don’t call me a backpacker…

Hanoi was super exciting on arrival, a city very unique in the world. Noise and clamor like you wouldn’t believe, I’m not sure even the pictures convey the craziness. I’m glad I went, and recommend it if you are interested. However, after some time there for me, the charm wears off and it can become annoying. The cold, cloudy, smog filled air gets to you after a while for sure.

I did love the other cities I visited in the middle of the country, Hue and Hoi An. Much more laid back and enjoyable cities, and a bit more of what you would expect of Vietnam.

Costs: everything is very very affordable.

Food: this was one of the sway factors in me picking VN over other destinations, and they did not disappoint. The food is incredible at all levels. I ate all kinds of crazy things: eel pho, a vietnamese hamburger, dried fish bbq’d right on the street, and try to get some rice “whiskey” if you can, it was the best of the 3 countries i got to sample.

Air quality: horrible in Hanoi, and amplified by the constant cloud cover. I don’t know how an asthmatic could survive here more than a few hours. Not too bad once you get an hour away from Hanoi.

Culture: to me, this sure looks like a country still divided. North and South, as it’s been for a long time.

(more…)

Ok so I managed to make my last 24 hours in Hanoi eventful and pull my mood out of the gutter. Also got some quality internet time and let my body rest.

What hadn’t I done yet? Eel soup, Bia Hoi, and Ho Chi Minh’s corpse

I had passed by the food stall several times by foot. And what was behind the glass, like many things in Hanoi, certainly makes you stop and wonder, what the hell are those? Mini Eels! Fried and dried! I was tempted last week, but passed. When I saw that Rough Guide actually reviewed the food stall, then I’m in! Mini eels are certainly no match for my iron stomach.

I went right at dinner time and all tables pretty full. Lady yells “sit,” with two other guys. I’m the only caucasion. Staring and giggling ensues. I say “xin chao” (hello) to my table mates and the usual questions start. Then he points at the glass case with a smile and says, “little snakes.”

Thanks for the tip dude, like I didn’t notice on the way in.

Needless to say, the soup was delicious.

I was thinking I wasn’t sure if I had actually partook of a Bia Hoi experience yet. Bia Hoi are the street-side beer drinking establishments for the locals, and of course tourists now too. So I walked around this new part of the Old Quarter my new hotel was in, and look, there’s those Brits that I talked to on my boat home from Cat Ba Island. So I sat down with them and a young guy from Montana they had met previously, and proceeded to down glasses of the weak stuff. Montana boy was already pretty drunk so we didn’t talk much.

Lastly, but certainly not least…

Wednesday morning, after another half-assed free hotel breakfast, and failing to get iChat video working over the slow Vietnamese internet (geee I wonder why it’s so slow? ’cause the government is scanning packets?) I decide I need to get my ass on a motorbike and over to see Ho Chi Minh’s dead body, as viewing closes at 11 AM.

Wow was I ever glad I did this.

I should note he was embalmed against his wishes. He knew it was coming, cause that’s what they do to the communist leaders, but he wanted to be cremated and his ashes scattered. Win some, lose some. At least he gets his fluids changed once a year.

No disrespect, he was clearly an amazing man and a great leader. I think it was just an unfortunate time and place for him to make a convenient choice of communism to get rid of the French and have alliance the Chinese. But it just doesn’t seem to work.  I would say what you currently see in Vietnam, is not your grandfathers communism.

I walked up by myself and was thrown into a group that was just finishing up a slide-show introduction. I was told to stand behind the line and wait. They all come out and we are told to form two lines, and walk two by two. They even have lines on the pavement to follow. You’ve got to be kidding right? I was at the front and she told us to slow down. We aren’t even close to the Mausoleum yet. So we march up to the camera check-in and metal detectors. No cameras or cell phones.

We start marching again. There’s a couple of Brit guys around me who are just cracking up at this, and I say, I don’t think I’ve marched two by two since 2nd grade. Then as we approach the door, it’s time for single file. There’s soldiers around of course, with big guns.

The line then moves slowly and in complete silence through the black marble foyer, and then around the glass coffin, never stopping. Uniformed soldiers stand at attention below at each corner. Uncle Ho’s body aglow with purple light, I’m not sure why they chose purple.

And like that, your 30 seconds with the greatest leader in the countries history is over.

