Sumner

Today was basiclly just a ride to Can Tho. We started out by metting our guide who’s name was Anh (pronounced: an with the a sounding like a mix of the letters O and A) and driving out on the way to Can Tho (pronounced: can toe). The first thing that we did was see how they make rice noodles. We stopped at a village in the sububs of Saigon and walked down a path to someones housenoodl factory. Anh explained the prosess of making the noodles which was very interesting but to many steps to explain. After that we got back into the car and drove on. We arrived in Can Tho and ate at a restraunt that was relly good and was close to out hotel. Then we went on a boat trip on one of the branches of the Mekong River Delta. We saw the floating market but it wasn’t very active and we are going to see it tomorrow. We got to go on a little cano paddled by a woman down a canal. It was very prety and we got to see life in the country side. We met the big boat and continued on out tour. We stopped to see the prosess of making popped rice. Popped rice is kinda like rice crispy treats. Any way the first step was that they placed a big wok over a fire and put sand from the river into it and a little oil. Then, once the sand was hot enough, they added rice to it. The  hot sand made the rice pop and then they put the rice into a sieve and sifted out all the sand back into the wok. Then they put it in another sieve and got all the rice husks which they used to fuel the fire. Then he started over again. After that they add some other ingredients to make it sweet and sell it to you. We tried to buy just a couple but we ended up with six, oh well. After that we got back on the boat and went to the hotel. We said goodbye to Anh and hung out in our rooms until dinner which we had at a restraunt in an indoor market. It was very nice and the food was good. After dinner dad got in trouble and asked for the price on a t-shirt that he liked. They went all over him and even he couldn’t get away. The one that he like was an knock off “Abercrombie”. They tried to sell him an knock off Osh Cosh shirt which was better quality. Of corse we knew that it was fake because Hannah and I out grew Osh Cosh a while ago. He ended up with the Abercrombie. Then I saw a t-shirt that had a picture of a Vietnamese telephone pole with all of the wires. I then went with one of the ladys to another shop and got a t-shirt that fit. Then we went back to the hotel. I won’t bug you with another tour because it really wasn’t anything special. And then went to bed.

