Hanoi, Vietnam

I met Claire in Haoni for a long weekend. She was a senior in my French class last year and studied in China for the last semester. We met in Hanoi and then traveled three hours to Halong Bay, Vietnam. She returned to Singapore with me and when I leave for Boise she will go meet some friends in Malaysia. We had a great time in Vietnam. It is a beautiful country full of culture and I hope to go back someday.

St. Jospeh's Cathedral

There is a lot of French influence in Vietnam left over from WWII. We could see it in the architecture and some people speak French. It was fun for us to see a huge catholic cathedral in SE Asia!

More Hanoi

Halong Bay, Vietnam

Claire and I spent 2 days and 1 night out on Halong Bay. It was a beautiful and relaxing trip. They say that there are more than 1000 islands out in the bay and 900+ actually have names. The Vietnamese believe that the islands were created by an angry dragon that swooshed his tail wildly at the bottom of the sea creating the jagged islands. Some believe that the dragon can still be spotted swimming around the islands. We looked for him but didn't have the luck of seeing the dragon!

Sea Village

We went by quite a few of these sea villages. They stay out on the water for months during the fishing season. I saw a mother bathing her baby in a tin basin, dogs running all over the docks, toddlers running around in penned off decks, families eating dinner on blankets in front of their houses. They have a market with the tour boats that come through too. We used their sea kayaks and while docked a few small row boats with lots of tempting sweets and goodies came by to sell to the tourists. We broke down and bought a box of cookies that Claire remembered from her childhood. It would be an interesting life living out on the sea!

The Scenery

Grotto- Halong Bay

We went through a huge cave when we were on our Halong Bay tour. It was pretty interesting and a nice place to cool off!

Halong Bay

One of our tour guides loved having two blondes on his tour so he would often take my camera from me and take tons of pictures of us. It was nice for us because we did not have to ask anyone to take our picture and now we have lots to choose from!

Chinese Opera

The costumes

Painted faces

This is another form of Chinese opera, the painted faces. It started with masks that had a wooden piece behind the lips to bite down on to keep it in place but that made the singing part of opera very difficult! So they changed it to painted faces.
The meaning of the masks:
Black mask- good guy
White mask- bad guy
Red mask- hero, warrior
Red and green mask- the monkey or fool

Behind the scenes

As we were standing around waiting for the opera to start we visited the temple, shared in the celebration meal of noodles and vegetables, and were invited to go back stage where the actors were getting dressed. It was interesting to see behind the scenes. They were putting on their makeup, placing the dramatic head dresses and wigs in their hair, studying their lines, ironing, waiting, dressing. It was organized chaos! It was so neat to see and they did not even pause when 16 caucasian women walked into their dressing rooms and took pictures, some even posed for us! After being back there I understood why our tour guide told us opera never starts on time!

Opera house

Chinese opera originated from religious beliefs so you can often find street opera performed at the temples. They will do a reenactment of famous stories and tell them in celebration of ceratin gods. This opera was for the water god's birthday and this particualr temple in Singapore worships the water god. When we first arrived we went to the temple where people were passing out all kinds of goodies, red eggs being one of them. Red is considered good luck and the egg is a blessing for your family. I was first given one egg and then I was approched again and given a second egg, I told her I already had an egg but she said I needed two to bless my future twins! Everyone laughed at me when I quickly tried to put the second egg back on the tray! It was good fun though, at least I hope that was all it was!
Incense is everwhere when you go to a temple. I have always wondered what it was for and on this trip I was told that it is used for prayer. The smoke from the incense is used to carry their prayers up to their god. It helps their prayer to linger and rise to the ears of the gods. I thought that was interesting.

Palau Sibu, Malaysia

Travis had this past Tuesday off for Labor Day so we decided to head north. We ended up at the Sea Gypsy Village Resort located on a remote island just off the coast of Malaysia. On Friday night, the resort had a bus waiting to pick us up in Singapore and drive us the three hours into Malaysia. After the bus ride, we had to take a 20 minute boat ride in the dark of night to our tiny island get away. We spent a lot of time relaxing on the beach but we also took a couple snorkeling trips, rented a sail boat, kayaked and did a little jungle trekking. It was a wonderful long weekend but we have decided it is time to get scuba certified. That's going to be our next adventure!

The Villas at Sea Gypsy

These are the cabanas we slept in each night. They were open and airy and so amazing! We not only had a bed but mosquito netting covering it as well. It was such a nice touch to keep the bugs and creepy crawly's off our faces every night. Who needs AC when you have the ocean breeze coming in through the cracks in the walls?

(I passed the computer to Travis to write a quick note about our villas. Since our accomodations weren't exactly 5 star, I asked him to put a positive spin on it. After a matter of seconds, he handed the lap top back with what you see written above. I sense a touch of sarcasm, how about you?)

Our little hideaway!

Travel Journal

After much proding and persuading, Travis finally agreed to sit down and write in our travel journal. He will thank me someday!

Our Buddy Francis

Francis is the name I selected for the dog you see in the photo above. Every morning we would see him strolling up and down the beach ensuring everything was in order. Once Francis was satisfied Travis and I were not intruders on his beach, he would come and lounge with us each day by our palm tree. If Francis ever felt something was not as it should be, he would promptly jump up, check it out, then return to his spot beside us. We liked Francis so we felt he earned a spot on our blog.

Learning to sail in Malaysia

Palau Sibu walk

We walked across the island in 15 minutes. It was a very small island!