Southern Vietnam

As many of you know we learned at the very last minute (two days before our planned departure from Cambodia) that Vietnam changed their visa laws. When we planned this trip back in June we were able to get visas on arrival in Vietnam. Turns out that in August, Vietnam changed that rule and we now had to apply for visas online and wait for them to be granted which is a 5-7 day process.

Luckily we found this out because Bryce’s friend Sara was planning her trip to Vietnam (she is here now) and asked him about how the visa application process was and we were like “what visa application process?”.

We immediately applied, extended our stay at our hotel for five more nights, booked new flights and anxiously awaited our visas.

Bryce got his two days before our newly booked flight and I got mine the day before.

The most upsetting part about this was that we missed out on exploring Ho Chi Minh. We were very excited to see the city, check out the Cu Chi Tunnels and learn about the Vietnam war in the museums.

But, I guess this just means we’ll have to come back some time. Next time with visas in hand.

We boarded our flight in Cambodia and were on our way to Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam for our 22 hour stay.

Hopped in a Grab from the airport, made the 45 minute drive to our AirBnb that sat vacant for days waiting for us, and got looking into nearby restaurants for dinner.

Bryce found a place called Pizza 4Ps that had 4.9 stars with over 7,000 reviews. We checked out the menu and it was a bunch of pizza and pasta that everyone raved about so we figured it was definitely the place we wanted to try out.

Reviews said they get really busy and it's best to make a reservation but they didn't have any available so we just thought we’ll walk over and take our chances. If they don’t have a table we will find somewhere else to go.

We got there and luckily for us, there was one table for two available. We ordered a 3 cheese pizza and a creamy carbonara spaghetti with pork to share. Oh my gosh it was so amazing. The waitress gave us the pro tip of drizzling honey on the pizza which really did step it up a notch.

It was such a delicious dinner.

Side note: it's the next day. As I was writing this yesterday I looked up what the name of Pizza 4Ps was because we couldn't remember and in the process I learned that there is another location here in Hanoi, an easy 12 minute walk from our AirBnb. We literally dropped everything, made a reservation and were eating their amazing food within an hour lol. We’re definitely going to eat there at least one more time before leaving for Laos.

Okay, back to our time in Ho Chi Minh.

After we ate dinner we walked across the street to a night market. I love to see what people are selling but the constant yelling “lady, buy something” does get annoying and kind of ruins the whole vibe. We didn’t last long in this particular night market because of this.

We then went back to our AirBnb, but not before coming literal inches from being hit by a car running a red light as we crossed in a crosswalk. Not that that really matters here. People cross anywhere they want and it is common for cars to ignore the traffic lights. If there is an opening in traffic, drivers usually take it. This car really seemed to appear out of thin air though it was wild. He wasn’t slowing down for anything.

But, we made it back alive and watched some youtube videos together before falling asleep. 7am rolls around and we are up and back to the airport.

Though our time in Ho Chi Minh was short, it was certainly memorable.

We arrived in Da Nang, Vietnam and began scheduling and planning out what we wanted to see and do in our 10 days there.

On the to-do list: check out the nearby city of Hoi An, take a day trip to the Demilitarized Zone of Hue, explore the caves and mountain top of the Marble Mountain, mix in beach/work/chill days and ride the giant ferris wheel (called the Sun Wheel) to see Da Nang from 377 feet in the air.

The first night we got to Da Nang, Bryce got some sort of stomach sickness so he spent the first few days there recovering while I got some work done.

Hoi An:

It turned out that the night we planned to go to Hoi An was in the middle of the Mid-Autumn Festival. This is a holiday of importance, celebrated on the full moon of the 6th month of the year. It is mostly for the children of Vietnam as it is based off of a fairytale about a little boy and girl on the moon (as our Grab driver let us know).

Upon arrival in Hoi An we walked to a restaurant to have dinner. Not long after we got there we really got a taste for how big this festival is to the locals. We were seated right by the door when we looked out at the sound of drums and cymbals. Walking on to the restaurant porch were Vietnamese dragon dancers. The two boys in one dragon costume were dancing around as a handful of other boys (all around teenage years) were keeping the beat. They came into the restaurant as people enjoyed their meals and while children were following them around, screaming in excitement.

After dinner we hit the closed off streets and checked out the night market stalls lining them. I grabbed myself an ornament as I do in every country we travel to. My ornament collection is 100% made up of keychains though because I have not had any luck finding any ornaments in Asia.

