Weekend(ish) Report: Red Sox, Walden Pond, and Martha's Vineyard

This Weekend Report is more of a Last Week report, since I have been a bit overwhelmed by all of the things and thus have neglected blog writing. I'm sorry, but I have to prioritize, and right now it looks like 1) school, 2) sleep, 3) exercise, 4) everything else. 

So here's to the everything else!

Last week I attended my first Red Sox game ever. I am fully aware that this is baseball blasphemy, considering I spent four years of undergrad within a mile or two of Fenway Park. But better late than never, right?

I and about 30 classmates bought three rows in right field and enjoyed the game (they lost, womp womp). It was really fun, but I am about to commit further baseball blasphemy here -- I have to admit that I prefer Nats games in DC...Nats stadium is just so much better!

Next up I did another Boston-area "first" and finally saw the famous Walden Pond! I've been taking time off running (some seriously strange low-back business going on here), so last Thursday, after many many classes, I walked out if the school building, realized how gloriously autumn awesome it was outside, and made the executive decision that I needed a bike ride. I started around 4:30 pm and peddled to the end of the Minuteman Bike Path in Bedford (11 miles from my house).

I was feeling good, so I consulted the map on my phone and decided to keep going. Let me tell you guys, Walden Pond is FAR. And the route is very very hilly. I arrived there at the most beautiful time of day -- the sun was setting over the water and swimmers were lounging on the beach after evening dips (it's a legit sandy beach! Who knew?). 

Sunset = beautiful. But sunset when on a bike ride about 20 miles from home = problems. I decided to take a different, supposedly faster, route home. But the roads were windy and hilly and not at all well-marked. I got lost SO many times and kept having to backtrack to re-find my way. By the time I got to the bike path in Lexington it was completely dark out -- way too dark to be on a bike path. So I cursed into the night and wiggled my way through some neighborhoods and side streets to find my way back. (In my head: I am never going to get home and it's dark and I'm in the middle of nowhere and I'm tired and hungry and I'm going to get hit by a car and die and it's all my own stupid fault for starting too late so I can't reasonably call anyone to whine/get help! Out loud: Ugggfhhhbbbllleerrgggggg dammit Massachusetts!!!)

Well, I'm happy to report that I lived (well duh) and made it home, 43 miles later, by 8:30 pm. Lessons learned: think of about time of day when choosing to depart on a long bike ride. Also, bike lights. 

Next up (this is the actual weekend part), I went to Martha's Vineyard. I've never been to the Cape or any of the islands in that area, so this was all new to me. Guys, it was beautiful! I hardly took any pictures, so you'll just have to trust me on this. The weather on Saturday was perfect -- warm and sunny and just the right mix of summer with a hint of fall.

Andy (remember our Asian adventure?) came up to visit, and we stayed in Vineyard Haven, a tiny adorable little New England beach town (not like SE Asia at all, i.e. same same but very different.) We rented bikes to get to the ocean-side beach.

No filters on this -- the colors were really that great!

I was talked into swimming (the air and water were warm...but not THAT warm), and did not regret it. And the route to the beach was so pretty! The island is a lot bigger than expected (post-ride mapping says that it was 15 miles to the beach), and also hillier than expected, but so nice that I didn't mind the long ride at all.

We had delicious brunch at Art Cliff Diner in Vineyard Haven (I highly recommend), and amazing seafood at Larsen's in Menemsha. Can I please have lobster mac and cheese and stuffed scallops all the time? Ok thanks.

And that, my friends, is that. It was a great weekend, during which I did no homework...a decision that I am paying for this week. But I think it was worth it! 

Last Stop: Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City

I had every expectation of hating Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City. Everyone we talked to was pretty meh about it, "just a big crowded city," "not very nice," "one day there is enough," they said. But of all the big cities I've seen on this trip (Kathmandu, Bangkok, Vientiane, Hanoi), Saigon is my favorite by far! The food is amazing, the touristy district is fun but not Disneyland-ish, there are tons of big trees and green space, the streets are wide and have sidewalks, and I could actually imagine living here.

On the roof of the Presidential Palace.

We spent two days in Saigon (it's officially HCMC, but everyone still calls it Saigon), doing our usual new-city thing of walking 500 million miles looking at everything (remember this tumblr? Could be my life.).

Traffic circle in Saigon -- I am so good at walking into the middle of speeding traffic!

