Ongoing cooking adventures

I feel like I should have some kind of opening sentence before I get into this but nothing brilliant comes to mind.

I've dealt with depression in various forms for pretty much my entire life, certainly entire adult life.  I've talked about this at length before so I won't rehash it too much.  I'll just highlight that almost everything I've done to try to combat it has failed for one reason or another...many of them just the self-fulfilling prophecy that is living with any affected ability.

One ray of hope that has remained for some time is ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, or KAP.  Psychedelics showing promise in the treatment of mental illness isn't new, but it's gaining increasing access as the studies and research and science actually back it up with something resembling hard evidence rather than anecdotes and experiences.  And I say something resembling because when it comes to psychiatry and psychology and mental illness, there isn't a *ton* of hard evidence to be had as everything is kinda twisty.

I'd looked into KAP a handful of years ago, but at the time it was cost-prohibitive.  Being still rather experimental, and of course involving a highly restricted substance, it's rare to get insurance to pay for KAP.  Some providers navigate this by getting insurance to pay for the therapy itself as normal, and direct bill for the drug.  Others just don't bother trying so as to save the time and hassle.  Most, from my admittedly small research, are the latter.

My depression has continued to ramp up over the time I've been out here in the world, quite contrary to my hopes and goals for the life I was striding into.  It's been the right decision and I wouldn't change it (well, most of it), but it does mean that the longer I've been going, the worse I'm doing.  So I decided that I'm going to return to the US, move back home for a while, and try KAP to see if it unlocks something that lets me move forward again.  Every intention is to pick back up in late December.  Assuming the world hasn't burned itself to the ground by then.

In the meantime, however, my limited exploration of Riga continues with this park not far from my apartment featuring a simple but cute sculpture and a dog park.  On the walk back home, I passed this church, one of many in Riga.  It strikes me that when the foliage is in full force, much of it would actually be obscured from the road.  I also saw this in a grocery store and somehow resonate with its difficulty in defining itself.  Also at the store is this different way of packaging ice cream.

The cooking adventures continue.  Last week I attempted to be inspired by Cornish pasties (pronounces with the short a, like past - eez).  Taking the flatbread I've been working with and adding a cooked filling of minced pork, cabbage, and potato, and wrapping it up to fry in a pan.  The result was quite good and is something I'll absolutely continue experimenting with, though no single pastry can hold much filling the way I'm currently making them.  I also tried making the fried chicken I learned in Vietnam, and cooked some flatbread in the same pan afterwards.  Good taste, mixed results otherwise.  And finally, I got some cinnamon and vanilla sugar (which I'd never heard of before, but I couldn't find actual vanilla extract) and attempted to make something akin to cinnamon rolls.  Didn't turn out too well.  But worth the experiment.

Speaking of experiments, my laptop stand arrived and while a little wobbly, it is so far proving to be exactly what I was looking for - namely something that can replace the full big desk that I've always had to either find, or find space for.  As I may have mentioned, this also telescopes up to a height that allows me to use it as a standing desk, which might help some with my core strength and posture and so on.  So far it's still an adjustment, and I've had some jobs this past week where I felt I had to play it safe and stay in my normal desk...but it's extremely promising.

 I leave Latvia in mid May, as originally planned, but with a different destination.  I don't know whether to expect more than one post before then, and definitely can't guess how actively I'll keep this up while in Colorado.  Time will tell.  Until then, I wish you all the best, dear reader. 

Adulting is hard

 When I went to South Africa, where I knew the language barrier wouldn't be a major obstacle, I determined that I'd use the extra spoons to expand my cooking repertoire.

It didn't really work.  Sure, I discovered that mac n cheese could be made with just pasta, milk, and cheese (and anything I was adding to it, broccoli or chicken or what have you) but that recipe didn't work in Vietnam and I haven't tried it since.  I learned that you could do pasta dishes with no sauce whatsoever, just seasonings and oil, and I relied on that for a while.

But in terms of learning actual new things, that didn't happen there.  Certainly nothing foundational.

In Vietnam, I picked up a couple things - spring rolls (which I haven't tried to make on my own), expanded stir fry approaches, and fried chicken wings with fish sauce.  Also a few soups, which I've overthought for most of my life.