If you go to Hanoi, don’t miss this.

A simple, short tour bus ride to Hoi An, along the way you get to see the infamous wartime locations of Da Nang, China Beach, and the Marble Mountains.
The Air Force base was enormous. I was really shocked to see it still there actually, all overgrown on the inside but still containing huge concrete plane silos. It was easy to see then how the history book described how it was turned into an self supporting American city. So much so that Vietnamese fled the dangerous jungles and hillsides and formed a huge ghetto outside the Air Force base safehaven.

I decided to forego a trip to the DMZ or any other wartime tourist destinations seeing how I was running out of time, they weren’t a priority for me, and my health was not so good.

Hoi An was VN’s main sea merchant port centuries ago, so it has a lot of Chinese and Japanese influences all over. The whole town is a UNESCO designated site, and they have retained the most of the old charm.

The tailors are also what Hoi An is all about. And they are not messing around. Blocks and blocks and blocks of tailor shops. It was insane and way more than I expected. My big plan was to have my favorite jeans copied, and see what else I could buy. There was one jean specialty place, that did stonewashing too, but they wanted $35, which was more than i expected to pay. Normal tailors said they would do jeans for $15, so I bit. Bad mistake. The jeans fit the same but look dorky.

My experience was this: Shopped around a little just finding out prices… hmmm, more than I thought. I then started working with a shop of girls who were very nice at first, but then things got ugly. I won’t go into the details, but I hadn’t given them money yet, I changed my mind on something being made when I knew I was paying too much, and they got kinda rude. At this point, come on, the customer is always right. But not in Vietnam apparently. So I grabbed all my clothes and stormed out.

Went somewhere else and worked out a better deal. I went a little crazy actually. Jeans, corduroy pants, short sleeve button down shirt… and then I saw another shop that made a great looking corduroy jacket, so I had to have one of those too. Total damage: $60.

It’s funny how you keep running into many of the same travelers when traveling a country, hundreds of miles away from where you met them. Chris, the guy from Scotland I hung out with on Hanoi day 1, pulled into Hoi An right after me. We hung out the rest of the day, which included one of the Chinese Assembly Halls, which again Rough Guide steered us to the best one of the bunch. It had amazing wood carvings and a Confuscious based temple, which Chris said he hadn’t seen even in his travel through China.

I also got hit by a motorbike, or rather, I hit him walking across the street. I was talking to a shoe merchant girl while waiting for Chris to join me. A truck had parked and you couldn’t see down the street. Bike comes FLYING toward me and Chris as we cross. What you are supposed to do in Vietnam in this situation is just stop and stand still and let them dodge you. But that’s not how we do it in San Francisco, so bad habits… I try to make it across and he keeps going in front of me.

So guy nearly wrecks from me hitting him, jumps off his bike and starts yelling at me in Vietnamese, from a safe distance because I’m a lot bigger than him. I yell some things in English, everyone watches, a little embarrassing. When I talk to the shoe girl again she said that he was drunk. He was going waaay too fast.

…has my inspiration to blog gone?

I don’t know if it’s being sick, or being sick of Hanoi that’s done it.

Ok so I had written this long, witty post full of wonderful narratives when Internet Exploder (on the hotels WINDOWS pc) decided to barf it up when I hit save. Thanks. I was too upset and not feeling well to re-write it so this is a place holder.

—————– let’s try again ——————-

Here’s a conversation I have had in a many taxis from Bali to Vietnam:

(I mean no offense by this, just reporting what happens…)

taxi driver: “Where you from?”
me: “USA”
(you always get a lump in your throat when you have to tell a Vietnamy this, but I grin and bear it.)
taxi: “Ah USA. America! Number 1! hahaha”
me: “uh, yeah, we try.”
taxi: “I have a brother (or sometimes uncle) in San Jose Californeeaah”
me: “ah yes I live in California”
(then he proceeds to make unidentafiable sounds I’m assuming are in Vietnamese)
taxi: “aaahniiiooooswaaassiiinaaaoooHahaha”
me: “umm, say again?”
taxi: “aaahniiioooo swaaassiiinaagooor Hahaha”
me: “I’m sorry I don’t understand”
taxi: “Aaaniiood Swassiiinaggor”
me: “Ahhh Arnold Schwarzanegger. Hahaha”

Hue, pronounced Hway, is a very lovely town. After the bustle and din of Hanoi, I feel like I could stay here for a month just riding a bicycle around. Sigh.