Sumner

To is our free day in Saigon (oh oops the politicly corect name is Ho Chi Minh City). We got up and went this morning at eight o’clock to the Cu Chi Tunnels. The Cuchi Tunnels are some tunnels that the Viet Cong hid in durring the Vietnam war. They are located on a bend of the Saigon River and cover over three hundred square kilometers (about one hundred fifty square miles.)  It is a little northwest of Ho Chi Minh City (very long name). Anyway now that you know it’s general vicinity I will continue the story. At eight o’clock we went downstairs and met our guide. He was an older gentelman (we learned later that he was two years older that dad). He started out by saying “We must talk about the war. We are not enemies we are friends…” He went into the details of our good relations and Bill Clinton starting those relations. He talked on about it pausing only to show us a sight. It was rather funny, he would be talking about some political thing and then point and say “there is a rubber plantation, we’ll see it on the way back.” and then go right on talking. He was fairly easy to understand (always a good thing) only a few pronuctiation errors but hey, I would have umppteen zillion errors if I tried to speak Vietnamese. His English would probably have been easier to understad if he had not had fake teeth that didn’t fit because all the time that he was talking he was tring to keep his teeth in! Oh! I forgot to tell you that he was ex-Viet Cong (Vietnamese comunist fighters in the south)! When he told us we were thinking “maybe all of the tour companys hire ex-Viet Cong to do tours of the Chuchi Tunnels. But after the tour we hadn’t seen another tour guide that looked than forty years old! We were extremly lucky that we got shuch a guide. When we got there we first were going to see a movie full of comunist propaganda but all the little rooms were full. So we just went on to see the tunnels and see the movie later. The first thing that we saw was some traps that the Viet Cong used against the Americans. They were pretty brutal. Then we went throught the forest seing some of the different entrances. Some were very teny only about twenty inches by ten inches and had a  little cover over it. You had to put your legs in and then slide down with your hands over your head and squat in the little hole to get in. There were little tunnels leading betwene the enterances that were maybe two feet wide and two feet tall. We didn’t go in those we just went down the entrance. We kept on walking through the forest and saw many other places that secret enterances to the tunnels. The reason that the tunnels have many enterences is so that when someone comes out and shoots if you go to that enterence then he goes to another enterence and shoots you again an so on. Then we came to a place that was the kitchen/mess hall. It was a rectangular pit with a fire and some tables. When it was really in use it was covered by a roof that was the level of the ground with a mound of dirt. For tourists though they made thatched roofs and made the walls about a food higher. If they let the smoke from the firego out freely then the Americans could find them and, as Phong said, bomb comes boom. So to avoid this fate they made tunnels that went through the ground. Allong the way put underground compartments to trap smoke so by the time that the smoke went out it waws greatly reduced. Sometimes they even had to do it for two hundred meters! After we saw that we saw the generals place. It was basicly the same as the kitchen just with a desk and a meeting table. After that we walked to one of the enterences. They made a roof and made the enterences ten times as big for tourists. They also made steps to get down to the tunnels. They had made the tunels larger two times (tells you how skiny they were and how fat we are). Inside the tunels used to be up and down and narower in some places and not in others. Also there were little indents that you could hide in while they went past and then follow them from behind. Also the tunels were curvy and made it hard to shoot at anything far away. At the first enterence we went back out. You could have gone further to other enterences but we didn’t. We didn’t go very far but it was very curvy so it seemed longer. All the other enterences in the circit were for tourists. They were really close together just like the part that we went in. We learned that there are three levels. The first one is three meters deep (nine feet) it is for getting around. The second one (six meters deep)is for fighting. And the third one which is nine meters deep is for when the bombs come. On our journey we went in the first and second levels (they don’t take the tourists to th third level because of the chance of them getting choked). The kitchen and generals room were also interconected with the tunnels (not now though). After that we went to a place were they colected unexploded bombsand shells to make their own homemade explosives. They burryed unexploded shells and used them as anti-tank mines. They sawed open bombs for the explosives (doesn’t seem like the best thing to do) and then put it into things to use as mines. After seeing the tunnels we went back to see the movie. The lady in the movie talked about how Cu Chi was shuch a piecefull place but how the “ruthles American bombs decided to demolish this beautiful land” (OK one or two of the words were wrong but that was the basic message). Then she talked about how the people of Cu Chi defended themselfs. She never said anything about the Viet Cong hiding there or that many of the people there were against comunisim. Fighting with the Viet Cong was almost like a game of hide and seek for the Americans because they had to find where they were hiding and then clean them out. And they were tring to hunt the Viet Cong and what is a game of hide and seek without the seek?

~Hannah~

Sumner

Today is our las day in Hoi An, well actually it is our last partial day. We leave for the ariport at eleven o’clock this morining to go to Da Nang for our flight to Saigon/Ho Chi Min City.

Sumner

Today after breakfast we met our guide to go on a bike ride. We went through the country side of Hoi An and passed lots of rice fields and just got to enjoy the country side. Then we got onto a boat with our bikes (I was surprised that they could actually fit) and went to an Island. We biked through the country side there and I almost had a wreck! This is what happened I was riding and some cows were running in the field then they suddenly bolted out right in front of me! It looked like a mama and a baby playing tag!