So now I'm in Riga and I'm trying to continue to expand.  And this has apparently begun with flatbread.  It's kind of a dream recipe really: three or four ingredients, a quick time in the frying pan, and I have a base or a side for whatever I'm doing.  Best of all, I'll be able to find flour basically anywhere I go, so it's a reliable thing (unlike rice dishes which I haven't been able to make here because rice cookers are exceedingly rare and I only have stainless steel pots that I'm afraid to cook rice in).

Today's experiment didn't exactly go to plan, but it was still educational - I was just taking some store-bought kebab chicken, sauce, and green leaf lettuce, much like this wrap I'd made a few days prior, and trying to make a pocket out of the flatbread.  The other two just became little pizza-like things with the sauce/lettuce/chicken piled on top.  It worked fine.  The biggest success today was frying them in butter instead of oil and adding some minced garlic to the pan.

I'm still learning the ratios, and spending a good 15 minutes just kneading, adding flour, kneading more, adding more flour, over and over.  The general thing I saw online was 2 parts flour, 1 part water, but that's been quite inaccurate so far.  Maybe I'm doing something else wrong.  As I continue practicing, I'll get better at the starting ratios, and the time tweaking it will drop considerably.

I've gone to a shopping center several times in the past couple weeks that's a short bus ride from where I live, and have always been struck by this rather large skate park that I only now got pictures of.  It's an impressive scale given what feels like a relatively low population density, but clearly it's a successful build for how busy it's been every time.  These were all taken on a Monday mid-day or morning, for reference.

I found this long bubble gum stick the other day.  I'm amused that the sour-o-meter that is supposedly the main marketing design takes up most of the box, but the actual dial at the bottom is still only in the middle.  This was accurate, because while the box advertises it as sour (or at least being coated with sour powder), it was barely bitter/tart to me.  Wasn't especially great bubble gum either.  Always good to try new things.

 While my goal in Gqeberha was to expand my cooking, my goal here is to redefine my workstation.  I'm rather tired of being limited only to places with adequate space for a full desk and chair setup.  I've done some experiments with my VR headset essentially serving as a replacement monitor, and those have been quite successful.  It's a little tiring on my neck and the screen clone's size is a touch too large (so that I have to turn my head to see things on the far edges), but I have strong enough muscle memory on my hands that I can type essentially at normal speed, and even use hotkeys and F-keys, without looking.  The important part is that I maintain good ergonomics in my head and neck without needing a desk that sits at a certain height.  It also nudges me to take more breaks, which I'd benefit from anyway.

The next step will be finding a way to have my keyboard and mouse accessible.  For that, I've ordered a tripod stand (not affiliated, just demonstrative), and along with some kind of shelf or board, that will enable me to work both standing and sitting without needing my laptop to be in any particular place.  The monitor will be cloned to my headset, and my keyboard and mouse will be at about the right height (adjustable).  It brings me down to only needing a chair, and even that might be negotiable since I can adjust to standing.

 The tripod is still en route, expected about a week from now.  I'll probably need at least a few weeks, possibly more, to really get used to it, so my next stay is a place that has enough room for a chair and desk just in case.  I'll update once it arrives and I have some time to figure out how it feels.

Speaking of next stay, from Riga I'll be going to Nairobi, Kenya for a couple months before returning to Gqeberha.  From there, I'll be heading to Budva, Montenegro (on the Mediterranean between Italy and Greece), then back to Hanoi in late December.  I don't recall if I've laid that out before, but there it is.

Between cooking experiments, workstation redesigns, and just general continuing to live, I feel consistently torn between pride that I'm making progress, frustration that I didn't learn any of these things before, and fatigue that is just a standard part of my life.  But this is the life I chose, out here in the world, and I'm doing my best.  That counts for a lot.

Cheers! 

Snowy Seashore

Now that I'm settling in more, establishing patterns, and figuring out how to feed myself here, my life has begun to grow outside my apartment walls.  It's something I'm working on doing more often; Plovdiv and Batumi only really did it once each, and I don't know that Gqeberha ever did (at least, not in the same sense; Gqeberha was more of social reaches/excursions than scenic ones).

Admittedly, the first such outing was still a shopping trip, but a trip about 40 minutes away by bus to a mall where I met someone I'd encountered through a Facebook where I'd asked about board game meetups.  I had a short list of things the nearby grocery store wouldn't provide, and while there's a mall closer to me, meeting him still had value.  So I rode out across the town, getting a good chance to see more of the city (at least the more suburban-esque side of it).  The mall was relatively unremarkable (as was the IKEA), but I did find a small stand selling bread, including this traditional style of dark bread baked with a whole bulb of garlic in it.  I got a sample and it was kinda good, though in my cultural background it needed something.  Butter, maybe.

