TravelStream™ news feed for member windwalk on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/windwalk en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Sat, 17 Oct 2009 19:13:44 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/windwalk/2/1255743195/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/windwalk/2/1255743195/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/windwalk/2/1255743195/tpod.html Sat, 17 Oct 2009 19:13:44 -0400 Return to the USA

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San Diego, California, United States

Many folks have asked us about our impressions of the USA after living in Mexico. Since Facebook only allows 2 line posts, and it would be too long for Amigas, I figured I'd go ahead and write a blog here. It's not really a travel blog, since we don't plan on going anywhere else right now. But for what it's worth, here it is.

Overall, we are very excited to be back in the USA. When we left over 3 years ago we were fed up with many things about the USA, but right now it's hard to remember what some of those things were (apart from Bush and his politics, and obviously that's over and done with!) In fact, at the moment we're enjoying some of the very things we used to scoff at -- like fast food places. I used to say I was proud of the fact that I'd managed to live in the USA for over 15 years and never eat at any fast food "restaurant" (I have a hard time using that word for fast food joints.) But we are finding that used appropriately -- i.e. when you're driving in the middle of nowhere and that's all there is, or when you have to eat all your meals out and don't want to break the bank-- they can be real life-savers (Taco Bell's 89 cent bean burrito comes to mind!)

While I'm on the subject of food, we are thoroughly enjoying getting reacquainted with old favorites -- like Kashi Good Friends cereal, fresh tofu, and of course everything that Trader Joes has to offer. We've always enjoyed Fresh Choice -- called Soup Plantation in Southern California for its excellent fresh salad bar. We are discovering better-than-average fast food places like Pick-Up-Stix which offer fresh stir-fried veggies/chicken with brown rice and we love the fact that we have a choice of Vietnamese restaurants in our neighborhood. Also, since we've had to rely on using external sources to get online for the last few days (because of work in our house), starting our days with breakfast at Starbucks isn't just a guilty pleasure as they provide free wi-fi.

But OK, apart from food, what else? Well Southern California is of course different from anywhere else, even northern California. You are surrounded by the beautiful people -- tanned, fit, healthy, outdoors types. We are less than a 5 minute drive from a reservoir with a 5 mile loop for folks to walk, run, bike and you really get to see those folks there. Overall we've been impressed by how friendly and helpful everyone is. Perhaps it's just the fact that we actually understand what they're saying but we couldn't help but notice that even though they might be screwing us over (we had to get over $1000 worth of work done on our car that we think was warranted) at least they do it with a friendly, cheerful face.

We have been mostly very impressed by the customer-service. One of the first things we bought was a TV. But when we hooked it up to the cable, certain channels had no sound. So we called the cable guy -- he came within half an hour, was extremely helpful and friendly, though ultimately he discovered that all these particular TVs have a fatal flaw that means they're going to be recalled so we had to take it back to the store. At the store they bent over backwards to accommodate us and to make it up to us that they were selling new TVs that shouldn't be sold. On the other end of the scale, we were unimpressed with the service we got at Sears where we bought a new set of tires -- after assuring us we could come in without an appointment and that we'd only have to wait an hour, we ended up having to wait three hours because they didn't tell us they only had one person doing that particular job. This wasn't the first time we noticed a major outfit seems to be understaffed -- we also had to wait for our rental car longer than expected because their office had "resized" their staffing needs.

Overall do we see signs of a weak or depressed economy? Yes and no. Yes, in that when we left the States the commercials on TV tended to focus on "you deserve to pamper yourself" and now they all focus on, "this will help you save money." No, in the sense that in this particular area all the stores, restaurants, etc, seem to be doing just fine, folks are working, shopping, etc.