Sumner

Today we drove to Hoi An. On the way we got into a traffic jam. One side of th road was completely stopped but the other side was sill flowing normally. We found out that there was some construction and they were letting people on one side through for thirty minutes and then the other side for thirty minutes. Well we got through and then our guide asked if we wanted to go on the pass over the mountains or through the tunnel. the drive over the pass was going to take forty-five minutes whereas the tunnel would only take fifteen. It was hazy and we had heard that the roads were a little scary. So we decided to give it a miss because we really didn’t want to crash off the side of the road and there wouldn’t be much of a view because of the haze. The tunnel was six kilometers long (three miles). Twice a long as Eisenhower (the big tunnel) in Colorado. It also seemed longer because we were going slower (only about forty M/H) instead of seventy. After going a little way we arrived at Da Nang We drove to a museum with many statues from the Cham people. Many were pulled from some Cham towers that we are going to see tomorrow. We then went drove along the beach where the Americans first landed during the war. We stopped and took some photos and then we saw some of the hangars that we used. Then we went back to the car and drove to Hoi An. We went to the market and saw many people selling things and then we went to the fish part of the market. I to this day haven’t figured out how people with stand the smell! It’s absolutely terrible even in the regular market! Anyway we went to a restaurant that was pretty nice compared to some of the places that we have eaten at. It was good food but we were kinda disappointing that we hadn’t gotten to eat good street food. Then the guide showed us a bridge that in times past separated the Chinese and the Japanese parts of town. It was just a small covered bridge but it had, in the middle, an area that issues were resolved between the two sides of the bridge. Then Phong showed us a shop that sold custom made clothing so we went in and were just going to look around but then dad decided to get a suit. I just waited downstairs while they were upstairs looking at designs but I got bored after a while so I went up to see what they were doing. Dad was looking at the many different designs of suits but they all looked the same to him so he just picked one and a color. Then they measured him. They took lots of measurements and then went downstairs to take pictures of him. I guess they did that so that they could see what his body looked like. Then we drove to the hotel. When we arrived at the hotel we went to a little gazebo where we went through all the stuff and had a drink. Then we went to our room, got settled in and then rented some bikes from the hotel and went wandering on the back roads for a while. On our explorations we ordered mom some jeans at the place that one of the employee recommended After our bike ride we had dinner at the hotel and then went to bed.

Sumner

Today we had our first day in Hue. We had a buffet breakfast in the restaurant and then met our guide at the front gate. His name was Phong, the same name as the guy that took us on our tour of Ba Be Lake and Phu Tho. We got into the car and went into town and went on a boat trip to a pagoda. It was like all pagodas basically lots of altars and incense and buildings. Then we went to the old palace of the emperor of Vietnam. (FYI, Hue was the old capital city of Vietnam.) On  the outside was a mote system and a wall that was supposed to look like a star (I didn’t look like a star to me but it must have to someone). Then there was another mote system with another wall that enclosed the palaces. We went inside through the gate. One interesting thing was that there were three gates. One for the mandarins (government officials), one for the king, one for the commoners, and one for the elephants and tigers and wild animals. We went through the mandarins gate. We got in and there were two pools with fish on either side of the path. You could buy some food to feed them. It was amazing when you did because literally hundreds of fish fought for the food! Then we went up above the gate where the king would give speeches to his people. Then we went down and went to some palaces. It was sad but allot of the palace was bombed during the war. Since it was only one hundred kilo form the DMZ it got bombed from both sides. We toured around all the palaces and saw where they were trying to restore it. I was glad that we had a guide because we would have been clueless on where to go and what everything was. After touring the grounds we went back outside (this time through the elephants gate) and saw nine “sacred cannons.” They were sacred because they were never used and nine is a lucky number. After seeing the palace we went to a tomb of one of the kings. there was a lake and a nice island in the middle. We learned that this tomb was not only a tomb but before the king died he used to come to his tomb to wright poetry and just enjoy the area. Then we went to a place that had some statues and had an autobiography of the king. After seeing that we went to the place where the coffin was. Nobody really knows if the body is actually there because nobody has opened it. After the tomb we got back int the car and he asked if we wanted to see another tomb. We had had enough tombs so we said that we just wanted to go back to the hotel. Then dad, Hannah, and I went swimming and then we hung out for a while in the resort. When it became tome for dinner we went to the hotel’s restaurant for dinner. Time to hit the sack!

