I was excited about our trip to Hanoi, and I wanted to love it. I am not sure why I didn’t, well, actually, it was probably the sky. I like blue skies. I need blue skies. I can only take one or two grey days in a row. Hanoi was three weeks of haze. Perhaps it was the Spring weather as we were told…  or not.

You can see what I mean in the photo below taken at West Lake near our condo.

But I did love watching the happenings as we wandered our neighborhood and the central city.

You could get a haircut in many alleys and main streets.

Houses on West Lake near our condo.

Streets are closed near Hoàn Kiếm Lake on the weekends.

Bikes carry goods of all shapes and sizes.

A small side street in the city center.

Small outdoor eateries are everywhere.

The photo above took place a few hours into our wait in line to see Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. The group of Chinese tourist in front of us was incredibly nice despite the fact that we could only communicate with hand signals. We never made it to the Mausoleum. We never even made it near the entrance to the complex.

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum (view from outside the barriers to the complex)

Trấn Quốc Pagoda

The above photo is a leftover from Hội An prior to our Hanoi stay. Our Airbnb manager, Ang, invited us to her daughter’s school’s celebration of Tết, where Matthew learned to make Bánh chưng.

The best part of that story is that Logan did not want to make the Bánh chưng because she hates being the center of attention. However, as she stood off to the side, she was nabbed by someone for an interview about her experience that day at the school.

We did two free walking tours in Hanoi. In Vietnam, University students who want to improve their English guide private, free tours. I loved these tours because the students were eager to talk about the sites visited, as well as every aspect of their lives, country, and history.

We asked almost every English speaking Vietnamese person that we met their opinion of Americans (and as an aside, it seemed that in all of Asia we had to say we were from “America” because the phrase “The United States” did not register). They all insisted that they held no ill will toward Americans, but blame the government in charge at the time of the war.

The structure above is on the 100,000 Dong currency in Vietnam.

The temple was also full of adorable kids.

Hoàn Kiếm Lake (below) is in the center of Hanoi. The students told us a long story about the lake that included an Emperor, a golden turtle, and a sword.

Below you can see the two students leading our tour. One explained how her father recalled climbing into shelters under the sidewalk when he was a child during bombings.

Our second tour brought us to the military history museum. It exhibited centuries of military conflicts in Vietnam. The very short story is that Vietnam was continually attacked, but each time fought off their enemies with cleverness, cunning, and patience. Reviewing their history, you would not think this is a country you want to fight.

Oddly, this museum was also full of adorable children.

Our guide led us to the next stop via the railroad track (that is still in use).

Our last stop was Hỏa Lò Prison, also known as the Hanoi Hilton. Much of the information presented focused on Vietnamese political prisoners that were tortured by the French.

The last room had photos of American prisoners.  It clearly was not a realistic portrayal of their experience in the prison. Basically, the photos made it look like they were at summer camp.

A fellow tourist described Ninh Bình as Hạ Long Bay on land, which is a fairly accurate description. 

We hiked up the peaks of Mua Caves.

And took a boat ride in Van Long Nature Reserve.

Matthew and Logan are sporting their newly learned ‘love’ signs. A young Vietnamese woman explained to us that the one where you hold your hands together in a heart shape is so out of style.

Logan and I relax at our hotel.

We got to sleep in a bamboo house. It was missing the bamboo floor, but it did have a bamboo door. Lainey… you are likely the only person who may read this that has a clue of what I am talking about.

Matthew eats the local dish wherever we go. This time it was goat. There were many goat carcasses hanging on stands alongside the road… looks better on the dish.

Cúc Phương National Park is a few hours south of Hanoi. Since we like trees more than cities, we hired a driver to visit. Most people must prefer cities because there were only a handful of people in the entire park.

Above, we are in front of the ‘thousand year old tree.’ I was excited to see it, less so when I discovered what is not obvious from the photo; it is pretty much dead.

Below is an old observation tower. The kids and I climbed only part way before deciding that collapse was imminent. Brave (or stupid) Matthew went all the way up. He couldn’t take many pictures as there was little room to stand on anything that was not in the last stages of decay.

Above is the view for which Matthew risked his life.

Above, we are on our way up to The Cave of Prehistoric Man. It was excavated in 1966, revealing human graves, stone axes, pointed bone spears, oyster shell knives, and tools for grinding dating back 7,500 years

We have been to a lot of caves this year. This one ranks near the top of my list for unguided caves because of its size and the scary ladder (that felt a lot steeper than it appears in the picture).