Yesterday, however, I went on a trip purely for the purpose of exploration and seeing something new; in this case, that was the beach of the Gulf of Riga during winter.  As often, the album link so you can look through it all, as I'll just be putting a few in here.

The trip began with a walk to the bus stop, seeing more of the architecture that dominates the city, particularly in the older parts of town.  The bus system in Riga, like many in Europe, puts the US generally to shame by having frequent routes with expansive reach.  In this case, buses from Riga run all the way out to the shore, as well as to several neighboring towns.  Northern Colorado has something like this in Bustang, which operates mostly on the highways between Fort Collins and...I think further south, like Colorado Springs maybe.  I haven't looked in a while.  But it's sort of a separate entity, whereas this is all under the same Rigas Satiksme operation.

The windows on the bus go round and round were unfortunately dirty as a result of road grime and splash, so I don't really have any pictures from the trip itself.  But after about an hour, I reached the trailhead (for lack of better word) to the beach.  An attempted snowman sorta-stood just off the path, which went by a farm and through a lagoon featuring a viewing platform and some informational signs that I couldn't read.  There was also this poster showing an experience I was quite sure I wouldn't have on this day (I believe it's an educational thing about trash and recycling).

The path then went through some forest that looked stark stripped of leaves.  I plan to come back in the spring before I depart and see how different it looks.  I was intrigued by some bird feeders hung here with some kind of fibrous stuff nailed to the trees.  I'm not sure what it is - if you know, do please comment.

Finally, the ocean came into view.  I walked up a ways, where the flat frozen sea was broken up (literally) by these large slabs of ice.  In a few places were ice stacks made by someone far braver than me.  I also found this boat beached, and couldn't tell if it was still in service or some kind of relic or display.

I've long loved cold, and this was no different.  The sea has a strange kind of beauty to me in this state, though that might in part be because I'm not miserable in the heat that most beaches tend to have.

By the time I started back, it had begun snowing, and when I reached the bus stop, my glasses were essentially covered in water and melting snow.  On the bus ride back, I passed the Latvian National Library which is just so extra that it demands I return to check it out sometime.  After I left the bus and began walking home, I was charmed by this gym's simple name.  Simple, but somehow loud at the same time.

There's still a few things I want to go see and do while I'm here, of course, but this large of an outing only two weeks into my stay does kind of indicate how my attitude towards exploration and living in the places I go is shifting.  Or, rather, demonstrates that my stability is increasing, and that means I have more spoons to get out of my apartment and exist in the worlds I'm choosing to occupy.

Hanoi-via

 The vaunted travel post begins!

And it's going to be shorter than these typically are.  Truth is, I left my apt at about 9:30pm when it was too dark to see anything of interest, bounced through three airports over 22-ish hours with less than 5 cumulative hours of layover, and then arrived in Riga, Latvia around 6pm when it was too dark to see anything of interest.  So the actual travel portion is basically nonexistent.  But I'll go in order.

When I left, Vietnam was gearing up for Tet, the lunar new year.  It's a huge event, on the order of Christmas in the US, and flowers are a huge part of the decorative styling.  As usual, Vietnamese people are rather adept at loading motorbikes.  I saw one that had a full freaking tree sapling, but failed to get a picture (mostly because I was on a bike myself at the time and did not entirely build up the confidence to be on my phone during bike rides).  The owner of the pole studio also had a cute gift for me before I left - flamingos being kind of the mascot/branding of the studio.  It's adorable, but I can now say from experience it isn't very *practical* - the plushie head and neck just kind of get in the way of use and I sorta worry about them getting soaked and moldy or something.  Still a kind gesture and an appreciated gift.

My Vietnamese partner also remarked that the humid spring season seemed to start early.  I didn't know that the spring was typically humid, but I did know that Hanoi had been frustratingly humid recently, a fact I can assert by how impossible it was to get my clothes actually dry after laundry.  I had to resort to inventive solutions to get the final load dry in time to pack.

