Phew, we've got a registry

So I am discovering that creating a baby registry is very intimidating when you have never had or taken care of a baby before! Rob and I put together a basic registry on Amazon which you can view here: http://www.amazon.com/registry/baby/3VPQ3YJHG0Z2T .

We realize that this is not a complete list. If you would like to get something, but nothing inspires you in our list feel free to buy some books, clothes or toys of your own choosing.

Thanks for helping us get ready for the biggest change in our life. Only a little over 2 months left! eek!

It's a girl!

I was telling Rob that we should change this blog name to "Rob and Tara's Adventures" given our new subject matter. A little while ago Rob and I decided that we were ready to have kids. Well, as ready as we were going to be anytime soon. We concluded that if we waited until we were in the perfect space to have a child we may be waiting a decade or more. So we just decided that we would just go for it and learn as we go. We also figured that based on my mother's experience it may take 2-5 years for me to get pregnant.

Well 2 weeks after we really started trying, we found out that I was pregnant. Surprise! We were both shocked and excited. I remember looking at the at home test multiple times within the first 24 hours. Actually we were in such disbelief from the first faint plus sign that we saw that Rob drove down to the drugstore and bought the most expensive home pregnancy test he could find. The digital window that read "pregnant" finalized it for us, we were going to have a baby.

I am currently in my second trimester (sooo much better than the first trimester) and we just found out yesterday that it's a girl. Rob is extremely excited. I am cautiously happy. I'm picturing a huge daddy's girl who is going to get whatever she wants whenever she wants. I asked Rob "What if she wants a pony?." His response- "Well every girl needs a pony." Oh man. It's going to be a long 18 years.

I am due November 12th. We will probably have a baby shower (with no stupid games) sometime in the fall. I'm thinking late September or early October. If anyone wants to get us presents, please remember that I am allergic to pink.

We will try to update this blog from time to time with baby news. When she is born we can also post pictures here. I will not post ultrasound pictures though unless people really want me to.

Let the adventures begin...

War Remnants Museum

Back in Saigon, we spent the last morning of our trip at the War Remnants Museum. The outside of the building was surrounded by American fighter jets, tanks and various heavy artillery sitting still and silent in the mid day sun. A man wearing a U.S. Army hat walked past us as we entered the building. He smiled and nodded to us as we passed, and it was impossible not to imagine him as a veteran of the war, returning to pay his respects and perhaps to find peace in revisiting this land of endless war that has finally arrived at a peace of its own. Inside the museum we were faced with the ghastly images of war and its cost in human suffering. Civilian victims of bombings, napalm and massacre stared out at us alongside images of human bodies, horribly disfigured from the effects of Agent Orange and other pesticides that were sprayed on the countryside during the war. These photographs were indescribably haunting, and although the museum is unfortunately propagandistic and one sided in its depiction of the American War, what is left after viewing the horrific record of needless death and destruction is a powerful sense of war's ultimate futility and of the tragedy of sacrificing so much beauty, life and possibility in the name of war's countlessly unobtainable objectives.

In our travels throughout the country, we often commented on the incredible beauty of the land and of the culture, wondering how such a place could find itself on the wrong side of history for so many years, the victim of so many conquering powers, and yet, the feeling that you get from traveling through this land that has only so recently emerged from one thousand years of fighting, and from meeting its people who are so proud of their history and culture, is a renewed sense of appreciation for the resiliency of hope and peace and of the vast potential of our shared human experience.

Hoi An

The last leg of our travels began in Hoi An, a perfectly preserved ancient seaport that, unlike most cities in central Vietnam, was almost completely spared from bombing during the American War, due to the cooperation of both sides. The town was recently declared a Unesco World Heritage site and many of the historic buildings are open to the public. All motor vehicles have been banned from the town center which lies on the banks of the Thu Bon River. At night, the town is lit by hundreds of brightly colored paper lanterns, strung across the narrow, unpaved streets and hanging in the openings of store fronts and houses. It was a very romantic setting to while away the last few days of our honeymoon.

Hoi An is also famous for its legions of tailors and cobblers whose storefronts line the streets of the old town center. Renowned as master copiers, the tailors of Hoi An can take a picture from a magazine and turn out an exact replica in a couple of days at a fraction of the price that you would pay for such a service in the states. Our hotel referred us to their favorite shop and we headed down to check out the operation.

The long and narrow store was lined from floor to ceiling with the raw fabrics in every imaginable color and pattern. Manequins were adorned with samples of the tailors' work, lifted directly from the pages of current fashion magazines. Sales girls roamed the floor, offering suggestions and samples from their vast library of catalogue and magazine clippings. We went in expecting to have a quick look and maybe pick up a shirt or two, and left with an order in place for a dress and shirt for Tara and three piece suit for me. Over the next few days, we would return to the store for fittings and alterations, often surrounded by two or three tailors who analyzed every seam and fold of the suit, reworking it through several rounds of revisions until it was up to their standards of perfection. My suit and Tara's dress both turned out beautifully, and we have been trying to rationalize making return visits to Hoi An every few years to stock up on a new wardrobe.

