VN11 - Caves (Phong Na)

 

VN11 - Caves

We woke up early, as always. It's hard not to when you're all in the same room. We did not eat a massive breakfast at the hotel this time, which was a complete surprise, and headed out right away! What happened to never skipping meals? Oh, just kidding, we got a block away and then had breakfast where it was $1 cheaper. To be fair, that is 50%... but Lou and I are the ones paying for all of this, and who gives a fuck. (Also, the caffiene wore off lol). Anyways, then we continued out to.... some cave! We were the first tourists there, which means, after a kilometer of walking up switchbacks, we had the cave to ourselves!   And least we did for a while, until Lou's indomitable need for pictures of herself allowed a couple of tour busses to catch up.  Anyways, the cave itself is quite impressive. It was discovered in 1991, but remained unmapped until the local hunter (who had used it for shelter years ago and noted the wind ((in caving there's a saying: "If it blows it goes")) told a geological expedition that was in the area over a decade later.  And it's massive. 31km of passages, of which we did 1, out and back. And it's enormous. You could fit a mcmansion inside the main room, with room on every side, and the cave continued to stretch back from there.  Geologically, it's not as interesting as Luray caverns or most of the east-coast caves, but that may just be because it's so big there's a lot more empty rock exposed... I'm sure if you collapsed all the cool stuff into cave you couldn't drive a bus through (not literally, busses can't do stairs) it'd be best cave on the continent. 

I resorted to photography to kill all the free time during photoshoots (both our driver and a local security guard were pressed into duty), and a cave is a great place to refresh on the basics: Light. Light is what makes photograpgy works, and the color, direction, and the contrasting volumes of photons are what make some photos good, and some portraits impossible - no matter how many times you try, you're still gonna be backlit to hell. I know phones and auto-HDR is amazing these days but they can't gather photons that don't exist in the first place. 

Have you ever heard the story of the russian cosmonaut? He was the first man in space, the first man to see the home of humanity like a tiny pearl beneath him, and countless stars above. But as he's up there, he hears a beeping noise. Tick. Tick. Tick.  He knows this sound will drive him insane. He has 12 more days up there, and this ticking is the only sound he can hear. So he decides his only chance is to fall in love with it. ... or so the apocraphylful story from an amazing mixtape goes, I'm pretty sure it's entirely BS, but the moral is true.  I made a game of the instagram, and it made it way better. (LINK) Grandpa made a similar choice, and began posing for photos in locations he found photogenic.

1 cave complete, time for....  another cave! Clearly the caffiene I took this morning didn't work, so I doubled-down, grabbing a coke while Lou bought tickets. Thankfully, this one worked. Again, I know it's totally unstainable, but if it lets me enjoy natural gems at the cost of a shitty airplane ride or whatever... 

This cave was a boat-cave-tour! We rented out the entire boat (which meant we were on our own schedule and didn't have to wait for 6 more people) for $12, and it is a beast of a boat. And I don't mean that in a flattering way, I mean like a workhorse, or a draft ox. The engine is near-defining, probably a large-bore single-cylinder, and it shakes the entire boat with every thump. And for all that, it doesn't get on-plane. It has never even heard of such a concept, and if it ever learned it would fear it, like Elizabethans (CHECK, LINK) convinced the sheer velocity of train would be fatal.  We made a brief stop and a teenaged boy ran down the shore and jumped onboard with a 2-liter of what looked like diesel, and we were off again.

But when we arrived at the cave the boat suddenly made sense. Instead of the cacophony I feared from a dozen boats sharing an echo chamber, they shut off the engine and began rowing, with a giant oar stern and pro, pushing us along near silently. This cave was similar to second half of the prior cave: Still massive by cave sizes, but you're not fitting a standard house into it. Driving busses, sure, and they can probably pass each other in the larger chambers. The roof of the boat slid back (manually, by untying it, shoving, and retying the ropes), allowing us to admire the views straight above in addition to the 270* panorama offered by the open sides - this flaunted some incredible stalagmites... which are impressive enough until you notice the scale, these are the size of small cars and must weigh... XX tons. (chatgpt does my math for me)

We sailed 2km down the cave - to the end of the artificial lighting. There's another 5km of navigable water beyond that, but that requires the 8-hour kayaking tour. We made our way back almost to the entrance, and disembarked on a naturally sandy beach within the cave, and I learned our tour-guide was also a photographer! Of course she is. Whatever, I scored a few more points in my game. Again, great cave, and the 500m walk out was full of incredible formations on a scale I'd never seen before. 

Exiting the cave, I found a watercloset! Then we did some drone things (the DJI is incredible... I was probably 4x past visual range but still had incredible signal, and if anything ever goes wrong you can always hit "return to home and autoland" and let the drone unfuck everything for you). Drones are always fun. Then we met our boat and just chilled on our way back to the home-base, passing literal hundreds of identical boats. Ours was #55, but every house on shore had a couple boats parked out front. During peak season this place must be bustling. As is, it appears all the boats are on rotation in strict numerical order, and after dropping us off our boat headed out, empty, to find it's berth (by which I mean chunk-of-shore) where our bow-oarsman was originally picked up. I'm assuming they're family...

And with that, it was 3pm! WE DID MISS A MEAL! Figures as soon as I blog it a counterfactual pops up the next day.  Anyways, we stopped by the hotel (hostel?) for a bathroom break (actually so Lou could change), and then set off out-of-town, passing dozens of restaurants without even slowing down.  We then drove about an hour, where apparently we planned to eat. As it was now 4pm, all the lunch places had closed and the dinner-places yet to open. After shouting at a few promising-looking restaurants (essentially open garages with a few burners and low tables-and-chairs), we finally found somewhere that hadn't sold out. A somewhat surprised shop-owner/cook/janitor/entrepeneur served us some lukewarm food, which we all devoured, thankful.

Then we continued out to the coast, only getting slightly lost. At some point we drove across a construction site that definitely wasn't rated for sedans, and then we started pulling up next to locals and shouting at them. I'm not sure what happened, but I heard the vietnamese term "googlemaps" repeatedly. 4 harassed locals later, we pulled up to a dude on an ATV. I thought we were gonna harass him too, but apparently this is who we were looking for.  After this hour-long drive, lunch fiasco, navigational confusion, etc... Lou turns to me and says "It's expensive, $3/person. Do you still want to go sand-sledding?"

Not especially, sand-sledding sounds lame. But apparently we'd driven all the way out there just for this, so we're doing it. We jumped on the back of his massive ATV and tore out across the dunes, and when we dismounted we were handed some 4mm plastic rope with a rope on the front. Is sand-sledding worth $3? Definitely not. You slide slowly down the hill, scooching whenever it gets slightly less steep, and then you have to hike all the way back up. I wouldn't even do it if you were paying me $3.  But since we were on the top of some great dunes, I tried to teach Lou the proper way to enjoy them: Buy hucking yourself off the edge as hard as you can. I'm definitely not as fast as I used to be, due to the combination of age, fitness, and utter exhaustion. However, I'm happy to report I'm still dumb enough to sprint at a blind cliff and full-commit, and got a good 20' or so on all my attemps. And it appears I've finally found Lou's limit, since she couldn't bring herself to jump more than a foot or so, even when I threatened to make fun of her on the internet. Her loss, that moment where your body screams "WE'VE BEEN WEIGHTLESS TOO LONG WERE GONNA DIE" is sublime. All in all, 8/10. Sand sledding is shit, but tearing around dunes and a few moments of flight are definitely worth the $3. Probably not worth the 3 hours, but /c'est la vie/ SPELLING ITALICS

And that's it. A long drive back to the hostel for showers and packing, since we fly back to HCMC tomorrow morning. 

