Contes de Canard

One final post on Southeast Asia

2011-06-22T13:07:00.002+02:00

Final cost report: Roughly $2559.26 or ￥16711.95

I say roughly because I used a mix of currencies, so I'm using the average exchange rate between USD and RMB for the month of April.

This figure covers every expense that I incurred from stepping into Pudong International Airport in Shanghai to stepping out of it, i.e. airfare, visa fees, foreign transaction fees, SIM cards, etc. The only exception is my visit to the international clinic in Saigon (which cost $96.14), since that will be reimbursed through my health insurance (Thanks, Obama!) and also because it is not a routine expense (though it is something you should budget for).

This figure does not include materials I bought in preparation for my trip. The expenses for those are as follows:

Digital guidebook: $14.84

General travel supplies (inflatable pillow, earplugs, eye mask, etc.): ￥30.36

Adding visa pages to my passport: $82

Backpack: ￥150 (I think)

External hard drive (for photos): ￥60 (I think)

Extra camera battery: ￥40 (I think)

I can't remember the exact prices for the last three items, but they are something very close to those figures. The average exchange rate in March (when I bought these items) was 1:6.56, so the total for this would come out to $139.58 or ￥833.12. I believe that many of you who may be embarking on a similar trip may not necessarily need to add visa pages though, which is the bulk of these expenses.

I am fully recovered from whatever parasite I had (which the doctors could not recognize but the internet leads me to believe is a fairly common parasite among travellers in the region), and it already feels like a distant memory, even though it only ended a month ago. I think the literal physical distance has a lot to do with that, although it's not the entire reason. I have been back and forth between Shanghai and Nanjing visiting relatives and friends, and it looks like I will be pretty transient between those two cities for the rest of my time in China. It is the rainy season here, which means it rains every single day, yet seemingly without any sort of cooling effect.

In contrast, China's greatest freshwater lakes are now dry. This is what happens when you cut down all the trees and then build a huge dam where it makes no sense to do so: Erosion and desertification run rampant, and the nation loses any natural resources it might have had once upon a time. The air is more dust and pollution than it is air, i.e. the air is actually visible. No one should be surprised. This has been a long time coming. The whole of China, whether it is the majority of people, companies, or government agencies, are more concerned about day-to-day survival and profits than meaningful and/or sustainable long-term development. And this is the price of short-sighted thinking. Ok, off the soapbox now.

I had an amazing trip. My favorites were Thailand and Vietnam for things to do and see, and Malaysia for food and relaxation. You already know how I feel about Laos. Feel free to add me on CouchSurfing. (Mention the blog or I'll think you're weird.) The end.

Oops.

2011-05-31T21:58:00.000+02:00

So I forgot about the Great Firewall, and then I got back to Shanghai and realized I couldn't access blogger. Or facebook. Stupid lack of freedom.

I've just now gotten a proxy to work, but the connection is very tenuous, and if I try to add pictures, it will stop working, so that's a no go.

Luckily (?), I don't have much to report for my last three days in Bangkok.

On the 19th, all I did was go shopping for some last-minute souvenirs (rather unsuccessfully, as I only got one thing). I took a little boat from the canal behind Sergio's place to get into the city center, which is a good way to avoid traffic, although it kind of smells during the day (19 baht).

The stop where I got off happened to be in the middle of a Red Shirt rally, which I didn't notice until 2 minutes later, at which point I thought, "There sure are a lot of people wearing red today." As a result, a bunch of the stores were closed, but not MBK.

I also saw the evening shift security people all gather for their pre-shift morale boost. This is some sort of ridiculous work custom that I've only seen in Asia where employees have to line up in a grid and do stupid physical exercises together and shout things about providing better service and whatnot. I highly doubt this has any effect on morale whatosever.

On the last day, I realized that I still had not gotten a Thai massage, so I planned to go in the morning, so then I'd still have time to gather my things and head to the airport in the afternoon. The thing is, I'm a procrastinator. So I actually went around twelve or something, which was cutting it really close.

I went to a nearby massage place and asked for a 1-hour Thai massage. They then give you these sort of pajamas to change into and wash your feet. Then the massage commences. It's sort of less of a massage and more of a physical therapy session that focuses on really stretching you out as much as possible.

So the lady did this for what was much longer than an hour, and they tried to charge me for a two-hour massage. I looked at them and was like, "I asked for a one-hour massage and now I'm late for the airport." (True.) So then they were like, "Oh, sorry sorry, ok one hour." So I paid them for one hour and rushed out.

I stuffed my crap in my bag as quickly as possible, and got a taxi to the airport link station and was able to make it on time, although without much to spare. I was fed on the plane, which, as far as I can tell, is still to be expected on airlines across the world, even for very short flights - just not America.

I went to the hospital for a check-up a few days after I got back (as I had another fever and the hospital is where you go to get check-ups in China), and it turns out I have some sort of colony of single-cell parasite things in my intestines. (Not like a worm. That is gross. Micro-organisms I can handle.) This is most likely from drinking water, as I can't recall eating anything raw. I also didn't drink tap water, but sometimes when you buy bottled water, you can tell by the taste that it's really just tap water packaged as bottled water. At least none of the water I drank turned green overnight. (This happened to the British siblings in either Laos or Viet Nam.) Anyway, you just have to take some medicine that makes you feel kind of nauseated and then they're gone. No biggie.

You do feel exhausted after nine weeks of travelling though. For sure.

Laos was not a good time.

2011-05-18T23:15:00.001+02:00

After finishing the previous blog entry, I went to meet up with the Thai girls to get ready for our 6:00 PM bus to Vientiane. I had noticed that the latest bus on all of the schedules posted at all of the guesthouses was 1:30, which I thought was strange, but I supposed there was some sort of non-tourist bus or something.

We got to the place where the girls had asked about the bus information, which was called Riverside Tours. The woman working there told us that the tuk-tuk would arrive at around 6:00. Buses often run late, especially if this one was coming from Luang Prabang, so I didn't think anything of it. We got dinner across the street, and then headed back to wait for the tuk-tuk.

The driver charged us 10,000 kip/person to take us to the bus station, only instead of taking us to the bus station, he took us to a point just beyond the old airstrip, which is perhaps a three- to five-minute walk from Riverside Tours. And then he just asked for payment without any shame whatsoever, saying that the bus would pass this way, so it doesn't make sense to take us all the way to the bus stop since we'd just have to come back anyway.

That makes no sense, because even if it would be backtracking, it still makes more sense to get your tickets and have your seats assigned at the bus stop than wait for the last, crappiest seats that happen to be available when the bus rolls around randomly to pick you up. I should have spit in a 1,000 kip note and thrown it on the tuk-tuk floor because that is as much payment as he deserved.

The place that we stopped at is a family owned haircut place that also sells snacks and drinks. The owner says that the bus is delayed and will be there around 8:00. It is only 6:15 or so. At this point, I'm thinking, "Ok, this bus does not exist, and they're saying 8:00, because by then it will be dark, and they will try to charge us for another tuk-tuk ride back into town."

Yep.

Do you know how long two hours is to sit and stew over being lied to? Can you imagine how incredibly pissed off and righteous you get in that amount of time? Believe me, the thoughts in my head could have given the best Bible Belt fire-and-brimstone minister a run for his money.

I had a flashlight with me, so we did not need a tuk-tuk ride back into town, and when the lady at Riverside Tours saw us, she just smiled without any shame whatsoever. And here's the thing - Thais smile no matter what. They smile when they're happy and when they're pissed. I bet they even smile when they're constipated. And these girls were pissed. But all they did was smile and say, "There was no bus!" I am not Thai. I gave this woman a dirty look and told a foreign couple who was asking about tours there that the place was a scam.

I had actually planned to stand outside and yell in the four languages that I speak about the place being staffed by liars for the rest of the night, but there were only ever 4-8 people within 50 meters in any direction of this place at any given time, so that would have been unnecessarily crazy.

Granted, I realize there are far worse scams out there, but in terms of my personal experience, this was the only time I was outright lied to (as opposed to just overcharged), and in a way that could potentially have serious consequences. (What if we had a flight from Vientiane the next morning?) She just had absolutely no regard for the effects of her actions, and for what, 30,000 kip? That's not even $4. It's not even a good scam; she should be ashamed even by scam standards.

The worst part about what she did is that whenever I think of Laos, I will think of her and how pissed I was that she arranged for a tuk-tuk to take us barely out of town to wait two hours for a non-existent bus. Not that I expect her pea brain to understand that the way you treat foreigners is not only a reflection of you, it is a reflection of your people and of your country. And my memory of Laos will forever have a negative tint. Because of her. I hope she's proud of herself. Selling out her country's image for 30,000 kip.

So yeah, Riverside Tours Laos in Vang Vieng is staffed by liars. I hate them. And their stupid fluffy dogs. They lie with their eyes.

So we set off to find a room. I was not aware of this due to my feverish state, but apparently the guesthouse that we had stayed at the night before (something Orchid Guesthouse) was not very nice - the towels were not fresh and the air conditioning barely worked. We went to Popular View Guesthouse, where a 3-bed room was 700 baht, or roughly 186,000 kip. The room was much nicer, the towels were clean, as was the bedding, and the air conditioning worked normally. However, this is not an expense we would have had to pay had we actually been in Vientiane, since we would have stayed with the girls' friend.

We went out to check out the local market on the airstrip, which we had passed on our walk back from our waiting point, and it was very much like the arcade in Cambodia with darts and balloons and a giant inflatable slide for kids. They also had bingo. The darts were much harder though, because you had to decide what you were playing for ahead of time, which would determine how much you had to pay for three darts. Then, regardless of what you're playing for, you have to make it all three times. So if you're playing for a silly keychain, you only pay 2,000 kip, whereas if you're playing for a large stuffed animal, you pay 15,000 kip, but no matter what, you have to hit three balloons with three darts to win.

After that, we had some snacks at a local restaurant and went back to the guesthouse. On the way back, I gave the Riverside Tours lady a cold stare and she had the gall to stare back. Seriously. No shame. Like you're going to pretend that I did something wrong? I don't think so.

The next morning, we took a minivan into Vientiane, which cost 70,000 kip and came to pick us up at the guesthouse, which was nice, especially since we were the first stop. We saw an accident on the way there, in which a big cargo type truck was sideways, after which the driver noticeably stuck more to his lane for the hairpin turns where you can't see oncoming traffic at all.

The minivan dropped us off... somewhere... in the city, and we took a tuk-tuk with a whole bunch of other Thais to some market to go meet the girls' friend. The four of us then had lunch, after which I took a nap at the friend's place while the girls went to visit some gate that is supposed to be like the Arc de Triomphe I suppose, only looks nothing like it.

We then took a tuk-tuk to the Friendship Bridge for 80 baht each (four people total), and went through Lao immigration. There is an "overtime" fee if you arrive after 4:00 PM of 9,000 kip, which I believe applies to weekends as well. Fa (one of the girls) really wanted to go duty-free shopping, but unluckily, the stores were closing just as we arrived (around 5:00 PM). There were two open though, so they were able to stock up on "Johnnie Lao." (It's packaged and sold as "Johnnie Walker" but believe me, something about the packaging is just off, though it's hard to pinpoint what exactly.)

The bus from here to Nong Khai is 4,000 kip and takes maybe 10 minutes.

From the Nong Khai immigration point to the Nong Khai bus station, we took a minivan, but I forget how much it was. Something between 20 and 40 baht.

We got tickets for a bus going to Bangkok for 350 baht each, which is ridiculously cheap, but it was a very simple seated bus that stopped at every bus station imaginable, so we didn't arrive until 8:30 or so this morning.

From there, I took a taxi from the actual taxi stand. It turns out the lanes don't mean anything. They're just separate lines, but not split by destination region or anything like that. Just pick a line and wait there. From my observation, the third one gets the most action, so that might be your best bet.

Now I am back at Sergio's, where I stayed before I went to Chiang Mai, and it's nice to meet up with the same people again. Even the receptionist recognized me and practically threw me his key. The taxi driver circled around this place three or four times because he could not figure out how to get on the right side of the road to make the turn, but he made it eventually. This place is pretty far east of the city center, and very far from Mo Chit, and the fare (even with the circling) was 150 baht. If I had taken a taxi to the metro and then a bus from there, it would have been cheaper, but not worth the hassle after an overnight bus ride where I didn't get much sleep. Plus I have a lot of baht left over that I can afford to spend.

I have a follower from Iceland! How cool is that?

I'm not dying. Don't call the embassy.

2011-05-16T15:01:00.000+02:00

So yesterday, I woke up around 6:30 to meet the Thai girls in the lobby at 7:00. We got a tuk-tuk for 10,000 kip/person to take us to the bus station, where the cheapest bus to Vang Vieng was 130,000 kip. It’s the same price if you take it all the way to Vientiane, but really only tourists go to Vang Vieng, so you can just think of it as a tourist tax.

The announcer guy at the bus station was really funny, although unintentionally so (I think). He was super dramatic. It was like listening to Gob. "Please. Get On The Bus Now. Because. The Bus Will Leave. In Fifteen Minutes."

The bus ride was fine at first, what with yielding to elephants and seeing people either living out of an old train car or using it as a furnace for something, but after several hours, the extremely winding and bumpy road makes you very aware that your brain is smashing against the walls of your skull. Repeatedly. I should’ve worn my helmet. The seats were surprisingly comfortable though and didn't make my ass hurt after an hour.

We stopped for lunch, which is included in the price of the ticket, and I got some noodle soup with beef while the girls had stir-fried stuff with rice, and we all got some ice cream after (5,000 kip for a small cup).

Ice cream is a good example of the point I was making earlier. At first I asked how much this really good cone ice cream was, with like peanuts and frozen fudge and everything, and they told me 15,000 kip. This exact same ice cream cost 15,000 dong and that was in Hoi An, where everything is priced for tourists. Same number, but very different value.

Then it was back to the bus for the rest of the trip, which thankfully, was almost over. We arrived at a new bus stop in Vang Vieng, so it is not walking distance from the main street. The tuk-tuk into town was 10,000 kip/person as well, and they put everyone’s luggage on the roof.

The girls asked for the price of a room at the guesthouse where we stopped, and it was 125,000 kip for all of us for a room with a balcony and air conditioning, which is not bad at all. It pays to have them ask in Thai, otherwise I’m sure the price would have been much more expensive. In general, it seems like they have no trouble with communication whatsoever. I don't know if this is because everyone here speaks Thai because of tourism or because they're linguistically very close.

We slept for a few hours, throughout which my brain was pounding from its intimate ordeal with my skull, and by the time the girls were ready to go out for dinner, I was running a pretty bad fever, was really dizzy, and kept wanting to throw up (which later I did). So that was not fun.

I hate being sick. Plus, when I’m sick, I always think everything is worse than it really is, so part of me is like, “CALL THE EMBASSY I NEED TO BE AIRLIFTED TO THE STATES FOR EMERGENCY MEDICAL ATTENTION.” And the other part of me is like, “… Well… ok, yeah, let’s do that.” In the end though, being sick and pukey and dizzy means you’re not going to look up the number for the embassy and then call them. It means you are going to stay in bed and mumble incoherent things.

During my fever, I had a dream that I got a contract to write a book about navy warships in connection with Yale Associated Press (does such an organization even exist?) but I thought I was supposed to write about these cartoon guys that LIVED on a navy warship, so I kept going, “Can’t I just write about the Weebles?” Sometimes you just want to write about the Weebles.

So I stayed in bed all day, and the girls brought me back some fried rice and orange juice, which I had asked them to but simply could not stomach. One sip of the orange juice made me dry heave, and solid food was just not possible.

It's a good thing there's only wifi in the lobby and not in the rooms at our guesthouse, because if I had had access to the internet, I would have been all, "CALL THE EMBASSY I'M DYING."

I do feel much better today though. We are leaving tonight for Vientiane (which is a much shorter ride, thank god), where the girls have a friend, so we are staying with them, and then tomorrow night, we will leave for Bangkok, and then I fly back to China, although given the state of things, this is not really a sad moment for me.

I was going to go to the tubing area to watch people be drunk and almost kill themselves, but I need to meet the girls in the guesthouse lobby at four, and it's already three, I'm really comfortable at this place where I had lunch and has free wifi, and I'm also somewhat afraid drunk people will hurl me onto sharp rocks and then I might actually die. People seem to be very comfortable with picking me up and dragging me around. Not that it happens often, but the fact that it happens at all is kind of strange. Plus I should just come back when I am in a condition to participate in said tubing. Maybe skip the killing myself part though.

Children are cute when not exploited.

2011-05-15T02:27:00.000+02:00

Proof that I made a post the night before last entitled "I think I broke my butt" - it showed up on my wife's news feed. So ha! I don't really know whom I'm proving that to. (No, I don't care about ending sentences in prepositions. All that rule does is force you into ridiculously awkward sentences, although the above is not necessarily the greatest example. I also do not know whom I am explaining this to.)

So this morning, I walked over to the nicer 70,000 kip/night guesthouse (the price I was quoted yesterday) and asked if the fan room was available. They only had an air-con room available for 80,000, but as I was going to walk away (because there's another 70,000/night place about 30 seconds away), they said I could take it for tonight. When I went to check out the room, I noticed that there was only air-con and no fan. (Usually rooms have both, and you just pay for what you use.) I asked him if it was ok if I used the air-con and he said yes.

The first thing I did was brush my teeth and take a shower, which I was quite frankly too afraid to do in the other guesthouse. As I was getting out of the shower, there was a knock on my door. They came to drop off a fan, which clearly means that I should stop using the A/C. Ok then.

After feeling clean for the first time since I walked into the previous guesthouse, I headed off for lunch before my trip to the waterfall. I had lunch at the same place where I had eaten the day before, because it's close by, and cheaper than places in town. There are only like, nine things on the menu though, and half of them are Western, so I had spaghetti bolognese. (Later, when I burped it tasted like pizza, and every time it happened, I thought to myself, "When did I have pizza?" "Oh right, it's the spaghetti." EVERY TIME.)

Lime juice

I headed over to the travel agency to ask about prices for transport to Bangkok (380,000 for two overnight buses - the first to Vientiane, the second to Bangkok) and wait for the ride to the waterfall, which came about a half hour late at 2:00. This is Laos though, so I pretty much assume everything is going to be a half hour late. There is not that much to do here other than sleep. Incidentally, that's perfect for me right now.

I met two girls from Bangkok who are here on holiday and are going to Vang Vieng before going back to Bangkok on Wedesnday. Naturally, they still have to go through Vientiane. (Vientiane is the Brussels of Southeast Asia. Every single person says there is nothing to do there, and no one has ever made so much as a gesture of disagreement.) That actually sounded kind of perfect and the timing works out perfectly, so I spontaneously said I might join them, and they didn't look creeped out, so that's good.

We got to the waterfall around 3:00, not because it takes an hour to get there, but because for some reason, our driver decided to drive back and forth through town three times before actually leaving. I think he went to wait for the last four people in our group (on the other side of town from where we were picked up), then realized he might as well get a phone card from a store back on the original side of town while we were waiting, and then went back to wait for them. That's the only way our route made any sense.

The waterfall is nice, and those of you who enjoy swimming or swinging into water from a rope like Calvin (as in "and Hobbes") should bring a swimsuit or a change of clothes.