The 11 hour overnight train ride was not too bad, considering the first class “soft sleeper” (4 to a room) cars were sold out. I had to settle for 2nd class “hard sleeper” (6 to a room). Hey, it’s an adventure right? I’m down with the people.

The people were all nice locals, one guy spoke a little English, asked all the usual questions, and tried to translate that the two late-40’s looking ladies (they looked like sisters) were talking about me in Vietnamese, saying I was handsome and being very “careful.” They’d understand if they knew I had a Macbook in my bag.

I wrapped the strap of my backpack containing said Macbook around my foot, and I put on my ipod on to Modest Mouse, and Godspeed You Black Emperor. Basically I would fall asleep for a while, wake up and the album would be over, start another album, repeat. So I know I got some sleep that night but I really have no idea how much. Got woken up around 4 or 5 AM for our first stop, which of course half the people woke up and got off the train. Went back to sleep.

All fine except these trains are very much a germ cesspool. I was starting to feel sick the day before on the way back from Ha Long, and as the hours ticked by on the train ride, I could feel my throat getting more and more sore.

So my Hue visit was kinda ruined by this cold. Fortunately, I was comforted by the BEST HOTEL BARGAIN on my trip, and probably in all of VN.
First, my Rough Guide to Vietnam (Sept 2006) has been great and right on with a lot of recommendations. I will certainly look at them now before Lonely Planet guides.

Binh Duong III was 1 of the highlighted Rough Guide picks for hotels in Hue. The room was one of the cleanest and nicest I’ve seen so far, and better than many hotel rooms I’ve stayed in California that cost over $100. A Balcony with a view, huge windows, nice bathroom and furniture, and get this – a computer IN YOUR ROOM with internet access. $15.
This was a great room to wind up being sick with a cold in. (until of course it crashed this post)

But I did take advantage of the computer access and updated my Wordpress blog version to 2.0.7 for all you geeks out there. It’s hard to find time to do this while traveling.

I did muster the energy (after buying a used rain jacket for $.60) to make it out for the biggest attraction of Hue, it’s old Imperial citadel. It’s really not that old, but housed the Emperors of Vietnam from around 1800 until WWII I think, when everything changed and the French were booted. It says it was left in disrepair, a lot burned in a fire in 1947, and then the Vietnam-American war pretty much did the rest of it in.

They are very slowly getting some of the buildings put back together, with some museums, but it was a staggering number of how many buildings were destroyed. Worth a visit.

Yum Yum

It got really cold here today. I am not prepared, like most tourists we laugh at when they come underdressed to San Francisco. But now I have 3 shirts on.

I keep feeling like I may getting a cold, but I brought a full supply of Airborne, and it’s keeping me healthy.

It may also be because, as you may have noticed… I haven’t really been sitting still at all since Kuta, Bali. I’ve been going and moving non-stop. And it’s been fun. I’m even starting to feel that maybe 3 months isn’t enough… but that feeling could probably change by March.

The smog here is truly on another level. I think I’m getting asthma it’s so brutal. That’s why you see people in Asia with masks on. Not because of SARS or avian flu. it’s the motorbike smog.

Too many tourists here. yes I realize the irony. I couldn’t even get a ticket to see the damn water puppet show tonight.

Here they call them “tube houses.” It’s funny when there’s one standing all by itself. (but then again I’m easily entertained)

The beer here is fairly weak. There are three brands, and the most popular one, Tiger, is from Malaysia.

I FINALLY found a decent wifi internet connection in Hanoi, after several attempts at places where they say, “No laptop!” Trying to even check my Yahoo mail on cafe PC’s is often horrific.

ATM machines just arrived in Vietnam 2 years ago.

The hotel I slept in last night left its bad smell on me.  Never again will I accept a smelly hotel room.

So my post earlier this afternoon on Ha Long Bay got interrupted. I was starting to get kind of bitter, and ready to leave Hanoi, especially after the woman on the boat gave her biased opinions on how the south is much better in many ways. And like clockwork, I get a text message from a waitress, Linh, that I made friends with the other night, inviting me over for lunch with her friends. I was like wow! that’s so nice! Later she admitted she didn’t think I would accept her invitation. haha.

