A Viet Nam Visit: Halong Bay, Danang, Nha Trang and Dalat

so, halfway through our vietnam trip, my camera died.  i had even fully charged that lithium battery within an inch of its life before we left!  at the time on the trip, i just couldn't figure out why my camera would up and die on me.

and then i saw the veritable photo shoot i hosted on the boat at halong bay. a photo shoot of the chrispinator and me. well, mostly me and the strange faces i make.  

and then i knew why my camera died halfway through our trip.

while in hanoi, we decided to take a day trip to near-ish by halong bay. gorgeous, gorgeous halong bay.

leaving the docks for the bay

it was an exciting trip, mainly for the gorgeous views, but also because i dawned a sweatshirt for the first time in nearly a year and we ate delicious food while taking in the views.

this is a hoodie! and i'm wearing it!

hey open, beautiful waters.

might be a favorite photo from the trip. isn't el tophoro handsome as shnat? 

part of the floating villages

we were, in fact, still married when we visited halong bay.

shall we begin the photo shoot?

are you serious?

part of our boat tour was a stop at the near by caves. gorgeous.

on our last day in hanoi, we stopped at a gourmet ice cream shop.  as if you couldn't guess, mine is the larger one.

topher: "can i eat it already? i hate melted ice cream!"

 we took an overnight sleeper train from hanoi to danang.  the approximately 15 hour trip began with a stop at a nearby deli for some refreshments that we hoped would make sleeping easier, and whatever food we could grab.

i am a tiger.

chris did not like his chicken sandwich.

but i loved mine!

 we shared our sleeper cabin with a family of four from switzerland. they were on the last two months of a year long journey around the world.  that they just decided to take with their two young children.  you know.

after miles and miles of bumpy sleep and then gorgeous coast line, we arrived at the beach of danang.  danang was a popular beach for american soldiers to escape to during the american war.

we enjoyed a ton of great, fresh seafood.

and i even got to enjoy some delicious wine one evening, while chris slurped on some ice cold beer.

we spent all of our four days in danang on the beach, lounging.  i didn't bring my camera down with us until we took a nighttime stroll.  to capture the water, we had to go sans flash, and after some wine...well, you get this.

after a relaxing time in danang, we hopped another train- soft seats this time- and traveled to another beach destination of nha trang.

we again spent a glorious three days enjoying delicious food and glorious sun.

we spent one great evening in, enjoying wine and chocolate.

our final stop was the beautiful town of dalat.  built as an escape for the french during their occupation in the 1900's, it's like a mini european hideaway.  with windy, yet very hilly streets and ample park and natural space, it was beautiful.

we spent a couple of days soaking in the chilly weather at the large lake, and wanted to walk the course of the lake, but i was taken down by an achy illness.  so we opted to sit and enjoy the views.

the eiffel tower inspired cell tower

the final picture we captured before the camera died.

if you look closely in the final picture, you can see my swollen eye, where a mosquito bit me and caused me to look a bit... uneven.

oh vietnam, how you cooled our bodies and warmed our tummies with deliciousness.  thank you.

A Viet Nam Visit: Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi

every year each april, cambodia celebrates khmer new year.  while the holiday is officially only three days long, schools close for a duration much longer than that as everyone travels to their homeland to spend time with loved ones.

topher and i decided to take advantage of that time to spend time with our loved ones in cambodia- namely, each other.

a large group of volunteers in cambodia chose to visit vietnam during the break, but somehow each travel group managed to visit different cities at different times, and there was minimal random run-ins, which it's safe to say, surprised us all!