The "hike" to the waterfall, if it can be called that, is very easy and takes about 20 minutes, if that. I do not enjoy physical activity, so this was perfect for me. (Seriously, have you heard me talk about doing a trek? No. No, you have not.) We had an hour and forty-five minutes to explore, which was way more than enough time, especially since I didn't go in the water.

There seem to be a lot of locals who like to come up here for a picnic, and for them the entrance fee is only 10,000 kip (about $1.25) as opposed to 20,000 kip. (If you can't do that math, we are no longer friends.)

Since I had a lot of time to kill, I went to a cafe that was by the water, which was no doubt more expensive than it should have been, but a cup of coffee was 10,000, which again, is about $1.25, so that's ok I guess, although it's really not a good habit to think in dollars, because then you think everything is cheap, even when it's way more expensive than it should be. By the way, if I ever say to you, "You know, I haven't tried adding cream and sugar into my coffee in a while. I think I'll try it out," just say, "Remember that time you thought that in Laos and how much worse the coffee was afterward? There is a reason you prefer your coffee black, and it has nothing to do with men like or unlike Taye Diggs."

There is a random bear sanctuary before the "hike" starts. There were two bears that were either making out or trying to bite each other's faces in a playful way. It's hard to tell.

On the drive back, we were taken to this village that is part of some development through tourism project that was not part of the agenda and is clearly just a ploy for tourists to buy really cheap bracelets or other stuff made by these villagers. There are a whole bunch of really cute kids who literally say the same sentence in Lao over and over again. There was an American guy who works in Vientiane who was in our group, and he asked the little girl who was trying to sell stuff to him if she knew what 2,000 plus 7,000 was (in Lao). She just kept repeating her sales line. So basically, instead of going to school to learn how to add, these kids are trained from really young to sell stuff to tourists at inflated prices. (One would think they should at least learn to add to calculate prices...) Yay development through tourism!

View from the road

Once you finish walking through, you wait for the driver for about 15-20 minutes. During this time the kids will realize you're not going to buy anything, so they just start playing with each other, and then it's really cute. But first, this kid asked me for my water bottle, which had perhaps two sips left in it, so I gave it to him. The American guy had a full water bottle though, and it was in a plastic bag that had other stuff too, so when he took it out in response to a kid asking him for stuff, all the kids swarmed over and had a mini brawl over the bottle of water and were asking for other stuff. It was like a lot of little Gollums fighting for the Ring. Only with hair. And clothing. And otherwise not creepy.

Gollums

While we were waiting, this party pick-up truck with about twenty people in the back and music blaring passed us. I should do that some time.

After we got back, the night market was already in full swing, and there were a ton of vendors with typical night market stuff for sale - lanterns, T-shirts, dresses, traditional-looking clothing, the weird purses that everyone everywhere sells, etc. Lonely Planet says the night market is candle-lit. Maybe the electricity was out when they visited, unless by candles they mean "a single electric light bulb dangling in each shop." Or the writing is bad and "the candlelit necklace of the Hmong night market" is a really weird metaphor for something.

The Thai girls were going to Phu Si (admission 20,000 kip) for the sunset, which is the only thing I really wanted to do here (you can really only be amazed by so many wats), so that was perfect. Unfortunately, the sunset was much like the one at Angkor Wat (i.e. non-existent), but the view of Luang Prabang from the top is still excellent.

We came back to the guesthouse (which happens to be the same one) so the girls could take showers before dinner (I shower before I go to bed and usually not earlier), which was lucky, since it started pouring. I guess it really is getting to the rainy season. By the time it settled down to a drizzle, most of the vendors had packed up and gone, and it appeared that the side of town on the other side of the market had lost electricity, because it was really quite dark. The lights were flickering at the place where we ended up having dinner, so I think that really was the case.

During this time, it occurred to me, that 80 was a good price for an air-con room, and if that's the case, a fan room should really be cheaper, so between paying too much for a fan room and paying the correct amount for an A/C room (and the difference betwen only $1.25), I'd rather have air conditioning. So I went down to the desk to ask the price again, only this time he said 90 for air-con. I said, "But you said 80 this morning. So can I have the fan for 60?" And he said no. So I went back up to my room, but a minute later, he knocked on my door and agreed to A/C for 80, so now I can actually sleep through the night without waking up and feeling the hair at the nape of neck be all damp from sweat. Yay!

I also looked up the travel time from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng, and it takes 6-8 hours. The girls were planning to leave tomorrow morning, spend the rest of the day and one night in Vang Vieng, and leave for Vientiane the following morning. I wasn't sure that this was really worth it for only a few good hours in Vang Vieng, so I told them I might just go straight to Vientiane. Upon hearing the travel time, they said they would stay in Vang Vieng an extra day so they could actually do stuff as well. So I'm leaving with them tomorrow morning, although it is kind of sad now that I've actually found a guesthouse I like.

Anyway, dinner.

Spinach Lasagna, which in hindsight, must look totally disgusting to Asians. It's green stringy stuff with yellow-white stringy stuff. And yeah, I'm eating Western because the "Lao" stuff on the menu is fried rice. Look, I live in China. I'm not paying more than $2 for fried rice.

There was "ancient apple crumble" on the menu, which I thought was strange until I realized the restaurant was called "ancient bon cafe." We met a couple who also live in Bangkok, although she's originally from the States, and he's from Algeria. Also, they lived in Paris for 8 years. How cool is that?

Laos, in general, is way more expensive than I expected. It's much more expensive than Vietnam or Thailand, and they are way more developed. My guess is that Laos and Cambodia gouge tourists because they have little other industry to support themselves. Is that offensive? Regardless, I believe it to be true. For example, I asked how much a dress was at the night market, and was told 60,000 kip. I never know how close the first offer is to the actual price, so I said 20, because I bought one in Cambodia (which is also expensive for tourists) for $3, which is about 24,000 kip. The vendor's counter offer was a smiling shake of her head and 50,000, so she wasn't going to much lower. In fact, a lot of things here cost the same amount of kip as they would cost in dong in Vietnam, except the exchange rate of dollars to dong is 1:20,000 and that of dollars to kip is 1:8,000. So basically it's 2.5 times more expensive. (If you couldn't do that math, we can still be friends, but you're obviously white and American. If you're Asian, you're out. Not of being my friend, but of being Asian. Seriously. Please pack your chopsticks and go. Bonus points for getting that reference. Bonus bonus points if you got this one and the one from last time.)

I've had a sore throat all day, and when I think about avoiding swallowing, I become very aware of just how much saliva is in my mouth. It's awkward.

Internet here is terrible.

2011-05-14T01:46:00.000+02:00

I most definitely made a post yesterday entitled, "I think I broke my butt," but apparently it did not actually post, and now I am annoyed. So I will try to recall what I wrote. LAME.

So I woke up around 8:30 feeling absolutely terrible. My lower back was killing me, and my butt is still "enhanced" and now all purple, so I think I might have broken my butt. I was sore all over, and I had a headache (which has only happened to me twice or maybe three times ever), and my eyeballs hurt. I think I also had an on-and-off low fever, and I was definitely dizzy and seriously fatigued all day.

I hitched a ride with Snow into the Old Quarter just to do some quick, last-minute souvenir shopping and then took the bus back to her house. She told me to take bus 31, so I was 100% certain that it would take me back, but the ticket guy kept insisting that I transfer to bus 8 to the point that I felt like it would be rude not to listen, so I did. Sure enough, bus 8 does stop on her street, but way, way down from her actual house. Given the dizziness and soreness, I was not too happy about this.

Someone was not happy about these flowers.

I had lunch at her place for the last time with her mom and dad, who are very typical Asian parents in that they will keep telling you to eat more and more and more until you absolutely refuse.

I packed up my stuff and had a bit of a rest before I left for the airport at 1:30. My flight wasn't until 6:25, but Snow said I should give myself three hours to get there on the bus (and the minivan is not guaranteed to be that much faster).

Before I departed, Snow's mom gave me a dozen pastry things and a huge bottle of water, and her dad tried to give me money. Seriously, these people are crazy-nice.

On the bus ride there (which involves a transfer for real this time), I dozed off very uncomfortably and in fear that in a moment of falling asleep I would slam my head against the end of a metal hand rail that was positioned very much in front of me. (Luckily, I avoided this.)

When I got to the airport, some guy offered to take my bag up the overpass for me ("for free!"), so that was nice. It had only taken 2 hours to get there, so I was too early to check in, so I just waited around. And kept waiting after I checked in.

I had a lot of Vietnamese dong left over, so I thought I'd buy a snack or something. All the prices were listed in dollars though. So I asked if I could pay for these Ritz cheese cracker sandwiches in Vietnamese dong, and they told me it was 60,000 in dong. The price was only $2 though, so that's overcharging by 20,000 dong, which they didn't seem to understand when I kept asking them about why the difference was so much. They just looked at me like, "I don't know what you're talking about. Two dollars is just sixty thousand dong. That's just how expensive it is." So I ended up just paying in dollars. It's the only time I've ever experienced something being less expensive in dollars other than visas.

The plane was one of those where you would bet good money that Michael Phelps would be able to touch both sides of it. It was only about a quarter full, so I told the flight attendant that I wasn't feeling well, so she let me sit by myself instead of with a neighbor.

The sky looked pretty cool when we left.

And we got a snack on board.

This is an Asian version of a hot dog. Something resembling hot dog meat (i.e. probably much better than real hot dog meat) in an actual pastry.

When I arrived, I asked these three English girls if they wanted to share transportation from the airport into the city, which they agreed to. First you get your visa on arrival if you haven't already gotten one, and then you go through immigration. Taxi tickets are 50,000 kip or $6 (roughly equivalent) for up to three passengers. Since we were four, they charged us 70,000, but they only had change in dollars, so it turned out to be slightly more. Oh well. They were going to charge 100,000 for dropping me off at the next street over from the girls, but the driver did it for free anyway.

The cheapest visa is for Vietnamese citizens ($20). Everyone else is mostly $30-$35, although Canadians are inexplicably charged $42.

The girls were "roughing it" at a guesthouse that charged $11 and change a night, which is not really roughing it, but ok. I walked up and down this one alley to ask for prices, but the cheapest I could find with wifi was 100,000, which is actually more than the girls were paying (about $12.50), but at that point, I was too uncomfortable to care. The state of the room did fit the price range though. It was nicely furnished and there were no mosquitoes, although the wifi signal was so weak and so slow and disconnected so much that I half-suspected they were actually stealing their neighbor's wireless.

This morning, I checked out and went off in search of a cheaper place to stay. I must have asked at a few dozen places, and am now staying in the cheapest room I found. It's 50,000/night, has a private bathroom, and wifi, and upon first glance is just your standard room. However, after chilling out here for a while, you start to notice why this place is so cheap. There is a dead wormy thing on the floor, there was a small pellet of vermin poo on the blanket, and there was a very large cockroach that scuttled by. And when I showed housekeeping the vermin poo, all they did was shake it off instead of replacing the blanket. So now there is vermin poo somewhere on the floor. Also, the room sort of smells like mildew and there's mold in some places. Basically, I am not going to shower here. And since it wasn't very hot today because it rained, I don't really need to anyway. The wifi here is also ridiculously slow and disconnecty, except for the past hour or two, so I guess this is some sort of golden period. The guy did take me on his motorbike for me to get my luggage from the other guesthouse though, which was nice.

I think tomorrow I will move to a 70,000/night guesthouse, because they seemed to be a little nicer. I could say I'm too old for this, but that's not really true. So I'll just say I like nice things. So I guess I don't like roughing it either.

So since I felt terrible yesterday, I did nothing today in the name of recovery. So now I'm not so sore, just a little stiff. Although my eyeballs still hurt. That's weird, right? Also my jaw hurts, which is new. Are these symptoms of a broken butt? In addition to licensed doctors, I will consider pre-med students and Indians qualified to answer that question.

So all I have to cover are lunch and dinner, which I ate at the same place since it's very close by, and also I booked a half-day trip to go see some waterfall at the recommendation of a Singaporean guest here. (50,000 kip for the transportation, 20,000 when I get there for admission)

Something I passed on my guesthouse search

This is a BANK. Seriously.

Dragonfruit shake

Chicken curry (mediocre)

Chicken with cashew nuts (also mediocre)

One comment from having the TV on all day: Jack Nicholson did a werewolf movie? Really, Jack? Ok, and now Bill of Kill Bill fame just used an old paint can lid to ricochet a sheriff's badge turned throwing star back into the thrower. Seriously, people?

I think I broke my butt.

2011-05-12T16:59:00.000+02:00

So when I woke up this morning, I had the worst lower back pain ever and was generally a little sore all over, and I don't know why. I think I also had an on-again off-again really low fever and I was dizzy and fatigued the entire day. My butt is still purple and "enhanced" so maybe I broke my butt.

I woke up around 8:00/8:30 to hitch a ride with Snow to the Old Quarter for some last-minute souvenir shopping, and then came back to her house. The ticket guy on the bus on the way back told me I had to transfer to bus 8, but he was in fact, not right, and bus 8 stops hella far away from Snow's house. Given the dizziness and the soreness, I was not particularly happy about this.

After packing and resting up a bit, I left for the airport at 1:30, because Snow said I should give myself about three hours to get there. As I was leaving, her mom gave me a huge bottle of water, and a dozen of these custard cake things. They also tried to give me money! Seriously, these people are ridiculously nice.

Overall, it took two hours to arrive at the airport, throughout which I dozed off extremely uncomfortable, which put my arrival at the airport 3 hours before my flight, so I sat around for quite some time. Some guy offered to carry my bag all the way up the overpass to the entrance though, so that was nice.

The sky was really cool when we left, and it's one of those planes where I'd bet good money that the width of the plane was shorter than Michael Phelps's wingspan.

It hurts when I move. Also it's dizzy. I should sleep now. Details and photos tomorrow.

A trick is something whores do for money... or cocaine!

2011-05-11T19:49:00.000+02:00

So I woke up around 11 and was all pumped and ready to do my loan applications, but then I started watching TV online, and then suddenly I had to leave to meet people for dinner.

Oops.

It's actually really good that I didn't go outside, because there was a torrential downpour at around 4:00 that I would have been completely unprepared for and probably not the cleanest water to soak my burn scab in. New skin that is covered by dead skin is really itchy, by the way. Apologies if you were eating.

What do you mean I'm justifying my laziness? I don't understand the question, and I won't respond to it. (Bonus points if you get that reference. So just Cathy, really. Others might be more successful with the title of this post.)

So anyway, dinner was quite far from my host's place and I left at rush hour, so it took a really long time to get there on the bus. Johnny called while I was on the way, so I had him speak to the ticket guy so he could tell me when to get off the bus. Later, this same ticket guy gestured to me that I had something on my face, and after I failed to brush it off, he did it for me, at which point I realized he was just messing with me, as all he did was a half-pinch my cheek/brush my face twice with his thumb as if he were flirting in the 50s. (Ok, so my concept of the 50s is entirely fabricated. Just go with me on this one.)

Sadly, I later found out that when he was on the phone with Johnny, he had asked to "borrow your girlfriend" for a day, so in hindsight he was perhaps not as innocent as he seemed. (Actually, that's probably exactly like the 50s.)

The sky looked really cool when I got off the bus, though.

I completely do not understand the honking system here. People honk even when they are not passing someone, not accelerating, and not in any situation where they need or ought to warn others that they are there. They are driving exactly as anyone would expect them to, and yet they are blaring their horn every 50 meters. And the horns here aren't a simple toot; they are an army of trumpets playing in harmony. It's like standing somewhere and screaming, "BY THE WAY I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I HAVE NO VALUABLE INFORMATION FOR YOU WHATSOEVER KTHNXBYE!" And then doing it again every ten steps.

Anyway, Amy, an American expat who teaches here, chose the place, which was a street restaurant (i.e. a place on the sidewalk with plastic tables and stools that look like they are meant for children or Candide) where you grill your own meat. Shockingly, they use butter here, which you almost never see in Asia. You also get a bowl of oil to scoop onto the grill plate, which is excellent, because otherwise you get lots of burnt sticky meat bits all over it very quickly.

On a nearly completely unrelated tangent (which I suppose is redundant), why do native speakers of English think I'm saying my duck's name is Candy? (Not Amy, but others.) Does he look like a stripper who works for male validation and blow? Also, who would pronounce that word "can-DEE?"

Disclaimer: I realize not everyone named Candy is a stripper, and that not all strippers work for male validation and blow. But if I came up to you and introduced myself as Candy, what would be the first thought in your mind? Yeah, that's right. Stripper. Followed by daddy issues. Followed by blow.

Johnny is awesome. He's so nice and so easy to get along with and talk to. One of those people who leave you smiling at the end of the night. Why aren't more people like this?

I'm flying to Laos tomorrow, and I have no idea what to do there or where I'm staying. So I should look into that now.

I guess this post got a bit family unfriendly. Considering the non-existent child readership of this blog though, I think it's all right.

Someone was directed to my blog post yesterday by googling "small boob blogspot." Who is googling that? Is there a blog about small boobs? Did they think by the title there would be a picture of boob sweat? Why else would they click on it if that's what they searched for and saw as the title? What is wrong with people?

I'm grumpy. And I hate boob sweat.

2011-05-11T01:48:00.001+02:00

I first woke up at 6:30 when my host turned on the light, at which point I had only slept for 3 hours. This really had no effect on the quality of my sleep, since it was really hot throughout the night, and again, I cannot emphasize how gross it feels to be sweating while you sleep. It is the worst; you can't really sleep well, and when you wake up you do not feel clean and refreshed, you feel gross and dirty and you haven't even started your day.

It's definitely not just me, because there were heat wave graphics of increasingly concentrated shades of red on the news tonight. I seriously haven't felt clean for three days. By the time you start towelling off in the shower, you're already sweating. The worst is the boob sweat. My cleavage hasn't been dry in three days. Can you even fathom how uncomfortable that is? I will tell you. It is like swamp ass, only displaced. (Yeah. Not sexy.)

Anyway, I discovered that the mosquito net I was using blocks a lot of the wind from the ceiling fan. And by a lot I mean all of it. So when I woke up again at 8:30, my torso was completely outside said mosquito net. Here's the dilemma though. I have over 85 tiny little scabs and scars from scratching mosquito bites just on my legs alone. (Yes, I counted.) And that's not counting the ones that have faded or that never left a mark. So basically, I need to choose between semi-comfortable temperature or not having tons of blood sucked out of me while I'm sleeping and leaving small bumps of itchy nightmares. Yay.

It is possible that I am a little grumpy today. You be uncomfortably sweaty for three days and not get good sleep and tell me you're not grumpy. I dare you.

The reason I woke up early (for me) was to visit Uncle Ho, who only sees visitors in the morning (no admission fee). My host dropped me off at the bus stop, where I waited for about 30 minutes for the bus. During this time, a guy backed his motorbike into my leg, exhaust pipe first, instead of just asking me to move, so thankfully it was only warm instead of burning hot. There was also an ambulance that left the hospital across the street that absolutely no one yielded to, despite the siren. I hate that. These people are basically saying, "Sorry dude, getting to my destination five seconds earlier is definitely more important than you getting what is potentially life-saving critical care. Tough nuts. Life's a bitch and then you die. -- Oh... too soon?"

Seriously, Hanoians? Seriously? (Did I mention that I might be grumpy today?)

Tip: If you notice that everyone is sitting on one side of the bus, you should follow suit. The sun is going to beat down heavily on the other side at some point.