So I just asked Carol what her impressions are. She said, "it's clean!" That's true, the roads seem amazingly clean, as do public restrooms and public areas in general. Of course it's totally unfair to compare a major metropolis like San Diego with a rural area like Lake Chapala, but that's where we were living so that's where we make our comparisons. We remember finding Mexico City very clean too in comparison to Lakeside. I used to walk Sparkle every morning to the lake which looked so sparkling in the distance, but the shore was always covered with trash, bottles, diapers, plastic bags, cow dung, horse poop, used toilet paper (no, not by the horses and cows) etc. etc. In contrast, the reservoir by our house is pristine.

And of course, the freeways here are amazing -- 8 and 10 lanes of fast flowing traffic. So far we haven't run into any traffic jams and are getting to know our way around pretty easily. We feel very lucky to be living on the one hand so near a major freeway, and also near several malls so that every store and restaurant we could want is within a five minute drive, yet on the other hand, we are in a very quiet community so that at night we can still hear the crickets, just as we could in Mexico.

As we did in Mexico, as soon as we moved in, we started having work done on our house. We really had to as it desperately needed new paint and new floors. The work has taken longer than expected, but that seems to be partly because they are doing a very thorough job. We can't post pictures yet (who knows where the heck the camera is? who knows where the heck anything is? everything is under plastic covers.)

Many of our friends in Mexico wondered if we would be shocked by prices here. So far, I don't think we've found things to be more than we expected. Of course, we don't eat in high-end restaurants, or have expensive tastes, but many things don't seem to be that much more than when we left three and a half years ago. A pleasant surprise is that the salaries being offered for the jobs I'm looking at are much higher than they would be in Sacramento and almost double what I saw in Florida, so that will be good news for my social security. I just got offered a job on Friday which I will probably take (mental health with older adults.)

If we were on a fixed income and trying to make it go as far as it does in Mexico, obviously we couldn't. But we found we were jaded by some of the so-called bargains. When we had the house in Mexico painted, we were amazed at how affordable it was. But the painters weren't experts and we weren't happy with a lot of what they did, which needed redoing a short time later. Here we are paying more but feel that the (Serbian) guys really know what they're doing and are using good quality materials. Same with the food thing -- yes, it costs more here, but we'd rather eat out less often at places where the food is excellent, than eat out as often as we liked in Lakeside but rarely find food worth eating.

OK, that's it for now. You'll notice there's a slightly rose-colored tinge to this blog, I admit we're in the honeymoon phase!

Feel free to ask questions and I'll reply .



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Guadalajara, Central Mexico and Gulf Coast, Mexico

The major lesson we learned, was to go with our gut. When we wrote the first entry, a month prior to going to Thailand, we had decided not to go to Ankhor Wat, but to go to Laos instead. But then we started talking with folks who thought that if we were in Asia, we should see the best of the best. But for ourselves we know that we prefer things on a smaller scale, and should have stuck with the original plan.

The next lesson was that there's no point doing too much planning because real life will get in the way. I spent HOURS trying to come up with a very specific itinerary, and within a few days the whole thing had been totally changed because of the typhoon in Vietnam.

We had read mixed reports about whether to book flights from over here or not. The fact is that it depends on the airline. For flights within Vietnam you do much better to wait till you're there, it's far less expensive. The planes are gigantic, bigger than some of the planes American companies fly to Europe, so although they're pretty full, you can pretty much always get on a flight the next day if not the same day. But for flights within Thailand it was the same to book online or to book with an agent. As for the airlines, you get what you pay for -- Air Asia are rude, give you nothing, but they're cheap. Thai Air and Bangkok Airways were much better quality, and much more helpful.

Finances -- even though daily expenses were minimal, moving from country to country is expensive. To get to and from Luang Prabang in Laos would have cost over $300 in airfare each, plus another $100 for visas. If you're only going to spend 2 or 3 days somewhere, then it's better to find a similar place in the same country than try to go to a different one. As for the money itself, we took a small supply of US dollars for use in Cambodia, and other than that we simply got local money out of the ATM, of which there were plenty throughout Vietnam and Thailand. However, have ATM cards from more than one bank -- at one point halfway through our trip our bank suddenly put a stop on our card and we had to contact them in order to get it taken off.

