March 12, 2019 – Today we started to make our way home.  We had paid our Da Nang, Vietnam Airbnb a little extra so we could stay there until 6:00pm.  We prearranged our usual taxi driver to pick us up and take us to the airport.  He gave each of our kids 10,000 dong (50cents) as a souvenir.  I dug into our luggage and scoured for two loonies to give him for his collection.

Our flight wasn’t until after midnight so with our early arrival to the airport it now made our 36 hour trip home now 41 hours.

We flew 5 hours from Da Nang to Narita, Japan (just outside Tokyo).  We knew we would be exhausted from little sleep so we didn’t prebook any tours and decided to play it by ear.  At the Narita airport they have some free tours while on a layover or you could pay and go on multiple tours of Narita and surrounding towns.  We decided to go that route.

Getting a little nap in before our tour.

We had checked most of our luggage minus electronics and had looked that the temperature was going to be 18 degrees.  We didn’t have our sweaters with us and when we arrived at 7:00am it was only 6 degrees.  The Japanese people are so polite and happy. When we were waiting for our bus to pick us up the kids were shivering.  The tour organizer came walking out with fleece jackets for us all.  We climbed on a coach bus for the 5 of us and an Australia tourist as well as three tour guides.

On our tour we first went to the Chiba Prefectural Open-Air Museum in Sakae Town.  Here they had houses, buildings and authentic shops recreated in the late Edo-Japan period from 150 years ago.  We were able to dress up in a happi coat for the day and participate in Cosplay.  As there was only our party of five and one other and we didn’t have any yen on us we declined.  We were able to walk through the market town which had building and shops outside (similar to Western Development Museum in Saskatoon). The merchant street here is a popular place for filming movies. We saw the pharmacy, samurai’s residence, farmhouses, and  places where they make traditional crafts like the tatami straw mats still used in Japanese homes. We also go to see a Shinto shrine here.  Our favourite thing we did here was learn about the traditional Japanese tea ceremony by participating in one.  We sat on the tatami mat and were served a sweet and then were poured some matcha tea.  We rotated the cups making sure not to drink from the side with the image on it.

The kids enjoyed playing games like ring toss and walking on takeuma (bamboo) stilts at one of the farmhouses.

Cosplay

Walking through the merchant street.

Old Japanese kitchen.

This is a living room. Bed/Table/Visiting multi purpose space.

Tatami (bamboo) mats

Inari shrine (Shinto diety of rice)

Sayer praying

Gabe praying.

Looking for Koi fish.

Cherry blossoms are beginning to bloom.

Inside the Samurai’s kitchen.

Stunting?

Samurai’s house

Stove, rice pot.

Shrine in the kitchen.

The tea ceremony started with sweets.

Pouring the matcha

You turn the cup around and make sure not to drink from the side with the picture.

Playing games outside this farmhouse.

In front of the cherry blossom.

Our tour guide

We then went to Kozaki Town to a roadside stop.  Here was another highlight where we were able to make our own miso soup and eat a traditional Japanese meal.  Then we looked around the Fermentation Market where they were selling the saké, miso, soy sauce and other fermented products. In Kozaki Town we also discovered that the nice Japanese toilets don’t only exist at the airport. These are a major step up from everywhere else we travelled in South East Asia.

Making miso soup

our meals

green tea, gyoza, fish and 2 kinds of rice.

todaysJapanese house

On our next stop we went to the town of Sawara.  Here we  learnt about the Sawara Grand Festival in which the ginormous wooden floats (dashi) stand four metres high.  On the top floor of each float is a 4-5 metre lifelike doll of heroes from Japanese history or folk tales. Some dolls are made of natural materials like rice or barley straw from renowned doll-makers in Tokyo.  The floats are decorated with wood carvings around the float sides done by master carvers. We learnt that to move the four wheeled floats around the town they push and pull and use a Teko (lever) which is 4 metres long and 20kg to move or stop the float.  It is put into the gap between the wheel and the float today to control speeding, steering, and stopping of a float.

This is a miniature version of the festival. The two sides of the canal have floats.

Wood carvings on the float.

Canal

This is a doll house.

