Yesterday, we went to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi, Vietnam. We got there in the morning because the mausoleum is closed in the afternoon. When we first got there we were so surprised at how big the lineup was, it took up more than 2 blocks! But we decided to go for it and wait in line. Luckily, the line moved very fast and within half an hour we were at the front of the line. The park where the mausoleum was was very pretty and had nice greenery all around. There was no photography allowed in the park but everyone was taking pictures so Cleo snuck a pic of the mausoleum for you, it is pic 5. All around the mausoleum are guards in formal white uniforms, the ones at the door of the mausoleum and inside the mausoleum even had guns. Before we went in, I did not know anything about the inside of the mausoleum except that in a glass case was Ho Chi Minh’s actual body. When we went in everything was silent so I decided to keep quiet too. Ho Chi Minh was lying with eyes closed in a glass case that was dimly lit with a candle glow. To keep the line moving, you only were allowed 1 minute to walk by Ho Chi Minh. Picture 4 is not him in the mausoleum, that is a statue of him in the Ho Chi Minh Museum. The picture below shows a tea set given to Ho by Russia, he was given many other gifts from other countries like Egypt or China. Picture 2 shows a wax Ho Chi Minh at his actual typewriter. Picture 3 shows Ho Chi Minh’s actual clothes, shoes, hat, and exercising equipment (apparently he loved to exercise). Here is the short version of Ho Chi Minh’s life. Ho Chi Minh (at the time, Nguyen Ai Quoc) grew up in a small village with his parents called Kim Lien. He had a simple life working on a farm and exercised whenever he could. He led the movement for Vietnamese independence from the French in the 1940’s. He led the communist government in the north, the south at that time was capitalist and did not want to become communist but the north wanted them to become communist so that they could be united. A civil war broke out and the US gave money to the south because they were capitalist and so was the US, the US wanted the whole world to become capitalist. The south was still losing the fight so eventually the US sent their own troops to fight the communist government in the north of Vietnam. In the end, the north won and the whole country became communist. But the US troops did not leave until after Ho Chi Minh had died in 1969.

P.S. By chance, while we are here the Summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong is happening and there is signs everywhere and paparazzi. I was on Korean TV and Cleo was on Taiwan TV.📺😀

Big Trip 2019

The link above will take you to a map of the places we have been on our trip. It kind of looks like we have been traveling in a Z-shaped formation. If you have any questions about where we have been and what it was like please comment on this post and I will reply as soon as possible.

Hoi An is a city full of vibrant life, colour and culture that is certainly worth documenting! As many of you know, street photography is a passion of mine, so it was hard to not take photographs of everything. For this blog post, I wanted to post 22 photographs but Denise told me that was too many! So now I have to pick and choose which photographs to share with you.

When I’m walking through the streets my eye is caught by the daily lives of locals selling their wares in the markets, or their trade in the streets.

Hoi An’s streets are full of alley ways, many painted a golden yellow, giving the old city a majestic feel. Above are a few shots showing off the golden glow of Hoi An!

Street eats are an irresistible subject matter for me. First of all, I love food and secondly, I love the way food brings people together. Food stalls and vendors can be found all throughout Hoi An, selling noodle soups, Cao Lau (a Hoi An noodle dish speciality) and of course Banh Mi!!

Getting around town is easy enough on bike, foot or moto. But sometimes it can tire a driver out!!

Overall Hoi An is a beautiful city, even if the old quarter is quite busy with tourists. I enjoyed capturing the feel of the city and hope you were able to get a sense of it too!! (I only shared 20 photos with you, clearly I need to work on my editing skills!!)