We sat at a late-night street bar/restaurant (i.e. tiny plastic stool on the side of the road), people-watching hundreds of locals and other travelers hanging out late-nigh style (beer and dried squid anyone?), and also saw a guy breathing fire! So random but so cool!

Just a cool tree in Saigon.

On our first day I insisted we spend some serious time at the War Remnants Museum, which, though depressing, is definitely a must-see.

We checked out some pretty cool aircraft and tanks from the Vietnam War, saw lots and lots of pictures, learned about prisons and torture and agent orange (ugh bad stuff), and saw before-and-after photos of Vietnam's post-war reconstruction.

After the museum we cheered ourselves up with a traditional Vietnamese lunch of fried tofu, pork, cucumber, rice noodle cakes, and herbs. You eat this all together, kind of like sushi, dipped in soy sauce and/or hot sauce.

And then we had coffee -- so much coffee! Vietnam is known for its coffee, and Saigon is known as Vietnam's biggest coffee city. Like Dalat, there are coffee shops all over the place and the coffee is all delicious: super-dark and rich and chocolately and not acidic at all.

I could drink it all the time...and that is exactly what we did in Saigon. It's served in tiny cups, always accompanied by a glass of iced green or jasmine tea. Since the coffee is so dark, you're supposed to water it down with the tea until it's drinkable.

Our second day in Saigon (my last day in Southeast Asia!!!), we toured the Presidential Palace, which is pretty much frozen in time from when the North Vietnamese tanks rolled in in April 1975, ending the war. The basement is a series of war rooms with radios and various coding and communications devices and maps on the walls. Pretty cool!

My final Vietnam to-dos included a back alleyway haircut (shockingly not bad!), one last massage, buying coffee beans, and a final fantastic dinner. The restaurant served Hue-style food, which is a lot of small plates and seafood dishes. We had a tiny clam salad (the clams were tiny, not the size of the salad) served with warm rice crackers, tiny clam spring rolls, and a cold noodle salad with beef and pork and many many herbs. It was all so good and only $8. I am going to miss this so much!

Tiny Clam Salad.

Climbing a Mountain in Dalat, Vietnam

Dalat is known as the "Seattle of Vietnam" -- a cool, dry, heavily French-influenced mountain town where Saigon's residents escape the heat of the coast.  You know I love the mountains, and I also love not being sweaty, so Dalat is the place for me!

We bussed our way up here, slowly slowly (seriously, like 10 mph up the hills), through acres and acres of coffee plantations and rows and rows of flower-filled green houses. The city really does feel different from the rest of Vietnam -- I'd say a mix of San Francisco, the French Alps, and Anywhere City Asia of course. The Seattle part comes from the coffee -- that and strawberries are their thing, and there is literally a coffee shop every third storefront. So Yes please I will have a fresh chunky strawberry jam baguette with my coffee, mmmk thanks!

The canal that goes through town.

Psyched to get our outdoorsiness in, we rented a motorbike to go check out Lang Biang Mountain, about 10k outside the city. When we arrived we saw "zebra" rides (so weird and random), and a paved road to the top of the mountain.

View from the top.

Hmmm, well that's a little bit disappointing...let's see if we can make this more interesting! Andy pulled out his Open Street Map GPS App (seriously a lifesaver -- we probably would never have made it out of the streets of Bangkok without this gadget), and found what appeared to be a trail up the mountain someone had marked.

I am becoming a pretty pro scooter-driver. 

Well that Someone must have been a deer, or maybe a bird, or possibly a professional bushwhacker, because there was nothing even remotely trail-ish about the route we traced up and down the mountain. On the way down, we gave up on the "trail" pretty quickly and instead off-road navigated our own way down the steep mountain, through brush and prickers and rocks and trees. This resulted in a cultural/agricultural detour through a series of coffee, carrot, and strawberry fields. I can't imagine what the farmers thought of us -- two giant bewildered foreigners (one casted), plodding through their rows of crops and every so often pausing to look intently at a phone to re-oreient.

Zebras...wtf?

It was touch-and-go for a while there, but I'm happy to report that we survived!

For such a sleepy slow-feeling town, Dalat had a hoppin' night market! It contained streets and streets of clothes and shoes and trinkets, plus many many snacks (meat on a stick! dried squid! omelet on a portable barbecue! roasted sweet potatoes and corn! hot milk!), and delicious fresh fruit from the local farms (plums and pears and strawberries!). I bought some strawberry jam and also a bag of artichoke tea, their other specialty.