Doll house.

Sawara was an important port town located on the banks of the Tone River used to transport rice, saké, and soy sauce. We walked around the town and admired the shrines and quaint buildings and towns along the canal.  We stopped by the former residence of Inoh Tadataka. Inoh was a surveyor and cartographer that became the first man to create the map of Japan based on an actual survey. At the age of 55 he walked throughout the country, across the islands under many survey missions, combining the smaller maps he created from each journey, to form the whole map of Japan—so similar to the ones drawn by satellites that you see today.

Some of his tools.

stove for rice.

His statue with a stranger.

We hopped back aboard the coach bus and may have had a little nap on the way back to the airport. Since we ate a traditional Japanese meal today we decided to have good ole Mickey D’s.  At least I tried the Japanese version of a chicken burger -teriyaki of course. We boarded the plane shortly after for our 8.5 hour flight to Vancouver.

Japan was a place that we wish we had more time to visit.  We will definitely be coming back here.- Renelle

Number 4- Durian- on almost every street corner.  If you have smiled this fruit before, you know what we mean.

Number 3- Creepy crawlies- Every night we would see an abundance of cock roaches and rats.  They would send shivers up our spines and make us laugh.

Number 2- Scams- Taxi scams and one restaurant that tried to scam us.  It made us constantly on guard at all times.  The abrupt business nature of Vietnam took a bit to get used to as well.

Number 1…..Traffic- Seriously, there are almost no rules on the roads.  All we know for sure is small yields to big and because pedestrians are small they always yield, even at cross walks.  Also, the honking of horns is really grating, non stop.

Number 10……. The Jeep Tour- the kids liked this one.  We drove 250 km in an old war jeep.  The exhaust was thick in the cab and the tour was expensive.  The kids liked handing out candy and soccer balls, the villages we went to were really excited to take pictures with us.

Number 9…..Waving Children- Over any of the other countries, Vietnamese children really liked seeing us.  They would be waving from everywhere and yelling out a hello to our kids.

Number 8……Beaches- Hoi An and Da Nang have some pretty good beaches.  We didn’t spend as much time as we would of liked but they were nice just the same.

Number 7….Old Town- This is in Hoi An.  It is really beautiful and at night comes alive with lanterns at every turn.  It also turns into just a walking street so no scooters.

Number 6…..Dragon Bridge – The bridge shoots fire out of the dragons mouth.  It seems that Da Nang has three really beautiful bridges but the dragon one was pretty neat.

Number 5…..Hoi An- We really liked this city.  It had a nice feel to it.

Number 4…..Food Tour- Just the parents went on this tour.  It was great walking around Hoi An and trying specialties.

Number 3….Bingo- It was a concert and bingo mixed into one.  Really fun!

Number 2….. Hoi An Eco Cooking Class- We all thoroughly enjoyed this.  It made us wish that we would of taken more cooking classses.  The workers were so amazing with our children and the food turned out pretty good.

Number 1…..Vinpearl Land- This place was so fun that we went twice!  When can you have a whole amusement park to basically yourself?  We loved this place!

March 6, 2019 – Today we moved from Hoi An to Da Nang.  It was a short 30 minute taxi ride.  We moved into a 2 bedroom apartment with a washing machine.  It was our first AirBnB in SE Asia.  We were looking forward to having a little more space here.  We explored the neighbourhood and didn’t do too much on this first day.  We found a highly rated restaurant not too far from us and had a very good Western meal there.  We met a man from Washington, DC that has been living in Vietnam for 8 years and now runs jeep tours.  He gave us his business card and we planned to look into it later.

We won’t be able to drive around like this much longer.

Very nice furniture in this apartment but not very comfortable. Hence, the pillow.

March 7 – We started the day going to  Thanh Tam Bakery and Coffee shop a place that employs people with disabilities.  The coconut coffee and pastries were delicious.  We then went to the beach and watched a group of people bringing in their nets.  They would wear a belt and tie it around the ropes and then use their body weight by leaning back and walking backwards.  Once they were far enough back they would untie and move themselves to the front of the rope and start the process all over.  When the fish made it to the beach they separated  the fish, took out the trash and jellyfish.  People were buying what they wanted right there.  Couldn’t get any fresher than that. We contacted the Mick, the American tour guide, after looking at his reviews and although the tour was fairly costly at the end of our trip we decided to do the tour the next day anyway.  The reviews online were good and we thought it would be good for the kids.

