Camille’s Big Adventure

  The next town I stayed in was Tam Coc, a small suburb of Ninh Binh. It’s a cute little tourist town in the middle of rice fields with a few rivers and some big limestone outcrop mountains.   I stayed in a cute little bungalow there at a family’s house. Every morning they made me coffee and an omelette and fresh fruit for breakfast.  The first day I was really tired from the scary bus ride over so I mostly rested and got my nails done and got a massage. While there I met another American girl, Sarah, who was really cool and I ended up spending the next few days with. The first morning I got up early and walked about a mile to a nearby temple built into a limestone rock called bich dong pagoda. The walk there was really beautiful through rice paddies. I saw lots of goats and farmers working in the area.  At the pagoda I climbed the 200 steps carved into the limestone to the top and had such a beautiful view. It was a really neat place and I enjoyed the walk a...

  My next stop was Hanoi. to get there I needed to take a flight. So I took the boat back to Hoi an and then a car to Da Nang. I had half a day to kill in Da Nang so I went to the other side of the city from where I stayed earlier. I’m really glad I did because it was actually really different. My hostel in was on the south side of the city which was very westernized. There were very few Vietnamese restaurants, and while the food was still really good and lots of nice cafés it definitely felt like a small scale area really intentionally designed for tourist. the central city next to it, I walked to while I was in the hostel, and it was a higher end touristy. Lots of tall, high-end hotels, and a bit more expensive. Today I went to the north part of Da Nang and it was my favorite by far. I went to this really cool shop coffee shop that was full of different books and records and really eclectic decorations. I was the only white person there although they were quite a few Korean and J...

  My next stay was Cham Island. It’s a really beautiful little fishing island. There are very few tourists, even though it’s really close to some big tourist centers. I liked it because it felt a little more authentic to Vietnam than most places I’ve been. To get there I had to take a bus to the next city over and then take a boat to the island. The water on the day I rode over was really rough and it was not an easy ride. Still, though it was a really beautiful ride as you could see these huge fly stone mountains in the foreground that we were headed in for. The water is a refreshing light blue.  On the boat I’m met a few other people I met a German couple who I traveled with a vet and later would find out we’re staying in my homes stay with me. I ended up spending a lot of my weekend with them. The other group I chatted with quite a bit was an American family from Seattle. The recently graduated son was traveling across Southeast Asia and his parents had come to join him...

  Grab is the Vietnamese/SE Asian version of Uber and every single time I get one I go to the wrong place to get picked up and they call me to ask me where I am, but obviously I don’t speak Vietnamese so they say something, I say “I’m so sorry, I don’t speak Vietnamese, I’m here” they say sometime I say “sorry I don’t know” they hang up. Then I run around reading license plates trying to find my car for what feels like an eternity. It’s so hectic lol, every experience is like that.   Anyway, I headed for the hostel and arrived around 7pm. Another girl on my flight ended up in the same hostel and room as me and we quickly began chatting and decided to go for dinner together. She’s German and we are doing a very similar trip so have some plans to meet up along the way in different parts. She is a travel agent in Iceland and it was really cool to hear about her experiences there.  After a dinner of street food we walked to the beach and chatted and enjoyed the water and ...

I think I’ve come to the realization that big cities are just a bit too much for me, at least the main parts of them. I found the markets and the tourist attracts extremely overwhelming and realized that wandering around in big cities, especially in places where people are trying to call you in and get you to buy all their stuff is just too much for me. I find it extremely stressful. So after a few hours of wandering I went back to my hotel room to rest for a while and skip out on the heat of the day it’s 97 degrees here and just so hot during the day, but it cools off a lot in the evening.   As the sun started to get low in the sky I began wandering around the area my hotel is located in. There is a big mall, lots of tall skyscrapers for wealthy people to presumably live, and a big beautiful park. The park was full of locals who come from all over to enjoy the area. Kids were flying kites, there was heaps of free work put equipment, lots of restaurants and coffee shops. I really...

 So, I'm a bit confused about whether locals call it HCMC or Saigon, but the tour operators were calling it Saigon, so I guess I'll go with that.  In the afternoon I headed to city center, about 30 minutes from my hotel, to do a bit of wandering around on the main street before my tour at 5:15. It was really beautifully decorated for the lunar new year with giant dragons and lights and it was really cool. I'm still in awe of all the motorbikes, I saw someone driving with a lunar new year bush which is like a 4-5ft sparely leaved tree covered in dangling red envelopes. They held it in one hand while driving at full speed in the other. Truly it appears anything can be carried on a motorbike. I hadn't ridden a motorbike yet at that point, and was shocked. I've since decided that I'm willing to take the motorbike taxis for a ride if its a short ride, but I'm willing to shell out the double the price for an actual car when I am going across town. When I say '...