Coke. It's definitely a good play on their part, as you just kind of feel like an asshole if you don't, since this lady has been rowing your fat ass up the river. So I caved, she took the Coke, and didn't even drink it. I have a feeling they turn them back in for some cash. Who knows how many times that Coke has earned money?

Back near land she asked for a tip and.. Alright, I guess so. God I hate tipping. It feels super demeaning to both of us. If you tip too little you seem like an asshole, if you tip too much it feels like you're taking pity on them. I find the whole idea of saying "Your service is worth this much of monetary value to me" just disgusting, and I wish it wasn't so prevalent in the US. Our guide told in advance they would ask and suggested 50000 Dong. (About $1.70). I mean, it's not like an extreme amount of money, but at the same time you pay for a ticket. I'd rather they just make the ticket 50k more and not have to do this ridiculous song and dance.

Anyway, a blog about our amazing Narnia adventure is not the place to complain about tipping. The song and dance was definitely worth it, so I'll end with some media.

Da Nang, I don't really know why you are a tourist town.

We got a private car for the 25km or so trip from Hoi An. On the way we worked out a stop at Marble Mountain, the main tourist attraction in the area. Honestly, Marble Mountain is fine. It has some temples on top, and views of the ocean past some old buildings. But overall it just seems like a place to hike. There is an elevator to the top, so that's cool. But overall, "Meh".

The much better attraction in my opinion was at the base of the mountain. Hoa Nghiem Cave is a giant temple carved into the mountain, complete with depictions of hell and amazing open caverns. It's not something that you need to spend more than 20 minutes seeing, but those 20 minutes are really beautiful.

So now the rest of the way into the city, we dropped our bags off at the hostel and set out. The only place I wanted to see in Da Nang was the Champa Museum, which has the largest collection in the world of Champa... stuff. I'm always a sucker for worlds blankiest blank, so it was a must. Honestly it's pretty cool for what it is. The statues and carvings they have are mostly in really good shape, much better than I'd expect. They're not behind glass or anything, so it was cool to get up close and personal with them.

As far as other things in Da Nang... You yell me. I think the main attractions are day trips to My Son and Hoi An, which we already did. In fact, Hoi An is a nicer city and closer to everywhere, so why would you stay here? You could go to the beach I guess, but Hoi An has those as well. Anyway, nothing against Da Nang. They do have a lot of restaurants, but wow, they're so much more expensive than they need to be. With a local meal costing only about $1, they hike it up to $4 or more for some chicken and rice since it's in the tourist area. We instead ate at a local place for lunch and dinner. One because it was delicious, and two because it was the only reasonably priced place we saw.

Other than that, we just sort of walked around the city. Ella wanted to see some churches and the Cao Dai Temple. Some religion I've never heard of, they believe all religions are right and sort of just worship all gods. The shotgun approach to religion, I guess. They were all nice enough but not noteworthy.

What was noteworthy was our hostel. First, it had a cat. Maybe one of the friendliest cats I've ever met, who also recently had kittens. In the evening we had a beer while 6 kittens and a cat were running around the bar meowing and getting into trouble. Meanwhile, they had an original Famicom hooked up to an old TV. Truly, it was a hostel perfectly tailored for the both of us. Roll Hostel in Da Nang, look it up.

The next morning we got a car to the station to go to Hue, the old Imperial capital until the 40s or so. The train was quite an experience. Creeping between a mountain and beach, both sides had really cool views of the landscape. There was a little girl sitting in front of us that kept saying "Whoooooah!" each time there was a cool view of the ocean. I agree. Meanwhile, the rest of the Vietnamese travelers got super personal super fast when they learned Ella could speak Vietnamese.

"Cool, where are you from?"
"Are you married? Why not!?"
"How many children will you have? Why don't you have them now?!"
"What brand of underpants you are wearing?"

All but the last one was a joke. Friendly folks, but Hue is just 80km away. We'll be there in no time, just... 3 hours?!

