Nick - Getting away from Hue

Well, our city tour was great. We set out early and just went for a walk. For breakfast we crashed a local street joint and were immediately surrounded by the locals who sat staring and laughing at our attempts to communicate. I will say this more than once I am sure but the Vietnamese are a wonderful people. Like Hoi An this city was hot so we stopped every half and hour or so for tea and ice coffee along our 6 hour stroll. Everywhere we stopped cute Vietnamese girls would sit down at our table and want to practice their English. It was so hot that I had been walking around in my tank top which according to Mateo was stopping traffic. Apparently no one had ever seen a hairy man before. We made our way back to the Citadel which was the emperors private city and paid the exurbanite fee of $2.50 to enter the purple city where only the royal family and eunuchs were allowed in to prevent tainting of the Emperor's concubines. It was here that we learned that Emperor Tu Doc expected 50 dishes to be prepared by 50 cooks to be served by 50 servants at every meal. And that his tea had to be made from the dew that accumulated on the leaves overnight. It's good to be king! The purple city wasn't too exciting due to all of the bombs dropped on it during previous years but it still held and air of awe when entering. The few buildings that remained were incredibly elegant and inspired me to become a dictator. After our mini-self tour we hustled back to the bus. Another thing to note about Hue is that hygiene is not a top priority. We stopped off for some more phó and the man eating with us used his own chopsticks to serve us our food then wiped them with a rag from the ground and handed them to Mateo to use. Very funny. Thank god we were tempered in El Salvador before this trip. The sleeper bus was rough with the beds being too short for both of us. Mateo suffered through while I traded a short V for his spot on the ground in the aisle way. The whole bus laughed as my shoulders were wider than the aisle but 7 hours into the trip they were all wishing they had done the same. Goodnight all and I will report back tomorrow...

Nick- Hurray for Hue

These past two days have been a little on the slow side. After missing our bus due to too much consumption the night before we have to stay in hott-as-hell Hoi An another night. I no longer feel that Americans hold the title for obscene partiers. Last night Matt and I went out to a bar called Before and After because it was the only tourist bar open past 10pm (well they ferry you from the bar in the city out to a bar on the beach after ten). We were surrounded by Englishmen/women. After getting a bit tipsy at the bar in town we arrived at the beach bar complete with pool where upon arrival we are handed buckets of alcohol (no, literally buckets!) and before you know it everyone was getting naked. It was Cancun all over again only this time Mateo and I were the foreign exchange students. We danced a little then left just as all the drunken drama/fighting broke out. And by leave I mean Mateo and I jumped on the back of a scooter and were driven to our hotel (3 grown men on 1tiny scooter...). The next morning we got our hand-made clothes and they look awesome! Though i was a little upset that we didn't get the suits from the movie Dumb And Dumber. We had the whole day to kill and yet again the power was out so we took a stroll down town. In a matter of 5 city blocks our boring little town became this beautifully quaint colonial town with interesting architecture, fountains, small river, and temples. We wondered threw the market place and resisted the temptation to buy everything in sight. I spotted a woman squatting on the sidewalk and BBQing some teryaki strips so we sat down to sample them and they turned out to be make-you-own spring rolls! Easily #2 on my list of favorite Vietnamese food. We stayed in last night and became fully enlightened to the lyrics "till the sweat drip down my balls..." as Hoi An rivaled the temperature of the sun at night. The bus was ok this morning but scenery along the way was breathtaking. Now we are in Hue and it is very fun and touristy though I have officially seen the most disturbing sight yet; on the street they were selling US dogtags from the war... Real dogtags from real fallen soldiers... I was upset and Mateo had to restrain me from punching every salesman I saw. Tomorrow we will tour more of the city and report back. Cheers!!

