Vietnam, Cambodia & Thailand

Brad was very interested in seeing My Son temple ruins from the Cham people. The Cham people begin building these temples in the seventh century and last until the 13th century. However, the ruins are about an hour out of Hoi An. Our guide offered us a package deal, but it was gonna take too much of the morning up so we opted to hire a charter vehicle to take us out there first thing in the morning.

We were down for breakfast at 7 AM sharp (when the breakfast begins) and then our driver picked us up at 7:30 AM. It took us about an hour to get out to the site, but on the way we got to see a lot of little towns and cities along the way. Our drives are always so interesting because there’s always so much to see. Everyone’s store is out front of their home so there’s always a lot to look at along the way.

We got to the world heritage site at about 8:30 in the morning which was perfect because although it was very very hot, there weren’t many tourists are yet. An exceptionally nice young woman helped us download the free audio guide, which is a lifesaver for us! We had to take a tram to halfway up and then walk the other half to get to the group B,C,D ruins. These ruins are the most intact ruins to see. Many of the structures were created to worship various Hindu gods such a Shiva, and a great deal of time has been spent restoring a lot of the site. Many of the temples were ruined during the Vietnam War, but it’s still incredible what you can see, especially considering that the last of these buildings was worked on in the 13th century. We were also fortunate to see a traditional Cham dance performance at one of the sites as well.

After we had looked around extensively, we took the trim back down and took a look at the museum, which featured many pictures about the restoration efforts as well as several informational plaques about the culture of the Cham people. We had to get back to our driver at about 10 AM which is fine for us because we were incredibly hot and sweaty as it was a very, very warm morning and we were in the jungle.

A ride back to our hotel only took about 45 minutes and bread, and I was so exhausted from the heat of the morning that we decided to cool off in our room and take a nap. Once we’re feeling a bit more refreshed, we walked over to Bahn Mi Queen, which is only about a 500 m walk from our hotel. If you look it up on TripAdvisor, it has great reviews and the line is testament to that. We chose to get the bánh mì that has a little bit of everything on it and take it back to our hotel so we could eat in the air conditioning. It certainly did not disappoint and those TripAdvisor reviews are well deserved!

At 2:30 we had to meet our group for a bicycle tour of the countryside. This was an optional activity, but our entire group decided to go so that was a lot of fun! Our first stop was in town at a local man’s house, who makes his living, making tofu. He showed us the process of how he grinds down the soy beans, crate, soy milk, but also the tofu to create tofu pudding, which his wife then sells in the afternoons. It takes about 3 to 4 hours to grind enough soybeans for the day. We have to try some of his tofu pudding with a ginger and sugar cane sauce. It was served warm and it was very delicious!

Back on our bikes, we continued riding into the countryside further, so we could go to see the vegetable farms. Hopefully you can see it in the photos but they were growing some very big zucchini, and they grow them from a lattice work structure so the zucchinis hang down instead of growing them on the ground. Here we were treated to some tea that had ginger and Thai basil seeds in it, as well as some of our group got to try the watering methods they use for these farms.

We had to ride about half an hour to our final stop of the day, but the rides absolutely exquisite. We had to ride through Rice field and see people working the sky in the mountains and the entire scenery was truly magical. Who knew a bike ride could be so wonderful? We finally arrived at the basket boat place and we were treated to some food which included watermelon, traditional style pancakes wrapped in rice paper, and some toasted coconut. We then hopped in the basket boats and our drivers took us around. For the people who wanted to, they would really rock your boat back-and-forth (kind of like a carnival ride) and then made us all rings out of leaves from the coconut trees. It was a really neat experience!

We then had to ride our bikes to the pier so we could put them on a boat. The boat took us back to the old quarter so we could unload and finally ride our bikes back to our hotel.

We are all currently getting freshened up and change so we can go for last group dinner in Hoi An this evening and then tomorrow we are off to Ho Chi Minh City!Les mer