TravelStream™ news feed for member roninsurfer on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/roninsurfer en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Fri, 01 Aug 2008 02:53:23 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/roninsurfer/1/1217570940/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/roninsurfer/1/1217570940/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/roninsurfer/1/1217570940/tpod.html Fri, 01 Aug 2008 02:53:23 -0400 Backpacking Southeast Asia

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Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

I think it's always risky to sort of ascribe a national character to any group. So with that caveat in mind I'm going to talk about our overall impression of Vietnam and the Vietnamese. Generally we found everyone to be quite friendly, curious, and welcoming. Naturally when you look as we do, burdened with telltale looks, clothes, and backpacks, that brand us as tourists, you will always encounter the more aggressive element looking to make money off of you. I can't blame them. But the best times we had in Vietnam was when we were able to talk to people without the specter of a monetary transaction hanging over our heads. Vietnamese children, whether in tourist friendly cities, or living on houseboats, or on canals in the Mekong Delta, we warm, and almost universally would wave an shout a hello to us.
The best way I can describe the Vietnamese is that hey get things done. Sometimes, when we were on a tour, or trying to get a bus connection, we would marvel at the seeming disorganization, and wonder how they kept everything straight bookkeeping in long hand without the aid of computers. But somehow, they always managed to pull things out.
From what we can tell the government is making honest efforts to improve the lives of Vietnamese. Public education posters are common and cover such topics as hygiene, HIV prevention, the need for primary school education, the evils of child-sex tourism, helmet laws, among other things.
Saigon is a very livable city by Western standards, with all of the usual amenities, at price of course. We spent a little over 3 weeks in Vietnam. We could have spent many more. We did not have the time to visit the central highlands. I could definitely spend another month or two traveling around the country...maybe by motor bike. I would like the chance to visit places that seldom see tourists. When you do find one of those places, it's refreshing. The people are genuinely warm, curious, and open. If I had the right job, Vietnam is the type of place I could live at for a while.

Vietnamese Food:
Vietnam is the second largest coffee producer in the world. I'm not much of a coffee expert but I have to say that they have some very very good coffee.
About the food....like anywhere, some places have really great food while most places have relatively pedestrian food. For breakfast we would usually keep it simple with a bowl of Pho noodles, or a small baguette with butter and jam. We did have some dinners that were quite amazing. By far the best food we had in Vietnam was this restaurant in the center of Saigon city. There is a huge culture of street food in Vietnam, so what this restaurant did was to set up small individual "street food"stalls all around the wall of the restaurant. Each of these stalls was devoted to a different regions cuisine. The place was packed with both locals and visitors. The decor was spotless, and the service was first-rate. A large and varied meal for 4 people ended up being about $20, including drinks. It was so good that we went back for two consecutive nights.
Service in the finner restaurants is good, but there are a couple of ares they need to work on. The first is that the dishes all come out at different times. This is almost exclusively the case wherever we ate in Vietnam. The other is that waiters don't remember who ordered what so sometimes it's a bit of a free-for-all.

Italian food: Given the former French domination of Vietnam we figured it would have a lot of french restaurants. The big surprise is that Italian food is ubiquitous. We did not have much of it but what we did have was not bad. But Italian food|? Um..ok. Maybe it's easier to make then French food and the travelers seem OK with it.

Here's another thing we can't figure out. Almost without exception every restaurant has a menu the size of a phone book. How do they keep that much food stocked? We have been in nearly deserted restaurants and they were always able to deliver on everything we ordered. How do they do it? It mystifies me. I'm telling you...if you want something done....go to Vietnam. They will figure out a way.

And for all you Pho lovers....if you go to Saigon, the best Pho we could find is at a pho fast food place called 24 Pho. The lonely Planet guide book said it was the bast, and despite our initial disbelief we have to say that gosh darn, it was pretty damn good..and cheap as well. The most expensive bowl of soup with a drink costs about $3.50. That's about a 1/3 of what you'd pay in the US.

