vietnam.

So after our freezing night in the airport and a 2 hour flight we were finally in Hanoi, Vietnam.  When we first got to the airport we had to go to immigration to get our visas on arrival.  We had ordered our visas online through a website and we thought it would take just a few minutes to get our visas and we would be on our way. Boy were we wrong.  Somehow my passport and kianna’s passport got lost or misplaced or ignored or something and it ended up taking FOREVER to get our visas.  Literally 2 whole other planes came in and everyone got their passports before finally over an hour later they called out our names and we could finally go to the baggage claim and get our bags.  We had arranged for some guy to pick us up at the airport and drive us to our guesthouse.  When we first stepped out of the airport I couldn’t believe how cold it was!  I didn’t realize that southeast asia gets cold and was shocked that I was freezing!  Fortunately I had just bought a sweatshirt and had that to put on, but I didn’t bring any pants with me so I knew I’d have to go out and buy some ASAP.  The guy was super nice and friendly…..so friendly that he asked me out on a date within 20 minutes of meeting us, even though he told us that he had a wife and a kid.  I told him sorry I don’t play that game and told him sorry.  When we got to the city we checked into our guesthouse (which was soooo nice) dropped our bags, got into bed and didn’t move until dinner time.  We were TIRED and cold.  After several hours in bed we finally got up to venture out to find dinner.  I didn’t really know much about Vietnamese food, but kianna has an obsession with noodle soups and was all over pho, so we searched the streets trying to find a good place to get a big bowl of pho.  We went to a random little hole in the wall place and had a bowl of chicken pho.  While pho is really delicious, I did not find it filling at all so I was always hungry in Vietnam!  Fortunately, because the French colonized this country, there were baguettes being sold EVERYWHERE.  I don’t get to eat bread that often in Thailand, so I ate bread every chance I got on this trip!  

 at the airport getting ready to leave for vietnam.

We spent the net few days checking out the city, getting lost, eating delicious pastries, drinking 50cent beer.  We got lost A LOT in this city, and normally this wouldn’t be that big of a deal, because in Thailand I get lost all the time, but I just stand around looking lost and pathetic and more often than not someone will come up and help me out.  Not in Vietnam.  The people were not overly friendly or willing to help out; it was a very different experience and I don’t think I ever really got used to the stares and how not very helpful the people were.  I got stared at a lot in Vietnam and not just quick little stares, but like long full on glares.  I mean I get stared at Thailand, but this was a very different kind of stare, it’s hard to explain how it was different, but it was not the friendly “I’m curious” stare I get from people in Thailand, it was more of a “you’re different and strange” stare.  I walked around with my hood over my head most of the time so I wouldn’t stick out so much and get so many stares.  This is nothing against the Vietnamese people, it was just a very different attitude they had towards white people and very different than what I had experienced in Thailand, so it took some getting used to.

 who knew vietnam went all the way down to australia?

 love our roooom.

 night out enjoying 50cent beers.

 hanoi.

After a few days of wandering and checking out the sites and indulging in bread in Hanoi, we decided to venture out and spend a few nights out in Halong Bay.  We found a travel agency near the guesthouse we were staying at a booked a 2 night stay—one night on a junk boat in the bay and another night in a hotel on an island.  Although we didn’t have the best weather (overcast and cold) Halong bay was still gorgeous and we had a great time.  We met a French Canadian couple and hung out with them and a guy from Australia most of the time.  We cruised the bay in our junk boat and then went to a cave and got some amazing views of the bay.  We spent the night playing drinking games with our new friends and had a great time.  The next morning most of the people on our boat were going back to Hanoi, so they schlepped the 3 of us off onto another boat (literally they had us jump onto another junk boat while out in the middle of the bay) and we joined a new group of people.  The boat pulled up to Caat Ba island and we grabbed a minibus to a national park where we set off on a pretty intense hike.  We had no idea that we were going to be hiking that day and were a little unprepared, but after a few hours of scrambling up a fairly steep mountain, we reached a clearing and had a beautiful view of these lush, green hills and of the tiny villages below.  After our hike the minibus dropped us off at our hotel and the girls and I spent the afternoon catching up on sleep, eating more bread, and relaxing.  The next morning we took the boat back across Halong bay hopped on a bus and were back in Hanoi later that afternoon. 

 halong bay.

 alysha and i on the back of the junk boat.

 our super spacious room.

 view from our hike on caat ba island.