Nick's Day 6&7 - Hoi An - Silky Smooth

So the overnight bus was less than comfortable. Matt and I literally slept on top of one another (though for the record, I was the big spoon). As you've probably read on Matt's blog post Hoi An is HOTT. Every time I look over at Matt he looks like he is melting. Hoi An is also very economical, they turn off the power to the whole city every other day and run water at random. But Hoi An is the center of the silk and tailoring trade for all of southern Asia. Matt was hell bent on getting a tailored suit and I was just going along. After about 3 seconds of listening to their prices I was getting fitted myself. I opted for a pin stripe suit, a few shirts, a pea-coat, and some pants. We were so excited about the clothes that we had overlooked the notion of carrying them for the next 3 weeks.... The tailor was fun and very skilled. We look hott. We explored the city a bit between fittings and found it to be quaint but not one of our favorites. I have made nice with the locals especially with a few street-vender families. Matt was asked out by a Vietnamese girl who was VERY persistent. She was the daughter of the family where we ate our fresh Chinese balls. In fact, while we were enjoying these doughy balls of bliss it began to rain.. and by rain I mean pour... and by pour I mean buckets.. and by buckets I mean Jesus H C the street is flooding into your shop and the ceiling looks like a shoddy damn holding back a raging river. Water was coming from every hole in the building, the street became a river and each car that splashed through sent waves of water INTO the shops lining the streets. Needless to say Matt and I ventured out on our bicycles and braved the storm while an entire city of on-lookers sat indoors taking pity on us. Oh, I forgot to mention that we rented bicycles! Yes, but quickly learned that bicycles, heat, and beer DO NOT mix. But white sands, turquoise waters, shady places to sit, and beer DO. Tonight we are off to a few bars.. Wish us luck!

Matt: Hot in Hoi An

It’s hard to think about how to recap the last day or two while I am literally expelling all the water in my body through my pours as I write this. It is Monday afternoon and it has to be about 95 degrees outside, with close to 100% humidity. We are on the fourth of four floors in our boxers with the window open trying to take this awful humidity in stride. Oh and I have to mention, there is no power in the city, because we are in the tourist off season, so they turn off the power every other day. We have no fans or AC, just pure sweet breezes that blow into the room every minute or so. It isn’t like we haven’t had this type of misery before. Nick and I have been through weeks of this kind of weather together over the last three years. The saving grace is that this hotel, where we are paying five dollars a night, has a cold, clean indoor pool. We’ll be all right.
Yesterday we were in Nha Trang, the best coastal city in the country, I assume. It is a city with a gorgeous beach with turquoise water and a pretty good nightlife. Because we are in the tourist offseason, the hotels are hurting to fill their rooms. We found a decent place downtown with friendly owners who knew a little English and fixed some amazing fruit smoothies. We had multiple orders of strawberry smoothies and tried Jackfruit, a fruit native to this part of the world. It was amazing. Our adventures started out by renting a couple of scooters and exploring the streets. It was our first taste of scootering through a busy city, and we soon realized that it isn’t so hard to maneuver through the mob of bikes, motorbikes, and automobiles. Everyone sort of looks out for one another. As proof that it isn’t too difficult to survive the traffic, one only has to merge off of the sidewalk and into the lane without even looking towards the on-coming traffic and everyone will kindly avoid hitting you, without even getting upset. It is quite something. So we drove off to see a giant Buddha statue sitting on top of a pagoda and hillside. I don’t know how to describe Buddhist temples very well, but I can say I enjoyed the feeling of being in a house of worship (if I can call it that). It was very calming.
From the temple we headed south to ride along the coast and find a desolate beach we had heard about. We detoured off the main route and eventually found ourselves lost in small fishing neighborhoods and rice-farms as well. I love the motorbike. It can really take you places to explore the area. And if it can take me to the campo, a place that I long to see, where the farmers and farmers’ families live, I will feel right as rain. After getting lost and seeing some beautiful beach, we headed back into town, grabbed our suits and headed to the main beach and spent a good three hours relaxing and bathing, all the while peddlers came selling us silk-canvassed paintings and offering body massages as we laid. We even had some students offer us English-teaching jobs, a tempting proposition. To finish the evening, we drove north up the coast and found a restaurant on the shore. We ordered a beer and watched as the sun began to fall in the sky over the ocean. It was quite the way to end the night before we caught our over-night sleeper bus to Hoi An. After an unfortunate mishap in a roundabout where Nick went straight up a one-way street the wrong way and a gentleman ran into me with his bike which caused him to fall and scrape is scooter up, we headed home and waited for our ride north, wondering if we should have stayed another night in Nha Trang. We both agreed that we should have. Nha Trang is gorgeous.
We are now in Hoi An, the tailoring capital of the country, known for its cheap tailored clothing. Me and Nick have been taking advantage of that business and revamping our professional wardrobe back home. We are no longer travelling light, unfortunately, but when silk tailored shirts cost 14 dollars apiece, one must partake. We are in our room waiting to go collect our merchandise, as the seamstresses are making final adjustments to our garments. Hoi An is also gorgeous. It is on a peninsula surrounded by white-sand beaches and has a quieter atmosphere compared to the last couple of hustle-and-bustle regional hubs we visited. The only complaint we have is the noodle soup here. There is something about it that is turning us off from noodles. It’s strange. We hope our next destination, Hue, will revitalize our love for Vietnamese noodles. Until then, we have discovered Bahm Beo, a Chinese dough ball filled with meat, egg, and peas, which cost a quarter and ore amazingly delicious.
To end, I will mention that it has been uncomfortably humid. Thanks to a huge thunderstorm today things really cooled off. But we certainly understand now why this is the offseason for traveling. You wouldn’t want to come unless you don’t mind sweating through all your clothes just by walking down the corner.

