The ancient ruins of My Son and a really bossy tour guide

Today we marched to the dictates of a very directive tour guide whose command of English was quite limited ( perhaps that was the reason he was always speaking very loudly and repeating himself a lot).
My Son was the worship site of the Cham people and was built in the 6th century before Angor Wat in Cambodia. The people were Hindu so the deities in the walls are Hindu and the writing of the Cham was Sanskrit. The ruins are very small compared to Angor Wat. And in very poor shape. Between Mother Nature, time, and frankly some bombing in the war there are few ruins standing. They are rebuilding and we have posted some photos of the process. The bricks were and are now glued together with a resin made from local trees. None of us could really understand our guide no matter how loudly and repetitively he spoke so most of us wandered over to different tour groups to listen.
The tour included lunch on a return boat ride and a visit to the island village where the locals make the carvings and some of the mother of pearl inlaid lacquerware sold in the market and around VietNam.
It was an interesting day defined by a strict schedule. " you return to the bus in 2 hours, 1-2 hours. Come back in t- w-o hours. Comeback to bus in 2, I say 2 hour"
Have you ever listened to some of us Americans speaking loudly to nonenglish speaking people.
Of course not! Yeah.
Last photo of lovely old village Hoi An.

Hoi An, the Ancient City and Foodie Paradise

Yesterday we took an easy day for market touring and relaxing by the pool. We really needed that day off!
Today we toured the ancient city, the many Tailor shops, and clothing stores. Yeah, we did spend a bit of money on a few articles of clothing but we passed on having custom made clothes or shoes. Once again, every time we stopped for a snack or meal it was fantastic!
In the ancient city, which reminded us a lot of Old St Augustine in Florida, we visited several "Chinese Assembly Halls". Although they look like temples or pagodas, they were actually assembly halls for special occasions. The halls are well guarded by scary dragon and people statues and the insides are ornate like a temple. The red coils are incense that families purchase and burn to honor someone and when you walk around, the ashes are occasionally dropping to the floor- or you head. Most of the ancient sites were houses and we go so caught up in shopping, we really did not do Ancient City justice.
Gary declined my offer to buy him a red silk tie with special insignia on it.
Last one is just the view from where we stopped for lunch.
Trip to the ancient ruins of My Son tomorrow.

Fried Silk Worms Taste Better Than Crickets, but

we didn't drink the weasel poop coffee ($80 per pound)!

We took a tour today that included a stop at a cricket farm. After the tour they served us a sample of crickets fried with garlic in oil with a sauce for dipping. They actually tasted ok. By the way, our guide had never eaten crickets before becoming a tour guide. The one Vietnamese man on our tour wouldn't try them.

Next we went to a flower farm. The pictures say it all.

We got to visit an ethnic hill tribe village. The fellow on the right spoke a few words of English. He showed us a piece of quite old plywood used as a window cover, that he called a souvenir from the Americans.The Vietnamese pig here, and her piglets were not from the pet store, but more likely for dinner. The monkey was MEAN! When given a bottle of water to drink from, he turned and threw it at the pig!

When we visited a small family silk factory, we got to see how they get silk thread from cocoons, weave it with Jacard looms into fabric, see live silk worms, and eat fried silk worms, which were indeed better tasting! Our guide said we were lucky. Fried silk worms were only available if a tour guide remembered to call ahead. Hmm.
Two women were doing the most amazing silk embroidered pictures!

We visited a coffee plantation. Vietnam is apparently the world's second largest producer. There is a traditional specialty coffee produced there where weasels are fed coffee berries. The beans are indigestible and emerge in their poop. It was for sale in all the markets. Apparently the tourists love to buy it. Hmm.

Near by was the temple of the smiling Bhuda. Amazing sculptures!

Last we went to the old French colonial train station, which is now a popular spot to have wedding pictures taken. There were at least ten couples with their photographers on the grounds while we were there.

It doesn't show in any pictures, but the Vietnamese people we have met are the happiest, friendliest, most helpful we have ever met. They are making it a delightful vacation.

Kinda Krazy

When we took the bus from airport to town, Gary met the manager of a local resort and got talked into going to the resort to "vist him and his wife". We walked a very long distance to this resort and on the way we went to a tourist attraction called The Crazy House. A Vietnamese architect named Hang Nga has been building this since 1990 to get people to connect to nature. To our disappointment, we just today discovered that we could have actually stayed here in this very room for about $30/ night.
So we arrived at this resort and it is this run down old place and a guide wanted to show us the VIP room and so forth. Gary's new friend wasn't even on the property! We politely visited one room then told them we had to leave. Not easy to extract ourselves! We then took a long walk back to the lake from yesterday and celebrated our escape with some Dalat wine followed by a swan boat ride on the windy lake. PS Asian swan boat pedals are designed for very short people.
Now we are getting ready to go for dinner and listening to a karaoke bar with quite the sound system that is apparently just behind us,
Tomorrow we join a tour of out of town places, and then fly to Hoi An at 6:30 PM.

11 inches of rain today!?

That was the forecast for our first day in the mountain town of Dalat! Dalat is where Vietnamese go on vacation to get away from the heat of Saigon. As well as weather forecasting computers were able to predict Nemo, they totally missed this one. It turned out cloudy with occasional mist. WHEW!!
From 1850 to 1950 the colonial French had their getaway villas in Dalat. It is now a popular holiday destination for Vietnamese, especially honeymooners. We spent most of the day walking around a small lake in town and the rest of the day wandering around the town lost and trying to find our hotel ( 3 times- the last. one late at night when every thing was closed up and looked really different)
Photo quiz:
1 Which picture below shows what is actually a cell phone tower?
2 Which shows a flower theme park? We haven't seen a lot of flowers so far in Viet Nam so we guess that this is unusual.
3 Which is the unbelievable bonsai Forrest within that park?
4 Bushes sculpted as hundred foot long dragons?
5 Apparently they plan to have a huge Dalat wine event in 2014 so do you see A tower of wine bottles advertising the event and Dalat's famous wine? ($1/glass at dinner and excellent!)
6 Is the iced coffee really that good? It keeps showing up in pictures. (YES))
7 Find the photo of where we stumbled on a park sponsoring a children's event. The kids can drive bikes, scooters and electric cars and weave thru the people just like mom and dad do. Parents can remote control the cars for little ones. Everyone lives either in a busy city or the countryside so there is nowhere at home that children can play with this type of toy. So, on vacation it becomes an activity.
8 A lady cooking an unbelievably good snack at the same event? They are making this yummy snack on every street corner. Just pull up a stool and wait for one to be prepared.
9 Varieties of rice in the market?
10 Can you guess how much weight we are going to gain on this trip?