Speaking of prices...whatever the guide books give, even the most recent ones, add 20-40% to what you expect. Vietnam, and especially Saigon, is getting more expensive. Well...expensive is a relative term. It still is a huge bargain by American standards. And it's not just tourists who are paying more. While we where there the gov cut gas subsidies by 30%, that hits the locals very hard. In the last 1 and 1/2 years the cost of food has gone up almost 50%. This is very difficult for Vietnamese, especially the poor who already pay such a high percentage of their income on food.

Well....we're leaving Vietnam. We had a great time here. I highly recommend this country to visitors. Be prepared to be flexible, gracious, adventurous, and patient, and you will have an amazing time. We mt definitely will return.
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Mekong Delta, Vietnam

Today I am giving Daniel a break and writing an entry on the blog. I know it is not in the trip's "job description," my title is "trip researcher":) but I figure I'll give Daniel a break today.

A lot has happened since we left the relaxing beach town of Nha Trang. We took an uneventful night bus and arrived in the bustling city of Ho Chi Minh, or Saigon as it is called by everyone outside of government officials ( I guess the name change did not stick that well). We arrived in the city at 6am and decided to go check out some of the sights. Saigon is the largest city in Vietnam and it is quite different than Hanoi in the north. First impressions: the streets seem a lot wider and there seem to be a lot more large buildings, foreign corporations, and expensive restaurants than Hanoi. Everywhere we went in the city there were construction cranes with artists-renderings of the future developments planned for the sights.

Since we had already checked out several of the obligatory Ho Chi Minh museums that proliferate in every city in Vietnam, we decided to skip the one here and instead go to the "Reunification Palace." We wanted to tour the old seat of the South Vietnamese Government and the location of the surrender in 1975, where the famous photo of the tank charging through the gate took place (actually, we learned that the first tank got stuck as the gate was too small and the tank driver got out and ran into the palace to hoist the Communist flag and "accept" their surrender. A second tank decided to try the larger gate and made it through shortly after).

The palace was amazing. Everything looked just as it did on the fateful day of surrender over thirty years ago (everything that is except the bomb that was air-dropped on a small section of the palace by a turncoat Southern Vietnamese general). We opted to tag around with an English-speaking tour guide instead of walking around and exploring on our own.

The palace has a strange Austin Powers feel to it, with plush red carpets and a strange mix of Western, Eastern, and 1960's décor. We saw the stuffed leopards and cheetahs the president liked to keep in his office. We walked into the map room where the maps, replete with troop and enemy movements, appear as they did. We toured the president's secret bunker and saw the radio room where the radios and typewriters you see in old war movies lined the desks. I wanted to pick up the rotary phone and ask a private to bring me some coffee and a map of Sector 6, but I thought the better of it and kept walking. At the top of the building the president had installed a hard-wood dance floor where he apparently liked to entertain guests while his wife watched films in the then state-of-the-art cinema.


After the trip to the palace we decided to book a trip to the Mekong Delta. We figured we would continue exploring the city for a couple of days after we got back from the Mekong before going to Cambodia
Year of the Rat:
After the trip to the palace we decided to book a trip to the Mekong Delta. We figured we would continue exploring Saigon after returning from the Mekong diversion.
We wanted a break from being herded around in large tour groups so we booked a private two-day tour of the Mekong with our own guide and a driver. It was so worth it. We were pretty much able to customize our tour and had a great time.

Our tour guide was an older gentleman who had been a teacher prior to being drafted to fight for the South. After being grazed by a bullet he was discharged. He continued teaching after reunification until it was discovered that he had relatives in the US and he was sacked. Because of his English skills he became a tour guide. He was perfect for us. As a teacher he was very knowledgeable about historical questions we asked, and, as we were the only ones on the tour, we felt comfortable peppering him with questions. Which he obliging answered.

The mighty Mekong River begins in Tibet/China and winds its way through several countries in SE Asia before dividing into several tributary rivers and traversing the alluvial planes of Vietnam's Mekong Delta. This alluvium has built up over the years and brought fertile soil to the Delta. Fruit and rice grow in abundance without fertilizers.

