here, there, everywhere

The first three days of our road trip were pretty but uneventful - so much so that I needlessly started to worry we'd have no stories to bore people with upon returning - though we did stumble across a pretty massive hydroelectric dam in Na Hang, the small town where we stayed in on our third night.


We knew nothing about the dam at the time, though the presence of eerie ghost trees in the reservoir suggested it must have been fairly new:


Back home, we learned the dam - finished in 2008 and apparently the second largest hydroelectric plant in northern Vietnam - destroyed much of what was once the Na Hang nature reserve. You can read more about that here (though this article was written before the construction started).


The only other thing that happened in Na Hang was that the police showed up at our hotel at 11 pm and demanded to speak to us. We were just about to go to bed, and were a bit freaked out by the hotel lady banging open our door in a panic, but Iain went downstairs to find several bored cops scrutinizing our passports and, after some confusion about the distinctions between Scotland/the UK/Great Britain, they seemed satisfied and left. Crisis averted.

It's our last night in Cao Bang; today we drove - or, more accurately, Iain drove - seven hours on potholed muddy roads clogged with trucks to get to the China border, to see Ban Gioc waterfall.



Real photos of the falls to come - for now, relaxing in our hotel room - I'm just happy we made it at all.



If all goes well, we should be back in Hanoi in two more nights, so, real updates instead of ones clumsily typed out on an iPod to come...

Mai Chau itself is one of my favorite places in Vietnam. We never do very much while we're there, just relaxing and taking in the scenery. As before, we stayed at Guesthouse Number One in Lac Village, where, amazingly, the super friendly owner Hoa actually remembered both me and Iain from our previous visits. If anyone going to Mai Chau doesn't already have a favorite guesthouse, I definitely recommend Hoa and Thu's place - I can't think of a nicer place to sit back and watch the rice grow.

The Continental Divide
After two days of non-stop driving along the I-80, Iain and I made it to Boulder, where we had a great time hanging out with Ryan-from-Hanoi (and also, briefly, my awesome stepsister Nika and her friend). Ryan was able to show us a lot more of Colorado then I'd ever seen before, including more snowy weather than I'd ever thought possible in June. 


Ryan and Iain climbed to the top of Mount Evans (after we drove to the observatory just underneath the top of Mount Evans). I did not, because I am a wimp. Ryan, incidentally, is about to leave on a one month long hike all alone through the mountains, so he probably didn't even notice the two minutes it took the two of them to climb to the top while I picked my way gingerly through the icy snow below and tried not to fall down.

And then we saw Marmots! Best road trip ever! 

Guess which state we're still in? 

My new favorite sign, in Winnemuca, NV.
Twelve hours and six hundred miles into the road trip, we're staying the night in Wendover, a "resort" town that straddles Nevada and Utah; we're on the Nevada side, staying alongside a stretch of shady casinos (this wireless network's password, ominously, is "mafia") and resisting the temptation to gamble away our budget at the Red Garter, though Iain succumbed to the Well's rest stop's slot machines and lost a whole 25¢. 

Iain shows off in Los Altos.
Setting off early tomorrow in my sister's car, armed with newly-minted AAA membership, language-learning CDs and some Google maps that helpfully show us exactly what the roads look like, to visit our friend Ryan, formerly of Hanoi and now of Colorado. I always have fun hanging out with Ryan (and his awesome girlfriend, Jessica) so I'm really happy we'll get to see him again, and am hoping that said happy thoughts will provide any additional nudges I need to get over my lifelong aversion to freeway driving. I'd like to think I'm over it after driving some of the scariest roads I've ever seen in much worse conditions throughout Vietnam. Nonetheless, while I've borne witness to this drive twice before, it's never been as the driver, so this will be... interesting. 
We have less than a month left in the States and many plans are afoot, though I'm going to wait till they're a little more solidified before blathering about them on the internet. I've figured out how to update this thing via text messages*, so will post more from the road! 
* Also, in the realm of newly discovered technological advances - I have a webcam now! Which would have been a slightly embarrassing admission back in 1999 (when my soon-to-be college roommate freaked me out with a similar announcement) but which, in this age of iSight and general online overexposure, is probably just sadly passe. At any rate, not much point to this except to say that even if I can't yet promise to stay in better touch than I did in Hanoi, at least I'll be able to make an actual smily face at you on iChat this time around.