With that, I was off.  From Hanoi to Dubai, where the airport is so sprawling that you have to take an actual bus to get between some terminals.  From Dubai to Amsterdam, I did take my first double-decker plane (or at least the first one I remember taking), which also had a wide gap between the windows and the seats.  Finally, Amsterdam to Riga.  I made my transfer; my suitcase did not.  Fortunately, another flight from Amsterdam was later that night, and my bag was back in my hands just the next afternoon.  It was one of those times where you think "Well, that was efficient."  And then you realize that the efficiency is so practiced and slick that it's only really possible after enough failures to train on.

Oh well.

I waited until the next day to take any pictures of the area around my new home.  There's a majesty to some of it, despite the age and general construction quality that comes with a developing nation that suffered Soviet occupation.  Despite looking a bit slummy with graffiti and a lot of shuttered doors and dead windows, the area actually feels fairly safe.  Maybe it's just that it's too cold (-10C today) for anyone to want to stand around watching for opportunities to mug each other.  But I've just heard generally good things about the safety in this country.

My apartment is a rather charming space, generally more roomy than I expected (with the exception of the shower which is definitely not comfortable for my frame). I have popcorn again, something I didn't really have in Hanoi due to the cultural approach of popcorn mostly being sweet (think kettle corn) or caramel corn.  The buttery salty goodness I grew up on, the delicious snack that served as one of my first three words (true story)...I was deprived in Vietnam, so it was one of the first things I bought here.

Latvia is in the Eurozone, so unlike Bulgaria there wasn't a new currency to acquire.  The Euro and the Dollar are almost 1:1 right now, which makes my financial navigating far easier.  It also means that I don't much need to explain how psychotically expensive Ben & Jerry's is here.  Food in general is on par with a lower COL part of America; loaf of bread is about $1, pasta and rice are similar, chicken and beef are a touch cheaper...well, all of this is relative to when I left, and I know things have changed since then.  It's not Hanoi cheap, but it's not Amsterdam expensive.  The shopping center with my new primary grocery store also has an indoor karting track which I found interesting.

My explorations will begin more in earnest in the coming week.  There's a small theatre nearby that does a pretty aggressive repertory of plays, predominantly in Russian, with a $15 ticket price.  So I'll be checking out at least one show there.  I've found a few restaurants in walking distance to try.  And of course old town Riga is well-known for its interesting mix of architecture and history; Riga's story is actually pretty interesting.

So as usual, you can look forward to more pictures and stories in the week or three after a new move, followed by a drop off to 1/month or so as I settle into the daily routines and stop tourist-ing. 

Assorted Explorations in Vietnam

 For the past month and change, I've been dating a Vietnamese woman I met on an app.  I haven't mentioned it because it wasn't really important at the time - it was part of my life, but rather a personal part and didn't directly impact my travels or produce general interest stories.

Well, that's not entirely true.  She was my company at Thang Long, providing some context and translation and also learning a bit from me.  But I'd likely have gone to Thang Long anyway so I didn't count it. Haha.

Whatever the case, she's become more of an active part of my explorations.

A couple weeks ago, we tried to visit a pagoda/temple. I say "tried" because for reasons we didn't understand (that weren't posted anywhere or commonly known to anything she could find online), it was closed.  Still, there was a neat sculpture near the entrance.  She told me there was a particular food popular near the pagoda that we should try, so we walked to a nearby shop famous for it.  Our route taking us along the lake, I happened to see this picturesque place and fail to capture it well on my little phone camera.

The dish in question is in the bottom center here: banh tom, or fried shrimp pancake.  Like many Vietnamese dishes, it's eaten by dipping into a sauce that's largely fish sauce-based with customization options at the table such as chilis and kumquat or lime.  The cups of sauce were placed on the table for us to tinker with well before the food arrived.  My date added a few things and then used a spoon to taste it.  I failed to fully understand what she was doing and thought this was a slightly thick soup, so after making some additions of my own, I just started spooning it down, even sipping straight from the cup at one point.  This drew a very confused look from her, and lead to a good laugh for both of us after she explained what it was.  Exploring new foods is sometimes an interesting adventure indeed.

I also learned that pho, which has become quite common in the US, actually refers not to the soup in general but to the kind of noodles it uses (sort of both, I suppose, in the way that a hamburger refers both to the sandwich and to the meat itself).  But this was drilled home by the other two dishes we ordered, rolled pho and fried pho (top left and top right, respectively).  Both were good in their own way.  It all made me think about Domino's and how they've elevated repackaging pizza to an art form.  "Here," the company says, "have pizza, and as a side, have pizza rolls.  As an appetizer, here's cheesy breadsticks that you dip in pizza sauce but definitely isn't just pizza again!"