Most of the delta can only be traversed by boat, as rivers and canals are the roads of the delta. Dan and I were in our own small boat and it felt wonderful to pass the larger tourist boats and enter small canals which are impassable to all but the small boats. In our long, narrow boat, which was captained by a young boy and his sister, a generator sized motor sat on a moveable platform where a long protruding shaft jutted into the water with a 10-inch rotor on the end. The young teen was adept at maneuvering this contraption around and clearing the rotor when it got stuck on floating plant debris. The local inhabitants use the river and canals for everything, and I mean everything. The latte colored water is used for everything from clothes and veggie washing, swimming, to garbage and restroom disposal.

The weather was perfect. It was not hot at all and after a short time on the boat the sky opened up and it poured. But it rapidly slowed to a drizzle and we watched the rain fall as we ate "Elephant Ear" fish at a deserted restaurant on stilts which was accessible only by the river. After a long day of cruising the river we stopped for the night at our prearranged hotel. We had told our guide that we wanted to try snake and he took us to a hidden restaurant down a small ally. We felt like Anthony Bourdain as we sat down on mettle stools in the wonderfully grungy place. Unfortunately, they were out of snake, but they did have snake wine and the rat came highly recommended. After being reassured that it was not "city rat" we ordered the barbecued rat. It was actually quite tasty. The meat was dark and rich (like duck) and the spicy flavor gave it a little kick as we nibbled away the small bits of meat from the rat's tiny bones. Where were the fries?

After several other dishes, including some forgettable deep-fried pork belly, our guide suggested we go dancing. Dan and I were unsure. I am not a big dancer and we were not sure what kind of "dancing" this place offered. After being reassured that this place was a ballroom/disco hall, we decided to check it out, mainly to please our tour guide who seemed eager to go. As we sat down in the large dance hall on the third floor of a mall. with some ice-coffee we saw a wide age range of people ballroom dancing (some quite well). Our guide, whom we soon nicknamed "the dancing king," adroitly navigated the table dance after dance and danced with almost all the women in the hall. We cheered him on and we soon began a game of guessing who he would ask to dance next. We wanted to spare the locals from seeing two large foreigners performing the dreaded "white-boy" dance and so happily stayed off the dance floor.

The next day we tooled around the Mekong's small canals and large rivers, some at least two miles wide, saw the large floating market, and visited a personal friend of our guide who lives by the river and grows a myriad assortment of fruit and veggies and raises snakes and other animals. After carefully and slowly sipping his homemade snake-wine, from "snakes whose venom can kill in 15 minutes," we headed back to Saigon.

Tomorrow morning we are headed for Cambodia on the early bus. I trust there will be more adventures to come. Thanks for putting up with the backup blogger. Daniel will be back, I promise.
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Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Well....sadly we had to leave the lovely beach town of Nha Trang. During the last two days we went on a boat trip of some nearby island, and snorkeled around a bit. It was great to be in the water, although there was not much to see in the way of marine life. The following day we rented a little palapa on the beach for $2 for the whole day and just relaxed, swam, chatted with friends and neighbors, and generally made lazy beach bums of ourselves. I'll write some more details on Nha Trang later. We got into Saigon (HCM) a couple of hours ago. After this quick stop in an Internet cafe we are heading off to find some breakfast and plan the rest of our trip including how and when to go to Cambodia. More details on Saigon to follow. Currently it's not too hot. Looks like it rained last night. No one we have met in our travels was that enamored of this place...so we'll see how long we hang around.
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Nha Trang, Vietnam

So...after a couple of days in the charming town of Hoi An, we took another 12 hour bus ride south to Nha Trang. We got a great bus this time. Private sleeper bunks. Nice AC. woke up to a beautiful view of the sun rising over the coast. The road in some places was...well... gone.

