It was bound to happen...

Oh Goodness!!  We just spent all day in crazy horrible traffic coming back from my birthday present, a 3 day/2 night cruise around breath-taking Halong Bay.  Because of the traffic we were 2 hours late getting back to Hanoi and ended up missing our 24 hour bus ride to Laos.  But that's okay!  Now I have some downtime to blog...

I am speechless when it comes to Halong Bay, so I am going to quote Lonely Planet, "Majestic and mysterious, inspiring and imperious, words alone cannot do justice to the natural wonder that is Halong Bay, where 3,000 or more incredible islands rise from the emerald waters of the Gulf of Tonkin.  Halong Bay is pure art, a priceless collection of unfinished sculptures hewn from the hand of nature."

I can't imagine a better birthday present!  Instead of typing it all out, if you're interested, here is the website of our itinerary:  http://aclasscruise.com/TourDetail.aspx?TourID=1.  My favorite part of the cruise, besides the scenery, was the kayaking.  Shawn's favorite was the food!

Vietnam is such a long country that it takes quite awhile to get from place to place and we've stayed a little longer than we intended, but it's been good.  We spent a couple days in the beautiful old town of Hoi An, a living museum, and a Unesco World Hertiage Site.  The narrow lanes of the town were filled with charming cafes and shops inticing you to relax and enjoy some coffee (Steph), tea (Shawn) and people watching.  There was also a beach a few km away that we visited via bicycle.  

Before that, we spent a couple days in the beach town of Nha Trang (nothing special), mainly because it's where most people end up after coming down from the hill town of Dalat...which is where my sad birthday took place...

On my birthday morning we got on a 8 hr bus from Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) to Dalat.  Our driver seemed to be an aspiring kick drummer and was practicing on the bus pedals.  HIT THE GAS...let it slow down...HIT THE GAS...let it slow down...BRAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!...repeat for 8 hours.  Immediately upon arriving in Dalat I got very sick and spent the next 4 days in bed and the bathroom.  We're pretty sure it was food poisoning, which was bound to happen at some point.  Fortunately, I haven't been sick in anyway so far on our trip.  Unfortunately, the first time I do, it was on my 28th birthday...  Dalat was nice, for the 1 hour I felt well enough to go exploring.  Shawn was the best male nurse in the world!  He really took care of me.

In Saigon we visited the War Remnants Museum, which is one of the worst things we've ever seen and, honestly, being an American and walking around the museum was incredibly humiliating.  It left us speechless and very down.  What's crazy is, before Saigon, we were in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and visited the Killing Fields and the S-21 Torture Prison Museum and didn't think we'd see anything worse.  Well, the War Remnants Museum was worse.  We know that there's two sides to the story and after seeing the Vietnamese side we're definitely interested in further reading about the war.

Besides the excruciating history of Cambodia, we loved the country and its people.  We spent a day riding rented bicycles around the Temples of Angkor, in the "backyard" of Siem Reap.  There were so many temples in the area, it was hard to visit all of them.  Angkor Wat, the national symbol of Cambodia, was amazing.

Tomorrow we'll leave for Laos and spend a couple weeks there before going back into Thailand to visit the northern half, awaiting our flight to South Africa!

We've realized that we don't have the time or funds for all the countries we wanted to go to in Africa, but on our way to South America, we are stopping in South Africa for a few weeks before our flight from Cape Town to Buenos Aires, Argentina.  We've loved SE Asia, but we're definitely ready for a change of scenery and culture.

By the way, Shawn finally wimped out and shaved his beard due to the extreme heat and humidity.  He left the most ridiculous mustache (see pics) for two days and insisted on being in public as often as possible.  I pretended not to know him.  Now, instead of looking like Moses, he's getting comments from fellow travelers that he looks like Kevin Costner.  He wishes...