DJ-RTW's Travel Blog

Markets & Temples - Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

 This place was Great visited Feb 6, 2008

After six months in Asia, the temples, pagodas and markets didn’t provide any surprises to us but these are great people-watching spots so I’ve included some photos here. Street scenes are always fun although, after a while, you stop seeing what is unique about smoked duck ‘hot dog-type’ carts, people driving motorcycles through the lobby of your hotel, seeing four or five people on one scooter and building scaffolding made of bamboo poles. We visited Giac Lam Pagoda a temple who’s architecture was greatly influenced by the Chinese – well, they did run the country for over one thousand years. It was just a few days before the New Year, so many people were visiting to honor their ancestors and dearly departed ones as tradition dictates they do so before the new year begins.

posted Feb 22, 2008 | Comments (0)

Tet Holiday (New Year’s Eve) - Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

 This place was Great visited Feb 4, 2008

Officially known as Ho Chi Minh City, but everyone still calls it Saigon, provided a sub-tropical climate in which to enjoy the New Year’s celebrations. It was fun to see the many vendors of flowering trees as well as all of the decorations for the year’s most important holiday. Traditionally, gifts of cherry blossoms, yellow primrose or miniature orange trees are given and these appear to be as important to the celebrations as the Christmas tree is in North America. Every night, the streets were full of people enjoying strolling down the avenues decorated for the holidays. There was music everywhere, flower displays in front of all important buildings and in the street boulevards, and more people per square foot than anywhere but China. It was a lot of fun enjoying the holiday with the thousands of Vietnamese and thousands of tourists in Saigon for the big day.

posted Feb 22, 2008 | Comments (0)

Preparing for Tet in Freezing Weather - Ha Noi, Vietnam

 This place was Poor visited Feb 3, 2008

After suffering in Luang Prabang, Laos with a migraine for three days it was time to move on to northern Vietnam where we knew the weather wouldn’t be any better. The pressure systems impacting all of China – with the worse winter storms in 50 years – were also affecting the north of Vietnam. We weren’t sure that the migraine would continue, so we took a chance and booked a two-day boat tour in Halong Bay. Unfortunately, on our second day in Ha Noi we had to cancel the tour and book plane tickets to southern Vietnam so that we could get out of this area of high barometric pressure that was really hurting my head. Even though the city was freezing cold and its people not much warmer, we have decided that we’ll likely return one spring day as we’ll likely be living in South East Asia in the coming years. Some of the photos we took show people getting ready for Tet, the lunar new year.

posted Feb 5, 2008 | Comments (0)

Cute Town & Lame Tourist Attractions - Luang prabang, Laos

 This place was Great visited Jan 25, 2008

A six-hour bus along very windy mountain roads made many on board regret the Lao Lao (rice whiskey) they drank the night before! We left Phonsavan for Luang Prabang – that most touristy of all towns in Laos – with a mini-bus load of travelers from all over the world. Belgian Malika joined us on a couple of expeditions to the Kuang Si Waterfall and to the really lame Pak Ou Caves. The most interesting things about the caves weren’t the holes in the rocks themselves, nor the hundreds of images of Buddha, but the boat ride there and the quick stop at a whiskey village. This is a nice and pretty quiet town where you can sit around and not do much or visit many temples and markets – we chose to do a bit of stuff, but not as much as usual. Jacob and I would have seen a great theater performance (if I hadn’t gotten sick and threw up all over myself, yuk!) – I went home from the theater to our guest house and Jacob stayed and took the photos below. It rained a lot during our last two days in Luang Prabang so we stayed indoors a lot and I updated the blog. Apparently northern Vietnam will also be rainy and cold….so we had better get used to it!

posted Feb 5, 2008 | Comments (0)

Enormous Stone Pots and Unexploded Bombs - Phonsavan, Laos

 This place was Great visited Jan 24, 2008

The reason for traveling to out-of-the-way Phonsavan, was to see hundreds of stone jars that are estimated to be thousands of years old. Interestingly enough, no one knows who made them, what they were used for or how they got to the eastern Laos sites. Some are as high as six feet high and weight between 600 kilograms and a tone each. These could easily fit a man which has led to some speculation that they might have been used for internment as has been found in other cultures. Others believe they were rice wine fermenting pots used for special celebrations. Many were damaged or destroyed in the USA’s secret war with Laos 20 years ago. We had read that there are thousands of unexploded ordinances (bombs, cute-sounding bombies, etc.) scattered all over the countryside of this part of Laos. From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, the USA dropped two million tons of bombs!!! in an effort to stop the transport of military goods from north to south Vietnam along the Ho Chi Minh trail. This unofficial war, sometimes known as the ‘Secret War’, continues to maim and kill locals as America has done nothing to clean up its mess. Thirty percent of ordinances did not explode on contact and some 30 to 60 casualties occur every year as people – often children – find the little bombs in their fields, parks and school yards. No amount of checking and re-checking by the British organization Mines Advisory Group (MAG) seems to make an area completely safe. When walking in the Plain of Jars, we had to stay within cement MAG markers that indicate where it is safe to walk. After a day of touring, we stayed at KongKeo Guest House where the garden is decorated with bomb shells, machine gun ammunition belts and other left over (but safe) ordinance from the Secret War. Most homes and businesses sport some kind of souvenir from the war as there is sooooo much of this around. We spend the evening sitting around a fire built inside a bomb casing (!)and Mr. Kong had us taste Lao Lao (rice whiskey) and he serenaded us on his guitar with American pop songs changed to reflect Laotian themes.

posted Feb 5, 2008 | Comments (0)