VN10 - Headed North

 VN10 - Headed north

This morning, we woke up too early (don't we always) for breakfast. Apparently it's important I wake up and we all go to breakfast together, even though we all know I'll be done in 10 minutes while it takes them an hour to raid the bar. (The eat like people who have known true hunger, which they very well may have. 5 courses at any buffet, a single plate when you have to pay for it, and never skipping a meal). 

That meal survived, we went to one of the kings tombs. Each king has an entire burial complex, designed while they were alive, even though many of them aren't buried there. That would be too large a clue for the graverobbers - instead they were buried elsewhere, unmarked, and with such secrecy the gravediggers were often executed to assure their silence.  This king was different, however, and instead designed his entire tomb complex so that it would collapse on anyone foolish enough to attempt a robbery, and let everyone know. As you may be able to guess by the level of detail, our tourguide was back with us today!

The complex itself was on the side of a hill, because of fung-shui. And stairs, they love their steps. Built with french materials and techniques (meaning a lot of concrete, mostly), it featured buddhist, indian, and christian motifs in an attempt to bring unity or something.  The inside was far more impressive than the outside, with extensive mosaic work covering nearly every surface except for the ceiling. The ceiling was painted by a master, who insisted on using his feet. He claimed he needed the distance to get the scaling and perspective right, and this flex impressed the king so much he won the job. A few quick passes with the drone (Nothing amazing, I still need practice) and we wrapped it up and headed back down all those stairs.

Our second stop was another instagram-trap, the incense store! Really, the incense district, because they have instagram trapping down to a science so they can capture entire busloads of asians at once. We tried our hand at the traditional technique of rolling incense, Lou got pictures in the stacks of colored sticks (which form the core of the incense), and I stalked the cat sitting on an empty insta-trap chair. If insta-traps all featured cats I'd like them way more.  I pay $4 for some lemongrass incense, which is very much a tourist-tax... but it's hard to be angry about $4. 

Right next to the incense was another tomb / burial complex, this time for the 4th king. He had to design the entire complex himself, since he died childless (a symptom of the smallpox that afflicted him in his youth.) He even wrote his own epitaph, <link>.  This complex was much larger, and featured a manmade lake at the center surrounded by tombs, temples, the whole 9 yards, however it was not as ornate.   It was also filled with schoolchildren, apparently one of the highschools from further up north had a field-trip that day... and these highschoolers couldn't stop staring at me. Apparently I look a lot like another traveler (tall white dude with long hair) who rented a car, drove deep into the backwaters of Vietnam, and got hopelessly lost. He had to call the car-rental agency for a rescue, which went viral and ended up with me taking selfies with the kids (who were all very polite and had decent (albeit limited) english. 

Lou wanted some drone-shots here too... but right as we were about to take off, security told us it wasn't allowed. So we did what we had to. Packed it up, walked across the grounds to the far gate, and took off there! Despite being somewhat under the canopy I got it out and up pretty easily, took the drone shots from enough altitude that it wasn't too obvious, and then swung it back in, tucking under the branches and landing right in front of the gate. (I'm getting better! Drones are so fun - especially in more-relaxed countries).

The last event at the tomb was another insta-trap, this time down on the lake, as lou got probably 100 photos from our tour-guide (who we should remember, only studied for her guide-certification so she didn't have to pay to do photoshoots for tourists.). This was, obviously, quite boring until Lou said she needed more fish, so I grabbed one of the emergency granola bars (which are entirely untouched, since they stuff me with food any chance they get), and started throwing crumbs whereever I thought would fill in the picture. Any excuse to throw food at fish, especially gorgeous koi. 

From there we hit a local market, where we stopped at a desert stall. There were 16? Different pots and bowls of various semiliquids, from stewed fruits to tapioca bowls to puddings and syrups in all different colors... You would yell at the woman behind the counter, and she would ladle these concoctions into a glass (if you were eating there) or a plastic bag (to go), mixing half a dozen into one delicious? goo.  Hard pass. Not a single one looked appetizing, let alone an admixturation of mushy diabetes. Thankfully, lunch wasn't there, but at a restaurant down the street. Fish, rice, peppers, pork... real food, and nobody yelled at us.

Then we swung by the hotel to pick up our bags and headed back over to the fort, where our tourguide showed us the gatehouse on the 50,000vnd bill! We got back into the car, pulled away, and just like that our tourguide was gone, vanished where we found her, and we were on our own (with the driver, who asks me to let you know is excellent. And he is, so if you're going to be in Da Nang look him up <LINK>.  

From here we headed north. Far north. How far? I'm not sure, I was just told "long drive". Thankfully, we broke it up with a few stops. The first was Our Lady of Da Vang - standard apparation of the Virgin Mary story, so they built a church there... They're currently in the process of tearing down that church and building a megachurch, full on cathedral size, but in an interesting mix of eastern and christian design language. This megachurch is very much still under construction, but you can walk right in... so we did.  And there was a sketchy stairwell with no railings headed up, and you can't drop me in an construction site and expect me not to roof it... so I gave it a shot! Unfortunately it only went to the balcony level, and (after checking for alarms) the door to the extreme upper regions was locked.

Then we saw the rest of the site, mass was in session in one of the side buildings - it was novel to hear the latin intonation style in an entirely different language, and saw the industrial-scale holy-water setup. But all in all not much happening and a pretty quick stop.

Rice patties, rice patties everywhere. <Maybe put in an aside about the life-cycle of a rice patty once I learn it)

Even further north, we saw a memorial to the fallen in the war with the french. Basically a park, even more boring, and an even quicker stop.

I apparently fell asleep, because I woke as we pulled off the side of the highway at the 77th parallel (CHECK), the river where the north-south divide was officially set. Statues and flags on both sides (especially the North, since, well, you know...) We walked out the somewhat-rickety historic bridge to the line and started hearing a voice on the loudspeaker. I thought it was classic propaganda being played for historic effect, but then the dude coughed during a long pause. Turns out it was a security guard telling us we weren't allowed to take pictures on the bridge without paying for a ticket to the museum first. Didn't stop me, since I don't speak VN, but we headed back to the car and continued down the highway. 

Gas dictated the next stop, and we headed out into the wastelands. This was miles and miles of sand dunes, scrub pines, and windmills peaking through the mists. The sun set on this wasteland and we continued north, to dinner. We only got a little lost once the planned dinner location was closed, but a few cuts down the back roads through some --slums-- neighborhoods, and we were back headed north on the final leg.

Around 8pm, we drove past some glowing letters floating in the darkness, and entered a town where they had advertistements in English. After seeing almost no english for hours, suddenly most the advertisements had english on them. Then we started seeing white people, for the first time since Hue (LETTERS). We had arrived in what is clearly a backpacker town.... and then we pulled into our location, which is a fancy hostel. We have a room, for the five of us. I thought we were done with one-room living, but here we are. Thankfully a bit larger, but still, only three beds, so apparently I'm sleeping with grandpa since the driver is with us tonight. Small mercies: The driver showed grandpa how to work the volume buttons on his phone, so tiktok is only half volume tonight. But so much closer.

This time I did refuse Lou's invitation to go out, so she took off with the driver. I'm taking this early night to hopefully catch up on blogs. We'll see. Today down, two days to do.

VN9 - Slightly less chaos.

 

VN9 - More chaos

They warned me we were leaving ahead of time! Didn't make the 7am calltime any easier to wake up, but we're making progress. We had breakfast and jumped in the car for a trip to.... some other town! 