Vietnamese Dong

i'm officially a big fan of vietnam.  beyond the delicious food like pho, spring rolls and crispy noodles, the weather in central and northern vietnam was gorgeous, and traveling around the country via train was a wonderful way to see the beautiful coastline.

chowing down on vietnamese food and beer at the night market in HCMC

chris and i started our trip down south, bussing it to ho chi minh city (or, saigon) and spending two great days bumming around with some fellow volunteers.  

we spent the first full day visiting the near by cu chi tunnels, used by the vietcong to evade the american enemy during the american war.

tiger booby trap at the tunnels

an opening to the tunnels

i may look happy but i was actually disgusted by the sound of machine gun fire that littered our visit, as part of the experience can be to purchase rounds to fire them off, just as they did during the war.  tourism at it's best, that is.
 

we even had the chance to walk 500 meters through one of the tunnels, widened for tourist use. i made it 100 yards, and chris went all the way!

while in ho chi minh, we got our first taste of subway in over nine months, enjoyed some delicious vietnamese and indian food, and even found cheap, familiar beer. i even enjoyed a personal pan pizza all by myself for lunch before we departed via plane to hanoi.

indian food where instead of lessening the heat, the chef accidentally added even more chillis. awesome.

chris: "beer with taste and then cheap american beer!"

kate: "i can drink my cheap heineken while eating a kit kat, yes i can!"

personal pan pizza and fountain coke. my personal version of heaven.

in hanoi, we spent three days enjoying chilly weather, gorging on pho, and downing as much bia hoi as we could.

crispy beef noodles.

crispy, delicious spring rolls

bia hoi

bia hoi is daily, freshly brewed light pilsner beer that small restaurants and stands sell beginning in the early evening and late into the night (as long as it lasts) for very, very cheap. 

bia hoi

chris and i enjoyed some delicious food in hanoi, like catfish spring rolls and crispy ostrich.

catfish spring rolls

ostrich. amazing.

we also took a day to walk around, and enjoy the vietnamese women's museum.

waiting on some delicious pho.

phooooooo!

the women's museum.

inside the women's museum.

at the large lake, hoan kiem, in the middle of hanoi

we even found delicious caramel and cheese popcorn!

we also couldn't get enough of the fresh fruit smoothies we found everywhere.

up next: ha long bay, danang, nha trang and dalat!

funkytown

i've been buried deep down in the heaviest of funks for the past three days.

(as if my emo post from yesterday, with clearly very little thoughtful merit, didn't make that painfully clear.)

heading to funkytown for me involves a lot of watching mindless shows like glee, spending too much time on the internet, and being indescribably tired.  inherent in this is a general lack of motivation to do anything, including running, which i started doing earlier this week and did really well for three days until the funk hit on wednesday.

there are various reasons for this funk (that's a lie- there's really just one), and i keep apologizing to topher for my general lack of energy, the heavy sighs that come out of nowhere, and the inability to focus on conversations.

so, apologies for the lack of vietnam trip recapping or various other posts that i dreamed up before i got the blues.

maybe i'll have adjusted by next week, and we'll return to normally scheduled mindless ramblings.

on decision (or, indecision. or, why.)

i've been doing a good deal of thinking.  (it's really cliche to start a blog with "i've been doing some thinking" but i did it anyway.) thinking about how we make decisions and the impact decisions have on our general happiness.

decision making has never been a particularly strong point for me.

clarification.  daily decision making about stupid little things has never been a particularly strong point for me.

topher can regale you with stories of me sitting on the grocery store floor sorting through brand after brand of shampoos.  or having to wait for me to hear what everyone else is ordering for dinner before i could decide.

i like to think my decision making skills have grown in the eight years since we first met.  what i've learned is that i am someone who makes decisions quickly when i am able to inherently trust my own feeling or perception about the topic at hand.  for some reason though, i am also someone who inherently distrusts decisions made completely based on feeling, without any thought given to reason or logic.

so i've become a decision maker who more likely makes a decision when all of the variables are presented to me and i am aware of the possible impacts of the possible decisions i could possibly make.

which is a very low standard to hold myself and my decision making too, obviously.

