We are spending our fourth evening in Beijing doing some more work on uploading pictures from Cambodia. What's kind of interesting about tonight is that its the first night that we've been in Beijing that we haven't had Peking Duck for dinner. Only they just call it Duck here. (For the simpletons reading this, Beijing and Peking are the same place)

We tried a different duck house on each of our three previous nights and we had to take a break because we think duck might actually contain more tryptophan than turkey and we were worried we might sleep through a day. Once we've tried a few more duck joints we'll have a report on which one was best. Though it hardly matters because any visitor to Beijing should do their own research and eat as much duck as possible, its delicious everywhere.

Today we visited the Forbidden City. If you are planning a visit to China just to see the Forbidden City, reschedule. At the moment, about a quarter of the main buildings are covered in scaffolding for restoration work before the Olympics hit town. The good news is that by the looks of it, the restoration work was much needed and the buildings that are already finished really do look fantastic, and the ones that haven't been done yet look pretty run down. I'm thinking fall of 2008 through late winter of 2009 will be a good time to visit. The Olypics will be over and the outdoor temperature should make the crowds a little bit more comfortable. The temperature today was actually pretty comfortable, it was hot but not oppressive. That is until we got into the Forbidden City. It was practically a mosh pit in some areas. Just wall to wall sweaty tourist flesh holding their cameras above their heads to get pictures of the things they couldn't actually see. It took a bit out of us.

Yesterday it rained, so we flipped through our lonely planet to find some indoor activities. We settled on a visit to the underground tunnel network that was built when China was worried about the Soviets invading, a peculiar sounding Daoist temple, and a belgian beer bar. All followed up by a randomly discovered middle eastern bar called Souk that had Sheesha available, and duck for dinner at Beijing DaDong Roast Duck Restaurant.

The tunnels were odd, wet, smelly and plastered with pictures of enemy ordinance. Oh, and there was a silk shop of course.

The temple we visited was the Dongyue Temple and it was peculiar as all get out. Its a big square and there are wee stalls in the walls of the square that house colorful sculptures of the netherworld beauracracy at work. Yes, I said netherworld beauracracy. Each stall represents a "department" and its function, for example: "The Department for Implementing 15 kinds of Violent Death". You can't make this up. There were maybe 50 departments, each with fairly good english descriptions of department's function. Pictures of the most interesting ones will of course follow in several weeks.

We then walked a couple of miles to the Belgian beer bar and watched "Jury Duty" (yes, that's a Pauly Shore movie) on HBO. It had stopped raining somewhere in the middle of the movie and we probably could have salvaged some more of the day for sightseeing, but a couple 8% beers each can be a fairly bad infuence. Instead we settled for a long walk to the Souk, followed by an early Duck dinner and called it a day.

Some of you may recognize that from Good Morning, Vietnam. The rest of you just think I'm weird.

After catching yet another sleeper train (our third in five nights--ouch), we arrived in Dong Hoi. It is on the coast and we stayed at a lovely beach resort with the most amazing sand. But the only real reason to visit here is the nearby Phong Nha - Ke Bang underground river and cave system. It is the world's longest underground river. Although it is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, nobody outside of Vietnam has ever heard of it until now. Matt and I were the ONLY non-Vietnamese tourists there. Out of many hundreds of people. So, if you ever go to Vietnam, be sure to check this place out. It was truly amazing.

On our way south, we visited the Vinh Muoc tunnels. During the fighting with US troops, the villagers dug out and lived in these tunnels off and on for a number of years. They were dark, hot, very small, and not easy to get around. But they had everything the villagers needed, including a maternity ward. 17 babies were born there.

Our next stop was the Hien Luong Bridge over the Ben Hai River, which is roughly aligned with the 17th parallel of lattitude. This was the boundary established by the Geneva Conference to separate North Vietnam from South Vietnam in 1954, after they fought for independence from France. It was also the mid-point of the DMZ, or demilitarized zone during the war that America was involved in.

Finally, we arrived in Hue, the homeland of a friend of ours (Hi, Vi!). We visited the Imperial Citadel, which was very architecturally interesting. From a historical perspective, it has seen a lot of fighting - most recently during the Tet Offensive of 1968. The Vietnamese are slowly catching on that they should keep their historic sites restored for the tourist dollars. This is one of the places they seem to have prioritized. In Hue, we also visited a few tombs and temples, all of which are set along the Perfume River. We took a boat out on the river (about 50 yards to the middle, where we stopped), and listened as some local musicians played Hue's traditional folk music. We also got to place paper lanterns in the river and make wishes on them. I must have forgotten to wish for health and wealth, and instead wished for something funny to happen, because all of a sudden the captain's eight-year-old daughter fell in the river. Not a problem, as she can swim just fine. But, man, did she look surprised.

