Vietnam!

Hello friends! It’s quite difficult to write one blog about the entire month we spent in Vietnam. I tried to blog as much as I could, but some things I just left out. I will try to fill in the gaps here. We began our journey on a plane to Nanning on January 9th.

Sorry, the picture is a little blurry...


This city is in the southern part of China. Last year when we arrived in Nanning we were able to shed a few layers and be much more comfortable than we were in Hangzhou! This year was quite different. It. Was. Cold.! The bad part was, we were preparing for warmer weather on previous experiences of it being warmer! We weren’t wearing enough clothes. (or “closes” as my students like to pronounce it. ☺ ) Pause! At this point in the trip my sister had a baby! My mom texted me this picture on Words with friends:




And we got to talk to Elise before she had the baby!

You might have already seen pictures, but here he is: Lucas Lee McLemore!!



Anyway, we got our visas (30 day visas) to go down to Vietnam from Nanning and got on a bus! We made the 8 hour trip down to Ha Noi, Vietnam. It was still cold. We had reservations at a hostel in this city and made our way there, hoping to find warmth. We got to the hostel and we were shown our room. We asked for the heat to be turned on. The reply? “No heat. [pointing to the bed] Just blankets. Very warm.” Ok, so Kevin got under the covers to try it out. The beds themselves were freezing and it did not look promising to have a restful, warm night. So, we decided to hightail it out of there. We paid for half of the room (a whopping $2 a person) and scheduled a bus for the next city south. We decided it would be better to be cold on a bus all night heading somewhere warmer than to be cold and not going somewhere warmer!
And it WAS cold on the bus, as evidenced by Stan's pea pod look. lol



We made our way down, bus by bus stopping in each city to change buses. We left Nanning, AND Ha Noi on the same day. So starting on Tuesday, January 11th at 8:00 AM until Thursday (2 days later) at 2:00 PM we were on buses. They were sleeper buses the whole way. No showers, same clothes and cold. We finally arrived to warmer weather at our last stop: Muine! It was so nice to be sweating after being sooooo cold for about 4 days straight with no relief!

I started writing those couple of blogs while we were in Muine. We had originally planned to stay at the same place we stayed last year, Hong Di. But when we got to the place, the lady in charge had bumped up the prices on the rooms because she added flat screen TVs. On top of that, the only rooms she had available were the ones that face the street, no bungalows. I know, I know, it sounds like I’m complaining we got to go to the beach, but couldn’t have the best room. But we knew we could get that, we would just have to look around. So we stayed there for 2 nights while we looked for a cheaper place to stay. We found a place that was a little cheaper, and had more perks: We got a bungalow which was only 40 steps from the beach and the people were much nicer! We loved them! The new place was called Hiep Hoa. “Hiep” and “Hoa” were two people’s names. They were joint owners of the hotel.

This was our little bungalow! It's connected to some other rooms above us, so there's the staircase to the right of our bungalow.


The second to last day we were at the beach, was the 9th of February. We were swimming in the ocean and Stan said, “ We are staying here for a month, and our visas are only for one month, and it took 2 days to get down here. AND, we still have 2 more days before we go back to China.” We couldn’t remember what day we had arrived in Vietnam. So we went and looked at our passports. We had arrived in Vietnam on February 11th, and we were planning on leaving on the 11th of January. Our reason for leaving on January 11th was because that’s when we could find the cheapest flight out! So it worked out perfectly!! And obviously we didn't end up staying there for a whole month. Just so you know we aren't complete idiots when it comes to math. :)

Here are a few pictures of our journey! Enjoy!

These kids were playing "Chicken" on this palm tree. It was funny!



We found this gold mine shack restaurant right on the beach. They sold any kind of sea food you wanted, but our favorite was the scallops!



Stan is obviously posing for the picture, but this is where he stayed most of the time. He didn't care anything about getting a tan. :)



This little girl was one our friends at a restaurant we passed every night while walking. We got to be pretty good friends, as you can tell. She's sitting in my lap and she thought it was so cool that she could see herself in my phone camera. Haha!



Isn't she just beautiful!?



Then Stan went kite surfing! That's his instructor, Vanessa. She was from some remote Island in the Caribbean or something like that. She was pretty cool anyway.



Just learning how to do it. There are some boring parts to it.



But then it's fun! You may not be able to see it, but that's Stan out there!


I had to get a close up of the action. This is him coming back up the beach after he went out!


And then I got this really cool Vietnamese style purse. I bought it for my birthday! :)



I have sooooo many more pictures, but I'm planning on uploading those to facebook soon! This was just a sneak peak! Thanks for reading! I love you all!