Nha Trang is a good sized city right on the beach. Lots of tourist/travelers here. Our hotel is about 2 minute walk to the beach. There are maybe 15 miles of unbroken sand. This is the water sports capital of Vietnam. Lots of jet ski, kayaking, scuba, snorkeling, sailing, etc. We've got that lazy feeling and spent all day on the sand doing very little. Lot of Euros around getting deep fried. I guess they don't have melanoma in Sweden. We require the shade of a coconut palm. Vietnamese families and couples come down to the beach in the middle of the day to have lunch and relax. They also find that tourists make for fun watching. I watch the Vietnamese watch the foreigners. They think our size, the amount we eat, the clothes we wear...are all comment worthy, and sometimes elicit a snicker. I get the usual stares because of my height. Sometimes when I walk by families picnicking, someone will stick out their hand to shake mine and ask where I'm from. Sometimes when I say America they respond, "I love America."

So Nha Trang also looks like the fitness capital of Vietnam. As our bus pulled in to town at 5:30 am...the beach was lined with thousands of people of all ages walking, swimming, doing tai chi, playing badminton, doing some sort of jazzersize, and generally enjoying the beach before the sun and the tourists invade. And yes...only mad dogs and Englishmen (and Frenchmen, Americans, Kiwi's etc) go out in the midday sun.

Josh and I have run into the local pot dealers a couple of times. The ubiquitous scooter drivers who in Hanoi and Hoi An offer you rides, here also double as pushers and pimps. All very low key of course. It's hard to figure out what they are saying...they call u close and then whisper questioningly.."veid? u want veid.?" After a while we are like ...."Oooh WEED? no thanks?" They seem surprised by this. I guess they must not hear no that often..or in pusher school they teach you to act surprised when you get a no. Last night after a walk on the beach promenade, I had a scooter driver as me if I wanted a massage..No not from him you Jokers! He said a pretty girl would give me a massage and then "boom boom." I've traveled halfway down the country and this is the most open offer I have gotten. Vietnam is doing pretty good at keeping it on the down-low...or maybe we just don't look the type. Oh...and I said no thanks in Vietnamese which seems to do the trick around here.

The food in Nha Trang is great! We are very near the epicenter of aquaculture of Vietnam. They also do a lot of fishing around here. Last night we had a mixed seafood platter that was grilled over a wood fire. Hard to beat for freshness and flavor. Had some fresh uni also. That uni was not as good as Channel Island uni from California which is the world's second best after Hokkaido's white uni. But what it lacked in creamy richness, it nearly made up for in freshness.

I think today we are going to visit some mud baths and mineral water springs. It's $8 per person. Time to remove some toxins!

So what's this about Obama? Well...the Vietnamese are incredibly well informed about the US election. The first political question they ask is who will win the prez election. We say we think Obama will. They then ask who we are voting for. When we say Obama, they say "good...I like Obama." I ask why and it's usually some variation on the young, with good ideas, and will bring change, theme. No one has said much negative about McCain other than that he is maybe too old. In one tailor shop we visited we found some of the shop girls were Hilary partisans and were quite interested in why we were not for Hilary. Some were for Obama. A very interesting and lively debate ensued.

Of course to a person, every non-Vietnamese we have talked US politics with is for Obama. When you travel this way you make friends fast. Deep conversations ensue. Josh and I ran into some former bus trip mates from Australia in Hoi An. We had some beers and talked US and Australian politics and sports for a couple of hours. One of them was quite well versed in the US and we held our own on Aussie things.

More on the people you meet when you travel in another post. There's a mud bath with my name on it.

Update: Bud bath was great! I know why the ladies pay so much for these things. We spent the whole day going from mudbath to mineral soak to pool to mineral waterfall. My skin feels....ahhhh....kissably soft. so about 6 hours at this place for about $8. Lots of other Westerners there...but also lots of Vietnamese. It's a school holiday or something. You can tell the Russians because..well...they've got that Slavic vibe working, and also because of their sexy crackriding speedos.....ouch! Sometimes I'm so proud to be American and from a country where the men wear board shorts. :) Ok...looks like our bus is here to take us to a boat tour of some of the local islands.
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Hoi An, Vietnam

Chilling in the lovely beach town of Hoi An about 25k south of Da Nang in central Vietnam. It is HOT here! This is a old trading post for Chinese and Japanese, and the architecture reflects that. We are staying here for a couple of days and using this time to rest up. We have a roof top pool and that has helped mitigate the heat. There are countless shops and great restaurants here along the old harbor. This is also the tailoring capital of Vietnam. Thus far, if I was going to chose a place to live in Vietnam, it would be this place. More on Hoi An to come...but the pool awaits.
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Hue, Vietnam

The somewhat random title for this post is from a book.