March 8 – Mick picked us up in his 1985 jeep that used to belong to the Viet Cong Army.   The shifter was a grenade, another one was a huge bullet and another a grenade launcher.  We toured through the mountains and stopped for coffee at a small roadside coffee shop, then we stopped to buy and eat fresh pineapple that was just picked.  While there we watched the neighbours loading up a water buffalo to take to work.  We also saw the carts that the water buffalo would pull to help the farmers.  We stopped at a stream and took some photos here.

Trying the pineapples.

This little girl’s shirt said the F word above a Nike swish.

Want chicken for supper?

Next stop, lunch, at the biggest town on the mountain.  This was one of the many restaurants in someones home which is very common here.  We didn’t know what we would be eating because there wasn’t a menu at this place.  It turned out to be Pho and all of us enjoyed it. Before leaving from the restaurant some kids recognized Mick and his jeep and the kids handed out lollipops to these kids.

The rest of the trip consisted of giving candy and soccer balls to kids along the way.  We were doing the things we tell our children to never do, taking candy from a stranger.  The people that live in the mountains are an ethnic minority group called the Co Tu people which rely on old agricultural methods for harvesting the rice, vegetables, and animals.  They are also known for their weaving and are often seen wearing their wicker baskets to transport goods.  We stopped in one village where there was a massive party going on with people of all ages.  We are not sure if this was related to International Women’s Day or a usual gathering for Friday afternoon.  This place was excited to see us and their partying moods were evident.  The people were picking up the boys and making sure their hats were off or at least lifted up to show their blond hair.  The women were taking selfies with Danika and myself.  Even one of the elder men came down with his walking stick to see the visitors in town.  The women were singing karaoke and dancing and were trying to get me to come into their hut and joined them.  I danced for a few seconds outside the hut but no one in our family really wanted to go in as they were all “feeling pretty good” and no one spoke a lick of English and I don’t even know what language they spoke.  It was kind of an awkward trip where our guide just stopped wherever the heck he wanted (when he needed a smoke) and nothing was planned he just drove around and had the kids hand out lollipops and soccer balls. When we would ask him a question he would answer it but then say “I think but I don’t know.”  He also was a great guide if you were not very intelligent and like people to state the obvious.  Things like, over here is a brand new gas station, see the banana trees, over here is a lake, etc.  Overall, the kids enjoyed it, minus the partying adults portion.

March 9 – Today as a reward for the kids getting their homework done we went to ……………………….. Vin Pearl Land.  It was a smoking 30 degrees Celsius this day.  There was so much we didn’t see the first time around so it was worth it for us to go back.  Today was busy so many Chinese tourists outside when we first arrived.  Even though today seemed busy compared to last there were only two rides we waited in line for and it was only a three minute wait.  The park was still pretty quiet for a “busy” day.  We went to the 3D art museum this time, which didn’t compare to the one we went to in Phuket.  We also went to the cultural village and saw examples of the houses of Vietnamese people over time.  Danika tried her hand at pottery and the boys attempted to make clay animals.  Of course we hit up the water park because it was so stinking hot.  We would put our shirts back on and go back to the amusement park with our bathing suits underneath to keep us cool.  About half way through the day the Bumper car employee was letting little kids drive on their own.  We decided that Gabe may as well drive on his own now since he had been taking turns driving with Shawn, Danika, or myself.  These kids were better drivers than the tourists attempting to drive bumper cars that clearly have never been behind the wheel of a real car.  Another highlite today was riding a new roller coaster.  One where your feet dangled and the track was above you.  Gabe was too small for this ride but he sat out like a champ and the rest of us loved this coaster.  Danika and Shawn braved the Swiss Tower where they rose up 85 metres before the big drop.  Someone had to take pictures so I guess I had to be that person.  Darn.  Our taxi driver came back to pick us up when the park closed.  It was another full day here.