A typical bus stop sign

A typical bus

Eventually, I took bus 41 to the closest stop to the mausoleum and walked on over using my handy, extremely zoomed in map of Hanoi from the airport. Evidently the queue on the east side of the mausoleum where I was is shorter than the other one. (I didn't even know there was more than one.) You'll need to cover your shoulders and to your knees to visit, as well as check any electronic items you might have. In my case, this was my e-book and my camera. I don't know what my e-book could possibly do to violate the sanctity of the place, but photography of any kind, cell phone or camera, is prohibited. Apparently, so is water.

While walking to wait in line, an English guy came up to me and asked if I speak English. I said, "Yes, I'm American," not in any sort of exasperated way, but just so he knew he wouldn't have to speak Globish to me. He seemed to feel really bad about assuming that I was Vietnamese though, but I mean, it's the clearly logical assumption. I, too, assume that the Asians around me are Vietnamese, even though many of them are also tourists from other countries and may very well be fluent in English. The vast majority are not though, so the assumption makes perfect sense. It's not as though you walk around Asia assuming the local-looking people around you must be tourists from English-speaking countries.

He was travelling with a German guy that he met yesterday for the day and their subsequent trip to Sapa, so we chatted while slowly shuffling forward. Once you get to the entrance to the building itself, you will be shushed by guards all the way through until you exit, a trip that takes about two minutes. The body is supposedly the real body, but if that's true, it is freakishly well-preserved. I would not be that surprised if it's really a wax figure though.

When you exit you are free to walk around the grounds of the Presidential Palace, including HCM's old garage, a house on stilts, a small lake, and the One Pillar Pagoda. (Guess what it is supported by.)

Presidential Palace, I think

Lots of buildings were in this style

House on stilts

Office in the house on stilts

One Pillar Pagoda (in case that wasn't obvious)

After that, the boys headed off for their journey on a xe om for 20,000 dong ($1) after wearing down the driver, who had started at 80. If you know you're offering the right price, you don't have to give an inch.

I walked over to the Temple of Literature (admission 10,000 dong or 50 cents), Hanoi's first university. Along the way, a Filipino family asked me for directions, so we ended up walking over and going through it more or less together.

This is where people had to dismount their horses. It is also used figuratively to mean that you've forced someone to get off their high horse, only instead of referring to a holier-than-thou attitude, it refers to some sort of higher societal position, either by wealth or by power.

I believe the text engraved into this stone are the names of a graduating class

Inside this pagoda are a bunch of statues of important educators, like Confucius and Mencius. Unfortunately, it was a bit dark, and my pictures of them are bad.

By the time I had finished with this visit, it was around 12:30, and I had overpaid for two bottles of iced green tea with lemon (15,000 dong or 75 cents each), one at each sight. It would only get hotter from here, and the swamp boob was driving me nuts, so I took the bus back to my host's.

I had lunch when I arrived, and a quick rinse immediately after. While I was eating, Snow's mom was watching a Chinese drama on TV. What they do here is instead of dubbing completely over something by erasing the original audio, they just turn the volume on the original audio way down and the speak over it in Vietnamese. The weirdest thing though, is that the same person dubs every single character's lines regardless of the character's age or gender. So you will hear the voice of a 30-something woman to represent that of a child, an old man, and a young lady. She also has all the emotional range of a newscaster reporting on the mediocre achievements of her cat. So in the episode that was airing today, there was a really mean lady who had kidnapped the young daughter of someone who is apparently rich or powerful. The mean lady slapped the girl twice and was yelling at her for giving her sass, but from the way the dubbed lines were delivered, it sounded more like she was verbally cataloging inventory at a CVS. Same monotone delivery for the worried parents as well. And the scared child. It was like if a female Ben Stein dubbed over every single line in a dramatic film.

Other than doing some laundry, I sat under the fan for the rest of the day and even then, I would be covered in a thin film of sweat even without moving at all. I received my ao dai from Ha (thanks!), but I couldn't try it on until the evening because I didn't want to get sweat all over it right from the start (although even in the evening, it was still a bit sweaty).

This is actually dinner, which is duck, bamboo shoots, and duck blood. Lunch was something eggy with rice.

After dinner, I went out with Snow's family to a cafe near West Lake, which is much bigger than Hoan Kiem Lake and way more relaxed. The only people who are here are here for a drink or ice cream and just to sit and chill by the lake, unlike the bustle of tourists and the hordes of motorbikes that are always circling around Hoan Kiem. I had a fresh orange juice (although there was a lot of sugar in it) and two scoops of chocolate ice cream. I also saw the owners sweep any and all trash straight into the lake. So I guess lake = nature's trash can, apparently. Do that often enough, and the attraction of your location will disappear.

Snow's family is wonderful. Her dad, not realizing that I am leaving (actually flying) for Laos on Thursday, was thinking about scheduling a family trip to Sapa this weekend so that I could go there with them. Her mom is constantly peeling fruit and telling me to eat more. They are awesome.

I tried on the ao dai when we got back, and I look super Vietnamese in it. Even more so than usual. And now, it is time for bed.

Two days in Hanoi (but really only one day's worth of activity)

2011-05-10T03:22:00.000+02:00

So Columbia sent me an email a few days ago telling me to activate my Columbia account as soon as possible so that I can receive relevant administrative emails. I tried to do this several times, but I kept getting error messages. Then my friend Steph, whom I know from attending a high school summer program at Columbia and who is also going there for graduate school this fall, told me that she had to send them a copy of her photo ID from said summer program in order to change the password on her existing Columbia email account. WHAT. So I will have the same email account as I once used seven years ago. That is crazy. And for some reason, I actually remember the email address I had (double-checked using a google search), which is even crazier.

It's also crazy that I have known most of my friends for at least ten years. Since when did I live long enough to be able to say that? I'm not going to pretend like I'm old or anything, but it's weird to realize just how long I have known these people. I've known my wife for fifteen years. (For those who are confused, I "married" my wife in Vegas while celebrating my 21st birthday there. This involved a $50 payment/bribe to the most stereotypical looking Italian ever in order to use a chapel for half an hour. We are facebook-official. That's right. The truest of all measures of any bonds that ever existed.) We'll be friends for all but seven years of our lives. And the first three don't even count. It's just, "That looks like a nipple; I will put it in my mouth." (Or alternatively, "That looks like a thing; I will put in my mouth.") So weird.

In a loosely related matter, the girls I was with yesterday asked me, "So are you a freshman or sophomore?" I thought it was funny. Especially the looks on their faces when I told them I graduated two years ago. It was like, "Oh shit, we are in the presence of an elder." (By the way, age can matter a lot in Asia in terms of how you speak to people, but if you establish a peer relationship from the get-go, it's cool.)

Yesterday, I got up before lunch, which consisted of fish, tofu thingies, and something green and leafy. (I know, my precision is astounding.)

After lunch, I went to go meet a few locals to explore the city a bit. I thought Johnny, the guy I was in touch with, had gotten my phone number from CouchSurfing, but he kept looking really confused when I mentioned it, so the only other way they could have gotten my phone number is by Ha contacting everyone she knows in Hanoi to ask if they could host me. So I guess this is a friend of a friend of Ha's, and I know Ha from a CS friend from Kuala Lumpur. So this meeting was several degrees of separation from CS, and yet still a result of being on it.

We met near the statue of Ly Thai To, the first emperor in the Ly dynasty, who moved the capital to Hanoi.

From here, our first stop was the same ice cream place that I had gone to the day before, but this time I knew not to bother with the "fresh" ice cream. On the way there, this motorcade passed us with these guys who were all decked out in white quasi-military uniforms. Evidently, the ASEAN summit is in town. Fancy.

After that, we went to the Hoa Lo prison (admission 10,000 dong or 50 cents), which was used by the French for Vietnamese prisoners of war, and then by the Vietnamese for American POWs.

To be perfectly frank and totally politically incorrect, the Vietnamese really did not have it that bad, as far as I can tell by what is on display there. They had clothing, even blankets, and they had food, even meat. The torture weapons were boxing gloves, not axes and hoes and waterboarding devices. It also seemed that everyone who was captured was an active member of the independence movement; there was no mention of innocent civilians who were imprisoned arbitrarily. Compared to what I saw at Tuol Sleng, this place was a resort.

That being said, there were certainly prisoners who died during their imprisonment, and conditions were far from what one would prefer to endure, but let's be real, this is a war prison. It's not going to be great.

The two small exhibit rooms dedicated to the prison's use for American POWs has a very clear political message. One room says, "The U.S. bombed the crap out of this country." And the other room says, "But we treated your pilots like effing royalty." The photos of the American prisoners being released does show a group of pretty healthy young men, so I'm inclined to believe that they had at least halfway decent nutrition, but I'm sure that terrible things went on if not here, then elsewhere, to American POWs. Let's not pretend there's any innocence when it comes to war.

A sewer duct used by Vietnamese prisoners to escape. It's been decades, so I think all the poo particles are gone.

John McCain back when he was a hottie. (What do you mean that's not what this photo is trying to convey?)

After that, we went to a pagoda, the name of which I'm not sure about, but it's like any other pagoda in Vietnam.

Then we had some che, only instead of getting the bean kind, I got it with fresh fruit and some jello stuff, which was good.

Um, ok. So all you can really see is ice. But it had mango, pineapple, canteloupe (or something similar), and I think watermelon, but I might be making up that last one.

We made one last stop at Hoan Kiem Lake, before the girls went home.

Johnny made a pit stop at the travel agency where I had booked my Halong Bay trip before taking me home, but the woman working there wasn't the person I had booked with. I started to tell her the issue, but before I could get anywhere (I had only mentioned the price difference), she said, "We can't give you that price." She said that they were just staff and they could only give the standard price. This is a line you'll often hear in Asia. It is almost never true. She told me the guy I had booked with was just a "security guard at night." This was definitely bull, unless security guards normally dress in nice collared shirts and business slacks and offer lower prices than what's in the brochure without potential clients even asking for a discount. So I just asked when he would be back, and she said 9. So I left. Sometimes I hate Asia. I am inclined to think everybody who comes here or lives here feels this way, natives and expats alike; it is simply a matter of how often and how intensely you feel it.

Back at my host's, we had a dinner of leftovers from lunch, a soup made with little shrimp and a melon/gourd thing, and some other green leafy stuff with pork.

After dinner, Lien, a CouchSurfer, picked me up and we went to the night market, where I ended up getting a T-shirt and a dress.

The English on this T-shirt not only makes sense, but is about mice fighting for cheese. How amazing is that?

It had been really hot during the day, and it sprinkled a little at night, so it was both hot and humid when we went to bed. Like, sweating through your sleep hot. Which is extremely unpleasant.

It wasn't any cooler today, and I felt really gross from the night of sweaty sleep (even after a rinse after lunch), so I just stayed put at home, because this is the kind of heat and humidity that makes you lose the will to live. (Although I do think it's cooler than the day I went to Ayutthaya. That was just hell.)

Fried pork, bean sprouts with pork, and more of the soup from last night

I did go out to meet a bunch of people for dinner though. I took the bus to the Old Quarter, and followed people's hand gestures until I got to the place I was looking for and met up with Lien, a CouchSurfer from Russia and his Belorussian friend, and I also invited Johnny, who came with his girlfriend (who speaks Chinese) and another friend (who speaks English).

We had a lot of deep-fried (read: insanely good) food.

Roasted quail

Fried pork ribs with onion

Fried pho

Fried... pastry things

After dinner, we had bia hoi, which is a kind of Vietnamese draft beer. Drinking is typically where it's clear that I wasn't raised in Asia, because whereas more conservative Asian girls either don't drink, or drink extremely slowly, I drink a normal quantity at a normal rate. (That's not to say that Asia doesn't have its fair share of non-conservative women.)

One of our topics of conversation was the relatively high rate of drunken, drug-using families in Russia and formerly Soviet nations. There are often sightings of 10-year-olds sitting in corners drinking vodka and smoking cigarettes. Being ignored by their parents is often better than the abuse they may otherwise face. There are reports of women throwing their two- or three-month old babies down garbage chutes. Granted, I'm sure this happens to some extent in every country, but it seems that it is a bigger problem in Russia than elsewhere. It was quite horrific to hear.

Lien also told me that I have a slight Chinese accent. I've actually heard this once before from an Irishman, but I've never heard it from an actual American, and considering that American English is my native accent, I am disinclined to believe it. I will fully admit that I sometimes speak with a Chinese accent when I'm in China, because sometimes it is easier for people to understand English that way (since that's how they've learned it), but I've been out of the country for a good seven weeks, so I don't think that I'm still subconsciously doing that. I do wonder what it is that makes it sound like it though to these two people. There must be something. I have also heard many times that people think I'm from California because my English is really clear. Do Californians have really crisp English? Is that a thing?

Lien also said that I looked much better today than yesterday, because I looked really tired yesterday. So I guess doing nothing is the new beauty sleep.

I'm debating whether I should fly or take the 24-hour bus to Laos, because 90% of what I read on the internet refers to it as the "bus from hell" where people are given buses different from what they promised (e.g. non-sleeper buses instead of real sleeper ones where you can recline all the way), or foreigners are crammed in the back where the seats are jammed and the engine makes it hotter, the staff is super rude and aggressive, the A/C doesn't always work, sometimes the bus breaks down all together, and the very small minority are dumped at the border with no onward transport. Did I mention there is only one driver, so he often drinks or takes other drugs to stay awake? 10% of people say it was smooth sailing, but none of these posts have a specific company, and they're not very recent. The bus, however, costs $35 whereas a flight is nearly $200. It only takes an hour though, and it goes directly to Luang Prabang, whereas if I take the bus, I'd have to spend a night in Vientiane, and then take another four hours to go to LP. Also, my ass is still bruised and swollen (it's like I'm wearing half of the derriere-enhancing underpants), so I don't know that a 24-hour bus ride would be the greatest comfort.

I actually tried booking a flight with Lao Airlines already, but the website is messed up, so my payment can't go through. Lame.

Last note of the day is that traffic here is crazier than in Saigon. Saigon might have a larger number of cars, but people drive much less according to regulation here. Whereas the concept of yielding still exists in the south, the north relies more on playing chicken. So you will have motorbikes who are travelling in a direction perpendicular to your own literally slam on the brakes such that they stop perhaps one inch from your knee. It is nuts. (From this example, you can also tell that red lights have no meaning.)

Halong Bay hurts my ass

2011-05-08T02:09:00.000+02:00

Woke up around 7:00 by means of Snow's sister, since for some reason I thought a 7:17 alarm would be appropriate for a 7:30 departure. (7:17 is probably when I ended up actually getting out of the bed, from which point it really does only take me ten minutes to get ready, but I have to factor in time to muster my motivation to move.)

Snow's dad dropped me off at the place where I bought my ticket (since they only do pick-up and drop-off in Old Quarter), called Ocean Star Tours, where I waited (but could use the internet) until about 8:30. The van seated about 25, and was packed. Since I was one of the last people picked up, I had to sit in a fold-out seat that fills in the empty space in the aisle, which was not comfortable.

There were very few white people on the bus, which I thought was a bit strange.

My ass started disliking the ride about an hour into it, and it takes about three hours to get to Halong Bay. We took a 20-minute break in the middle at a shop with a frightening lack of charm. Not that you need charm when your market is captive and your whole system is based on kickbacks to the tour companies.

Some tour guide just lit this up and smoked it as casually as ever.

Naturally, everything here was completely overpriced, so I just sat there with my bottle of water for what was actually 30 minutes until we were loaded back onto the van.

I met an Asian-American who now lives and works in Singapore (but evidently travels a lot for her job) and a brother and sister from England on a nine-month leave from work for travelling, so the four of us pretty much stuck together throughout the trip.

Upon arriving in Halong Bay, I was not met with the hordes of scissor- and knife-wielding pickpockets that I had been warned against (blades for use against purses and bags, not victims), and it wasn't as crowded as we had been told either. The guide purchased our junk tickets for us (as in the boat, not as in rubbish) and we headed on to the boat. At this point it was about 12:45.

We cruised for a while into Halong Bay, which was really good for picture-taking, and then we stopped at this random fishing place to have lunch (although sadly, we were not served any of the seafood we saw in the nets).

We were supposed to see a "floating village" at some point, but this is the closest thing I saw.

Lunch was an uninspiring array of dishes, including one small fish for six people (qualifying it as a "seafood lunch" in their advertising), although there was enough to go around (if only barely).

Fish and tiny egg things

Pickled radish and pork

Tofu and tomatoes

Salad

Not part of the lunch, but purchased and provided by the Asian-American

Because I had asked before I purchased my ticket last night, I knew that drinks were not included, so I had my previously mentioned big water bottle. Otherwise, cans of soda were 20,000 dong and lukewarm beer was 30,000.

Tip: You should also ask if the company will charge you for opening your own bottle of water on the boat, because apparently this happens with some of them.

There was a Czech woman who was extremely displeased with the lunch. She evidently saw that on the other boats, they had a substantial amount of actual seafood and felt that for $30, our lunch should have been much better. She said that she had been on several boat trips before, and that for the price, this was terrible value. I can't speak for other destinations, but the more reputable companies do Halong Bay for substantially higher prices, so $25 was on the cheap side, so I was going into this with very low expectations.

Tip: Know what you're getting into when you book a tour so you can manage your expectations so you won't be an angry Czech woman.

After lunch, we went to a dock where those who had paid for kayaking (an extra $5) embarked on their excursion and everyone else had the option to take either a bamboo boat or a motorboat into two "heaven swimming pool" caverns for an additional $5. The English siblings and I opted against this and stayed on the boat to chat.

After about an hour, we then left for the caves that were really the main activity of the tour (other than simply cruising around the bay).

The first was Dong Thien Cave, which is huge and lit in many colors, which actually makes it look a little fake.

I exited the cave a bit earlier than the other three, so after waiting for a while outside, I decided to go back in to see where they were. Unfortunately, in doing so, I slipped on something and fell down a few stairs, so now my ass and lower back are very bruised, my left arm has a few scratches and a sporadic shooting pain, and my right ring finger is a little jammed. (Typing is not fun.) So yeah, limestone steps don't offer the softest landing. I was also the only one in our little group wearing sneakers instead of flip-flops so go figure. God hates me because I don't believe.

For whatever medical reason I totally don't understand, I felt really dizzy and nauseated after, so I had to sit down for a while, and the English sister, who is a nurse, said I should drink some soda to get some sugar in my system. So alas, I was forced by the circumstances into buying a 20,000 dong can of soda anyway, although at least it was cold, and I did feel much better afterwards.

When you exit the cave, there is simply a sign that says "Exit to Boat" with no indication of a second cave so I thought perhaps the big one was really two connected caves. However, after you go down the steps, you see a sign across from the bathrooms that forks off into "Exit to Boat" and "Dao Go Cave" so I was mistaken. We were already late though, so we had to go back

to the boat. A google images search tells me it was more of the same.

We then took the boat back to the harbor and got back on the van for the ride back to Hanoi, which was doubly unpleasant due to the new and very large bruise on my ass.

The sunset was nice, though.

The shop we stopped at had slight charm, but obviously nothing notable ever gets sold in these types of stores. The four of us had decided to go to dinner together, so after we were dropped off en masse in Old Quarter (except for two people staying in more upscale hotels that we passed on the way there), I walked over to their hostel with them. We arrived back in the city at about 8:50.