After a 12 hour bus ride from hell we arrived in Hue. Hue is a very lovely city. It's the old imperial capital. There is a very nice old walled city with a collection of buildings in various states of repair or disrepair. I sort of prefer them in disrepair. I have this sort of fetish for old Asian gates. There were plenty of those here and I took a bunch of photos. Josh thinks I'm crazy.
Hue is MUCH more laid back than Hanoi....not that a speeding Hue scooter will hurt you any less than a Hanoi one. There are quite a few nice restaurants serving both Western and Vietnamese food. We stayed in Hue for a day and half and generally tooled around the city, found a large (by local standards) supermarket and loaded up on water and fruit.

Let's talk about water. If you travel to Vietnam you must understand this. You are going to spend more on bottled water than on almost anything else. Yes....more than on hotels...or bus rides. My hotel room in Hue cost $12 for 2 people. Water? Oh.. we spent a lot more than that. 2 reasons: 1) you just need so damn much of it to stay hydrated and alive. 2) You need so damn much of it that there is a considerable mark-up for non-locals. What we try to do is buy in bulk and fill up our hydration packs. We usually try to buy it in a grocery store where they have prices listed. If you do this you can spend between one 5th and one 10th of what they sell it for on the streets or near tourist areas.

Economics: Eventually I'll write a post about the cost of things and prices and being a Westerner and US dollars and all. For now let me just say that it is very inexpensive here. We have paid between $12-20 for a two bed hotel room with showers, AC, cable, fridge, etc. The place we are in now is a bit upscale with a rooftop pool and we are paying $20 a night. Some travelers think we are overpaying, but we don't want to bunk it with 4 other backpackers and a communal bathroom for 5 bucks a night.


Electricity: The government turns off the power for to different parts of the city every day. They alternate it and move around who gets hit at what time. About half the shops have generators. Everyone else uses candles, and it's not unusual to see tourist dining by candlelight. It's an inconvenience to be sure, but they have figured out how to manage it well. Everyone comes out on the street and has their dinner in front of their houses or shops, because it is too hot inside. Josh and I just stay out until the power comes back on around 9 or 10pm
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Hanoi, Vietnam

Ok,
Going to try this again. Last time I wrote this post it did not save. Since the computer I was using did not have Word, I had to type directly into travel blog and that's always a bit risky. So here I am now at an internet café in Hoi An on a street of tailor shops.

After taking a bus back from Halong Bay we had a couple of hour in Hanoi and then took a 12 hour bus ride to Hue in Central Vietnam. Traveling is all about learning and we learned that we took the wrong bus company. I wouldn't list all the negatives, but there is a laundry list. I'd not complain if it were the norm and if everyone had the same experience, but apparently it's a bit of an aberration. We've since changed bus companies and it's going swimmingly thus far.

If you like living on the edge I suggest you consider road transportation in Vietnam. I'm loath to point out the negatives in a place I travel to but.....driving in Vietnam is HORRIBLE!!!! Dangerous Dangerous. Trucks and Buses share the road with cycles and bicycles. I'm talking about the highways here. Drivers spend as much time in the opposing lane as they do in their own. The majority of the major roads are slightly larger than the road that passes in front of my house in a quite residential area. Words almost fail me. Buses and trucks bear down on cyclists and scooters with horns blaring. Drivers calculate passing distances down to the centimeter. Usually they are right...we have however seen considerable evidence of miscalculation with what could have only been catastrophic consequences. So what's the awestruck and frightened traveler to do about it? You could do as one Israeli girl on our Hanoi to Hue bus trip did and that is begin screaming at the bus driver in English at 4 in the morning...."Stop!!! Why are you driving like this? You are going to get us all killed....Stop the bus I want to get off!!" The bus driver responded by saying, "no speak English." Or you can do like we did, and apparently most others do, and that is to say "fuck it," roll over, and go to sleep.
As an aside: when the Israeli girl was screaming at the driver we were hoping (vainly I'm sure) that the Vietnamese could tell the difference between an American and an Israeli accent.
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Halong Bay, Vietnam

UPDATED with Spell Check 7/19


Housekeeping First:
- So I'm writing this from Hue in central Vietnam. Connection was intermittent at our Hanoi hotel and well...on the boat in Halong Bay we were sort of off the grid.

