Vietnam

So, I bet you thought you might never hear from me again!  I really, really meant to keep and update my blog, but I've started working part-time.  That, plus the sheer craziness and busyness of 3 school-aged kids, has pretty much knocked me out of the running lately.  This working outside the home business is taking some getting used to, for sure. I promise, we don't spend our lives here on vacation.  And I have plenty to say about mundane - but never-boring- daily life in Beijing.  I'm going to try hard to recommit to posting at least once a month.  So, if you know me, do try to nudge me along to make me stick to my promise.

In the meantime, I definitely want to blog about our trip to Vietnam.  My dad served in Vietnam during the war, many many eons ago.  He told us stories about the country when we were kids.  Not gory war stories although I'm certain he has plenty of those.  Rather, he would talk about the beauty of the people and places that he encountered there.  Vietnam and its' people and places fascinated me.  I always thought that it would be amazing to see it, but wasn't sure I would ever do so. My dad also talked about returning, but I'm pretty sure he didn't think it would ever really happen either.  So, when my parents started planning a trip to visit us here in China, we decided that it would be very fun to meet in Vietnam for a week, then go on to China for a week.  Like a great Asian adventure.  Since Vietnam has a lot to see and we only had a week, I let my dad choose between the south and the north.  He decided to go north since that was a part that he didn't see when he was posted here (thank goodness since Americans in the north typically stayed at the Hanoi Hilton).  He spent his time traveling between Hue and Da Nang in the south.

The family nominated me as vacation planner.  So, after consulting Tripadvisor and friends that had recently returned from Vietnam, I mapped out an aggressive itinerary that focused primarily on Sapa in the northwest and Halong Bay in the Gulf of Tonkin.  We based ourselves out of Hanoi, but didn't plan to spend more than a day or so in the city.  Our trip involved homestays with ethnic minorities, luxury cruise boats, overnight trains and plenty of buses, taxis and automobiles in between.

I'll do each leg of the journey as a separate blog post with pictures so you can see the different areas. The short version is that we all LOVED Vietnam and had a great time.  We also had a pretty adventurous and active itinerary. I'm thrilled that my parents and my children did a great job keeping up.  We didn't spend a single night in the same place.  And we hiked over 12 hours.

Here is a brief preview of what the Old Quarter Hanoi is like. This was right in front of our hotel.  Craziness!  Cars also use this road, amazingly enough.  So glad I wasn't driving there.