This recreation of a traditional tomb was surrounded by fertility statues. Taken at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi.

These are the kids from the Literature Temple in Hanoi. As you can see, there are a great many of them. Now picture me, pressed into a corner surrounded by the whole giggling group, and you will get a better picture of my Literature Temply Experience.

In all honestly, they were super cute and funny, but it was pretty overwhelming to be unexpectedly surrounded by a whole group of children and interrogated about my name, home town, and career. I’m still a little puzzled about why I was so much more interesting than Miles & Leanne seemed to be, but I doubt I will ever know.

Also pictured is one of the kids rubbing the head of one of the Tortoise statues at the temple. Tortoises are one of four sacred creatures in Vietnam, and they symbolize longevity. I was told that it is very good luck to rub their heads, as it is something of a prayer/wish for long life.

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.

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.

Tiny Plastic Chairs

Vietnam was a country full of tiny plastic chairs. All along the streets in front of shops, the sidewalks would be full of people selling goods and sitting in these little chairs. In Hanoi our hotel was near an intersection with corner bars which filled the sidewalk and street with plastic chairs at night and big groups of tourists and locals would sit drinking beer hunched into the kid sized chairs.

A horse themed post. Both of these pictures are from Dalat. The first was taken while we were walking around the lake to the Dalat Florwe Garden. We were enjoying our walk (unbeknownst to me I was working up an epic sunburn) and randomly a horse appeared on the side of the road! The horse was just chillin, he was tied up on a long rope nibbling on some grass and there was no one around. It was very random.

The second picture comes from inside the Flower Garden. This guy was walking around with the horse and for a small fee you could ay to sit on the horse and have your friends take your picture. I think it was a pretty slow day at the Garden, and this guy loked a little bored. Suffice to say, it was surreal to see a Vietnamese dude walking around a botanical garden towing a horse in western cowboy gear.

We saw some seriously weird food in the markets, but this is one of the only photos I took (mostly I concentrated on walking as fast as possible and breathing as little as possible). This shop was selling some seriously fresh fish. Still alive, and swimming around in these bowls on the sidewalk fresh. I think I looked a little horrified when I saw them, and the guy on the motorbike was snapping his fingers and pointing to the fish for me. maybe he wanted me to buy them.

LIttle kids in Vietnam were really happy to see me. I guess it’s becuase I looked so, so different. It was really weird, but mostly just funny. This kid yelled hello to me about 15 times and smiled the biggest smile ever when he saw me with my camera. I took this on our second day in Dalat when Miles, Leanne and I wandered around town vaguely trying to get to the lake, but mostly just enjoying the cool neighborhoods we walked through and being happy to get away from tourist central.