That night we booked another trip with a travel agency—this time we were going to go check out the Perfume Pagoda. Perfume Pagoda, also known as Chua Huong, is located in Huong son (Perfume mountain) 70 km southwest of Hanoi.  This place isn’t just one temple, but a cluster of temples and shrines that are all located on the mountain.  Even though it isn’t that far from Hanoi, this is a pilgrimage that attracts people from remote areas of Vietnam where Westerners are not a common site—so I stuck out even more. It starts out like your average tour in your typical air-conditioned tourist van. The van dropped us at the river lined with boats ready to transport our group up the river. The boats were these little metal rinky-dink row boats that these older Vietnamese women rowed.  It took about an hour on the boats to get to the mountain where the pagoda is and the scenery on the way there was beautiful.  Green mountains surrounded us on both sides and it was really peaceful. There were lots of other boats around us loaded up with Vietnamese families who were making the trek out to the pagoda and they all felt the need to yell “hello” to us and point and stare at the group of white people making their way up the river.

The main site at the mountain is this cave/grotto where hundreds and hundreds of people crowd into to offer prayers.  To get to the cave you have to climb up an insane amount of stairs/switchbacks….so being the lazy people that we are, we opted to use the gondola to get up the mountain and would walk down on our way back.  I felt a little bad about taking the gondola because all around us were little old ladies who were slowly but surely climbing up the mountain.  I’m not sure how they made it, but they did and I was impressed!  The cave was impressive, but way too overwhelming and crowded, so we looked around for a bit, before starting on our trek down the mountain.  All along the path down were vendors selling anything and everything!  Little Buddha shrines, food, drinks, books, clothes….everything!  We made it down the mountain without buying too many little trinkets.  We still had a bit of time to kill before we had to meet up with the rest of our group so we found a few plastic chairs and busted out my deck of cards and played some games.  The Vietnamese people thought this was hilarious and gathered around the 3 of us as we sat there playing.  At one point we had about 10 men huddled around us, watching us trying to figure out what kind of game we were playing.  They tried to get into the action and ask if we wanted to play a gambling game….but we politely declined!  After a row boat ride back and a 2 hour van ride we were back in Hanoi!  We were exhausted from our long day so we grabbed some dinner at a little restaurant, indulged in some 50cent beers before heading back to our room.

The next day was our last day in Vietnam—we had booked a bus for that evening to take us to Vientiane, Laos.  We spent the day shopping, writing postcards, calling our families, and stocking up on snacks for our 24+ hour bus ride.  We got picked up by a van at about 5:00 that evening and the van was PACKED.  Every seat was filled by the time we got picked up so we had to squish into the nooks and crannies of the van—I had to sit perched on top of the luggage in the trunk of the van!  We started talking to a few other people in the van and found out that one of the guys was a UCSB alumni as well!  Small world!  20 minutes late we were shuttled out of the van and were split into 2 different buses, so sadly we had to part ways with our fellow UCSBer.  When we got on the bus we were shocked to see where we were going to be stuck for the next 24 hours….it was bad.  The bus was basically a huge mattress with little dividers to keep you from rolling on to the person next to you.  Fortunately the guys next to us were really nice so we didn’t have to deal with creepers sitting next to us (one of them looked like harry potter so I was happy).  The bus broke down several times throughout the night—one time they attempted to fix whatever was wrong with the bus with a butter knife and a lighter.  But after 20+ hours, a border crossing and some stolen ritz crackers we were finally in LAOS.

summer break: the kohs.

So I’m sitting back at my desk at school where I’m supposed to be getting lesson plans ready, preparing worksheets and getting ready for a new school year, but all I can do is think about the past two months and what an amazing time I’ve had.  I’ve had some of the best times of my life these past two months and I feel so lucky to have been able to experience all that I did!  But now comes the hard part of trying to remember it all and trying to share the journey with everyone!  So I guess the best place to start is at the beginning…

So after kianna and alysha got to Thailand, they headed down to koh phi phi for a few days.  I had to stay at school for a few more days so I could help out with the kindergarten graduation, so we made plans to meet up that Sunday in kohl anta (another island down south).  Graduation was lots of fun and the kids looked adorable dressed in their caps and gowns and the English play went fabulously, so all in all it was a great success and I’m really happy I stuck around.  Saturday night I grabbed a bus down to krabi, and from there I got a minivan to take me to koh lanta!  I didn’t know much about kohl anta before arriving, but I wanted to go to a new island and check out a new island so we figured we at least go for a couple nights just to check it out and if we didn’t like it we’d just head somewhere else.  Well our couple night stay turned into 4 nights there we loved it so much.  Koh lanta is probably my favorite island in Thailand….i absolutely loved it there!  Less touristy and crowded than koh phi phi, but still beautiful blue water and lots to do!  We spent our days lounging on the beach, hiking to waterfalls, eating lots of yummy food and drinking fruit shakes and renting motorbikes that we rode around the entire island.  Driving motorbikes was probably one of the highlights of the entire trip!  I remember driving the bike, looking around me at the clear blue sky, the beautiful ocean on one side of me and green meadows on the other side and I just smiled….life is good.  Monkeys run all over the island too, so sometimes we’d have to come to an abrupt stop in the middle of the road to let monkeys cross the road and get out of the way.  Early one morning we took our motorbikes out to the bottom tip of the island and went to this neat little lighthouse where we had an amazing view…. i just can’t get over how beautiful this island was!  Loved it.  