Our visit to the pagoda wasn't successful insofar as we actually got to see the pagoda itself, but at least I discovered more foods.

Last weekend, my date and I planned a little getaway to Tam Dao, which is named for its elevation and the way it is often in the clouds.  Despite being only about an hour away, it didn't take long for the urban density of Hanoi to give way to more open spaces and rural lands.

Tam Dao is a mountain town, sort of a small resort - high tourism, lots of hotels and similar places, fairly small permanent population.  Our stay had a very cozy room, a swimming pool (we didn't use because it was cold and a little dirty), some really pretty landscaping and general integration with the terrain, and downright excellent food.  And, as always, I'm tall.

We stayed for two nights, but happened to both get sick in the day or two leading up to the trip.  We opted to go anyway as we have very limited time together, but it meant we didn't really go anywhere or see anything in the area.  Yesterday we returned, though we found this neat cafe with this huge, cool statue thing.  The whole town really leverages the views by building onto the hillsides.  It makes me think about Estes Park, where I've lived many years of my life, and how most of the shops and restaurants in town are in the valley of it, sort of squeezed together, and actually most of the mountainside space is residential.  So while Estes does have great scenery, it isn't really...*utilized* the same way.  And in some ways I think that is to its detriment...a missed opportunity of sorts.  

 I have less than two weeks left in Hanoi.  In many ways, it has felt, inexplicably, like the longest stay of my brief nomad life thus far.  The perception of time is a funny thing.  I've started dipping into Latvian.  The app I've used has a lot of phrases and words and such and it's a little overwhelming, and because I struggle with self-motivated learning, it can be hard to get a lot of the value that it has.  However, it did have one phrase I've decided I need to learn everywhere I go: "What do you recommend?"
For Latvian, this is "ko jus varetu ieteikt?"  I'm missing some accent markers but that's close enough.  It's a really cool sounding language to me for some reason, kind of a mix between Russian or Polish and Italian.
The thing is, when living in a new place with no real food familiarity, I often wind up not going anywhere or trying anything due largely to choice paralysis.  It's daunting to look at a menu of unfamiliar words, particularly if there are no or few pictures, and just...choose something.  Even running it through translation doesn't always help.  But now, I can learn a phrase that just requests specific assistance in making that choice, and maybe lets someone feel like they're doing a good thing or introducing someone to a thing they like.  And most people, I've found, will appreciate that opportunity.

And maybe some will use it to screw with me and order me something horrible.  And then I'll know not to go back and not to get that thing again.  I'll be a little hungry but I'll try to laugh at being "gotten."  Laugh at yourself before anyone else can.

I assume I won't post again until I've left Hanoi.  I expect my last two weeks to be relatively mundane, largely preparing for the move and such.  But I reserve the right to change my mind 😉 

Thang Long

 I've made more of an effort in Hanoi to get out and see things.  Part of this has been making an effort to meet people and interact with humans, something I really didn't do in Bulgaria or Georgia.

As a result, I actually have things to say sometimes because I'm going places and doing things.  

Last Saturday, I went to Thang Long Citadel.  As a quick note, in Vietnamese, the "th" is closer to a T sound than an English "th," so it's closer to pronounce this as Tang Long.  Not perfect, but closer.
A historical site, world heritage since 2010, Thang Long is kind of an epicenter of ancient and modern Vietnamese governance, having been (as I understand it) the seat of several dynasties stretching back through the Ly Dynasty in the 11th century.  The Ly Dynasty, among other things, actually codified some of the earliest laws in Vietnamese history.  Artifacts at the site date back even further, some all the way to the 7th-9th centuries.

 The album link, as usual - I will only be calling out a small portion of the things I saw, and I have some 58 pictures from the day.

There are various depictions around the site of how the area may have looked during its prime.  Work is still ongoing to excavate the area and find more; archaeology is an interesting field in that sometimes, active sites will actually be left 'unfinished' because as technology advances, relics and information that could be lost with current methods might be found with future ones.  (This tidbit brought to you by Milo Rossi.  For those interested in entertaining and informative archaeology, his is a youtube channel I can't recommend enough.)

