4 Months Later

So yes I realize I have been doing a horrible job of keeping up with my blog. There just really hasn't been anything to say. Now something finally has happened so I decided an update was necessary. I had my one week vacation last week and met up with my friends Chris and Renee in Vietnam which is a place I have always wanted to go. I was extremely nervous and spent the whole week beforehand on the verge of a panic attack. I am so glad I went, though, it is one of the most beautiful countries I have ever been in.
The first is me on the bus ready to attempt sleep the second is the beds on the bus and the third is the monsoon in my first couple of hours in Saigon. The whole street flooded.
We will start with day one which was last Saturday. I arrived in Vietnam around 2pm and Chris picked me up at the airport. I got to experience some more wonderful Asian cab driving skills on the way to our hostel. We only stayed in the hostel for a few hours before we hopped on something called a "sleeper bus" which is a bus that has beds instead of seats. We decided to sit in the back which was a big mistake because every time we went over a pothole or bump we flew about 5 feet into the air off of our beds. It was about a 12 hour drive from Ho Chi Minh to Nha Trang.


Sunday Monday and Tuesday were spent in Nha Trang lounging on the beach. It was beautiful and the perfect relaxing vacation spot. Renee and I also went parasailing which was really fun. I couldnt take any pictures from the sky because I was afraid of dropping my camera but Chris took a few pictures for us.

Tuesday night we flew into Hanoi for our tour the next day. We left Hanoi at 830 Wednesday morning. We met up with about 15 other backpackers and rode in a bus for a few hours. We were going on a tour of Halong Bay which has like a billion islands on it. A lot of tour groups take trips around the bay in boats and explore the islands so that is what we decided to do. We spent the night on a "junk" which looked like a pirate ship. We went kayaking to a floating village, went to a cave, and I jumped off of the roof of the boat (about 3 stories high) and almost peed my pants from fear. The next day we went on a hike up a mountain and then went to a place called Monkey Island where we stayed in bungalos on the beach. We went night swimming and saw monkeys. We stayed there until Friday when we got on several boats and buses to get us back to the city. I went souvenier shopping for about an hour then headed to the airport. I must say I really enjoyed my trip and Vietnam may be my favorite country I have visited so far. It is beautiful and the people are all really nice. It is a pretty popular spot for people to visit and we met a lot of cool people from Australia, America, Barcelona, Israel, and Holland. I am going to have to backpack around like Chris and Renee when I finish in Korea it is pretty awesome.