a long house

this is the bed.

in the brick kiln

Shawn took this picture of the four of us on the roller coaster.

brave

too high

bumper car kids

you can see Sayer on here

March 10 – Our taxi driver had his friend pick us up today to take us to Lady Buddha this morning.  This is the tallest Buddha statue in Vietnam at 67 metres tall.  We paid $2 for a family pic which was hard to accomplish with so many people wandering around.  We also saw the Linh Ung Pagoda which is decorated with numerous dragons on the outside and three buddhas inside.  Outside the pagoda are 18 Arhat statues, conveying different emotions, to protect the main shrine.  We walked to a very good taco restaurant and had a quick walk on the beach today.  We came back to our apartment to get a break from the heat for awhile.  Later this evening we walked 30 minutes to the dragon bridge.  It is a beautiful bridge that changes colour and at 9:00 on the weekends and holidays it breathes fire and spits water.  It was a pretty interesting site to see.  We chose the right side to watch from because the people on the other side of the bridge get soaked with water and ran for it when the dragon started spitting water.  We made the trek back home with a fresh fruit stop on our way back.  – Renelle

looking at the fish

mmmm coconut coffee

chickens?

tacos for supper

a typical fruit stand

at the market

a view of Da Nang from the bridge

water

Mar 5, 2019- Yesterday I went to Vin pearl land it was fun.  my favourite ride was the Lost valley and bumper cars.  I was the legend (Dad helped).  There was a water park and a water show.

Mar 6, 2019 – Yesterday we did a cooking class.  Befour we cookd we went on a tiney sercle boat to fish for crabs and we cout one.  We made spring rolls. – Gabriel

Hoi an

-paddle bingo: paddle bingo is a type of bingo only played in Hoi an.  One paddle has 3 words, get one you get a yellow flag.  3 and it’s a red flag.  Gabe and Dan each won once.

-Vin pearl land: Amusement park to a water park it has it all.  Vin pearl land is every kid’s typical dream.  My personal favourite was bumper cars, Lost valley and Super Chaos. Bumper cars was more of a boys thing.  The water park was really good.  My favourite was the tube toilet bowl.  Super chaos we thought it was broken when it started doing extra swings.  The Water Safari was cool.  And no it is not one of those cringey Disney one’s this one was real.  Tigers, lions, rhinos, zebras, you name it.  The free arcade was pretty sick, and yes it came with the price of admission.

-Cooking Class: Last but not least the Hoi an Cooking Class.  It started with some crab fishing (each boat got one).  We cooked 5 different meals some good some not.  One I wasn’t even willing to try.  The workers let us do it all, when they want to help they would ask.  IT WAS FUN. – Sayer

March 5th

Hoi An

In Hoi An we did many things.  We did bingo, went to vin pearl land and did a cooing class.  Which were all very fun and I will tell you about them.

Bingo, bingo in Hoi An is different from the bingo we play at home.  At home you pull a ball out of a wheel then you say the letter and number you pulled and everyone checks their cards.  Here in Hoi An there are two different singers who sing a song about love and pull out the cards which are not numbers but words and sing about them.  You get a flag for each word you have.  You only have three words, so the game is short.  The third flag is red which means you won.  Gabe and myself won and each got a lantern and CD.

Vin Pearl Land, Vin Pearl Land is an amusement park also with a water park attached to it.  Vin Pearl Land was very fun and it also only had about 200 people there that day even though it is new.  There were no lines.  The only times you had to wait was for more people to come or five minutes. Then you just go.  At the water park there were many slides.  My favourites were the rainbow ones which were 6 slides red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple all lined up.  You take a mat and slide down on your belly. It was very steep and fast.  My second favourite waterslide was the toilet bowl. You go on a two person tube down the waterslide.  My favourite ride at the amusement park was Super Chaos. It went up and down and spun and was very fun.

Cooking class, Cooking class was very cool.  We made sweet and sour fish sauce which I didn’t really like. Fresh spring rolls which I liked. Banana Flower Salad with shrimp I liked the shrimp but not so much the salad part.  Rice Crispy Pancake (not the treat) which was ok, and AuBergine with soyasauce. Which when we cooked the sauce went on fire it was fun to cook but didn’t taste very good.

