I've been back from Vietnam for a month, but the great thing about having a blog no one reads is that I can update it whenever the hell I want, thank you very much. Some quick updates from the ol' personal life before I dive into the trip: new term started last week and I'm teaching a lot of upper level classes this term. Classes so far have been pretty stable and no major issues, though I do have one kid who makes me super uncomfortable. It's not so much how loudly he laughs at his own jokes as it's the excessively detailed and violent content of those jokes which makes me triple check that my door is locked every night. We have a couple new teachers, one of whom is Canadian, which means soon the students will start to unravel all the lies I've told them about Canada. The days of pretending I rode to school astride a giant polar bear named Trüllbus are over. On to Vietnam then! You know, I don't think I've ever been properly rested during the descent into a new country. No matter what time my flight leaves the next day, I've never able to properly sleep the night before. So as we coasted into Da Nang International, I was fueled by about 90 minutes of the sort of sleep you get on a plane where you're strapped into an upright seated position and someone keeps slamming a drink cart into your god damn knee every fifteen minutes. The first thing I noticed from the plane was the wall-to-wall greenery of the country. There were mountains and some cities dotting the landscape but my first and strongest impression was of a verdant, deep-green country covered in heavy grey clouds.
This, but kinda everywhere
The original plan Chloe and I had for this vacation was to find a few nice places to settle down and just relax for a week, which I think we pretty much achieved. I don't have much to say about sightseeing for the first few days because we simply didn't do that much. We did visit the beach, checked out Hoi An Ancient Town and did a bit of exploring in the area though. We also did some shopping and I may have gotten taken for a ride by a disingenuous t-shirt vendor but that's a story for another...well, I just don't wanna talk about it.
Not pictured: t-shirt vendor. She's dead to me
But mostly we relaxed. Our first resort had a fantastic spa so we spent the first part of our second day getting some pretty amazing massages and lounging by the pool. A lot of our excursions away from the resort involved finding some amazing food to try, and oh god the food we ate, you wouldn't even believe it. Everything was amazing and delicious and cheap. We would sit down, try four or five dishes, have a few drinks and all told the meal would be less than $30. We ended up bringing a lot more money than we actually needed so we kept looking for different ways to spend it, which is how I ended up coming home with a strange bottle of Vietnamese SomethingOrOther which I am excited to actually drink. Best food was probably Banh Mi, which was a Vietnamese meat sandwich with different vegetables, spicy sauces and pâté. I would fly back just to fill a suitcase with these things.
And that was most of the trip really, which was awesome. I was pretty stressed out at the time about some things at work, and nothing helps you forget about workplace stress than putting several thousand kilometers between you and your workplace. After the first couple days we went to a different resort in Da Nang and spent a few days there as well, which was also really nice. We spent the second half of the trip exploring the city, trying more delicious food and visiting a huge market downtown. Han Market had hundreds of different stalls with a variety of different clothing options, but all employing the same fashion of sales technique; namely, they would yell at you until you either bought something or ran away.
In Da Nang we also did our only real day of sight seeing when we visited the Marble Mountains, which is a collection of temples, pagodas and old statue work on top of series of mountainous plateaus located just outside of the city. We spent the day checking out these really gorgeous caverns, carvings of the Buddha and some beautiful old temples. We also got to enjoy a spectacular view of the countryside when we started climbing a narrow, dangerous flight of steps on a whim and accidentally wound up on top of the mountain.
Yeah, oops
My favourite thing though was Am Phu Cave, also known as the "Hell Cave," which was underneath Marble Mountains. Exploring through it was meant to represent one's journey through the afterlife. When you enter the cave you see statues of bodies sinking below the water, symbolizing the beginning of one's descent. The main entrance chamber shows where your good deeds are weighed against your bad, and you have to stand before a series of judges who decide your ultimate fate.
As soon as I stepped up they all said "HELL!" like pretty much right away
If you are judged evil, you have to descend ever further under the mountain, where you pass by statues of hideous demons and monsters inflicting pretty graphically rendered tortures on all the unfortunates who were similarly judged. The further you go, the harder it becomes to progress forward, as the walls become narrower and more cramped. When you finally make it to the very bottom chamber, there is an alter where you can ask for redemption, at which point you can try to ascend back up to the main chamber.
The ascent to heaven was probably my favourite part of the day. After exploring the depths of hell, I was pretty exhausted, but decided to make the arduous climb up the Stairway to Heaven (which, come to think of it, would be a pretty cool song title). The stairway is surrounded by statues of angels and revered religious figures who are meant to guide you out of the cave and back into the sunlight. It was a tough climb; the stairs were narrow, there wasn't much to hold on to and there were a ton of assholes who just actively refused to get out of my way.
I eventually made it out and got to look down in contempt on everyone still trapped in hell. Including my girlfriend, who elected not to make the climb.
And that was Vietnam! This turned out to be a longer post than I originally intended, so I will omit the fact that I attempted to go swimming in untenable weather and ended up getting a fever as a result. I mean, nothing! Bye now!