We headed out across town, past the beaches (though it's hard not to given the layout of Da Nang, and into the mountains. From there, we proceded to hit a bunch of "Check In Spots"... which is, in truth, a clever euphemism for Insta-traps. The first two were mountain overlooks: A lot of good rocks, and views down to the sea. We did a bit of drone flying and then got back in the car on our way to #3: XXXX fort! This fort dates back over two hundred, as it controls the pass leading to Hue (FANCY CHARACTERS), the old imperial palace.  However, it's been used in every war since then, and has modern pillboxes abuting ancient cannonades (LOOK UP THIS WORD AND SEE IF IT'S RIGHT), and views down to the sea to either side. This one might not count as an insta-trap

Fourth stop was a spit of sand sticking out into the sea, with various things to pose on. It's only saving grace was an oyster farming operation that also occupied the spit. The oysters are grown on old scooter tires, which float beneath the surface anchored with small rocks, and once a year they are harvested. This involved hauling them all into a boat, hanging the tires a few at a time on a tree sticking out of the bay, over a spread out tarp, and beating the tire with a stick so they pop off.  Another woman sorts good from bad, and another beats the rest of the crud off so the tires can go back out.

Picture: "There's something poetic about a dead insta-trap" or "A metaphor for the social media mindset" or whatever.

Having gotten our instagram out of the way (oh, if only), we finally arrived in Hue, the imperial city of Vietnam. We were dropped off at the palace, where we were met by our guide, who was wearing full purple (royal purple was a wide-spread phenomenom) ceremonial dress. She gave us a wonderfully thorough and informational tour of the palace grounds - even though I only heard a portion of it, translated, I learned a boatload. (SYN? Find something clever/apt?) 

A brief history of the royal dynasty:

1) United Vietnam, mostly via the force of external mercenaries. Otherwise everyone agrees he's a bit of an asshole. He's the reason most people in VN (40% VERIFY) have the last name Nguyen. Everyone was afraid he'd genocide them if they had any of the old royal family blood, so they all changed their names which apparently worked. 

2) A scholar and a gentlemen, people like him. Known for creating the first ever map of VN, and having a LOT of concubines with the vigor to match. So much so that he had to create a roster with names and timeslots, and the wine which now bears his name is considered an aphrodesiac. So either all that, or he just had a really good PR team. 

Look up the rest

Near the end, it was all kings who sold out to the french, either hardcore or temporarily. One dude refused to take the full royal oath and omitted the parts he didn't agree with... he lasted 3 days. They gave him the option of hanging or poison. (FIND OUT WHAT HE CHOSE)  The second-to-last was 6 when he took the crown, installed as a french puppet, but grew to hate the french, which was inconvenient, so he was deposed.  The final said he'd rather be a citizen of a free country than the king of a slave state, and dissolved the dynasty altogether.

The palace buildings themselves were gorgeous, various gates, reception areas, bedrooms, temples, and of course, a few buildings for concubines. The kings-mother (note: not former-queen, as there was no telling which concubine would bear the favored son) even had her own wing of the palace with her own temple, since most the areas were exclusively for men. All of this within a walled fort, surrounded by a moat, within a walled city.  The throne room was especially ostentatious, with gold leaf on every accent.  At one temple the rest of us performed a ceremony where they casted lots, by shaking a container of sticks and pulling one, which had a a number corresponding to a fortune card (honestly, very very similar to the Bingo game). TLDR: Lou's cursed.

After the temple-tour, our guide took us out to lunch, and her accent totally changed. She went from a professional timeless docent to a regular girl in an instant, and we enjoyed dumpling-things, beef-on-salad, and sausage in ricepaper until we couldn't eat anymore.  Then the switch flipped again and we were touring a pagoda, learning the history of the kings who founded it (happy 80th birthday kingmom), the meaning of the 7 layers, 8 sides, and the history of the monastary. Apparently one of the famous immolating-monks was a member, and the car he drove to his final (fiery? pun?) protest is on display.

But wait! We're not done! We all piled back into the car, just slightly squeezed past spec, and headed out of the city. At this point my exhaustion was fighting it's way back, but I figured we were not going to the hotel.... We left the city center, left the city, and headed out across the rice-patties. Then we turned down an alley in a neighborhood (that in america would be considered slums) but is actually pretty middle-class for VN, and pile out of the car next to an inlet in the bay. 

Ok, easy. Another "check-in" instatrap. I can just smile and be out of here in 10m 

Then they tell me to get in the boat. So I get in the boat, take off my shoes, and crawl onto the bamboo mat under the awning.  And we take off across the bay. I guess this isn't just a check-in location.  At this point i'm finally informed that we are going to go check some traps and then eat whatever's been caught. 

We roll out (float out?), past a trailer-park of houseboats. These are one-room houses floating in a bay, and a way-of-life for many families in Hue (LETTERS). Then we continue to putter out between a bunch of fish-farms, closed in squares (1sqkm?) of water bordered by walls of dirt, concrete, or just stakes and nets pounded into the ground. This is an insta-trap though, but at least it's gorgeous and weird enough to deserve it.  Past the farms, we make open water and continue our sluggish pace across the bay to this family's fishing ground.  Each of the families has a region of the bay, probably smaller than the fish-farms we saw earlier, where they are the only ones allowed to fish. And they have huge net-walls set up, feeding v-traps to catch what they can.  

We emptied two of these traps, and caught several dozen 2-3" fish and a one or two 6" fish - this is normal, especially during winter. We're approaching sub-sistence fishing here, but still, technically, on the commercial or at least professional side of the line. Fish obtained and flapping their last flops in a cage in the bow, we headed back towards port.... and pulled in at one of the fish-farms.

We offloaded there, on wide fish-walls that have clearly been tweaked for their tourism side-hustle. They have a a shade-shelter, a few docks, a kitchen (bamboo, tarps, and a propane stove), a restroom (bamboo, tarps, and a hole in the ground), and two tables set up.  After delivering our fish to the kitchen, we chilled a bit before dinner. Mostly, this was wondering around the fish-wall/docks and a SUP trip.  My sup was not properly inflated, but it worked well enough aside from getting my pants wet.  Lou and the the tourguide (still in full cermonial dress) took the properly inflated SUP out together. While the ladies instagrammed, I paddled over to investigate an excavator, curious as to how it made it out to these farms and how the narrow fish-walls were supporting it... turns out, it's on a barge! Seems obvious in retrospect, but still a cool glimpse into the economics of it all.

SUPing done, it was time to sup! The other boat (we were one-of-two) had caught a bunch of shrimp, and they had clams from other semi-subsistence-fishing, so those were the first course. Next came large (5" fish) they had caught earlier, along with the prize from our expidition. Shrimp are always good, the fish was good until you got to the guts (they weren't cleaned), which made everything bitter. It tasted like snake bile, which I realize doesn't mean anything to most of you... but you should be thankful. I was still stuffed from lunch a few hours earlier, but eating everything to try it / be polite. Then they brought out the "porridge" (closest english translation" - clams and rice with bits of spinach? Sea weed? Quite good. Then they brought out the smaller fish we'd caught today, which they'd fried whole.  I ate one of the larger ones, eating around the spine/head, and then ate a 2"er en totus (THATS WRONG FIND PHRASE).

And now, after the sun had set, the bats had come out, and we'd all finished our beer, we called it a night.  The cruise back to the harbor was truly peaceful, and our captain let us stop by his house to use his restroom. (His daughter 4? 5? was baffled by the random white guy, his mother gave me bathroom-sandals to wear). Finally, it was time to head to the hotel.

