We toured the former Presidential Palace, now known as Independence Palace or Reunification Palace. This was the site of the end of the Vietnam War, during the fall of Saigon in April 1975, when a North Vietnamese army tank crashed through its gates. Another significant landmark from this era was the War Remnants Museum, known for its vast collection of artifacts from the Vietnam War. In addition to US military vehicles, the museum has exhibit rooms containing graphic photography from the war. Our Vietnamese guide indicated that very few Vietnamese ever visit the museum due to the painful memories it provokes.

Saigon is also famous for the Ben Thanh Market, one of the oldest and most iconic structures in the city. This market was reminiscent of the Grand Bazaar in Instanbul, although on a smaller scale. It was interesting to visit, but difficult to get down the aisles without hearing repeated pleas to "shop here... do you want to buy this shirt... how much you pay... you like this, I give you good price." Somehow, we managed to shop there without actually buying anything.

I was very impressed with Saigon. It was a big city much like any other big city in the world, with first-rate shopping, historical landmarks, and excellent restaurants and cultural attractions. We were able to catch a show at the Siagon Opera House, a Cirque du Soleil-like act called "My Village," where acrobats used long bamboo poles to act out their story. It was very well done. Another important note, we felt completely safe in Saigon (as well as Hanoi) and felt genuinely welcomed by locals wherever we went. Vietnam is still climbing out of difficult financial times and is hoping for a thriving tourist industry. I would not hesitate to visit again.

Goodbye Vietnam, and thanks for all the fish!

We arrive at the AmaDara and board. The ship is every bit as luxurious and welcoming as we expected it to be, and we settle in for a week-long tour of life along the Tonle Sap Lake and the Mekong River. Some of the tour highlights included:

• Kampong Chhnang - floating villages that contain a fascinating mixture of boats and barges tied together for miles on end.
• Koh Chen village - a small village with several home workshops specializing in silver and coppersmithing.
• Oudong - we visited a large Buddhist monastery and received a special blessing by the Buddhist monks, who threw lotus pods at us.

Our third day on the river brings us to Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia. There were some parts of Phnom Penh that were quite beautiful, such as the Royal Palace, but my memories of Phnom Penh will mostly center on the killing fields and the horror conducted there during the mid-late 1970s under the Khmer Rouge regime. We visited the nearby Choeung Ek Genocidal Center (the killing fields) and the Tuol Sleng (S-21) Genocide Museum, both of which did a good job in portraying the historical events that happened there.

A brief historical update: Upon taking power in 1975, the Khmer Rouge evacuated Phnom Penh's 2.5 million residents, stripped them of their possessions and forced them to work in the fields. Those who complained or broke rules were tortured and killed in detention centers such as the one at Tuol Sleng, the infamous S-21 detention center. The Khmer Rouge regime came to an end in 1979, when Vietnamese troops captured Phnom Penh and forced Pol Pot to retreat back into the jungles of Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge received arms from China and political support from the US throughout the 1980s, but the Khmer Rouge's influence began to decrease following a 1991 ceasefire agreement and collapsed completely by the late 1990s. Pol Pot was captured in 1997 and died in his sleep a year later. To date, a UN-backed tribunal has convicted only a handful of Khmer Rouge leaders of crimes against humanity.

Unfortunately, Chris and Pamela (our friends and traveling companions) had to end the trip early due to a family emergency and departed for the US from Phnom Penh. We were sad to see them go! During our 2-day stay in Phnom Penh we also visited the Royal Palace, the Silver Pagoda, and several other historical landmarks. Tomorrow we cross the border back into Vietnam.

We started our first full day in Siam Reap with a guided sightseeing tour of the Angkor Archaeological Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We visited the temple complex at Angkor Thom, established in the late 12th century by King Jayavarman VII, and the last capital city of the Khmer empire. The Angkor Thom tour included stops at the famous Bayon Temple, known for its gigantic smiling stone faces, the Baphuon Temple, the Terrace of the Elephants, and the Terrace of the Leper King. We also visited Ta Prohm, known as the "Kingdom of the Trees" for the way in which thick forest vegetation has intertwined with temple stones over the centuries. Some of you may recall that Ta Prohm was featured in the movie, Tomb Raider, when characters visited Angkor Thom to recover the first piece of the Triangle of Light. Our final temple stop of the day was at the pink sandstone temple, Banteay Srei, dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva and known as the "jewel of Khmer art" for its elaborate decorative wall carvings.