Night Market.

We had a REALLY good dinner here too -- steak strips with sesame (you cook your own on a terra-cotta shingle), and Seafood Vietnamese Salad, which is squid and shrimp and shredded cucumber, carrots, hot peppers, peanuts, cilantro, mint, and lime juice.

I highly recommend Dalat as a great change-up from the humid Vietnam coast. If you go, stay at Hotel Pink House, which has really big rooms with great windows and water pressure. And get breakfast at the place next-door that advertises "American Breakfast." It has relatively big cups of coffee, and the best fried eggs I've ever had -- two eggs over easy over rice with chives and the spicy/sweet/vinegar sauce that is everywhere here. Plus, SO MUCH DELICIOUS COFFEE EVERYWHERE!

Living the Dream in Hoi An, Vietnam

If your dream is eating copious quantities of Vietnamese food and laying on the beach all day, then we are living it!

After Andy's medical mishap was handled, we set out to explore the little beach town of Hoi An, Vietnam. The "Old City" is very small, just a few blocks square, and full of shops and neon lights and the usual touristic silliness. My finely-honed people watching-skills deduced that this is a tourist town for mainly Vietnamese (in addition to foreigners of course), so despite the trinkets and salespeople and paper lanterns everywhere, I feel like we're having an authentic experience. 

(I'm sorry to report that due to a phone mishap, no pictures of Hoi An survive, so you'll have to use your imagination here.)

For dinner we had one of those perfect eating experiences -- when atmosphere and taste and view combine in the most satisfying way possible. We stopped at a street/riverside barbecue "restaurant," which really means a woman with a collection of pans and pots over a portable grill on the sidewalk. The proprietress waves passersby to sit down on a tiny chair at a tiny table (seriously, everything here is legit kindergarden-sized), and proceeds to serve amazingness. She handed us a menu and strongly recommended Pork Pau Lau and Barbecue -- ok sounds good!

Pau Lau might be my new favorite thing: it's a bowl of think rice noodles in sauce (not fried) with slices of pork and a few crispy pieces of pork rind, all on top of a mix of greens, bean sprouts, and fresh herbs (cilantro and mint). I love greens mixed with hot things, and the fresh herbs here are fantastic and abundant.  The barbecue is slices of deliciously marinated pork (I'm guessing something like sesame oil, vinegar, soy sauce, and sugar) pinched between chopsticks that have been split in half lengthwise. Perfect.

The next two days we spent at An Bang Beach, and that was pretty perfect too. To get there we rented a motorbike, since a bicycle and broken wrist do well mix. As the one member of the party with four functioning limbs, I was the pilot of this operation, to the extreme amusement of everyone we passed along the way. 

An Bang Beach is just 6k from Hoi An, is less crowded than the main beach, and I highly recommend it! At the beach, the lounge chairs are free as long as you buy lunch at the associated beachside seafood restaurant, WHICH YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY DO IT -- WAS MY FAVORITE MEAL SO FAR. After a rough morning of reading and swimming and beach walking and napping (refer back to the aforementioned "dream"), we sat down for a late lunch. I ordered the Squid Soup: rice noodles, shredded carrots and possibly green papaya, many many pieces of squid, all submerged in the most delicious seafood broth I have ever experienced. It was amazing and I will dream about that soup forever. 

The two days we spent there included more motorbiking, a lot more food, and extensive beach time of course. I could have stayed for a week (or more?), but it's time to move on to the mountains! 

Accidents Happen, Running in Vietnam

Well now this is a little bit inconvenient.

Accidents happen, often in the most ridiculous ways. We've survived a week of dirt biking through Laos, a mini-bus ride packed with 27 people in an 11-passenger vehicle, exploring a region rife with unexploded ordinances, cycling around monkey-infested ruins, and white water kayaking through Class 3 rapids. So what's the one thing that results in a hospital trip? A morning run. 

We ran first in Bangkok, a huge mistake from which I don't know if our lungs will ever fully recover. After that we made a rule of not running in pollution, so our next venture was along the Mekong river in Kratie, Cambodia, and again in Phonsavanh and Luang Prabang to shake out the stiffness of dirt biking.

We've actually been running a decent amount, excluding situations of major pollution, overcrowded cities, and our hectic travel schedule of course. I know that sounds like excuses-excuses, but it really is hard(/pretty much impossible) to exercise consistently when on the move!  So I'll enjoy occasional Asian running while I'm here, and have all the time in the world to get back into actual shape when I go home. 

