Day 14 - To the Mountains

Today we went up into the mountains to a type of retreat that you would never knew even existed. The drive there was beautiful. One of the most interesting things about being out in the countryside is to see the differences between there and the cities. I love that you can see a brand new, very nice home right next to a run down shack (with a satellite dish on the top!). I tried several times to get pics of oxen pulling a cart, but the car was going too fast to get a good shot.
This is a family burial plot that is out in the middle of their farming land. They just farm around it, leaving the shrines untouched.

As we walked up the steps at the retreat, there was this dragon that was playing kinda strange music. There were steps from the bottom to the top, where the mouth is. Van said that people walk up through that to rid themselves of bad spirits and stuff. She said its really scary in those things!

Here is Holly sitting on a zebra. She really, really loved the elephant, and I had a great picture going, but then Hung wanted in the picture too, and Holly was super annoyed by that, so that photo sucks.

Up at the temple, there was a guy who might have been a monk. He told us a little about what all was there and things we could do. Around the temple, there were wood carvings of each animal in the Chinese zodiak. I took a picture of Holly hugging the pig. The pig was much more attractive in person than he appears in this picture!

Here is one of the two temples at the top of the hill.

Oh, Van! Such respect for the monks!

Both of Van's cousins went with us. Here are the girls sitting on a turtle. They pretty much had to sit on every animal we went by and wanted me to take their pictures on every single one.

This was a really pretty pool with dolphins spouting water into it. It sat right between the two temples.

We stopped to have tea and cold drinks here before moving on. When Holly was running over to Van, I thought she was going to keep going right through the space between the bars, go right over the edge of the platform, and tumble down the side of the mountain. She's really good at scaring me these days!

Half of this retreat was on one side of the river and the other half was on the other side. You had to go across a bridge above this river to get to the other side.

This is the bridge, which swayed as you walked and had boards that weren't all that sturdy. I got about 20 steps out onto the bridge and said NO WAY!!! I told everyone else to go anyway, but they didn't listen to me.

So we went back to sit on a platform where the girls used me to run round and round.

Holly "borrowed" Hung's princess crown and Hung just about went ballistic! She is really cute, but she's also quite a brat. She wants whatever Holly has (ie taking Holly's binkie out of her mouth, which doesn't endear her to Holly), but she certainly doesn't want Holly to have anything of hers.

The monk came to tell us that there was another way to get to the other side of the river by car. So down the mountain we went, hopped in the car, and drove to the other side. There, they had fruit trees you could pick from, and a super cool (not literally) place that was underneath these plants where they had picnic and rest areas set up for groups of people to go and relax. I don't know what kind of plants they were, but they were tall and it was like being in a type of forest.

They had hammocks for people to nap in.

And some super cool buildings.

When we were in Hanoi, I saw some fruit on a tree and Hai tried to describe what it was, but apparently we don't have that type in the US at all. They had the same fruit on trees here and we had some of it at lunch. Van said its her dad's favorite, but it must be an acquired taste, because it wasn't all that yummy to me.

After some more drinks, we headed back to where we started from and then back to Nha Trang.

Holly slept in the car, then refused to nap at all once back at the hotel. She finally fell asleep at about 4:10. I had to wake her up at 4:45 to go eat dinner. I'm sure you can imagine how thrilled we both were with that! We ate at a place that we had eated one other night, and Holly ate almost my entire plate of rice by herself. Van planned to go back out to Vin Pearl Land to the water park, but I asked her to bring Holly & I back to the hotel and they could go. I didn't want to be stuck out there until who knows how late with a tired, crabby kid.

They went to the beach instead, and we came back to the hotel. Holly took a bath and then played with her piggie while running around naked.

She asked me to take a picture of her naked bum, which I did, but you don't get to see that! She did the chicken dance for me and had lots of fun.

I was hoping that Holly would go to bed early or at least close to a regular bedtime, but she just now fell asleep. Good thing we get to sleep in tomorrow!

I got my bags packed up tonight; we leave to go back to Ho Chi Minh City tomorrow. We will get to sleep in, eat a late breakfast, and then pretty much head to the airport. I am looking forward to getting to HCMC.

Last night, I had my first dream about going home. I was eating McDonalds and Red Robin in my dream! I guess my brain is just getting ready for leaving on Wednesday night. Just in the last 2 days have I started looking forward to coming home. I guess that means its about time, right?