Here are photos from the southern half of Vietnam....
My South-East Asia adventure has come to an end; tonight I fly back to Australia to figure out what comes next and Tomer will continue his trip in Asia before going home to Israel. Enjoy the photos and Chag Sameach again to those doing Passover...
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Warning: Longest Blog Entry Ever Because It Hasn't Been Updated in Almost a Month
So I haven’t written on this thingy in a really long time….In an attempt to catch up, I’ve copied and pasted bits of emails that I’ve sent in the last month to describe where I’ve been. Forgive the horrendous typing, and read until you get bored…..Love Mara
March 12—Chiang Mai, Thailand
“…..i have SO many mosquito bites....i guess i should start wearing deet....:( SO here i am in chiang mai! today i was actually supposed to go help out at this school that the ngo i contacted is refurbishing but i oculdn't find it. the woman told me what street it was on but i couldn't find anything. i asked this old dude who turns out to be an old hippie from chicago if he knew where it was, so he pointed out their building (locked) and told me the place is run by aging hippies like himself. oh, aging hippies. Anyhoos, thats kind of sad so i'm just writing an email to her to maybe meet up again? hm.
so anyways, despite my awkward antisocial tendencies, i actually made friends yesterday. the first two days i was here i actually didn't want to talk to anyone, i was really enjoying being alone. then yesterday, i was like, okay i'm bored. there were two north american dudes about my age eating at the guesthouse, so i went up to them and was just like, mind if i join you? they turned out to be from right outside toronto so we had stuff to talk about, then two female friends of theirs randomly showed up at the guesthouse. so i persuaded the two boys to come to a museum with me, and the four of us went out to a bar last night. arent you proud of me? i'm proud of myself for talking to strangers.”
(Note: I never managed to get in touch with the woman, I scheduled a visit to volunteer at a dog shelter outside Chiang Mai, but the day before I burnt my leg when I brushed up against a still hot motorbike exhaust pipe. It turned into a pus bubble and I didn’t want to risk infection by being around dogs....so in the end I never actually volunteered! But being on my own was enough an experience, I always thought I would hate traveling alone but I learned that I can totally do it and it’s even enjoyable.)
March 21—Bangkok, Thailand
“i'm back at the red sons inn, cozy, air-conditioned and with rubber sheets. I took the night bus from chiang mai into bangkok on thursday night and when we got to bangkok, they dropped us off a few streets over from ko san road and tried to trick us poor sleepy backpackers that we were kilometers away and we'd have to take a tuk tuk. I almost did, but i met this hippie girl who went to nyu and now lives in la, and she knew where we were and we walked, then we split a room to crash in….”
(The next day I met up with the two Israelis that I did the Great Ocean Road Trip with in Melbourne. David headed off north to Chiang Mai with some other Israelis and Tomer became my new travel buddy for my last few weeks in Asia.)
March 31—Pakse, Laos
“it's me! i'm in pakse at the moment, in southern laos. so the update: after a few days in bangkok hanging on khao san, eating at the israeli restaurant, and seeing ayutthaya, tomer and i headed for the border and crossed into laos. we spent a couple of nights in pakse and did a tour of this area then we spent two nights in the four thousand islands, on one of the islands that seems popular with the tourists. its still quite undeveloped, i think outside of pakse, which is a proper town, this is the most rural and least developed place i have ever been too. the island has no electricity, save for some generators to refrigerate food, and we got a bungalow that had generator power from 6-10 pm. so no fan, no air-con. yikes. i never realized what a westernized lady i was....it would have been fun if it werent sweltering hot. we went swimming in the mekong to cool off and i was trying to avoid putting my face in the water in a perhaps misguided attempt to avoid any water parasites that i'm scared of...but then discovered that the shower water was pumped directly from the river anyways so it didn't matter. We rented bicycles one day and biked to a waterfall, all in all it was really nice but almost unbearably hot and humid.”
April 2—Hue, Vietnam
“…then we took a bus from pakse across the border into vietnam. we went for the local bus option because we wanted to go at ni9ght, and the local bus i took in laos the first time wasn't too bad. that, however was only four hours. the bus to vietnam was like a 17 hour ordeal with women transporting baby birds, abouta thousand pounds of rice stuffed in sacks under every seat, random hour long stops that seemed to serve no purpose other than to let the bus driver watch an episode of who wants to be a millionaire at a roadside restaurant......mostly it wasn't too bad, but tomer realized after we arrived in the city of hue that someone on the bus had stolen his camera and cellphone....bad news. but we survived, and i'm currently in hue right now, it's a lovely city. tomorrow we'll head south and seder will be in ho chi minh city.”
So now April 7, Today! I’m in Nha Trang, Vietnam, and we’ve been making our way south. In Hue, (pronounced Hoo-way) we went to see the citadel, where it used to be the royal center of Vietnam. I really loved it, I mentioned before the architecture and art in Vietnam is so different from the rest of Southeast Asia, because of their historical closeness with China. We also saw a pagoda and a tomb of one of the former emperors, all with beautiful architecture. From Hue we went to my favorite city so far—Hoi An. Sigh…. Hoi An. So lovely. Hoi An is well known amongst tourists because it was in its time a major trading port and its status as a World Heritage site has kept the old part of the city intact; the style is a mixture of Vietnamese/Chinese old homes and French colonial architecture. At night, the whole place is lit up with tons of Chinese lanterns, and it’s seriously magical. Hoi An is also famous for their tailors, you can’t walk two feet without someone trying to entice you into their shop. I bought a winter peacoat and pair of nice black pants from a very convincing woman named Emma…I love her. I spent a day exploring some of the sites in the old town on my own (apparently not everyone is excited by a place called “the museum of trade ceramics”) and it cemented my love of Hoi An. Now we’re in Nha Trang, a beach town where we took a tour boat out to the islands off the coast today, with sunburn to prove it; tonight we take the night bus to Saigon. Time flies….
