Ha Long Bay

This past weekend Henna and I visited Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was an absolutely gorgeous vacation weekend. (Get ready for a lot of pictures...)

Day 1: We left Hanoi early on Friday morning to take the 3.5 hour drive to catch our boat. Once we boarded, we had the first of many amazing meals. We had so many great choices! We ate family style so we got to try it all: Chicken, pork, fish, scrambled eggs, morning glory, rice, french fries, fried spring rolls, chili sauce, stir fry etc... For dinner, we even got to learn how to make our own spring rolls which was quite fun. 

After cruising  through Bai Tu Long Bay and Halong Bay, we visited its largest cave, Hang Sung Sot (Surprising Cave). It was huge!

Next, we ventured out on a kayak tour through a limestone tunnel grotto called Hang Huon and even went swimming off the boat. We spent the rest of the evening relaxing on the boat and enjoying the absolutely stunning scenery. 

Day 2: Our first stop of the day was a hike up to the top of Titop Mountain. It was a lot of stairs! But the view from the top over the surround bays was worth it. We even got to go swimming for the second time off the beach. 

Next, we cruised over to Cat Ba Island. Cat Ba is the largest island in the area. On the island we went biking and visited the Viet Hai village. The original plan was to do some hiking, but a flash storm flooded our path. That's what you get when you visit a tropical country in the rainy season. The weather changes quickly here though, so the beautiful sunshine quickly returned in time for another kayak/swimming excursion. Once we arrived back on Cat Ba, we had free time to explore the touristy part of the island and spend the night relaxing and watching the sunset over the bay. After dinner we even splurged for the banana chocolate crepes! 

Day 3: Our final day was spent cruising through the bay. We had an incredible weekend!

Duy's Family

Last Thursday I got to hang out with Duy (St. Olaf friend from Hanoi) and his family. It was great to see them all again. Dinner was absolutely delicious!

Perfume Pagoda

 This past Sunday I travel to Perfume Pagoda with 3 other volunteers - Sarah (Australian), Laura (Australian) & Alex (American). After a two hour bus ride from Hanoi, we took an hour long boat ride out to the area where the 2 pagodas are. The boat ride was absolutely beautiful, but incredibly sweaty!  With three applications of sunscreen and two doses of bug spray, we were rocking the Vietnamese August temperatures. I only got slightly burnt :D

Once we arrived, we took a cable car up the mountain to visit the first pagoda - Perfume Pagoda. The ground below us was incredibly lush!

Perfume Pagoda is located in the Huong Tich Cave. There is a small pagoda inside as well as many rocks which visitors touch for good luck in a particular area (financial success, children etc). 

Ba Vi, Vietnam

This past weekend I spent leading a summer camp for the same group I volunteered with in Haiphong. We spend the weekend leading games (Sharks & Minnows, Ninja, sack races, stations game), teaching about deforestation, preforming skits, hiking, and leading team building games (human knot, 3 legged race). It was quite fun hanging out with this group of kids. Plus, the camp was located in Ba Vi, a national park around 70 kilometers from Hanoi. It was absolutely beautiful!

During one of the free periods, Daniel (another volunteer with IVHQ), Tu (local volunteer with SJ Vietnam) and I went hiking. It was absolutely gorgeous to go hiking through the national park. It was quite lush! The forest was covered in young bamboo (which you can eat-and we have!) and fully mature bamboo which was so cool.

Freeman's Visit

I'm a bit behind on my blog posting, so get excited for multiple posts coming soon.

Let's begin with a couple of weekends ago with a visit from my family friends - Arlys, Becca & Josh. Since they only spent a couple of days in Hanoi, we were quite busy! So get ready for a lot of pictures... :D

One of our first stops was a visit to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum and museum. Ho Chi Minh was a Vietnamese communist party leader. Apparently he desired to have his body cremated, but they decided to embalm his body instead. Tourists can see his body (or potentially a fake version for protection, but that's speculation...) and then tour his complex. One of the things we learned during our visit was that News of his death was withheld from the North Vietnamese public for nearly 48 hours because he had died on the anniversary of the founding of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. 

Mausoleum from the outside

We also got to visit "One Pillar Pagoda" - one of the iconic pagodas of Vietnam.  

We also got to visit many other temples and pagodas around Hanoi. The detail on the woodwork and metalwork was incredible. 

It was quite entertaining introducing the Freeman's to Vietnamese traffic. I've spent six weeks here so far, and now although I still think that the streets are absolutely crazy, I've come to expect it. Vietnamese people are pretty open minded about what is appropriate to carry on the back of their motorbikes. Here are a couple of examples...

Another stop was back to the political prison (see earlier post). That night, their tour guide took us to meet a couple who had been imprisoned in the prison. Despite being 85, this woman (on left below) had spunk and could barely wait for translation before tellings us story upon story of her time in the prison. For example, she told us how she met up husband in the prison due to their shared passions, songs they would sing for Ho Chi Minh/Vietnam, and the various torture devices used. It was incredible to hear her stories after we had walked through the walls of the prison just hours before.

We also enjoyed a water puppets show. The puppets are controlled through a combination of rods and strings to create a series of mini shows. 

And a visit to the Phở bò restaurant for dinner!

It was so great getting to see Becca, Josh and Arlys!