- Photos.....I owe everyone a ton of photos but have been struggling to find the bandwith. As soon as I do, expect a flood. So far we have taken over a thousand.

- Shout out to Josh. He's the best traveling partner/navigator one could have. He knows every town to visit, every hotel listed, every street we have to get to.

- Where are the fucking Americans? We have run into loads of travelers the last 6 days, Kiwis, Aussies, Canadians, Brits, Euros, But not ONE SINGLE other American!!! Where the hell are we? I'm sure we are out there somewhere. We should get our backpacks on and see the world. Seriously!(UPDATE:) Met one today.

- Oh...and about the notion that all backpackers are feckless hippies: We have been traveling with lawyers, dentists, computer folks, chefs, designers...I'm about the least grounded of them all.

In the few moments on the web I catch here and there, I could never do Vietnam justice. There are some beautiful things and people, and there are some things, such as poverty, and child labor, that are simply heartbreaking. Perhaps when we have traversed the length of this country, I'll feel I can write seriously about my impression of this country from a historical aspect, where they have been, where they seem to be heading, how they are getting there, the obstacles they face and such.
When I wrote my first blog on Vietnam I asked "What Communism?" It is here of course, mostly in propaganda posters, flags, and emblems. But the people are all about free enterprise and find business opportunities in everything. Example: A guy came up while I was sitting at a beer stall watching Hanoi go buy. He pointed at my trusty hiking sandals and asked "where"? I told him and he seemed to admire them, then pointed to a place where they had started to separate. I said "Oh, I'll get it fixed later" He responded by pulling out an entire shoe repair shop that was crammed into a basket and hiding behind his back. He sewed up and glued my shoes on the street for one dollar. These sort of things happen every minute. Most of the Vietnamese people can't speak English, but I swear they can read minds...if one were to think "you know...I would really like a toothpick made of ivory...but not African ivory, I'd prefer the Indian variety." I swear....in @ 10 seconds, there would be a Vietnamese lady there with a basket full of toothpicks..she'd have the African, Indian, and walrus ivory for good measure....and of course she'd have the required mark up for tourist. Ok..there is so much more to say in this post and I have not yet gotten to write about Halong Bay or Hue. Unfortunately there are restless backpackers behind me at my hotel who have been waiting for the Internet. So I'll have to visit this later. Until then!

I've been wanting to do this for a few days...so here is my list of things I have seen on a scooter in Vietnam:
- 3 teenage girls
- A dad a mom and two kids
- Some sort of ab slider
- 4 Kegs of beer
- a woman who looked about 13 months pregnant
- A mom with a baby in a chest sling (or whatever you call those fabric baby holders)
- a computer (CPU)
- A load of @ 30 coal bricks
- 2 guys pulling a trailer with a cow in it. I know you don't believe me. Fellow travelers have scoffed until I show them the photographic evidence.
- 2 suitcases
- A TV
- A woman in a summer dress
This list may grow.