Sumner

Well today is our last few hours in Hanoi. After breakfast we went to the air port for our flight to Hue. (Hue is located in the central part of Vietnam.) It took only one hour to get there and when we did we had to show our baggage claim tickets. Mom was so unused to having to do this so she had to dig for the tickets! Anyway the airport was extremely small so we just walked outside and people with signs were there waiting to pick people up. We found our guy and then got into the car to go to our hotel. As soon as you walked in there was a great atmosphere, trees, grass… The first things that you saw were some handcraft shops where you could buy things. Then the lobby. Behind the lobby was a restaurant for lunch and dinner and to the left of that was the internet cafe. Behind this were rows of rooms set up with little houses that made it feel like a neighborhood. There were two swimming pools and another restaurant that served breakfast. There were spas and beauty salons and all sorts of other stuff. We were greeted and then sat down and an employee talked to us about the services. Then we were shown to our room. It looked on the outside like it wasn’t a connecting room but when we got inside we saw that is was. The rooms were mirror to one another so I will take you on a tour of one and you will just have to switch it around in you head to have an idea of what it was like. I’ll tell you about our room just because I want to. When you entered into your room you were in a little corridor that if you walked forward a little bit and looked to you right would be a huge bathroom that I will tell you about in just a minute. If you keep on walking you would in the main room and to you left would be the door to the other room and your right the bed that I slept in. Walk a little further and you would be in the center of the room with a steep right in front of you and a sofa. To your left is the mini bar and the closet. If you went around the sofa and down the steep you would be right next to a desk. Walk a little further and the TV would be to your left. Look right now and you would be looking over a coffee table at the bed that Hannah slept in In front of you just a little to the right are the doors to go outside onto the balcony. Outside were some chairs and a little lounge thing. OK now I will tell you about the bathroom. As soon as you walked in you would see yourself in the mirror and underneath the mirror the sink and amenities. Turn right and you would be looking at the shower and then tub. The water from the shower just flowed down to a sunken area with rocks and went to the drain. Go forward and do a right turn you wold be seeing yourself in another mirror. Look in the opposite direction and you would be facing a towel rack. Walk a little further and turn left you would be facing the toilet. Well that’s all, the only difference between the two rooms is that mom’s and dad’s didn’t have the extra bed like the one that Hannah slept on. Then we walked around enjoying the nice atmosphere and finding the pools and restaurants and the spa ext. Then we had dinner at the restaurant. Dad had hot pot. (By the way what I ate at the Kangaroo Cafe wasn’t hot pot it was clay pot.) Basically hot pot is a big wok set up on a little burner. You had some broth and some other vegetables. Then you have to add all sorts of different ingredients to the mix to cook them. Once cooked you would roll it up in a piece of rice paper. I forgot what I had but dad’s meal was memorable. After dinner we went to bed.

Hannah

 Sorry I have not been able to post my blogs. But I will tell you all about our adventures at Halong Bay. First we had a four hour drive to Halong Bay. ( Not a bad drive.) We arrived at a place that sold a lot of different stuff. It went from Jewelry to food. Of course we did not buy anything. I felt sorry for the driver because my dad had spilled some red juice on the floor.( I do not know why he brought the juice in the car in the first place.) So the poor guy had to clean up the mess. He had said we would have a 15 minute break. I think that was his lunch break.Then when dad thought the 15 minutes were up, we started looking for our driver. We found out that he was still in the middle of eating his lunch, so we started out again. When we got there. we were welcomed with wet towels,( that’s the custom in Vietnam.)and tea. We waited for a while and then got ushered to the HUMONGOUS boat. Well it was big, but since I am small, it seemed that big. We had a warm welcome of rose pedals falling on our heads.( Pretty fancy stuff huh?) Then we  got directed to the dining room. It was set with fancy glasses,plates, and the napkins were folded into the shape of a kind of bird.We had a speech from the manager, and then got our keys to our rooms. Sumner and I shared a room together.( Away from the adults.) We looked at our room, and then headed back upstairs for a yummy buffet lunch. I do not remember what there was, but it was good anyway. The first thing we did was go on a boat to this really cool cave. It had three different chambers in it. The first chamber was 300 square meters, the second chamber was 400 square meters, and the third one was 900 square meters. They were huge. And if you had a good imagination, you could see different animals, and people in the rocks. Got to go!            T.B.C

