Hanoi and Cat Ba Island

With my ear troubles slowly subsiding and my mood greatly improved, it's time to recap the last chunk of my journey. My time in Hanoi was all too short, but that's the way it had to be in order to catch up with Nicole and Sophia. I got to see them for one night and a half day in Hanoi before they took off, but at least I've caught up enough now that I can meet them in the south of Laos and keep travelling with these two awesome people. That being said, my short time in Hanoi did provide some cool moments and sights. First the sights: I didn't get to see much of the city, but what I did see, I loved. Hanoi has a great mix of older french-styled architecture, beautiful public spaces and the kind of densely packed, super-vibrant streets you expect in a major souteast Asian capitol. My kind of place. Spent a lot of time haging around a beautiful man made lake that gets swarmed with locals during the day, including a lot of kids who go to meet travellers and practice their English. Kids like these:

The funny thing is, when I first sat down on that bench a guy approached me and asked where I was from. I waved him off and said no thank you and he proceeded to start admonishing me for being rude, and asked me if it looked like he was trying to sell anything. I had just come off the night bus, in pain due to my ear, and was exhausted and sweating like mad in the heat while I waited out the few hours before check in at the hostel and the bed that I was craving, so my cynical side had taken over and I just shooed him away saying that everyone who asked me where I was from in vietnam was trying to sell me something. He left in a bit of a huff and it asn't until these kids came along with their obvious list of questions their teacher had assigned to ask foreigners that I realized I had been a real ass to the first guy. Felt terrible about it, but that's what weeks of harrassment will do to you. I also told these kids not to start with 'where are you from', which they appreciated. Later the next day I spoke with another guy, an IT student learning english in his downtime, dor about an hour. Great guy, was a lot of fun. Here are some phtos of the lake and of a couple of other nearby sights, as I didn't have time to venture far.

And that's where I'm going to end it for today, as apparently there's a problem with my phto card and I can't scroll through the photos as per usual to pick out the best ones to upload. I'm on Cat Ba Island right now and the scenery is a big part of the story here, so I'll save it until I get this sorted out. Here's a preview though:

Home on the 25th of July

The ticket is booked and paid for, and the end of my tripped is now set in stone. I fly out of Bangkok on the 24th, stop over in Cairo between about 6am and midnight local time, and then land in Toronto on the 25th. Kinda nice that on the way back I essentially gain a day that I can use to explore Cairo a bit. Benny, this wedding of yours better be worth it.

There are some pictures up in a new gallery that includes everything from the Dalat to Nah Trang bike ride onward in the usual spot on the right sidebar. I'll be posting more about Hanoi when I can but I've gotta get up early so not tonight.

Still infected...

A week in, and I still have this miserable ear infection. Made yet another trip to the hospital today, this time in Hanoi, and guess what? No doctors on Sundays! I've advised Stacey that she clearly needs to move here to work, as doctors don't work evenings and weekends except in Emerge. Insane. But let me back up a bit and describe Hue.

First off, my trip to the hospital there, which can only be described as pure frustration. I went to the only non-emergency desk/reception area I could find and asked where to go, and of course they sent me down to emerge, where I knew I didn't belong. A funny thing about people in Vietnam is that nobody will help you unless you pester them (which is hugely ironic given how often you are pestered yourself). I stood at the emerge desk for about 5 minutes before I caved and bothered one of the clearly very busy docs, who passed me off with a heaping dose of impatience to the guy that drives the stretcher cart thingy. He took me through a winding maze of buildings and paths to the correct ward, where I got out and proceeded to wander around, utterly confused, for about 20 minutes. No doctors anywhere, just patients. No nurses either, no administration staff, nobody that I could direct a question to. After those 20 minutes I gave up and left the ward, searching around for anyone with a white coat or scrubs that might be able to help me. 10 or 12 attempts later, none of the staff I accosted spoke English, aside from the ability to say 'no'. So I gave up and returned to the hostel, defeated. Luckily I have an appointment tomorrow at the hospital here in Hanoi and I've never been more excited to see a doctor - this infection needs to die.