So now to Halong Bay:

We booked a tour to Halong bay. Halong bay is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It is a bay that is dotted with all these nearly vertical islands. Eons ago this was land and then the climate changed and the sea rushed in etc etc.
We took a two hour ride from Hanoi to the coast. There was continuous population along the way. At Halong bay we boarded our junk. We had about 10 fellow passengers. What can I say about Halong bay? It's beautiful. The dramatic contrast between islands and water, makes for amazing photographs. The water of the Bay is sadly, not as clean as one would hope for. In some areas it is littered with the detritus of daily life. I saw some local visitor throwing garbage out of the boat directly into the bay. The Vietnamese gov recognizes the importance of the bay and there are obvious efforts to educate the public about its care and conservation. The bay has places that look like the pirate's cove at Pirate's of the Caribbean: Land's End. Ships that look as if they sailed right in from 1920. Our boat had a nice crew that steered our boat with their feet (photo forthcoming), strummed a guitar, and sang Vietnamese folk songs during the lulls, ( I reciprocated with some American rock songs) made some pretty decent food, and generally made it a pleasant cruise. The only drawback was that there were little cockroaches on the boat. They were quite evident in our cabin. We spent a good portion of the evening on the upper deck, and when it started to rain, we retreated to the cabin and left the lights on. It was survivable if not comfortable. We went for a kayaking trip through some caves. It was nice. I would have preferred to have had a little more independence for the kayaking part. If I go again I will get a cruise that focuses on kayaking. We also visited a very large and quite amazing cave that was discovered by the French in the late 1800's. The cave is up in the side of a cliff and we were able to get some great photos of the harbor.
This trip was great for Zen moments. I got up at @ 5am just as the sun was rising. There was a light rain. It was cool for once. I worked out and did yoga on the front deck in the rain and in complete silence with the view of other ships at anchor, the islands around us, and the sun rising on the South China sea. Definitely a memory for a lifetime.
This place has something for everyone. Go along with me on this....close your eyes and imagine that you are standing on the 3rd deck of a wooden junk with towering island cliffs on 3 sides. You are taking in the view and suddenly, junk (hee hee) food fiend that you are, you start to crave some Oreos and maybe a Twinkie or two. You also happen to be a connoisseur of French wine and like to enjoy it with your Oreos. (I don't know..just go with it.) Where on earth are you going to roust up so eclectic a menu?....not to worry mon frer....for not much after the craving hits you brain and you begin to salivate, a Vietnamese woman in a conical hat rows up (in the middle of the Halong FREAKIN Bay) and shouts up to you, "Excuse me Mr... you buy?" You shout back, "I say there, you wouldn't perchance happen to have any Oreos would you? "Yes', she responds...'Oreos...yes have Ok?" "Um..well then, Oreos please, have any Twinkies hanging around your boat?" "Twinkies..yes have" You brace yourself...there's no way she will also happen to have a bottle of wine in that floating wicker basket of her's..."Excuse me...do you have any French wine?" "Yes have..you want Burgundy or Bordeaux?" That my friends is Vietnam....how can you not be charmed by this place.*
*Author's note: Having said that, I honestly prefer my travel's to be as untainted by American/Euro/Chinese marketing as possibe. But I can't hate those who make it work for them...especially people who live on floating villages in the middle of Halong Bay.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/roninsurfer/1/1216034220/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/roninsurfer/1/1216034220/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/roninsurfer/1/1216034220/tpod.html Mon, 14 Jul 2008 19:27:04 -0400 Backpacking Southeast Asia

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Hanoi, Vietnam

There is a lot to say about this place. But one only one thing deserves its own post. Here it is....

Scooter/motorbikes

Yes....in every direction, on every street, in front of every shop, in every single available parking space, you find the ubiquitous scooter. They told me about this before I came.."oh Hanoi has a lot of scooters." The people who told me this should be prosecuted for criminal understatement! A lot? A-freaken-lot?!!!! Hanoi has millions...millions of scooters. And few visible road rules. You do the math. The economy of Vietnam must be driven by scooters. Let's talk about getting across the street here. If you want streets with crosswalks and flashing green person lights with little beeping sounds for the deaf...GO BACK TO AMERICA! This is a common conversation between two hapless tourist here:
Tourist one: Shall we go to that pho eatery we saw last night?
Tourist two: Sounds good...but how do we get there alive?
T1: Yeah, you have a point. Hold a second, let me pull out my Lonely Planet guide book. So, says here that we are on Chan Cam street and we need to go to Hang Do street. But to get there we have to cross at least Hang Cau street, Hang Doi street, and Duong Xuan street. Those look like major streets. No way I want to risk my life 3 times in 10 minutes just to get bowl of Pho.
T2: Yeah...well if we walk up this street for 10 blocks..it looks like there are no major intervening roads..we can then turn left for another 10 blocks, turn left again for 10 blocks.....and
T1: Yeah, but then see here, where it says Hang Ma? We'd have to cross the dreaded Hang Ma. We almost died 4 times in 15 feet walking across to the drug store to get baby powder. See the food stall where they are cooking pork that has been laying on the ground?
T2: Yeah, I see it..so?
T1: Let's eat there.
T2: Um...whatever the Vietnamese name for Montezuma revenge is...we're going to get that if we eat there.
T1: Don't know about you, but I'd rather risk that then brave the scooter traffic again.
T2: It's not a "risk" it's an absolute certainty...but I'm with you. Street seasoned pork it is.

