Time to back it up to Tokyo, we were there over a month ago. It is hard to believe how time flies! Seriously, we have been here for over a month and I know we have done so much, but at the same time it feels like we don’t have enough time, it is such a paradox.

Tokyo was our first stop on our Japan trip, as expected it was a metropolitan city like many others, there were tall buildings, an advanced transit system and lots of places to eat with a dabble of history. Tokyo gently eased us into the cultural subtleties that Japan would introduce us to. Tokyo felt safe and friendly and we had no problem wandering the streets in search of good food and tourist sites.

As usual, Ed had done a great job of finding places for us to eat, including the first night when we arrived and he planned for us to go to a nearby ramen place. We never did find that place, but instead we found a quaint little local bar that was one of my favourite meals of the entire trip. The food was yummy, but the experience was really what made it memorable. We wandered in and were greeted by 5 business men drinking beer and one waitress who quickly realized that our lack of Japanese and her lack of English was going to be an issue, but she remedied it by asking the business men for help. They got as far as to getting us beer and then she disappeared into the back and then re-emerged with a man who we guessed was the chef. Turns out he was the chef and owner and spoke enough English to understand that we would eat whatever he recommended. He seemed delighted by the fact that we were giving him a chance to show off his skills and continuously came out of the kitchen with small plates of food. The first dish was cheese springrolls, my personal favourite and a dish I continued to talk about for the rest of the trip. The springrollls were followed by a chicken dish, a beef dish and finally a thick piece of seared bacon.

Tokyo continued to please us with more eating adventures.

As I think back to our Tokyo trip, I remember rain. Each day we were there was a mixture of wet snow or rain, which only dampened our mood slightly as we searched for recommended foodie spots. Like the morning we got up extra early to go and eat sushi breakfast. We arrived shortly after 6am and were not the first ones there. There was a lineup for the tiny restaurant and we waited for nearly 2 hours before finally getting into the infamous omakase breakfast. The sushi breakfast included 13 courses of super fresh sushi and 3 excited sushi chefs who seemed to be performing sushi theatre for us. The restaurant sat 15 people around a sushi bar were each course was served on a continuous bar top. Each piece of sushi was announced by our chef and we were told whether or not to add soya sauce depending on where the fish was from. Each piece was super fresh, including the surf clam that was still moving when it was served to us. To the dismay of our chef, I let Ed eat my piece and he seemed disappointed that I didn’t like it. I thoroughly enjoyed almost all the pieces except the baby shrimp one which was a little too slimey for my liking. It was definitely worth trying and the long wait.

And then there was the foodie adventure that took us down a dark alley to a hidden ramen place. Another recommendation that Ed dug up clues on and eventually found, the restaurant is marked by a large bone outside a black cloth vestible, certainly not a place you would just stumble into without knowing it was there. It was like we found a sercret society. This place only sat 5 people, we arrived early for dinner, around 5:30pm so we were the first of the dinner crowd. The man who runs the little shop jumped into action when we arrived. We were not the first tourists to find this place, he was prepared with an English menu with 5 dishes you could order. We ordered 2 ramen meals and watched as he got down to business. He fired up the soup pot, sliced pork and set the timer for the noodles. He had his method perfected to the second. As the soup boiled, he placed the noodles in a bowl, ladled the soup over top and lay the meat for presentation and served it to us with a bowl of fried onions for garnish. The broth was flavourful and the noodles cooked to order, we both thought the soup was a bit salty, but still very tasty.

I swear, we did do other things than eat…although it doesn’t really seem like it 🙂

Jenn

Nearly 3 weeks of backpacking, 3 overnight trains, 7 cities later, with 12kg of custom clothes and souvenirs and our tour of Vietnam is complete. We experienced Vietnam from north to south, starting in Hanoi and ending in Ho Chi Minh with stops in Hue, Khe San, P’rao, Hoi An, and Nha Trang.

Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city are the capitals of the north and south and were the bookends of our trip. I think these cities still possess a lot of their history and cultural roots, while being influenced by a surgence of motorized vehicles, tourism and KFC. These cities are flooded with motorcycles that obviously follow the mantra of organized chaos. The street can appear to be a one way street until your taxi or bus has to turn down it and then you realize that lanes actually run both ways depending on the traffic light. The tour guides speak with Aussie accents and say “mate”, the menus have pizza and pasta dishes, and everywhere you look there is another hotel. KFC is the only foreign restaurant that we saw in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city.

