This shot was taken at one of the assembly halls in Hoi An. The assembly halls were built by the Chinese during the old silk trading days, and the Chinese influence was noticeable in architecture and styling. There were altars and incense bowls all over, and I was the only person in the hall so I had free reign of the place.
I love this picture. I took this one our second day in Hoi An, in the early morning just as the shops were opening. Hoi An is gorgeous, and well known for it’s tailor shops and silk goods of all kinds. When I took this shot, I was walking around on my own just peeking into the shops and enjoying the relative quiet of the day. After the shops open, it gets a little intense to stop and look at anything because if the shop owners spot you checking something out, they immediately approach you to make the sale. But walking around at 8 in the morning was like a whole different world: there were almost no cars or motorbikes on the street and half the shop owners were still setting up, so I was able to take some photos uninterrupted.
I took this picture at the beach in Nha Trang. We had just gotten off a long bus ride from Dalat, and it was a hot walk over to the train station to see if we could get a train out that same day. All told, we only spent a few hours in Nha Trang, but we did make it to the beach just in time for the epic rainstorm you can see brewing on the horizon. We could see the storm, but everyone on the beach was still playing volleyball and soccer and swimming with abandon, so I assumed that maybe the storm wasn’t going to head our way. But come it did! It went from sunny to instant downpour in seconds. The rain felt great, but we had all of our bags with us, and I worried about testing their waterproofness.
We ended up grabbing the first taxi we could find, and spent at least 3 minutes trying to explain to the driver (who spoke no English at all) that we wanted to go back to the train station. I even tried saying “choo choo” out loud! Leanne eventually got our guidebook out from the trunk (getting even more soaked in the process) and we were able to point the train station out on a map. Despite that breakthrough in communication, our driver took us on the most confused journey through Nha Trang in the complete opposite direction of the station. We made it eventually, and spent the next several hours hanging out at the park across the street with a pleasant drizzle making the heat a little more bearable.
After visiting the Crazy House we headed up to the Summer Palace of King Dao. The palace is a gorgeous Art Deco building and is probably the coolest palace/historical buiding I have ever visited, not just because I loved the 1930s feel, but also because it was mostly empty of people during the visit, and instead of those pesky velvet ropes keeping you in the halways and out of the rooms, you could enter every room in the house.
These two photos are from the throne room. They have it set up so that you can dress up in fancy outfits, and sit in the chair posing as the Queen for a photo. When I wandered into the room the guy manning the room asked me if I wanted to do it, except he only said “Queen?” which caused me to say “what?” and after repeating ourselves severl more times, he pointed to a wall of photos of tourists impersonating royalty and said “Queen?” to which I said a very quick “no!” and probably looked vaguely horrified because he definitely got a laugh out of it.
The strangest thing was definitely the rows of worn yellow boots that they had for you to wear for the photos. No thank you!
You can view the whole slideshow from the summer palace here:
This is the Dalat Crazy House. What is the Dalat Crazy House you might ask? Well, it’s this hotel that is, crazy. It’s sort of a weird Gaudi/Dali-esque treehouse filled with intricately carved furniture and animal themed guest rooms. If you don’t want to stay there, you can still pay an entrance fee and visit the house. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen and was definitely worth the trip for the strange factor alone.
While we were there we saw tow separate groups of people who were on our flight into Dalat, and I also encountered an excited older asain man who spoke no English but really wanted to see my camera. He gestured to it repeatedly and asked to see it, I kept saying no and his friend, watched the exchange and laughed. The excited guy was sporting his own Nikon camera so I’m still not really sure why he was so insistent to see mine.