Even with some of the smaller and more temporal buildings lost to time, the scale of the area is impressive in itself.  That picture was taken from atop this gate which itself is only about halfway across the complex.  The gate is accessible, and for whatever reason I found the water runoff management to be interesting enough to deserve a picture...but not much else up here.  The topmost tier that you can see is also accessible, but by some of the steepest stairs I think I'd ever seen.  

Also on the grounds, constructed in 1967, was Bunker D67, a military command post with an underground bunker nearby to protect from the several, and severe, bombing raids during the American War (for obvious reasons, they don't call it the Vietnam War here like we do in the USA).  Within this underground space, artifacts of the war are displayed in much the way they would have been set up at the time, or are displayed on shelves and in cases.  As a mild computerphile, I was particularly intrigued by the typewriter layout and how similar it is to the familiar QWERTY.  The development of that layout would be its own interesting rabbit hole were I so inclined.

I am currently not so inclined.

A few of the structures around the complex were repurposed for museums, displaying printing blocks, clay artifacts, roof tiles, pottery/ceramics, as a copper cannon, and other decorative elements that once adorned the larger structures in the area - structures that are either no longer standing or have been remodeled in one way or another over the years.  After all, we're talking about political occupation across five or six major dynasties spanning a full millennium.  Changes definitely took place.

Speaking of a full millennium, Hanoi had recently celebrated its 1000 year anniversary as the political center of Vietnam (having largely been chosen as the capital in 1010).  A few ancient-styled creations, including a bell and an enormous drum had been crafted and dedicated for the event, and were on display here.

Further into the complex was Hau Lau, or the Ladies' Pavilion, another sizable structure flanked by a lovely courtyard (including this well).  Here again were incredibly steep stairs, which were necessary for vertical scaling when the rooms are so tall.  I found it very intriguing, and it's another rabbit hole I could probably plumb.  Honestly, the consistent takeaway from this area was have I mentioned that I am just such a tall human?
Within this topmost tier is a temple/shrine where photography wasn't allowed, so obviously I don't have any pictures of that. 

Vietnam is an interesting place for someone of my height, as I've shown more here than anywhere else I've been.  Heck, my companion for this trip (visible in a couple pictures) is about 4'10, and while that's short even for a Vietnamese person, it's still closer to the scale for which this country is built than my towering giant frame.

But it's also just generally an interesting place.  Their ability to fit things on their motorbikes is, of course, legendary. 

Ha Long Birth-bay

 Special treat for y'all today:  Not one, not two, but three bulk album links for the pictures.  Because there's about 134 of them.

Told you in the last post that I'd be updating again soon and it'd be a big one.

For my birthday, I went to Ha Long Bay, designated as a UNESCO heritage site in 1984 (from what the tour guide told me).  Now, I say I did this for my birthday.  The whole truth is that I planned to do this soon, and when people learned that my birthday was fast approaching and started pestering me about how I was going to celebrate it, I decided to do my trip this day and shut them up 😆

 I think if I had it to do again, I'd have gone on a Tuesday or something.  But more on that later.

I was up at 6:30 am or so to get an Uber over to the Old Quarter of Hanoi to meet the bus that would take us out to the Bay.  The city's urban density passed pretty quickly, with some curious sculptures and unexpected high density housing perhaps 25 minutes outside of the city limits.  I found this odd because it was not really...near anything.  I hope they have some kind of high-speed transit planned to get people from these buildings into the city where jobs and resources are, because otherwise these won't be particularly good for the area.

Crossing a few rivers, we were soon out into the countryside, which was (not surprisingly) mostly farming communities.  Two things intrigued me here.  First, the architecture.  I had assumed that the tall, narrow buildings were largely a response to urban density and the need for increased housing without taking up more horizontal space.  These houses have the same kind of build, but with some space beside them for gardens/lawns or something.  Suggests that a preference for those tall, narrow buildings might just be cultural in Vietnam.

The second is the cemeteries.  I knew from my prior visit to Vietnam back in 2019 that Vietnamese cemeteries (or whatever the appropriate term would be) tend to be pretty ornate, but was really surprised to see just how large and how ornate they can be, even in relatively low-income areas like these.  It speaks to the cultural priorities, the value of family and ancestry.

Another river we crossed showed far more economic activity.  Clearly these are major shipping routes, which is probably obvious to anyone who isn't a weird landlocked kid like I am - our rivers were tourist destinations in Colorado, far too rough and narrow to be useful for transportation.  This guy stood out a little bit, though I think this was a dry dock of some kind and it was perhaps there for repairs.  Not far from there was this thing.  Yeah, no idea.