Phones -- we didn't have a cellphone with us, and though we didn't miss it at the beginning, once our friends loaned us one we found it was really good to have. But buy a local one with a local card, far cheaper than using one from a foreign country.
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Bangkok, Thailand

Bangkok is noisy, crowded, beautiful, overwhelming, modern, and ancient.
We arrived in Bangkok from the airport around midday and after checking into the hostel, and a quick lunch, decided to head over to Chinatown for the afternoon, figuring that at some point jetlag would catch up to us and we'd be ready to crash. Outside the hostel was a tuk-tuk and the driver offered to show us around for an hour for a very small amount of money, "temple, shopping, city". We said OK, but once in, I was concerned that the price was too good to be true. The driver took us first to a crappy temple, where, once inside, the caretaker started asking us if we'd bought any jewelry yet, and explaining how cheap the jewelry was at the wholesale market, and how he himself was an attorney who was about to go to Harrods the next day to sell his jewelry... at this point we figured what was going on. Outside we told the driver we just wanted to go to Chinatown. "No, I take you shopping, to wholesale jewelry." No, we remonstrated, we don't want to do that, just go to Chinatown. "Then find your own way," he said, and drove off. Well, that was our first lesson learned!

The next day we took the skytrain to the river. The skytrain is an elevated system like a metro. It's incredibly modern, very well signed and easy to use. We then took the river taxi up to various points in Bangkok, including Wat Pho, a gorgeous temple with beautiful buildings and an incredible massive golden reclining buddha; Chinatown, which was intricate, claustrophic and had excellent food (ah, to be able to buy fried tofu on a stick for a snack!); the Grand Palace, which unfortunately was closed because the royal princess is being cremated tomorrow. Instead we saw some of the preparations, including the changing of the guards, who look exactly like the guards at Buckingham Palace, with their Busbys. The whole country is in mourning for 3 days, everyone is wearing black, and there is no alcohol sold.
We have enjoyed what we've seen but are happy to move on to what should be a quieter, slower pace of life from here on.
The hostel we're staying at is great, very funky, modeled on an old teak house with wooden floors, shrines, etc. Tomorrow we move on to Cambodia.
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Chiang Mai, Thailand

Throughout Asia we have seen Buddhist monks come to homes/hotels early in the morning with their bowls, and the owners would give them food, and they would say a prayer together. On Saturday morning, Chiang Mai organized a massive giving of alms to 11,250 monks from all over the region. The posters said it would begin at 6.09am, obviously a significant and auspicious time, so we made sure to get there by around 5.45am. People continued to arrive for a long time after that, and in fact the ceremony didn't take place till around 7.15, by which time the area was packed. They closed down a main road for over a mile. People were lined on the street in two columns, kneeling, and the monks first walked all the way down, then when they came back, everyone filled their bowls with alms. Soldiers (barefoot of course) were seated strategically along the way so that the monks could empty their overflowing bowls into large bags and continue to collect arms. It was a very moving experience.

On Sunday we decided to go to Pai. So, have you ever done one of those road trips where you just prayed for it to end? Maybe the road to Hanna (in Maui), or crossing from 101 to 1 in California? For those of you who know it, picture Lombard Street in San Francisco (called the curviest street in the world), and imagine driving through the mountains on that road for a couple of hours -- and that's the road to Pai. So why did we do it? Because we wanted to see the sleepy, laid-back little town of Pai that everyone writes about as a charming little hippie backwaters set in idyllic scenery. And the scenery is indeed bucolic, serene, gorgeous -- jungly mountains covered with banana trees and fir trees (but how does that work??) with a seren little river flowing through the valley. Utterly beautiful. And the town -- did we say sleepy and laid-back? Perhaps that's true -- but not when you go like we did on the day following the King's birthday. That, it appears, is the day the entire Thai population decides to descend on sleepy little Pai and turn it into New Years Eve at Times Square. Prepared for the drive back, we drugged ourselves with plenty of dramamine and then were able to enjoy the stunning scenery driving back through the mountains.