We got an unexpected surprise our last day in Hoi An, when we went to check out of our hotel, and realized that we had reserved it for another day. Happy to stick around, we took advantage of our "extra" day by taking a bike ride to the nearby beach through a spectacular landscape of rice fields and palm fringed river bends. We ate lunch at a beach front sea food restaurant and enjoyed one final afternoon gazing out into the turquoise waters of the South China Sea before beginning the long journey home.

Hue to China Beach

We stepped on the train in Loa Cai at seven and slept hard through the night in our private sleeper car. At four in the morning we got off the train in Hanoi. We found a taxi and negotiated a price to the airport. Up to this point in the trip, we felt that we had come to grasp the counterintuitive logic that structures the flow of traffic in Vietnam. Whereas in the west, we drive fast and straight, keeping more or less within our given lane, obeying traffic signals, etc., in Vietnam, they drive slowly and constantly, flowing together in currents of traffic that merge and separate much as the currents of a river. Although this seemed at first chaotic and dangerous, we found that drivers seemed much more highly attuned to their surroundings and in the rare case of a collision, the vehicles would be moving so slowly that damages would be minimal. In fact, we would later witness one such accident in downtown Saigon in which a young fella on a motorbike was struck by an SUV and though he did fall off his bike, he jumped immediately to his feet, a still burning cigarette hanging from his lips, took a drag, brushed himself off, waived away the approaching traffic cop, got back on his bike and sped away.

However, our taxi driver on the early morning in Hanoi broke all of our preconceived notions with regard to the accepted rules of the road in Vietnam. At one point, I glanced nervously over at the speedometer to see the needle quivering around 150 km/h, just before we careened into the right hand shoulder around a plodding eighteen wheeler. The grand finale of our harrowing drive came as we approached the airport terminal and Tara, concerned that we were heading to the international terminal, leaned forward and said, "We're going to Hue." The driver turned around, wild eyed, slammed on the brake and came to a complete stop in the middle of the onramp. He grabbed our plane ticket from her hands and scanned it rapidly, tossed it back at us and laid on the gas, the wheels screeching and burning beneath us. "Vietnam Air, this way!" he said and sure enough, he dropped us off right at our gate, in about half the time that it should have taken to get there. Guess that's what you get for settling on a fixed price before heading out to your destination. "Good luck!" he waved as we put on our bags and headed off to find our flight.

We landed in Hue at six in the morning where we had arranged for a driver to pick us up and take us on a tour of the city before transferring us to our fancy resort at China Beach. What we didn't know was that we had apparently purchased an entire Mercedes-Benz mini-bus with a driver who spoke about as much English as we did Vietnamese. If we could just have split the difference between that bus and all the various vehicles we'd been crammed into on the trip, so far, it would have evened out quite nicely. And so began our magical mystery tour of the ancient imperial city of Hue and the central Vietnamese coastline. With no idea of where we were heading, we followed the instructions of our driver as he dropped us off at an assortment of interesting sites. "You go here. See the citadel." He said, and we found ourselves at the 17th century imperial enclosure, a moated fortress compound filled with the ornate temples and palaces of the Nguyen Dynasty. We visited a towering pagoda and a sprawling complex of tombs and temples built for the emperor in a beautiful pine tree forest along the banks of the perfume river.

After we had wandered around the outskirts of Hue, our driver headed south along the rugged mountain coastline. We stopped at the peak of Hai Van pass and hiked up to an old French battalion that had been used as a bunker by the American army during the war. The old brick buildings were pock marked with bullet holes and the place had an eerie, haunted feeling even as the vast ocean beneath us shimmered in the mid day sun all the way to the horizon.

Our driver dropped us off at the Furama resort, one of the swankiest places we would be staying on our trip. It was a luxurious, beach from resort that felt a world away from the most recent leg of our journey which had seen us sleeping on trains and staying in modest backpacker accommodations. We were quite pleased to be back in full on honeymoon mode and took full advantage of our decadent digs. Unfortunately, it was my turn to get the stomach bug and so, ironically, Tara and I were both knocked out of commission by the food our two fancy hotels, while all the local food we ate on the trip treated us just fine. Fortunately, I brought along some antibiotics and was back at it in no time. The beach was pristine and we spent many long hours lounging beneath our palm thatched umbrella, staring out into the ocean, just enjoying our time together.

Sapa

We took a night train from Hanoi, 8 hours north to the small town of Lao Cai on the Chinese border. When we arrived at the train station at 4:30 in the morning, we were piled into a mini-bus with a mixture of other weary travelers and early rising locals. It was an hour drive from Lao Cai to Sapa on a winding mountain road that climbed over a mile of elevation through the alpine terrain to the old French hill station of Sapa. The dense, low lying mists seemed to have followed us all the way from Halong Bay, and the scenery that materialized through breaks in the fog was on a very grand scale. Mountain peaks soared over head, while cascading rice terraces followed the steep contours of the hillsides as they plunged into the valley below.