Now back to Hue. Not a good choice on my part. A beautiful city in some parts to be sure, but part of being sick is not having the energy to keep your guard up, and in a tourist trap of a town like Hue, that causes problems. Hue is the seat of the former Imperial Citadel, built around 1800 (side note: I'll upload pictures later, but right now this computer seems to think that my photos are programs and so won't upload them - wheeeeee!). Oddly enough I picked up a book in Hoi An called 'Dispatches', a great book about Vietnam that I had read my first year of Uni, and in it there's a bit about Hue and how extensively the Americans destroyed the palace in order to root out the VC that were entrenched there. Wish I had've read that before I arrived, because there was not a whole lot left to see. Much had been re-created, but that's hardly worth seeing as it lacks charm or aura. What was left were stretches of wall and moat and not much else. After having been through Angkor and such, it was utterly disappointing, but that's what I get for not doing the research. That being said, having read the passages in the book dedicated to the author's time in the city gave it a new dimension that I really enjoyed: I could really imagine it as he had seen it. And that was all that I liked about Hue because frankly I only had the energy for one day of sightseeing and I wasted it.

To me, the real hidden legacy of the Vietnam war is the cult of hustle born of occupation. This goes for all major cities in Vietnam and maybe I just felt it more because as I mentioned above, I was sick and my guard was down, but Hue was an unyielding nightmare of scams and propositions. The moto drivers there were easily the most aggressive and annoying I've run into, some of them even going so far as to grab your arm and attempting to steer you toward their bike. I had one guy follow me for a solid 3-4 minutes while I was out for a walk, he couldn't believe that I was just walking and didn't want to be driven somewhere. And they're not just selling transportation; they're selling sex, drugs, anything you want (they also can't believe you don't want weed or boom-boom with lady). Not at a reasonable price either: you have to bargain your ass off and invariably walk away just to get them even close to a fair taxi price. I took the metered taxi every time, just to avoid them, with the exception of coming back from the hospital, when I couldn't find one. Moto rides are typically cheap because of course you're just piggybacking on a bike, but the guy outside the hospital that flagged me down refused to accept the logic that I wanted to pay less than the taxi ride TO the hospital. Eventually I got him down to the same price, all the while scanning for a taxi that never appeared, and just accepted out of frustration and exhaustion. Sadly, it's this attitude that they prey on.

A few of the other scams I've run into, by no means a complete list:
 1. Arrived in Hue starving and exhausted, went to a restaurant that was a little hole in the wall, and I didn't notice that it didn't have prices on the menu, just ordered a standard usually-cheap meal. You can guess what came next: when I got the bill it was the most expensive meal I've eaten in Vietnam. I tried to protest, but it was me against a large number of them, and what could I do except risk getting my ass kicked and the rest of my money taken? You just suck it up and learn your lesson.
 2. Met a man named Mr Lee(rolling my eyes even as I type that) who I had seen trying to talk to every Westerner that passed him on the street before I got to him. Asked me where I was from, etc, and gave me the usual 'oh I have family in Canada!' bit, asked if I wanted to go have some lunch. Told him I was on my way to see the Citadel, he said he'd meet me back there at 2pm (I agreed to get him off my back, knowing I wouldn't be back to see him). Clearly he was trying to get me to a certain spot for commission. And because my brain was working at about 3% capacity (dad I can hear you making a joke all the way from Russia), I walked back along the same path at 2pm, where he was waiting. When I told him I had a massive headache and was going to go to the hospital, he tried to take me to a doctor 'friend' of his. When I refused, he turned...unpleasant. He pestered me for a solid 5 blocks. He was basically a step up from the moto guys, well-spoken enough to put on this friendly persona but really just hoping to earn commission off of anything he could steer you toward.
3. Arrived in Hanoi via bus and the exit is swarmed with moto and taxi drivers looking for touts, but the new trick I hadn't seen before was a guy getting onto the bus and declaring that he was from the bus company and that if you told him where you were going you'd get a free shuttle. We all believed him until he led us to his large taxi-van, where we all laughed at him and walked away to find a real taxi.
4. Think I've mentioned this one before, but taxi drivers that take you past a different hotel and urge youto check out the rooms, 'very cheap, very nice! You look, you look, I wait!'. No chance in hell.