They went upstairs to freshen up, and I went to ask about the price for a one-day tour of Tam Coc. Apparently, the English siblings had only paid $17 for the Halong Bay tour instead of $25. I recalled that when we went to buy my ticket yesterday, I had asked how much a 2-day/1-night tour of Halong Bay was, and the guy told me $45. Then when he opened up the brochure to show me the itinerary, my host noticed that the price was different in the brochure and said, "Oh, it's more than $45" and for some inexplicable reason (in hindsight), we both went by the prices in the brochure rather than what he was saying. I think my thinking at the time was that he's telling me $45, but there are really hidden costs that will make it the same as the brochure price. This is not the case. The price in the brochure for a one-day tour is, in fact $25, but it's not what you should be paying.

I asked about the Tam Coc tour, which is $27 in the brochure, and was told by the agent that he could do $20. I could also book my bus to Laos, which would be a sleeper with proper bunks, for $35. So knowing this, what I think I'm going to do tomorrow is go back to the agency where I booked my ticket for Halong Bay and see if I can essentially get the Halong Bay cruise, the Tam Coc tour, and the bus ticket to Laos for a grand total of $67, $25 of which is already paid for. (So that works out to 17 + 20 + 30, because I think that's what the Laos bus really costs.) The agency I used also used an exchange rate of 1:21,000 when it's actually 1:20,595, which makes a difference when you are multiplying by 67. So more accurately, I'll see if I can get everything for 1.38 million dong, 525 thousand of which is already paid for. We shall see. I hate the feeling of having overpaid, even though I know this is a fundamental part of travelling, and it's usually not by very much when converted to dollars. I am my father's daughter though, and he's much worse than I am on this count.

Tip: Always ask for a discount. Always bargain. Lonely Planet seems to think that if a price is marked that means it's non-negotiable, but I have absolutely no idea where they get this notion. It is patently false. You should not, however, bargain in a store that is a national chain or at a proper shopping center/mall. If it's a street stall or small shop though, feel free. If they are really non-negotiable, they'll just tell you so. It's not going to offend them.

The English siblings do not eat street food for some reason, and even if they did, they wouldn't tonight, because it's the sister's birthday, so they went to a nearby restaurant to eat. Nearby means in the foreigner-dominant backpacker area. I looked at the prices and decided to pass, because I can normally eat for less than 30,000 dong, but the prices here were 80-120,000. So I called my host's sister who picked me up and took me home where I had some instant noodles, which at 10:30PM, were delicious.

I used some sort of Japanese version of Icy Hot (not that I've ever used Icy Hot, but it feels icy and hot, so I'm assuming that's the concept) and Salonpas on the places I fell on. Salonpas is some sort of stick-on thing; I don't know if it's a pain reliever or anti-inflammatory thing, but whatever.

I think something I had for lunch on the tour was bad, because my tummy is not happy. I have antacids though, as any traveller should.

Tip: Pack antacids and basic over-the-counter pain relievers, antibiotics, and, if you so desire, fever medication.

A selection of conversation topics throughout the day:

September 11 (about which the English sister knew far more than I did)

The Vietnam War

Drunk tubing in Vang Vieng and stupid people who die there because they are doing lots of other substances and then jump onto rocks in shallow water

The English siblings' harrowing 31-hour bus ride on a non-sleeping bunk bus from Vientiane, Laos to here and the terrible border crossing involved

The one-child policy (which I suppose for my generation is the two-child policy)

Law school debt

A failed attempt to talk about movies, but we haven't seen any of the same ones

Twins (the brother is one of a pair of identical twins)

Aborigines having just been classified as "humans" (as opposed to animals) in Australia by a vote within the last year (which totally blows my mind)

One random photo:

The stupid blinking/rotating lights to the right of the traffic light are surprisingly effective at passing the waiting time. You don't even notice you're staring at them and then the light is green.

Host = awesome. Hanoi = ...

2011-05-07T01:30:00.000+02:00

It feels weird to write about this morning, because I was in a different city then, which makes it feel like two different days. Does anybody know what I'm talking about? Is this a common sensation or an idiosyncratic one?

So, from what I can remember, I woke up around 8:00 or something, and was doing something productive on my laptop although I can't recall what precisely. Then I packed up my stuff and Tony picked me up to take me to the airport, where Thao, my original Da Nang host, would meet us for coffee. (Oh, I remember, I was answering a student's questions for a research paper. I guess I should say former student, otherwise it sounds like I'm actually being a productive member of society.)

Checking in at the Da Nang airport is not like checking in at the Saigon airport. There, I was finished and done in about 1 minute. Here, the representative I was speaking to was backseat handling the passengers who were in the next line over, who had some kind of issue with wanting to take their backpacks as carry-on instead of checked luggage. This resulted in her asking me the same question a few times because she kept forgetting I existed. She also spoke to me in Vietnamese even after seeing that I had an American passport with a Chinese name. Seriously, what are the chances that I speak Vietnamese? There must be very few people who fit that description.

After getting my boarding pass, we went to the "airport restaurant," which is a misnomer, because they only have two choices for food as opposed to a million for drinks. It's also ridiculously overpriced, but that's always true of airport food, and in this case, "ridiculously overpriced" still only comes out to five bucks.

When it was time for me to head to my gate, I was wearing the traditional Vietnamese conical hat over my new motorbike helmet, simply because this is the most convenient way to carry these things. This woman behind me was commenting in Chinese, "Why is she wearing that hat?" in a rather judgemental tone. Her significant other responded, "I'm sure it's just a souvenir." Then she says, "Yeah, but she has two," in the same tone as if she were referring to number of heads. I know, man. Two. Madness. Now I obviously don't care what random strangers think of me, however, I do get some weird schadenfreude kick out of making them feel embarrassed that I can understand what they're saying behind my back (in this case, literally). So I turn around and say in Chinese, "One of them is a helmet." And the guy goes, "Oh! She's Chinese." And the woman shuts up.

By the way, don't let any Asian give you any crap for not being able to tell the specific nationalities apart. I've been Thai, Malaysian, Singaporean, Vietnamese, and Korean (evidently I look like some actress there) on this trip. Let's be real. We do all look the same. Although apparently, I look particularly Vietnamese, because everyone takes the time to tell me so, rather than just speaking to me in the native tongue and then realizing I don't understand a word they're saying.

Anyway, we are shuttled off to the plane and I am reintroduced to the ridiculously crammed seats provided by JetStar. Also more crying babies. What is it with JetStar and unhappy children? At this point, I see a text from Tony telling me he has feelings for me and hoping to keep in touch. I very much appreciate his decision-making here. Knowing that I am not single, he waited until after I left to say anything, which eliminates the potential for extremely awkward face-to-face interaction. (Given the situation, it's not as though saying something sooner could have changed the outcome.) I tell him we can keep in touch for sure, but it's only fair that he knows the chances of any date in the future are slim to none. He says he just wanted to tell me how he feels. All right then. Duly noted, I suppose. Or just... noted.

After I arrive in Hanoi and get my bag, I go to the tourist information desk to get a map and to ask where I can take the bus. The woman looks at me all blase and sort of mumbles some directions, which she has to repeat for me to hear, and even then, I don't quite understand what the last step is. All I know is she's telling me to go upstairs, go outside, and then go down, which makes no sense to me. (Why wouldn't I just go out directly then?) After asking a couple other people, I finally understand that I have to walk along the overpass, which eventually descends into the bus station. (The level of English of employees at the airport of the nation's capital is surprisingly sub-par.)

I take bus 7 all the way to the end, which takes about an hour but costs only 5,000 dong, which is a fraction of what a cab or xe om (motorbike taxi) would cost. I don't know the route, so I don't realize when it's about to be the last stop, so I don't have my stuff ready when we get there. Every other person, including the ticket guy, gets off the bus, and then the bus driver keeps going. The rest area is naturally only a short distance from the last stop though, so it's all good.

My host, Snow, comes to pick me up and take me to her house. A lot of houses here and in Cambodia are skinny, but tall. Snow's room is on the fifth floor and has very high ceilings. We go around the city a little bit before she has to go teach a tutoring session at a student's house.

Two of what must be hundreds of silk shops in the Old Quarter

Apparently turtles live in here.

Fancy shmancy stores

Snow takes me to Hanoi's first and most well-known ice cream shop. As we were turning in, this guy in an SUV behind us just blares the horn. I had heard about the Hanoi habit of doing this, but seriously. Let's grow up. I turn around to glare at him, and it's a foreigner. Really, dude? That's what you took from cultural integration? Being obnoxious on the road? The guy stares back at me, even after he's passed us. The last thing you want to be doing when you're driving in Asia is not be looking at the road in front of you, and instead be sticking your head out of your window glaring at someone on a motorbike behind you like a moronic dog. But no, I'm sure that staring at me is both proving your superiority and safe.

Anyway, the ice cream shop sells two types of ice cream: a fresh, "soft" kind and a hard kind. The hard one is far better than the soft. (Yeah, yeah, insert penis joke here.)

It's more like an ice cream shop/motorbike parking lot for customers.

This tasted like it was made with chocolate powder and water (and not really purified water)

This was much better and had little rice jelly things in it that made it really smooth. While in line for this, the lady immediately after me was nudging me along with her shoulder, and not in a cute way. Seriously woman, I don't think the .3 seconds you're saving by doing so is really worth your augmenting the unfriendly and unopen reputation of your city. If I wanted people with this sort of attitude, I'd have stayed in China. I can see why Westerners generally dislike Hanoi. Because the people here are less likable. Which I wouldn't be saying if it weren't for Hanoi residents proving that point as if on purpose.

While Snow is off tutoring, I stay at her house and have dinner with the family.

We have stir-fried veggies and pork, chicken, more pork, even more pork with powder peanut stuff on it, and shrimp. Also that bowl of green things. During dinner, I think my host's dad was asking for favors having to do with America, because my host's older sister (who also speaks English) kept using the "oy" that you use when a seller quotes a price too high, i.e. No, Dad, that's not appropriate. The reason I'm guessing that's why is because she did translate one sentence about him wanting her to have some opportunity in the U.S.

When she gets back from her class, we go out again to check out the night market here. Along the way, I see a tour company, so I've paid a deposit for a one-day trip to Halong Bay tomorrow. Snow will be departing for a two-day trip in a village near the Lao border, but I don't have enough time to join her and also do Halong Bay, which everyone says is not to be missed. I'm not sure if the company I've booked with is legitimate or not, but I knew to ask whether the lunch they provided includes water (it does not). So I will bring my own, which they've told me they will not charge me to open on the boat. If they're decent, I will book another tour for Sunday to a place Tony suggested when we were at the Marble Mountains.

Did I mention all I do is eat?

2011-05-06T01:50:00.000+02:00

Woke up around 10:00 and did stuff on the computer before and a little while after lunch. (Anyone want to write a letter of recommendation for a scholarship for me?) Lunch consisted of noodles and some more rice paper wraps, this time containing greens and beef and/or pork. Again, homemade food = delicious.

You essentially mix in the same stuff with your noodles as you put in the wraps, but it's good both ways. The larger bowl of sauce on the left is satay sauce, I think, based on its peanuty goodness.

Dessert was a cold drink called che, which is a mixture of different beans that, when combined, is very sweet and yummy in my tummy.

Although not particularly attractive

My wound didn't secrete any fluids yesterday, so I switched from gauze (which I am fresh out of in any case) to the children's face mask to cover my wound. It works very well. Plus everyone says it's fashionable. They're being sarcastic of course, but whatever, I like it. I also can't believe this is not the popular thing to do, given that these wounds are really common. (A person my age has typically had at least two or three if not many more.) At the very least, there should be gaudily decorated big-ass band-aids readily available at any pharmacy.

Tony picked me up at 2:30 to go see an art exhibit featuring pieces from all over the country at the city museum (free admission), where "usually, there is nothing" (which explains the free admission). I'm not even going to pretend to get art, so here are a few photos with no commentary whatsoever.

Lacquer on wood

"Sunny Street"

Uncle Ho. I love that they call him Uncle Ho. So much better than "Chairman Mao." Uncle Ho sounds like a guy you could find at your dinner table and has a lot of wisdom to dispense. Whether or not that's what you really want in a leader, selling that image has a nice feeling to it. This is commentary on his name, not the art, so it doesn't count.

Ok, this totally just looks like a 3-D emoticon. That will be my sole commentary.

"1000 years"

Some old rich guy smoking opium with his man-servants around him. The one on the left is holding a bottle of Jim Beam. The original bad-ass (but actually douchebag). That should have an acronym, like BAMF does. BABAD. There, it's done.

"Marketing"

Evidently in Viet Nam, it's the men who are worse than the women when it comes to this social activity of swapping news that is irrelevant to your life but you find endlessly interesting anyway. (Commentary on the subject, not the art.)

"Sounds from the Past"

After that, we went back to the restaurant where we had dinner last night to try the other two specialties, which they had run out of when we arrived the night before.

This one, which is rice cake and pork, you dip in a sweet sauce.

This one, which is obviously shrimp, you dip in a salty sauce.

Then we went to this snack place that caters mostly to females and children because it is said that guys who eat too much of these snacks will be really girly as a result. I don't know why, as none of the food seemed distinctly feminine (apparently fruit and spicy dried squid = Barbie dolls?), but who knows.

Guava and mango and pickled versions of each

Two kinds: either pate or beef rolled up in rice paper

Spicy dried squid, as mentioned above

I forget the name, but the coloring is supposedly natural (I have my doubts). It's pleasantly sweet.

Coconut and coffee-flavored jelly. The coffee was obviously mixed with water before it was set, but I think it would've been much better with milk. The coconut one clearly had a decent fistful of sugar added to it, but I like sweet things, so it was ok for me.

After getting what is evidently a dose of estrogen, I wanted to check out the helmet shops, because I really like the helmets here, and I want to learn to drive a motorbike when I get back to China, and nobody wears helmets in China. Some of them actually really look like hats; I never would have guessed that they were helmets had I not been in a helmet shop. However, these are also not the safest. I bought one that is a matte black with two somewhat-darker-than-baby-blue stripes going from the front to the back and little mouse ears on either side (as in a graphic on the helmet, not as in mouse ears that stick out of the helmet). It cost 160,000 dong (or eight bucks). So now I have a mouse on my head a little dog on my leg. I wonder why people think I'm younger than my age. (Everyone here thinks I look 17/18, and that my CouchSurfing profile picture looks very different/much older. This is ironic, since my CouchSurfing profile picture was taken when I was 19.)

Then we went to a park that used to be a landfill, but is now quite nice with a manmade lake and a lot of low-thrill amusement park rides for children.

This is an awesome dragon made out of plates.

The feet and tail are made out of tiny bowls and dishes.

The bush wasn't quite as solid as it looked, so I had to put Candide between two... fronds? Is that even a word? Is it plant-related?

A cool tree that branches into several trees, so it never dies

A massage train

A police station. With no one.

A future moth

Did I mention there's also a small zoo?

This cage was ridiculously small and the roof was ridiculously low.

I took the plastic bag out of this little one's mouth. I think he already ate some of it though.

I could not get a decent picture of this bear. He was swaying back and forth as if he were carrying a boom box and came from the 'hood in the 80s.

I guess this is what pythons look like when they're sleeping. Exciting stuff.

Crocodiles, mostly submerged

Monkeys!

After a walk through the park, we went to meet my host for dinner. At this dinner (aside from Tony and me) were my host, her boyfriend, her cousin, her sister, and her boyfriend, whom everyone was meeting for the first time. He was so nervous, I could not stop myself from being entertained. He had a look of fear and kept nervously tugging his shirt or otherwise playing with his hands. And the sister was just sitting there casually eating, as if to say, "Dude, you're on your own here." I think also the fact that I was watching him as if he were a projection on a screen instead of a real live boy was also a factor. I gotta say, he had reason to be nervous though, because the sister is 18, and he's 27. So if his internal monologue was, "Oh god, everyone thinks I'm a dirty old man," it was at least partially true. The age difference is the first thing you notice. Then the physical appearance difference. I saw Ivy's sister leaving the house last night, and she looked hot. She was wearing a tight, white, one-shoulder top with a single ruffle from the shoulder to the middle of her sweetheart neckline and the shortest shorts that shorts can be without becoming indecent (read: Hemline falling precisely on that line that separates your ass from your thighs). This is the kind of hot that you can't look at directly for over 5 seconds. (If you've seen it before, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you haven't, I actually feel a little bad for you.) If I were a guy, I would say she was intimidating, to say the least. Honestly, if I had seen them together with her in that outfit the night before, I would have assumed she was a prostitute, because the age difference added to the fact that he's like a 6, tops, plus her attire would make you think this is not a legitimate coupling at first glance. (I realize this is personal stuff, but the chances that these people will become anything more than just random strangers you read about are pretty slim. Unless you're a CouchSurfer, in which case I shall use the Force to make you forget this. That's something you can use the Force for, right? I totally have never seen any of those movies.)

A vegetable of some kind

Eel, rather spicy

Shell things that you use a toothpick to get the meat out of

Clams

Shrimp

Chili sauce with mayo, which is actually really good

Banana leaf with tiny shrimp

Or was that this one? I can't remember. I thought this was a duplicate photo until I noticed the plate was different.

Something that I didn't bother trying because I could smell the cilantro as the waiter placed it on the table. Unacceptable.

Next to us was a table of men happily drinking and gossiping away, as mentioned (and pictured) earlier. They had a very loud chant/cheer at a few points during the evening. So maybe it was a cult.

There was a guy who set up a large speaker and walked around with a wireless mic singing a song called "Money and Love" and sold candy. I would have paid him to stop singing. It was not a good marketing technique. The new boyfriend bought some though, so I had one.

Like peanut brittle, only more like taffy. Actually, I guess there must be such a thing. So peanut taffy.

After dinner, we went to a karaoke place, where they had Vietnamese and really old English songs. Like in China, karaoke does not mean going to a bar where people get up to sing, but being in a private room just for you and your group of friends and serving you snacks and beer. Ivy's boyfriend (who is awesome and hilarious) was ordering songs for me like "Baby One More Time" and "2 Become 1" and "Beat It." Karaoke is always more fun when people know the songs you're singing, so I was happy to play along and was very entertained in the meantime.

That was our last stop, so I'm back at Ivy's now, and Ha has found not one, but two people who can host me in Hanoi, which is amazing, because northerners are evidently not very responsive as a whole to this type of thing.

My country tis of thee

2011-05-04T23:42:00.000+02:00

Woke up around 10 this morning, and my host told me that she got a call from a volunteer organization that she works with and would have to leave Da Nang for two days for the countryside. There, she'd be translating for an American couple who was interested in making a donation toward the development of the town, which would go toward building better housing (as opposed to the current housing, which literally blows away when there's a typhoon) and children's education. I obviously would not have minded staying at a guesthouse or hostel especially considering the reason for her departure, but she had already arranged for me to stay at Ivy's (the same girl who took me to Hoi An), so it all worked out.

I was partly glad to arrive at Ivy's, because the power was out at Thao's place due to controlled blackouts planned by the city (so neighborhood A might not have power today, and neighborhood B will be without power tomorrow, which encourages trips to the supermarket and cross-neighborhood friendships), but Ivy's place is in a different area, and she has wifi, which is a nice bonus.

