Danang

(See the size of our bags! black/blue is Jeffs, teal/orange is mine, Genna's is smaller, and Maya has a nice child size 35L internal frame)

Our first train experience of the trip was the night train from Nha Trang to Danang.  It was running late and the wait was uncomfortably hot.  We had 3 night trains total on the whole trip and progressively went up in class.  We started here with the "Hard Berth" sleeper which is a cabin for 6.  Two triple bunk beds with thin mats, a pillow, and a blanket.  It wasn't terrible sleeping but expectedly bare-bones.

We ate SO MUCH NOODLE SOUP for 8 weeks! Most of it was good.  Occasionally there would be weird things to pick around (crab balls or blood lumps), but you can't go too wrong with noodles and broth.  

We hoped to see more of Marble Mountain but entered at a minor ticketed entrance later to discover that we needed a different ticket to see the major part of the caves, pagodas, and mountain top. It was such a frustrating situation, we just left and skipped the rest.

We really liked Danang, even though we only spent 24 hours here.  The city is cleaner and traffic is lighter compared with Saigon.  There are several bridges that are lovely day and night.  

ADDICT
Here we learned that the iced coffee with sweetened condensed milk is called "Saigon" style.  It often comes with another glass of cold jasmine tea.  This cafe also served a DELICIOUS and cheap glass of fresh yogurt topped with passion fruit.

Nha Trang

     We figured NaTrang would be the last stop together before the Boyans departed.  It took us a while to figure out how our last week would play out.  Should we take a bus and stop in Dalat or take the train direct from HCMC? (We gave in and flew).  Since we scrapped the beginning part of the Thailand itinerary, we thought the Boyans might leave Vietnam early and try some of the southern Thai beaches, perhaps with a direct flight to Phuket.  (There were no such logistically convenient flights).

     The Boyans were hoping for some good diving conditions on the coast.  The girls wanted more beach time (which would potentailly be our last).  So we ended up spending 5 days in Nha Trang. The Boyans would leave 2 days later after getting a dive in.  Gratefully, they offered to take a bit of our cast-a-way luggage and souvenirs so we don't have to carry them for 4 more weeks.  

     Our major take-aways from Nha Trang were that it is overrun with Russian tourists.  We hadn't heard anything about this, but it is, in fact, a thing.  Secondly - the beach is overrun with trash.  A steady stream of plastic floats in with every wave.  (We did encounter 2 travellers a week later that had stayed less than a mile down shore, who oddly reported that their beach was clean.)  

   We were annoyed with our lodging situation at "Holi Beach Apartments" inside the Maple Hotel. The room itself was nice and even had a balcony washing machine and a kitchenette.  However it was an arrangement where some apartments had taken a few floors of a larger hotel.  The hotel pool was only available to us for a relatively high day-fee.  The Boyan's apartment was nearly as large as ours but was less than half the price of our room.  We just felt that the overall value was disproportionate to the enjoyment we had in Nha Trang.  Jeff and I can do with generally less beach time (ugh SAND and SUNBLOCK, yuck), so we're a hard sell on this city.

On the first full day we checked out the Cham Towers (above left) and Long Son Pagoda (right and below) 

We managed to get Grandpa to have street food on tiny stools with us once.  

     The Boyans treated us to a snorkeling trip with Vietnam Active to Hon Mun Island and Madonna Rock.  After our Cambodian experience and the amount of trash on the mainland of Nha Trang, we had low expectations that Vietnamese sea life would compare to our Caribbean standards.  We were pleasantly surprised.  Clarity was good and the reef-life was colorful.  We saw many blue sea stars, lots of parrot fish, and some specimens that even the crew of Exit Strategy didn't commonly encounter.  This was the first time Genna truly snorkeled, rather than freaking out and reverting to goggles.  She loved it and loudly narrated her findings through her tube the whole time.   Thank goodness for the wet suits they provided.  The water was a bit chilly and Genna was quite purple by the end of the day.  The Boyans booked themselves for a dive in the same area for another day.