Again, I think to a certain extent I'm just really sensitive to this stuff right now, as normally it rolls right off my back. In fact I talked to one moto driver returning from the Imperial Palace who was thrilled that I waved him off with a smile and a 'no thanks'. We chatted about how rude people can be, but sadly in my mind I couldn't help wonder if he was going to pitch me on a ride at the end. But no, when I said I was going back to the hotel then to the hospital he showed genuine concern, shook my hand and wished me well. So of course not all of the apples are rotten.

Anyway, I arrived in Hanoi this morning after another night bus ordeal. This one featured a bus driver who insisted on playing music and concert videos of exclusively female pop stars on the video screens in the bus, dimming the lights at 8pm in order to do so. By 9 just about everyone was asleep but he kept the videos blaring until about 1am. My berth was one of the uppers, and so with a speaker inches from my head, sleeping was even more difficult than usual. It was actually the first time I'd been grateful for the infection as it acted like a natural ear plug. Same deal at 5am, time for the local news over the PA! Was anybody up before that? Nope! Lots of moaning and sighing from the passengers when that kicked in. Add this to the fact that the bus stopped a solid 20 times (that's not exaggerating) to pick up small parcels or snacks for the driver and that they picked up additional passengers that slept in the aisles. Family run bus maybe? Hard to say, but this is Vietnam in a nutshell. I'll describe Hanoi more when I can upload photos and once I've seen more of it, but so far I'm enjoying it: there's a beautiful little lake nearby that was full of Vietnamese (likely more than the usual Sunday because it's Ho Chi Minh's birthday, a big deal here), and lounging beside it was a great way to kill some time before check-in.

Until the next one.

Trying to get healthy again

Being sick is aggravating enough when you're at home, working through the misery and trying to find moments to rest and recover. But far worse is the knowledge that you are somewhere amazing and special and that every day you take to recover is a lost resource that you cannot recover. Granted, inactivity here is easy and slow: it's cheap enough to rent a private room with a TV and feel the time melt away (though I miss having the internet at my disposal in a way I can't express with words). I really shouldn't complain about being able to go to the beach to sit in the sun for a few hours in an effort to ease my cold, but when you know that doing so pushes something potentially far cooler off your itineary, it's a depressing feeling.

I've had a cold of varying degrees of intensity now for 2 weeks and it finally feels as though it's grip is loosening. Only an admittedly nasty cough and a sniffle remain, but in it's place now comes an ear infection that is driving me out of my god damned mind. I can't remember ever having one of these before and ironically I thank the universe that now curses me with it for that. The pain is both a dull, unyielding ache from the pressure the trapped fluid creates, but far worse are the stabbing pains that pop up when I move. And when you're travelling you tend to move around on occasion, so this really limits what I'm willing to put myself through. Plus it hurts when I try to sleep, which means I don't. Awesome.

One positive to come of this is my resolution to get significantly healthier. Earlier in my trip, mostly through Singapore, Malaysia and some of Thailand, I was doing great. Lots of exercise, lots of self-catering via grocery stores, lots of raw veggies (you would have been proud mom) to balance out the streetfood. The sweet tooth re-emerged in Bangkok with it's insanely cheap sugary delights from small bakeries and the ubiqitous 7/11s alike, and when I moved on into Cambodia the sugar stayed cheap while the grocery stores got fewer and farther between. Then I stayed on a beach for a month eating nothing but prepared meals and junkfood while letting my muscles atrophy in the comfort of oceanside seating. In other words, I'm pretty sure my immune system was simply inm a downward spiral for the last month and a half or so and it's finally caught up with me. Time to get back to being responsible, because these consequences can go to hell.