Thao dropped me off while Ivy was home for her lunch break (11:30-1:00) and I had lunch here with her and her family. Homemade food is always the best, no matter where you are. We had a version of what I ate last night, but it was infinitely better, and a curry-based soup with chicken, something like taro (or maybe... taro), potato, and carrots with pieces of baguette to dip into it.

You take the crispy rice paper partially see in the lower right-hand corner, fold it in half and tear it (because you only need half), then dip the whole thing in the small bowl of water (so it will stick to itself). You then add the leafy stuff and one or two small fishes and roll it up. There's spicy dipping sauce for it as well.

I had three bowls of the curry soup and was extremely full.

Because my leg had somewhat recovered overnight from the blister and accompanying disgustingness the day before, I decided to give it a rest for the afternoon so it could heal further, which means I did nothing except watch TV shows online (again).

Around 6:15, Tony (from yesterday) came to pick me up and take me to eat some local food, to see the "mini-Golden Gate bridge" and to hang out at a coffee shop.

This time, the local food was cheap and good. This shop has four specialty dishes, but they were already out of two of them, so I can only report on the other two.

The bowl on the left is just porridge with rice, but they add something or other to make it green. The stuff on the right is what you add to the porridge as you eat it. There's stringy pork, pickled stuff (which is spicy), and salty fish.

This duck egg is also eaten with the porridge. The egg white is extremely salty, and the yolk is kind of chalky, which sounds bad but is really good.

This is more dessert-like because the sauce in the middle that you pour over each little dish is sweet. The dish itself is made from rice (I assume, but I highly doubt I'm wrong) made into a pasty cake and bits of shrimp and fried pancake sprinkled on top.

I'm not that into bridges, so I don't really know what to say about this. It does have the function of marking the line between where the river becomes the sea, but that's all I've got.

My camera does not know how to focus at night.

While we were on the road though, I asked Tony what made Da Nang so attractive to foreign investors, and he said it's because it's a "one-stop shop" process. As a foreign investor, you basically hand your plan over to this one department (where Tony used to work), and they take care of everything for you instead of you having to make the run-around to this agency and that bureau and hitting bureaucracy and red tape at every turn. The U.S., Korea, and China make up about 70% of foreign direct investment in Da Nang.

The walkway along the river (although we only drove by) is really nice. It's not exactly the Bund in Shanghai, but I think that's a good thing. It's more of a relaxing area to sit and chat and enjoy the atmosphere. Across the street are a string of local hawker stands and houses that will soon be replaced by Da Nang's upcoming version of Wall Street, with banks and government offices. Joy.

We went to May House for coffee, where Tony had never been but had found on facebook. The setup of the place is really interesting; it's divided into areas with certain themes. The first room you walk into is a typical coffee shop with signs that say "Decaf is for wimps." If you walk further inside, there's an area on the left that has two wedding gowns and a bunch of bridal photography and an area on the right with a huge portrait of a woman's profile made out of different colored coasters. I think there was another room in the back, but we didn't go there. I believe there's also outdoor seating, but we were there at night, and it's not lit, so I didn't really see it.

"Choco cookies," one of three signature shakes. It was not bad, but not amazing. I might rather have a McFlurry.

We talked about a lot of different things that mostly centered on travel. For one, travelling truly makes you adopt a broader perspective of the world. Living in China has made me not particularly fond of the Chinese government, but it has also made me understand that anyone would be hard-pressed to propose an alternative system that would actually work in China. The sheer size of the population demands a strict government, let alone if you tack on the disparities in education and income and, shall we say, moral compass. A democracy, for example, at this point in China's development, would lead to certain disaster; there is no doubt in my mind that that's true. It is essentially a partially modern and partially third-world country that, despite the size of its GDP, still has to worry to some extent about basic stability. And in times of uncertain stability, the government does things like censor people and imprison political opponents; this is not something Western history is free from either.

At the same time, travelling re-affirms your identity. I never paid particular attention to whether I identified with America or China; I never had the same identity crisis that some children of immigrants do. At most, I felt that if the U.S. and China were playing each other for the gold in the Olympics, I'd side with the Chinese, because that's who I am, by blood and by birth. (Also, we TOTALLY should have won the women's world cup in '98. That goal was in. The ref made a bad call and you know it.) After moving to China, however, it is clear to me that I am much more American than Chinese, culturally speaking. All the "freedom and liberty" crap that you brush off as a child becomes much more significant when you are denied those things (and bacon). You realize it's not just cheesy Fourth of July propaganda; it is actually true (for the most part). You also realize it is much less tiring to be American. In China, if someone tells you A, you have to think: "Do they really mean A? Or are they implying B? Or C? Or D? If X or Y hears about this, what will they think and what will their response be? How will that affect my future options?" Everyone's a politician/13-year-old girl, which forces you into the same mode of thinking if you want to avoid unpleasant surprises. In the States, yeah, there are some conniving, manipulative people, and there's the requisite amount of bullshit in more formal communications, but 80-90% of the time, if someone wants A, they will tell you A, and that will be exactly what they mean. Even when there is any further implication, it is usually fairly obvious. This is not to say that one way is better than the other - indeed, the Chinese are master negotiators when they want to be, because you can never get a grasp on what they really want - but I strongly identify with one over the other. That being said, I'm not going to forget that I'm Chinese any time soon and I love my country; it's just that when I say that, it refers to more than one, hence my ever-shifting "we" to refer to either Americans or the Chinese and never knowing how to answer when someone asks where I'm from.

Tony warned me that travelling in the north would be harder, because people there are less open and friendly. For example, if you window shop and don't buy anything, they may yell at you. That really doesn't bother me, but I do believe him, at least for now, because only one person has responded to my several couch requests (and he says he lives inconveniently far from the city). Typically, there might be one or two people who ignore your request all together, but usually people at least send you a message to say they can't host you.

After that, Tony dropped me off at my Ivy's, where she was watching a movie with Jennifer Aniston and either that guy from 300 or someone who looks like him. Seriously, culture is America's biggest export and strongest political weapon. The babies of the 90s in China have grown up with the same expectations as American kids solely due to exposure to American pop culture. This becomes an issue when your native culture does not necessarily accept or allow for the fulfillment of these expectations. (American kids are way more independent and individualistic than those of any country in Asia. Here, a break from cultural norms is weird, and not in a good, quirky way.) Believe me, if and when there is a revolution, it will be the children of the 90s who spark it. And all the U.S. had to do was watch TV and movies to ensure the production of more TV and movies.

Yesterday I forgot to mention that there was fighting at the Marble Mountains during the war. The Americans were on the high ground, and the Vietnamese inside the caves. The only way they avoided complete destruction of the place was by taking and holding American hostages. There are also a ton of marble shops outside, but as Tony said, if they were from the mountains here, there'd be no mountains left to see.

Mountains, beaches, and temples, oh my!

2011-05-04T17:33:00.001+02:00

I woke up around 8:00 and was debating over whether to go straight back to Da Nang or to venture around Hoi An's old city during the daytime for a while, and the latter option won. I was expecting to have to buy a ticket, but I walked straight past the entrance booth and across the Japanese-covered bridge, and no one asked me to purchase anything, so it turns out I didn't have to. Here are a few pictures of the same locations as the previous night in the sunlight.

This isn't from the previous night, but it was a cool store of old (and recent, anniversary-edition) propaganda posters, as is well marked outside.

This is the same meeting house as the night before.

And this is the same ancient house/apothecary.

I was contemplating buying a ticket to go inside the houses and have a look around, but instead, I went to where they punch your ticket for the assembly house, took a look around without going further into it, and decided it was pretty much exactly what I expected it would be, and decided against it.

I headed back to Ivy's grandmother's house, where I was fully planning on leaving for the bus station when she gestured to the stove and was clearly in the process of cooking lunch for us both, so I stuck around.

As we were finishing up with lunch, her neighbor came over to eat some stuff and then gestured me to go over to her house. I didn't bring my camera, but basically I had a second lunch, after which I was completely stuffed. We started off with dessert, which was sweet rice cake (the gooey kind) with something yellowish inside perhaps made from corn. There was another kind that used red bean paste instead of rice cake.

Lunch there was a slice of what must have been a rather large fish, soup, and rice, with some very fresh and very delicious mango to finish everything off. She turned on the Chinese news for me (apparently they get CCTV 4 here), which was covering the death of Osama bin Laden, and then gave me English magazines from December 2009 to peruse. When she saw my leg, she put some sort of ointment on it, which I didn't really want, but also did not know how to decline politely since a) she is a grandma, and in Asia it is assumed that elders know better, and b) I don't speak a word of Vietnamese. She also randomly gave me two silver bracelets intended for a baby and her address. Hopefully I didn't agree to sell her my first born child or something. If that's the case, I must say smiling and nodding actually does have a downside.

For some reason the ointment made my leg decide to grow a blister in the middle of my wound, so then she insisted on taking me to the pharmacy and bought me a pill (which I assume is an over the counter antibiotic) and H2O2. I tried to explain that I didn't want the H2O2, but she didn't understand. When we got back to her house, she was about to wash my leg with the H2O2, but I got a pen and wrote "NaCl," which she seemed to understand. Thank god (or Mendeleev, I suppose) for the periodic table.

At this point, I decided it was time to head back to Da Nang, so she took me on her motorbike to the bus station, stopping at some random pagoda on the way and asking a confused driver who passed us on motorbike to take a photo for us. I had heard the public bus to Da Nang was 20,000, so I gave the ticket guy exact change. He then gestured "3," so I gave him another 10,000. My host later informed me it is only 20 though, so if this happens you should just ignore them.

Tony, a CouchSurfer from Da Nang, picked me up at the bus station and took me to the Marble Mountains (admission 15,000 dong or 75 cents). I'll give you one guess as to what the mountains are made of. (If you guess wrong, please have the decency to go ahead and unfriend me on facebook yourself.) On the drive there, you could see that the city is in a pivotal moment of change. Everything everywhere is fenced off for construction, and what was once the slums are now being torn down and villas are being constructed for the rich. This is evidently the best city in Vietnam for foreign investment (I'm not sure if that's in terms of taxes or what), and it shows.

This bridge is garishly lit in multiple colors at night. They are building another one further down the river in the next few years. Hopefully they will have better taste in lighting this time around.

The mountains themselves involved a lot of stairs and climbing and buddhas, which was probably not the best for my ointment-covered burn wound in terms of amount of sweat and sticking to the gauze, but oh well. Can't let a burn get too much in the way of travelling.

A chess table for the gods

A lying buddha hidden behind a standing buddha that you have to climb up to see

A tunnel in which the wind is particularly cool and strong, though that is not true a foot in front of or behind it

A piece of stone fell from here during the tsunami a few years back in Indonesia. It was said that the people couldn't feel it, but the mountain could.

This is at the top of the ocean watch tower. You have to climb here on very smooth, slippery marble. Beware of what you grab onto - there are cacti abound.

This is from the highest visitable peak, which just opened a year and a half ago and is way better than ocean watch tower. Lots of stairs.

This used to be the emperor's seat at the river watch tower.

I would recommend coming here in the morning, because it was ridiculously hot in the afternoon for climbing a whole bunch of steps.

Afterward, we had a drink to replenish our hydration, and this drink is supposed to be much better than water since it has other stuff that you lose when you sweat. It's made from "Vietnamese lemons" that are kept in a jar for a long time (the longer the better).

It tastes like salty lemonade.

After this drink, we headed to the beach for a short rest. The sand here is really fine, and there are a ton of kids around. There are also riptide areas marked off by flags and lifeguards who will whistle at you if you get too close to them. Other than that though, it's your typical beach activity.

Except for this awesome round fishing boat. I don't know how you drive it. I guess you sort of spin in a general direction.

We tried a few local snacks here.

Steamed bun with veggies and half a hard-boiled egg

Fried snacks

Then we headed over to a very large Buddhist pagoda (no admission fee) that has the largest Buddhist statue in Da Nang and a good view of Da Nang at night.

This is the shadow of the statue in the night sky behind the figure.

After that, we went back into the city for dinner. The restaurant said "Local Food" in English, which sort of tipped off my radar as being questionable, but there was only one table of foreigners, and the rest of the people actually were locals. In my personal opinion, it was overpriced and not very good (the lemonade was far too sweet and the dipping sauce was far too salty), but I suppose I imagine what this local dish would be like if it were better.

(The pancake in this picture is not part of the final product below.)

To get to this end result, you first take a thin sheet of crispy rice paper, stick it on the pile of gooey rice paper (press hard), and peel it back. One or two sheets of the gooey stuff should stick to the crispy one as you do so. You then add a slice (or two) of pork and any veggies/herbs you like before rolling it into what you see here. You then dip into sauce as you eat.

Lastly, we met up with my host and the other CouchSurfer she's hosting for a coconut drink. (The same one I had in Hoi An.) As we were talking, I slowly came to the realization that the other surfer was the same person who my host in Saigon had hosted before me, which is the craziest coincidence I've come across in my CouchSurfing experience. (Ok, so maybe it's the only one. But it's crazy.) She has two or three burns, and they were infected, so relative to her, I'm actually way better off.

It is possible that I forgot to take a picture of this drink until I was almost finished. Originally it had several slices of coconut. Also more liquid.

After that, we went home and talked about random stuff like horror movies and ducks until we went to bed (or in my case, blogged until 3:00AM and then went to bed). My host's room is covered in photos of entertainment stars from 5 or 6 years ago, so it's a blast from the past for sure. There Chinese stars (like Zhao Wei when she was young and F4) as well as American stars (like the cast of Charmed, some people who look vaguely familiar but I forgot why they were famous, and Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears). She's also got all these photos of her and her friends, many of whom are foreign (probably CouchSurfers). Her room is pretty awesome. Also, she origami-ed a shirt, Superman pants (complete with triangle underwear), and a heart out of Vietnamese money for me.

Hoi An really is gorgeous at night.

2011-05-04T02:46:00.000+02:00

I woke up at 8:00 to meet Ivy, a CouchSurfer who was heading to Hoi An for the day, and I was surprised to see her covered from head to toe - literally. She was wearing what her boyfriend so adoringly called a "Taliban" face mask, aviator sunglasses, a long-sleeved hoodie over her shirt, gloves, jeans, big-toe socks, and shoes. By "Taliban" face mask, what he means is a mask that goes over the nose (like a surgical mask would), but instead of cupping the chin, it hangs down to protect your neck. It also wraps around the back of your head and is fastened by velcro to protect the back of your neck as well. Under a helmet, it does indeed look like a Muslim headress, although Muslim and Taliban are not exactly equivalent. This might be appropriate for the fall in New York (face mask aside), but it makes no sense for the summer in Viet Nam. It does, however, keep your skin out of the sun, so I suppose it's the price for the pursuit of beauty.

We first went to have breakfast, which was a bowl of noodles with various meats in it.

My quang

After that, we went to a coffee shop, where I ordered "coffee with milk." Generally in the region, coffee is very milk-ed down, so I was expecting a tall glass of barely tan complexion. What I actually received was a short glass half-filled with very dark brown liquid. Evidently if you want what I was expecting, you'd order a coffee with lots of milk. It is surprisingly strong.

The Vietnamese split expenses the same way the Chinese do, which is to say you take turns treating each other to stuff rather than splitting every bill appropriately. So if you get breakfast, I'll get coffee, and someone else will get lunch, or something of that nature. It's obviously not going to work out to be perfectly even, but it would be extremely petty to worry about the minimal amount of money you're "losing" when treating friends.

We waited for Ivy's boyfriend to join us and then set off for Hoi An. It's about a 45-minute motorbike ride along the beach. This would have been nice two or three years ago, when you could see straight out to the sea, but now everything is fenced off for construction (or currently under construction) for development by Hyatt or Le Meridien or whatever other companies make beachfront resorts. What used to be public beaches with fishermen and locals are now mostly private and clearly going to be very upscale, which is too bad.

The sun was strong enough during the 45-minute ride, that my thigh was slightly red (except for where my bag was resting, so I'm looking forward to that awesome tan line). This made covering oneself from head to toe a little less laughable.

We had lunch at Ivy's grandma's, which coincidentally was the same thing we had had for breakfast, but it was better, obviously.

After lunch, they all took a nap, so I headed for the internet cafe (4,000 dong/hour, or 20 cents) to send off some messages to Hoi An CouchSurfers to see if anyone wanted to meet up. This is where I found out Osama was killed. In fact, I think it happend while I was in said cafe, if I've calculated my time zones correctly. These computers were running IE6 on Windows XP and could not type in Chinese without the CD to install the language pack, but at least I could get the news.

The rest of the afternoon involved markets and snacking.

Banh Trang Dap Dap, so named because you have to slap it to flatten it before you eat it

Hen Tron, in which you break off pieces of the pancake and scoop the stuff on the left like nachos and salsa (except the salsa is made from those screw-looking shell things in the sea)

Che bap, a sweet, syrupy drink made from corn and sugar

I bought a traditional conical hat and a Vietnamese single-cup coffee filter (20,000 dong or $1 each)

Even my host doesn't know what this is called. That's how obscure it is. I bet hipsters know what it's called.

Nem chua, which is tiny sausages wrapped in two types of leaves. There's a sweet kind and a sour kind.

I ate a lot of stuff involving some amount of soy sauce, which I've been warned by lots of Chinese people who are completely unrelated to each other not to eat because it will make my scar darker. I do put a certain amount of stock in traditional Chinese medicine because it may not have any scientific backing, but it works. Consistently. For realsies. I can't argue with results. Some people may disagree, but typically it's people who were expecting a very quick turnaround time. like you get with Western medicine. (The downside to Western medicine is that you're going to have to take it again the next time the same problem pops up, i.e. it is only a temporary fix. Or if it's surgery, then you've sliced into your body and tinkered around with it, which, if there is an equally effective alternative, may not be the best thing to do.) The whole philosophy of Chinese medicine is that it alters the very constitution of your body in some way to eliminate the sickness/allergy/pain, etc. completely. That takes a while. Depending on the severity of the condition, it may take months. But by god (or whatever you wish), it works. Unless you've been seeing a quack. (No offense, Candide.) That just sucks.

Right before Ivy headed back for Da Nang, a CSer from Hoi An, Hieu, called and we agreed to meet at 7:30pm. (Ivy's grandmother had spontaneously offered to host me during lunch, before which I hadn't decided whether to stay overnight or not.) Hieu came to pick me up and we went to the old town, which is the main attraction and the place that I've heard is beautiful at night. All the shops are lit up by a combination of electric bulbs and lanterns (admittedly also lit by electricity), giving a very old-timey feel with a touch of, "Let's be real here. We need lights." Motorbikes are not allowed in the old city on six days of the week. There are a ton of foreigners, although the ticket lady didn't think I was foreign, so I guess I don't count for those purposes.

This is like singing bingo. They mention animal names in the song, and if you have the matching card for all the animals, you win something.

They hang up the cards for each animal they mention as they go along.

Lantern store (obviously)

One of the "ancient houses" in Hoi An. This one used to be a traditional medicine shop.

Candide on the Japanese-covered bridge

Clearly Western architecture

Clearly eastern architecture

There are about 2.8 million tailors on each block, and when I asked Hieu if the locals knew very well who was worth their salt, she said, "Yes, because we need clothes." It then dawned on me that the only places selling ready-to-wear clothes in the area were souvenir shops with "same same but different" T-shirts. So everyone's entire wardrobe is tailored. That's awesome. I wish I lived like that.

