March 2, 2008

We had a fun-filled, exhausting day today. There are TONS of pictures, so just take a look around the photo album. I'll try to add titles so you'll know what's what! We saw a couple cool things-a HUGE snail that Dylan was scared of, and a snake skin, which we stopped to inspect and then saw the snake it belonged to. It quickly slithered away, so the pic is just the skin.This morning, after breakfast, we took a stroll down to marble mountain. Those familiar with our last trip know about it, but it's a huge slab of a mountain made from marble right down the road in Danang. They mine the mountain and make BEAUTIFUL marble and jade carvings and ship them all over the world. Think of those huge lion statues you see at the front steps of a mansion, or the marble fountains in the lobbies of nice buildings. They have tons of marble and jade items all along this street we dubbed 'marble alley' (it's more of an alley than a street!).You also can climb partly up the mountain to a beautiful pagoda. It's a steep climb of uneven rock steps (think flashbacks of my last adventure on steep, rocky steps and hyper-extending my knee). But it was worth the climb. The view was beautiful and the pagoda was awesome. There was also an enormous buddha carving. I saw a bunch of locals rub the big buddha then rub their kids' heads, so I gave that a shot. I'm assuming it's for good luck. I think it was the good luck buddha. When we got back down the mountain, we went in one of the marble shops. We got a solid jade, hand carved buddha, dog and pig (Dylan was born in the Year of the Dog and Maddie is the Year of the Pig). On the walk back (about a mile), Dylan fell asleep in his sling, which was perfect for nap time. Unfortunately, as soon as I got him out of the sling and onto the bed, he woke up. So, no nap.After lunch, we went down to the beach. I rolled up my pants legs and walked in with him. He was dying to get down, so I stripped off his pants (he was wearing a shorts onesie underneath) and set him down. I figured he would freak out the first time the water touched him. But he LOVED it. He giggled and stomped his feet in the sand, even when the tide came in and the water was coming up over his shorts. We had to drag him back to the room to get cleaned up. It was only in the 60's at the time and the water was COLD. But he was ecstatic. It makes us so happy to see him so happy.The afternoon adventure was Hoi An, an ancient town about 30 minutes away (by hotel shuttle). They have a bunch of silk factories there. We saw silk worm eggs, baby worms, adult worms, cocoons with larvae (the locals eat the larvae) and moths. We saw how they take the silk from the cocoon and spin 10-20 strands together to make one strand of silk. We then saw them use a machine (moved by hand) to weave the strands into fabric, then saw the finished products of shirts and dresses. We also saw them hand-weaving silk rugs. They were gorgeous. We got a picture of one that took 3 workers, working full work days, a month and a half to make. It was $500. For 6 weeks of labor for 3 people. Amazing. Oh, and on the way there, Dylan fell asleep and stayed asleep for over an hour in his sling. Seven more hours until we get Maddie!