On a side note, going to the hospital to see about the ear was an interesting experience. First off a nurse filled out paperwork with meas per usual, and marveled at how much I weigh (which isn't much for merelative to most in Canada) and how I'm almost too tall for their measuring thingee. Then I was passed off to a gentleman who briefed me on how paying for the visit works and correctly diagnosed the problem based solely on the fact that he's worked there for 100 years and has seen every idiotic Westerner that has come through the place with our identical, trifling problems and motorcycle catastrophes alike. He passed me off to the doctor, who took me to an examining room and spent all of 3 seconds  looking into my ear and asking me to cough while looking down my throat before reiterating what the previous gentleman had said. He then took me to anotherroom where he attempted to show me what my bad ear looked like in comparisson to the good, only to be thwarted my a Windows-based machine that crashed to the blue screen of death every time he tried to load up the imaging software. So as he rebooted the exceptionally slow machine over and over, two nurses stood by texting and gossipingjoking around with him, one of them up on the examining table with me. Once he finally gave up on the machine he simply railroaded me down to where the payment for this visit was to be paid and where he could fill out my prescription. The information he didn't give me far outweighed that which he did, and I ended up sending off an email to Hoz and Stace asking for clarification of a few things (my thanks and apologies for wasting your time guys). All in all a kind of surreal experience where you feel like you have to just keep your mouth shut, as the questions I did think to ask were met with curt, impatient replies thatfeatured a hint of exasperation. Clearly bedside manor is not much of a focus here, but in a country where you really can't sur people because liability as a lwaful concept simply doesn't exist, I guess that's to be expected. Good times.

Anyway, that's it for now. My last few days have been spent watching bad movies and contemplating stabbing my ear with something sharp in order to release the burdensome liquid trapped within, and frankly that's not very exciting. Hopefully Hue will yield better stories, and it should definitely supply better pictures, as it's the seat of the former Royal Palace. Until then.

Nah Trang to Hoi An

Hello again. I'm going to make this a short update since my aircon cold is making a comeback all of a sudden and I'm feeling like a night in bed watching movies. Doesn't help that it's raining on and off here, which means I haven't got much incentive to venture out and check out Hoi An at night. And that's a shame, as this town is gorgeous despite it's insanely touristy vibe. But first, back to my last few days in Nah Trang. Here's a picture of the beach, where we spent an afternoon:

The Swedes and I decided one particularly hung over morning (actually it was more like afternoon) to stick to our plan of visiting Vinpearl island, an amusement park built next to a couple of upscale resorts on an island just off the coast.

You take what is apparently the world's longest cable car ride there, over water at no small height (pictures from it above). Jake and Kevin both did not approve and were a bit freaked out, but we made it without incident and headed straight for the water park section to cool off. Unfortunately the water park lacks the pumping power to keep all of it's rides going at the same time, which makes for a very aggravating experience since at any time only 1 of the 3 slides built into each tower section would be running at any given time. The ones that were, however, were pretty solid: fast speeds, crazy twists and turns, and tons of water spraying everywhere made for some chaotic fun. The park also featured a free-to-play arcade where I flexed my pop-a-shot muscles and wo the majority of the head-to-heads with the guys (though credit them for taking a few games from me, despite the fact that they don't play ball). Most of the other bits of the park closed too early for us to catch or were geared towards kids, like the '4d movie rides' that were laughably bad and left us dissapointed. It did have a great aquarium though, where I saw these guys among others (most of my pictures didn't turn out due to the glass). All in all, a lot of fun.

The next day I went diving. I was very nervous since I hadn't been diving since getting my open water certificate in 2004 on a Great Barrier Reef trip, but it all went very smoothly. A few emails and some research on trip advisor led me to a guy named Mark Scott, who not only didn't charge me the 35$ for a 'refresher' dive that just about everyone else wanted to, but was the highest rated dive shop in the area. After going out for a day with him, I can understand why: he's a no-nonsense pro who understands that the best way to make a living is to stand by the reputation he builds with his own name. He was very patient with me while managing to keep the more experienced divers in the group entertained as he went through all the gear and his instructions, then took us to a couple of beautiful spots with a ton to see. The only part I struggled with was maintaining an even level of buyancy (it requires a very rhythmic kind of breathing that takes some time to become second nature), and that was only really a problem when he had us go through a small underwater overhang on which I got stuck. You tend to forget you have a tank on your back when you haven't been diving in so long. I wish I could have locked into the breathing earlier so I could have enjoyed the scenery more, but the first time I dove I remember having to watch my oxygen levels a lot more and was a bit obsessed with it since one of the Germans in the group made a bit of a stink about my possibly ending his dive early before we left the dock. All in all though, a great day out and very worth it. Can't wait to do more, wish I had some pictures from the dive itself, but above water was nearly as spectacular as we zigged and zagged through the islands nearby. A few pictures that don't come close to doing it justice:

