Vertical Run and Dalat

It's been super fun having our friends Amy and Anthony visiting us in Ho Chi Minh City. First of all, it's a great excuse to try all the restaurants and bars around town that we've had on our list for a while. We've also got to take couple fun trips and have a few more coming up.

The first weekend Amy and Ant were here, Nikki and I had signed up for the Bitexco "Vertical Challenge." It's a race to the observation deck of the tallest building in Vietnam (at least for now). It was 49 floors in all, which Nikki covered in 14 minutes (good for 10th in her age group) and I did in about 6 minutes (3rd in my age group, 8th overall). I had been training with my buddy Jordan a little bit (Jordan was just a couple seconds behind me), but we weren't quite prepared for the extreme leg burn of the last 10 stories! We celebrated our survival with a BBQ on the roof of our apartment building and by drinking "Foxy-Jorge" beer, which Jordan and I had just finished brewing. Jordan returned to Europe – sad to see my buddy, training partner, and fellow brewer leave!

Last weekend Nikki, Anthony, Amy, Amy's mom, and I headed to Dalat, which is a former French hillstation in Central Vietnam. These days, it's famous among Vietnamese people as a honeymoon spot, and on our first day we rode motorbikes to check out the "Valley of Love." It was everything we hoped for – tons of photo opportunities with random sculptures, flower-covered hillsides, two-person bikes, etc. The next day, we went canyoning in a nearby river. This involved rappelling, rock slides, jumping off cliffs, and swimming. The biggest attraction was rappelling down the face of an enormous waterfall. Sunday also happened to be my 30th birthday – can't imagine a better way to celebrate!

Plenty more adventures to come – next up is a coastal motorbike ride and then Borneo!