Lao Classes and sweets

For the last seven weeks or so a group of us have been taking Lao classes - our instructor Nou is great. We do vocabulary and basic tourist questions (the most useful less was how to haggle and learning numbers). 

Yesterday was Seth's last class and Nou brought sweets... 

Very interesting flavors... The green thing in the top picture was incredibly hard to eat, and I think the purple one had mushrooms. Corn (whole kernels) is also used in desserts. The coconut rice, wrapped in banana leaf (on the right) was really good!

But I'm bummed out Asian desserts never have chocolate.

Ha Long Bay Bhaya Cruise Day 3: Last day, Surprise Cave

Last day we went to Surprise Cave. It was beautiful, if not a bit of a walk for the senior citizens :) 

Leo-ing off the front of the Bhaya Classic 2. 

Ha Long Bay Bhaya Cruise Day 2: Adventures on Cat Ba Island

We got up before 6am- not just because the Australian retirees were up, but because the sunrise over the islands in Ha Long Bay was incredible. 

Also, there was 6:15am Tai Chi. Please notice the participants... there's the retirees, and then there's Nick (I also did the class).

Concrete boats - still don't get how these stay afloat.

Of the 40 passengers on the Bhaya Classic cruise, only 6 of us signed up for the 3D/2N cruise (versus the 2 day, 1 night, which is less than 24 hours). This was an AWESOME decision. Since Ha Long Bay takes 4 hours to get to anyway, I would have felt cheated if I went all the way to Ha Long Bay only to turn right around again.

As part of the 3 day, 2 night cruise, you spent one full day away from the main luxury cruise. We took a smaller boat (still three stories) to Cat Ba Island, which is incredibly beautiful, and has a massive National Park. On Cat Ba Island, we bike into the village, grab a soda, then bike back (only about 12 km total, including both mild but steep mountain biking and paved jungle trails).

The eel and frog farms on Cat Ba Island.

Biking through the village.

After returning to the boat, we had a four course lunch (again more seafood/ prawns) and then went swimming off the boat. 

And when I say "swimming" I mean we jumped off the top of the boat, which was not technically cruise-line approved but we were 4 of 6 passengers, and the Viet guys were more than happy to cheer us on as we pencil dived (me) or swan-dived (Nick's cousin).

We then explored the islands on kayak and went to tiny remote beaches for some swimming and shell-gathering. 

Nick sizing up the distance to the water before jumping. 

A junk boat on the way back to the main cruise boat.

We really lucked out with the weather- sunny all day, and incredible stars all night.

Showing off my new fancy earrings (they're from H&M, no big deal).

There was also a cooking class where they taught you to make spring rolls. I stayed just long enough to take this picture- spring rolls are one of the few Asian foods I actually know how to make.

Tuna, in the shape of a heart. A bit over the top.

Note: There were two entree choices each night. The first night, it was between steak (black pepper sauce) and sea bass (passion white sauce). The second night, it was lamb chops (black pepper sauce) and prawns (passion white sauce).
If I never have black pepper sauce or passion white sauce again, it will be too soon. 

Ha Long Bay Bhaya Cruise day 1: Youngest ones on Board

There are a ton of Ha Long Bay cruises, ranging from budget to mid-level to luxury, and we chose a luxury cruise that had great reviews and pretty good rates. Bhaya Cruise was great: the food was amazing, the boat was beautiful and the staff were incredibly attentive. We (a group of four in our 20's) were also younger than every other passenger by 30+ years. (The others were mostly part of a package tour specifically oriented towards Australian retirees.) We were up at 6am, falling asleep by 9pm... it was great. 

Departing the Ha Long Bay Marina around 1pm.

As part of the first day, we went to a fishing village called "Vung Vieng Village". It was incredible to see how people lived on boats and houses built on stilts. 

The schoolhouse in Vung Vieng.

One of the best things about Bhaya was the food- the dinner was a four course meal. A LOT of seafood- I don't need to eat prawn again for a while.

Hanoi craziness

Hanoi, one of the few cities that has a direct flight from Vientiane (via Lao Airlines), is practically the opposite of Vientiane.

Where Vientiane is quiet and calm, Hanoi is loud and crazy. Where Vientiane takes 15 minutes to drive from the airport, through the city center, and to the other side of the city limits, Hanoi stretches out for miles and miles. 