 

 

We were biking across the rice paddies and came to Long Phu restaurant to have a drink. We later found out we could do a cooking class the next evening there, it sounded fun so we called our neighbour´s friends from Toronto who were also traveling in Asia. They have two kids named Soren,and Annika, the parents names are Melana and John. They also thought it sounded fun so we booked a class for dinner. Long Phu’s van picked us up and brought us to the local market on the outskirts of Hoi An. The market had so many vendors and a lot of food. As you can see in pics 1,2,8, and 10, pic 10 is a little gross. We saw one vendor killing and peeling off the skin of an alive frog!! There was so much produce, Hang, the owner bought some morning glory leaf for her family. After the market we got back in the van. We drove to a pier and got into basket boats that were so fun, you can see the basket boats in photos 4 and 5, and video 1. One thing that is really popular in Southeast Asia is Karaoke, in video 1 a guy was dancing on his basket boats for tips, we gave him 10,000 VND which is about 60 cents CAD. On the boat they gave us homemade banana leaf rings, you can see my mom´s in photo 3. When we got to Long Phu Restaurant, we washed our hands and put on our aprons and picked stations and partners, my partner was my dad and we were station No. 4. The first thing we made was spring rolls, we chopped up carrot, onion, scallion, and we put it in a bowl. Then, we put in a blob of pork and mixed into a mash. We split the the mash into equal thirds and were given rice paper to roll up our spring rolls in. We rolled up our spring rolls and they were given to the chef to fry while we started to make Banh Xeo. Banh Xeo is a Vietnamese savoury pancake made from rice flour, they are yellow and get their colour from turmeric. We made a batter out of flour, water, salt, pepper, and scallion. Me and Dad fried our Banh Xeo on our gas burner, the pancake included pork, shrimp, sprouts, herbs, and lettuce and you rolled it all up in rice paper to eat. We finished our Banh Xeo and moved on to preparing the papaya salad. I shredded papaya and carrot for the salad. The papaya salad was quick to make so we quickly moved on to the last but not least dish, Chicken Curry. We were making two pots of curry, one spicy, one mild. Me and Soren are stirring up the curry in pic 7. Finally, we got to eat our spring rolls, Banh Xeo, papaya salad, Chicken Curry, and they kindly prepared us some mussels and gave us…… Coca Cola!! The food was so delicious I couldn’t believe that we made it. I really liked the spring rolls, papaya salad, Banh Xeo, and the Chicken Curry. After dinner we took advantage of the karaoke machine in the restaurant and sung many songs, you can see us doing karaoke in video 2, Long the owner was so into it, he was dancing the whole time. We did a bunch of good songs until the van arrived to take us to our hotels, we were staying at Bonsai Homestay which by the way was really nice. I would rate Bonsai a 8.5 out of 10.😀

 Every month there is a lantern festival for the full moon. Luckily, February’s festival was scheduled for a day during our visit. In the old town everything is dark but the lanterns on boats and at stalls. You could pay to go on a boat down the river to see the floating lanterns but we did not cause you could also get a good view of them from the land. Also, they were pretty expensive. The festival is packed with tourists and vendors selling goods and food. My mom and Cleo got jade rollers which are supposed to help with anti-aging facial stuff. They also got mango cakes and me, Denise, and my dad shared a donut.

These are floating lanterns going down the river. Me and Denise both released floating lanterns but unfortunately they got stuck in the corner of the bridge. The lanterns were 10,000 VND which is about 60 cents CAD. we released them with a long bamboo stick with a bowl on the end. When you release the lanterns you make a wish. I hope mine comes true, probably not :).

 This is one of the boats you could take down the river. I think that this picture is beautiful. Photo Credit: Cleo Haber.

This is a bunch of pop-up cards that a stall was selling. I wanted to buy one but unfortunately we did not buy one. Cleo took this photo on her camera. Do you have a favourite card?  This is our floating lanterns stuck in the corner of the bridge burning out. Me and Denise’s lanterns are the ones at the very bottom of this photo side by side. The candle lasted for longer than I expected.