I had a local Hoi An food called cao lau, which, unsurprisingly, consisted of noodles.

This meet-up was Hieu's first CouchSurfing experience, which made me feel like an ambassador to a secret country. We sipped on a delicious coconut drink and talked a lot about our respective countries (both the U.S. and China on my part) and between this conversation and others I've had with local CouchSurfers, I've found that there are a ton of similarities between China and Viet Nam.

- We celebrate the same lunar holidays and have the same zodiac (except the rabbit is a cat here).
- The educational philosophy (memorize and regurgitate) is similar.
- Society is relationship-based (meaning that networking is ten times more important).
- Many words are very similar in pronunciation.
- Minorities get official advantages (like extra points on the university entrance exam).
- Communist, although less so, web censorship-wise. Viet Nam only blocks facebook and twitter. China also blocks blogspot (e.g. this blog) and YouTube, and it's much more difficult to get around the Great Firewall without paying (that is, if speed and items actually loading are important to your internet browsing experience).
- Physical appearance (everyone tells me I look really Vietnamese, but I assure you, I look really Chinese as well) and dress (an ao dai is very similar to a qi pao/cheongsam, except that you can actually sit/move in an ao dai, which is nice)
- Traditional medicine and the belief that foods are "hot" or "cold" (not referring to temperature)

I am seriously going to miss coconuts from this region. They are sweet, not sour, and really milky. I spent way too much of my life thinking I hated coconut because I hate those stupid coconut shavings they put on pastries. But seriously. Eat some coconut shavings and then eat a coconut and tell me that's the same flavor. That's like saying Jolly Ranchers actually taste like the fruits they're flavored after. If you believe that, you should smack yourself until you don't. (Disclaimer: I am not responsible for the consequences of any actions you choose to take based on that, or any, recommendation. Psh. Totally have this lawyer stuff down.) The practice here is to eat/drink coconut, watermelon, and plum with just a pinch of salt. This makes it sweeter and helps balance out something or other so that your tummy is happy.

Among our topics of discussion was immigrating to the States. Although this was an attractive option perhaps 30 years ago, it's no longer so in vogue. Because Vietnamese schools are not recognized in the U.S., people who are highly educated here end up working in nail salons in Little Saigon in California. Nobody wants that.

When I went back to Ivy's grandma's, we played a game of charades. And by that I mean, we have exactly zero language compatibility. It's surprising how far hand gestures will get you though. As I was taking the gauze off my leg to take a shower, I found that it had stuck to my wound. I couldn't take it off without removing some of the skin. I just wanted to yell at the gauze, "Do you know how long it took to GROW that skin?" Seriously. Skin takes a long-ass time to grow. It is slower than watching paint dry. It is like watching paint dry and then grow another ten coats.

(Contents of this post refer to May 2. May 3 will be up tomorrow.)

JetStar: Not so great

2011-05-01T18:16:00.003+02:00

Hien and I both woke up around noon and settled in for a lazy day of staring at laptops. The only thing we did do was truly Vietnamese, which was to go to the local market in our pajamas. Hien’s are a very typical set of Asian pajamas, which means a matching top and bottom of very lightweight cotton. Mine consist of a tank top and what I can only assume are basketball shorts intended for a 12-year-old boy, since they say “Hoop King” in the corner and the hemline is above my knee. We had a lunch of noodles with some sort of vegetarian “meat” and a ball of stuff partially made from crab, and of course, flan for dessert.

I bought a child-size face mask (4,000 dong or 20 cents) to wrap around my burn wound when it stops secreting gross fluids, because the medical tape is irritating my skin and I also won’t have to keep buying gauze. The original purpose of the face mask, which is shaped like a surgical mask, is to be worn when riding a motorbike because, believe me, you can feel the pollution in your throat and lungs from the hundreds of exhaust pipes passing you by. I’m sure there’s an environmentally friendly aspect somewhere in there as well, but I fly a LOT (over 20 times just in 2009), so I don’t think buying and disposing of less gauze really offsets my carbon footprint.

After that, we really did just stare at laptops (since when is Will Ferrell on The Office?) until I had to get my stuff ready to leave for the airport. We stopped for an early dinner along the way, since I would be arriving in Da Nang at 9:45 at night. It was a cute café that served burgers and very simple rice dinners, so I got a “King Burger,” which was surprisingly good for Western food in Asia and had a spicy kick.

Don't worry, that's the fried egg, not the beef.

The domestic terminal in Saigon is tiny, with few Westerners milling around. There are only three airlines that serve it, so aside from their check-in counters on the first floor, there’s just a small waiting area on the second floor serving 14 gates. When you board you take a bus to your plane (although it’s easily walkable, even with luggage). The international terminal is bigger and more modern.

Tip: The wireless network provided by the first/business class lounge is unsecured, so if you sit close to it, you’ll get a steady signal.

The plane is packed with as many seats as they could fit onto it. If I sit up straight, the space between my knees and the seat in front of me is perhaps three or four inches, and I am really short. The guy sitting across the aisle has to sit with his legs in a V or propped up against the seat in front of him (and he’s not slouching). There are also approximately 1.7 million crying babies. (Read: perhaps five.) The price difference between this airline, JetStar (a budget airline), and Vietnam Airlines is negligible if you book far enough in advance, so after this experience, I would suggest booking Vietnam Airlines instead.

I arrive and go to the taxi stand to get to my host’s place. The first guy tells me a taxi is 200,000 and a motorbike is 100,000. This is total bull. A taxi from the airport should cost 50,000 (about 35 on the meter and 15 for the fee for taxis entering the airport). So I scoff at them and move on. Mailinh is a reliable taxi service, and the driver accepts my offer of 50, so we go.

My host walks out of her door just as I’m pulling up and invites me in. Her room is very large, and is one of many in this house, where she lives with her family and relatives. The setup of the house almost feels more like individual studio apartments in the same building rather than one unified house, save for the kitchen/dining room on the first floor.

We snack on a traditional Vietnamese food, the name of which I already forget. In any case, it is a rice cake with mushrooms and pork cooked in a leaf.

Thao, my host, is very down-to-earth, and unlike many Vietnamese girls, does not care about exposing her skin to the sun (remember, lighter skin is better here) and would rather have a tan than die of heat stroke. I’m her first CouchSurfing guest in about six months, because the last guest they had attracted trouble from the police, not through vomiting on an image of Ho Chih Minh, but because you’re supposed to register with the police if you have a foreign visitor. Before that, she had CouchSurfing guests in and out of her home on a regular, revolving door basis. That says something about her family, because most Asians of my parents’ generation would be a bit too conservative for that. She also informed me that I was lucky that JetStar wasn’t delayed. Apparently, they are delayed all the time, some times by half a day.

Tip: Unless the price difference is substantial, which it usually isn’t, book with Vietnam Airlines. In fact, Vietnam Airlines may very well be cheaper.

Tomorrow morning, I set off for a day or possibly overnight trip to Hoi An with another CouchSurfer, Ivy. Hoi An is known for its historical architecture, which is influenced by many different countries, and crafts. It is also supposed to be beautiful at night. See how knowledgeable I am?

Happy Reunification Day!

2011-05-01T02:28:00.000+02:00

Hien and I woke up a little after six this morning and lazily got ourselves ready to go to the Cu Chi Tunnels, which are a bit far from the city. We left the house around 7:00 and trudged over to the bus stop. Getting to the tunnels involves taking three buses (bus fare 4-5,000 dong) and about two and half hours.

After we took the first bus to its terminal stop to switch to the second, we got some breakfast to go and scrambled into the second bus Asian-style, or in other words, show no mercy. In fact, any show of mercy or chivalry will be greeted with raucous criticism from behind you.

A couple of old ladies who managed to get a seat saw the gauze on my leg and offered half a butt cheek’s worth of space. However, since this area was also occupied by the armrest, it wasn’t much more comfortable sitting than standing, so I opted to sit on the armrest instead. The ladies left a few stops later, so Hien and I had the seat to ourselves, which was nice.

We took this bus to its terminal stop, where a moto driver persuaded Hien to let him take us the rest of the way. I assume this was the right call, as it wasn’t expensive, and he waited for us to finish our visit at the tunnels to take us back to the bus stop as well. Otherwise, we might have waited for the bus for quite some time in both directions. The total price for both of us for the round trip was 150,000 dong (or $7.50). We arrived at the tunnels at around 9:30.

The Cu Chi Tunnels (admission 20,000 dong or $1.00) are a network of layered tunnels used by the people of this one Vietnamese community during the Vietnam War. The first level is one meter beneath the ground, the second is six, and the third is ten. You can only visit select portions of tunnels in the first layer, which have been widened for tourists. The original tunnel dimensions were about .8 meters high (2.6 feet) and .5 meters wide (1.6 feet). This is small even for us Asians and makes me think that even if the GIs could find the tunnels, they wouldn’t be able to enter them anyway (though obviously other means of attack would be plausible). This web of tunnels included kitchens, dining and meeting areas, medical clinics, workshops for building weapons, residential areas, and bomb shelters (in the deepest layer).

There were several attempts made by American forces to find the holes to these tunnels, but between the booby traps and the Vietnamese figuring out ways to get around these tactics, there was no hope of success. For example, the U.S. troops tried to use dogs to sniff out the Vietnamese through their ventilation and entry/exit holes, but the Vietnamese caught on quick and took the clothing off of dead American soldiers and put them near the vents, so the dogs would take a sniff and keep on moving.

This is apparently a jack fruit tree, which I have never heard of.

Booby trap covered by a camouflaged door. The idea is not only that it traps the poor guy who steps on it, but also his leaves his army pals vulnerable to ambush when they come to help him.

This is the size of a manhole to enter and exit the tunnels. For your reference, Candide is not large.

Ventilation

One of many types of booby traps

Again, Candide is not large, and this is a widened tunnel for tourists.

Underground kitchen

Tapioca, which itself is relatively flavorless, and a sugary peanuty powder to dip it in

Ventilation from the kitchen, which would be located about 50 meters away, so that you couldn't tell where the kitchen was. They also cooked in the morning, when the smoke would blend in with the fog.

We fell asleep on the bus ride back to Hien’s and had a quick lunch before heading home to rest. We were pretty tired, so we cancelled our plans for the Mekong Delta, and I think it is better at this point to let my leg rest every now and then so it can grow some proper skin.

Banh cuon - pork wrapped in rice "paper" that you top off with a tangy sauce (to which you can add chili as per usual)

We told Ha we would be in the city tonight, so we decided to meet up at 6:30 for dinner and then watch the fireworks for Reunification Day (today, April 30).

Hien took a nap from 3:00 to 5:30, during which time I sent some requests to CouchSurfers in Hanoi, who thus far have been completely unresponsive with the exception of one person. I also contacted my host and another CouchSurfer in Da Nang, as I will be arriving there tomorrow night. I also caught up on Modern Family and How I Met Your Mother. (I know, I know, an absolutely riveting afternoon. When you’re travelling for a long time though, you need to relax every now and then or you’ll exhaust yourself before the trip is even over.)

After this exciting afternoon, we left for District 2, where Hien had never been before, on account of its being a more suburban area of the city where foreigners and Vietnamese returning from abroad live in grand villas. Ha had intended to have me try a sort of pancake for dinner, but the shop was closed on account of the holiday, so we stopped by a hawker stand for com tam instead, which is rice (or rice noodles, depending on your preference) with a slab of pork, some cucumbers, and a very sweet oily sauce (to which you may add chili) that you can pour over everything.

You'll find that people rarely eat fruit on its own in the region. It's almost always dipped into some sort of powder mixture, whether it's peppery or salty or sour or spicy, or a combination of these flavors.

Once we finished dinner, we stayed at Ha’s house for a while (where there are a great variety of pets) and then headed over to the bridge to watch the fireworks. We took a taxi, but it could only take us so far before it met a road block a bit of a distance from the bridge itself. Motorbikes could get through, although I wouldn’t necessarily recommend taking a motorbike due to the sheer number of them zooming in and out. You might not wind up with good visibility. Walking to the bridge was very similar to walking to Independence Hall in Philadelphia to watch the Fourth of July fireworks in that you rarely see so many people on foot headed in the same direction.

After the show, we waited for several minutes for the horde of motorbikes to whoosh past us (but finally just crossed the street) and stopped at a milk tea place (8,000 dong, or 40 cents). There was no way we could get a taxi until we had walked a decent distance from the bridge, but at any city event like this, that’s to be expected. Hien picked up her motorbike from Ha’s place, and we headed home.

As a general note, I’ve noticed that I’ve become accustomed to using Globish, which is to say English at its most basic level. If a word has no meaningful purpose in a sentence (i.e. it is only there for grammatical reasons), you eliminate it. You do not conjugate verbs, either for subject-verb agreement or for tense. So for example, instead of saying, “I went to the market yesterday and bought three pairs of pants,” you say, “Yesterday I go to market. I buy three pants.” You also need to listen to how the locals speak English and use their vocabulary. For example, “America” is much more recognizable than “the States,” and “toilet” is more understandable than “bathroom” or “restroom.” It also helps somewhat to have an American accent, which I believe to be a result of the popularity of American films and TV shows. (If you’re from New Zealand, you might as well be speaking Swahili. Sorry kiwis.)

You’ll also notice throughout the region that there are motorbikes with megaphones that play a recorded message or song. In every city, the locals will recognize what the purpose of the motorbike is by hearing the sound. A certain song will mean it’s an ice cream moto; another will mean it’s collecting recyclable materials. This is true in China as well, where the slogans are from decades ago and use vocabulary nobody uses today except for in these messages.

Also, they have socks in Viet Nam that separate the big toe from the rest of the toes, specifically so that you can wear socks with sandals. Somewhere, Coco Chanel is having a heart attack. Unless she died already. In which case, replace Coco with any given gay fashion icon (which is to say any fashion icon).

Random cultural things

2011-04-30T00:21:00.000+02:00

Last night we had planned to go to the Cu Chi Tunnels this morning, but Hien forgot that she had English class, which is just as well, since if you tell me I can sleep more in the morning, my brain shuts back down immediately before any other options are considered.

She got back from class around noon (at which point I had been up for a while but had not yet brushed my teeth because no one can smell your breath over the internet), and we decided to head for the tunnels after doing laundry. You don’t realize how much forearm strength modern people have lost until you do laundry by hand. (It is also possible that I just have no upper body strength whatsoever. Actually, that’s definitely true. So the other thing may or may not be true.)

Anyway, as I was hanging up my clothes to dry, it sprinkled for just a tiny bit. I told Hien, and she said we’d better not go then, because it was likely to shower in the afternoon as it often does in Saigon. (Sure enough, it did.) It wouldn’t be safe to go by motorbike in the rain due to both lack of visibility and road conditions, so we decided against it.

Instead, we started off for another day in the city. We went to lunch at the same place as yesterday, where I got curry chicken and the veggie of the day was eggplant.

Afterward, we headed over to the local market because I needed new flip flops. (My non-heavy duty ones are so thin that I can feel the texture of the ground.) Hien parked her motorbike with these two old guys who were playing a blind version of Chinese chess.

The pieces are flipped over and covered by soda bottle caps.

Other than the king, who is visible, the initial setup is completely random, so you don’t know which piece is where. The first movement of any given piece is based on its initial location, so if it starts where the rook would be, you move it as if it were a rook. Once you move it, you uncover it, and once it’s uncovered, the piece moves according to its actual identity. So if it turns out that it’s a knight, you move it as a knight from that point forward. Any piece that is taken by your opponent is revealed. Unlike with regular Chinese chess, the river is not a boundary that some pieces can’t cross, which makes sense, because your bishop might be revealed across the river, where, according to traditional rules, it’s not even allowed to be.

After some brief observation of their game, we moved on to get my flip-flops. I got a pair with non-slip soles for 35,000 dong (or $1.75), and having worn them all day, I can say I like them a lot.

After this, it started showering, so we took refuge in a small clothing store, where I tried on a bunch of shirts, but none of them were particularly flattering, so I didn’t buy any, which seemed to annoy the shopkeeper. Tough nuts.

I believe this is derriere-enhancing underwear.

When the rain slowed to drizzle, we were heading back to the motorbike when Hien saw a dessert cart and said I should try it and stopped. I thought it looked an awful lot like flan and was surprised to discover that it was, indeed, flan. (In my mind, flan is associated with Spain and Latin America, so I wouldn't expect to see it in Southeast Asia except perhaps the Philippines.) Hien thought it was French, so that explains how it got here.

I don't think they'd ever serve it like this in Spain, but it's good.

Our next destination was to meet up with Hien’s friend who is leaving on May 1, but we passed by Vinh Nghiem Pagoda, so we stopped by for a look. The temple is Chinese in style, and all the signs and carvings were in Chinese as well. It was apparently prayer time, since there were a lot of monks and people with what I suppose is the Buddhist equivalent of a hymnal.

Evidently the gods are big fans of Choco-Pie.

After this quick detour, we went to New Pearl restaurant to meet Hien’s Vietnamese-German friend. His family fled as refugees to Germany when he was one. For some reason I didn’t quite catch, his parents moved to California to stay with relatives, leaving him and his sister in the care of a sort of surrogate mother in Germany. Since then, he’s only seen them for one ten-day trip to the States. He is now 32 (although he looks 24). He said he has two sisters in the States, so my assumption is that they were born after this separation, though I don't know for sure. As a result of his family situation, he doesn’t speak any Vietnamese (his English carries a slight German accent), and until three or four years ago, foreign Vietnamese who visited Viet Nam were often not allowed to leave, so it wasn’t until now that he decided to visit. His six-month trip was originally slated to include China and Korea, but the way things worked out he ended up staying here.

I have no transition to these photos.

After he had to go, we met up again with Ha to go to a tailor so I could have an ao dai (traditional Vietnamese dress) made. I realize I will only be able to wear this on the rarest of occasions, but I really do think they look beautiful, and it’s not like I’ve got any growing left to do, so I think it’s all right for a one-time expense. We went and got the fabric, where I was charged an extra 50,000 dong compared to the normal price essentially for being a foreigner, but that’s to be expected. (The total was 250,000 dong or $12.50.) The tailor’s labor on a rush order was 370,000 dong (or $19.50). It will be finished on May 3, and then Ha will mail it to her cousin in Hanoi, where I will be until the 10th or 11th. I failed to take a photo of either the fabric shop or the tailor's. Oops. If it makes you feel better, I also forgot to take a picture of my burn wound after I cleaned it to track its progress. No, I don't know how that's supposed to make you feel better.

Our last stop for the day was dinner. We had a typical southern Vietnamese meal (pho is better known in the north) called ho tieu, which actually comes from China, though I’ve never seen this type of noodle, so it must be found in the south or something.

Saigon at night on a motorbike

We headed home after that, because we’re going to try to hit the Cu Chi Tunnels tomorrow morning and then head for an overnight trip to the Mekong Delta. We come back in the morning the day after tomorrow, and then I go to the airport in the afternoon, so I'm not sure when my next blog post will be up. Possibly tomorrow, possibly May 1 or 2. But regardless, I need to get up at 6:00. Gross.