I thought we were done. I hoped we were done. But once we checked into the hotel Lou said "ok take a rest and then we go to the boat" gdwtfyz. Traveling with a chaos pixie who has no need to sleep is a blessing and a curse, but heavy on the curse side.  I wrote the first half of today's entry, still backlogged two days, and it was time to go. We went on a "traditional Hue LETTERS musical cruise", an echo of the days when the King would take court-singers down the river on a barge. It was... Not very royal. I knew I was going to savage it, so let me check my notes:   

We started by cruising out to the bridge. Hue (LETTERS) loves this bridge. It's a basic girder bridge made no better by the RGB LEDs on it [EDITORS NOTE: WHY THEY LOVE THE BRIDGE. ASK TOUR GUIDE?] Before that, lets cover the boat. Our traditional river cruise was a converted ferry, very much a utilitarian beast of a vessel. The lighting was retrofitted fixtures that ran at full-blast the entire time, the chairs were plastic seats covered in sea-spray except where polished clean by asses. Now, on to the music: Zithers are cool. Multistring, single-string, zithers are just fun. Next, the singers: 

1) Classically trained opera singer. She's far too good for this.

2) Far too much filler and maybe botox, approaching the uncanny valley.

3) Actually cute, and sounds like she could do GITS <LINK> justice. But her instrument of choice is teacups.

4) She's too old to be wearing the disney version of the traditional gown, and she can't hit the notes shes thinks she can. But she clearly loves it.

5) Everytime I look at her I think she's crying. Almost works during the songs, but it's even worse when she's not singing.

We idled in the middle of the river, perfumed with the incense of diesel exhaust, while the singers technically fulfilled their contract, in 4/5 cases struggling to compete with the noise of the now idling engine.  For a donation, you could buy a plastic rose to gift your favorite singer, which they then had to awkwardly hold through the rest of the song. In addition, if you can't keep your singers from checking instagram while their compatriots are singing, why would you expect the audience to be any better? It's Lou's dog's birthday, and you can bet Rocky's instagram got all the best hashtags. <LINK TO HIS INSTA? AKS LOU>

I think what sums it up best is after a handful of songs two of the girls stepped out, and the Zither-er handed them a lighter as they left. I assumed they went out for a smoke-break. It just seemed in keeping with the rest of the shitshow. But no, they went out to light paper lanterns! So we could go make wishes or something.... and when we went out to join them (or in my case, see what was going on), there was an old lady selling baskets of fish who had pulled her boat up to the front of the ferry. For $5USD, you could buy a basket of fish to release to make sure your wish came true. 

All in all, it was wild. Good music, half the singing was good even if it was hard to hear, but the overriding feeling was a compounding state of WTF that was only magnified by my sleep deprivation. Now, to be entirely fair, some of the other boats looked like they had their shit together. But I still expect random fish-mongers and a cruise that remains within 800' of the dock at all times.

Now, finally, we're done, right? Of course not!  Lou decided we're going out for drinks with our driver and the tour guide. I tried to decline, citing my delerium, but honestly.... she bullied me into it and I folded far too easily. I'm a sucker for weird shit I've never done before. We'll just throw even more caffiene at the problem tomorrow and hopefully this unsustainable system can support itself for 6 more days before total collapse.

It was great though. Lou asked me to pick a style of bar, and I said local... our Tour guide, who's from Hue (LETTERS), knew a close spot that was absolutely vietnamese.  We got a table on the street, ordered a bucket of HUDA and some bar snacks (they keep eating here. Like 4 full meals a day, when I can barely manage 2), and we just chatted.

Interesting tidbits: 

    Tour guide used to be a preschool/kindergarten teacher until covid hit, then she started cooking. She would take pictures of food to sell, and her husband (formerly in the tourism industry) would deliver. From there she moved into taking photos for tourists, and then learned all the history to get her guide-pass so she didn't have to buy entrance tickets.

Driver goes to cafe's while we're at attractions. "I can drink 5 coffees, but can't finish a single beer" he said with the asian flush.

Neither of them make up bullshit answers when asked questions by tourists - there's no need, all the tourists ask the same questions.

Kids kept coming by trying to sell us peanuts.... Turns out their parents are gamblers or gangsters and they got forced into this, they typically get collected ~10pm. 

Homelessness isn't as big in VN, but still exists. They mostly live under the bridge. Way less common than baltimore though.

The bar food (Hue style) was salty and very spicy.  But overall it was just another glimpse into real life for actual vietnamese. 12/10 totally recommed. And the entire bar tab was $13 or something ridiculous. 

That's it. I'm now sitting in the bathroom so grandpa can sleep, desperate to get at least one of these three done. Apparently tomorrow is another early morning dammit. <GO BACK AND ADD GRANDPA/GRANDMA EXPLAINER TO ALL OF VN).

SOMETHING ABOUT HOW SOME DAYS ARE JUST SURVIVING, AND THATS OK

VN8 - Domesticated Wildlife and Feral Humanity

 VN8 - Monks and Monkeys

Today is supposed to be an easy day, to recover from the last two, and we slept in at least an extra hour, before the requisite 12-course breakfast. Then we headed out the coast to the giant buddha! It's accordingly huge. I'd forgotten my cell back in the hotel, so I was shooting with the DSLR which is always fun. Lou was back on her "running ahead like a small child" bullshit, so I stuck to my now-traditional walking slowly with grandma and grandpa sheepdog routine. After viewing the temple, we sat down to wait as Lou got back from wherever she got off to... and noticed the monkeys. They have monkeys! Hell yeah. So I spent like an hour chilling shooting photos of the monkeys, which involved a lot of swapping lenses depending on what I wanted to frame with them. Monkeys fighting, monkeys playing, monkeys stealing waterbottles from tourists, monkeys holding trash...   One of the babies even came up to sniff my boots after I'd perched on the edge of the steppe for a few minutes without making any scary movements.  

Lou finally reappeared, lead us on a long wander around the rest of the site, and we headed back toward the city... but stopped at a cafe. Because it's an insta-trap, I think.  Lou wanted to fly her drone despite an off-shore breeze strong enough to push my empty coke-can off the table, and I declined to be involved. I just watched, waiting for the inevitable... but apparently it wasn't inevitable, as she got it up and back during a relatively calm spell. 

Instagramming over, we got back in the car, this time to a spot I'd requested, a pull-off on the side of the road, looking out over the bay and all the docked fishing-boats, with the city in the distance. It was a very quick stop and I got this pic:

From there, we went to a local market! This is what China used to have (and probably still does, just not in the cities I visit). Hundreds of stalls, selling everything from underwear to fruits, dried fish to fake rolexes (MAYBE FIND ALLITERATION). We stopped in the restaurant district for lunch - Similar rice-paper wrapups as last night, but with middle school-cafeteria levels of background noise as shouting carried on almost continuously in the background. Good food, very cheap, and very local.

Then, back to the hotel, for the recuperation part of the rest day. Grandpa took his pants off and fell asleep on his bed, I started reading my book, grandma came over to our room and fell asleep on grandpa, and then I woke up two hours later. I'm not a man who naps, but the past few days have taken it out of me, and I was thankful for the rest.

Lou really wanted to go to the beach, so we did! However, we walked the entire mile there, and by the time we arrived the sun had set.  There were dance-aerobics on the boardwalk (really, an extra wide sidewalk, but same difference), and Lou and I walked the sand for a bit before deciding we were done with the beach. We caught a cab back towards the hotel for dinner....   I forget what dinner was, because grandpa and I were watching the soccer game on the TV across the room. VN vs Thailand for the asian title. 1-0 when we arrived, and by the time we'd finished dinner it was halftime.  Grandpa and I were on a mission to see the end of the match, but Lou was on a mission to see the dragon and lead us several blocks in the wrong direction. We got to the riverfront at 9 exactly, dragon time, just in time to see the dragon blow two puffs of smoke and quit. Apparently something important was on fire last night...

