In Vietnam!

Well, hello again wonderful readers!

I know we've gotten really behind in our blog posts about Korea. We will definitely get all up-to-date on those when we get back to North America and in some kind of regular schedule again. We'll also have to post about our travels to Southeast Asia. Right now we're traveling up the coast of Vietnam. We arrived early Friday morning, July 13, in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC - formerly Saigon, although it's still commonly referred to as Saigon here). We traveled north to Mui Ne for a lovely and peaceful Sabbath by the bay. The next morning we visited two sand dunes near Mui Ne before catching a bus further up the coast to Nha Trang, which is where we are right now. Yesterday we took a great snorkeling tour (and got red backs as a result...), and today we've been exploring the city and seaside of Nha Trang. This evening we'll be taking a night train further up the coast to Hoi An. It was highly recommended to us by a South African couple on our snorkeling tour, so we are looking forward to seeing the culture and ancient architecture there. From there on our plans aren't exactly solidified yet, but we want to see a cave not too much farther north from Hoi An, and eventually we'll get to Hanoi near the top of Vietnam. From Hanoi we really are looking forward to seeing and touring Halong Bay and maybe some islands in the bay or another bay nearby. That might very well take us the rest of our time in Vietnam, but if it doesn't, we plan to fly back down to Ho Chi Minh City and then see if we have time to see Phnom Penh and Angkor Wat near Siem Reap in Cambodia. We'll see if we have time. We VASTLY underestimated how long this country is and how long it takes to travel from city to city along the coast. We will almost assuredly not be able to make it to Laos like we'd hoped we could before arriving. So Laos will have to wait for another time; maybe someday we'll try to pair it with Northern Thailand. Anyway, that's the short version of what we've done and where we've gone so far, and a little snippet of some of our ideas for the rest of our time here.

Stay tuned for the rest of Korea and for our Vietnam/maybe Cambodia trip! And, as always, thanks for reading our blog so faithfully!