After checking out what the night market has to offer, a local woman asked us if we wanted to take a boat ride on the river. Seconds before, Bryce and I talked about checking the boats out so we told the woman yes. She guided us over to the ticket table about 50 yards away and we bought 2 tickets for 150,000 Vietnamese Dong ($6 USD).

After waiting in line for a few minutes we boarded our boat and began our 15ish minute trip around the river splitting the streets of Hoi An.

It was a beautiful ride under the stars and full moon. Hoi An is known for its paper lanterns lining all of the streets and those only added to the scenery and experience out on the water.

After the boat ride we walked around the streets for a while. We saw more dragon dancers and many more stalls selling souvenirs. We explored for about another hour or so before ordering a Grab driver and heading back to Da Nang.

We loved Hoi An and its beauty. We would definitely recommend it to anyone that visits southern Vietnam.

Demilitarized Zone of Hue:

We booked a van/shuttle (they call it a limousine here) to drive us a couple hours north for a day trip to Hue. They picked us up right at our AirBnb around 8am. What was supposed to be a two hour ride turned into three+ as we drove around Da Nang for an hour picking up a couple other people. We finally made it to Hue and we were hungry so the first stop of course was food. We found a restaurant with great reviews about a 12 minute walk away and we were quickly on our way there. Over lunch we talked about what we wanted to do for the day.

Our initial plan was to visit the Citadel there but when you combine the weather being 103 degrees and having already walked around a lot of ancient buildings in Cambodia, we weren’t exactly feeling it anymore.

Instead we looked around for inside activities to do.

Our first stop: an air conditioned mall. At this point it had been almost two hours without AC in crazy temps so we were dying for any relief from the heat.

We walked a good bit to get to the mall and spent some time poking around the stores there. We like to check out grocery stores in Asia and so we swung by the one in the mall. We grabbed some cold drinks and a couple snacks for later in the day if we needed them. After that we sat at a coffee shop for a while, talked and tried to come up with more things to do inside.

Bryce had been on a kick of wanting to play pool so we thought it could be a fun idea to try and find a billiards hall. Billiards is a big deal in Asia so we figured it wouldn't be too hard to track a hall down.

We found one on Google Maps and headed in that direction. We took the elevator up to the fifth floor, claimed a table and started our game. There were a couple other tables of locals playing at the same time and admittedly we were embarrassed because we were obviously not as good as them lol. But we had fun anyway. Bryce won the first and the second game but then after I got all warmed up I tied the series 2-2. Bryce came back and ended up winning the best out of five series.

We paid and headed back out to the streets of Hue. We walked around, admiring the ancient architecture and buildings. Even stopping for a break in the park as we looked for a shady spot to escape the sun.

It is now around 5pm and we were starting to get hungry again. We mapped to a pub for some fries and drinks. We killed time there as we watched a tennis match on tv and got bombarded with locals trying to sell us things as we ate. I do always find it interesting how that is allowed in restaurants. Locals will just come up to you from the streets and show you every variation of whatever they are selling as you're trying to eat and repeatedly tell them “no thank you.”

By the time we wrapped up there we still had one hour until our van came to bring us back to Da Nang. We stopped at a second restaurant for mozzarella sticks and a second bevvy.

Finally, it was time to call it a night. We went to the pick up spot, jumped in the van and were back to our AirBnb in 2 hours.

Overall, it was a good, memorable day in Hue and we were glad to add another Vietnamese city to our list of places we’ve explored.

Marble Mountain:

The Marble Mountains are made up of 5 different marble and limestone mountains in Da Nang and are used as Buddhist worship sites. They are all named after the five elements metal, water, wood, fire and Earth. The only mountain that is accessible to visitors is Mt. Thuy (water).

Throughout history, the Marble Mountains have also been used as refuge, secret command posts and even a hospital during the French Colonial and Vietnam War.

When you arrive at the mountain you have to pass through stalls of vendors selling souvenirs. Many of which are selling carved pieces of marble claiming to be from the mountains. Some are shaped like buddha, turtles, and lotus.

Once you get past that you arrive at the ticket booth where you pay 40,000 VND ($1.63 USD) per person for admission. You also have the option to pay an additional 15,000 VND (61¢) to get on the elevator that brings you right to the top (which we opted for).

Once at the top, the first stop is Xa Loi Tower. It is a cylindrical, 92 feet tall structure, 7 stories high and inside is 200 Buddha, Bodhisattva and Arhat statues. This is the largest number of stone statues in Vietnam. I was excited to go inside and see them all but turns out you can’t go up the tower. There is one opening at the front where there is one statue visitors can admire.