That was our time in Hoi An. -Danika

Feeding the giraffe on the River Safari at Vin Pearl Land.

The Super Chaos Ride.

March 5 – We booked a family cooking class.  I researched a lot of classes and found Hoi An Eco Cooking Class. It was supposed to be hands on and really good for children, well it exceeded our expectations.

We started the tour with a tour of a local market.

We then went for a ride on round fishing boats through a coconut tree forest.

Local fisherman putting on a display for us.

We even got to try a bit of crab fishing.

We learned the old way of making rice paper, from grain to paper.

We got to try our hand at making, sweet and sour fish sauce, fresh spring rolls, banana flower salad, rice crispy pancake and aubergine with soya sauce.

The kids did amazing with this and the staff could not of been better and more attentive.  The flambé was the highlight.

I loved how they asked the kids permission to help them instead of just grabbing stuff and doing it.  This was a great morning and we got to eat what we cooked. – Shawn

March 1 – Now that we are in the last bit of our trip we are starting to REALLY miss home.  Renelle finally got her bangs cut.  The lady didn’t want to take any money because of how quick it was.  We had to pretty much throw the money down for her to take it.  We went to Old Town again and Renelle and I got to share a few games of bingo with the kids.  Gabriel was our big winner.

One of the historic sites in Ancient Town. On old Vietnamese house.

The old house.

We found an excellent restaurant. Passionfruit chicken.

The street at night.

Ready for BINGO

Gabriel wins a lantern and Vietnamese CD!

Winner.

Our crew

Danika is hoping for a win

More night photos

March 2 – We went to check out the other beach in Hoi An (Cam Thanh) and then we went to Old Town to find a lantern (for Danika).  We then played a couple more games of bingo with Danika being our big winner.

Old Town river’s edge

BIG WINNER!

Some toads on our way home.

March 3 – Nothing to report.

March 4 – Today we went to Vin Pearl Land Amusement Park.  This place is less then 1 year old and is pretty cool.  It has a large water park,

a river safari,

large amusement park,

Us in a long line up.

free arcade, musical water fountain show,

cultural shows and more.  We were here all day and could not take everything in.  It was also not busy, the longest line we waited in was two people ahead of us on a waterslide. We were often the only people on the ride. It was a really good day! – Shawn

Feb 26 – We decided to go to Hoi An today.  It is only a 30 minute taxi ride and is the main reason we have came to Vietnam.  Hoi An is as advertised, it is awe inspiring and really relaxed for the most part.  Our Homestay is nice as we have an extra room to stretch out into, the boys have made this their race track room.  On our way out to check out the markets we were approached by a English guy.  He was “giving” away these tickets, some promotion.  Well Danika and myself won a hat that he said we could go to the river later and claim.  Renelle then opened hers and “won” either a iPhone X, 7 nights accommodations or $250.  The kids really wanted to check this out so we agreed to go.  It was a time share spiel.  Anyways after being whisked around Hoi An, a free lunch, some drinks and getting to see their “members only” resort we declined investing $12000 USD and took our prize of 7 days accommodations.  It was interesting at least.

We then checked out a bit more of Hoi An.

Kids found a bouncy castle again.

Japanese Bridge at night

Feb 27 – We spent the whole day checking out Old Town, really cool place.

Us people watching.

This lady asked us if we wanted to take pictures.

It was heavy.

And then she asked us if we wanted to buy some bananas.

Feb 28- We decided to go to An Bang Beach.  As we walked onto the beach a lady asked if we wanted to sit in her loungers, all we had to do was buy lunch from her restaurant.  Seemed fair to us so we sat and the kids enjoyed the ocean.  We got some drinks and then our kids were hungry so we sent them up to sit at the restaurant.  They ordered a pizza, fries and smoothies.  The lady was really harping on us about us eating as well.  We said we would eat in a little bit.  Anyway, Renelle ordered Spring Rolls and I was not hungry so didn’t order anything.  We had three workers around us, almost yelling that we did not order enough.  They said that a pizza only counts as one meal.  It was intense!  After us trying to explain that our kids cannot possibly eat three pizzas and us threatening to leave they calmed down.  It was brutal!