The picture below is from an opening in the ‘upper floor’ of the cave. I wanted to exit it to avoid going go back down the ladder, but it was a plunge down to the forest floor.

When we arrived in Thailand, we noticed strangers taking pictures of us. It is almost always the kids that attract attention, although I have had my photo snapped while running and working out in a gym. Sometimes it is locals taking the pictures, other times tourists. Some will try to hide the fact that they are photographing us, others will ask us to join in with them. Ethan once had three Japanese tourists stand feet from his face and snap about a dozen photos. Logan had a woman take pictures of her throughout a meal in Hoi An. We have had more videos taken of us walking down streets than I can recall. The photos happened so often that Matthew eventually started to capture a few of his own.

Most of the group of Vietnamese students above was too embarrassed to ask for our photo, but once the girl in red did, they all jumped in.

We were taking a picture of Logan and Ethan near Luang Prabang, Laos when the group above saw them. They literally sprinted back to join them and take pics of their own.

Above was a group of Chinese tourist in Vietnam. They were in front of us in line waiting for entrance to Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum (long story, we never saw it). They took a series of photos with them and us in many combinations. After reviewing the first set of photos, they perfected their poses in a new series, this time with a focus on Logan as the star.

On our trip to Ninh Binh, Vietnam, we couldn’t walk 10 feet without a request. The group below asked to have Logan in a photo. Then they saw Ethan, and all chanted, “the boy, the boy!” So we called him back to join in.

I cannot imagine how many photos our kids would have endured if we had traveled when they were still little and had blond curls.

Matthew took the photo below in Thailand. We know not to take pictures of monks without asking, but in Matthew’s defense, this monk snapped a picture of Matthew too. And on our day back in Chiang Mai when we went to the ‘monk chat,’ the young monks were whipping out their phones left and right to take pictures of Ethan and Logan.

Matthew asked to take the photo below after reading the man’s hat. It is unclear if he knew what the hat said.

Every time we land in a new country we have to learn a few things quickly.

• Can we flush the toilet paper?
• Can we drink the water / how do we get drinking water?
• What can we eat? (Our diet changes completely every country. If you ever wanted to try an elimination diet, this is the way to do it.)
• Where do you buy toiletries… does anyone in the country use conditioner?!?

And then we have to learn how to cross the streets. This involves observation. In some countries, like Germany and Slovenia, everyone follows the rules. You cross at crosswalks and you wait for the light to turn green, even if you don’t need to. In Thailand, it was more of a ‘sprint when there is a break’ or ‘wait until the traffic backs up and you can weave through the cars.’

The advice given to us prior to arriving in Vietnam was to “walk slowly across streets at a steady pace without stopping suddenly while letting the motorcycles/scooters avoid you.” And true enough, Vietnam was the first country where we had to slow down to cross streets.

The videos below are of a small side street. We crossed many larger roads with multiple lanes full of scooters, however, I didn’t take videos because I didn’t want to be the idiot on You-Tube that filmed their family getting splattered (or smushed as Logan prefers).

A few countries back I completely stopped making sure the kids got across the street. Ethan gets mad if I get a block ahead and don’t notice he got trapped crossing, but it became apparent that if anyone were going to get smacked by a car, it would probably be me. Sometimes Logan gently holds my arm as we cross a street. I like to pretend she is looking for comfort while crossing a particularly busy road, but I am fairly she is trying to guide her less coordinated mother across the street.

Back when we were in Hanoi, we took a three-day cruise on Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is one of those places that you can’t quite capture in pictures because it surrounds you and the scenery is constantly changing.

We had time to relax, read books and shuttle around to some tourist sites.

Logan on the upper deck.

The bay was full of cruise ships alongside smaller fishing vessels and ‘boat shops’ that would stop at the ships to sell goods to tourists.

The first evening we visited a cave.

We were the only guests on our cruise (of about 40 people) to opt for the three-day tour, so they transferred us to a smaller ship on the second day that ferried us to various areas of the bay. It seemed overkill to have a relatively large ship with staff twice as large as our family.

We visited one of the few remaining floating villages in the bay.

Our guide also took us to an inner part of an island that often has monkeys. The odd part was that all the other tourist were Chinese, whereas all the tourist in the cave the day before had been Western. We didn’t have a choice of which sites we were going to see when we booked the cruise, so it appears the tour agencies decide who goes where and, for some reason they seem to separate the Western and Chinese tourists.

We did get to see monkeys. We have seen quite a few this year, but this was the most that we have seen at any one time (note mom with a baby in the center). They jumped from limb to limb frequently too, so they were the most entertaining monkeys thus far.