Our second day in Cambodia included a full-day tour at Angkor Wat, the most iconic temple in the Angkor Archaeological Park and the largest religious monument in the world! Angkor Wat was built by Khmer King Suryavarman II in the early 12th century to honor the Hindu god Vishnu, but was gradually transformed into a Buddhist temple toward the end of the 12th century. It felt almost surreal to be climbing around the Angkor Wat complex. Crowded in some areas, but easy to find places with no one else in sight. The temple complex was massive and there were relatively no areas out of bounds for visitors to explore. It was an amazing day of exploration and history, and we all agreed that AmaWaterway's local guide (Trang) did a great job of sharing the history and highlights with us.

I would love to visit Siam Reap again in the future, and particularly the Angkor temple complex. Angkor Wat is a bucket list item, right up there with the pyramids of Giza, Machu Picchu, and the Taj Mahal.

Russell and I awoke early on New Year's day and were the first on deck, taking in the calm quiet of the morning, the soft sounds of the bay's inhabitants and finally the fishermen starting their day as the sun broke through the water's edge in the distance. It was remarkably quiet and serene. I tried to inhale and absorb every peaceful moment before the sun rose, bringing the remaining passengers with it. My camera and I could not get enough, but unfortunately, we could never do justice to the sights and sounds of that morning on Ha Long Bay.

Later that morning we went on an excursion to Sung Sot Cave, also known as "Surprising Cave" due to its sheer size and the thousands of stalagmites within the cave walls. The cave is colorfully lit up and quite beautiful to walk through. This excursion was one of Russell's favorites. He likes spelunking in caves. I enjoyed it too, but favored the view high up on the exit platform overlooking the beautiful bay below.

Ha Long Bay is home to many boats and floating villages, essentially a collection of house boats, barges and small fishing boats roped together. The people who live in these floating villages make their living fishing and selling trinkets to tourists. The fishing villages have about 30–50 families with a population of around 200–600 people. These floating villages are like a true water world, rising and falling with the tides and sheltered amid limestone towers. Cruise companies like Indochina Sails offers sampan (flat-bottomed wooden boat) tours around the villages to aid tourism in the floating villages.

Goodbye Ha Long Bay... time to catch a flight to Cambodia.

We realized on our first day in Hanoi that crossing the street was a life experience to remember. There were practically no traffic lights and scooters continuously zipped by in every direction. Sidewalks were not even safe as scooters drove down the sidewalks as often and as fast as they drove on the road. We finally settled on hiring a rickshaw driver to take us the two blocks to the hotel where our friends were staying. This proved to be a near equal harrowing experience but the rickshaw driver knew what he was doing and delivered us safely to our destination in a matter of minutes. We joined Chris and Pamela at the Sofitel Legend Metropole, a French hotel chain, for our next two nights in Hanoi. The Sofitel was every bit as beautiful and even more luxurious than the Hilton.

We spent our first full day in Hanoi walking around the area near the hotel. We walked to Hoan Kiem Lake which means "Lake of the Returned Sword," and visited the Ngoc Son Buddhist Temple located on Jade Island at the northern end of the lake. Legend has it that Vietnamese Emperor Le Loi was boating on the lake one day when the Golden Turtle God Kim Qui surfaced and asked for the return of the magic sword that the dragon king Long Vurong had lent him in his fight with the Ming Emperor of China. Le Loi agreed and returned the sword, which Kim Qui took to the bottom of the lake for safety, where it remains today. The entrance to Jade Island is a famous and colorful bridge known as the Huc Bridge, which is featured as this blog's photo caption.

Our official tour started the next day with a visit to the Hoa Lo Prison, the prison of fame known as the "Hanoi Hilton" where nationalist and communist Vietnamese political prisoners were tortured by the French and where the North Vietnamese held US bomber crews during the Vietnam War. The prison was ultimately demolished in the 1990s but the gatehouse still stands as a museum. It was one of several heartbreaking visits during our tour. Other stops this day included a visit to the impressive Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and the Temple of Literature. We were also treated to a one-hour rickshaw ride through the old city, which proved to be more exciting and interesting than we expected. That evening we attended a water puppet show at the Thang Long Water Puppet Theater.

Hanoi - with its thousands of scooters overburdened with wares, people selling foods we had never seen before on the sidewalks in front of their homes and storefronts, Buddhist temples and Asian architecture everywhere - was the most unusual place we had ever visited up to this point in time. But a new day and a new year was upon us with promises of beautiful Ha Long Bay ahead, and New Year's Eve spent overnight on a luxurious and traditional Vietnamese junk.

Our home for the first three nights was the Hilton Santa Fe Historic Plaza, using Hilton points for the stay. We were upgraded to an executive floor pool view room with free breakfast and 24-hour access to the executive lounge with complimentary beverages, snacks and hot/cold appetizers (thank you, Hilton Gold status). The Hilton is housed in a 300-year old hacienda in the historic district of Santa Fe, within easy walking distance to most of the cultural attractions, shops and restaurants in Santa Fe. I highly recommend staying here on your next visit to Santa Fe. If you do stay here, make sure to say hello to Perry Redondo at the front desk. Perry was awarded the highly-coveted TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence badge last year and serves as an excellent example of great customer service. He certainly was interested in making sure our stay was perfect, and I believe he treats all his customers the same way.