Also, as an addendum to the post involving the creepy host from Phnom Penh: When I went into the room to sleep (on a mattress on the floor), he repeatedly said I could join him on the bed if I wanted, despite my repeated insistence that I was fine where I was, citing his feeling bad about me sleeping on the floor as the reason. I think you can chalk a certain amount of touchy-feeliness up to being southern European, but dude. Seriously. A random midnight massage after you've already gone to bed and tedious invitations into said bed? I could understand a simple, "I don't mind if you want to share the bed, but it's totally up to you," but it's really not the type of offer you insist upon. So yeah... I don't think so, buddy. This is not just me being all American about my personal space. This is definitely you being a weirdo.

Downtown Saigon

2011-04-29T02:42:00.000+02:00

Woke up around 10:00 and waited for my host to get back from her English class, after which we headed to lunch at a nearby hawker stand. Hawker stand is evidently the phrase I should be using instead of “small restaurant.” They are usually not completely enclosed (no fourth wall) and thus not air conditioned, typically furnished with really cheap foldable tables and plastic stools or chairs. This particular hawker stand sells a standard work lunch, which is to say steamed rice with two sides. I had an egg and pork with carrots and radish. The other side was some kind of veggie. (Ok, I don’t know my vegetables. They all look the same to me. Green with leaves. The only one I know is cilantro, because it makes me want to die inside.)

One of her friends happened to be there as well, so he decided to join us on our trip downtown. He also happens to be a tour guide, so this was pretty lucky.

Our first stop was the main post office, which sounds weird, but the building is one of the first two built by the French, and the architecture shows it.

We were also meeting Ha here, whom I was introduced to over facebook by Abbey from KL. While we were waiting for her, I went to use the bathroom. I’m used to bringing my own tissues for use as toilet paper, because very few bathrooms in China are stocked with it, but I’m not used to paying to use the restroom, which is fairly common down here. So I left my bag at the post office with my host and her friend and only brought tissues. When I came out of the restroom, this old lady said something to me on the way out, and I realized this was a pay restroom. I told her I didn’t have any money with me, only tissues, and flipped out my pockets to illustrate that point. She gave me this look like I was the devil incarnate for having come to the restroom without any intention of paying. Seriously lady, 2,000 dong is 10 cents, and that doesn’t go far even in Southeast Asia. In fact, the only thing it could get you is a trip to the bathroom. Usually one with toilet paper. Unlike yours. So after giving me the evil eye for an unnecessarily long and completely ineffective amount of time (as if I would be like, “Oh, I forgot, I happen to have 2,000 dong in my mouth,” or “Allow me to perform for you instead 2,000 dongs’ worth of interpretive dance,”), she goes, “Ok, you come back.” This was the obvious solution to begin with; I don’t know what her evil staring was supposed to accomplish other than make me look at her like, “What exactly do you want from me?”

Anyway, Ha arrived when I returned, so we crossed the street to take a few quick photos at Saigon’s Notre Dame Cathedral, the other of the two initial French buildings constructed here.

From here, it was a five minute walk to Reunification or Independence Palace, where my host’s friend’s tour guide skills kicked in. Admission is 30,000 dong (or $1.50 USD). In case the name isn’t self-explanatory enough, this is where the Vietnamese were liberated and the north and south reunified.

Well I guess someone's in a hurry.

A symbolic Vietnamese flower

President's office

The most interesting part of the building is the basement, which doubles as a bomb shelter. There are radio rooms and war planning rooms and a secret staircase to the president’s office.

The next sight I wanted see was the War Remnants Museum. I was intrigued because I thought it would be really interesting to see the contrast between the way the Vietnam War is presented here and in the U.S. My personal experience is that we didn’t really cover it in school at all, although I realize that’s not necessarily true everywhere. We certainly did not see any horrific images of the war as we did with the Nazis in WWII.

This museum is small, but the photography it showcases is poignant. You see images of protests held all over the world against U.S. aggression in Viet Nam (as it is known here, if not elsewhere) images taken during the war itself, and others of victims of Agent Orange decades later. The last of these churned your conscience the most; children today are still born with severe physical and mental disabilities, a price very few in the U.S. have had to pay. The vast majority of those affected are civilians who happen to live in affected areas (and even if it were the military, their future generations have nothing to do with anything). I think any American visiting Saigon has some obligation to see this museum, because rarely are Americans faced with images of the brutalities committed by our own country; we simply gasp in horror at the acts committed by others, forgetting that our defense of liberty and equality tends to stop at our borders (and for some people, within them).

I’m not going to force graphic images upon you, but just know that American GIs of the Viet Nam war as a whole do not fare too much better in my book than any other perpetrators of massacres.

After the museum, we went to Ha’s university for dinner, since it would be cheaper to eat there than elsewhere. The traffic was insane, and it doesn’t make a difference if you’re on a moto or in a car. You’re not going to get through. You can also feel that you’re breathing in dust, and it makes the back of your throat taste like metal, which I’m sure is really good for you. Perhaps it provides you with your daily dose of zinc.

I had a noodle soup with chicken, to which I added a squeeze of lime and some chili. I wasn’t really in love with the lime + salt/pepper mixture in Cambodia, but I do like the touch of sour in the soups here. I do wish that they didn’t mix in the cilantro with the scallions, because then I can’t have either.

This is Hien's. That's why there's cilantro in it.

Having been a French colony, their floor numbering starts after the ground floor.

We intended to go to Ben Thanh Market, but it turns out it closes at seven, so we just walked through a small street market nearby. Hien (my host) informed me that everything here is generally intended for tourists and thus overpriced.

A cyclo

Closed market

Paintins on coconut something - bark, probably

Our last stop for the day (so we thought) was a bar that has live music every night (except Wednesdays for some reason) from 9:30 until late. We got there about an hour and a half before the music would start, so we just chatted and I flipped through her photocopy version of Lonely Planet Vietnam. What that means is the entire book is copied to replicate the original, including glossy pages in the front for the country map, highlights, and photos. You wouldn’t know from the cover or those first few pages that the book is bootleg, but the quality of the regular text is obviously a photocopy.

While here, I undid the top strip of tape on the gauze on my leg, and it looked worse than in the morning, so we decided to go to a clinic. I wanted a place that spoke English so I could ask questions and things, and there was a place not too far away that’s open 24 hours.

The fee for a consult was very high ($89), but thanks to Obama, I have health insurance, and the receptionist said that with my particular policy, I would definitely be able to get reimbursed for the consultation fee and medication.

They cleaned my wound with saline (and vigorously shook their heads when I mentioned iodine, so I guess the nurse in Cambodia did not receive the best in medical education) and put a topical disinfectant on it, then dressed the wound with non-stick gauze and another bandage over it that is cottony and sticks all the way around. They were not skimpy with the gauze they used to clean it or the cream, and in general this place was a lot more sterile (i.e. everything individually packaged), well-equipped with more advanced supplies, and, well in short, what you’d expect to see in the West.

They also had a tropical aquarium.

I was also able to talk to the nurse in English, which was comforting, so she could tell me that the yellow color of the fluid in my wound is normal and is not pus, and that yes, it’s slightly infected, but there’s no pus or blood, so it’s fine. She also instructed me on how to wash it and how often (asking me along the way to make sure I had the necessary supplies), and in general, it puts you much more at ease to get medical advice in your native language. (Incidentally, saline or “salt water” is what I kept asking the medical shop in Cambodia for, but they insisted on giving me H2O2.)

The nurse also had notably better English than the doctor, who came in for about 30 seconds, presumably to fulfill his duty of having seen the patient. Also, when I asked if I should wash the wound with soap and water when I’m at home, he said, no soap. Then the nurse was like, “Well she can’t use tap water either. We should really give her a bottle of saline.” And the doctor was like, “Yeah, I guess. Whatevs.” So yeah. The nurse was much more experienced than the doctor. I liked her.

Then we finally came home, where the sewing shop is still running like mad, so I guess they work 24/7 and just switch shifts. Or the set it on a really complex pattern and just let it run all night.

Other random notes:

- There are no McDonald’s in Thailand.

- The days are pretty early here, too. People eat dinner at around five.

- Also this:

In Saigon

2011-04-27T23:23:00.000+02:00

Today was mostly being on the bus, so not that much to cover.

So this morning, I went to the clinic to get my wound disinfected, which involved yellow iodine, something that was clear (but I don’t think was alcohol), and some sort of topical disinfectant that looks like Vaseline. The nurse told me not to use H2O2 because it actually makes the wound worse. Ok then.

After that, Dany had class, so I hung out in the computer lab again. My friend found a website that said both iodine and H2O2 are not to be used with the skin is broken because they kill newly grown healthy cells in addition to the bacteria. So soap and water it is. Then we went and had lunch at this Chinese restaurant where the noodles were exceptionally bland and there was no pepper on the table, but the coconut milk tea was good.

Then we went to get my bus ticket ($10, Sapaco tours, includes border service, meaning you don't really have to do anything at the border other than wait for your name to be called). The earliest one they had was at 2:00 and it was only 12:00, but they had wifi, so it’s easy enough to spend two hours doing nothing on the internet.

I pretty much passed out once I got on the bus until we got to the border. I started chatting with the guy who was sitting next to me, who had really good English but told me he’s from Ho Chi Minh City. He informed me that my host’s place was really far from the bus terminal, but that I could get off earlier at a place much closer. He also said they use French in the north, but English in the south. Good to know. Also, young people say Ho Chi Minh City, and old people say Saigon.

There was a little confusion over whether or not my host would be there to pick me up, so I asked a security guard in front of the building where I got off how to get to her address. He had his friend take me on his motorbike. Before we left, I asked, “How much?” with the hand gesture for money (that is, thumb and fingers rubbing together), and he waved his hands and shook his head in a way that I took to mean, “Don’t worry about it.” I thought, “Man, Vietnamese people are so nice,” because the guy on the bus had been really kind in making sure I was getting off at the right place with the people in charge.

The driver couldn’t really find the address, so he had to ask around a lot and went in a couple circles, even though I pointed out to him at one point that the addresses were really close and it was probably down this one alley. (It was.) When I got off the motorbike, he kept talking to me in Vietnamese, which I clearly was not understanding, until he pulled out his wallet and I realized he wanted me to pay him. So maybe I misunderstood and the guard meant that he didn’t understand, but I don’t really think so, because he spoke a little English, and anyone who speaks a little English in this region knows what “How much?” means.

I hadn’t withdrawn any money though, so I literally could not pay him. So I started asking around for my host’s place, and was directed to about three different doors, until she turned up on motorbike. It turns out she had indeed gone to pick me up, so we had just missed each other. Because I had used my bus seat neighbor’s phone to contact her, he had been texting her to see if she had picked me up yet, which is really nice. She said his Vietnamese sounded like he had been abroad for a long time, which explains his English.

So this guy basically spent ten minutes just sitting there, waiting for a payment, which I had to ask my host to pay for me until I could get Vietnamese currency. She told him off for being a bad guy, because it was such a short distance and all.

After I took a shower, which here means scooping water out of a tub and dumping it over yourself, we went for some food, which was, naturally, pho. I told them no cilantro, so I just had chicken, lemongrass, and some chili in mine. It wasn’t the best (just at a hawker stand), but it was all right.

This is next to my host's house. It's a bunch of sewing machines working on a bunch of shirts in unison.

Got a SIM card for 45,000 dong with 145 credit on it, which my host says will probably last half a month if I don’t call that much and just text, which is fine by me.

Facebook is blocked in Viet Nam, too. Interesting. It hasn’t been in the other countries.

Quick things I forgot to mention about Phnom Penh:

- The owner of Tiger beer lives in a huge house there (but at least you know where his money comes from).

- Hun Sen’s house is enormous, and he had a gym across the street closed because you can see into his house from it.

- There is a monument to the guy who created the Khmer dictionary and what I understand to be their grammar system.

- There are always cultural disputes between Cambodia and Thailand over who stole whose culture because they’re so similar. There are also current border disputes going on that started right after I crossed said border. So that’s lucky.

- Dany is very sheltered, which I think you probably gathered from the time she comes home every night, but she also believes that the city is much more dangerous than I could tell, but it might be the case that she’s right and I’m wrong on that account.

- You park on the sidewalk.

- In the countryside, people get murdered for their motorbikes.

- People who work at the UN organizations or NGOs here are more often than not simply making a career move. They’re getting field experience for x number of years so they can be promoted when they get back. Which is why they’re all in a bubble in BKK 1. From the Cambodian viewpoint, they were welcomed with open arms, seen as rich people from rich countries who would bring wealth and development and contribute to society, and when that didn’t quite pan out, they’ve just sort of ceased to have an opinion of them.

- Days end early in Phnom Penh. Dinner is around 5 or 6 and people go to bed around 9.

Some pictures you don't want to see.

2011-04-27T00:47:00.000+02:00

So when I got up this morning (read: 12:30), I noticed that the precarious skin over my burn wound had been broken in my sleep and now you could see pink skin under the burnt brown skin. Gross.

I didn't do anything (other than tool around the internet) until around 4:30, when I met up with Dany, a friend of Abbey's who lives here. She didn't know where the street was, and she was driving a car (as opposed to a motorbike), so it took her a while to get there. While I was waiting, I bought some gauze, medical tape, and H2O2 to clean the wound.

When she picked me up just before 5:30, I told her I had to pick up my passport. The travel agency had told me to come "around 5:00/5:30." What they really meant was, "We close at 5:30." So when we got there at 5:42, the metal gate was down and locked. So I guess the midnight bus is out of the question then.

We drove to a market where Dany bought me a ring of jasmine flowers (the thing you see everywhere), but most of the shops here were closing down as well. So then we drove around for a bit. Dany showed me the building where most people rent space for weddings and told me that in Cambodian superstition, Tuesday is an unlucky day to start a business or get married. Today was a Tuesday, so we didn't see anyone in their wedding garb, which is too bad.

This isn't Dany's car, but they do represent status, so Lexi are designed to let everyone know you're driving a Lexus.

Older people exercising by doing a traditional Khmer dance

She also showed me this tiny bridge that some people now refer to as the "killing bridge," not by any affiliation to Pol Pot or the Khmer Rouge, but because during the Water Festival in November, someone on the bridge kept screaming that the bridge would collapse. As a result, there was a massive stampede and 500 people died.

We also talked about the government here. You can't really openly protest it, or you will disappear. But you can quietly resist through education and discussion; that's really the extent of political activity here.

Another topic was the education system, specifically in higher education. This is a lot like China, in that if your parents are important/powerful people, you will get a free pass, and professors will give you special treatment, like letting you reschedule your exams or giving you a few extra points here and there so that you'll pass. Even if you're not powerful, it matters if you know the professor, and students tend to flaunt it if they do.

We went to this Khmer restaurant furnished with tiny tables and chairs (which was also how the street stalls were furnished outside, so it's not unique to this place) and ordered baked eggs and some papaya salad.

On the left are the numbers 1-10 in Khmer.

You can get your egg at various levels of cooked. I like mine runny.

After that, Dany had class, so I went to the computer lab and while surfing the internet, contacted another CouchSurfer to see if I could stay at his place tonight on account of me being uncomfortable at my current place. He said yes, so that was good. The lab was actually closed, but they let me use it anyway. It might have been simply because they didn't want to yell at a foreigner. I'm not really sure.

After class, Dany took me to her favorite restaurant, where she's been a patron since 10th grade. They have sandwiches with fish and pork in them in a savory sauce, which are served with some sort of vegetarian meat (I assume, by the color and the taste). After the sandwiches, we had dessert. It's got the jelly strings like in cendol, but then it has these other jelly things in it as well, and it's all in coconut milk and shaved ice. (Though that quickly turns into cold water.)

Dany took me back to my host's to get my backpack and invited me to her house instead. She was very insistent, so I took her up on the offer, and the new host I had contacted didn't mind (which makes sense, since he wasn't expecting me anyway). We waited for him to get back from being out, which he had told me would be around ten. After he got back, I went up and packed my stuff and came down, which took about five minutes, since I had only been there a day. Dany's parents had been calling her every so often since 9, since that's when she usually gets home. When we got back to her house at 10:23, Dany said it's the latest she's ever come home, which I found to be incredible.

Upon taking the gauze off my wound, I found out that the previously clear liquid oozing from it was now yellow, and it was a little hot. Verdict: infected. So I washed it with the H2O2, which foams on contact where the skin is broken. Also, it hurts, but not that bad. My cousin told me that if I had use alcohol on broken skin, it is horrifically painful. So I avoided that. So I will probably go to the hospital tomorrow morning to get it properly disinfected and taken care of. Joy. Everyone loves hospitals.

What is wrong with you people?

2011-04-26T01:03:00.003+02:00

This morning I got up a little before 8:00 to drop my passport off at the travel agency so a) they could start processing it today, and b) I would make it back in time for the transport to the killing fields at 9:00. I had to insist pretty hard with the moto driver, who was trying to convince me that the destination I wanted was by the river (it is not) and thus very far. I just kept saying, "I walked there yesterday. I know it's not far. I know how far you can get on one liter of gas." (Seriously, you can go really far.) So finally he settled for $1 going there and back, which is a fair price, since most rides within the city should be 2,000 riel.

When I got to the travel agency, I told them a guy had told me on Sunday that the rate was $31 for a 15-day visa. They looked a bit puzzled, but realized I had apparently spoken with their boss, who doesn't do the day-to-day work and checked the rate for March, not April. They couldn't show me a printout of the rates for April like their boss had for March, so I was a little skeptical when they said the new rate was $37, but on the other hand, this was still cheaper than any other rate I had heard when asking around yesterday. I dropped off my passport and apparently did not need to bring passport photos or sign anything.

The moto driver took me back to the guesthouse with plenty of time left before the 9:00 departure for the killing fields. (I tipped him 500 riel because I felt like it.) I went back to my room for a bit before a guesthouse employee knocked on my door to tell me the tour was leaving soon. By that he meant I should order something for breakfast from the restaurant before I leave. I was hungry anyway, and the menu wasn't expensive, so I got a mushroom omelette with bread. As soon as the dish was out, they told me the tour was leaving in five minutes. (I think it was actually that the driver was late, so they used breakfast as a diversion, but then he showed up.) So I wolfed down the omelette and packed the bread (which was a baguette) in a bag for the road.

The killing fields were further away than I thought, and the road to it is extremely dusty. I had wrapped my scarf around my leg and tied it, which looked like I was making a ridiculous fashion statement, but better that than have a dust-filled burn wound.

The other people on the tour with us were a couple from Ireland who are travelling for seven months around South America, Oceania, and Southeast Asia; an Indian-Englishman who is on a two-week holiday, and an extremely quiet Japanese girl.

After a very long tuk-tuk ride, we finally arrived at the Cheong Ek killing fields (admission $2). This is where the Khmer Rouge committed mass slaughter of their prisoners, including those transported over from S-21. It is definitely beneficial to go to the Tuol Sleng museum before you go to the killing fields, because you understand the context and have a much greater appreciation for the visit.

This memorial stupa is filled with bones (below).

Mass graves

There'a a lot of fabric everywhere.

Bones

FYI, hand grenades are not allowed.

Some little kid on the other side of a wire fence that ran along the path we were on saw the bread I had and asked, "Can I have one?" (The baguette was cut into maybe four pieces.) I asked, "You want the bread?" And he nodded. So I just gave him the whole bag through a gap between the bottom of the fence and the dirt road beneath, and he said in the sweetest voice, "Thank you," and trotted off with it. It was adorable, and also a little sad.

We headed back to the guesthouse where we agreed to have lunch together after I checked out. It was actually a steal, because I checked in at 4:30AM yesterday and checked out at noon today, so I really slept there for two nights, but I only paid for one.