1-2, Thailand scored. Grandpa and I were both full steam ahead (SYNONYM?) on heading to the sports-bar a block from the hotel, Lou was appeased, and grandma is such a slow walker. Instead of heading straight to the bar, we had to try another bar. Despite having chair set up up and down the block, they had no seats, so that was a no-go. So we continued slowly walking, and 80% of the way there, they gave up. The bar was standing-room-only (do we care?), so we walked across a small park to a local coffee shop who had chairs and a projector set up outside, and some of the chairs in the back were empty.  And then, despite everything I just said, we stood in the street so we could see better. I didn't care though, I could finally watch the end of this match.

headbands, stickers, red shirts, etc

VN is big on football, as we saw a week ago in HCMC. Even though this was a coffee bar (smoothie bar? I don't know and didn't care), there were hundreds of people (mostly highschool kids?) watching, and this was the case at atleast one establishment on every block, in every city. With 15m left, a Thai player catches a (deserved) red, leaving VN with a single player advantage. The crowd goes wild. The already high levels of energy are all kicked up a notch. With 10m to go, we heard screaming and horning across the street (their stream must be ahead of ours). Our crowd responded likewise in anticpative energy - unsure of what was about to happen but sure it was exciting. A sudden breakaway, a shot that looked like the goalie would save it, and a very unfortunate tip by the Thai defender. 

The crowd erupts. Screaming, jumping, horns, hugs, high-fives, and a chant that sounds very much like "Get Dem Ball In"  (I later learned it was "Viet Nam boi em" - Vietnam Number One).  The most hyped I've ever seen a crowd, and that was just for a tieing shot. As the final minutes tick away, every strong play is met with racuous cheers.  Shot on goal? Cheers. Good clear of the ball? Cheers. Foul? Cheers. Shot saved by our goalie? Thundrous screaming. End of regulation? It looked like 300 people had all simultaneously won the lottery. I've only ever watched a couple hours of asian football, and I couldn't help but to be caught in the tide of elation and totally surrendered to it, caring more about this game than I had any in my entire life.

At this point, there were scooters lined up in the street as passers-by pulled over to watch the final minutes. Overtime continues much the same, a pretty even match and a crowd hyped to 11, and only getting more racuous SYN the longer the match goes. And then, at 14m into a 15m overtime, we scored. Choas erupted. Screaming, running into and down the street, hugging everyone, and of course GET DEM BALL IN on repeat at the top of our collective lungs, punctuated by blasts on dozens of horns both human-powered and scootered.  And instantly, the crowd started to dissapate. Only a third of us remained to see the final minute of the match, in the hearts of the masses, it was over, and it was time to party.

Which meant scooters. Everyone loaded up on scooters and took off towards the dragon-bridge, honking the entire time, and a good percentage carrying flags. I thought this initial surge was impressive, but that was only a trickle. As the waves of riders from the outer blocks converged, the streets became clogged, packed solid with scooters. All screaming, chanting, celebrating, and honking. We stood in the median cheering the scooters, the scooters cheered us, it was a great time. And it continued to intensify. 

Across the street at the bar a ninja climed into a tree over traffic, waving flags. Celebratory items appeared in the crown, people banging bowls together, waving entire palm fronds.  I saw a potted plant go by, and a dude wearing the box from a crate of beer covering him from his waist well past his head. There were costumes in the crowd, and cars with children out the sunroofs. And honking. Constant honking. Near-painful levels of honking, but who cares, we won. I was chanting and taking selfies with other people on the median, and then I figured out a trick. If you point a fancy camera at scooters going wild, they go wilder. So I began wading into the sea of scooters to snap "special idiots" as I thought of them, people going even harder, or even weirder, than everyone else. Some dude snapped his spoon in half banging it on a kettle right in front of me. It was great.  Another dude ran up to me for chanting and hugs, then offered me a ride on the back of his scoot. I said no by reflex, and still regret it. Drone were flying overhead, cell cameras everwhere. And constant honking. Fireworks on the street, while a frog danced around it. Police showed up to cut off traffic to the bridge, it was overwhelmed. Scooters continued to sneak through, but the majority were diverted, so we headed down to the dragon bridge where the scene was repeated.   Here there was a contingent that would wait at the light, and when it turned red, they'd rush into the crosswalk. Hundreds of people, waving signs (breakfast half price!), flags, jumping and chanting.  Then the countdown would reach the single digits, they'd rush back to the medians, and the scooters would roar across the intersection, honking.

It was the best party I've ever been to, and we stayed out until 12:30am or so - 2 hours after the match, and it was still raging. From our hotel, we could see the bridge still flooded with scooters. I fell asleep at 1, to a thankfully-muted but everpresent sound of honking. 

VN7 - Surviving the Happiest place in Vietnam

Another early morning, waking up (with sore calves) to broken english demanding attendance at the compulsory complimental breakfast. Those sound like antithetical (WRONG WORD) concepts, but I assure you with Grandma free food is a required activity. 5 courses later (or, you know, some bread, bacon, and fruit), we headed out into the cloudy morning for a long car ride... somewhere. 

We arrived to an enormous parkinglot, almost entirely empty, and jumped on a shuttle to an massive ticket-hall. Really more of a ticketing-complex, surprisingly ornate, which lead us eventually to a cable-car.  Cable cars are always cool, and I started to enjoy the day, sweeping over the jungle mountains while bland corporate music played. It was a surprisingly long ride, maybe 10m? and about half way through we rose into the clouds, ears popping from the elevation change.  There's something magical about riding a cable car through the clouds, unable to see the ground below you, the towers above or behind, only seeing the empty carriage headed in the other direction every 15 seconds. You don't know how high you are, where you're going, when you'll get there... You could be headed anywhere.

Or you could be headed to a mountaintop souveneir hall with a 360* panorama of... clouds. Visibility was still limited to 20' or so. Doesn't matter, Lou had a plan, and lead us out a set of sliding glass doors to Golden Hands bridge!  This is the famous bridge from all the travel guide photos, and apparently we had woken up early to get here before all the crowds, you know, because instagram. So I did my insta-boyfriend best and took a half dozen photos, even though it was hard to see much, given, you know, the fog so thick it was actively condensing on everything including us. We headed back to panorama hub to figure out our next move, where I was informed that all my pictures sucked, and I'm a bad photographer. 

After a quick bathroom break, we headed out the huge sidewalk across the top of the mountain... to the other side of goldenhands bridge! Apparently (I USE THIS TOO MUCH FIND ALT CONSTRUCTION) the bridge just a giant prop, looping 100 feet back to the same ridge it starts on, and the side we were first on was closed for a professional photoshoot. Speaking of photoshoot, Lou handed me her phone for another round of pictures. I simply said "Nope" and walked away, too cold, exhausted, sore, and wet to care to sign up for another round of insults for a cause I never believed in to begin with. So I waited at the end of the bridge, hiding in the meager wind-shadow of a small booth, every surface too wet with condensate to sit on, and tried to conserve body warmth.  20 minutes later Lou+family emerged from the fog. Apparently she'd hired the on-site photographer to take photos that looked almost identical to the foggy pics from the first round.

The point of our visit now accomplished, we were free to enjoy the rest of the park, though enjoy is a strong word to use given my soreness, sleep deprivation, and exhaustion. I was fully in survival mode. I threw caffiene at the problem and it just made me slightly more aware of how little I was enjoying the most magical place on --earth-- VN. 

We set off towards our first target, the vietnamese gardens and giant buddha statue. This was, unfortunately, all downhill. As any hiker knows, you don't trade away elevation you don't need to, since you're just going to have to recover it all anyways. Especially given that we'd been visiting Vietnamese gardens, shrines, and buddhas all of yesterday. I tried to explain this to Lou, but she just ran ahead like the 13 year old boy she is inside. So instead, I just followed along slowly with her parents, always hoping we'd gone down far enough and didn't have to make it to the end, and always being disappointed as Lou disappeared around the next bend. Finally at the bottom, I noticed the cleverness of this theme-park design! They have a gondola to take you back to the top! Or at least, they will, once it's completed in 2028 or some bullshit. So of course we turned around and retraced our steps back up the mountain. But the elderly weren't complaining, so I just mutely trailed along behind.