And so now it appears that somehow we have come to the end of our trip. All of a sudden a month has gone by, which seems impossible, though it also seems forever ago that we were in Cambodia and Vietnam. The trip has been a kind of two-in-one, with the first half careening around Bangkok (Thailand) Ankhor Wat (Cambodia) Hoi An, Hue and Hanoi (Vietnam), avoiding bad weather and enjoying the incredibly varied and diverse scenery and surroundings. The second half has been a relaxing, interesting, thoroughly enjoyable stay with old and new friends in a dynamic, beautiful part of northern Thailand. We've marvelled at how different some things are (did we mention squat toilets?), and how similar others are (Deal or No Deal in Korean!)

We leave early tomorrow morning. An hour flight to Bangkok, a 3 hour layover, a 3 hour flight to Taipei, a 2 hour layover, a 12 hour flight to Los Angeles, a 3 hour layover, a 3 hour flight to Guadalajara where we will hopefully collapse into the arms of our dear friends Jan and Char and see our little Sparkle. So, while you're eating breakfast, lunch, dinner and going to sleep, you can wonder, are we in Thailand? in Taiwan? in the USA? or just insane???!!!
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Chiang Mai, Thailand

First of all we managed to be one day ahead of a typhoon. Now we have managed to beat the Bangkok airport shutdown by a few hours! But before we write about that, a little more about what we've been up to in Hanoi.

We ended up really enjoying our time in Hanoi. Once we got used to the complete craziness, it sort of grew on us (especially once Carol found an excellent coffee shop, after 2 weeks of instant coffee!!). We spent a day going to some really interesting museums. First we went to the Ho Chi Minh museum, or at least we thought that's what we were going to do, but didn't realize that it was part and parcel of the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum, where Uncle Ho is perfectly embalmed. There were masses of people -- (think the opening parade of the Beijing Olympics) in long lines and we all filed silently past the body. Then we went to the museum, which was fabulous, really interesting and innovative. Instead of just telling the story of his life and of Vietnam, it was very artistic with a lot of symbolic representations of different aspects of society and culture. In the afternoon we went to the Museum of Ethnology, which represents all the different peoples of Vietnam. Inside the building are exhibits and outside in the grounds are reconstructed houses, tombs and longhouses, which were just fascinating. That evening we went to the very famous Water Puppet show. This is where people stand waist high in water and manipulate puppets from under the water. The puppets are all representations of various aspects of Vietnamese life and although it's a bit simplistic, it was quite charming too.

The next day we went to the Temple of Literature which is the oldest university in Vietnam (possibly Asia?), dedicated to Confuscious. We spent the rest of the day enjoying sitting by the lake, and wandering in and out of the alleys looking at the endless tiny little stores. Some are geared to tourists, but many are whole streets of just one product -- for example, a whole street of stores that just do wedding invitations, a whole street of stores that have party decorations, and so on, with the streets being named after the product they sell. On our last day we went to a fabulous restaurant for a buffet lunch with the most delicious concoctions we'd had so far. And of course, every day we enjoyed the sights that you see everywhere -- women with conical hats carring long bamboo poles on the ends of which are enormous baskets with fruit or other products, men on motorcycles with anything and everything you can imagine on the back. For instance, anything you might put in the back of a pick-up truck -- furniture, animals, massive 6ft china urns -- we saw on the back of a motorcycle!

The one thing that did bother Carol unfortunately was the pollution and so much smoking everywhere (including in the hotels.) So we decided we would head out of Hanoi and go directly to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. We flew with Air Asia, a budget airline -- the first time we've ever been on a plane where they wouldn't even give you a cup of water without charging you!! We had to change in Bangkok which was no problem. Thank goodness we were doing it yesterday, so that we only found out about the disruption to the airport when we met up with friends of friends who told us about it.

