Christmas in Vietnam

Its just a tad late now but Merry Christmas guys and gals!!!

Well, y'all are hopefully all tucked into bed back home, overly stuffed and maybe a bit buzzed. I'm quite envious in a lot of ways- I miss the snow, the mac n cheese, the tacky old Christmas decorations we still use and, most of all, all of you. As my dad said, the holidays are about being grateful for what you have, and I couldn't agree more. I am so grateful for this oppurtunity to travel, but I am even more grateful that I have such a wonderful group of people back home to miss and go back for.

I did have a good christmas though and i also feel very fortunate for that.

I got to enjoy Jesus' birthday (a day earlier than everyone back home) with Jaap and Theo, a not-so-great plate of chile con carne, and three bottles of Dalat wine. The boys even got me two rather tacky porceline buddahs that are very awkwardly shaped and will be fun to pack around for another month or so. My best presents though: waking up on (Asia) Christmas morning, I recieved two wonderful emails from my papa and Andy (both brought me to tears) and then found out, as I was making my Christmas phone calls back home, that Andy is flying me out to meet him in Hong Kong for new years (I was just a bucket of happy tears that morning sitting in the lobby). Due to a last minute work trip and Andy's plethora of miles, he was able to book me a roundtrip (and business class) ticket out of Siagon- all I have to do is get to Saigon by the 30th- he arranged everything else. Amazing this boy!! Made a few alterations to my very tenative and flexible schedule and will be starting this new years off with someone I love more than life in a place I have never been before- the best of both worlds!

Christmas day also included a Christmas breakfast with the boys, a stuffy six hour bus ride to Mui Ne, and walking about 3km with all my stuff as every hotel here here was full. It was all fine and great though- honestly I was just floating last night after finding out about this trip that I could have slept on that stuffy bus and still been happy.

Spent the day today booking an overnight bus for tonight, eating a few good meals, drinking green coconut juice and just lounging on the beach here. Mui Ne is a beautiful little beach strip (not really sure if you could really catagorize it as an actual town) filled with resorts and bungalows and restaraunts. The beaches themselves are white sand and very peaceful aside from the eight hundred kite surfers in the water- honestly looks like the scene in Mary Poppins where they are singing 'let's go fly a kite'. It is a pretty cool sight to see but really ridiculous as well. Because there are numerous kite schools, there are people everywhere in the water who are just flailing with their monstorous kites- which are juat dragging the people (who appear to be swallowing gallons of sea water) away from their boards which they are so desperately trying to swim back to... It's a bit sketchy- but rather entertaining as well. The end result of my day: really bizarre sun burned patches in a very awkward fashion, one split open toe that I so gracefully stubbed as I was walking out to see the sunset, about 50 pages read from my book, and a solid 12 hours or so of 'freeloading'- the overnight bus doesn't get here till 2am (retarted bus company)- so I get to stride around this little town till the bars close and then jump on a bus for a few hours to Saigon. Woohoo! I made friends with the family at the homestay though so I have wifi and a place to store my bags and a toilet and even a shower so i have a home base at least. Going to try and be in the Mekong Delta are by mid afternoon tomorrow... Wish me luck!

To back track slightly, I'm gonna post a blog that i started when I was in Dalat but never posted... I'm sorry for slacking on this whole posting thing- will try to get some routine going. K, here is Dalat (and a bit of Nha Trang) in a nutshell:

Made my way from the beaches of Nha Trang (which I got to spend about two hours enjoying as the rain finally broke for a couple hours) and am now in Dalat, a small city set in the central highlands of Vietnam. Sitting at nearly 2,000m, the town itself is bigger than I expected but is easily managable once you realize that many of the streets loop back on themselves and figure out which way on your map is 'up a hill' or 'down some stairs'. There is a huge lake near the center of town where you can rent a paddleboat creepily shaped like a ginnormous swan or take some pictures of ponies draped in flowers being held by a Vietnamese guys dressed as a cowboy. The garbage trucks here play the tune of 'its a small world after all' (not joking!) and the towns' cell phone tower is shaped after the Eifel tower. Despite the hoakyness though, it is a nice little town to wander around in. The beautiful mountains around the area are home to countless flower, fruit and vegtable farms as well as tea and coffee. In fact, I learned on my little tour (details to follow), that over 60% of Dalat's population is comprised of farmers of one sort or another. Thus, the streets and main market in the middle of town are chuck-full of the freshest looking produce and flowers. And, much to my liking, they also make wine here which is, actually, really great wine. I'm no wine conosoure (spelling?) or anything, but (as my tahoe roomies could confirm) I had grown quite fond of having at least a glass of wine before bed everynight- especially after those doubles and triples we were so good at pulling- that wine is right up there with Mexican food on my list of 'things I miss from home'. The two times I have ordered wine on this trip has been sheer disappointment. There was the glass that Andy and I shared in dirty Phuket that was okay but was overpriced and tasted slightly expired; and then there was just the other night when the Kiwi boys had dressed up in their newly tailored outfits and we all went out to dinner- as a promotion, we were offered one free drink with dinner- we all excitedly ordered red wine but were brokenhearted when we found out it was served cold and out of a box. Overall, I am content here in Dalat for a few days... Between the wine and the fresh food and chilly nights, it's as close to home as I think I'm gonna get for my 'christmas in vietnam'.

Dalat is home to the Easy Riders- a group of motorbike tour guides that were started by a group of unemployed men when VN opened their doors to tourism. I hired one of these Easy Riders the night I got here after much haggling and negotiations. Mr. Lulu, as he called himself, picked me up the next morning and showed me around the area for a solid 7 hours. At times, it seemed a bit silly as we would pull off on the side of the road and he would tell me some story about whatever we were looking at and then he would always end with:'okay you take picture'. But, overall it was interesting and informative. We stopped at flower, veggie and fruit farms, saw how silk is collected and produced, learned how coffee and tea are harvested at a 'plantation', saw some bamboo weaving, explored a pretty sweet waterfall, walked through a few temples where we got to view tons of different buddahs and even went on a few 'treks' (I told him I wanted to do a trek in the area so he would just drop me off on the side of the road and point to the top of a hill and say: 'Go trek. Good excercise'- thanks Mr Lulu).

The Dutch boys found me that night just as I was heading out to dinner... Caught up over a nice dinner and a bottle of wine before I went back to the hotel. We made a resolution that first night that we should drink a bottle of wine a night (which we actually one up-ed as we had one the first night, two the second and three on the third) and had a good routine going by day #2: we would all do our own thing till maybe 6 or 7, drink some wine at the hotel, go out to dinner, finish another bottle, and then come back and finish whatever we had left. It is not a stressful life here.

It is Christmas eve now and I leave for Mui Ne tomorrow, so trying to soak up all that Dalat has to offer. Walked around some nice walking paths earlier, cruised around the lake for a bit (turned around after some guy meowed at me) and am now sitting and enjoying a VN coffee and artichoke tea and am enjoying the view as it sits right above the lake where all the vendors are- an awesome people-watching location! My favorite sight right now? A Vietnamese man who is dressed up in a really bad Santa suit who has taken one of the ponies from the Vietnamese cowboy and is holding him as he sits on a motorcycle- and the kids are lined up for pictures! Oh and the coffee shop I'm at which is part of a really boutique-y hotel is playing the quinessential techno-remixed Christmas songs I have been hearing everywhere lately. Merry Christmas!!