Once we got back to the top, we took another gondola - a short ride this time - to the next section of the park. This was where I finally realized we were essentially at Disney Vietnam. There was a french town, complete with castles and a miniature cathedral (the bible was a cast block of foam), and I could see japanese pagodas rising over those in the distance. We wandered through a lot of this, and then made our way to the steampunk area, which continained a beer-hall that was 4 floors tall. Here we got our complimentary 200ml beer in a highly-efficient assembly-line process, I supplemented that with more caffiene, and finally felt ok about the world. The best part of the beer hall was the views - the fog (clouds) was finally lifting, and we could see out into the valley, which was gargantuan construction site. The scale of the engineering project here is incredible - they're essentially building an entire city of themed skyscrapers on top of a 1500m mountain, with all the infrastructure to support it. 

From here we wandered through the japanese gardens, which included a nice break while Lou took 20m of selfies or something, and then headed back down (of course there's stairs, always stairs), through some arcades / carnival game things, and then off to lunch. How do you feed thousands of people with 4 different levels of buffet offerings in a single restaurant? You stack 4 enormous cafeterias on top of each other. Again, the infrastructure and coordination behind the scenes is as impressive as any of the props, which are all world-class in their own right.

After lunch was the indoor portion, and we walked down a bunch of stairs and ramps to get to the castle where we saw a 4d film (surprisingly good plot, but the air-tickler was designed to blow on the top of asian heads and instead blasted directly in my ear every time), and rode a motion-simulator panoramic thing, which was totally fine and beats walking.

Speaking of better than walking, there was a funicular/trolley thing to take us back up this hill! We'd essentially completed the entire park, except for the alpinecoaster and the squiggly road. After dragging us to the aplinecoaster lou then started asking "do you want to do it? should we do it? I don't know if it's too expensive ($3). Do you want to do it?" Despite my answers of don't care, if you want to, $3 aint shit, really don't care the questions persisted, and I eventually agreed to do it with her because she clearly wanted to.  It was... ok. Roller carts on a downhill track. I think it could have been fun if they let you take the entire thing balls-out, but they had these clever inductive brakes to slow you down. Mounted beneath the cart were two powerful magnets, and the track had - where they wanted you slower - thick aluminum sheet that would stick up into the gaps between these magnets, harnessing eddy currents to slow you down. I mean, they turned it into a kiddy ride, but it was technically neat.

The entire park complete except for the "lava road", Lou dragged us back across the park again. Running ahead, as always, while we politely and exhaustedly followed. However, we did not follow her down the lava road, a zig-zagging pathway that lead down the mountain to a fenced off gate, and let her do that one on her own, communicating with gestures that there were perfectly good benches up here and she'd be forced to come back this way eventualy. 

Now, we were done. You know, except for another round of instagram on golden-hands bridge. Lou was evidentally still too stung by my refusal this morning, so instead she begged passers-by to take her photo, while I took photos for other passers-by, in a crude fascimilie of an economy. But these strangers actually thanked me, and none insulted my skills as a human tripod, so I guess it worked out. 

The cable-car down the mountain was less cloudy (though we still vanished for a while), offering better views of the virgin rainforest below. I still can't believe we thought we should fight a war here. 

The last of the caffiene wore off as our driver picked us off, and I was already making plans for how I would politely excuse myself once we got back to the hotel, and head out to find a beer and a pizza, or something easy like that, alone for once. However, there was then a phone call (which are always loud, you have to yell into the phone since they're so far away. Vietnamese can be a beautiful language, or it can be barked out as a stacatto assualt). The phone was passed around the cab, and apparently we were looking for a scooter on the side of the road, since we then followed that scooter down an alleyway and then exited the car to head down a smaller side road, ending up at a house. 

This home was a "middle class" home. Still a giant cement box, but this one had doors and windows, and was broken into rooms inside. On the interior balcony, a small shrine to buddha sat, ceiling stained directly above from decades of incense. 

One of grandma's friends lived here. They hadn't seen each other in 40 years, it was admittedly heart-warming to see them reconnect. As a guest, I was on my best behaviour, smiling, sipping tea, and pantomiming following conversations I couldn't understand - reading inflection and facial expressions to gauge reactions. It's definitely not as relaxing as a normal conversation, but once you get the knack of it it's pretty easy. I'm sure the beer helped.  Dinner was egg-pancake things, which you would roll into a rice-paper wrapper along with some cucumber or lettuce, and then dip in fish sauce. Quite delicious.

We finally got back to the hotel at 8:40pm. Just in time to pee and speedwalk to the dragon for the 9pm show. Tired as I was, I wasn't going to say no to a giant flamethrower that is the pride of an entire city, and the food/break had rejuvenated me enough. The bridge was packed. Hundreds of people on each side, and some brave souls in the median directly infront and ahead of the beast. 8:58 rolled around, and everyone whipped out cell-phone cameras. It was definitely a cooler experience on the bridge than from the boats. You could feel the heat of the flames, and the crowd atomsphere was a fun touch. 

After the second set of blasts... the pilot light didn't extinguish. In fact, we could hear crackling from the flame, and the occasional drip of fire fell from the dragons mouth. The third and final set of fireblasts was just a single blast, instead of the typical quartet. The crowd was worried, but mostly wanted to see what would happen next. The smoke blasts - a super high-pressure high-flow water mister - came next, drenching those foolhardy souls brave enough to watch from the median. The pilot flame still wasn't out though, and the dragon began to smoke with actual smoke, coiling and rising out of the mouth.  Traffic on the bridge resumed, a man emerged from a control-box in the neck of the dragon to look up at the mouth, shouting into his radio. A minute later another water-jet issued forth, drenching the dozens of scooters unfortunate enough to be crossing the bridge at just the wrong moment. And still it smoked.

It appeared the show was over, so we made our way down to the night-market, and out the bridge-of-love or some bullshit like that. Basically, a pier with heart-shaped lanterns on it, where couples can engrave their name in a lock, latch it to a railing, and toss the key into the river, sealing their togetherness forever. I don't know why Lou takes me to these romantic places, but I did appreciate the view from the pier. Firetrucks had shown up on the bridge, blasting the dragon in the face with foam. 

From there, a quick pass through the nightmarket where I had to refuse dozens of offers for lobsters. Great price, but I've already eaten too much. I did pick up a cool lighter though, and Lou talked to a local woodcarver about making a nameplate. He's going to deliver it to the hotel later, and won't let her pay for it until shes sees it incase she doesn't like it. VN is a high-trust society, and it's SOMENICEWORD laudable? interesting? to see that as the default between strangers.

On our way back, we stopped for cocktails at some fancy bar. Lou had to photograph them for instagram, of course, but had to do them one-at-a-time so it didn't look like a date. Whatever. I thought we might finally talk since it was just the two of us and the converstaion wasn't dominated by vietnamese (her mother basically never stops talking), but mostly it was time to check facebook and instagram. But I wasn't walking, and I had a fancy gin+tonic aspertif something to keep me company, so still a successful stop.

At long last back to the hotel, and I'm too exhausted to blog before going to bed. (I'm finally getting to this 5? days later).  But we saw cool shit, walked another 11 miles, and I survived the day. Some days (definitely some portions of the day) that's the only goal.