After a few days we decided we needed to move on to somewhere new and headed up the coast to a town called khuraburi where we spent the night before catching a speedboat out to the koh surin.  The surin islands are 5 little islands that make up the mu koh surin national park.  There’s no hotels on the island, only a few little bungalows and tents.  On our last day in koh lanta we met up with another girl, Julia, who is from three rivers and was a roommate of another friend of mine from UCSB.  The 4 of us decided to rent a big tent for the week and rough it out camping on the beach.  koh surin was a beautiful place and its been kept nice because Thailand hasn’t let it become taken over by hotels, restaurants, bars, etc.  There is a big mess hall on each side of the island so this is where we ate all of our meals.  While the food was really good, it got frustrating because they were usually out of a lot of stuff….such as chicken….or noodles…or fruit.  So we ate a lot of friend rice and lots of papaya salad...it was delicious, but got a little old after 5 days!  Oh well, mai pen rai.  We spent our days snorkeling in the crystal clear water, chasing after nemos, swimming with baby sharks, laying out on the deserted beach, reading through out supply of books, playing sudoku.  In the evenings it would usually pour rain for an hour or so, so we would sit in the mess hall and play cards, read and relax.  Basically, we just sat around and did nothing on this island.  It was great.  After 5 nights though we needed to switch things up so we headed back to the mainland and hopped on a bus to another national park, khao sak.

Khao sak national park is home to the oldest evergreen rainforest in the world, it has huge limestone mountains that shoot staring up in the air, caves, wild animals, and it looks like something straight out of Jurassic park.  When we got off the bus we were bombarded by these thai guys who were trying to convince us to stay at their guesthouse.  Super overwhelming, so we kinda just chose the one that offered us the cheapest deal.  Little did we know that the price was so cheap because we were going to be sharing it with other roommates….a lovely bat, a large lizard, some friendly bugs, and so many more.  Needless to say we only spent one night there before moving on to somewhere that was a bit more expensive, but we had the room to ourselves.   After changing rooms we headed to the park entrance and headed up a trail that went to a series of waterfalls.  We started fairly early in the morning, but it got HOT fast.  We continued hiking for a good 2-3 hours before suddenly I hear alysha screaming!  We hadn’t really been paying attention to our surroundings, but when alysha looked down at her shoe she saw a leech trying to latch on to her!  We froke out and all of us started checking our socks and shoes to see if any of those little blood suckers were on us!  We tried to continue on the hike, but the ground was getting wetter, there were more leeches and we just kept getting attacked!  Finally we had enough of getting attacked so we hurried back down the mountain and called it a day with hiking.  We were drenched in sweat by the time we were done because we had hustled down so quickly, so we went and washed up before heading out for a late lunch.  We were just about to eat at a little pizza place on the main road when I looked up and saw my friend Chelsea, another teacher in Thailand, walking down the road with her friend Katie!  We spent the rest of the afternoon/evening catching up with them and hanging out on our porch watching the rain pour down around us.