We were looking forward to seeing our friends Fran and Bill from Ajijic, but since we came earlier than expected, they were out of town. They arranged for their friends Ruth and Bill to take us under their wing and they have been just fabulous. We're staying in the apartment-hotel they live in -- we feel like we're in the lap of luxury. Yesterday they took us to the Night Market, where even we, the most hopeless shoppers you know, can't wait to go back and start buying! It's just amazing the amount of stores and stalls, and the quality and variety of things for sale.

Today Ruth and Bill took us up to the King's residence in the mountains above Chiang Mai. It's a palace for the royal family to come to in the winter, (January to March) so they're currently getting it ready for the royal visit. It was beautiful, and because the King is big into botany, the gardens are absolutely lovely. From there we went to an incredibly beautiful temple, also in the hills. People say they get "templed-out" but so far we're still enjoying the beauty. Afterwards the four of us went for a delicious lunch at an upscale restaurant in the posh part of town -- which cost all of $5 each! Now we're off to Thanksgiving Dinner with Bill and Fran.
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Hanoi, Vietnam

So, our somewhat bad luck continued to dog us. Hoi An is a very charming town -- but hard to see when it is bucketing down rain monsoon-style. The first morning we couldn't leave the hotel at all it rained so hard and the streets were flooded. People here are used to it -- everyone wears enormous plastic rain ponchos and pretty much carries on regardless. When the rain eased up a little, we too donned these fashion statements and made our way onto the streets. Hoi An is famous for their tailors -- you can order almost any clothes and they'll make them up for you. So there are streets and streets of fabric/silk shops. There are some lovely old buildings which served as Merchant Houses and a beautiful river. The shops have names such as, "Same, same but different", "same same, not different", "same same but better."! There are lots of little restaurants all serving similar and delicious food -- banana and chocolate pancakes, pho (vegetable noodle soup), curries etc. and we spent time out of the rain hanging out and eating. There were a couple of day trips we'd hoped to do while in Hoi An, and we wondered whether we should wait out the rain, but when we found out that it was forecast for the next 5 days, we decided to give up and move on. So we got the bus to Hue.

The road from Hoi An to Hue runs along the coast and everything you read about it, is that it is stunningly beautiful. We'll have to take the guidebook's word for it -- hard to see when rain is slashing down the windows! From time to time I would open the window just to see, but the visibility was almost non-existant. We caught what they call an "Open Bus" -- these are buses for tourists that run the entire length of Vietnam and you can stay on for as long or as little as you want. What we didn't know, until we got on, was that our bus was a "sleeper." What that means is that instead of having seats it has rows of beds -- great for night travel, but not ideal when your goal is to watch the scenery as you could only partially sit up. We didn't mind that much, but there were some people on the bus who were really annoyed because they'd had the same problem with a different company so had specially switched to this company.

When we arrived in Hue there were touts swarming around the bus and we went with one of them to a little hotel that was fine ($8 a night, all mod cons). We booked an afternoon sightseeing tour with a Danish family who were also staying at the hotel, and went to see 3 of the tombs of the emperors. Hue was the imperial capital of Vietnam early in the century so it has a very royal history. The tombs were wonderful, set in beautiful scenery a few miles outside of Hue, elaborately decorated, one very Chinese-style, the most recent, more French style. I was going to see the Imperial City, but the family said it was in such disrepair they didn't think it was worth it. And of course, it was raining the entire day. So we decided we would forge our way north to Hanoi where the weather would be better (it is!)

Tomorrow we are off on a two day trip to Halong Bay.
In answer to a question about money: this is definitely the place for those who are good at maths. In Bangkok we were using Baht -- 35 to the dollar; in Cambodia, Riem -- 4,000 to the dollar. And here in Vietnam there are 17,000 dong to the dollar. Good thing I do so much killer sudoku to keep my brain sharpened!
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Siem Reab, Cambodia