Oh god. China, I continue to appreciate your train system more and more.

In Hue, we set straight off to see the Imperial Palace. It used to be where the Emperor chilled out and did Emperor stuff until suddenly not. Now it's just sort of a big park with some regalish buildings in them. It's kind of cool for some photos, but I don't think it's worth the $5 entry price. They legit have some cool stuff, and many little corners and hideaways would be a good spot for some wedding planning or Facebook photos. But now so much of the place is either under construction or completely untouched and crumbling. It's nice to have a comparison, but it's somehow not authentic and not pretty at the same time.

The Imperial Palace is quite large though, and we took our time spending close to 3 hours there. We mulled going to one or two of the tombs the next day, the only other attractions of note in Hue. Eventually we decided they were too expensive and remote to be bothered. So instead, we hit up the town to get some local food. The tiny bowls are rice cakes with some shrimp flakes and a pork rind on top. Add fish sauce and enjoy. We also had the banana leaf version with pork, and topped it off with some street onion chicken rice. It reminded me a lot of larb, one of my favorite Thai foods.

And that's about it for Hue. The next morning we got our flight to Hanoi. Originally we were going to do a train, but both that and a bus were around $50 each and 14 hours. Or a one hour plane ride for $10. Plane it is, then!

Travel travel? Travel travel, travel travel.

As previously mentioned, Ella's parents came to visit us here in little old Guangzhou. For Ella's mother, this is by far the furthest she's ever been away from home, and certainly the largest city she's ever been to. Unfortunately on the day they arrived, Ella had a cold. So I trekked down to the Southern Train Station alone to retrieve them. This was quite a test for me and my Chinese, since I didn't have Ella to fall back on. I think my Chinese skill is not expanding, but getting better, if that makes any sense. In that, I'm more comfortable using words and phrases I'm familiar with, and can understand them easier. However I'm not gaining really any new ones. Maybe something to address, but still, we had a pleasant chat on the way. They seemed particularly fascinated by the Cantonese spoken in the metro, commenting on how different it was from Mandarin and playfully mocking it.


They stayed with us for upwards of a week, so we had lots of time to occupy. Fortunately for us, they're not particularly ambitious travelers and were fine going out from about 10-3 most days. Most of what we did we have done before, so I won't rehash things. Honestly I really enjoyed hanging out with them. They're nice folks, and this is certainly the most time we've spent together in one sitting. As far as in-laws go, I did pretty well.

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Alright, I will complain a little. They kind of conform to the "Asian Parent Stereotype" as being incredibly hard to impress. You got a 99/100 on a test? "Why didn't you get 100? Are you dumb?" Not so blatant, but I remember from years ago, my first time meeting them, I brought Dad a fancy bottle of Chivas Regal - since he's a big drinker. His response? "...Hm." To this day I don't think he's opened it, and that should have been a hint, because I really busted my balls to plan out places to see and find food they would like. Every attempt was met with indifference, and it started to get pretty annoying. Until I had a breakthrough - Ella's dad in particular, loves art. We were visiting a smaller art museum and a few times he said "Wa!" and looked around in awe. There we go. From now on, all art, all the time. All future plans were dropped to cram in as many art museums, galleries, and anything creative I could find.

And when Guangzhou ran out, we went on to Hong Kong. Talk about a Beverly Hillbillies situation, Hong Kong was a whole new sort of big for them. But first, we had a whole host of problems to deal with. First, when I booked the hotel I thought the price was HKD. Nope, turns out USD. So I was stuck with a hotel that, while I'm sure quite nice, was about 8x more expensive than estimated. So. That was not fun to learn. Of course, no refunds. After many insistent calls to Agoda, moments after I booked it no less, they finally caved under the condition I rebook another place with them. Another problem to add to the list, Mom and Dad had some problems with their entry visa, as whenever they had their cards made the backside didn't get printed. So... Hong Kong Immigration was not super thrilled with that. After a lot of arguing we eventually made it through, and on to... a lot of places I had already seen. Seriously, you can look at previous Hong Kong blogs here here and here. Pretty much every place in there, we also went to. The only really different thing this time was we went up the Ngong Ping 360 Cable Car, but the end result is the same - big Buddha on the mountain. I liked the cable car, but really I think the bus is better. You get to see a lot more of "rural" Hong Kong, it takes just about as long, and is a fraction of the price.

