Lotus Blanc

Wow!  Talk about service. We stayed at the Lotus Blanc Resort in Siem Reap. This place was pretty darn super for $100/night... and we only paid $30/night. Fresh coconut juice greeting by the manager upon our arrival. The room was huge and the bathroom brand new (with two sinks!!!). While being slightly politely interrogated by the manager during the arrival greeting, we let it slip that we had just got married thirteen months ago. On our second night there, the manager showed up at our door with a bottle of champagne and a chocolate cake, compliments of the house. The breakfast was awesome and the pool area was beautiful. This may just sound like an advertisement, but it's hard to say enough good things about this place. 

Yeah, Baby!

We took a detour on the way from Nha Trang to Siem Reap, Cambodia and stopped back by the Saigon Airport for a layover. We'd like to thank the airport and iTunes for making what could have been an irritating layover a rather enjoyable experience.  We were just looking for a place to sit and found these couches that also just happened to be serviced by a nearby restaurant. So we got the best pho we'd had in a week and watched Austin Powers on the iPad. Enjoyable indeed. 

Excellent Timing

When we decided we had had our fill of Vinpearl Land, we started heading over to the gondola (who are we kidding, we headed over to the soft serve ice cream that was in the general direction of the gondola).  The moment we were handed our cones, it began to rain (who are we kidding, a torrential downpour erupted). We were under cover, for the most part, getting from the park to the hotel and from the hotel to the restaurant for dinner, which was a good thing, because unlike most afternoon showers here, this one did not quit after a short while. When we left the restaurant, there were no taxis to be found, because we were walking down the middle of the street in knee-heigh water. OOHHH, that's why all the store fronts are two feet above the sidewalk which is a foot above the street.   We made it back to the hotel just fine (who are we kidding, we made it to the nearest unaffected massage parlor and had our toes and feet and legs cleaned and massaged for an hour...then made it back to the hotel).   

Docket Day 3: Vinpearl Land

Some would say that it is a bit ridiculous to go to a theme park while touring a place like Southeast Asia. I mean, come on. These things are found everywhere across the US. But we took the experience less as a day of riding rides and playing games in a western-like amusement park, and instead just soaked in the differences of the place and how the natives rode the rides and played the games.  Differences such as how the rides were actually called "games."  So no one there rode any rides. They actually played the roller coaster game and played the pirate ship game. And when it came to the actual games, there were absolutely no noisy barkers calling on people to pop balloons with darts or to throw hoops. Instead, overstuffed animal toys were won by playing first-person shooter video games and underwater video slot machines--all of which were ten times louder than any barker I've ever heard. I went on ONE water park ride there. After I retrieved my heart from my lower intestine, I staggered back to find Nikki on the pristine white sand beach that lined the entire park and washed off the fear in the ocean. 

One of the coolest things about this place was that it was on an island just off the coast and, you travelled there on a gondola that crossed the waters of the South China Sea. 

The aquarium also deserves note. It was so cool walking through a glass tunnel with sharks and sea turtles swimming around and above you. 

Docket Day 1.1: Cooking: Market

This market deserved a few extra pics. There was not just raw meat flying everywhere, there were also live turtles, eels, lobster, fish, chickens, and frogs crawling, slithering, snapping, flopping, running, and hopping everywhere.  

Cheesy

While we were really enjoying the whole "we're on vacation!" aspect of food gluttony, we started to get tired of the traditional SE Asian tourist fare, which consisted of either broth or fried everything.  It's no secret that we love pizza and have made it our mission to eat pizza at every Seattle pizza joint there is (and there are many). So we decided to broaden--or stretch, toss, or press, depending on your preference--our horizons and make it our mission to eat pizza at every pizza joint there is...in the world. Yeah, mission impossible. But it's worth a try. We started in Nha Trang. Sadly, this venture did not consist of partaking in a local take on the American-made Italian dish, but rather just a tourist spot with pizza that happened to be in Vietnam. But it also happened to be super duper!

Roll in the, hey!

There was a huge open common in the middle of the strip on the beach. During the day, it was generally completely empty. During the night, it was filled with...get this...people rollerblading. 

Docket Day 1: Cooking

Up early for 6am 5k run and breakfast. Then headed down the street to start our full-day cooking class at Lanterns restaurant. The class started with cyclo (rickshaw) rides to the local market. They say it's local because "you can buy 'anything' except souvenirs." We bought all of our fresh ingredients there and hopped back on the cyclos and headed back to the restaurant, where we prepared fresh spring rolls, clay pot grouper, and mango flambé. It was all pretty darn super. 

Docket Day 2: Bicycle

Another early start to the day. We filled up on the hotel's breakfast buffet (which was not nearly as good as Ruby's) and headed to Vietnam Active to meet up with our guide for the full-day bike tour. The tour began with a leisurely ride through the city (yes, that's sarcasm, since there are no stop signs in the city, there are traffic lights at only ten percent of the intersections, and no one actually abides by the traffic lights at all). But we were out of the city pretty quickly, and cruising alon the countryside. To be clear--because it was not clear to me when and if we were on or going to the "countryside"--the countryside is a cement path about ten feet wide that winds through the jungle forest between little villages. I make this clear, because the tour literature and the tour guide kept using the term, and when I think if countryside, I think of a highway running through wide open spaces. Anyway, We made our way to the base of the nearest mountain and took a right. That's a right up it, I mean. It Was a good thing they supplied us with super nice, rugged mountain bikes, because there was some steep rock climbing going on. A first for both of us and super fun. We headed down the other side of the mountain and made our way to the Ancient House, where we swam in the beautiful pool and ate a yummy lunch. On the way back through the countryside, we stopped for some fresh sugar cane and made it back to the city just in time to get the massages that came with the tour...what a deal -- bikes, drinks, lunch, guide, multiple stops for treats, and a 60-minute massage to boot, all for only $65/person. 

Beach!

We arrived early in the afternoon  in Nha Trang, Vietnam's vacationland beach city, fully equipped with a Disneyland-esque amusement park. We checked in to our half-star hotel and went to the "gym" (that glass box containing the workout machines was super hot and even more smelly). We immediately decided to hit the beach instead, for the most grueling 5k ever. It was sooo hot and sooo humid and sooo hard, and we sooo loved and enjoyed doing it!

More, Please.

Last night in Saigon. We took a tip from Trip Advisor and went to a local restaurant a bit outside of the tourist district. We were not disappointed. The waitress spoke a little English and told us how typical Vietnamese diners usually order (courses, tapas style), and she also made recommendations. We had a feast! It was so much food and so awesome and so twenty five bucks. 

After dinner, we went to one of the many shopping malls inside the city for the best mochi we've ever had. It's  the only mochi we've ever had, but it was spectacular. So spectacular, in fact, that we braved ATM fees to get cash, so we could have second and even third helpings of the stuff. 

Boredom

Nicknamed Michael Rodney Boltonfield, this guy was a huge trip. Loud, large, and mos def in charge... of those snakeskin sandals and belt, anyway. Helped us pass the time waiting for our next flight to Nha Trang.