Vietnam: Same, Same, but Different

"Same same, but different" - it's a phrase often used to explain things in Vietnam. It's usually set up as a comparison between something we'd be familiar with and the particular item being described. But it also became somewhat of a mantra for us throughout the trip, and many of us even bought the t-shirt.

And, as it turned out, our last few days in 'Nam were just that: "same, same, but different." Same beautiful scenery, same busy schedule, but different adventures.

Our stories-to-be-told from Hanoi began the moment we stepped off the bus. One of the women we'd seen lugging baskets draped from poles accosted Jenna as we stepped out at our hotel. Since Jenna didn't want to buy her pineapples, the woman just hefted her pole onto Jenna's shoulder. The idea here, of course, was that someone would take Jenna's photo, and then the woman would charge her for that picture. Well, when a different woman tried it with ME a few minutes later, I decided to play a bit of a trick myself. At Joe's suggestion, when she refused to take the pole and baskets back from me, I just turned and started walking down the street! Completely ignoring her protests, I walked about a half a block down the street before she started getting a bit panicked and heaved on the basket to stop me. Needless to say, she didn't bother asking me for any money!!

On our way to the Temple of Literature that afternoon, our local guide, Friday (thanks for the Rebecca Black interlude there, Joseph...) told us a bit about the city. Since we were back in the land of crazy traffic, he told us that there is actually a scooter for every two people in the city, and that 70% of the population travels this way. No wonder we were seeing them everywhere and avoiding about a million of them every time we tried to cross the street!

I found the gates to the Temple (which was later converted to a University) the most fascinating part. The characters at the top of it read "heart" and they've inscribed "intelligence" over the exit door. The idea is that the university looked for people to admit who had integrity and a good spirit, THEN trained them to be knowledgeable while they were there.

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The final stop on our tour was an overnight junk boat to Halong Bay. This is a collection of nearly 2000 islands, which made for an absolutely stunning view as we sailed along. We visited a beautiful cave system as well as going kayaking through a bit of a cave and next to some beautiful cliffs. This was, of course, a huge highlight for ocean-loving me!

photo credit: Joseph Liu

While on the boat, we were fed the most amazing seafood feasts - crabcakes baked in a crabshell, giant prawns, heaps of clams, fish prepared in a variety of ways. Lunch and dinner were great! Breakfast, however, was a little weird... It was almost like they tried to give us breakfast AND lunch at the same time, but in the wrong order. We were served the following, in this order:
  1. Fries
  2. Chicken
  3. Calamari 
  4. Eggs
  5. Veggies
  6. Fish
  7. Rice
Keep in mind that we got one dish at a time, never knowing what was coming next, and sharing the dishes with everyone at the table. So by the time we got that rice, we were all full and had already finished eating the fish. Pretty ridiculous meal, all around. But, that's okay. It was more than made up for by the awesomeness of the overnight stay in beautiful Halong Bay!