A place for all my small and big adventures!
The trip to Taiwan was perfect. The train had no delay, we had enough time at the airport and the security checks were fast and without any problems. The flight itself had a 30min delay because of high traffic at the runway (yes, even there there’s traffic 🙄) and some minor turbulences but nothing where …
After a breakfast in form of a burger with sausages instead of a patty, which was still very delicious, I went to the central post office to send a postcard.
In the post office were also some souvenirshops who sold some nice stuff which even weren’t that expensive as I thought. After that I looked at the Notre Dame cathedral next to the post office, I just saw it from the outside because it had opened much later and I was to lazy to come back later^^
I went then home and accidentally slept a while. I went to a café and then to a Spa where I had to promise the a girl that handed out flyers of the Spa to tourists. It was crazy in the street I was, almost every 10 m somebody wants to give you a flyer and that you come to their place^^
I got a whole body vietnamese massage which was really great, they cracked some bones in my body I didn’t even know they could crack like my ears and even my scalp!
If you’re in Vietnam you should really get one, they’re super cheap and are really good! I paid like 6$ for 1h of a great massage.
For the guys maybe just say you have a girlfriend, that makes it a little easier to deny some certain extra services…^^
I then went to the tattoo shop from yesterday and went out to eat with one of the guys. I got a rice porridge with duck and some bread pieces which was pretty tasty, I just forgot to take a picture of it 🙈
After the meal I got this drink which tastes a little bit like red bull and is also something like this.
In the evening we went all together to a bar a the street and enjoyed the night. It was very nice and I find it very nice that sitting in a bar here also means to eat a lot of stuff 😅😋
We got some fried gristle pieces, a sun-dried and then fried fish, chicken feet and my highlight: the duck embryo! One of the guys invited me to one so I finally had the chance to try it ( I think alone I probably hadn’t buy me one^^). It tasted really not bad, you get lime and chili with it to dip it in and it’s real nice, it doesn’t tastes that different from a normal egg and sort of looks like it when you peel it. But if you break it open you can see all the details, like the freshly developed head and stuff 😛
Was a great experience to try it^^
For breakfast we ate spring rolls which we had to roll by ourselves. It was pretty fun and tasted really good.
After that we went to the coffee village here in Buon Ma Thuot, it was like 20 min. away from our hotel. I can really recommend to go there, it’s not like you see a whole lot of awesome stuff, but there are some nice cafés were you can drink a iced coffee like we did and walk around just looking at the old houses that are just made of wood which looks very cool.
We talked with a villager who could speak pretty good French. She told us that sadly this old tradition of building houses of wood is getting forgotten because all the rich and young people come to this area and build new houses or of bricks instead. It’s kinda reasonable I think, because the wood houses have to get renewed every 50 years and the stone houses if they’re build good never. But it’s still sad that a old tradition like this dies.
We didn’t made very much after spending some hours around the coffee village. There isn’t really much to do in Buon Ma Thuot itself. We ate at a streetrestaurant some real nice beef with rice and salad, it tasted really great. After that we went pretty early to bed to get up early tomorrow.
Today Bon picked me up and invited me to a great feast with a part of his family, not his wife and kids, but his brother and his brothers and sisters in law and more. It was very nice to see how they all eat together and the food was really really great. Before the big meal they burned some papersuits as well as paper money, Thao, the girl I rented the room from tolde that they burn all this stuff as symbolism to gift it to the dead ones so they have new suits and money and stuff in the Heaven. They also print iPhone and really everything on paper so you can burn it 😀
As far as I noticed eat the woman and kids separate from the men, but they still came over some times and talked with them. They also all drank beer, so there’s no separation there^^
After the great meal we sat there some while and then went to Bons home. I talked with one of his daughters, her english name is Alice, and she could talk very good English, especially for a 13 year old!
She had to translate everything for the others and had to ask me everything the others wanted to know 😅🙈
But is was very nice to talk with her/them and to spend just some time with a normal Vietnamese family 🙂
After that Bon drove me back to my hotel where I booked a ticket for the night bus to Da Lat and went to a nearby shop to get a new belt because mine broke apart.I had an hour until the belt should be ready and before I had to be back at my hotel, so I went to the city to buy some last souvenirs.
After that I got my belt and went to the Hotel where a small bus picked me up and brought me to the place where the sleeping bus would pick me up.