While I loved the colors and all the different shops and restaurants, the traffic and car craziness definitely lived up to its name.  Someone told me that when in Vientam, the best way to cross the street is to "close your eyes and just start walking". Usually I just took my queues from Nick, who seemed to have the pedestrian-in-Vietnam style down, but when I was out walking by myself, I found myself cupping my hands around my eyes and humming at a loud volume just to block out all the sensations and potentially fatal distractions (not unlike an autistic person).  At one point I noticed that an older Vietnamese woman had crossed the street next to me and was a little worried at the tall white girl who was humming loudly to herself.

I didn't take any pictures of myself, or of the group, just random things I saw around. We were in Hanoi only Thursday night and Sunday night, having spent the rest of the weekend on a cruise in Ha Long Bay. 

Having gotten in late Thursday evening, we went straight to the hotel, where we then passed out. (We stayed at the Tirant Hotel, which had a great location and incredibly welcoming staff.)

Friday morning the van from the Bhaya Cruise line picked us up at 8am. 

(See other blog entries for Ha Long Bay cruise info)

Sunday afternoon we got dropped off. Nick and I wandered around the Old Quarter, including a walk around the lake and an exploration to the luxury area of Hanoi. 

Reindeer with flowers at the lake in the Old Quarter.

Woman gardening in the park.

This building was designed around the tree. It's awesome. 

This is the statue near the park. A bit intimidating. 

Saw this on our walk: A man doing work on the front of a building. Pretty sure his ladder is perched on an inch-wide ledge. He was tied to the top of the building with a rope that circled his waist.  

We met with Nick's cousin and her friend to go to the Orchid Restaurant, which has a cooking class during the day but had really good food at night. Easily my favorite dish of the night was "Steamed fish in a clay pot". What they don't tell you is that the fish is served in caramel sauce. I will eat anything served in caramel sauce. 

After the dinner we went to the Green Mango, which had expensive drinks. And "Fresh Squeezed Cow Juices". And a chocolate martini that was really just vodka and vermouth in a martini glass, with chocolate around the rim.

Until you order Bailey's and Kahlua and a cup of chocolate syrup and make it taste delicious. 

Chocolate martini : before

Chocolate martini: after

From there we found a taxi to "take us to karaoke, please". What he did: drove us around the outside of the quarter for 10 minutes, charged us $15, and dropped us off four blocks from where he picked us up. No karaoke in sight. So we went to a bar, drank some beers, and had them play the Eagles, Gnarles Barkley, and Marvin Gaye at a loud volume so we could sing along.

We then moved to an expat bar with a pool table and hookahs and spent a bit of time there. As the Old Quarter shuts down at midnight, we got "locked in", where the bar closed down from the front, with all of us on the inside, and when we left a half hour later, we had to go out the side door.

The next day I went on a walk around the Old Quarter, and then Nick, Elaine and I searching for a museum. Unfortunately, the Vietnam National History Museum is closed on Mondays, along with most of the museums. Luckily we walked by the Women's Museum, and that one was actually open. It was really cool, and gave a ton of information about the roles of women in marriage, family, war (particularly the American-Vietnam war) and in rural villages. It was particularly interesting because there are so many ethnic groups in Vietnam, both matrilineal and patrilineal. 

Women in Vietnam: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Vietnam

After a lunch at the Aubergine Restaurant, we went across the street to an art vendor. The paintings (both originals and reproductions) were all ridiculously cheap! 

Nick and I bought this one for $20 :) 

American Halloween

American Halloween! The expat community is doing a Halloween party on Saturday but as we won't be here (and Halloween is my favorite holiday), we decided to throw a Halloween party for our work buddies. 

Homemade costumes were a requirement :) I was a Jack o Lantern! 

We did watermelon carvings (instead of pumpkin carvings; haven't seen any pumpkins in Laos), which is nice because watermelons are actually super easy to carve, and you can put vodka in the watermelons...

For dessert I tried to do a black-and-white Spider Web cake, but evaporated milk is way less solid than vanilla frosting so it kind of all ran together. So I drowned the cake in hot chocolate sauce, put a "puddle" in the middle, and had sour gummi worms crawling out of it. Add vanilla ice cream to the hot chocolate cake and it was awesome (if I do say so myself)

On the way out one of our coworkers got stuck in the ditch we have along the dirt road in front of our apartment. Ten guys (all dressed in Halloween costumes) couldn't get him out, so they had to call a tow truck ...

Then Zach decided to scale the side of our apartment building.

Eye make-up.

I left the ten jack-o-lantern watermelons outside our apartment but the cleaning ladies threw them away before we got back from work today... very very distressing. And sad.

But Happy Halloween from Laos!

Pumpkin cut outs

Nothing says accomplishment like getting five computer programmer guys to get on your living room floor and do arts and crafts. 

Watching Sinister and doing Jack O Lantern cut-outs.