footbridge in Sapa

Halong bay

Linh Sa, Steffie, me and blaine in Hoi An

We are all in Laos now. Vang Vieng to be exact. We are going tubing on the river today amongst amazing limestone cliffs where there are zip lines and tree swings...should be fun. Tomorrow we are renting mopeds to explore the area and see some historical caves.

On our last day in Hanoi we went to the prison where John McCain was imprisoned during the Vietnam War...very interesting (and I don't usually like museums).

We thought you guys would like to see a photo of the 2 girls from the Netherlands that we've been travelling with for the last 2 1/2 weeks! But only 1 more day and we start going North and they go South.

Our last day in Vietnam!

We just returned from Halong Bay, had a great cruise. We stayed on the junk the first night (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_(ship)

where we kayaked to a cave and went spelunking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelunking

We then sailed to Cat Ba island the next day and hiked in Cat Ba National Park up to an amazing overlook of the island. This island has very few Langur monkeys left, one of the most endangered primates in the world (no, we did not see one). Spent the night in the hotel and sailed back to the port the next day.

Tomorrow we fly to Laos; we will make our way to the northwest corner (on the border of Thailand) to go on a jungle experience. Here is the website, take a look! We are doing the Waterfall Trekking.
http://www.gibbonx.org/

So farwell Vietnam, hello Laos!

The cutest boy ever!

Don't ask me what he was saying...but I figure it was something like 'I see you' or 'Try and get me'. But we visited an elementary school in one of the hill tribes around Sapa. He is wearing the cultural dress for that specific village. When I showed him the video afterwards he stood mesmerized...he had obviously never seen himself on a video. He watched it about 7 times. So adorable.

We loved Sapa and the trekking around to all the different villages. The terraced rice paddies and soaring mountains. We will post more photos later.

Are you happy now, Ben? :)

From Hoi An to Hanoi
We had a lovely time in Hoi An, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. They have preserved/are restoring more of this historic trade route/port town and it has a charming, old feel. A great site to celebrate my 28th birthday and Valentine's Day. As my mother said, the pressure was on Blaine to make it a great day and he lived up to the challenge. He brought me breakfast by the pool and wrote a thoughtful card...in the afternoon we went on a cooking class experience, where we toured through the local market and then took a boat ride out to the cooking school on the riverside. We made some awesome Vietnamese cuisine and got to eat everything we cooked. I got many well-wishes from home via email which really made me feel loved. Thanks to everyone who remembered me. Hope everyone had a nice Valentine's Day!
We took a flight this morning to Hanoi (the capital of Vietnam) and will spend the day tomorrow touring the city. Then we will be leaving for a cruise on Halong Bay, looking forward to that!
More soon!

Adventures in Dalat

warming up in rooftop hot tub after day of canyoning (with Stephie and Linh Sa)

Kate abseiling down 25 meter water fall (75 feet)

Group photo of canyoning crew

self-portrait by waterfall

incense burning at pagoda

Laughing Buddha--Blaine's favorite

Our great news is we have purchased our tickets home to MISSISSIPPI! We are arriving on April 5th, Sunday at 6:30 p.m. There is already talk of marching bands and blueberry ice cream....beat that!

Dalat, Vietnam

We enjoyed our 3 days in Saigon: visited the Reunification Palace, markets and took a day trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels. We caught a bus (7 hours) into the Central Highlands region (heading northwards through Vietnam) to Dalat, Vietnam. We hadn't even planned on stopping here but had heard from people that it was very nice. They were right...such a change from hot, humid, crowded Saigon to cool, dry mountainous with a small-town-feel Dalat. We are staying in the most lovely guesthouse-an amazing breakfast, free bike rentals, such friendly family who runs it. Today, we rented a driver/tour guide and explored some waterfalls, pagodas, silkworm factory, coffee plantation. Tomorrow we are going canyoning ($23/person)...I did this in Switzerland with Melissa and Cindy years ago and have been telling Blaine he has to do it but it is usually very expensive ($300 in NZ). So here's our chance! We still haven't found fast computers/internet to load up more photos but be patient with us! We have booked our tickets home to L.A. and will arrive on April 3rd...so we will soon buy our plane tickets to Mississippi probably on the 5th or 6th! We wanted to give everyone ample time to start planning our welcome home parties!!! (plural: parties)

Viet Nam

We are actually surviving just fine without Amber and Tyler (although we were a little worried in the beginning) and meeting people from all over the world. We took a bus tour through the Mekong Delta of southern Vietnam for 2 days and enjoyed it until the very end. We were on a bus to get us back to Ho Chi Minh City but it is the end of Tet in Vietnam (which is their big holiday/Chinese New Year celebration) and the roads were very crowded...we waited on a hot bus for 1 1/2 hours to get on a ferry and my claustrophobia finally got the best of me. Blaine agreed that it was not 'feeling like vacation anymore' so we got off in this random town (Can Tho) and decided to stay the night and try again first thing in the morning. Our tour guide was not happy with us but we fished our bags out and went on our merry way. We ended up finding a lovely riverfront hotel ($10/night) and meeting some Aussies and having dinner with the ex-pats of the town! We got the 7 a.m. fast boat (that only the locals know about, as it is not in any of the travel guidebooks) and arrived in Saigon (HCMC) 3 1/2 hours later. I believe our original bus had not made it in before midnight the night before. When we arrived in Saigon we followed one of our Aussie friends from the night before to the hotel where he is renting long-term and ended up getting a lovely room (much nicer than we have been staying in) for $25/night and the hotel has a pool and rooftop terrace with 360 degree view of the city. We visited the War Remnants Museum today...learned a lot about the Vietnam War that we didn't know before.

I will give a shout out to my mother who celebrated her birthday (and it was a momentous one...30 I think) a few days ago! She is the most supportive, loving mama anyone could ever ask for and I don't know what/where I'd be without her! Happy Birthday!