vietnam...
Our trip to Vietnam was amazing and challenging, most disappointing was when we lost our camera- sooooo... many of these photos are sourced from the internets based on what we did while we were there. Hanoi was bustling and... well seasoned ;). This was exacerbated by my raging morning sickness (I had just entered my second trimester) and being a person that doesn't eat wheat because of intestinal fussiness all I could fathom eating most of the time was french bread and cheese- pobrecita! I did try the pho and bun and loved it- and many other things that I imagine I would enjoy under normal circumstances like fried snakeskin, sauteed silkworms (Sean's favorite), sweet potato and prawn fritters, chicken feet (ack), and lots of other interesting tid-bits. I think our favorite activity was the cooking class we took. They took us to the open air market before we went into the kitchen and it was incredible. There were ladies sitting cross-legged on rustic looking tables with raw slaughtered mean laid out around them... seriously. They did two slaughters a day and the meat was incredibly fresh. There was honestly no odor in the market- and I was the nauseous pregnant lady to find any and all questionable scents- it was seemingly the cleanest freshest place we visited.
Hanoi market:
Photo Credit: David Brewer
Hanoi Cooking Centre:
Photo Credit: Hanoi Cooking Centre
The traffic in Hanoi was incredible- it was like the Seinfeld frogger episode... We visited lots of sites here including the Hanoi Hilton where Vietnamese people were imprisoned by the french before the American were imprisoned there during the Vietnam War (including John McCain). It is now a museum and was super interesting to read the history of the Vietnam War from the North Vietnamese perspective- talk about a reality shift.
We also stood in a massive line to visit the Ho Chi Minh Mausuleum with hundreds of very small school children.
I visited the art museum by myself after Sean left to fly to China and loved it- it was so NOT climate controlled- the art was ooooold and sort of rotting in some places. I took myself to lunch at KOTO which is a restaurant that works quadruple-time to get kids off the streets, educate them on working in hospitality, and employ them in the restaurant. I loved it there.
Hanoi:
Hanoi Hilton:
Ho Chi Minh Mausuleum:
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Hanoi Fine Art Museum:
KOTO:
Halong Bay, where to start... We had totally idyllic ideas of that this place would be like- built from pictures like the ones below. We took a bus out there which stops midway at a rest station that is run by an orphanage of sorts that was started to house and care for children born after the Vietnam War with varying degrees of birth defects from the chemicals used in warfare that could not be cared for by their parents in villages across the country. I had never considered this part of what war leaves behind and it was very sobering for me. The people that lived there made arts and crafts that they sold to the passing tourists and we bought a needlepoint type picture for Norah's room. When we arrived we were shown to our junk boat which seemed to be a regular boat retrofitted to look like a junk boat. We cruised around and everywhere we went there were at least five other boats in the near vicinity and copious amounts of garbage floating in the water. It was a pretty amazing site regardless and the spires of rock jutting out of the water were inhuman.
Halong Bay:
We ventured out of Hanoi by taxi one afternoon to do something we had read about on the internet- pick a venomous snake to eat, drink the bile from the liver, and... drink the blood and still beating heart... why not! The taxi driver dropped us right at the door of the restaurant he wanted us to go to and managed to get the message across that we should not leave the restaurant until we were done and then they should get us a taxi to take us right back to Hanoi... this was somewhat unsettling but we were on a mission. The people in the restaurant spoke zero English and we had quite the adventure haggling for a snake, figuring out how to eat the million dishes they brought to us which was supposedly our snake prepared a multitude of different ways, and getting back out the door. We choose a smallish snake and they whacked it on the head, slit its little body and drained its blood right there. Did I mention I was queasy on this trip? They poured the blood into two shots of rice wine, and then they proceeded to remove the heart and liver. The heart was presented to Sean and he was to put it into his shot and drink it down. Then they gave us two more shots and poured the green bile from the liver into them. Sean was my champion and drank ALL FOUR shots- I wasn't sure my prego bally could handle it and we didn't want to appear rude. We then mowed through as much snake pieces as we could- Sean again taking the lead and eating way more than he wanted to because I was turning more and more green the more they brought out!
Snake feast in Zermat:
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Phew- I think that just about covers it- Sean and I separated in Vietnam and he went on to China for his MBA program and I came home. We loved the adventure and I made him promise our next vacation would be a little more cushy and relaxed ;)