Today is our last day in Hallong Bay. We woke up a little later that yesterday so we definitely didn’t see the sunrise. Breakfast was about the same as yesterday but that’s OK. After breakfast we packed up our things and then went to see the cooking demonstration. Today they showed us how to make fresh spring rolls. You basically had to put the ingredients on evenly and then roll it up. No need to pinch it in. Then we went to Te Top Island, the island that we dropped off the two day people yesterday. We hiked up to the top of the island and had a wonderful view of Hallong Bay. Then after staying for a few minutes we hiked back down and go onto the boat. We packed up as we sailed through Hallong Bay and then went up to the sun deck to see our last views of Hallong Bay It was so beautiful, islands with very steep bare sides and then lush, greenery on the top. There were, it seamed, thousands of islands. Then we arrived at port. We were all sad to leave such a pretty bay but we have more great adventures to come! We got our luggage and then got into the car to take us back to the Elegance for one more night. On the way back we stopped at a place “conveniently at the half way point” It was a place that sold all sorts of arts and crafts and a restaurant. We ate some food and then got back in the car. When we arrived at the Elegance we were welcomed warmly as always. We got some pictures with the manager and the staff because the manager won’t be here tomorrow. Then we walked around Hanoi for a wile and had dinner. (Look near the bottom for what I meant to say.) I think that it would be proper to decide the Elegance in more detail than I have because it was such a memorable hotel. It had glass doors in the front and to the right of the doors were a sofa and a coffee table. it you walked in a little way to your right would be a travel desk where you could organize a tour. Opposite of the travel desk was reception. If you went to the right of reception were some chairs and a news paper stand. Opposite of the chairs was an elevator and if you stood in the middle and walked towards the back of the hotel you would be in the breakfast room. Behind the tables on the back wall is a mural/painting that showed a scene in Hanoi. The only thing missing was the multitudes of motorcycles. To your right is the cooking area which has a stove and a refrigerator and some counter space. It was extremely small only about five, maybe six, square yards in total area. It must have been extremely hard to cook because the squashed three sometimes four people in the space! OK now if you walk back so that you are in the lobby facing the travel desk you will see the bottom of the stairs. On the second floor if you turned right you would be facing two rooms and if you tuned the other direction on you left would be the elevator and if you walked just a little further to you right would be a bathroom that guests waiting for a room or those who have already checked out. In front of you is a lobby with a TV and a few chairs and a sofa. It also has two computer for guests to use. On the furthest side away from you is a little overhang where you can see the first floor. If you kept on going up the stairs you would be on the third floor which on you right would be tow rooms and down the hall one more room. On of the ones that we stayed in. The rest of the eight floors are basically the same so I will not bore you any more with my explanations and move on to…Oops I made a mistake. Right before the tour of the Elegance I said “Then we walked around for a while and had dinner.” But really this is what happened.
We had been wanting to do a cicilo ride but we hadn’t been able to. Did I tell you what a cicilo is? If I did you get another explanation. A cicilo is a cross between a stroller and a bicycle. The back wheel of the bike and the seat are at the back and the stroller type thing is front with a little bar at the back that the driver uses to pedal. The stroller is just a metal thing that is sorta like a sofa just really short. It also has a foot rest and two wheels on either side. We asked the receptionist to call one so that we could tour the old quarter. They came and we got in. Hannah and mom got into one and dad and me in another. Then we toured around. I felt bad for our guy because he had such a heavy load. We had asked for an hour tour but we only got a forty minute tour. Oh well it was very net to do because we could really enjoy the sights without having to dodge things on the sidewalk and cross streets. When we got back we payed them and went back to the hotel. Then we went out to dinner and went to bed.