Homesickness is only in your head

So we've gotten around a little bit since the last time I posted. Currently we're in Hoi An which is one of the towns that got hit pretty hard by the typhoon about a week ago. The water damage is still visible on the walls which reaches over six feet high. It's hard to imagine what this town really looked like during the worst of the storm. And even harder to fathom how they pulled it together so quickly. There is still a film of dust and dirt all over the surfaces here where the waters have only recently receded but most of the debris has been cleared and everyone is open for business. It's really incredible to think about. We took a bus out of town to visit some old Champa ruins at My Son and there are still remnants of the flood hanging high up on trees and power lines. It seems that in some places the waters carried the washed away at least ten feet up leaving a dangling mess of dead foliage. We are really lucky that we detoured though Dalat instead of coming straight up the coast.

So in between here and Dalat we spent a few days in Nha Trang which is a whole other world when compared to the rest of the Vietnam that we've seen. It's located right on the coast with beautiful beaches reaching forever in both directions. Palm trees, blue waters, clear skies. I mean the place would be an absolute heaven if it weren't for the mass of foreigners attempting to mold it into the next Cancun. I constantly felt like I was walking down some beach strip in southern Fl. But the upside of this was the oh-so-satisfying comfort food. I actually had to come to Nha Trang for the best burger of my life. I have pictures and I will post them soon enough. But believe me when I say it was worth coming back for. And then there was the guilty pleasure BBQ joint. We were just walking the streets one night and some round guy came walking out of his place attempting to lure us in for "the best BBQ you've ever had". The exclamation on his statement was the giant neon cowboy sign waving back and forth with his right hand. I could only scoff on the inside since I'm from the south and he was too big to offend. His spiel I actually found very ugly. The selling point being that all of his meat came from the states, "none of this Vietnamese crap". For one I feel that the meat being corn fed and medicinally filled in the U.S. cannot possibly compete with the grass fed, free roaming beef that they have here locally. The tastes just don't size up. And two, if you're going to come over here and open a restaurant, not help contribute financially to the community that allowed you this opportunity by buying overseas instead of locally, and then knock the quality of food that they both eat and provide here, well then you're just a huge dick and your business should fail. But then he mentioned that he served hot wings so I went in and had some. I live for both hot wings and guilt so it was sort of the perfect storm.

So yeah, we spent five days there eating too much and also having a blast. We got totally lost on bicycles, went scuba diving and snorkeling, braved the roads on a scooter, got a sunburn, went to a day spa for a mud bath, and basically lived like royalty. It was super awesome.

And now we're here loving this place with it's old-world French architecture until tomorrow afternoon when we'll take a plane up to Hanoi and venture out from there.