The next morning we got up early because we had signed up for a jungle trek, kayaking, cave trekking adventure!  The 6 of us drove in the back of a truck for about an hour before we reached the Cheow Larn Lake.  On our way to the park our driver stopped to pick up some food and water for us, when he went to start the car it wouldn’t turn start!  We ended up having to get out of the truck and pushed the truck while he tried to start it.  I’m sure all the thais got a laugh watching us push this little pickup down the street.  When we reached the lake we boarded a longtail boat and began our cruise around the lake; the lake was beautiful and there were gorgeous limestone mountains jetting right out of the water all around us!  After about an hour we stopped at a little floating restaurant and immediately jumped in the lake to cool off.  We were able to rent some kayaks and paddled around the area a bit.  We could see monkeys in the trees, huge clusters of butterflies flew around us, and just gorgeous scenery.  Lunch was delicious and we stuffed ourselves with sweet and sour chicken, stir fried veggies, and fresh fruit.  After lunch it was time for our jungle/cave trekking!  We had no idea what to expect and we weren’t really prepared for anything to athletic since we all were in flimsy flip flops.  Lek, our guide, made us little straps for our flip flops so that they would be connected to our feet so that helped a bit, but they still weren’t very secure.  The trek through the jungle was beautiful, it really looked like the set of Jurassic park…I was just waiting for a dinosaur to pop out at us!  The only difficult part of the jungle trekking was that the ground was wet from rain the previous day so our flip flops kept getting stuck in the mud.  After about 45 minutes we reached the beginning of the cave; Lek told us that we would be spending about 45 minutes in the cave and we honestly had no idea what to expect.  They had told us that the cave had water in it and that at some parts the water might come up to our knees, but nothing to worry about.  Yeah right.  We didn’t really think about how the cave would be dark inside, so the only lights we had were our guides’, so one light in the front and one in the back, and the light that came from our phones.  As we got deeper and deeper into the cave it became pitch black and we literally couldn’t see a thing.  Lek flashed his light up to the ceiling and we all screamed in terror when we saw hundreds of bats hanging from the ceiling!  Then Lek shined his light on a rock that was nearby and we all screamed again when we saw an ENORMOUS spider!  Literally the thing was as big as my hand; now we were terrified of everything around us!  It was hard to walk through the cave since we couldn’t see too well, we didn’t want to touch any of the rocks around us since we didn’t know what kind of creatures might be on them, the unevenness of the rocks, and our flip flops so we all were falling, but fortunately no one got hurt.  At one point in the cave we came to this portion of the cave where the water was above our heads and we literally had to swim through the cave while holding onto a piece of rope….so sketchy and scary, but we made it through ok!  We finally saw the exit of the cave and were so happy to see light…but as soon as we stepped out of the cave we realized that it was POURING and we still had to walk for an hour to get back to our boat!  It was actually pretty fun being in the rain and we had a good time trekking back out of the jungle.  There were a few leeches that attacked us, but nothing horrible.  The hardest part was that the path turned to mud so we kept getting stuck and losing our sandals and falling into the mud; we looked pretty ridiculous. After all of us made it on the boat, we ventured back to the restaurant to wait out the rain a bit. It finally stopped but since we were soaked it was a chilly ride back; however, it was really pretty with the fog resting over the mountains and the clouds surrounding the trees and mountains. It made for a different view on our way back. It was quite the St. Patrick’s Day spent in the jungle.  Lek told us to stop by their shop after dinner; he braided each of us a ring made out of bamboo. We were all pretty exhausted from our long day of trekking so we headed to bed early.

We woke up early as usual and headed to Koh Phangan for the infamous Full Moon party. It was a long day of travelling; we took a van from Khao Sok to Surat Thani; a bus from Surat Thani to Donsok where we caught a car ferry to Koh Phangan. The weather was not so good today, making it rough seas and a not so fun 3 hour ferry ride. There were numerous kids who were getting sea sick and it was not fun to be around… we were reallllllly happy when we finally reached the pier and got off on koh phangan!  We made it to our bungalows on bann thai beach and met up with all the other girls.  There was a huge group of us and we took up pretty much the entire bungalows!  Altogether there was about 16 of us….most were other OEG girls that I teach with, and a lot of us had friends that were visiting and were with us so it was great to see/meet everyone and catch up!  The next night, the 19^th, was the night of the full moon party!  We all dressed in clothes we wouldn’t mind getting paint on and headed out to Haad Rin for the madness.  We lucked out and we were actually participating in the super full moon party since the moon was slightly bigger or fuller that night than it usually is.  There were tons of people everywhere; I think there was about 20-30,000 people on the beach.  It reminded me a lot of Halloween at UCSB or floatopia.  It was a really fun night filled with dancing, translucent body paint, fire shows, a fire slide, and watching the sunrise over the beach.  At about 8am we decided to call it a night and headed out for some breakfast before going back to our bungalows to pass out for the rest of the afternoon.  After sleeping away most of the day we all met up and talked about our evenings and chilled out.  After dinner we had a slide show of the full moon pictures everyone had taken the night before.  Allie busted out Gianda, her panda bear loud speakers that she has connected to her ipod and we all laughed at the crazy and silly pictures everyone had taken.  It was a great way to end out weekend together since a lot of us wouldn’t be seeing one another for a while since we were all about to start on our own travels.  It was sad to say bye to the girls since it would be the last time that I would see two of them, Chelsea and Olivia, since their 5 months of teaching were over.  It was a great way to end out time together and I’m so glad we were all able to meet up and spend that weekend together.

The next morning we woke up and hopped on the ferry to an overnight bus to take us back to Bangkok.  We had a day to kill in Bangkok before our flight left for Vietnam so we spent the day shopping in siam, seeing the worst movie ever (red riding hood) and shoving our faces before heading to the airport to sleep before our 6am flight.  Our night in the airport was probably one of my most miserable nights ever!  The airport was freezing, the benches were hard and we got no sleep!  We were so thankful when we could finally check-in and get on our plane to Hanoi, Vietnam!

love you all!