While in the historic plaza, we visited the Palace of the Governors, the New Mexico History Museum and the Museum of International Folk Art, although there are many other museums that would be worth visiting. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum is very popular as well. The Palace of the Governors is the oldest continuously occupied public building in the United States, built by the Spanish as a government building in 1610. The oldest church in the United States is also in Santa Fe - the San Miguel Mission, which was built by the Tlaxcala Indians between 1610 and 1628. And speaking of churches, the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi is quite an impressive site at the end of the plaza.

Our last three nights were spent at the Hilton Buffalo Thunder Resort north of Santa Fe, using this as a good location for day trips north and west. We were fortunate to be upgraded to a deluxe suite with two kiva fireplaces and a private balcony overlooking the pools (gotta love Hilton Honors). We spent more money in the casino than we planned, partially due to an unexpected snowstorm during our stay with little else to do but gamble or shop. From here, we visited Taos and the Taos Pueblo, the Rio Grande Gorge bridge, Bandelier National Park, and the Los Alamos National Lab. The cave dwellings and pueblo ruins in Bandelier were very cool to see, as was the scenery driving along the mountain roads from Santa Fe to Los Alamos. We also visited the Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos and learned more of the history of Los Alamos, the Manhattan project, and the story behind building the first atomic bomb.

In summary, Santa Fe is a city I would love to visit again in the future! Have you been there? If so, what are your favorite memories?

The flight to Havana was delayed due to mechanical difficulties and a storm over Havana. We had to forego our planned stops at Plaza de la Revolución and the Colon cemetery and went straight to the Parque Central hotel for a welcome drink and check-in. That night we had dinner at the hotel and settled in early.

Our first full day in Havana was very busy. Our first stop was Las Terrazas, a planned eco-community and nature reserve in Candelaria, in northwestern Cuba. The site is a reforested former coffee plantation and is part of UNESCO's Biosphere Reserve. At Las Terrazas we visited a medical clinic, pharmacy, coffee shop, artist studio, and ration store. Ration stores are where local Cubans shop for everyday products like grain, beans, fruit, and other items that might be available on any given day. After an authentic, country-style lunch at a local farmhouse, we visited the Vocal Clave de Sol music project for a concert by young student musicians. After dinner, we attended a lecture by an economics professor who discussed the effects of the US embargo (referred to as "the blockade" in Cuba) on the people of Cuba.

The next day included a visit to a primary school and a tour of Old Havana, followed by a visit to a local store to stock up on Cuban rum and cigars. After lunch, we visited the convent and studio of an a cappella group called the Vocal Leo who serenaded us with beautiful voices and song. We had the remainder of the afternoon free and chose to spend some time at the Museo de la Revolución and the Hotel Nacional before heading to Miramar for an oceanfront dinner at the Vistamar paladar. Paladars are family-owned restaurants, rather than the traditional government-run restaurants, and are usually housed in someone's home.

Our fourth day in Havana started with a classic car tour, which concluded in an auto workshop for an explanation and demonstration of how the classic cars are maintained. Next up was a dance studio rehearsal, followed by a visit to Fusterlandia, the home and surrounding neighborhood of the Picasso of the Caribbean, Jose Fuster. 

Our final day in Havana included a tour of a cigar factory, with a "marriage of Cuban cigars, rum and coffee" at the end of the tour. From there we traveled to Finca Vigia, Hemingway's Cuban retreat. We also visited Cojimar, the fishing village made famous by Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. Another stop at an organic community garden, known as Organoponicos, to learn how residents grow fruit, vegetables and herbs for their personal use and local sale.

Our journey from Havana to Trinidad included stops at the Che Guevera Mausoleum and in beautiful Santa Clara and Sancti Spiritus, before arriving at the Iberostar Trinidad, our home for the next two nights. In Trinidad we visited Casa del Alfarero, a pottery house that had been managed by the same family for generations, and a bed and breakfast known as casas particulares in Cuba. The view from the top of the Iglesia y Convento de San Francisco tower was particularly memorable. Trinidad is a beautiful, Spanish colonial town and UNESCO World Heritage site.

Our departure from Cienfuegos to Miami was on time and uneventful. Skies were clear and we watched the Florida Keys and Miami come into view as we returned to the US. This trip was the first opportunity we had to use our newly-acquired Global Entry pass, and it worked perfectly in enabling us to bypass US Immigration by using the Global Entry kiosks located at the airport.