Saigon, Ba Vi, Da Nang, and Beyond

Hello all. As of today I have a little less than 2 weeks left here in Vietnam. It's been a crazy, fun and eventful time here and I have really enjoyed it. It's been a great experience and I have learned lots about both Vietnam and myself here. This will be my last blog entry, and so I'll try to make it worthwhile.

The last thing that I talked about was Sa Pa. Two weeks after that my colleague Nathan and I flew down to Saigon to meet with some fellow SALTers from Cambodia. This was everyone's first time in Saigon except for me, though last time I hadn't enjoyed it very much due to being sick. This time however it was great. We toured the city one day, went to the Cu Chi tunnels another, and spent the last day just enjoying the city and going to the zoo. We saw some amazing roller-bladers who skated more like figure-skaters than roller-bladers, had the opportunity to (but didn't actually) fire some of the weapons from the Vietnam War, ate western food, sang Karaoke, and had a great time being Westerners after spending so much time immersed in the local culture. 

Fast forward about a month, and I went on a trip with my office to Ba Vi, which is a rural area just west of Hanoi where they produce much of the milk and yogurt consumed here in the north. We went to some farms in the morning to take a look, and then spent the afternoon walking in the countryside. It was a very pleasant time despite the torrential downpour that happened in the afternoon.

A research farm we visited. 

A Jackfruit tree

Buddha flexing some muscle

Ba Vi was quite fun and it was unfortunate that we only had a day to spend there, because it would have been nice to explore it some more.


Last weekend I got on a plane to return to Hue, and potentially Da Nang. I made friends with some locals there and wanted to visit. I ended up spending about 3 days in Hue, and 2 in Danang, and another in transit. While in Hue we ended up going to the beach, visiting pagodas, and mostly just enjoying the city. I should be noted that we enjoyed the beach Vietnamese style, which means that you go once the sun is almost down or on it's way up. On the fourth day one of my friends, Thang (pronounced Tang), went to Da Nang to attend a training course, and I decided to join her as it would give me an opportunity to visit Da nang. While there I enjoyed the sunshine, the beach and went to Marble Mountain and Hoi An.


Marble mountain is a series of large rocky outcroppings south of Da Nang. One of them has many caves. pagodas and temples and so I climbed and explored there one morning.

The biggest cave was quite dark and you could hear bats

There was a lookout up there, provided you climbed for it

Another Temple

Surprisingly arid at the top of Marble Mountain

A temple in a Cave

The whole setup felt a little Indiana Jones at times

Ominous stairs...

The mountains are surrounded by city, just like everything here in Vietnam

A large Lion statue that I purchased for my parents backyard

The city of Da Nang was quite nice, being bigger than Hue, but not nearly as bad in terms of traffic and noise as Ha Noi.

The Riverside at night

One morning I got up at 4:30 so that Tang and I could go visit a pagoda and go to the beach before class.

Vietnam really likes giant Buddhas

Da Nang at sunrise

All in all it was a great trip to Central Vietnam.

One last thing. 30 minutes ago I was told that I would be moving out of my host-families house the week due to them going on vacation, so I will be going to live at the MCC office. This will be both nice and a pain. It's further to the office and I will miss my host-family. However, it will be nice to be on my own again, at least for a little bit.