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.