Nick's Day 5 - Nha Trang - The Beachiest Boom Boom

Night Before: [So last night out on the town we were approached probably a thousand times and asked if we wanted the "Boom Boom?". This was later translated to us as to mean "sex". Thats right I have officially decided that my sons will never come to Nha Trang. Coming in at a close second to the sex offers were the drug offers. I feel the Nha Trang is swiftly becoming the Amsterdam of Asia, but I may rebut this statement as such that we have yet to hit Laos, Cambodia, or Thailand which according to passing backpackers are "FAR MORE LIBERAL.."]


Ok, now I know that it is still early but this city is AMAZING!! Picturesque turquoise blue water ebbing gently against a white sand beach bordered by a boulevard of busy summertime scooters against a large resort town skyline. Things here are once again very cheap and friendly. Matt and I kick off the day by strolling down town and sampling some of Vietnam's famous slow drip coffee. This coffee is made by placing grounds in a strainer and pouring in about a shot of water in the top (see picture). The drip process takes about 2 hours to produce one shot of unbelievable coffee. Being that it takes so long many Vietnamese can be found sitting on stools in the street sipping on Vietnamese tea and waiting for their coffee. After our long breakfast we could not fight the urge to rent scooters again and IN THE CITY!! So we found a shop were they rented scooters for $3 a day and we set off. Nick's Day 5 - Boom Boom?

After the quaint conversation with the ex-pat the night before we had a few key destinations to hit. First stop, the giant white buddha, this was cool, we went in to a buddist temple and spoke with a 90 year old monk who thought I was Bin Laden (because of the beard) he granted us luck and he told me that "when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice. We lit some candles in celebration of buddhas up-coming birthday and for luck. All was going well until right before we made our accent to see his holiness; four young "tour guides" blocked our path and refused to move until we bought a book of post cards for $50. Now, in all fairness they were orphan's and had just given us a 3 minute mini-tour and all the proceeds were going to pay for their school supplies. Unfortunaitly they were begging the two most frugal tourists in Vietnam at the time so we pulled out our famous salvo bargining skills and brought them down to 2 dollars.... Don't judge. So we made it up to the Buddha while debating where the ethics of buddism have gone. It was amazing, and instantly made me want to convert. The temple on whole was extremely peaceful and serene. After, we ate delicious Chinese balls for lunch at the monastery where to my great embarrassment I completely smashed the chair I was sitting in. It just shattered and broke the serene silence that was the buddist prayer time. Next we took our bikes way out in search of an isolated beach that we never found but the winding drive along the coast was spectacular. Now we had an afternoon to kill before our overnight bus so we got our suits and headed to the main beach. It wasn't packed but the bodies there weren't too hard on the eyes. We swam in the luke warm water sat out one the white sand and turned down every vender that came our way. I was even slapped by one because I didn't want to buy any gum! Once we were good and burnt we hopped back on our scooters and rode all the way out to the point to sip beer and watch the sunset over the city and watch the city lights come on. On the way back in the dark we had issues. I went the wrong way on a one way highway and matt caused a elderly gentleman to spin out of control and go flying off his scooter into on coming traffic. It was ok though because the Vietnamese were used to this and just swerved around him. Finally we made it to our bus which to our surprise ment that we would be sleeping on top of each other for the next 15 hours. Oh great....

