Beach Party Vietnam

Vietnam

Last stop on my mini tour of Asia, a destination inspired by an episode of "No Reservations" on the Travel Channel. I flew into Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) from Bangkok and was eating dinner at a restaurant near my hotel when a couple at the next table asked me about my Kindle (the great conversation starter of the tour of Asia). Another girl eating nearby overheard and we started talking as we are both Amercians traveling alone. She was looking for someone else to go on a tour of the Mekong Delta and in looking up the company, whose policy was to go to places outside of the guidebooks and interact on a personal level, I enthusiastically agreed to go along.

We went to Ben Tre province and stayed at the home of a local family- seen here. Mama Anh was our lovely hostess- she cooked us some amazing meals (that we tried to help with).
Our guide/translator Thanh took Asami and I biking through some local towns. This was really fun and also quite hilarious as I found myself the main attraction for the local people- As we were biking people on motorbikes would pull up beside me and stop and stare, mothers would bring their small children to me to show them what a foreigner looked like, an older man told me about the activities of the American soldiers in the area during the war. It was very bizarre and very interesting to find myself the center of so much curiosity.

We also went out in the morning to tour the floating market. Here is our breakfast from the breakfast boat- sticky rice, some other kind of rice in some milky sauce topped with sugar and spices, and my favorite, rice-cake medallions in coconut milk.

It was a really great experience- one of those serendipitous things that happened thanks to my Kindle!

I really didn't see much of Ho Chi Minh- I was only there for a day before going on the Mekong Delta tour and after we got back I got on a bus to Nha Trang. It was a 13 hour overnight trip on a sleeping bus- which was pretty comfortable although I could have lived without being woken up at 2am with a restaurant stop. Somewhere along the way I came down with a miserable cold so when I got to Nha Trang I pulled out the cold medicine and crashed. I came here to go diving but the conditions (weather, visibility, my head congestion) did not align themselves for diving.

I've spend a few very low key days in Nha Trang trying to get better before I get on a 13 hour overnight train ride to Hue.