Greetings loyal readers. Sorry for the infrequent posts, but we've been pretty busy running around Vietnam, so we've slacked a little on the blog. Here's the happy recap of what's happen since we last spoke:
Ha Long Bay Boat Cruise: On Wednesday, we headed out of our hostel at 8:00am for an overnight trip to Ha Long Bay. The start was a bit inauspicious: a 4 hour van ride to get there on a van that a jockey would feel cramped in. Needless to say, the Giants were a little uncomfortable. Thankfully, it got much better after that. Once at Ha Long, it was a little bit of a cluster f*@k getting out to the Bay, but boy was it worth it. There are over 3000 mini islands out in the Bay, in crystal blue water. Once we anchored, we spent about 30 minutes jumping off the boat and swimming, followed by a 2 hour kayak and cave exploration trip. Boyink, being the Giant that he is broke his paddle on the way back. To make matters worse, his kayak mate (Scott aka Danny Dyer) broke his paddle on the way out, so they had a ton of fun trying to get back to the boat. After we all go back and showered, things got aggressive.
The 2 trip leaders organized a couple of spirited drinking games for us. Since it was taking them a little long to get going, we decided to pregame the drinking games... maybe not the best idea. The first offical game was "Roxanne". For those of you that have never played this, it is a debacle. Sting's Roxanne is played on an iPod or what have you, and one team drinks every time he says Roxanne, the other team drinks for "put on a red light" That should been a sign what kind of night it was going to be. After that, we played the CRAZIEST game of Kings ever. Since there were 50+ of us, they just laid the cards out in two long lines, and we played one side of the room vs. the other side of the room. By the end of the game, multiple people had obscene drawings on their arms, we learned a few peoples inner most secrets, and no one was wearing any of their own clothes.
After the games, we had a dance party, highlighted by our new friends from Lehigh belting out "Born in the USA". Sadly, we could only stay out there one night, since we had a flight to Ho Chi Minh booked for the next day. All in all, Hanoi was a ton of fun. I lost one day with a stomach bug, but it was still a great time.
Ho Chi Minh was the last stop on the Two Giants SE Asia tour. Our flight was delayed, so we didn't arrive at our hotel until 3AM. On day 1, we went to the War Remnants Museum. When you walk in, you see a bunch of US Planes and Tanks. We joked that we were going to repossess them and take them back with us. After going through the museum and seeing all of the things America did during the war, we decided it best to let the Vietnamese have the tanks and planes. Granted, it was very biased and one-sided, but you still felt a little worse about being American after you walk out of there.
Later that night, we found our favorite Ho Chi Minh pregame spot, the Spotted Pig. They had 50% off all cocktails, so we treated ourselves to $5 pitchers of Mojitos. We also got a private Vietnamese lesson from Yuen, our very friendly waitress. We were a little spent since we got in late, and we had an early day on the Mekong the following day, so we called it an early night.
Day 2 was spent touring around the Mekong Delta. Really interesting hopping around the islands, sampling local food and playing with bees and snakes. After we got home and showered, we headed back out to the Spotted Cow for there 1.5 hour all you drink special. We definitely got our moneys worth. After that, we headed out to Apocalypse Now, a relatively big club in Ho Chi Minh. The details are a little hazy, but I know it was very well air conditioned (always a plus), and we got bottle service with our Lehigh friends.
Ho Chi Minh, like pretty much everywhere on this trip, has been great. It will be sad to lose Andrew, but I'm excited for my quick stop over in Hong Kong. Maybe someone might even come up to ME and tell me I'm tall with him gone.
Sorry for the long winded post.
Two Giants
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