We loved it on Koh Rong Samloem, we would of stayed there longer but we had planned to meet our Aunt Cleo in Hoi An in Vietnam. We left Sihanoukville at 8:30am in a taxi to go to Sihanouk International Airport. We purposely stayed close to the airport because the roads in Cambodia are not the best. When we got there we checked our bags and went through security in a breeze and we got to the gate a while before the flight. I read my book by Gordon Korman for a little while. We boarded the flight, we were going to Hoi An in Vietnam but the first plane went to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and we had a 4 hour stopover there. In Ho Chi Minh we went to a restaurant across the street from the airport. We got Banh Mi and a Lime shake. Banh Mi is a Vietnamese baguette with a bunch of vegetables and chicken or pork. I really liked the Banh Mi. We boarded our flight at 4:10 pm to Hoi An. When we got there we took a taxi from the airport which was actually in Da Nang, the city next to Hoi An. It was a 35 km ride. The taxi was 420,000 VND, which is $24 CAD. We got to where we are staying on Cam Nam Island a 10 minute walk away from the old town on the mainland, it is nice to not be right in the centre of town because Hoi An is so busy. We are staying at a place called Bonsai Villa which has 2 dogs, Lala and Lulu. They are so cute!! Yesterday was a big day.

In the early morning we left Champa Lodge and took a tuk- tuk to a travel agency. We got on a minivan 🚐 that would take us to Sihanoukville, the big city in the south of Cambodia 🇰🇭. We had some snacks at a restaurant called Yasmine. I ordered a mango shake, Denise ordered a lime shake, and my parents both got falafel wraps🥙. We almost missed our boat. The name of the pier in Sihanoukville was Serendipity Pier which I thought was very funny. We boarded our boat to Koh Rong Samloem. Koh Rong Samloem consists of 2 beaches, Saracen Bay which had lots of resorts and tourists and Lazy Beach where we stayed. Our resort was the only one on Lazy Beach which was nice because we are used to so many tourists. We were staying at Lazy Beach for 4 nights. On the first day we just relaxed on the beach 🏖 and went swimming in the ocean. Just before bedtime we went into the ocean and saw bioluminescence. It was so cool. Bioluminescence is little plankton in the water that glow when you touch them, you can only see them at night because the sun ☀️ is too strong to see the glow. On the second morning, I woke up for the sunrise 🌅 and read my book 📚 for a while. For breakfast I had a peanut butter baguette and I really liked it. That afternoon we rented snorkel gear and went out to see the fish 🐠. We saw so many fish! Fish we saw included yellow and black striped fish, big circular orange and white fish, and blue & brown fish with a leopard pattern. Unfortunately my skin got really irritated from the salt water and little red dots broke out all over my body 😢. That night we had a delicious dinner and my parents played Backgammon, (they love that game). The next morning me and Denise went to the restaurant alone, we played the card game War and I ordered French Toast and Honey 🍯. It was such a big portion. It was like 14 little pieces of French Toast! After breakfast me and my dad played badminton 🏸 and then we went swimming 🏊. We got a lot of bites from “Sea Lice”, sea lice are little fleas in the water that bite you, the bite stings a little but not for long. After lunch we went snorkelling again and we saw big blue & green fish. It was awesome! Next, me and my dad played Bocce ball, he won 3-0😢. Me and Denise did a lot of schoolwork and reading 📖 after that. We went to dinner but it took a little while because it was pretty busy. It is usually busy because there are twenty bungalows on the resort. I was very tired 😴 so I went to bed early and woke up early, again me and Denise had breakfast alone, we ordered a fruit 🍉 salad and pancakes 🥞 to share. We played a big game of UNO and unfortunately Denise won. We tried to go snorkelling but it was a little murky in the water. On our last dinner I ordered Spring Rolls with vegetables which were very good. The next morning we woke up early because we were taking the boat at 9:00am back to Sihanoukville. The boat on the way back was so nauseating, I think half the people on the boat threw up 🤢and there were like 20 people on the boat. When we finally got off the boat we were exhausted and sickened. Me and Denise ordered a lime shake at Yasmine and my dad got Ice Tea. We are staying in Sihanoukville for one night and then the next day we will fly to Hoi An in Vietnam 🇻🇳.