Our next destination was Hoi An, which is basically a tourist town these days. It's an ancient city inspired by the Chinese and Japanese merchants that lived there. However, it's easy to miss the architectural joys when every building houses a souvenir shop. From Hoi An, we visited My Son Holy Land, which is a collection of ancient temples of the Cham people. These were nice, but not that impressive after seeing Angkor Wat a few weeks ago.

We flew to the vacation destination of Vietnamese locals, Nha Trang. We took a boat around some islands, which were all very crowded, snorkelled, then went back to the mainland to visit the mud baths, which were a new experience. Not much to report on Nha Trang, really.

Finally, we flew to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC, or Saigon). We visited the Reunification Palace and the War Remnants Museum. It had a fascinating, and surprisingly non-propagandist, photojournalist exhibit.

We also visited the Mekong Delta. It's a good thing we went in a boat driven by a professional, because I would have been lost inside three minutes. There are all kinds of canals and stuff carved into the Delta, which of course saw lots of bombing during the war. But it's thriving now, with floating markets and tourist spots like the place where they show you how to make rice candy and rice paper, or the big muddy factory where they make bricks. Matt sampled some snake rice wine, which mostly tasted like it was infused with chili peppers. It was a relaxing two days of floating around the Mekong Delta, even with its many souvenir stops.

Today, we drove out to the country to see the Cao Dai religious order. These are people that have mixed Confucianism, Taoism, Christianity, and Buddhism, among other things, into a religion all their own. There are between 3 and 4 million Vietnamese that follow this strange sect. Did I mention the portrait of Victor Hugo, who is considered a "master," even though the religion began long after his death. Very strange. Very colorful temple, though, with lots of interesting imagery.

Finally, we visited the Cu Chi Tunnels. These were constructed by guerillas who fought against the Americans. The tunnels worked and the Americans were taken by surprise many times. This site was all about glorifying the Viet Cong as heroes, which was strange for me. It's like, "We killed your soldiers and defeated your country. Now give us $5 so you can see how we did it." We crawled through the tunnels for a number of yards. They are tiny and it really hurt to crouch over like that. And those are the tunnels that they expanded for Western tourists. The coolest thing we did, though, was shoot an AK-47 and an M16 at the Cu Chi Shooting Range. Don't ask me why they have one, but we couldn't resist the impulse to shoot something. Having fully explored the Cu Chi area, we headed back to Saigon to our favorite deli/restaurant/bar/gallery/internet cafe.

We head to China on Saturday, and we are very excited.

NOTE: I just finished re-reading this post, and I think I finally think it's funny. I caught myself laughing, so I must be past the trauma.

We're coming home. Well, eventually. What I mean is, we now have an actual plan as to how to get home and some specific dates.

We leave Vietnam for China on July 29. We will be starting off in Beijing for about a week and then taking the new express train to Tibet. We will then make our way to Hong Kong by August 28, where we will stay until September 2.

On September 2, we fly to Cairns, Australia and plan to spend 3 days on a live-aboard dive boat in the Great Barrier Reef. We fly to Sydney on the 8th, and spend a few nights there until we fly to Auckland, New Zealand on the 12th. We spend 4 nights there and then we fly back in time on September 17th to arrive in Papeete, Tahiti on September 16th. Weird huh? We spend one night in Papeete (Not nearly as good as it sounds, but it will be nice to be somewhere we've already been for a change) and then at 1AM on the 18th we fly to Easter Island. On the 20th, we fly to Santiago, Chile for a couple of nights and then we move on to Lima, Peru (briefly, to see the Nazca Lines) and then to Cuzco and Aguas Calientes on September 25 to see Machu Picchu. Contrary to prior ambitions, we are not planning on hiking the Inca trail. Oh well, the train will have to do. We leave Peru via Lima again and arrive in Guayaquil, Ecuador on October 1 where we will fly to the Galapagos Islands for 10 days, and then we finally fly home via Miami on the 10th, spend the night in Miami, and finally arrive back in Raleigh on October 11th.

Which gives us four days to finally file our taxes and still fall within the six month extension deadline. After our taxes are filed, we're going to sleep for about a week. I'm exhausted just reading this.

We'll have a bit more to say about our time in Vietnam in the coming days, but in the meantime, check your calendars and see if you can meet us somewhere!