Mui Ne – by Amelie

In Mui Ne, we stayed at our first resort of the trip. We did not realize how much we needed it until we sat down at the beach and read our books and swam in the ocean. When we arrived, we swam in the pool and went to the beach at our resort. At the beach there were so many wind surfers, it was fun to watch them catch a wave and go flying! The next day, we took a two hour drive to see my moms old friend named Rita, her boyfriend named Drew and her aunt. We went to a market and to their family farm to get food for lunch. After that, we went to the aunts house and had a delicious lunch with chicken, vegetables and fruit. It was really interesting to meet Rita’s family, and learn about there experience in the Vietnam war. They were boat people and escaped Vietnam and came to Canada. The next day we had a very relaxing day we went to the beach for the day, and did nothing but swim and read. For dinner we went to a very fancy hawker stall with Rita and Drew. The day after that, we did not do much but we went to the beach with Rita and Drew. In the afternoon, we went to the sand dunes they reminded me a lot of the ones in Chile, but these ones were white! We had a lot of fun sliding down the steep hills and taking funny pictures. The next day we had to leave so we had our last delicious breakfast (a buffet). After that we hoped in a bus with Rita and went on a four hour drive…. next stop Ho Chi Min!

Ninh Binh- by Elise

Ninh Binh

These are sum of the experiences that we had in Ninh Binh. Ninh Binh is in North Vietnam.

We stayed at a Homestay with a lovely family in Ninh Binh. We had a delicious meal that the owner of the Homestay had made for us.

Are family rented motorcycles. We went to the Muha caves and took lots of pictures. We went to the big pagoda and the big Buddha. We saw the tallest pagoda and the tallest Buddha

We went on a boat for 3 hours. We went threw 3 caves and one was a km long. The boat people were paddling with their feet. We went to a lot of temples on the boat ride

Cat Ba, Vietnam- By Anna

Cat Ba was beautiful! On Tuesday, we took a boat to Cat Ba, which is an island right off of Hai Phong. When we arrived, we took our luggage to our hotel. We rented scooters and we drove to the Cat Ba National Park. It was beautiful. We stopped at the Hospital Caves, which were caves that the North Vietnamese built so that no one could find their hospital and the Southern Vietnamese couldn’t bomb them. It was really different and interesting to visit the rooms like the operating room, the old office and the meeting room. We saw couple of pictures of the hospital during the war and saw the actual equipment they used. After the Hospital Caves, we rode up to the beginning of the Cat Ba National Park hike. It was a bit of a confusing hike but well worth it. At the top, the view of Cat Ba was amazing. We took a couple pictures, then we began our hike down. The next morning, we had a boat tour of Halong Bay. Halong Bay is one of the most well known places in Vietnam. After a little bit of boating, we took double kayaks out onto the water. Amelie and I were together, Elise was with my mom and my dad was with Joe, from Germany. We kayaked through caves (sometimes got stuck). It was blast and Amelie and I killed it! After kayaking, we walked around the fish farm and we saw a giant fish that was the length of me but the weight of my dad. Then we all got back on the boat and we went swimming. It was definitely cold but freezing for my mom. It was fun because we could jump off the top of the boat. Lunch was amazing, there were spring rolls, red snapper, fish cakes, tofu and a veggie salad.That night, we went out for a Hot Pot at a restaurant were this young boy around Amelies age served us dinner. A Hot Pot is a burner that sits in the middle of the table with boiling broth, which is served with raw meat, seafood, noodles and vegetables for you to cook. We went to cannon fort for the last day. It was really cool to see the old cannons and the old uniforms they used to wear. It was really rainy ( and yes I did say rain! first rain in two weeks). At the hotel, Amelie and I finished our Buddhism project. That night we presented it in front of our parents and Ellie. Elise was our facilitator. For dinner, we went to this really loud bar and we played a big round of our card game called” Five Crowns”. The next morning, we had to go so we took a selfie with the brothers who owned the hotel and then we took the boat back to Hai Phong. The views in Cat Ba were something I’d remember for a long time!

Hoi An- By Elise

Wen we rented motorcycles in Vietnam. It was really fun! Amee my dad and I rode on one and my mom and Anna rode on another. And we went to a really big Buddha.

We went on a bike tour. We went on a bamboo basket boat. We had a Lunch at a Vietnamese Family’s house. By the way l rode my own bike. One of are stops were seeing people making carpets.

We got bikes from are hotel, I rode on the back of my mom’s bike a lot. We saw a famous bridge that had a dragon on it. We saw lots of lanterns. We went to the beach and had lunch.

I REALLY LIKE HOI AN!!!

Visa issues and Ba na hills-by Amelie

Most of traveling is easy, but there can be some difficult times too. Here is one of them:

To enter Vietnam you need a visa. When we got our visas, our entry place was written on them. After we got our visas, we decided to fly into a different city in Vietnam. We thought it was okay to have a different port of entry, because it was in the same country, but the airline proved us wrong. When we got to the airport, the airline said we had to have the the exact port of entry written on it. We had to rebook our flight so we had enough time to buy another visa and then we could go to Vietnam. We got our pictures taken, but by accident we put in my birthdate wrong, so we had to pay for another visa. We thought it was okay after that, but when we got to the airport the airline said that on my moms visa there was one wrong number. We had to buy another visa! That’s twelve visas we had to buy in two days! We finally got on the airplane and went to Ho Chi Min. There was a layover in Ho Chi Min city, and the airlines said that they had not rebooked our second half of the flight. They had to rebook it… AGAIN! We are no longer flying with that airline! I think all that was worth it because Vietnam has been amazing so far!

“Ba na hills” is a popular hill in De Nang. From Hoi an it takes about one our to drive there. When we got there we took the longest gondola in the world and actually the longest one, that was about 45 minutes and 5 km long up to the top of the mountain. At the top of the mountain we walked around, saw the big Buddha and went to an old French wine cellar. We also went to the Golden Bridge which was so cool because there are hands made of stone holing up a Golden Bridge. It was hard to take pictures tough because there are so many people. After that we took another gondola down to fantasy world (kind of like a amusement park). We waited in a very, very, long line so we could go on this super fun roller coaster where you are in charge of the brakes (I went at full speed). We also went on a fun spinning ride and went to a Jurassic place were you see dinosaurs. We went for lunch at a restaurant in the French colony and got western food (i will not put in exclamation point after that because I prefer Asian food). We also took some funny pictures while my mom and dad went to a beer plaza. After it was time to go back to Hoi an.