VN6 - Marble Mountain and Da Nang

 VN6 - Marble Mountain and Da Nang

The rain which had been threatening the whole tripe finally arrived, and as we headed out this morning towards the car and the drizzle, Lou asked for my room key. I hadn't realized "We're leaving at 9" meant leaving the hotel.... forever. After learning that fact, I then learned I could repack my bags in under 60 seconds! Exciting start to the day, but the day only got more exciting as it went on.

The main event for the day was Marble Mountain... I had ascertained that it was not a mountain full of marbles, but nothing beyond that. However, as we drove into some city (CITY NAME), I saw some stunning upthrusts of rocks dominating the city skyline, turns out the biggest conglomeration is --Magic-- Marble Mountain! If there was any doubt, the dozens of shops selling stone ranging in size from jewlery to 9 foot virgin marys confirmed it. (AWK, rework or drop) The first tickets we bought were for the cave within MM, which we then learned were not tickets for the mountain itself, for that we needed a different ticket. Definitely confusing, but at $1 a pop hard to be upset over.  Mom and Stepdad took the elevator to the top, and Lou and I set off on the hiking trail. Which was stairs. And they were sizable, both in quantity and individually, each step far taller than a step should be.  We quickly arrived at the what I thought was the top, and it turned out to be a landing, with a shrine, pagodas and sculptures in the marble of MM itself. Then there was another (long) flight, and a trail slanting upward, which lead eventually to more steps!

Luckily, the drizzle hadn't intensified any, and except for making everything slick, the rain was actually pretty nice - it meant I didn't have to sweat, since nature was taking care of that for me. If only it had drizzled some extra O2 (DO SUBSCRIPT) as well...   Actually, I take that back, that would take temperatures down to -XXX degrees, but you get the idea. However, it finally leveled off and we passed through an arch into a fissure in the top of the mountain, a natural courtyard through the center. And in that courtyard there were... more stairs! However, it was a short set (the equivalent of 2 stories or so), and it went into a cave. Of course we had to do it.  The first cavern was a room-sized opening with a buddha inside, and as we waited for the squeeze to the next room to clear, I noticed some bats hanging out in the highest point. The squeeze (which we had to climb up, of course) lead to a larger room which stretched 60' overhead to break through the top of the mountain, forming a natural skylight that was quite beautiful and only let in the smallest hint of drizzle.  Looking around the room, I saw light trickling in the back as well. 

Are we supposed to go this way? Not sure, but I'm still gonna send it. Some slightly technical climbing over slick marble later, I emerged onto the topside and found a path! I shouted down that it was a real thing, and soon Lou (and another family) all emerged to join me. This path was short, almost flat, and lead to the peak of the mountain. We were flanked by the other mountains in the MM family, had the city spread out beneath us, and the ocean pounding beyond that.  We hung out on top, standing on sketchy wet rocks, taking pictures, and just enjoying the summit, but eventually it was time to head back down.

We stopped by another overlook (note to the family ahead of us: If you are sketched out climbing wet rocks next to a 100' dropoff, maybe don't try to take your 4 year old up with you), swung by another cave (really more of a giant alcove, of course with an equally large buddha), and made our way past the far entrance to the courtyard to the central branching-point of the MM range. From here, we followed the signs to the next mountain! The main path lead to another alcove, which had a cave, off to the side. Once we rounded the corner in the cave I was stunned. The main cavern was the size of a cathedral. There was even a shrine built inside of it, which only took up a single corner of the cavern. Truly impressive and awe-inspiring. And of course some stairs, but who cares when it's in the biggest cave I've ever seen in my life.  If you ever find yourself in Da Nang, definitely do MM, and do it in this order.

We only saw 2 trails headed up, one which said "Highest peak" (didn't we do that?), and one which was unlabeled, heading up the second mountain. So we took that trail! It headed out past the restrooms and got narrower and less travelled, until we were ducking under very wet bushes and relatively sure this wasn't part of the tour. Turns out, we were right. We ended up at a rubbish dump with an amazing view, and then circling back to the base of the "Highest Peak" trail.  Oh well, nothing to it but to do it. 

It sucked. Hundreds of thin, steep, and slippery steps. Lou left me behind, and I didn't fight it. Stairs like this remind me I need to run more, but even on my most motivated days I'm not doing stairs for fun, so I may just need to accept that things like this will always be painful. But worth it? Probably worth it. We arrived on the top of the mountain adjacent to our previous summit, which unlocked the view that had previously been blocked. Plus, I have a deep-seated compulsion to get to the tops of things. If there's a mountain, I want to summit. If there's a 'bando, I want to roof it. A week ago when santa was driving around the neighborhood on a firetruck, I was up on the peak of my house so I could spot him. And then, of course, we had to go down all those steps.  If there's another sign that says "Higherest peak", I'll let lou run that trail solo.

Having taken all the "up" trails, that only left the down trail. We wound our way down the mountain, taking the long route wherever possible. This lead us past a number of shrines, look-out points, and pagodas, and of course we hiked up to them (almost always up) every time. Eventually we ended up in a graveyard which spit us out on the back entrance to MM. After checking sattelite view, we walked down someone's alley, cut through a trail behind someone's pig sty, and made it to the main road and the second entrance to MM. 

Lou was convinced (SYNONYM) we should head back up to find her parents, but I eventually convinced her we shouldn't climb the entire mountain again, and it'd be easier if they came down the elevator to us instead. I even offered to buy a second set of tickets to the park so we could take the elevator. I was done climbing mountains. We walked 5 minutes down the road and back to the elevator, and when we arrived the drizzle switched to a downpour. We were just in time to hide under the awnings and wait for her parents to descend. I checked my phone and was flabbergasted to find that we'd only done 3 miles - it felt like at least twice that.

Reunited at the base, we then went over to cave we'd bought tickets for. There were several flights of stairs to get in, but if this cave is so good you can sell standalone tickets just for it, it's gotta be worth it, right? We all headed in, and crossed a bridge into the mountain over a pond filled with koi fish and statues of grasping arms reaching upwards.  Another 100 feet in, and this cave is even bigger than the last! It felt slightly less grand, but I think that's because it was narrower but longer. It also had skylights with rivulets descending some of them, and it too had an enormous buddha gracing the end. What this cave had that the other didn't, however, was side passages. The first went down. Oh well, what are we gonna do, not see what's down there? Lou's parents (smartly) decided to wait up top, and we went down so many more stairs, passing sculpture of torture the whole way. Lou explained they were representations of the afterlife for specific sins. Theives, pimps, children who dishonor their parents... At the bottom, another buddha! You're supposed to reflect on your misdeeds and feel pennance at the bottom, but I was mostly reflecting on the fact I had to reclimb all those steps.

The second side-passage went up! What's another flight or two among friends? But like every other staircase in this mountain, it lead to a bigger staircase! A super sketchy wet staircase, at times more rock-scrambly than stairs, it eventually dumped us out, calves burning, on a small balcony half way up MM. The view would be great if we hadn't just done MM itself, the comparison and the knowledge of what was next made it kinda meh. Next was all those stairs in reverse, squeezing past the people headed up.

But we did it! And with Magic mountain completed and thoroughly damp clothes, we went to lunch. Some noodles with beef and peanuts, good but nothing abnormal at this point. Local specialty for the town we're in, of course. 

Our new hotel in Da Nang looked surprisingly fancy. We checked in, and as always in these case I hoped for the largest room-number possible.... and got it. We had rooms on the 17th floor, overlooking the river and the dragon bridge. I walked in, threw open the curtains, and it's excellent. Second only IMO to Huizho. My legs were done, everyone was tired, so it was naptime / reading time.

After an hour or so, I went out wandering with Lou to "see what was in the area". Apparently what was in the area was searching for a selfie stick... it sounds like a joke, but this is serious business. Regardless, it was nice to get out and see a new town. Selfie-stick acquired, we headed back to the hotel and off to dinner.