So anyway, fast-forward to a couple mornings ago in Hue.

Andy and I went out for a humid jog (soft j) along the river greenway, and all was going fine. We were on the homestretch, looking forward to consuming gallons of water, many many tiny cups of Vietnamese coffee (someone introduce them to regular coffee mugs please!), and breakfast.

There was a 1-foot high chain across the path to prevent motorbikes from entering the park. (You see where this is going.) Andy went for the hurdle, caught his foot, and proceeded to faceplant onto the concrete.

I gasped, Vietnamese people shrieked (the giant foreigner crashed!), and Andy popped up like no big deal. But later on, when we arrived in Hoi An, he decided an x-ray was in order. Yep, broken wrist.

I'm happy to report that the Vietnamese hospital experience was excellently efficient and friendly, with some local charm. The doctor showed us the x-ray, pointed to the broken part, and laughed, "You are not so lucky!"

But Andy is making the best of it, and considering that we're still traveling around Southeast Asia, doing whatever we want whenever we want every day, I don't think he's that unlucky.

Oh yeah, guess who's driving the motorbike now?

Hanoi, Hue, and the DMZ

Well here we are in a private car, on our way from Hue to Hoi An (Vietnam).

A private car! That sounds fancy! you might be thinking. And yes, yes it is. With a private car and a few million dong in my pocket (that's the Vietnamese currency, feel free to laugh), it looks like I'm taking steps up in the world and am well on my way to being a classy traveler! Or, more accurately, we waited until the last minute and the bus was full, the train was late, and this was the only way to get to where we needed to go.

While we're talking about classy though, let me just take this moment to say that Southeast Asia is ALL so much nicer than expected. In Nepal, sister2 and I joked about what we called "the relativity of nice," as in that shower was really nice! And by that I mean it was full of spiders and dirt in all the corners but it had tiled floors and the water pressure was great! Or, that bathroom was nice, meaning it had hand soap and toilet paper woah crazy!

But on this leg of the journey, at least in Andy's and my experience, things are legit nice, no relativity required! Hotels are clean, transportation is American standard, and the roads are good. It is significantly more expensive than Nepal, but seriously, Agoda.com is my favorite thing for booking discount hotels -- if you travel you have to use it.

Ok so anyways, it's been a while since I've blogged, so hmm let me catch you up. We finished our cruise and spent a day in Hanoi, which mainly meant walking 500 million miles (or so it felt) around the crowded craziness of narrow streets and many motorbikes and intermittent rain showers. We found an American B52 that went down in a bombing raid during the war and is just kinda chilling in a pond in a neighborhood.

And then we walked past Ho Chi Minh's toomb. 

And then we went to the Hoa Lo Prison (aka "Hanoi Hilton"), which was built by the French to keep Vietnamese prisoners during colonialism, and later used for American POWs (including John McCain) during the Vietnam War.

John McCain's flight suit.

And oh don't worry we've been eating everything! Vietnamese food is amazing and so cheap. A full blog post about our gastronomic experiences is on its way!

Grilled eggplant with peanuts, cilantro, and chilies. 

To get from Hanoi to Hue (the current capital to the ancient one), we did it Vietnamese style and took a sleeper train. I guess that counts as another instance of classy travel -- A/C! Individual soft berths! Space to walk around! It was more comfortable than a sleeper bus, though it did take a lot longer.

A dragon boat on the river in Hue.

Hue (pronounced Huế) used to be the capitol of Vietnam, so we walked around the twice-moated citadel (is moated a word? You know what I mean) to see the ruins that are in the process if being rebuilt. Because much if Southeast Asia had been sooo heavily bombed (especially Vietnam and Laos), a lot of the stuff we see us completely new -- towns, historical sites, etc, in the process of being reconstructed. 

Huế Citadel

Especially as Americans, it's hard to not think of the history here in Vietnam. So we might as well embrace it and learn some things! Thus, we spent day 2 of our Hue experience on a tour of the DMZ (the north/south border during the war). Our guide, Mr. Trung, is a former south Vietnamese soldier, so he really knew his history. The most interesting part was talking to him about what's happened since the war, how the north/south divide continues to exist, the current political climate, etc. 

Mr. Trung explaining an assortment of bombs.

Our tour went to a church, a series of tunnels, the bridge across the border, and a former US base and now VietCong cemetery.