Today I went to a Hill full of Temples called “Chùa Non Nước”. I went there by bicycle which I could use for free from the Hotel as I said. It’s very nice to ride the bike to this place, the street is very calm and it’s only about 15 mins away. At the hill there are many shops who offer you to park your bicycle/motorbike for free in exchange to look through their items when you’re back from the Hill. At the hill is a elevator which can bring you up to the temples if you’re to lazy or can’t climb the stairs, it costs 15k VND. The Temples at the mountain are awesome a hell! There are also some big caves which cool you a little down from the sweating climb up and there’s a way to the “Heaven Gate” which is one of the highest points of the hill,the view is awesome! Although you have to really climb to get there because at some point there are no more stairs. But it’s pretty fun to climb up there and the view is really worth it. There are about 5 Temples or so and they are all so beautiful, you really wonder how the managed to get all the statues and everything up there. The climb itself costs 40k for adults, which is pretty good. If you go there and want to see everything and take your time, you should plan at least 3h. I had about 2½ h and I had to kinda hurry because I had to be at my hotel at time so I won’t miss my bus to Hoi An. It wasn’t like I had to rush through the temples but if you want to see everything with calmness and walk slowly through the temples you definitely need some more time.
After the climb down I drove back to my hotel, packed my stuff and went to the place I booked a shuttle bus to Hoi An, which was like 5 min away. I can really recommend my Hotel, the owner is very nice and helps you with everything, you get a bicycle and laundry service for free and the location is also pretty good, with 10 min to the beach and 10 min taxi drive to the city. And it’s really cheap.
The drive to Hoi An was pretty fast with nothing special on the way.
Hoi An itself is awesome from the first impression! The small river through the city looks very nice, the streets are full of local markets and souvenir shops, there is a pretty nice nightmarket and at night there are so many colors! Also at the time I’m here there’s the “international food festival” with stands of countries from all over the world with chefs who cook awesome food for you! *-*
The festival goes until the weekend and everyday they cook a different national food, it’s like heaven for me!
I ate fried seafood noodles from the Malaysian stand and a Russian fish soup called „Ukha“ stand, both were really tasty! Sadly it’s a little expensive with 60k per plate and the plates are not that big^^ which is okay because you want to try everything but it makes it a little more expensive. But it’s totally worth it to spend there some money 😋😍
Today was really the laziest day ever, I just walked around the old quarters, planned my trip to Da Nang, ate something, and chilled at home. I’m going to Da Nang with a night bus, I booked it in the hotel and it costed me 25$. The cheapest flights I found online were for about 35$ so it’s a little cheaper like that, I’ll write if it’s also comfortable or if it’s maybe worth it to fly.
It started to rain in the afternoon and I was still a little tired from the long night yesterday so I went to the hotel and chilled a bit. In the evening I went again to the two bars and partied with the same girls I met yesterday. It was pretty fun and it was my last night here so why not^^ This time I didn’t stay this long though, just until 2am because I have to check out tomorrow at 11am.
But if you want to go to Hanoi to party you’ll have no problems finding a bar that you like, the night life here is so huge and you can meet so many nice people. Also many other tourists with which you can exchange your stories and give each other recommendations for everything, so it’s pretty helpful to go in a bar for a little chat. But maybe you’ll have some problems with the music, most of the bars and clubs all play this more or less trash techno music, which I have no problem hearing it, but if you hear it for 4-5h it can get a little annoying^^ but anyways you can also find bars who play another kind of music, you just have to look a little harder^^
The food I ate were a tofu noodle soup for breakfast which was pretty good, a iced lemon tea to cool down from this awesome hot weather *-* The tea was cheap, just 10.000 VND, you can find stands selling them all around the lake with the red bridge I wrote about earlier. For lunch I had this South Vietnamese beef noodles at a place called “Bun Bo Nam Bo” which is pretty famous for them and they really tastet great, pretty sweet but still great. And for ‘Dinner’ I had a grilled pork stick from the street.
I also found out why the Vietnamese people like my long hairs so much and why they don’t grow their hair apart from the obvious fact that it’s pretty hot with so much hair on your head in this country^^ Because it’s so hot here they also sweat a lot and this makes their scalp very itchy. It’s also said that Asians have more sweat glands than the westerns so that’s maybe also a point why their heads gets easier itchy than mine.