That night it was off to Hoi An on a 14 hour sleeper. Despite the fact that I told myself never again for the sleepers, this was my only choice and so I sucked it up. It was just as horrible as the previous times, probably more so due to the fact that the receptionsit at my hostel booked the ticket for the wrong day and I only discovered that fact when I saw her confused face as I brought my bags down to the reception desk at the appropriate pickup time. A quick call corrected the error, but I had to take a bunk at the back of the bus along a sectio of 5 seats that weren't separated like the other berths. Not cool. Pretty hard hard to sleep when you've got someone on either side of you invading your personal space constantly throughout the night as everyone collectively twists and turns in a futile effort to get comfortable.

Hoi An though is worth the pain. The town's main section is along a waterfront and features a ton of older buildings that reflect it's heritage as a trading port: you can see the Japanese and Chinese influence everywhere. Saw a lot of cool buildings and I'm not done yet, but here are a few photos:

Ok that's more than a few, but as you can tell I love the architecture around here. The other thing Hoi An is famous for is it's tailor shops: there are something like 400 of them in the city. In fact as I was taking a cab from the bus stop to the hotel, a woman on a bike struck up a conversation with me through the cab's window, pedalling alongside the cab as she tried to sell me on the idea of dropping by for a custom suit. That was definitely a first, but it certainly wasn't the last. After doing some research I decided to splurge and get myself one made, I paid about 250$ for the suit, 3 shirts, and a pea coat. Those are higher than average prices too, as I decided to choose materials in the mid-range instead of settling for the cheapest options. I go back for the first fittings tomorrow, should be interesting, but I'm pretty happy with the prices and the quality of what I saw in the shop, especially since right now I don't have a suit at all and I've got weddings to go to (sorry Benny, but I'm gonna look better than you on your wedding day).

And as usual, a few bits:

1. Here's a great camping experiment for us when we go this year dad: take a can of sweetened condensed milk, and bury it underneath where you make your fire. The heat should carmelize it, and if you retrieve and open the can the next day, you can slice that stuff up for what sounds like an amazing treat. Courtesy of the guy who took me diving.
2. Met a guy named Yoshi who's ex-military from the US. He served in Afghanistan and is now travelling courtsey of the roughly 3k US he gets each month from the government. He saw some stuff there to say the least, so it's hard to know whether it was worth it, but man do I envy that byproduct: he can now travel for life.
3. After diving, my right ear was about half-plugged and remains a little bit plugged even after 3 days. I blame it on the congestion, but it's strange to me that when I was up in the highlands it was my left ear that gave me trouble, and when I go beneath the sea it's my right. Very, very annoying stuff.

That's it for now, back in a few days.

Dalat to Nah Trang on a bike

First off, a disclaimer: the keyboard I'm typing this on has a sticky 'T' key, so there will be errors. Just a head's up.

Yesterday was trial by water, today was by land. The Swedes and I took a 65km mountain bike trip from Dalat, way up in the highlands, down to Nah Trang along the coast. My camera battery died toward the end so I don't have as many photos as I'd like, but I've put them in a gallery that's posted in the links on the right as per usual if you want to see more, but here's one of us just starting out:

It was a roughly 1.8km descent, but that doesn't mean it wasn't challenging: there was about 10k of climbing in several stages to start the day. Our guide nicknamed the hills baby hill, lady hill, ladyboy hill and man hill, and I was the only one in the group to manage both the ladyboy and the man hills without needing to walk the bike, stitch a ride, or be taken up in the support van that followed us (sorry guys, gotta brag here). To say that making it up those hills was rewarding is an understatement, especially given how bruised up I was from the day before. My right knee in particular required a steady diet of aspirin and ibuprofen to keep from forcing me off the road. I did come pretty close to quitting shortly after lunch when we tackled the man hill, as my legs cramped up in a way I'd never experienced. I was the last one to set off after the break and within a few minutes everyone was around a corner and far ahead in the van, which is of course exactly when my legs decided to betray me. I could feel them tightening so I stepped off the bike to stretch them out a bit and they seized completely, locking up perfectly straight in a brutally painful way. I actually had to bend down at the waist and hit the back of my left knee with my fist to bend it and break the seizing, then I sat by the side of road massaging my muscles until the cramping stopped. After that I got back on and slowly completed the man hill, trucking along in first gear until the ordeal was over. Gotta say, I felt genuinely proud, but my god were my legs in bad shape by the time the climbing was done. Also felt very much like throwing up because I had unwisely pounded water while massaging my quads in an effort to help combat the cramping. You'd think I would have learned my lesson back in Algonquin Park, huh dad? Apparently no so much. Luckily that's when the fun started. Before I get to that though, here's a picture of where we ate lunch:

Can't really beat eating lunch in the middle of a river, surrounded by waterfalls big and small. Had a dip in the icy cool water that took my breath away and along with a great lunch of sandwiches and fruit provided the perfect way to re-energize after a tough morning. Beautiful stuff.

After the climbing was over, we started a stretch that was nearly entirely downhill for about 30km. The speeds we hit were amazing and terrifying as we wound our way down through the mountains on excellent new roads with barely any traffic. The fun and exhilaration took me back to biking down the hill near Donegan Park as a kid, only without the climb back up: this was like a ski run that just went on and on without needing the lifts. It's hard to say which I enjoyed more though, the adrenaline rush or the insanely beautiful scenery we passed along the way. Here's a few samples hat don't even come close to doing it justice:

In a way the scenery was more dangerous than the roads or the sporadic traffic, as it was impossible not to rubberbeck constantly. If I had've been on my own I could easily have stopped every 100m to snap more photos, as the views were probably the best I've ever seen. Really wish my camera was up to the challenge, but it wasn't as you can see from that last one where the farmland just went on and on into the horizon. Anyway we reached the bottom of he descent without incident and loaded into the support van for the ride into the city and right to our hostel's doorstep. I miss the cool air of the highlands already though, the difference in temperature between departure and arrival was and is drastic.

All in all an amazing day and one of the best things I've ever done. I'm completely exhausted now and bed is calling me as I write this, but I have to throw in one more quick thing just for Hoz: Guled and I both have colds from the air conditioning in Saigon, and do you know what he said to me when he heard me blow my nose in my particularly distinct way? That it sounds funny, but effective. Redemption!

Out of Saigon, into Dalat

Saigon was great fun. Leaving was not.

Took the night bus from Saigon to Dalat despite telling myself I'd never take another, and this only confirmed my impressions: not enough room, not enough sleep. It all sounds so good in theory until you end up spending the bulk of the following day sleeping and accomplishing nothing. It also exacerbated my first aircon related cold, which lingers even now. So yeah, no more of those. Not much else to report from Saigon other than the ordeal of watching an opium addicted girl in a school uniform wander past our drinking table repeatedly while holding a syringe. That was a new one.

Today was my first introduction to canyoning, and I can say with relative certainty it won't be my last.

Best of all, I didn't seriously injure myself! Though I did slip once on the biggest waterfall (which I supposedly have on video but haven't seen yet), I managed to get back on my feet relatively quickly and keep going without much trouble. The day consisted of trekking between the 5 waterfalls and/or rock faces that we would then abseil down, as well as a few cliff jumps (biggest was about 11 meters) and some water-sliding down rock sections. One of the water-slides was head first and I smacked my tailbone on something, leaving a nasty pain. Tomorrow I'm doing a mountain biking trip from Dalat to Nah Trang, and being on a bike all day is going to be tough with a bruised tailbone, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Or more accurately, you gotta do what you can until you give up and let the van that trails you for support carry your lazy, sore butt. Anyway, I have a ton of photos but they're a mix of everyone in the group since the guide was using it at the bottom of the falls and the computer I'm using is way too slow to comb through them all, so you'll have to wait for more. I chose a few randomly visually appealing ones from the thumbnails, but they aren't necessarily of me. Wish I had've had the opportunity to take proper shots of the falls, but it wasn't in the cards.