(sarcasm.)

i think i'm deeply afraid of making that one wrong decision.  that one wrong decision that will alter everything i know to be true. even more terrifying, that one wrong decision that i don't even realize is that one wrong decision.

so i guess i come down on the side of believing in the act of over-thinking.  of considering every possible angle of the potential decision, and considering every possible outcome, and which one i most desire.

because even more terrifying to me are the decisions we have no control over. the ones other people in our lives make, that impact our every thought about what we thought our future would be.  the ones that are completely unclear in the varied sides that were considered, the possibilities that were taken into account and the why that decision was made.  the ones where we're not really sure- that other person did consider all the possible outcomes of that decision they made so hastily.

those decisions that we don't make but that still lead us to hurt, to confusion, to a re-imagining of our future that we weren't prepared for- those decisions are the hardest.  the ones that i mull over for days, trying to understand the why.

and that's all i have to say about that.

and then there was my scotty.

i was in a funk all day today.  i didn't accomplish most of the things that i had said i would, and i couldn't get rid of this feeling of...

petulance.

today, i was petulant.  easily frustrated.  irritable.  smarter than everyone around me, simultaneously angered by my own anger.

today was a day where i was reminded, deeply, of the family members that are in america and how deeply i care about their well-being, health, and nearly most important, their happiness.

happiness.

happiness is meeting the man that will become your husband, and then meeting his adorable, also slightly petulant twelve year old brother.

happiness is wanting to be cool and show off your awesome soccer skills with your future husband's athletic little brother, and subsequently kicking the soccer ball directly at his face, nearly breaking his nose.

and then little brother sharing that story at your wedding day, during his best man's speech.

happiness is a sunday afternoon spent lounging on the couch watching silly movies and getting snuggly warm with your boyfriend on one side and his kind and hilarious little brother on the other side.

and then falling asleep only to awaken and realize that oops, you accidentally slept on little brother, but he's so loving that he just let you lie there, napping away, content to be still while his maybe-future-sister snoozed the afternoon away.

happiness is eating all of the chocolate chip cookies your boyfriend's little brother made and only being really slightly jealous at his baking skills and how they rival yours.

happiness is realizing that a lot of your five year old dreams came true the day that your fiance's little brother became your little brother too, and your little brother he will be until the day you die.

and then happiness is being reminded of how kind, generous, humble, smart, athletic, lovable, and funny your little brother is, and how much you miss his presence in your daily life.

happiness is scott, our little brother.

and sadness is not being able to be there for him when other people in the world forget to recognize how kind, generous, humble, smart, athletic, lovable and funny he is.

sadness is realizing that the second time you've had that sweet-jesus-we-have-to-get-home-to-america-NOW feeling happens when you know your little brother is unhappy. (the first being that time when your grandmother had a stroke and you thought this might be it and you couldn't catch your breath for a few days out of fear.)


eating your feelings is what i did when i declared: because i couldn't make things right for my little brother, i couldn't wrap myself up under a blanket of his kindness and love, i had to make cookies.

chocolate chip cookies, just like scotty makes.

and petulance is when those cookies turn out slightly burnt, but your husband still declares them the best cookies you've made so far in cambodia.

and that's when you realize all over again how lucky you are that your husband is who he is, and his little brother got all of those things that you love most about your husband, and you're reminded all over again that-

happiness is scott, our little brother.

NLN (no-longer-newlyweds)

today is two years.

last year i wrote quite a lengthy post about my thoughts on success in marriage.

last year, i thought the key was having a sense of humor, and being able to not take anything in life too seriously.  

last year, i thought, one year in, that as long as you could laugh off the things that are frustrating about marriage, your partner, life, you can do anything inside that partnership.

this year.

this year, we celebrated not with elaborate dinners involving escargot, or fun day trips to a nearby farm.

this year, we enjoyed pizza from a box (seriously, the BEST PIZZA i've had in cambodia) with jill.

this year, we were invited to dinner with our host family, and enjoyed our anniversary dinner of rice, chicken and soup made of chicken bones.

this year, i spent a wonderful hour reliving the amazing day that was may first, twenty ten, courtesy of our amazing photographers brian and susan. (thank you both, again, so much.)

this year, i realized.

damn, was i right last year.

humor for each other, humor for life, humor for all the things that could make people bitter, frustrated, or angry, really is a great answer.

this year, i'm still just as lucky to have chris as my husband.

this year, i'll happily move out of newlywed-dom to simply married-dom.

bring it, NLN status. we're ready.