Next we found ourselves in a small cave where there was an illuminated statue surrounded by florals (and of course a donation box). Behind it was a narrow passageway through the rocks that led to a slightly larger opening in the cave. This room had bats lining the walls towards the top. Towards the back of the cave we saw a couple seemingly disappear into the ceiling of the cave and Bryce was immediately on his way over there to see where it led. I hung back and waited for him to let me know if it was an exit or not. He came back a couple minutes later and let me know I had to climb through as a way to get to the next destination. So we climbed back out this hole in the ceiling that popped us out a hole in the ground a little higher up the mountain.

A few more steps and we were at the very top of the mountain with gorgeous views of the South China sea on one side and the city of Da Nang on the other. We hung out at the peak for a few minutes before heading back down.

The next stop was a major surprise. We didn’t prepare much before going to Mt. Thuy, we just knew there were caves, statues and views. So you can imagine our surprise when we enter a cave, turn a corner and are greeted with a large staircase into a huge hollowed out room. This particular cave is called Huyen Khong Cave. The main focus is a large buddha statue up above everyone, seated in the wall. There are holes in the ceiling that let the sunlight fall into the room, illuminating the stone Buddah. It is a really cool site to see.

Our Last Day:

The last full day we spent in Da Nang we started off at the beach. We were a 5-7 minute walk from the gorgeous My Khe Beach. The water was like bath water at a refreshing 85 degrees. We spent a lot of time relaxing and enjoying the water. The waves were quite big though so I preferred to stay where I could touch the bottom. Bryce had a blast swimming and diving through the waves a bit deeper out.

Once we were done soaking in the sun and warm water we headed back to our AirBnb to hang out and eat some lunch before our adventure to Asia Park - Sun World later that night.

Asia Park - Sun World is essentially the same thing as Six Flags in America but scaled down a little. It has roller coasters, ferris wheels, food, and multiple “cities” inspired by different asian countries. We thought it would be fun to check out before leaving.

We checked their hours online because some rides close before others and we wanted to get the most out of the trip. According to the website the rollercoasters and Sun Wheel (the main attraction, a 377 foot tall ferris wheel) were open until 10pm. The little games you can play off to the side of most walkways where you win prizes like teddy bears closed at 8pm. We made dinner and left our AirBnb for Asia Park just before 7pm. We arrived at the ticket counter where they sell a ticket just for the Sun Wheel for 100,000 VND ($4) or a ticket for all of the rides and rollercoasters for 200,000 VND ($8). We wanted to ride everything so we asked for the 200,000 VND tickets. The ladies at the counter then told us everything was closed except for the Sun Wheel. Which is slightly annoying as the website said everything was open until 10pm. But we said whatever and bought two tickets to the Sun Wheel.

It was a lot of fun though. The views of the city at night from 377 feet were insane.

After disembarking the Sun Wheel we stopped at a smoothie stand and split a strawberry smoothie as we decided what to do with the rest of our night now that our time at the theme park got cut short.

We started walking around outside looking for a good spot to call a Grab from when I saw a mall in the distance and offered the idea of seeing what was going on in there. Bryce was down so we went in and checked out all the floors before landing on one with speed bowling. They advertised 20,000 VND (< $1 USD) for a game so we thought that would be a fun thing to do. After shoe rental for both of us and socks that Bryce needed, it ended up coming out to somewhere around 170,000 VND or $7 USD for everything. Not too shabby. We bowled for about 45 minutes and I ended up winning by 20ish points.

Attached to the bowling alley was of course an arcade that we had to buy some coins to so we could join in on the fun. We started with the basketball game, raced dirt bikes in the wanna-be version of Mario-Kart, played knock-off Call of Duty and lastly, a game we’ve never seen before. The object is to push large metal balls on a track at a moving frog and hit him in the belly. We absolutely demolished the 50 point high score on that game and reset it at 90.

We ran out of coins and on our way out Bryce tried to give our tickets we won on the frog game to a kid so he could cash them in. I think the kid was confused because he was acting scared so Bryce just left them on a seat for someone else to find.

We jumped in our Grab that dropped us off at the grocery store by our house. We grabbed a couple ciders, walked home and enjoyed them as we watched youtube videos together in bed.

All in all we had a great time in Ho Chi Minh and Da Nang. As I write this we have just under a week left in Vietnam before heading to Laos for three weeks. I can’t wait to see what else Vietnam has to offer us for these last few days.

Today marks day 40 of the trip. We cannot believe how fast it is going!