Not much else to say right now. Ate some great meals in Dalat at a place called the New Art cafe, where the owner finger paints you a little painting while you sit, and where this little guy popped up on one of the plates:

Also ate at a little local place where I ordered spring rolls and they brought the ingredients to the table so that I had to make them myself. Fun, but frankly kind of annoying when you're tired and just want to eat. Marlow, I know you can sympathize as to how annoying rolling those things can be; rice paper does not like to cooperate. The weather here is awesome because we're up in the highlands, an amazing respite from the ridiculous heat of the Mekong delta. Feels weird wearing a sweatshirt though.

That's it for now, I should have some good stuff to post after tomorrow's bike trip and the diving I'll likely be doing in the days following that. Right now I need some sleep.

Just a quick note that I added the link to the photos that I've put up on Pictorl to the bar on the right side, just below the links for the other galleries. Again, if you haven't given Pictorl a try, I'd suggest that you do - I really like it. The address is just Pictorl.com.

Cheers everyone.

Into Ho Chi Minh City

Disclaimer: I'm typing this on a computer where the browser is set to Korean and every word I type has the red underline from spellcheck. So there's not much chance I'm going to proofread this entire thing, meaning there will be spelling mistakes. Apologies in advance.

First off, presented without comment:

Well, I finally got my lazy, exceptionally relaxed butt off the beach and back into the swing of tavelling, strange as that currently feels. It's a big change in mindset going from 'do I have enough energy to get off this lounge and swim?' to 'what 400 things do I need to think about and plan in advance today?'. Nothing too painful, but you definitely feel the stress.

I took the night bus from Sihanoukville to Ho Chi Minh City (that's Saigon, in Vietnam), and it was both convenient and terrible. The little sleeping areas are not built for humans of Western proportions. It was a 14 hour trip and I slept for probably 3-4 of those hours, but the advantage is that it's very quiet and dark, so you do rest even if you can't sleep because your knees are in your mouth and your body is cramped up from being in the same position for hours at a time. Probably won't be putting myself through that again unless it's just super convenient.

When I arrived at the bus drop-off point, everyone getting off was swarmed by taxi drivers and hostel hawkers, and despite my hostel being a literal 2 minute walk, some fool of a moto driver tried to tell me it would be a 10 dollar ride that would take 20 minutes. I laughed him off and started walking. 5 minutes later I was terribly confused becaue the directions I got from the hostel indicated it was on a street corner, and as far as I coud tell it wasn't there. That's when an old woman who had been at the bus stop approached me and offered to show me where it was: she had overheard me talking with the driver as she passed, knew the hostel I was talking about and knew the guy was trying to rip me off but didnt want to say anything in front of him. So she led down a back alley to the entrance and went on her way, saying she just wanted to help. Some people are just awesome. That was my introduction to the insane maze that is Saigon; most places are down little alleys and side streets, and it gives the place an amazing vibe. You feel like every walk is a little voyage of discovery.

The hostel itself had a group of Indian folks staying there, all abou 50-60ish I'd say. One of them though is the biggest jerk I've come across in a while. He argued with the receptionist for literally about 2 hours over 2 dollars. 2. He threatened to go to the police, he kept berating the poor girl at the desk, it was ugly. And all because the hostel charges a commission surcharge when you book a tour through them, which is standard practice for any hostel anywhere (same with bus tickets, etc). Hilariously he kept insisting that he is the president of the youth hostel association of India, while complaining about things like not being able to get a towel when he checked in because they were all being washed. His expectations of a hostel did not at all match the realities of one, and even the people in his group were getting uncomfortable and sneaking apologetic looks to the girl at reception. Some people are just assholes.

At the hostel I met 4 guys, He Jong from Korea and Kevin, Jacob and Guled from Sweden. Been drinking with them every night since. The group composition changes every night though, bcause we've been drinking by the side of the road and between meeting others at the hostel and talking to people sitting beside you while drinking, the group keeps expanding and contracting. Here's what I mean about drinking by the roadside:

Basically you're sitting on tiny plastic chairs drinking 33 cent draft beers whith traffic zooming by inches from you. Street performers and vendors are passing constantly and the atmosphere is just to cool. It's a crazy mess that provides endless entertainment. A great place to start off the night, and a great group of people to drink with, it's been a lot of fun. Last night was Jacob's birthday and we had a good meal followed by a really fun night. Here's some of the group:

Left to right, that's Guled, Kevin, Jacob, Lauren, Lucian and He Jeung.

