the Friedman fam meets Nam and Cambodia!

Warning: this is a long one...2 countries worth of stories :)

The first day in vietnam I was welcomed by my family and our tour guide named Fat ( or in the words of Don Friedman..."Fat boy") the ironic part is he was skinny! We take a van over the bridge where I was first introduced to thousands of motorbikes. I have never seen so many of these things in my life! It was like being in NYC traffic except all the cars are motorbikes! We shortly get to our 5 star hotel where I am in shock because the words 5 and star hadn't been in my budget the whole trip. By that point it was time for lunch and if it hadn't been for my newly found adventurous palate, we probs would have ended up at KFC. After a hearty vietnamese lunch we ventured to get dresses made. I was told there would be tons of stores that could custom make literally any dress as long as I had pictures...that was only half true. They got the sundress down to a tee, but the BCBG dress needs work! Next up: a war museum, the hard rock cafe, and in search of pepto bismal for mom. Charades came in handy at the pharmacy until they tried to give her acid reflux meds for an upset stomach!

That night we went to another vietnamese restaurant for dinner, but I'd have to say, crossing the street was more exciting then that meal! That's partly because there are no cross walks in vietnam and ur saposed to just slowly cross in the middle of traffic as the motorbikes dodge around people!

After dinner I managed to drag dad and matt to a famous bar called Apocalypse to meet up with pretty much all of semester at sea...it was a great night!

The next day we met our tour guide bright and early to go see the Cuchi tunnels...aka the enemy tunnels. We got to not only crawl through the tunnels where vietnamese people lived for over 20 years, but dad and matt also got to shoot an M16!

After that adventure we decided to take another through the streets around our hotel in search of lunch. I was in search of more vietnamese food, but somehow we ended up at a Japanese sushi restaurant...go figure! The rest of the afternoon was spent at markets where we found a replica of my ship (I guess they know semester at sea pretty well), DVDs for literally 50 cents, all the usual fake stuff, and of course a traditional vietnamese hat (the triangle looking ones with the chin strap). That was the first time I got to show off my new found bargaining skills to dad and he was so impressed he had me doing all the bargaining for the family!

That night I took the friedman family to the ship for dinner...they were quite impressed with life style for the semester.

The next day we woke up early and flew to Siem Reip, Cambodia! This country was literally the easiest visa process ever.... I walked in the airport in Cambodia, paid $20, gave a passport picture, waited 5 min. And voila....I'm allowed to be in Cambodia!

It was a short drive and great scenery to our hotel. We were driving on a newly paved road and all along the way seeing 5 star hotel after 5 star hotel. Our tour guide told us there used to only be 5 hotels and now there's about 150!

We were greeted at the hotel with a green "welcome drink"....we're not sure what it was, but we were sure it tasted funny! The hotel was incredible! The hotel itself was open air and very spacious, but the rooms were enclosed with air conditioning thank goodness! After walking past the front lobby, There was the most incredible, huge blue pool surrounded by lots of greenery and big comfy lounge chairs.

The two days in Siem Reip were spent sight seeing 5 temples, a dinner show, and a ship where silver was hand carved. The 5 temples literally looked like they came out of movies. One temple known as "the jungle temple" was actually used in the movie Tomb Raiders. All of the temples we saw were hand made from lava and sand stone thousands and thousands of years ago! Today they are sadly falling apart, but they are doing their best to restore them. The temples were either buddhist or hindu and mostly used today for tourists, though there were buddhist shrines in a few for people to pray and wish good luck on their family and friends. The last temple was we saw was Ankor Wat (aka a world wonder). This was by far the best of the 5 we saw! There was a long walkway over a moat to get to the temple before we hit the intricately carved entrance. I thought the entrance was pretty cool, after walking through and seeing the temple, I thought twice. It was 3 stories high and more intricately carved than the entrance. Words can't even describe how awesome this temple was!

We flew back to vietnam after our short trip to cambodia and had one day left to visit another world wonder...the Mekong Delta (the 7th longest river in the world!). We ended up having a small boat meant for 12 people just for our family and 2 tour guides! First we stopped at a coconut harvesting place where we learned they use coconuts for everything...including to make a lamp! We tried interesting fruits like one that looked kinda like a grape, but it had a shell in the inside and a big black seed on the inside. Next we took a horse drawn open carriage to a small family business where they make and sell Honey. They also had a huge snake for us to hold, but we said no thanks...friedmans and snakes don't mix well. After some sweet hot tea and a small game of vietnamese hacky sack we headed back to the delta but this time on small gandela like boats. We split up 3 and 3 and took the small boats back to our original boat. Next stop was learning how to make coconut candy...or rather watching people make coconut candy and us buying it. The last stop on the delta was lunch where the greeter was a huge water buffalo tied to the ground through a string in its nose! Ouch!

we sit at a table under a grass hut surrounded by a dirty moat and lots of greenery. 5 min later we see some one walking towards us with a deep fried fish held upright with 4 pegs. Literally they had pulled a fish from their pond, stuck the WHOLE thing in the deep fryer and served the WHOLE fish teeth and all to us! Surprisingly it was quite tasty!

The rest of the time I had that day with the fam. Was spent a another market of course. I found more DVDs while mom talked dad into buying place mats. Little did they know the place where I bought my DVDs had just taken my credit card somewhere to be charged...dad didn't like hearing that! I was soon after that being dragged across 3 busy intersections by a girl younger than me to get my credit card. She literally would grab my arm and lead me through the traffic of motorbike to get my credit card and then back again. It all happened so fast that my parents didn't even realize I was gone!

Well that's how the Friedman's do Vietnam and Cambodia...and if you cant smell it already, look out for india next!