Nick's Day 4 - Scooting around

orry about missing the last blog day but it has been one incredible ride these past two days. Me Nu is a relaxing and beautiful place yet very boring. Yesterday we had most of the day to kill in Mu Ne and so we decided to throw our hats into the ring of the moterists. That's right we rented scooters! Luckly there was room enough for our HUGE learning curves. As we pulled away (rather rocketed forward uncontrolably) the owner of the scooters was probably calling to verifiy that his insurance was still valid. After a few close calls, some terrified pedestrians, and a chipped mirror or two we were on our way and enjoying the beautiful scenery. We visited the nearby fishing village and mat got his hair cut. It was one of the more interesting places because not only do they cut your hair but pop all of your pimples and clean your ears (they had a dentist-like setup withpointy instruments and all and were working on someone when we arrived). We tore our way up to some pathetic sand dunes then got lost in the back country in search of a very elusive waterfall. We did however find an abandoned highway where we tested the limits of our crotch buggies. We toped out around 120 km/h, all the while loving the fact that this country doesn't have traffic police. We wrapped up our first scooter adventure and waited for our bus to Nha Trang. At this point matt was vying for the world record in sweating threw your clothes. Normally I wouldn't mention such trivial details but you should have seen the amount of sweat... The bus was much more relaxing this time around though when we stopped for gas I asked about the time and the driver said 5 mins so we waited next to the bus (we were starving and there was a noodle stand a half a block up. This german girl spoke to the driver and assured us that we had 30 mins so we took a gingerly stroll over to the noodle stand and began to feast on perhaps the best noodles yet. That's when a man came walking down the road to tell us he thinks our bus is leaving without us! So we throw down our chopsticks and sprint back we make it to the bus just as it was turning on to the highway. Panting and out of breath we are met by a very frantic and apologizing German girl. She makes it up to us by giving us great locations to visit along our route. Finally we arrived and it is a GREAT city. Livly night life, cheap, beautiful. Our hotel was fantastic (Peace Backpackers Hotel). I met a cool ex-pat who gave us some great insight as to what to do while here. Exhausted from traveling we crashed early.

Matt: On the road

To our agreement Nick and I think that the best part of our trip has just begun. We are venturing out of the big city and into the rural campo where we rightfully feel at home. Because of the similar climates that El Salvador and Vietnam share, there is very similar vegetation. We keep seeing the banana trees, flor de fuego, izote, eucalyptus, maranon, licha, mamon, and a ton of other beautiful plants that were part of our daily lives in Central America. It is easy to see that we are experiencing a bit of nostalgia for our recently former home. It has been special seeing these plants and learning their Vietnamese names. In a way it is giving us a greater picture of the world, bringing some universality to our view of humanity, which I think is something we all try to look for at some level or another. And if you could see how absolutely different this place is, this culture is, to anything we are used to in the west, a little bit of nostalgia is greatly appreciated to help us feel like we aren't in a complete other world.

Nostalgia aside, we got out of Ho Chi Minh City as fast as we could before spending too much money. Nick convinced me to get a massage with him, and boy was it nice. If I could marry someone who could massage my feet the way those women did it yesterday evening, I would not be a needy man. That is all I need for happiness. We jumped on a sleeper bus, which is called so because it has no seats, but BEDS to lie in during your journey. It is a beautiful way to travel, though something that I was surprised to see. I mean, I have taken 23 hour bus rides through Mexico and the Mexicans love luxury options to travel, but not even THEIR nicest buses had beds to lie in. Luxury might have a more amplified interpretation here in the east. Even all of the city buses have air conditioning, which isn't something I would expect to see coming to a developing country. It is sure making travel a lot nicer, however. It still is 95 degrees with high humidity at night, so a little comfort doesn't go unappreciated.

Right now we are stopped in a coastal city, Mui Ne, staying in a very nice beach hotel owned by an Ozzy and his Vietnamese/American wife. It's beautiful, and cheap ($5), and a nice little leisure stop. Tomorrow we head to a larger beach town and will hopefully rent some scooters and ride out to see waterfalls and a little countryside.

I'm in good health at the moment. Nick had a short stomach issue but seems to be recovered. Off to bed!