Dinner was equally typical, and it was on our way to the boat! Tonight we're taking the boat to see the dragon... yes, the dragon we can see from our hotel-room, but this is the thing to do in Da Nang proper and we're gonna do it. A nice short 2km walk later, and we arrived at the docks. I had assumed a sedate pleasure-cruise, but instead there were two-story sightseeing boats festooned with lights and blasting music. Right before we left, the music kicked up several decibals and a bellydancer danced her way around the boat. I'm still not sure why, but the crew of dancers made their way down the whole lineup. 

WE GOT AN EMPTY BOAT SAY THIS IN CONTEXT. Finally underway, everyone was just sitting in their seats. I had to show these people how to boat. So I wandered around the boat, prompting others to do the same, and then descended the stairs and headed out to the bow, where I was soon joined by others. And as we pulled up to the dragon bridge, joined by half the tourists on the ship. All of the boats from the docks began lining up, all pointed towards the dragon, and all the soundsystems ramped up. 

The dragon bridge has a special talent. Every evening on the weekends, at exactly 9pm, it breathes fire. 9pm struck, and a huge jet of fire erupted from the dragon's mouth. We're talking 40' of diesel flamethrower, or something.  Not quite as large as I'd expected given the size of the dragon, but flamethrowers are a passion of mine LINK VIDEO, so I'm not complaining. After several minutes of spurting flames, the dragon switched to smoke (or water?), and the boats started booking it back up the river, in what essentially became a race. The ship beside us cut our stern and passed with about a meter clearance, both of us under full steam. It was impressive. 

Out of curiousity, I started counting the boats. I got to ten, then walked to the stern where I counted another 10 behind us. The ships all docked, stacked two deep, and we disembarked while belly-dancer waved us goodbye and pointed us to the exit gate.

Another 2k back to the hotel, interrupted this time by a stop for icecream! Cacao was the best, durian the worst, by far. By so far.

I intended to write this at the rooftop bar, but they were shutting down. Lou invited me to go walk to the nightmarket, and I shut her down. (MAKE thIS FLOW BETTER). 20k steps / 9 miles is enough for a day, especially when it feels like half of them were stairs. So instead I'm typing in my bed, next to an old vietnamese dude watching tiktoks in his bed... at full volume.  

VN5- My Son

 VN5 - My Son (GET FANCY LETTERS SO IT DOESN"T LOOK LIKE I HAVE A CHILD)

Do you know how great it is to sleep for 8 hours? In a room your only sharing with a single person, and that person is a chill old-dude who doesn't jump on your bed or stay up all night texting? We can't speak to each other, but me and step-dad get each other on a level far deeper than words. 

After a continental breakfast, we went over to the shopping district "because there's no cars allowed early morning so it won't be crowded".  And when we got there... there was a professional photographer waiting for us! Surprise! Well, I was surprised. Stepdad may have been, he was wearing the shirt from yesterday, but he may also not give a fuck. Which I respect. Mom had her wig though, so I don't think she was surprised...

I was initially amazed that I was replaced less than 12 hours after I quit, then slightly resentful, but as it wore on... it was actually awesome. We got all the instagram done in an hour, I didn't have to do any of it, AND this is his specialty - he has connections with local business owners that have the colorful instagram friendly displays, he knows all the spots (this wall, that alley, the elementary school doesn't open until noon and has a huge mural behind the basketball court...) I think he even got a good shot of me, sitting on the railing of a coffeeshop's roof-bar, but I haven't seen the images yet.  And of course, he'd pass other photographers, en route to all the same spots. I think they have a cartel. Regardless, 5/10. Any insta-boyfriend who is sick of it should absolutely call in a pro and take the demotion to porter.  

Now that the priorities are taken care of, time for the main event of the day - My Son.  Our driver took us out across the rice paddies and farmland (I saw cattle-egrets... with Cattle! REMOVE THIS MAYBE), out to the ancient city of My Son.  When I was told we were going to an old city I was picturing 1940s, maybe 1800s... and I was off by a Millenia. My Son is essentially Angkor Waat (SPEELING) writ smaller. The same indian-buddhist-shivaist methswa (FIGURE OUT THIS WORD) peoples who built the temples across India, Thailand, and Cambodia built those same temples here. 

What was most interesting to me is everything I've ever seen anywhere near this old has all been stone (except for that one mud-temple in peru?), and the XXXXXXXX peoples were brick-builders. So these temples are made of bricks laid between the 8th and the 12th century (CHECK DATES). They're also pretty run-down, damaged by rain, time, and the vietnamese war, but it's remarkable they're standing at all.  Many of them have been rebuilt, and we spent an few hours walking between them, into them (They're not that large... Lou asked "How can they live in a house so small?" I asked "isn't this the same size as your apartment in HoChiMinh City?").  At one point, we veered slightly off-piste to an unexcavated structure. It was outside the temple wall, so maybe it's not important enough to restore, maybe it's too damaged, or maybe they just aren't there yet. No matter why, it was still cool to go climb this 1000 year-old heap of rubble barely distinguishable from a hill, and see what they started from before the restorations. <SOMEWHERE SYNONYM RESTORE>

It was a lot of walking, but anything old automatically gets points, and when the clouds lifted you could occasionally get good views of some beautiful mountains - which is what My Son translates too. Not only did it not rain, despite the constant threat, I didn't told to take a single picture. 7.5/10

Lunch was "Tuna with rice", I didn't know what to expect, but a plate of rice and a bowl of soup with a slice (widthwise, not lengthwise) of fish definitely wasn't it. No complaints though. Maybe delete this I don't even care why would anyone else. 

Then, back to the hotel for naptime for the older generation, and catching up on blogs for me. Lou is off trying to do a drone thing maybe? Lou is back! She needed wifi to log in to her drone, so she had to come back to the hotel to configure it, conveniently giving me time to finish this!

<Break>

As the sun was setting, we headed back out to see all the boats, much earlier than last night.  Not only did the bars have their music at reasonable levels at this hour, the boats were out in force and looking fabulous. (SYN FLOTILLA? FLEET? Already used those too much). An Hoi is truly beautiful at night, even if you have to weave through the crowds for the views. We got down to the park where the boats started, and Lou launched her drone and immediately handed me the controls. My previous refusal to be her photographer was immediately FANCY WORD FOR DISSOLVED and I took to the skies. I decided about a month ago that drones were going to be my next hobby, so I've been practicing flying virtual drones... but hadn't yet done any real flying beyond a few laps in the hackerspace, but it stick time is stick time, even if it's virtual. For my first-ever big-boy flight, I immediately headed out over the river, and piloted the drone about 100 yards down river over hundreds of people, and started getting low battery warnings. I was so comfortable I even canceled out the auto-return-home and flew it home manually so I could control the camera angle.  Then we swapped out the battery and went out for a second flight, and took the drone way down the river, out of our sight, but we had great signal and great views.  Lou requested a few shots, and I did some nice complex-movement shots coming back in.  Hopefully the footage looks great, because I'm gonna drop it here:

Droning completed successfully, we all walked down the river, retracing our flight of a few minutes in about a half-hour through the crowds. We wandered the night markets and eventually stopped for dinner (despite a very late lunch), and on our way back we played a traditional vietnamese game... You pay a dollar for a card with 3 numbers on it, and then they sing a song, drawing numbered stick periodically. If you have a match, you get a flag, if you get three flags, you win!  So basically... vietnamese bingo.  After a detour to a PICTURESQUE? CONTRASTY? BEAUTIFUL? fountain Lou found on her failed attempt to drone, we made our way back to the hotel.   It's an early night, but I think we'll all appreciate it. 

Tomorrow, some mountain!