The Golden Loop Motorbike Ride, Central Vietnam

Haha, funny hair on Adam. lol At the Da Nang beach before we set out on our motorbikes.

This past February brought one of my all-time favorite adventures in Vietnam! One of my absolute best friends from High School, Adam, joined me on a motorbike tour nicknamed The Golden Loop, courtesy of super-indie-traveler Tom over at Vietnam Coracle, an indispensable source for Vietnam travel.

It was a vacation for the ages, truly! Let me take you on our trip, step by step, ending with New Year's celebrations in the historic UNESCO village of Hoi An!

Dressed to Kill in Hoi An, Courtesy of Ha Na Tailor

Red club! BTW Kat's shirt is an outline of Wisconsin with "curdlandia" written across it. LOVE IT.

In January I had what might be my most successful traveling stint of all time, with my sister and her best friend. Finding good travelin' buds be hard, amirite??

We were in sync in almost all things. Foods (all), bedtimes (early), fruit juices (again, all), music (OMG THIS ST. VINCENT ALBUM HOLY SMOKES), opinions regarding gazelles (majestic, obviously). It was a not really a surprise, though, that I was not really into the "let's make me new clothes!" thing, as we approached Hoi An - a city known globally as a custom clothier paradise. I'm not a clothes shopper on the best of days, and presented with unlimited choice? Well, that's just downright intimidating.

However.

All it took was one carefully dropped hint from my sister, and I was off to the races, too (although I managed to spend several hundred USD less on dresses and blazers).

Click through to see the fantastic clothes we got, custom made by Ha Na Tailor!

[p.s. Please forgive the wretched photography. These beautiful women deserved better, but all they got was me and my iPhone 5 camera. haha!]

Cao Lầu: Hội An's Most Famous Dish

Cao Lầu is Hoi An's most famous and mysterious dish, and, I argue, it's most delicious! This is a reason to visit as often as possible - while you can get great ribs outside of Memphis, you literally can't find Cao Lầu anywhere but Hội An.

But what is it? And what makes it so incredibly satisfying? And why can't you get this dish - literally - anywhere else in the world?

First and foremost, it's all about the noodles. These are a lye-water kneaded noodle, and are toothsome and thick, soaking up the scant sauce ladled on top. They are created using rice flour mixed with water and wood ash (specifically from the Cham islands, two dozen km offshore), and then cooked with firewood three times.

These are not your average noodles, my friend... and it shows!

Street Food IV: The Voyage Home, and What I Didn't Find There

Pork Sticky Rice (Xoi Man). Mandatory? No, not really. But pretty good.

Wow, it's been quite a while since I posted about my street food adventures, huh? Let's rectify that!

In between/during my Autumn posts, I got to visit my homes in North America, and I really appreciated for the first time what kind of environments I was bouncing between. The rapid changes threw their differences into sharp relief. It highlighted the good in each and reminded me that even the negatives sometimes serve a purpose.

One thing that really made me blink, however, was Chicago's lack of street-level activity. I'd never really noticed it before, but the streets are pretty dead here in America. Relatively speaking, of course. Now, I'm not generally a guy for crowds, but I really enjoy the vital atmosphere typical of virtually any Vietnamese street, and there's a LOT to be said for convenience, price, and quality.

Ok. True story: the weeks I was in the midwest were unseasonably cold (and then unseasonably warm... thanks Denver!) and Chicago's true character is naturally more visible in the warmer months of April-September, so there's that. Even then, however, Chicago doesn't have much of a street food scene to speak of.

To me, this has some clear benefits and losses.