A Trip of Their Own

Thank you for your email and the nice pictures! We have been back to Holland for almost two weeks now, and although the weather is less cold than in Canada, we miss the nice weather in Vietnam. We had a great trip altogether with a lot of highlights: beautiful Halong Bay, Perfume Pagoda, the tombs and citadel in Hue, the waterfalls in Buon Ma Thuot, the buzzing beehive that is Saigon and the tranquility of tropical beaches at Phu Quoc Island. When collegues and friends ask about the trip, it takes us a lot of time to explain about everything.

It is so hard to describe the impact of what we have seen and done in a few words. Fortunately we didn't encounter any ghosts in Buon Ma Thuot (or may be we did, and didn't recognize them). It was a very beautiful place, nice to visit because there were not many tourists. In fact, I don't think I have seen any other foreign tourists at all. We were quite a sight, we noticed this when a couple who just got married, stopped and waved enthusiastically at us! We also met some of the Ede-people, a mountain tribe originating from Malaysia and Indonesia. We couldn't communicate in words with them, they didn't even speak Vietnamese. But it was already great to look at each other, wave and shake hands with the little children who were after a while brave enough to come towards us.
We have read your blog about Sapa, it sounds wonderful! We recognize a few of the entertaining stories you told us on the way up and down to the perfume pagoda. Pho Hien sounds like a nice place to visit and meet with local people. We look forward reading more details about it on your blog!

Best regards to you and your family,

Hanneke en Marijn

Good to know that you both enjoyed the trip and were not troubled by the legend of "Ma lai" ghosts. As a matter of fact, the american named Buon Ma Thuot (Kontum and Pleiku) as "Ghost cities" during the Vietnam war, for being too "mystic" dull and gloomy especially when the wet seasons arrived not mentioning uncountable stories about "Ghosts". Ma Lai ghosts borrowed the form of human being during day time(that is why you didn't recognize them), but turned into ghost / vampire at night to go out and feed themselves with human feces!. Ma lai used to disguise as a beautiful woman, married ordinary man, but at bedtime, departed from the headless body to fly out of the house, half a meter above the ground with the internal organs dangling to its head...
Will have a post about this story in a coming future. FYI, as of March the 1st, a post entry about Phố Hiến was made available. Hope you find the pleasure to discover it at least through my writings. Of course with photos!.
Until next time...