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!