Daniel and Josh's tips..um... rules for crossing the street in Vietnam:
1) Don't Run
2) Walk Slowly
3) Don't Change your speed
4) Swivel your head so that the scooter drivers know you care about living.
5) A one-way road is not a one-way road...it is a four-way road.
6) Find a religion...any religion...and learn about faith in in the ridiculous and unbelievable. It will help you do things like step into Hanoi traffic.
Scooters and Vietnamese Culture:
Josh and I, being the nerdy academic types that we are have been looking for clues into Viet culture by observing scooter use. We've established of course that scooters are used for everything. Here's a list of what I saw sitting at a corner cafe for one hour:
On a scooters: 4 beer kegs, 30 bricks of coal, 3 girls, A dad, a mom, and a 1 yearold baby, somehwat preganat women, VERY pregnant women, 5 boxes of beer, two police men wearing a shade of green I have never seen before...(gonna call it "Revolutionary Unity Green), some sort of ab-slider, an air -conditioning unit, an overflowing crate of coconuts, a boy driving a girl who was carrying two hugs plastic bags of ramen, a girl driving her friend who was sitting side saddle, a vietnamese man with a tourist on the back who looked as if she would be too heavy for a mid-size sedan, a blond girl who would not look out of place on Berkeley's frat row, many Vietnamese girls who look like they were on their way to a beauty pagent, and a man with two kids under the age of 4.
If you look like a tourist, lost, have a guide book, or just a map...expect to be offered a scooter ride..oh..about 100 times a day. Can there really be that many scooters for hire? Really? They are everywhere. Everywhere! I suspect that most of them are just random accountants, IT techs, school teachers, and others who happen to be outside for a smoke break, see you looking in need of a death-defying ride through traffic, and kindly offer. I'm not sure though. I have never been asked to scooter-taxi by a women, and I know they own scooters...so I'm not sure what forces are at work here.


Next Morning: Lost my internet in the midst of some brilliant writing. More to say about scooters and Hanoi but it will have to wait until Hue. Now we're off to junk around Halong bay for a couple of days. Cheers,


So much more to say about scooters and Hanoi but
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/roninsurfer/1/1215994560/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/roninsurfer/1/1215994560/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/roninsurfer/1/1215994560/tpod.html Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:28:42 -0400 Backpacking Southeast Asia

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Hanoi, Vietnam

In Hanoi at last. This first post is going to be brief because we are hungry and running out to look for breakfast. Photos will come but the Internet at our hotel takes forever.
First impressions word association:
Hot Hot Hot
Teaming
Million Scooter-city
Cooking on the street/ground
What Communism?
Inexpensive
Cheek to Jowl humanity
Smiles
Air quality B.A.D.
Good Eats
Narrow and tall houses
What traffic laws?

We got a nice little hotel in the heart of the old town...near a lake..shops and eateries. We slept very well! about 12 hours.

Our plan for the next few: Today we are going to go check out several museums...mostly related to the "American War," Ho Chi Minh, and Vietnamese culture. Tomorrow we are taking a trip to Halong Bay where we will travel around the bay on an old style junk, we'll kayak around the islands, sleep on the boat, maybe swim, and generally relax.
Soon to follow will be an elaborated post on Hanoi and our experience here.
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