We visited a cultivated pearl farm and saw how to plant a bead inside an oyster to make a pearl. Then a staff woman violently stabbed an oyster to retrieve a pearl, as a kid in our group screamed, “She killed it!” Not that I wanted to wear pearls, but I am even less excited about them now.

On our cruise boat.

At one of the stops, we climbed to a viewpoint.

Back at the dock, Ethan discovered he could do a vertical jump, and so he did… over and over and over…

Hội An was crowded with tourists, both Vietnamese and foreign. The few days prior to Tết it was so crowded that we abandoned our policy of “stand where you are if you get separated and lost.” Instead, we decided it would be easiest to push through the crowd alone for a half mile and meet at the bridge that would lead back to our house.

But there is a good reason the crowds flock to Hội An; it is charming. We never tired of looking at the lanterns, buildings, and boats. And there was constant entertainment as the tourist posed to get the perfect selfie.

Spending too much time in cities makes us restless, so a few weeks back we hired a car and guide to take us to Bạch Mã National Park, located between Da Nang and Huế.

We hiked to the top of Dô Quyên waterfall (below).

Then walked down 700 steps to get to the bottom of the falls, almost 1000 feet below.

Then we climbed back up.

After lunch, we headed up to the peak as the clouds started to roll in. There was an area that was used as a helicopter base by the U.S. Military during the Vietnam War (or The War Against America as we are told it is called here).

Ethan was happy to get to stand on the roof of a building.

And to pretend to be a giant.

As we headed back down, we came across another monkey eating junk food. He finally finished it but was not in a hurry to leave the path.

Our guide then took us to a tunnel system in the mountain that had been used by the North Vietnamese during the war. The tunnel led to storage or living areas periodically. The guide kept telling us about all the spiders, bats and deadly centipedes that lived inside the tunnels. We only saw bats, which was good because he said if a centipede bit you, you would have two hours to get to the hospital or you would die.

A few weeks ago I was talking with my sister on the phone while sitting on our back porch in Hội An. She kept asking me to be quiet. I do blabber on a bit too much, so it wasn’t a totally odd request. But she explained that she was trying to listen to the birds in the background, then added that I should post the sound of the birds on my website. So here are a few clips. These clips are missing the roosters that are present when I first go out in the morning. I am usually outside by 6 am and get to read, drink coffee, and eat for an hour or so before I start my day. We leave for Hanoi tomorrow. I will miss my morning time with the birds.

This post is also for Kathy “I love birds” Blondheim. She has no idea that this is her nickname in our house. A few years ago we went to lunch with her while visiting Atlanta. Ethan was talking excitedly about a bird watching hike that we had just been on; Kathy’s eyes lit up, and she exclaimed, “I love birds!” It turns out that Ethan doesn’t care about birds very much. He simply liked the hike because he got to talk to a lot of adults for a few hours. But Kathy genuinely does love birds.

We did not plan to visit the ‘Lady Buddha’ statue near Da Nang. I had attempted to book a hike after our visit to Marble Mountain. But the driver didn’t speak English as advertised, and he had not been told that he was supposed to drive us to a hiking path. Plans change. He assumed we wanted to see ‘Lady Buddha’ (or Lady Pagoda as he called it), so we did, along with hoards of other tourists.

(Update… Steve has informed me that the correct name for the statue in English is ‘The Goddess of Mercy’. Thanks, Steve)

We went to a few viewpoints first.

Then the Buddha, which is about 30 stories tall.

Our driver could tell we didn’t really want to see Lady Buddha, so he assumed we wanted to see monkeys and kept stopping the car so we could look for them. We didn’t care that much about seeing monkeys, but there were plenty to see once we arrived at the Lady Buddha. It appears the tourist feed them frequently. We saw one munching on what looked like a snack cake package. We took photos to show our driver that we saw monkeys, hoping he would feel happy that we had achieved our “goal.”

Below is an example of a tourist trying to lose her hand… or face. She was not the only one we saw that seemed unaware that monkeys are wild animals.

An Bang beach is a short Uber ride from our place in Hội An.

Ethan has always loved water splashing his face. Once, when he was about nine months old, he and I were a few blocks away from our house in Cleveland Heights when a cold, pelting rain began. It felt miserable. I started to run while pushing his stroller, hoping to get out of it as quickly as possible. Ethan screamed with delight and pumped his little fists in the air… all the way home. His face was red, wet and cold; and he was delighted.

His reaction to water splashing his face has not changed significantly.

Logan prefers her book.

We all agree on snacks.

