Cambodia in Pictures

Vietnam

Holiday Greetings from Vietnam! We are on the first leg of our Christmas journey through Vietnam, Cambodia and ending in Bali for New Years. The hotel in Hanoi has wi-fi and so I thought I would start the blogging so I could remember everything and not leave anything out. Vietnam is a crazy, loud and very crowded place and worth seeing but I will be honest in saying that our calm quiet hotel room has beckoned me more often than the crazy streets of Hanoi. Their currency is called "Dong" and the exchange rate is 19,466 Dong to 1 US Dollar. It has made for many 5 million Dong meals and I'm not proud to say the 6th grade Dong jokes have been flying around like water. But, no more stories...here are the pictures:

The Vietnamese Flag

A side street in Hanoi with hundreds of Vespas parked

Such a cute Vietnamese woman selling fruit and perfectly walking through the craziest traffic I have ever seen in my entire life! I had to take like 6 pics to not get a car or a Vespa in one.

On our second day in Vietnam we drove a few hours out to a place called Halong Bay which is essentially a place with thousands of limestone karsts which you can see in some of the pictures. A karst is basically barren rocky ground, caves and sinkholes (I had to look that up.) We took a cool little boat out overnight and enjoyed really great food and some of the most breathtaking views. The pictures don't do it justice (as I always say) but I hope you can get a good idea.

Our "boat" that we took. It was very comfortable and quaint.

And then these are the limestone karsts.....when we first set out we were crazily taking pictures and then we realized these karsts were ENDLESS so we relaxed and ate our faces off at the buffet. That has sort of been the theme of this trip, eating and spending Dong.

Long and Dev hanging out (two peas in a pod) but a cool pic with the Vietnamese flag

A pic of what the "caves" looked like.

We got to go into one of the caves with a million stalactites and stalagmites (stalactites are tapering structures hanging like icicles from the roof of a cave formed of calcium salts deposited by dripping water and stalagmites are ones that rise from the floor of the cave.) Who knew this blog would be such an educational experience for you, huh? Anyway, this cave was incredible! I LOVED walking through it. Here's Long and Steph walking in....

The pictures DO NOT do the amazing natural structures justice....

Our guide had us guess what images some of the different structures formed. Sidenote: Devin MADE me put this picture up amidst me telling him we do not know who views this blog and that are grandmothers view it but there was no cajoling him . He wanted you to guess what this one was. He said even my mom would think it was funny (so, sorry Mom.)

Sigh, boys will be boys. Good luck-it's a toughy to decipher....

Leaving the cave we saw this amazing view of the harbor. Again, not a fake backdrop but a great prom theme if someone wanted to do

"Under the Karst Stars."

This was the most "sunset" I could get due to the clouds but still a cool view...

Devin and Steph kayaked around the harbor....

We got to go exploring one day and came upon these monkeys...

So, now we head to Cambodia. I can't wait to see what awaits us there! Merry Christmas to all of you back home! We love you and miss you so very much!

Taiwan

We just got back from a weekend in Taipei and it was my favorite place we have been so far! I decided I love all things Taiwanese and Long Long was born there so it was fun to go back to her homeland. Plus, her friend went with us/hosted us and his brother is a famous Taiwanese movie star so he took us to all his favorite "hot spots." It was an amazing time!

This picture was specifically a posed shot (taken for the blog) as soon as we arrived in the airport. Long and Steph were good sports and the fact that we all wore purple was a coincidence.

Our hotel's beautiful tree put me in the Christmas spirit!

We put our bags down and hit the night food markets which is what Taiwan is known for. It's like thousands of booths with all this great food. Whoa! The food was so good! So so good! Picture the fair with no rides or rednecks and all food booths...that's what it was like.

This guy was my favorite and sort of tasted like a cajun fillet chicken biscuit from Bojangles without the biscuit. Lawdy, it was yummy!

There was beautiful fresh fruit everywhere but we opted for more unhealthy picks this night.

Here you can get a sense of how many booths were set up! Hundreds!

These were strawberries with a candy apple coating. Duh right? I was LOVING these!

An unfortunate misspelling of t-shirt....

Fish balls. They were surprisingly really good but maybe my palate is changing...

Devin (to no one's surprise) liked the fish balls.

My palate has NOT changed enough for me to try these guys....yowsers

Ok, this is not meant to be a picture of me...check out the girl's outfit in the background. Awesome. Pure awesomeness. I just love that she is all trended out but still sporting the face mask. As if her mom was like, "you can wear that outfit, but you have to wear your mask" and she actually obeyed her. Maybe teenagers in Taiwan are more obedient than I was but I would NOT have been caught dead sporting my furry knee high boots with a mask in high school...TSC

This was our movie star friend. We said he reminds us of Jackie Chan but I think that's because that's the only other Chinese movie star we know. He is the NICEST guy alive!!!

Y'all, the cabs had karaoke IN THEM! WHAT?!?!?!? Funnest thing ever. I wanted to just keep driving all over town. They call karaoke "K-TV" there and it's very popular. I think I was supposed to be Taiwanese. The back of our seats had the screens with the words.

All dressed up ready to go to dinner where we went to the best sushi restaurant I've ever been to. The guy on the very right was our wonderful host for the week. Such a great guide!

We went to K-TV that night as well. This is Nick who they tell us is like the Justin Timberlake of Taiwan. We didn't believe them really until we left the Karaoke place and saw the paparazzi outside and then saw him on the cover of a magazine at the airport. So, we got a free concert!

We enjoyed a very Taiwanese breakfast one morning of dumplings and rice soup with some Chinese pastries. Long was explaining what everything was to us here....

This is the guy that made them for us.....

Taipei Street

Scooters everywhere....

The last few pictures are famous temples of some sort. Long Long complains I don't listen to her enough when she explains the culture. "I don't really remember, I wasn't paying attention." I'm kidding, that is a movie quote from an old classic. :)