Laos

 

 

 

 

Final thoughts of trip

Highlights:

1. Observing religious ceremony at Cao Dai Holy Temple outside Saigon
2. Going to the floating markets early in the morning in CanTho and ChauDoc
3. Seeing Stephen in Phnom Penh
4. Eating Pho and pumpkin blossom fritters
5. Seeing Angkor Wat
6. Watching Tony swing from a rope and jumping off Khuang Si waterfall
7. Mountain biking to the Poukham caves and swimming in the Blue Lagoon
8. Sunset over the Mekong river
9. Early morning parade of monks gathering their "alm", mostly sticky rice, from people in Luang Prabang
10.Cruise on Halong Bay
11.Watching the colorful ethnic women at the BacHa Hill tribe market near the Chinese border
12.A performance by the Water Puppets in Hanoi

Laos

 

 

 

 

Angkor Wat, Cambodia

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

Home !

A 10.5 hr. flight to LA followed by a 3.5 hr. to Atlanta and all went well, no problems.
So glad to be picked up at the airport by our son Colin, with flowers in hand!
Another 2.5 hr. drive home and thankfully fell into our own bed!
What a trip it was, a summery will follow and of course all the promised pictures!

Seoul (Incheon) Korea

We are in Korea on 10 hr. layover and were smart enough not to take the offered city tour, but instead take a day room at a nearby hotel and go to sleep for a few hours.
We were back at the airport, refreshed and rested by 3:30 pm to check into our long flight home to the US. What a change from Vietnam. What we saw of Korea, nice big highways, clean and not so many people. A very modern and beautiful airport too.

Hanoi, Vietnam

Anbother overnight train ride brought us back to Hanoi for a couple of more days of sightseeing and one overnight in our favorite little St. Joseph's Hotel. The highlight was a performance of the "Water Puppets". A very traditional Vietnames folk story telling art form, with a troupe performing with puppets numerous vignettes of daily life in the country side and ancient tales. It's all done on a pond which forms the stage. There are lots of dragons, turtles, fishermen etc. Very entertaining, with a live orchestra and of course all in Vietnamese.

Another sight we saw was the "Hanoi Hilton" actually it's the Hoa Lo Prison where the US soldiers that were shot down during the war, were held (including John McCain). It was of course very depressing and somber but interesting. WE also saw the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, including the actual Chairman Ho Chi Minh, very well preserved (embalmed) in a big glass case and guarded, that was incredible. Thousands of people filing by looking at him after 42 years of his death.

I want to ramble on, but have to go catch our flight home, we are in Seoul, Korea and a 10 hour layover! More from home, it was an incrredible journey,.

Sapa, Vietnam

A quick taxi ride took us to the Hanoi train station, where we boarded an overnight coach to Lao Cai. We could only get a four people berth, so we shared the cabin with a couple of Vietnames. It was a long 9 hr. train ride, but we managed to get some sleep and got woken up at 5am. In Lao Cai a bus from our hotel took us up the mountain to Sapa. The town is at 5400 ft altitude and is quite interesting. There are three different ethnic tribes represented there, the most prevelant being the Black Muong,not because of their color of their skin, but the color of their costums. We took a hike down the valley to the little tribal village named CatCat. The scenery was stunning, lots of terraced rice fields. The colors were not at their best, as we were at the end of the dry season. The rain will make them emerald green and is a sight to see, we hear. Unfortunately in the afternoon the fog settled in and we couldn't see a thing, it felt like being back in Highlands!!We did see Mount Fransipan, SEAsia's highest mountain at 10,312 ft.


This morning we took a 3 hr.bus ride down the mountain and up another to the Bac Ha weekly tribal market, one of the biggest of it's kind in north Vietnam. It was a sight for the eyes. Never seen anything like it. The women wore this multi layered very colorful costums to the market and were trading and buying anything from food to cows and plows and of course their handy crafts, which I was most interested in. The village was only about 14 miles from the Chinese border and the people were very similar in looks to the Chinese. The big tribe there is called the Flower Muong.
Now we are back in Lao Cai waiting for the night train to take us back to Hanoi. Then one more night there and home we go. I think we are ready for it!