March 12—Chiang Mai, Thailand
“…..i have SO many mosquito bites....i guess i should start wearing deet....:( SO here i am in chiang mai! today i was actually supposed to go help out at this school that the ngo i contacted is refurbishing but i oculdn't find it. the woman told me what street it was on but i couldn't find anything. i asked this old dude who turns out to be an old hippie from chicago if he knew where it was, so he pointed out their building (locked) and told me the place is run by aging hippies like himself. oh, aging hippies. Anyhoos, thats kind of sad so i'm just writing an email to her to maybe meet up again? hm.
so anyways, despite my awkward antisocial tendencies, i actually made friends yesterday. the first two days i was here i actually didn't want to talk to anyone, i was really enjoying being alone. then yesterday, i was like, okay i'm bored. there were two north american dudes about my age eating at the guesthouse, so i went up to them and was just like, mind if i join you? they turned out to be from right outside toronto so we had stuff to talk about, then two female friends of theirs randomly showed up at the guesthouse. so i persuaded the two boys to come to a museum with me, and the four of us went out to a bar last night. arent you proud of me? i'm proud of myself for talking to strangers.”
(Note: I never managed to get in touch with the woman, I scheduled a visit to volunteer at a dog shelter outside Chiang Mai, but the day before I burnt my leg when I brushed up against a still hot motorbike exhaust pipe. It turned into a pus bubble and I didn’t want to risk infection by being around dogs....so in the end I never actually volunteered! But being on my own was enough an experience, I always thought I would hate traveling alone but I learned that I can totally do it and it’s even enjoyable.)
March 21—Bangkok, Thailand
“i'm back at the red sons inn, cozy, air-conditioned and with rubber sheets. I took the night bus from chiang mai into bangkok on thursday night and when we got to bangkok, they dropped us off a few streets over from ko san road and tried to trick us poor sleepy backpackers that we were kilometers away and we'd have to take a tuk tuk. I almost did, but i met this hippie girl who went to nyu and now lives in la, and she knew where we were and we walked, then we split a room to crash in….”
(The next day I met up with the two Israelis that I did the Great Ocean Road Trip with in Melbourne. David headed off north to Chiang Mai with some other Israelis and Tomer became my new travel buddy for my last few weeks in Asia.)
March 31—Pakse, Laos
“it's me! i'm in pakse at the moment, in southern laos. so the update: after a few days in bangkok hanging on khao san, eating at the israeli restaurant, and seeing ayutthaya, tomer and i headed for the border and crossed into laos. we spent a couple of nights in pakse and did a tour of this area then we spent two nights in the four thousand islands, on one of the islands that seems popular with the tourists. its still quite undeveloped, i think outside of pakse, which is a proper town, this is the most rural and least developed place i have ever been too. the island has no electricity, save for some generators to refrigerate food, and we got a bungalow that had generator power from 6-10 pm. so no fan, no air-con. yikes. i never realized what a westernized lady i was....it would have been fun if it werent sweltering hot. we went swimming in the mekong to cool off and i was trying to avoid putting my face in the water in a perhaps misguided attempt to avoid any water parasites that i'm scared of...but then discovered that the shower water was pumped directly from the river anyways so it didn't matter. We rented bicycles one day and biked to a waterfall, all in all it was really nice but almost unbearably hot and humid.”
April 2—Hue, Vietnam
“…then we took a bus from pakse across the border into vietnam. we went for the local bus option because we wanted to go at ni9ght, and the local bus i took in laos the first time wasn't too bad. that, however was only four hours. the bus to vietnam was like a 17 hour ordeal with women transporting baby birds, abouta thousand pounds of rice stuffed in sacks under every seat, random hour long stops that seemed to serve no purpose other than to let the bus driver watch an episode of who wants to be a millionaire at a roadside restaurant......mostly it wasn't too bad, but tomer realized after we arrived in the city of hue that someone on the bus had stolen his camera and cellphone....bad news. but we survived, and i'm currently in hue right now, it's a lovely city. tomorrow we'll head south and seder will be in ho chi minh city.”
So now April 7, Today! I’m in Nha Trang, Vietnam, and we’ve been making our way south. In Hue, (pronounced Hoo-way) we went to see the citadel, where it used to be the royal center of Vietnam. I really loved it, I mentioned before the architecture and art in Vietnam is so different from the rest of Southeast Asia, because of their historical closeness with China. We also saw a pagoda and a tomb of one of the former emperors, all with beautiful architecture. From Hue we went to my favorite city so far—Hoi An. Sigh…. Hoi An. So lovely. Hoi An is well known amongst tourists because it was in its time a major trading port and its status as a World Heritage site has kept the old part of the city intact; the style is a mixture of Vietnamese/Chinese old homes and French colonial architecture. At night, the whole place is lit up with tons of Chinese lanterns, and it’s seriously magical. Hoi An is also famous for their tailors, you can’t walk two feet without someone trying to entice you into their shop. I bought a winter peacoat and pair of nice black pants from a very convincing woman named Emma…I love her. I spent a day exploring some of the sites in the old town on my own (apparently not everyone is excited by a place called “the museum of trade ceramics”) and it cemented my love of Hoi An. Now we’re in Nha Trang, a beach town where we took a tour boat out to the islands off the coast today, with sunburn to prove it; tonight we take the night bus to Saigon. Time flies….
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