The Irish couple wanted to head over to the riverside, so we got a tuk-tuk to take us. The initial asking price was $2 for everyone, although it should probably be closer to $1 or 5,000 riel. The Irish couple thought it was a good rate though, and I didn't have the heart to haggle and have them realize they've been overpaying for transportation this entire trip through Cambodia.

All the restaurants along the river are going to be a bit more expensive than ones you'd find elsewhere, meaning they're in the $4-5 range as opposed to $1-2 at food stalls or $2-3 at Khmer-patroned restaurants. We went to Cantina, which is a Mexican restaurant, and I had an unremarkable burrito.

After some very interesting lunch conversation where I found out that the university application process in Ireland is the same as China's, I headed over to the Royal Palace, having changed into my longer shorts before I checked out. The entrance fee is $6.25/person, and ladies cannot use scarves to cover up their shoulders; they will make you buy a T-shirt.

The Royal Palace is just a palace. The one in Bangkok is much more impressive, and this one isn't even really old, so if you're going to see the one in Bangkok, you can probably just skip this one.

This is the Silver Pagoda. The floor consists of silver tiles, but the vast majority of the floor area is covered in rugs. The little silver you can see is extremely tarnished, although if you sit near the edge of a rug in the middle of the room in front of the bedazzled (ok, diamond-encrusted) Buddha statue, you can lift it up and see the silver.

After leaving here, I got a moto, where again, I had to insist pretty hard on a price of 2,000 riel (especially since the Royal Palace is by the riverside, where there are more tourists so they tend to charge a higher price), but one driver accepted, so I went back to the guesthouse to use the internet while I waited for my host to pick me up after work.

My host came on a motorbike and we headed over to his place and had a beer before heading out for dinner. We went to a place along the Vietnamese Friendship park (which is just south of the Royal Palace), and passed Independence Monument (which is taller than I expected, but I don't have a picture of it since we were driving by) and Hun Sen's house, which is enormous, along the way. We had Khmer curry, but it wasn't as good as the one at Khmer Kitchen in Siem Reap.

Afterward, we took a walk around the park (which is much more concrete than it is green) and witnessed a group of people doing aerobic exercises, a group of teenage guys practicing dance moves from a Korean pop video, and the audience departing from a transvestite farcical comedy that had just wrapped up. So yeah, I guess that's what goes on in Phnom Penh for low-key entertainment.

We decided to rent a movie at a place that sells a ton of bootleg stuff, including movies that are still in theaters, which is fairly common throughout Asia. My host had been giving me weird vibes earlier, like through unnecessary physical contact (but he's Spanish, so it's hard to tell exactly what is normal and what is inappropriate) so I was steering clear of anything that might be remotely romantic, which resulted in picking out Role Models, which is one of those stupid comedies that is possibly hilarious even though it's dumb. (I haven't seen it, so I don't know if it's successful or not.)

We stopped by a gas station quick mart for some ice cream, where there is also lawn furniture indoors, which allows Khmers to buy beer at much cheaper prices than they would find in a bar and still be in an air-conditioned environment.

After we got back, it turned out that the disc was problematic and wouldn't play, which is just as well, because I was really tired, so I just hopped in the shower before blogging before crashing.

All was well until just now. My host had already gone to bed. Then he came out to use the restroom maybe a half hour or so later, and then came over to give me a shoulder/perhaps was trying to move south but I removed his hand, which he put back on my shoulder/head/hair? massage, only by massage I mean not at all massagey, just his hands were on my shoulders and sort of moving around. Dude, what are you doing? CouchSurfing is great, and you can meet wonderful people, but it's not a hook-up service. Let's not pretend I know you well enough for you to be giving me a massage I didn't ask for. Maybe it's a Spanish/Italian thing where you just keep putting on the moves until you are clearly rejected (the Italian guy from Penang was definitely trying to bed my host, also pulling the unsolicited massage move), but I finally just told him it was really distracting and I couldn't concentrate on my writing, which was true, considering the inappropriateness and discomfort. So he said he would let me concentrate then and went back to bed.

MEN OF THE WORLD: WHY ARE YOU SO CREEPY?

My host said he would check out my blog. So host, if you are reading this, you should know that those moves probably only work in Spain and Italy, if ever. Everywhere else, it just makes people extremely uncomfortable, because well, why the hell are you touching me? I literally just met you. If I were into it, you would have picked up on that somehow. I certainly would not have ignored you and kept writing. Also I mentioned I have a boyfriend several times. Why do people always neglect that? It's like I'm talking to myself whenever the word boyfriend is involved. Do single men not hear that word? Is it involuntary selective hearing? Is the concept unclear? I know fidelity is not the strongest value for many Spaniards and Italians, but I'm neither Spanish nor Italian, so by no stereotype am I a cheating whore, regardless of your own personal tendencies. (Not that this applies to all Spaniards/Italians, hence the use of "stereotype," and if anything, it's the men, not the women, who are whores.) Plus, a host coming on to a guest is so inappropriate. It is the opposite of hospitable, regardless of how welcoming you are or what you otherwise provide for your guest, because for the rest of the time that they're there, they're just going to be uncomfortable and guarded against you.

There are CouchSurfers like Mikel, Tian, and Art who are male and presumably single (I'm basing the assumption on the fact that no girlfriend was ever mentioned) who are totally cool though. (Unless it turns out they're all actually gay and I just didn't notice, making this moot.) I guess I should just avoid the southern Europeans. Because fuck, your behavior is not ok elsewhere in the world. Not only is it not acceptable social practice, I have a hard time believing that it even gets you laid anyway. If a girl is into you, she'll be into you whether you give her a massage or not. In fact, she might ask for one. Don't just go around giving unwanted massages. It's super creepy.

On a brighter note, the Irish couple have just left for Saigon tonight, which is where I'm headed tomorrow, so perhaps we'll have the opportunity to meet up again. (Also, I probably won't be able to blog tomorrow night.)

And then some people take it away.

2011-04-25T04:37:00.000+02:00

My bus was scheduled to arrive in Phnom Penh at 6:00AM, but we actually arrived at 4:30. I wasn't sure where the bus stop was located in relation to the city or where to stay, but a fellow traveller let me flip through his Lonely Planet. The price for a ride from the bus station was a bit higher, because at that hour, there's not a lot of competition among the moto/tuk-tuk drivers. I paid a tuk-tuk driver $2 to take me to Spring guesthouse, but they turned out not to have any $6 or $7 rooms available, so after consulting my e-book, I set off on foot for Sunday guesthouse, which was nearby.

Luckily, Phnom Penh is fairly easy to navigate since the streets are in a grid system and numbered, so it didn't take me very long to find. They had one $7 room left, so I took it and crashed until about noon. When I got up, I wanted to see if I could switch to another room, since the one I was staying in was right by the entrance and the road, so I was worried it would be loud at night. (I had asked about this when I checked in, and they said there might be one available around 8:00 or 10:00.) They took me to a room on the second floor, but after staying there for about five minutes, it became obvious that there was a temperature difference between the first and second floors, so I came back to my original room.

My primary reason for stopping here is to get my visa for Viet Nam, so after a shower, I set out to look for a few travel agencies to compare their rates, as I was told they were ubiquitous and could do it for cheaper than the embassy here. I actually walked quite a distance before I came across one. It was closed, but two men just came out of it, so I asked them what the price was, and they let me in to check the rate. Most travel agencies are closed on Sunday, because the embassies and airlines have off, so they have no business to conduct. The rate they gave me for a 15-day visa for next-day service was $31. From what I had seen online, I knew this to be a pretty good rate. I have to go back tomorrow morning to drop off my passport and fill out the forms.

I walked the rest of the way to Friends restaurant, which I had wanted to check out since it supposedly helps orphans or something, but it turned out to be closed for a while and will reopen in early May. On the way, I stopped by several travel agencies, but the neighborhood got distinctively more foreign (read: whiter), and the quotes I was getting were in the $40-44 range.

These look like the cell phone ad with the signal bars.

Amazing balance

Roadside barber shop, anyone?

I had lunch at Angkor Shadow, which is nearby, and ordered the cay curry with chicken.

I was browsing through my e-book while I was eating, and decided I wanted to see at least three things while I was here: Tuol Sleng, the killing fields, and the Royal Palace. I could only realistically do two of those in one day, so I figured I'd knock one out in the afternoon. I was really close to the Royal Palace, so I set off on foot to go there.

Typical Khmer housing

National museum

One of the Royal Palace buildings

I also passed a shop run by Friends along the way and bought some handcrafted stuff.

After getting to the Royal Palace, I discovered that my shorts were unacceptable to visit it, so I took a moto to Tuol Sleng instead ($1, although it should really be 2,000 riel, but I'm foreign, so it's hard to negotiate effectively). The driver knew where Tuol Sleng was, but had obviously never been inside or taken anyone there, since he initially took me to the opposite corner from the entrance and had to stop and ask a tuk-tuk buddy where the museum was. When I got off of the moto, he kept saying something to me in Khmer that I couldn't understand. Then he said, "I love you." So I laughed and just said, "Thank you," in Khmer. But then he said, "Ok?" So I'm not sure if he was trying to proposition me, but that's got to be the worst attempt ever. Even worse than this one.

So Tuol Sleng used to be a high school, but was turned into a prison when Pol Pot, the head of the Khmer Rouge, came into power. Anyone who was intellectual (and by intellectual, that could mean finished high school or higher education, spoke a foreign language, or simply wore glasses) was tortured and murdered. The classrooms were converted into cells and interrogation rooms. The outdoor gym area was changed into a gallows. Of the perhaps 10,000 documented prisoners who went through Tuol Sleng, only 7 survived, all of whom had skills useful to the regime, like painting or fixing mechanical stuff. In other words, you didn't come here for labor. You came here to die.

Admission to the museum (which is Tuol Sleng itself) is $2, and the second you walk into one of the buildings, it is eerily chilling. Unlike the Holocaust museum, you know you are standing where people were actually murdered and actually died. It's a very different experience.

This place would have been depressing enough as a high school, let alone what it came to be.

An understandable loss of faith

(No god would let this happen...

if he did, fuck your god!!

Only suffering creates memory

but to what benefit?)

This is the same as Chinese. It means peace.

These cells are tiny. Just barely enough room to die in.

Torture tools

They show a film at 10:00AM and 3:00PM, but my visit didn't fall into either of these time slots, so I'm not sure if it's good or not. I assume it's a short documentary about the Khmer Rouge regime.

After Tuol Sleng, I walked back to my guesthouse, being asked by just about every single moto and tuk-tuk driver if I needed a ride. I do like to walk around a bit though, because you get more of a feel for the city than if you're on a motorbike.

After I arrived, I signed up to go to the killing fields tomorrow with a couple others from the guesthouse, and then I got a call from Patrick, a CouchSurfer here, who came to pick me up and we went off to dinner. We went to the Laughing Fatman, formerly known as Oh My Buddha!, which I had actually passed on my way to lunch. We shared two dishes, a Khmer curry and beef luk lak, both of which were pretty good.

Patrick made a good point that if Hun Sen, the current prime minister (who was previously part of the Khmer Rouge, as were many current government officials), were to die, it would not necessarily be difficult for the Khmer Rouge to make another bid for power. The regime is very recent "history," and its members presumably still have their AK-47s. The question is how many people truly defected because of the regime's ridiculous actions and how many defected in name only in order not to be prosecuted. It's a scary thought.

He also said the big NGOs are worthless in that they do research and studies, but they don't do any boots-on-the-ground sort of development. They also tend to live in an exclusively foreign neighborhood called BKK 1 in houses he referred to as "palaces" that charge way more than equivalent housing in other neighborhoods, and there are only Western restaurants and hardly any Khmer around.

After dinner, we met up with his friend Summer at a bar along the riverside. Summer has a very interesting background, having lived in Cairo and the West Bank doing volunteer work in the past, so it was really cool to meet her. The first bar was a bit expensive, so after our first drink, we went to a second bar, which was cheaper.

This is one of the first bars to open after the Vietnamese invaded (to kick out the Khmer Rouge). It is called the Foreign Correspondents Club because it's where all the journalists used to hang out.

The "happy" is not because it tastes good, it's because there's a special ingredient, occasionally used in certain brownies.

As I was getting off the moto though, I burned my leg on the exhaust pipe of the bike park next to Patrick's, even though I barely touched it for a fraction of a second, and now my skin is purpley-grey, wrinkly, and secreting some kind of liquid. You could probably eat my leg right now. I think it's cooked medium-rare. I also asked the waiter for ice to put on it, which apparently you are not supposed to do. But I did. For quite some time. So if my tan from last August from being in the sun for a half hour is still visible, I'm assuming my skin doesn't easily lose pigmentation, so I'm guessing this is going to leave a mark for a good five years. It's pretty sizable and looks like I previously contracted some sort of crazy disease that only exists in Africa. Which means I will actually have to wear pantyhose to interviews. Which is terrible. I hate pantyhose. What annoys me most is that I've been really careful about the exhaust pipe thing, but I never took into account the exhaust pipes of bikes I'm not riding. Poo.

Some people restore your faith in humanity.

2011-04-25T03:25:00.001+02:00

Rahul is the BEST. EVER.

All the places we went to eat were solely Khmer, which meant it was both authentic and cheap (though it also means a wealth of MSG). Other than myself, there was not a single foreigner in sight. You could also tell by the tone of his voice that he was bargaining on my behalf if the owner quoted a price that he knew to be too high. (There is a very distinct sort of "Oy!" used throughout the region in reaction to prices that are too high.)

So first, the sunrise. Rahul was nowhere to be seen at 5:10, so I called him to see where he was. He hadn't left his house yet and asked, "What time is it now?" This might turn a lot of people off, but a) he is new at this (which may partially account for his awesomeness, because old hands are more inclined to consider things like commission), and b) I have overslept so many times in my life I am in absolutely no position to blame someone else for doing the same. After telling him the time, he said, "Oh! I'll be right over."

So we left a bit later than planned for Angkor Wat, but we didn't miss anything, so it didn't make any difference. Initially, the sunrise was a bit pathetic, but it got better after it rose through a larger cloud.

After the sunrise, I was still really sleepy, so I asked Rahul to take me back to the guesthouse to rest until 10:00. Before the nap, we had breakfast at a local food stall. I paid for all of Rahul's meals, but I'd much rather pay for a true, local meal for my awesome driver than have my non-awesome driver tell me he's taking me somewhere good or cheap, knowing that he's really just taking me somewhere where he can earn a little extra on the side. It's not the cost (as in the end it's probably more or less the same), but the pretense that bothers me.

After my quick nap and checking out of the guesthouse (I can leave my bag there), Rahul took me to buy a cell phone, because I had mentioned the day before that mine was having issues (again, even though I had it fixed less than a week ago, which means the problem is not just the metal strip). I got a very basic secondhand one for $18 at a place where Rahul was definitely not getting commission. We then had an early lunch before setting off for more temples. I ordered soup noodles with beef, which was very good.

Then we set off to see Lo Lei. Honestly, there isn't much of it left to see, but it was once a man-made island that could only be reached by boat (as opposed to elephant), so that's something.

Next, we went to Preah Ko, which has something to do with a sacred bull.

A very sophisticated edit

There is a lot of random wood and metal supporting the temples.

The bottom steps of all the temples today had this sort of appearance. I don't recall seeing this at the temples closer to Angkor Wat.

Across the dirt road from Preah Ko is a collection of miniatures of some of the more iconic temples, meant to imitate the way they were in their heyday, as opposed to today's ruins.

This temple is in the disputed territory between Thailand and Cambodia. Rahul says he's climbed the hill before, which is about 600m high.

The star temple of the day was Bakong, which is surrounded by a moat and beautiful gardens. Also cows.

Here, and at many temples in the Angkor Wat area, you'll see groups of landmine explosion survivors playing traditional Khmer music for tips. There are also the standard hordes of women and children selling you water or juice, or bracelets/nail clippers/bamboo flutes/postcards that you'll never use. The price for souvenir nail clippers with images of Angkor Wat on them will go from $5 for six to $4 to $3 to $2 to $1 as you walk away. None of these items should be one for $1 if you are inclined to buy them. Also, there are very, very few tourists around during lunch time and in the early afternoon. They generally go back to their guesthouses to rest.

After Bakong, we went to Lake Barai, which is where a lot of Khmers go on the weekend or over holidays to go swimming and chill out on the beach. During holiday times, it will be very crowded. We got a small grilled chicken to share and two Angkor beers. They dip the chicken (and other meats) in a sauce made from lime juice, salt, and pepper. It's sour, but it's good.

There are a few rows of hammocks and beach mats set up for your relaxation pleasure. Rahul was going to go swimming after we finished eating, but there was a storm brewing, which prevented him from swimming and us from leaving. I really like storms though, so it was actually pretty enjoyable for me.

Monks having fun -weird, right?

Stormy skies

While we were chilling in hammocks on the beach, he asked me how much Mr. Seng was charging me, and I told him $45 for three days. Since he brought up the subject of money, I asked him how much Mr. Seng was in turn giving him for driving me around while he was out doing other stuff. Rahul said $5. So I was not wrong to feel uneasy for the first two days I was in Siem Reap. Mr. Seng essentially dumped the longest day (no one wants to get up for sunrise) and the furthest destinations (Bakong and Barai are pretty far, and in opposite directions from the city) on Rahul and paid him a fraction of what would have been a fair cut. So my intuition about the difference between these two drivers was confirmed.

Once the rain slowed to a sprinkle, we left for my guesthouse, where I helped Rahul set up a facebook account and get his new cell phone (which he bought during my morning nap) set up. I also tipped him $5, just because he's a good person.

Rahul, after thanking me profusely for helping him with facebook, his cell phone, and for the tip, then asked me if I wanted to go anywhere. I said I didn't know of anywhere to go, and he said, "Ok, I'll take you." Again, no concern for time or gas used.

So we went to this semi-carnival that is across from where the Cambodian Olympics were held, which is at least halfway from my guesthouse to Angkor Wat. There are a whole bunch of places set up where you throw darts at balloons, and for each balloon you pop, you can choose a free drink from the selection that they have. Darts are 1000 riel (25 cents US) each. We got five darts and hit three balloons, so we got two beers and a bottle of tea (for my bus ride).

Then we ordered some beef straight off a cow on a spit and sat at another beach mat-type set-up along a creek to eat. Rahul said if it hadn't rained earlier, there wouldn't be any of this beef left to sell by the time we got there. We chatted a lot about Cambodia and China, as we had been doing throughout the day, and even though there was a slight language barrier, it was really easy to get along and have a good laugh.

After this late dinner, I really had to pee, so Rahul took me to his landlord's place (which is next to his) to use the bathroom. It is really big, really quiet, and really nice. The guy is French and is second in command at some international NGO called gtz, if I remember correctly. Rahul explained that the vast majority of residents in the neighborhood were foreigners, which explained a lot about the standard of living I was seeing.

After that, he brought me back to the guesthouse, where I waited for midnight to roll around to take my bus to Phnom Penh.

If anyone is going to Siem Reap, you should call him. His number is +855 (0)8 999 5277. (If you're dialing +855, don't use the zero. If you are calling from a local SIM/phone, you can omit the +855, but then you need the zero.) His Chinese is better than his English, but you should be able to get by, and I think that having someone you can trust is way more important than having someone who can swindle you in your own language.