 The terrain change from flat farmlands to more rocky, mountainous landscape was pretty swift and dramatic.  We made a quick stop at a pearl farm and saw the seeding process, learning a bit about the process.  Cultured pearls are actually defined by the fact that they are "planted" in oysters like this using a small, rounded piece of shell that then has the layers added over 2-6 years (depending on variety/species) before being harvested.  Natural pearls are often irregular shapes, but most cultured pearls are more reliably spherical.  Not sure what this shell belonged to exactly but it was neat-looking.  Sort of conch-like but with tentacles.

Soon after, we got to the marina and boarded the boat.  Some musicians were playing along the way there, and while I couldn't tell what of their music was recorded and what was mic-amplified, I was sad that we couldn't pause to listen.  We had lunch aboard the boat.  I love buffets because I get to have so many different things.  Of particular interest is the small thing in the upper left, which was jellyfish salad.  I wonder if it was actually squid because the texture was more rubbery (and I've never heard of jellyfish being eaten), but the whole area is well-enough traveled internationally that their translations and such are pretty reliable.  In order to protect the environment as much as possible, plastic bottles are banned in Ha Long Bay, leading to the only source of potable water being cans.

 The marina was quite close to the formation the Bay is famous for, and we were in the midst of them quite soon.

The whole block above pretty well covers the album, but there's the full album link.

Our first stop was Sung sot cave, the largest cave system in Ha Long Bay.  Our route lead up the cliffside, then through the caverns and back around to another marina to get picked up.  I really can't say much specific about this except maybe for the monkey formation.  This is where I get grumpy at my image host: the upload process didn't keep any kind of order for my pictures, so the album is in total disarray.  I'd taken five or six pictures in almost panorama to show the sheer size of these caverns and now they're just...all over.  But still.  Quite impressive.

From there we went to Titop Island, where we had the option of swimming or lounging on the beach or ascending this terrifying staircase up to the summit, where a small pavilion allowed for some truly spectacular views.  If you could enjoy them while panting.  I'm honestly glad I did this when I did, at the end of December, because trying this in the summer heat would probably have lead to my untimely demise.

Our final stop was Hang Luon, a kind of grotto/sheltered bay kept somewhat serene by being only accessible via "bamboo boats" (so named, I assume, for the design/layout/operation, not the actual material of their modern versions) or kayaks.  Because I was traveling alone and didn't bring swimming gear, I opted for the bamboo boat.  Hang Luon is accessed through a low cave and is apparently home to monkeys.  One of the boat operators got into an argument with some of them, splashing them with the oars and even throwing water at them with a jug he had.  I have no idea what the story was there, they seemed to me to be mostly minding their own business.  Impressive to watch them navigate sheer cliff faces pretty easily - not something I could easily get a picture of.  This album is much smaller, as I spent more attention just enjoying the moment than anything.

By then, it was getting a bit dark, so we began the trek back to the marina.  I took the obvious photo opportunity at this light-up moon they had on the top deck, and tried to capture the ominous but beautiful silhouettes the islands can make against the dusky sky.  The bus ride back was in the dark, so I just dozed.

 I was dropped off near where we'd picked up...to find that for some reason, I had no data service.  This was a problem because I needed data to order my Uber back home.  I wandered for a while looking for signal, running across a pedestrian area blocked off for what I assume was some kind of event.  Eventually I found some, got a car home, and collapsed.

Cosplaying as a tourist was an interesting experience.  My bus was about two Canadians, one other American, a man from the UK, a couple from Romania, and several Indians.  Aboard the boat were some Germans and a couple from France, a few from Cambodia, and others.  But really, the US was highly underrepresented.  I wonder if it's largely because the holiday season has most US travel being closer to home.  What I knew, though, was that I was among very few people there who lived in Hanoi, even temporarily.  Kind of made me feel a bit apart from them - not in any kind of haughty or superior way, just in the sense that I'm different.  I didn't really talk to anyone during this trip, in keeping with my common tendency towards introversion, and it's debatable whether that was the "right" choice.  I just didn't want to explain my lifestyle to more people than I already do in a typical week.

Absolutely recommend, though, if you happen to find yourself in northern Vietnam.