Welcome to The Wedding Travelers!

Alrighty kids! Let’s get down to some blogging.

First off, at this point in our trip, after having logged many hours of walking, we thought it was about time to give some credit to our shoes.

Yes, our shoes.

If you’ve ever traveled before, you know that it involves huge, huge amounts of walking. And if you have shoes on that aren’t comfortable, it can be misery. Add to that the fact that this place is hot, and you need something that isn’t going to make your feet super sweaty.

Well this time around we took a chance on an unknown shoe, and boy are we glad. Rob remarks about once a week that he could live in these shoes.

Meet our Sanuks!



And I guess the makers would appreciate me saying that these are, in fact, not a shoe. They are designed to “mimick the natural function of the foot”. They like to call it “Barefoot Untechnology”. And I’ll tell you right now, these babies work. For the first couple of days we definitely felt some soreness in our feet. There were muscles there that we don’t usually use with our fancy schmancy hi-tech shoes. Now that we’ve gotten used to them we can wear them all day and barely feel a thing. It’s so amazing, we really had to recommend them to any other travelers. Here’s another shot more close up. They definitely look really cool, we think. And they don’t stick out the way bright white running shoes do…..Please don’t wear bright white running shoes! ☺



So another cool thing we did was check out a lacquerware factory. Lacquerware is a big thing here in Vietnam, and you can see it being sold all over the place. It was really amazing to see what actually goes into making it. This is where they apply the lacquer and sand things down. This guy was just working away as we walked through.



A close up of him sanding. The white parts of the panel are made out of eggshells that are broken into very small pieces.



This woman was working on putting the eggshells on. They use goose eggs instead of chicken, as they are stronger. Bet you didn’t know that!



And this guy was painting designs on. They really have incredible skill, and the painting they do is so intricate.



Now here’s a common site in Vietnam. Iced coffee! They make it with very strong coffee, a ton of ice, and condensed milk. Think about that for a moment. Amazing. To tell you the truth it takes like a Tim Horton’s Iced Cappuccino (Iced Capp, as we Canucks like to say), but more flavourful, and less simulated.


Those two were actually both Rob’s. He tends to drink one in 30 seconds, so he always orders two. The men here will nurse one of these for 4 hours as they sit and watch traffic go by. Rob has a long way to go before he manages that!

Now one of the really nice things about this past week here in Ho Chi Minh city is that a couple of our friends from Edmonton have been here. Actually, let’s call them our “flients”. That’s a term I concocted to describe clients of ours who have become our friends. So Kevin and Cherie are flients of ours. And it just so happened that they were planning to be in Vietnam the same time we were. So we’ve been hanging out with them and having a ton of fun. The other night we went out for dinner and found this insanely cool place. It had tons of tables with grills for the meat, but it was all open air with tons of lights and lanterns and huge trees. The ambience was just amazing. The food was pretty tasy too.

Those crazy cool flients of ours, Kevin and Cherie. Trust me, you will be seeing a LOT more of them very soon ☺

Now, I know we haven’t been posting a lot these last few days, and for that we definitely apologize! I’ve actually had a bit of the stomach flu and have spent a ton of time trying to recover in the hotel room. So we haven’t been out too much. Now if you’re like me, when you’re stomach isn’t feel too hot you want some familiar food. So we went out in search of some pasta. And did we ever find it. This is what I got for dinner, served in a clay pot red hot from the oven. It was fantastic, and I was so happy to have something familiar in my tummy!



Man, this post is just loaded. Yesterday we ventured out to the Cu Chi tunnels. This was an elaborate network of tunnels dug by the Viet Cong in the American war. Here’s one of the guides showing us a cross-section of the tunnels. They were three levels deep, and had kitchens, living rooms, and escape routes. They even created a system to let the smoke from the cooking escape in a manner that kept it small so that the enemy wouldn’t notice it. Very impressive.



They have widened the tunnels so that the tourists could fit through them. But they have one that shows the original size of the openings. There was no way Rob would fit, but I managed to squeeze in there.



It sure was narrow though!



And last night we made our way to the post office to send some of our gifts back home. That was a crazy adventure in of itself, which I will write about later, but on the way out we decided the play a bit. Here’s a shot of the impressive post office of Ho Chi Minh City, and we tried to write “Vietnam” over top of it. Hard to do, and we didn’t do the greatest, but it was still neat looking!

And one last shot. A wide view of the street below our room at night time.

Well all, that’s it for now! We’re hopefully leaving tomorrow to Dalat, and then things will really pick up! But we still have some cool stuff up our sleeves from HCMC, so stay tuned.

Lauren ☺

Category: Adventures

Tags: cu chi tunnels, food, Ho Chi Minh City, lacquerware, post office, street life