     One weird encounter we had was at Hon Chong Promontory.  Some sources we read mentioned that you could snorkel off this point around these picturesque boulders.  Lonely Planet said that locals dive off the rocks.  Maya and I love to jump off cliffs and all of us love snorkeling (which was lacking at most ALL of the beaches we'd been to on this trip).  However when we got there, no one was swimming. We disrobed, masked up, and planned to jump in and immediately got tweeted at by the guards.  NO SWIMMING!  So we thought we'd climb around these boulders for a while before leaving for the approved adjacent beach.  TWEET! TWEET!  No climbing on the rocks!!!  You must stay on the maintained pathway.  They didn't speak English so we could neither argue, reason with, or wrench an explanation from the guards. Perhaps they had a good reason to ban swimming like there could be unexploded ordinances in the bay or they were protecting the (drab) reef (probably not). So we momentarily retreated, then the girls made a break for some offshore boulders to explore while leaving the dads to porter our belongings to the beach.  We made like Dori (just keep swimming, just keep swimming), don't look back, ignore the tweeting.  However, it took Dad and Jeff so long to catch up with us at the beach we feared they had been detained on our behalf.  

   Maya is a persistent diver and always found teeny tiny crabs or interesting shells off the beach.  Near Hon Chong she investigated this bumpy sea star.

The last beach day ALL the girls tried out the inflatable playground.  

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

     One thing about pre-booking hotels online is that if you have not been to that city yet, you don't have a feel for the neighborhood you are booking in apart from mapping the distance to the attractions you want to be close to.  We were having a hard time finding a reasonably priced place in Saigon that could fit our family of 4.  Since the girls cannot share one twin bed (not because of their size, but because they are miserable at sharing space, specifically with each other), we have to pass on some "family rooms" that only have a queen and large twin. Sometimes we have to get 2 rooms as it is a bit unusual to get 2 queens or larger in one room.  Dad and Jeff had been doing most of the bookings, but I gave this one a shot and found the Riverview Apartment Hotel.  

     Saigon addresses, like in other Vietnamese cities can be confusing as they are labeled as a main, recognizable street, but can actually be off that street in an alley, or hém.  Our apartment was deep into one such alley.  We arrived at night and walked through the garishly lit frontage of massage parlors and sushi bars.  This happened to be Little Tokyo.  To the girls, the underlying seediness was not blatantly inappropriate, and overall we were happy with the location.  The $45 apartment itself was grand with 2 bedrooms and a roomy dining area with furnished kitchenette.  Although no-pool, it did have a smart TV so the girls could YouTube their mermaid shows on the big screen.  Besides the Boyans I don't think anyone else was staying here.  The elderly hosts were always cheerful to us, while not knowing English, and if we had some question they could not assist with, they went down the block to get the daughter (in her sailor suit, or other costume-of-the-day at "Captain's Bar") to translate for us.

While the Boyans went off in search of a Western Breakfast before mass at Notre Dame, the Carrolls tucked into some street pho.  The sweet iced coffee was so addicting, Jeff and Genna wend back several times and befriended the proprietress and her granddaughter. Another benefit of having a "baby" with you is increasing positive interactions with locals.

Maya, Babçia and I took a cooking class with Cyclo Resto.  Keeping with their namesake, guests are picked up on these bicycle rickshaws, "cyclos" which happen to be operated by the oldest men in Saigon. It is a wonder they could maneuver through the hectic traffic with these heavy carts.

We began with a guided excursion of Ben Than market for supplies for our meal. A unique observation was a vendor prepping a large fish for her customer.  (bottom center photo above) She took the selected LIVE fish out of the tank and whacked it on the ground several times until it was dead enough to bag.  All parts of animals are on display from "nose to tail" as the hip agro-foodies say.  We did not buy anything exotic for our class, just shrimp, pork, veggies/herbs, tofu, and fresh noodles.

The class menu was fried spring rolls, chicken pho soup, Vietnamese pancakes, garlic morning glory, and veggie garnishes.  The treat for dessert was egg coffee.
Come over and Maya will prepare one of these recipes for you!

The War Remnants Museum is very educational. The girls thought it was a little too creepy, but 'tis the reality of these tragedies.

The young guide at the Cu Chi Tunnels (red shirt) definitely skewed his interpretation towards pro-North Vietnamese as he pointed out all the cunning ways the Northerners evaded, trapped, or maimed the G.I.s.  It was impossible to imagine living through that event on either side.