From Hanoi, we took our first overnight train. It was a Livitrain which are the “luxury” trains of the route. That means you get a bottle of water and a cup of noodles in the morning, you are guaranteed air conditioning and the sheets were slightly nicer, it also means only foreigners pay the extra fees to be on it. This was our longest overnight ride starting at 7pm and ending at nearly 8am the next morning. Ed and I took the upper bunks, we chatted with our fellow passengers, a guy from England and a lady from France, both traveling on their own; until it was time to sleep. It was a little difficult at the beginning and I woke up each time the train stopped at a station, eventually I got the hang of it for a not so restful sleep. This train ride was the first of three so the experience was still intriguing and even slightly enjoyable, this can not be said for the other 2 rides.

Getting to Hue by train seemed like a mission accomplished and being picked up by Hieu and Ngoc our motorcycle tour guides was the icing on the cake! We would spend 5 days with them exploring a more local view of inner Vietnam. I really enjoyed the tour more than I thought I would, we got a private history lesson about the war and Vietnamese culture from Hieu, we shared meals at local spots, and to see Vietnam at the same level as the locals and not from a tour bus. Even though my butt was in need of a rest by the ended of it, I missed seeing them in the morning the next day.

When we arrived in Hoi An, I was excited to get to tour around on our own and by foot. We stayed for 5 days, the longest leg of our trip for the anticipated custom tailor shops. There are nearly 600 custom tailors in Hoi An and each one is distinct and the identical to the shop next door at the same time. I liked Hoi An the most, it was a relaxing pit stop in our trek from north to south and it was a good mixture of traditional architecture, local food spots, folk customs and shopping!

From Hoi An, we took the train to Nha Trang for a 2 day retreat from doing anything. We stayed in a beautiful resort on the beach and did nothing but work on our tans. And by pure coincidence ended up bumping into Ed’s cousin by marriage, they haven’t seen each other since they were kids.

And for the third time, we took the train to Ho Chi Minh city. This ride was the shortest, but the anticipation and my imagination made waiting for it very stressful and the delay made it almost unbearable, but we made it. By this point, we were fairly travelled out and the weather had heated up to the 30’s, so I think as a result HCMC has left the least lasting impression on me. I did however enjoy the market where we got quite a few souvenirs and I practiced my bargaining techniques.

Lessons learned from this trip:
1. In bigger cities, trust the hotel chains that have 4 or 5 hotels in the city, they know what they are doing.
2. Don’t always trust tripadvisor reviews.
3. Taking the train for the experience is fun, but then after that fly.
4. Good tour guides make all the difference.

I really enjoyed our getaway to Vietnam. Vietnam is a country shaped by war, there is history, tragedy, and reunification that bonds and divides the country. I learned a lot about the American War.

Jenn

We like to think of ourselves as foodies. We pride ourselves on finding unique local food spots that are either famous, labelled as the best or must tries as well as the occasional stumbled upon finds that are shockingly delightful and sometimes our most memorable experiences. We do this at home and with every trip we go on, people usually make fun of us that our vacation albums are filled more of pictures of food then of ourselves. Food is our passion.

Usually when we go on trips, we are likely to have one or two mishaps, a place be closed or not as good as we expected. Since this trip is like compiling many trips into one, we were bound to have more of this occurrences and there has been no shortage of them. Often part of the fun for us is the scavenger hunt like game we play to find the place, we have a map, some tidbits of clues from blogs and sometimes a picture of what the signage looks like. Sometimes we wander up and down side streets looking for the infamous establishment and when we find it, we are so excited that maybe it makes the meal taste even better.

However, there are the few times where we have food blunders. Like, after ordering what the place is famous for, we order a few more dishes and those dishes just are no where near comparison. This trip has resulted in more than a few mishaps, the time when the place wasn’t there at all was a little less than humorous. I was feeling under the weather but was up to helping Ed find a place that was supposed to be where Ma Po tofu was invented. With our treasure map in hand, a few clues from blogs, we took the bus to the intersection and began wandering up and then down the street. Finally, we asked a street vendor about the address and she pointed at the one we had been standing outside of, so we went into ask if we were at the right place and it turns out the restaurant we were looking for had moved to Beijing! Ok, it is a little humorous… I wouldn’t trade in our adventures for anything, I love them!

Inspire yourself!

Jenn