This monkey was sneaky. He would sit and wait for someone to order a drink, then sidle up and pounce! He was so fast once he got the can and made his escape that the girl he took it from was like “what just happened?!”
He climbed to his perch and slammed it, then threw the can on the ground. Litter Bug!
We went on a pretty good trek to get to this tower on the top of one of the mountains. It was so worth it. Climbing to the top of the tower was a rush. Lennon and Jesse led the way with the camera so they got photos from the top, but we didn’t get any of them! Bummer.
We were so proud of the kids for just doing it! They aren’t afraid of much and it is fun to watch them be so brave on all these adventures. They call kids “babies” in Vietnam regardless of their age. Sometimes a person will say “no! not safe for babies!” We always say “they can do it!”
I was at the top in this photo and Em is on the side. There are planks missing on the platform at the top- so you have to be very alert.
When we got to the bottom of the tower, two young guys ran up all sweaty and shirtless huffin’ and puffin’. I don’t know if they were trying to impress the girls we were with or what, but in the deepest voices they could muster, they exclaimed “some guy said the trek would be 40 minutes. For us, it was more like 10!” Oh my gosh! The one guy said it like three more times. We all just smiled politely. I whispered to Maddux “nerd alert!” Then the guy pulls out a ‘proud to be a Canadian’ shirt with a list of all the things that the rest of the world are apparently ignorant about when it comes to Canada. Then he says that later he’s going to cut his shirt up and make it into a cool ‘wifebeater tank-top.’ It just kept getting better.
Life lessons are everywhere in the world! We talked to the kids about always being true to yourself and, hopefully, never feeling the urge to pretend like you are something you’re not. You could end up coming across looking like an enormous boob!
Even funnier end to the story- the guys got to the top and were scared poop-less!
Note to my Canadian friends: this guy just happened to be Canadian. If he had been American, Austrian, Transylvanian, whatever- I still would have made fun. If that makes me a bad person- I will own it! 🙂
The kids were fighting over who would go with Roman -the young Russian guy. Finally I told Maddux and Em they had to work together to kayak and I would go with Roman. Him and I talked a lot about the relationship between Russia and the US. He said Russians started not liking us when George Bush Sr. called Russian people evil. I don’t remember that. I told him that I thought he was nice and he felt the same about me- so that was that. Maybe I should go into foreign diplomacy!
A guide led us through a cave that was magical. It felt like we were on another planet. The pictures don’t really do it justice because some of the colors and crystallized rock formations looked surreal up close.
I used to have a bit of claustrophobia when I was younger- but there is no room for any phobias when you’re trusting strangers taking you through dark enclosed areas. Jesse barely fit into one of the entrances to a cave.
There was a Vietnamese soldier hat and a gun at the entrance to the cave and people were taking turns having their photo taken. I said I wasn’t going to do it. Jesse asked me why, the guard was laughing and said “you think you won the war!” (It is good to know that there are comedians around the globe!)
I personally don’t think anyone “won” the war. It was a brutal, sad time for all involved, but the boys like hats and are intrigued by guns so they took their turn for a photo.
This cave was insane! Walking up to it was no big deal- you walked a little off the road, climbed a tall ladder and were left standing in a cave with a high ceiling. A guy came up and opened a small steal door that you had to crouch down to enter. Inside was jaw dropping- during the war, a three story hospital was built inside the cave to care for Vietnamese soldiers. It had patient rooms, operating rooms and a generator supplied electricity when it was a working hospital. It also had a movie theater next to a training area to practice running under and hiding in cave holes. A small pool off to the side served as a therapeutic pool. Another smaller pool on the lower level helped to break the fall of soldiers needing to evacuate quickly. They could jump straight down three floors and head out to the jungle. The cave was always a comfortable temperature staying warm in the cooler months and cooler during the hot, muggy summer.
If American soldiers tried to get close by foot- they would have been shot by one of the many guards surrounding the two entrances. They would have easily been spotted if they ever got close enough to climbing the steep open terrain at the front and back of the cave.
A karst is a limestone region with caves, caverns, underground streams, huge boulder like masses with sheer sides that seem to jut up and out of the ocean randomly. Incredible! Everywhere you look is picture worthy.
Sometimes we don’t eat as much as we want or when we we would like to, but when we do eat- it gets really quiet for awhile. That is quite strange for our group. In Vietnam, we are loving their pancakes and pho ga (which is a really yummy chicken noodle soup concoction.)
marschmadness 