Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Gooood morning!

Hoi An


Tasty.  This was actually for sale in the airport.

My tailor
Special price for foreigners!

Breakfast


They'll make ANY suit, for a price.

Universal

Street spring rolls
Nummers



Secret's out


Cheapest beer in the world, 16 cents a glass.


Hue
 

Remnants of French and American occupations
The citadel






These tall skinny houses are the norm.
Strangest passenger on our "bus" ride to Phong Nha: Steel door.
Phong Nha National Park



Not a joke.

This is the lady who tricked me into planting rice for her.
Come on, you try.
He he he, I'm planting rice!
Peace out, sucka!
Ok I'm fini... Hey, where'd you go?
Ah, crap.
This sucks.
Picked up passengers on our bike ride. 
Native coffee
Unexploded ordnance

The next few pictures are of a huuuge cave called Paradise Cave.  This park is home to the largest cave in the world, but it's not accessible to visitors.  This one sufficed, but I feel the need to point out that these pictures don't even begin to do justice to the sheer magnitude of the cave.  Even in the cave it was hard to comprehend the scale.  Despite standing there looking at these gargantuan cave structures in person, the perspective is distorted because you're looking at them against a backdrop of other gargantuan structures.  Hopefully these pictures give you a bit of an idea.








Dark cave.  It was... dark.






Dong hain!  (Frogs)


Trek to the "choose your own chicken pub with cold beer"



Lunch

WARNING! The next 3 pictures are very graphic.  If you don't want to see what happens to"Lunch," squint and scroll down until you don't see red...



There's none of this chop off the head and let it run around.  They collect the blood and use it to make a soup.
Dinner






OK, all good now.




Last rice paddy picture
First class, all the way

Ha Long Bay





Coming home from school
Learning the ropes


Floating school
Sinking boat



Ha Noi



This is what a full cup of native coffee looks like.


Ho Chi Minh's bomb shelter
Had it pretty well figured out... U.S. bombers flight plans from Guam and Thailand.

UNESCO World Heritage Site in it's early stages





Pigeons
Water puppets

Pho!
Street shave.  Don't bump him.