There are two ways to get from Bangkok to Siem Reap in Cambodia. The easy way is to fly, the more interesting way is to go by road (OK,and I admit, it saved us about $350!) It was a long journey, but a good way to get to see the incredible contrasts between these two countries. We got the bus from Bangkok to the Cambodia border. The road was a four lane highway, and very well maintained. All along the way were signs of affluence -- enormous shopping complexes (complete with Tesco superstores!), golf courses, beautiful homes, nice cars, parks, community colleges etc. We got to the border, where chaos reigned supreme. We'd read about a variety of scams that are run to make you overpay for your visa by making you buy it before you cross the border, and we resisted all their attempts to do this, got successfully to the border and then the border police insisted we pay $25 even though the large sign said tourist visas were $20! Once on the other side we got a taxi which we shared with two young russian women and off we went. The road was quite different than previously -- rice paddies with half naked people wading in them, wooden shacks, extreme poverty, and for much of the 3 hour taxi ride, the road was unpaved. It was one lane,shared by taxis, motorcycles, bicyclists, men leading their oxen, water buffalo and children walking home from school. Then suddenly it was paved, it was wider, there were cars, and within 5 minutes we had come to the entrance of Siem Reap, which is the gateway town for Ankhor Wat. It was like coming upon Las Vegas in the middle of the desert -- massive, beautiful hotels, one after the other.

We are in a nice hotel ($18 a night), in the town, which is way bigger and way busier than we had anticipated. Tomorrow we'll head to Ankhor Wat. We have no way to post our photos-- that will have to wait until we get back home.
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Chiang Mai, Thailand

We've been in Chiang Mai for a week now and are still enjoying it very much. It's such a mix of old and new together. Inside the moat are small, quaint streets where you can find anything from stunningly beautiful gold wats(temples) quaint little teak houses and miniature shops, and then outside the moat are the super deluxe shopping malls, and enormous condo buildings. I think in general we've been surprised on this trip by how modern things are, especially how high-tech everything is. For instance, even in our super inexpensive hotels in Vietnam, the air conditioners were modern, silent and efficient, and in the small towns of Vietnam, the modern stores sold super-modern appliances. It shouldn'be surprising -- after all, we're not that far from Japan and Hong Kong, two places I think of as ultra high-tech and modern.

We've taken some lovely trips -- yesterday we went to the botinical gardens which were so large we only saw a very small part of them. They're in the mountains so in a beautiful setting, and then in the afternoon we went to an elephant conservation camp which we thoroughly enjoyed -- saw elephants bathing in the river, saw a show of elephants painting pictures, and Alison had her earring eaten (and then spit out) by an elephant while she was sitting on its knee. (Yes, yes, you'll see a picture of that, once we get home and can download them.) We've also been to the zoo, which is set on the mountainside and is like wandering through the jungle, and the aquarium (the largest in south-east Asia.) And Alison entered paradise when she had a Thai massage.

As for the political scene here -- well we naturally had some concerns the longer the airport shutdown went on, and then when we checked our airline's website and discovered that our flight had already been cancelled. It was interesting to see it from the Thai perspective -- in particular to see how important it was to them toavoid a violent confrontation and also to see to the lack of action that led to. We couldn't get through to the airlines until yesterday when our friends called the office in New York, and now we are confirmed on a flight that will get us out of Bangkok and into Taipei to make the same connection we're originally booked on. Today is the King's birthday, but he's been too ill to make a speech and people here are very concerned, as he is very beloved.

Well, I have to go now so that we can gear up for our next meal out...
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Chiang Mai, Thailand

We are thoroughly enjoying Chiang Mai. It's very different being with friends than being totally by ourselves like we have been before coming here. Fran and Bill have been so wonderful, from loaning us a kettle and coffee press (aah, tea and coffee, first thing in the morning...) to introducing us to their friends, to taking us around the city, it's great to see Chiang Mai from the inside. We took it easy the first day or two as we were both trying to get over our colds, which finally seem to be on the way out. We spend lots of time eating -- the food is great, and at these prices, there's really no reason to stop! We just had lunch, fried rice, mixed vegetables and tofu/omelet, for less than $1 each. And even though we didn't have it (this time), ice-cream would've only been about 60cents too. One of the things we're enjoying about Chiang Mai is its great shopping malls (would compare favorably with London or Mexico.) We avoid the ubiquitous KFC, Sizzlers and Starbucks, but did give into Dunkin Donuts yesterday!