The town of Sapa is an interesting mix of French colonial architecture and traditional hill tribe structures. The hill tribe people who live in the mountains of north Vietnam are composed of a variety of nomadic ethnic minority groups whose farms and villages are scattered throughout the mountainous highlands. Although farming remains the primary source of subsistence for many of the these villagers, the rapidly developing tourism industry has provided new economic opportunities for some who now earn their living by selling handicrafts and embroidery to travelers as well as offering homestays and guided tours of their villages. It is a common sight in Sapa to see western travelers flanked on all sides by groups of Black H'mong or Red Dzoa women dressed in their traditional attire of elaborately embroidered clothing, offering up a selection of hand crafted garments or jewelry. Although the growing tourism market has offered new commercial opportunities to some of the hill tribe people, it is also contributing to the erosion of their traditional way of life and has lead to some forms of exploitation as children are often forced to sell trinkets or beg for money from travelers. The Vietnamese government has set up schools and health clinics in some of the villages in an attempt to integrate the younger generation in mainstream Vietnamese society. Although this will provide greater economic opportunities to what are some of the poorest communities in the country, it is also seen by some as an unwanted effort towards assimilation, while many of the tribal people wish to remain autonomous, and do not consider themselves a part of this or any nation.

For now, the tribal people, and particularly the youth, are living in between worlds. On our first hike in the mountains overlooking Sapa, we were passed by a group of Black H'mong teenagers dressed in their striking ensemble of of indigo dyed linen clothing, skirts, tunics and cylindrical hats. Every one of them was either talking on a cellphone or bobbing along to a track on their iPod as they hiked upward through the rocky terrain toward their village.

Later, we took a guided tour through a couple of hill tribe villages in the valley. We purchased some handicrafts and walked along the terraced rice patties. Once we were out of Sapa and down in the villages, nobody really paid us any mind, as they went about their daily business of plowing the fields and planting the new season's crops. This life of subsistence farming truly did feel a world apart from our daily lives in the "developed" world, and though it would be absurd to idealize this life of endless toiling and laboring and trusting in the land to provide, it struck both Tara and I profoundly the degree to which we are disconnected from the sources of our own subsistence back home. From the food we eat, to the clothes we wear, to the endless barrage of new products, we are so far removed from the origins and from the true cost of the items we consume on a daily basis.

After a couple of days of hiking through the breathtaking mountain scenery, we were ready to begin our long journey back to the beach. We spent our last afternoon in Sapa drinking Bia Hoi with a rotating cast of locals, all of whom were eager to practice their English with a couple of "Tay balos," a teasingly derogative term that translates more or less to scruffy western backpacker. Every time we finished a glass, it seemed that there was someone else there with a new pitcher to top us back off again. It was a good thing that our bus come along when it did, or else I may spent the whole afternoon at that Bia Hoi joint and Tara would have had to carry me back to the hotel.

Ha Long Bay

As we approached The Jasmine in our motor boat, Tara and I exchanged looks of excitement, our smiles widening as we moored alongside the elegant wooden form of the Chinese junk ship. We were greeted by the ship's captain and escorted up two flights of stairs to the main cabin. I was immediately struck by the craftsmanship of the vessel in which all surfaces were finished in dark tropical wood or bamboo with hand carved railings and trim work. We met some of the the other passengers, mostly Australians and Europeans on holiday and then went to check out or private cabin. It was a lovely little room with bamboo paneled walls, a beautifully tiled bathroom and best of all, a private deck looking out over the sea.



We set sail and made our way up to the top deck of the ship. It was a calm and misty morning and the deep blue waters were like a sheet of glass. As we ventured further out into the bay, the looming forms of Ha long's famous limestone islands began to emerge from the curtain of fog. The bay is home to thousands of these islands whose limestone cliffs tower over the waters below. Our ship charted a winding course through the rocky formations, as we dined on a multi-course meal of fresh seafood that included crab soup, chilli and lemongrass prawns and clay pot sea bass.



We anchored in a quiet lagoon and went ashore to explore a massive cave of "cauliflour" limestone formations, stalactites and stalagmites. The path through the caves lead us to a viewpoint at the island's peak where we could see for miles in each direction. Thousands of islands rose from the sea and dissapeared into the misty sky above.



That afternoon, we sat on our deck and watched as the evening light turned the waters and the mountains to darker shades of blue and green. Over dinner we were treated to a surprise gift of champagne, roses and a traditional Vietnamese love song in honor of our honeymoon. Returning to our cabin, we were lulled to sleep by the waters below us and in the morning we awoke to the first light of the sun as it filtered through the misty air, ushering in another beautiful day of new adventures.