Mỹ Sơn, the capital of the Champa Kindom, is an hour from Hội An. There we saw the remains of Hindu temples dating from the 4th to 13th centuries.

We started the day stuck on a bus while a guide told us cringy jokes. Then the bus blew out a tire, and I wished we were still on the bus instead of standing on the side of the road.

When we arrived at Mỹ Sơn, we decided to skip the tour (having had our fill of creepy jokes) and headed off on our own.

We returned via bus and boat, but it appears we didn’t bother to take a photo. Imagine a wooden boat on a river with a view of the countryside.

We are more than halfway through our trip, so I think it is time to thank my husband for making it possible. I was able to take off work to plan our adventures, homeschool, and shop because he continues to work his full-time job in addition to working on his startup company… and he still does the laundry (thanks!!!) and teaches the kids computer programming. And he does it all under circumstances that can be challenging. His “daily” meeting is now at midnight, the internet can be slow, and I don’t even want to talk about finding acceptable desks and chairs everywhere we go.

And yet, he still finds plenty of time to hang with us. In fact, I suspect he feels he gets to enjoy our presence a bit too much at times.  We have all been working/studying in the same room since early November. He especially loves it when I spout random news at him while I read the newspaper, or when Ethan hums the same six notes over and over.

Last week we took a bike tour to some of the islands of Hội An. We started out with a boat ride down the Thu Bon river, arriving at Duy Vinh Island.

There was a demonstration of mat weaving. The woman on the left is the weaver, and the one on the right is the assistant. Our guide says that the younger generation is not learning the trade and that it will soon be gone.

And a tour of a traditional house, which was interesting as it included a description of how to climb in the rafters and live there for days when it floods.

We then biked to a house that made rice wine. The rice is on the white tarp, and fermenting in the red buckets on the left.

We tasted the rice wine, while our guide told numerous stories of excessive drinking by men on the island.

There were a few pigs in concrete cages in the house. Per our guide, they ate the leftover rice from the wine production, so they were always happy (despite their concrete cage?). She also told us that the rice is cooked using methane gas from the pig poop that has been washed through holes in the concrete and collects under the house.

We biked across a bridge to the adjoining island.

One fisherman slapped the water with the paddle, and then the other grabbed the fish that surfaced with the net.

A tradesman showed us how he makes boats. Our guide said that every family on the island had one to use in time of floods.

The wife of the boat maker then demonstrated how to use the boats. You never know if the locals enjoy working with tourist, as obviously they get more work if they aren’t scowling at you. Perhaps this woman is not having fun, but she deserves an Oscar for her performance if it wasn’t genuine.

Views while biking.

A water buffalo with the longest horns we have seen yet.

In Kim Bon, we visited a workshop that does woodwork with shell inlay. The final products were impressive (sorry, no photos).

Above is the end of the tour. Below are photos from around town.

One afternoon the kids and I took an afternoon walk to Kim Bồng village on an adjoining island. Below the kids are pictured relaxing at our destination in a cafe. We needed to relax after walking over the long bridge that prohibited cars. It was wide enough for two motorcycles to pass, and there was an endless stream coming in both directions. The frightening part occurred every time the motorcycle on our side was pulling a cart behind it, which would leave us with about 6 inches of space (okay… maybe it was 18 inches). Whatever it was, I was frightened I was going to lose my knees, or legs… or life.

Since we did not want to return via the bridge, we walked halfway across the island to where I had read that the ferry could take us back to Hội An mainland. It turns out; the ferry had already stopped for Tet. Opps. A friendly shopkeeper helped me talk our way onto one of the last tourist boats leaving the island. We would have paid quite a lot to skip the hike back over the bridge, but the captain let us on for about $4 total.

We arrived in Hoi An, Vietnam on Monday evening. It is always a bit stressful on the first few days in a new country. This time our kitchen is lacking… it’s probably easier to state what it does have, rather than what it does not. It has  a fridge, a hot plate, two bowls, one plate, and a total of about five utensils. I am taking it as a sign that I should not start back cooking.

As a bonus, the house comes with entertainment. The last two nights we have enjoyed karaoke at a volume that could probably cause hearing loss. We are hoping that Monday and Tuesday are the party nights in our neighborhood, and the rest of the week will be a little quieter.

On the positive side:

• The kids and I took a short class on basic phrases in Vietnamese this morning. I can now say, “I am a vegetarian,” which is very useful.
• Tomorrow the kids have a voice lesson across town, and I am working on setting up a food stall tour on Friday and a bike tour to island villages on Saturday.
• Matthew got an office chair yesterday, which is a challenge every time we land.

And…