A few notables from the evening:
1. I ate duck intestine, because why not?
2. We played that game where someone writes a bunch of names of famous people on small bits of paper, then everyone sticks one to their forehead so they can't see it and you have to guess who you are. great fun when you're drunk. Not pictured here is a British girl named Sophie, which was one of the names someone was given. Hilarity ensued.
3. Another game that I was introduced to is simply called 'the game'. You win the game by not thinking about it, and lose it by thinking about it. When you think of the game, you have to say out loud, 'I lost the game' (usually with a damn or sh!t in front), the idea being to make everyone around you who knows of it also lose. Great, pointless fun.
4. Once Jacob hit midnight and the shots came, he got super drunk, super fast. There's a video that Lauren shot of Jacob ranting against the world because she and Kevin made a bet she couldn't name all 52 states (she couldn't because there are only 50 haha), and Jacob kept trying to interject with hepful suggestions that were always cities. I can't post it because it's 5 minutes long, but it's gold. I was dying laughing when we watched it again yesterday. He ended up crashing into a buddhist shrine near the bathroom insdie the shop that sells the beer, didn't hurt himself but now the universe (and the owners) hates him. Bad karma, man.

Most of what I've been doing has been hanging out with this group, but my first day I went on a tour to the Cao Dai temple and Cu Chi tunnels outside of the city. First up, the Cao Dai temple:

Exterior

Service in progress

The major figures

The Cao Dai religion is pretty nutty, and the exclectic style of their temple reflects it: the religion is a mishmash of beliefs. The 3 figures in the last photo above are Sun Yat-sen, Nguyen Binh Khiem and Victor Hugo. Basically, 3 people who were humanist writers. So strange. You can read more about it here, it's pretty interesting: Click me to let Wikipedia do the work.

The Cu Chi tunnels are a system of now-collapsed tunnels that were built bewteen the Cambodian border and Saigon by the Vietnamese fighting in the area during the war. As the Americans tried to take the area back from the Communists, that chunk of land was considered the last stronghold and was basically what kept America from taking Saigon for so long. The system was estimated to be something like over 200 km of tunnels going as deep as 15 meters deep. The rebels and their families often lived in the tunnels for long periods of time as the area was bombed heavilly. The tunnels themselves were tiny, often too small and too foreboding for the Americans to go chasing the locals through, and were so effective at providing routes for escape, abush and supply that the US decided to wipe the area out with Napalm and then an intensive bombing campaign that collaped the tunnels. Very interesting stuff, even if the site is now a super-touristy area. A few photos:

A ventilation shaft disguised as an ant hill

These tunnels were not big, though this re-creation is larger than the originals. 

You waddle through.

I also visited the war remnants museum, an overly anti-American set of displays about America's atrocious behaviour in certain aspects of the war. The focus was on the torture of prisoners at the Phu Quoc Island prison camp, agent orange's lasting effects, and the overwhelming disproportionality of the war. If you know a bit about Vietnam then it's easy to cut through the rhetoric and see the pro-communist propaganda for what it is, but that doesn't dismiss the fact that the US did behave barbarically in a lot of respects. The displays of photos of agent orange victims in particular was soul-curdling and effective.

I haven't done much sight seeing here otherwise, as it's too damned hot and the buildings, while nice, don't have much significance aside from everything war-related. I did see some of the best fireworks I've ever wtinessed though, which was great. Standing and watching them in a sea of locals was very cool. 

Lastly, the traffic here lives up to it's reputation. The anology I keep using is that in order to cross a street, you ave to treat it like walking into a cave full of bats: you just walk straight and let them avoid you. It's not possible to wait for a gap in the traffic, as there typically aren't any: you just edge out into traffic and the drivers adjust to you. Definitely takes some getting used to. I'm not sure if this video I took does it justice, but here it is anyway:

Anyway, that's it for now. Tonight is the last night in Saigon for a lot of the people I've been hanging around with, so it should get messy. Gonna be fun!