Tunnel entrance. 350 people lived underground for 5 years!

Guided tours are not usually my jam at all (ugh people talking at me and telling me what to do), but in this situation it was good, and I think seeing the DMZ without a guide would be a waste of time. 

Speaker that was used to project propaganda across the border into S. Vietnam

Next stop: beaches!!!

Cruising Vietnam, aka We're on a Boat!

We've left the mountains behind -- goodbye Laos and on to Vietnam!

We arrived in Hanoi on Friday evening, and were immediately overwhelmed by the lights and noise and millions of swirling rushing zigging and zagging motorbikes in the narrow roads of the Old City. We spent a night just walking around, mouths agape at all of the things (so many things!), sampling Vietnamese food and desserts along the way. 

Friday Night Market Hanoi

The next morning we were on our way again, this time changing things up completely and going for the must-see super-touristy experience: a 2-night/3-day cruise of Halong Bay. And so I'm happy to report, WE'RE ON A BOAT!

I've never been on a cruise before, and as someone who likes movement and independent exploration, and detests organized tours as a rule, I imagine cruises would not usually be my jam. But this one is short, involves only one night on the boat, and is the best way to see the epic awesomeness of Halong Bay. (Super-touristy experiences are super-touristy for a reason -- there's something there worth seeing!)

Halong Bay has 1,969 islands, some big, most tiny, all weirdly beautify like something out of Avatar or Pirates of the Caribbean or Jurassic Park.

Our first stop was a huge cave on one of the islands. It was discovered by fishermen in 1993 and has since twice been named a "Natural Wonder if the World."

The colored lights, paved path, crowds of tourists, and pleasant music over a loudspeaker made it all feel kind of like waiting in line for a ride at Disneyland, but the cave was so freaking cool that I didn't mind the kitschyness at all. Plus the colored lights made the nooks and crannies and stalagmites and stalactites easy to see. Big, airy, and well-lit = my kind of caving!

For our next activity, we went kayaking around a floating village, between some rock-tower-ish islands, and through waterway caves under the mountains. We only had 45 minutes, but the great thing about tandem kayaking with someone who is good at kayaking is that when Andy paddled harder, we moved so fast! Like four times faster than when I paddle on my own. 

We kayaked in and out of little coves, speculating on the best places to hide our hypothetical pirate ships, properly defend the bay from possible muarader invasion, and scoping out the very real awesome climbing routes up various rock faces. 

Around five o'clock they anchored us between some islands. The tour guide told us it was time for swimming and that we couple jump off the top deck (maybe 15-20-ish feet up) if we wanted to. I am not afraid of many things, but jumping off high things into water is one of them. It took a few count downs before I was airborne, but I did it! (One...oh jeez no I can't! Ok try again. One...two...NO WAY I'm not doing this. Ok ok ok I will. I promise I'll go this time. One...two...three!)

Oof look at those tan lines!

Then we did it again to get it on video. I can't control the screaming, it just happens.

There are 12 people in our cruise total -- four French medical students, a Spanish couple, a German couple, and an Irish couple. They're all nice, but kinda meh. I don't know if this is a cultural thing or just a bad luck thing, but they are not good at conversation. How do people just not ask questions? Don't they know that's how conversation works? So Andy and I are doing our own thing. I can't imagine being on a longer cruise and having to sit with strangers at every meal. My inner introvert can only handle so much. 

Next stop: Monkey Island!

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Sandy beach + warm water = hooray vacation! 

Day two of this experience is at a little beachside resort on Monkey Island. (Though there are no monkeys at the resort, a fact that I am happy about because monkeys and their grabby hands and old people-ish little faces kind of creep me out.) To get here, we left the cruise ship, then took a bus across a bigger island, then a small boat to the resort, arriving around lunchtime. 

I didn't take any pictures of the food, but it is delicious. Seafood me please all the time! My only complaint is that ummm slices watermelon is not and never will be dessert. Come on.

It's hot and humid, so bathing suits on and into the water STAT. It is the rainy season, so about every hour or so a storm cloud moved in, dropped some rain on us for a few minutes, then went on its way. I love a lightening storm on the beach!

Our final morning was sunshiny and nice. We did the same trip in reverse (small boat -- bus -- cruise boat) and ended with lunch on the boat as we made out way back to the harbor. We'll be in Hanoi tonight, then who knows? Maybe on to more beaches!