Nick's Day 3 - Mui Ne

Last night's festivities weren't epic but interesting none-the-less. The night life in Ho Chi Mien City is hopping, with beautiful women, live music, foreigners and locals alike. We started the night at one of the glitzy tourist bars (BIG MISTAKE) the beers were outragously priced at 1 USD a piece and the attractive eye candy that lures you in turns out to be a shemale. We promptly downed our costly beers and moved on to the greener pastures of the bodegas (say it with me now Bo-de-ga) were beer was a reasonable 50 cents and conversation was lively. Poor Mateo caught the eye of the only gay Vietnamese male and we were invited to join their table. This small misfourtune turned out great in the end as this group of people knew everyone on the block and introduced us around. As the beers continued to flow Mateo and I became more and more determined to speak Vietnamese. This was to the delight of the entire table and street for that matter. We met people from all over last night austrelia, Japan, England, India, and more and we all shared and swapped beers learned to toast in other languages (Yo! In Vietnamese). After a sufficient period of embibing we reached an effective level of inibriation and finally turned in. (about 3am)

This morning was rough and with heavy hearts we said our goodbyes to Madam Chu's (great hotel with nice staff). We were met by what could only be discribed as the-best-way-to-travel-by-bus bus. Our sleeper bus actually has beds on the inside! Bummer Matt and I could sleep next to each other...er.. I mean near each other. But the comfert beats a salvadorian bus any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

I know this is a public blog but I must mention that getting explosive diarrhea on a 6 hour bus ride without TP is about as bad as it gets. Aside from that we had a psycho bus driver that nearly hurled us from our bunks on every turn. But we got to travel while lying on beds, need I say more? When we arrived we were immediately drawn to a sign that read $5 a night on a beach front hotel (this roughly translated to "Nick and Matt you will both be staying here regardless of the conditions") as we entered the hotel we were met by an Ozzy named John who went out of his way to help us. It looked bleak, what with the second story private room that over looked the ocean with a pool and bar that served 40 cent beers all for the ridiculously low price of $5. Everything here is unremarkable and VERY cheap. Thats it for now.. To those reading this, we will be toasting to you while sipping cheap beer on an empty white sands beach. Cheers!

Nick's Day 2 - The Tunnels

So the day started off early (again with the jet lag), and we went back to our favorite little Non stand for breakfast. The city slowly awoke with it's hustling scooters flying through the narrow streets honking gingerly at terrified pedestrians. Breakfast was yet another orgy of flavor mixed with a genuine Vietnam experience as the locals stared in awe at the two Americans sitting with them at their local eatery speaking a confused mix of Spanish, English and Vietnamese.

We opted for a tour of the underground tunnels (VC created an impressive underground tunnel system that stretched for 200Km). The bus ride was long and the tour guide barely spoke English and bashed the US for a bit. But he had his funny moments, one in particular being when he explained to us why all Asians have narrow eyes "We eat the wice and when we need make shit.. We push weel hawd and squint like this (hard pooping face). All the time we make this face."

The Cu Chi tunnel excursion was great. Talk about your one sided American bashing war presentation. Seeing the VC booby traps, while listening to live gun fire and explosions in the jungle was intense. But the end part of the tour was the best we got to fire live rounds from an American M16 and M6, as well as an AK47. The sound that erupted from those guns was both an ear splitting and eye opening experience. We only fired 10 shots and that was enough for a lifetime. Next we entered the VC tunnels (less than a meter tall and a half a meter wide) which again reinforced our joint relief that we didn't have to fight against an army so determined to win that they would live in these caverns of shittiness.

After a hard day of tunnel exploring Mathew and I went in for a $20 four hour massage (sorry no happy endings here). It was fantastic and now we are about to head out and experience the night life.. To tell the truth... I can't wait to get out of this expensive city. Well, expensive to a PCV...

Matt: I heart SE Asia, So Far

I left mom and dad and Claire on a cold morning in Denver Colorado with great thoughts of travel and food and people and foreign languages. Of course I was also thinking of all the insecurities and political turmoil that could be waiting for us in our first port of arrival, Bangkok, but Nick and I had made the proper preparations to leave Thailand immediately before the milk got too sour. I flew from Denver to Seattle where my knight in shining armor was waiting for me, a big grin on his face, full of the same emotion of traveling to a truly foreign place within the next twenty four hours that I had. It was good to see Nick. I had last seen him a week before I left in El Salvador when he was passing through San Salvador with his sister and brother-in-law. Now me and him were going to stay at his sister’s and brother-in-law’s abode in Bellinsham, WA. There we made our last arrangements and toasted with his family over a chicken barbeque and pasta dinner, overlooking the ocean towards Vancouver Island.