Yesterday we took a walk into the old city -- Chiang Mai is surrounded by a moat from days when it was fortifying itself against possible Burmese attack -- and enjoyed seeing all the wats (temples) along the way. Despite our best intentions we got suckered into going to what we thought was going to be an exhibit of stone-cutting but actually was a big jewelry store. Today we went to a garden party put on by the English language magazine with stalls and booths selling things for charity. We get around on public transportation -- which consists of either tuk-tuks, or songtheaws -- red pick-up trucks with benches in the back which take you anywhere you need to get to.

We've been out to dinner every evening with Fran and Bill and various of their friends, including Steve who some of you in Mexico know. It was good to see him again and he was happy to hear all the Ajijic gossip.
This evening we're going to do a night market walk, where we will eat and shop -- which seems to sum up our Chiang Mai experience.

Our current plan is to stay here for another few days, then go to Chiang Rai, which is further north, for a couple of days, then finish off back here again. (People here assume that the Bangkok airport standoff will have to be resolved by Friday, which is the King's birthday and a national holiday. We hope so!) So unless we have something super exciting to post, we probably won't add to the blog for a few days.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/windwalk/1/1227430920/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/windwalk/1/1227430920/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/windwalk/1/1227430920/tpod.html Sun, 23 Nov 2008 04:22:35 -0500 Northern Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia -- first-timers in Asia

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Hanoi, Vietnam

Several of our friends and family wonder how people react to us, perhaps especially as Americans in Vietnam. So here's a sample of interactions:
Bangkok taxi driver: "Where you live?" "Mexico." "Mexico? Ah, Charles Bronson, cowboy, love Charles Bronson."
Bangkok stranger: "Mexico? Ah, near Cuba right? Your president Castro's brother?"
Cambodia, a little boy who was chatting with Carol at Ankhor Wat: "America? Ah, new president." Then pointing to his arm: "Black skin." Smile.
Malysian on cruise: "Born in England? Then you Christian." "No, I'm Jewish." "But you born in England, so first you Christian, no?" No. "Hmm. Only thing I know about Jewish -- good brains."

In general, it's really nice to not be embarrassed to say we're American, as we have been in previous years. In general there is definitely Obamania everywhere. People are so excited about him, so amazed that he could have been voted in, as someone who was relatively unknown, and as an African-American. From the young and old, Asian and European, everyone mentions him, asks how we feel, etc.

As for being Americans in Vietnam, people are very warm and welcoming. Our guide said, "why should we not like American or French tourists? what's passed is past." He also explained that within Vietnam this is how people deal with their own North-South backgrounds, that while his parents' generation want him to know what happened and how they suffered, they don't want the younger generation to hold onto anger or grudges. Indeed, it seems that the Vietnamese are remarkably open and forgiving, while Amercians have held onto a lot of hatred. (The husband of a friend of ours, when we told him of our upcoming trip said he had no interest in going to a country of (sic) "gooks.") But here, the war is over and people are happy to see us.

The funniest thing happened today, while I was visiting the Ho Chi Minh museum. Carol decided to sit outside and wait. While she waited she had hordes of young Vietnamese asking if they could have their picture taken with her. They told her she's so beautiful (well, we all know that!!) and were all over her, taking photos, buying her ice-cream, etc. A similar thing happened when we went to the museum of ethnology and I was exploring an exhibit while she sat and waited, young people came up to her and wanted to talk to her. They asked her what she likes best about Vietnam and if she finds the people friendly. She said, yes, very friendly. A young man said, "we always smile. We smile because we are very optimistic."

The other side of this coin is that here and there we have been duped by people who smile -- for example, in Bangkok by a tuk-tukdriver who offered us a good price for a ride with him, but then after we'd gone some way, wanted to take us shopping and when we said we didn't want to shop, dropped us where we were, who knew where.
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