my country

i promise that when i get back to hk i won't do these recaps so often. it's just that in a third world country on vacation, it's not that easy to have a good internet connection. so here we go!

24/3: we woke up super early and headed to the airport for hue. when we got to hue, we met our tour guide and immediately started touring. we saw the same things ive seen before but having and english speaking guide was key. we went to two emperors tombs, the imperial city, thien mu pagoda and to a traditional folk song show boat ride. it was a lot of touring temples and things that began to look the same. but the architecture and the use of yin and yang within it are pretty neat-o. or as jbo and i would say, super cool.

25/3: we left beautiful hue for da nang and our tour guide immediately brought us to hoi an. there we toured a silk factory (complete with worm farms and all) and i felt bad for the worms, even though they are just worms. but they could have been butterflies instead of being boiled for their cocoon. shit man. then we went to the old village of hoi and saw some old house (really that's all it was to me), the japanese covered bridge, a chinese assembly hall (which was neato frito) and then had coffee and pancakes on the water. i also met an old man that i fell in love with and so i gave him some money because he was awesome and because i took his picture. then it was dinner (i also fell in love with the waitr) and that's all.

26/3: marble mountain! it was only 200 steps but we had pitstops to admire buddha statues. then we went to the marble factory where they make tons of crazy elaborate statues and i bought a little buddha for my room. i think this one is siddhartha, the original. then we went to the museum of the cham people in vietnam and looked at their relics or artifacts or whatever. then it was time for yet another flight, this time from danang to hanoi. from hanoi we drove 3 hours to ha long bay and ate dinner. michael and i walked through the night market, had fruit at club 18, got foot massages and went to sleep.

27/3: our tour guide, nicknamed leo for his lion eyes, brought us to our private boat in ha long bay. we cruised and spelunked for four hours and had lunch on the boat. the scenery there is just so amazing, i could go back a few more times. i could do without the bat caves though, oh god. well we drove back to hanoi and went to the fiditour office to book another tour to sapa. kevin met us at the internet cafe we go to and brought us to have cha ca at cha ca la vong on cha ca st. HA. it was so yummy! then we booked it to the train station, hopped on le train and went to sleep. exciting night, i know.

28/3: sapa turned out to be amazing! we sat in the hotel for an hour or two before visiting cat ca village and trekking through the terraced rice paddies. alogn the paddies there were tons of baby pigs and goats and cows and buffalo and chickens and doggies. i love baby animals. or even animals in general. i sat next to a buffalo and he didnt even get mad. :) then we went to a mountain and got an awesome view of the city of sapa which is more like hills and houses and awesomeness. the climb wasn't too bad and the view was very rewarding. on the way up we met two ostriches, so cool. they are definitely dinosaurs. i love dinosaurs. then we had the rest of the night free so we walked around the market and called it a super early night.

29/3: city tour at 9:30 and it only lasted like 30 minutes. so after being bombarded by hmong ladies selling stuff, i pinky swore two of them that i would buy something later on. those tricky ladies. then jeremy asked the guide to take us to a valley or anything we could hike through. so jeremy, michael and i jumped down a bunch of terraces and it was sort of a difficult task because each one was almost my size and that's a far jump for that many jumps. michael decided to head back up to the village and i was determined on going further so jeremy and i climbed down and ran into a tourist on the path. the nice guy from australia had a guide with him and let us follow them to another village, but we only went half way because of time constraints. we trekked to a small waterfall type river thing and sat in it on top of rocks to cool our feet off. afterwards, jeremy and i hiked back by ourselves and boy was i tired and dehydrated! we got to the top, had a bite at a cafe michael was at and then headed to another village. we saw a house of one of the villagers and they had buffalo meat and hooves just chillin out. (eew).

the place was super dirty, there was an open fire and tons of mosquitos and smelliness. i can't imagine living like that. i suppose they don't know anything else and would think our way of living is absolutely nuts too. who needs all that luxury? (i like it) then we attempted to go in a cave but these little shits wanted to charge us for it and we didn't pay because its a public cave and so the shits turned the lights out on us. the only good thing aout the cave (besides it being a cave) was that it was freezing cold.

afterwards we headed back to lao cai and had dinner. we had to spend some time before the train departed so we spend an hour on the computer, which happens to make time pass by quite quickly. all aboard and we went to bed.

30/3: shit shit shit. it's now 8:30am, ive been up for three and a half hours and i am tired, groggy, bug bitten to the max, sunburned for the first time ever, smelly, sweaty, a cockroach just ran by my hand and i can't check into the guesthouse until 12 so i cannot shower for another 3.5 hours. fuck. there are these really lame tourists here who are fighting with mgmt over 6000d which is like....idk, less than 50 cents. and also i want to put my contacts in because sweaty glasses are gross. and my pants are ripped from trekking into that damn cave yesterday. so now i am crabby. but on the UPside, i just spent like an hour talking to nancy and although i now miss her more, i love her so much and it was a good talk! :) linda and eric attempted to gchat with me but theyre stupid joint account pissed me off and then they had to go back to work and it was 'game time' for eric. maybe ill call kevin. i dont like hanoi today! :( wahhhh.