The next morning Nick and I shuttled ourselves to Sea-Tac, or the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport if you haven’t heard it before. Remember this. Everyone will give you a pretentious frown if you don’t know what Sea-Tac is. Anyways, we hopped on the swank Korean Air Boeing 777 to Seoul on Monday afternoon at 2:20, and touched down at 5:00 pm on Tuesday! We landed in almost-zero visibility fog, to our amazement. We both were surprised when suddenly the runway appeared right below the plane we touched down without a bump. Thank you modern technology! We barely caught our next flight as we were both passed out in the terminal, and quickly we were on our way to Bangkok. Sadly, we couldn’t see any of the city since we had booked a plane to fly us immediately to Saigon. Bangkok has been alight with burning tires and gunshots due to political violence, so we bypassed Thailand and headed straight to Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City), but not before we had some knock-out Pad Thai and got stared down by a serious-looking transvestite.

We arrived in Saigon at 9 in the morning and grabbed a bus to Pham Ngu Lao, in the center of 9 million-people city and settled in to Madam Cuc’s guesthouse. We wasted no time to hit the street and find our first Vietnamese dining delight. It just so happened to be a block down the road, on the sidewalk, a woman throwing together soup next to men sitting on short stools bent over tables picking away with their chop-sticks at something that looked, well, very Vietnamese. They passed us two stools and we perched on them waiting for our grub. The woman handed us our bowls and sticks and we took our first bite. And we both looked right at each other and gave an expression we both understood, that this food was “are you kidding me?” delicious. It was a bowl of bean sprouts, rice paper, basil, pepper, and two kinds of absolutely amazing tofu. It was love at first taste, and to top off the moment we were given two ice-cold Saigon Exports (a pretty good local lager) to wash the goodness down. We went back this morning for breakfast and already feel like regulars. We plan to go for dinner tonight.

Today we went out of the city on a tour of the Cu Chi tunnels dug and used by the Viet Cong during the war. On our way out of the city we got to enjoy our driver dodging and weaving through the giant sea of motorbikes that consume all traffic in the urban areas. Vietnam is a motorbike-crazy country. At the tunnels, not only did we get to crawl around fifteen feet underground in tunnels less than a meter high, we also got to see how Victor Charlie (military for Viet Cong) made ad-hoc explosives, weapons, and tools as well as the different types of booby-traps they used to fight against the US military and the Vietnamese Army. It was an important thing to see, as an American. I couldn’t imagine the horrors that the US military faced while in the bush in Vietnam, as well as the horrors the Vietnamese faced. Seeing these reminders of the war tells a more personal story of “America’s nightmare” and I predict that there will be many more humbling experiences along the way.

Tomorrow we head north in a sleeper bus to see the coast and make our way towards Hanoi. Till then, adios.

Nick's First Entry

So here we are sitting in a quaint little hotel in downtown Ho Chi Mien City, sipping on fresh coffee and chowing down on some warm bread. But it wasn't and easy trip getting here. After a grooling 17 hours in a luxury airline we landed in Seoul South Korea just weeks after the North Koreans crossed the border and were fired upon to return. Luckily, we jumped out of that frying pan and landed in the fire that was Bangkok. Thailand as it just so happens was on the brink of civil war and at the airport tensions were less than high. Again we escaped death and a visa fiasco and landed in Southern Vietnam. The city of 9 million people and 3 million scooters without traffic lights. Battling a potential civil war in Thailand was nothing when compared to crossing the bustling streets of Ho Chi Mien City. But we found our little hotel and immediately set off to sample some of Vietnam's famous street food. Luckily our experience in El Salvador has given us the cajones to sample REAL street food made from an ancient Vietnamese woman cooking and handling our food with her bare hands. And to our surprise it was the most amazing food we had ever tried! I am speechless as to how to describe this amazing explosion of flavor. It is completely unlike that of the food found in the States the inexcusably call Vietnamese food. The tofu it self is more than one can handle, with its firm texture and slightly sweet taste it makes for a mouth watering and unforgettable experience. After a walk around town the jet lag hit us like one of bombs dropped here during the Vietnam war. We passed out at 3pm for a little siesta and woke up at 1am. Needless to say we are working on it...