So after Mom and Dad flew back (first time flying, as well. So many firsts for them!), we took a deep breath, congratulated ourselves on a job well done, and went home.

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Naaaaah, we went to Vietnam! Specifically we flew to Da Nang, around central Vietnam. We then went to a charming beach sort of town called Hoi An. Hoi An is one of my favorite places I've ever traveled to. It is just categorically better that so many other places. Let's run down why:

• The entire center of the city is a UNESCO Word Heritage Site. Everywhere are preserved French Colonial Buildings, still being used.
• It's easily walkable. The entire city is maybe 1.5km wide, 500m tall. The only far place is the beach, which is still only a few minutes by car or bus.
• Everything is cheap cheap cheap. Beers are 50 cents. A meal at a nice restaurant is $2. There is Mexican food, Indian, Chinese, Western, and virtually anything else you could want.
• Going to all the little museums, preserved homes, bridges, and other things costs you $3 a day for a pack of tickets.
• During the night... wow it is really beautiful. They hang these paper lanterns all over the place that gives a cool light in the alleys. They have public acrobatic and martial arts shows. They light candles and put them on the river.

In short, this place is great. Ella originally said we should stay for one night. We wound up staying three, only because we wanted to make sure we saw other places. But I would have been happy to stay longer.

For as cool as Hoi An is, there isn't as much to do during the winter. It's not cold by any means. T-shirt during the day, maybe light jacket at night. Still a little too chilly to go swimming. But there's even a nearby island you can visit, raft up the river, and all sorts of typical water things. If you go in the summer and like to take it slow, you could fill out a week.

For us landlubbers though, we spent a lot of time just wandering around the old town. It seems every little corner has a coffee shop, restaurant, clothing store, or bar. There were tons of photos, meeting other travelers, and just relaxing. Our hostel was awesome, and did free beer and cooking classes in the evening. I'm just going to throw out tons of media, because I love this place.

Everything was perfect, minus the day trip we took. Not that it was terrible, really. I mean, it was a full day for $8. But it wasn't worth it to me. We drove around all morning picking people up, and then drove about 2 hours to My Son (pronounced "Me Shone"). Also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, they advertise it is a mini Angkor Wat. Let's say "mini mini". Honestly its a couple of ruins in a park, and you could finish all of it in 30 minutes if you went alone. Especially after seeing Ayutthaya, Bagan, and the actual Angkor Wat, it was really unimpressive. Yeah there are some cool photos, but it's the same Khmer style you see across a lot of SE Asia.

Also, our guide had one of the weirdest English accents ever. I could barely understand him, and I don't mean to judge - well, I do a little. English is hard, but if your job is a tour guide for English tourists, you should be better at it. He pointed out the spots that were destroyed by "American bomb", and it got to be so ubiquitous, his funny accent combined with our boredom led us to joking amongst ourselves, blaming "American bomb" for watery beer, the weather, and traffic.

So when we got back, our guide hopped off a bit out of town. He said when the bus stops, turn right. Whatever that means. But we found out, when the bus stopped on the side of the road about 2km outside of town and kicked everyone off.

Wait, what? You spend hours picking everyone else up in the morning, and then decide, "Nah. Going back is too far." Anyway, silly day overall. At least we got an inside joke, and even a slightly underwhelming tour could not make Hoi An disappointing. Seriously, I love this place. But next is another holiday destination, back to Da Nang.