Renelle and I had a walking Food Tour booked for the evening, so the kids had an electronic evening in our Homestay.  The food on our tour was phenomenal, we went to many specialty places,

White Rose production.

I tried Balut (it actually was not that bad),

we ate at a lady’s house,

Spring Rolls

Fresh Spring Rolls

Quail Egg Pancakes

Tapioca and banana

The cook (in apron)

a boat ride and even got to play bingo, a special game only played in Hoi An.  There were only 4 of us in our group and our guide Jackie was amazing! – Shawn

Feb 24- After pricing out a flight and realizing the train takes 18 hours to get to Da Nang, we flew with Jetstar.

Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)

We checked into our hotel and decided to search out some grub.  We found a busy restaurant with a lot of Vietnamese people eating there.  It even had a guy blasting karaoke.  They started us off with some quail eggs that Gabriel loved!

I was ordering and thought the waiter spoke English, so what we thought we were getting and what we got was very different, it was still pretty tasty.

Feb 25- Everyone was feeling a bit off today.  We really mainly hung around our hotel, but we did manage to check out the beach which was nice.

Side surf board holder.

Da Nang is a lot more relaxed then Saigon so this was a welcomed reprieve.

Feb 26- We took a taxi to the Night Market and then made the long walk back to our hotel. – Shawn

Feb 22 – We decided to leave Cambodia behind with a 7 hour bus ride from Phnom Penh to Saigon.  This is our last country of our trip.  It was kind of sad to leave Cambodia because we really loved it!  All of us thoroughly enjoyed our time there.

Once we got off the bus, taxi drivers met us to take us to our hotel.  I made sure that the guy had a meter as we heard about scams with taxi’s.  The guy had great English and was very nice.  Until our drop off….. he stopped a 1/2 block away from our hotel saying that he could not go down our street.  He stopped and did not help us get out.  His meter said 680,000 Dong.  I was paying as the kids and Renelle are taking the luggage out of the trunk on a busy street.  The guy was giving money, taking money.  I mean I am dealing with hundreds of thousands.  Anyway, once the dust settled and he sped off, I realized I ended up paying him over 1,000,000 Dong. We read online that there are 3 legitimate companies (not this guy).  His meter quadrupled in speed and he did everything to the tee that it says online.  Arghhhh.  Lucky for my 1,000,000 Dong is about $50.  Needless to say we are only taking cabs from the legitimate companies.  We walk up to our hotel and see this sign………….  It actually ended up turning out as the room was spacious, clean and had two air conditioners.  We were so excited to see this last name (a friend of ours last name), Renelle took a picture.  Little did we know that the Nguyen’s own the whole city, this name was everywhere.

We decided to head out for a meal and found a restaurant with every kind of seafood imaginable.  It ended up being a Chinese restaurant, the food was greasy and not great.  So we headed to our hotel and called her a day.

Feb 23 – We found a great bakery by our hotel, apparently one is not safe on the sidewalks in this city.  Gabriel and Shawn almost got ran over on two separate incidents while we were clearly on a side walk in front of a business.  We had our first taste of Vietnamese food and enjoyed it.  We then headed out for the War Remnants Museum.  This place was so disturbing that I could not take it all in.  It really makes one question USA’s motive in the whole Vietnam war.  Obviously this was strongly from the Vietnamese perspective but the atrocities that were committed on innocent civilians was morbidly shocking.  Never mind, the  after effects that this war has left the Vietnamese people with.

“Tiger boxes”, prisoners were kept in here for days on end. This seemed to be the least amount of torture done to the Vietcon.

We wanted to lighten the mood with our family so we went to Viacom Mall, in the hopes of bumper cars, arcades and fun.  Apparently, all of this is shut down in this mall now.

Later in the night we went to the Ben Thanh Night Market and looked around.  We walked further down the street and found the food market.  They had two really good singers here and the food was really good.

Upon, realizing that Saigon is WAY TOO BUSY for us we decided to take a flight to Da Nang tomorrow.  – Shawn