We slept well, and woke up to rain. The forecast suggested that chances of rain would diminish as the day went on. We decided to go to the Thung Namh Bird Park, as we’d heard it was kind of a hidden gem. I don’t know if it’s just that it was Sunday, but the place […]
Vietnam
Lantern-City – Hoi An
Due to a bonehead move on my part, we are now spending the afternoon in the Da Nang airport, waiting for our flight to Hanoi. I accidentally booked our tickets for March 14th, rather than Valentine’s Day, February 14th. So let’s make some lemonade, and catch up on our posting. Hoi An sees over 3 […]
Marble Mountain, Lady Buddha, Am Phu Cave
We’d heard a lot about Da Nang and the Marble Mountain. Also, wanted to check out the Lady Buddha, as we haven’t seen many female buddhas, let alone a lady. So we signed up for the tour. Ellen woke up the morning of feeling quite ill from a cold. We considered skipping the whole thing, […]
Cooking Class on Steroids
We left HCMC, (always reminds me of Hennepin County Medical Center), and headed North by plane via Da Nang to Hoi An. This is a very walkable, smaller but busy, town. The weather is much cooler and it sprinkles rain daily. I’m freezing so we bought puffer jackets for around 25$ as we will need […]
Cu Chi Tunnels (Ben Duoc)
One of our goals in visiting Vietnam has been to better understand what happened during the Vietnam war (called the American War here). To this end, we decided to take a tour of the Cu Chi tunnels. Vietnam has done an amazing job of turning these tunnels, 20 years of war in the making, into […]
Ho Chi Min City
Saigon is the second largest city we’ve visited so far, behind only Bangkok. It seems we prefer somewhat smaller cities, perhaps from having spent so much time in Saint Paul. At any rate, it took some getting used to, but we were reasonably successful. I’ve already talked about the motorcycles. Traffic, in general, is intense. […]
Lung Ngoc Hoang Nature Reserve
We decided to check out the Mekong Delta a little bit. In searching for tours, we found what looked like something a little bit different, maybe less touristy – the Lung Ngoc Hoang Nature Reserve. Lung Ngoc Hoang is a 28 km2 wetland located in Hau Giang Province, Vietnam. According to legend, the name “Lung Ngoc Hoang” comes […]
War Remnants Museum
I am chastened. They say that history is written by the victors. Clearly, the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Min City has a “pro-liberation” attitude. Even so, the evidence is pretty much undeniable. In hindsight, I was probably a bit “holier than thou” with my Killing Fields post. Having seen what we did in […]