Linh is also from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon, like the woman in my tour group) and has been in Hanoi for 4 months, living with her brother, while she works out some things. She reiterated the same differences about north and south, and was trying to understand some things about America. We all had a fun time at lunch, and talked for hours until it was time for her to go to work.

Once again it was great to know you can meet and get to know someone genuine while traveling, alone, and you don’t even speak the same language.

Ok, it’s time for my first train trip of this trip.

Ha Long Bay was excellent visually. There are several places in the world that have these kind of formations, but none on this grand a scale. Quite a sight. The journey itself wasn’t quite what I expected, but still enjoyable. Mostly because I chose the 3 day excursion with kayaking, thanks to my Rough Guide’s suggestion, they were right. The only reasonable way to do this trip is by pre-paid tour, if you try to avoid it you’d probably end up paying more, so I join my first TOURIST MADHOUSE!

First off, you think you’re going to escape the traffic jams of Hanoi on this trip, only to start your journey seeing a traffic jam of junk boats! Complete with smash up derby contact and sailors cursing! It was high entertainment.

We cruised around all day taking in the amazing scenery, and visited a pretty huge cave in one of the mountains. The guides say “enjoy a relaxing night sleeping on the boat under the moonlight.” Well, there was no way the moon was getting through that fog, and it would be relaxing only if you love the sound of old generators running all night. Not just your generator, but the generators of the 50 other junk boats parked in the same harbor! Why do they call them junk anyway?

The night on board was actually enjoyable with a wide mix of people, I think we had 11 on board plus the crew. 7 Aussies, 1 German backpacker, myself, and a Portuguese couple who I connected with right away, and then of course told them I was planning on going to Portugal. Coincidentally, we three were the only ones getting off the boat on Cat Ba Island for the 3 day adventure, so I pretty much spent most of this trip with them.

After we disembark we have a short bus ride, and then it’s straight into trekking through Cat Ba National Park with our “local guide”. He said he was 70 years old. I told him if he keeps trekking like this he’s going to live to be 95 like me. The hike continued through a tunnel shaped cave, he said it was used by locals to hide during the American war. It was scary considering we were the only ones in there, especially when the lights flickered

Then in classic local tour style, the guide takes us to his daughters house where we can relax, and buy cold drinks. haha. But really it was nice to walk through a quiet little village.

Later that day, kayaking Ha Long Bay. You get to be up close, and get to park on a beach and look at all the aquatic life making it’s home in the rocks. And wait – oh my god! – what’s that? – IT’S THE SUN!!! Right as we are getting ready to kayak the sun appears for the first time in Vietnam! Another amazing thing besides the rocks themselves were the fisherman who live in them. Our guide says “very hard life.” Indeed.

So my Portuguese friends, Joad and Teresa, were very good to hang out with. They live around Lisbon, work in the film/tv industry, are avid rock climbers and were totally salivating at the idea of getting to rock climb some of these formations. They had brought their gear, but had said there’s basically zero information available about rock climbing in Vietnam, so it was also a bit of an adventure for them to find out on their own. As it turned out it looked to be pretty challenging. Most of the rocks when you get up close have very small jagged edges. Not to mention, it is illegal to land on most of the mountains as they are protected. So they were going to stay an extra day and try to do some climbing, we’ll have to see how that went. They invited me to stay with them when I go to Lisbon so of course that is fantastic.

On the latter half of the trip we wound up with a new group for the way home. We met another couple with a cute 2 year old, who were originally from Vietnam, but moved to Australia. I mention this because they both had pretty strong words regarding the country, and kind of made me think about it more. She was from Saigon originally, and clearly doesn’t care for the “north.” Of course she’s biased, but she said “they are more friendly, and more open in the south.” And also that there is a ton of corruption and things in the north run are run by very old methods of “local council” and they are very resistant to change. So I want to see with my own eyes, but I do agree with that about the north so far.

I have certainly encountered a few friendly people here, but the majority I do not get a warm feeling from and it appears most of them are just after your money. Of course, they see tourists come and go day in and day out.

That said, these people are very hard working. I can see that everywhere. I’ve encountered few beggars, and reports I had read about rampant prostitution, like stories about them soliciting at your hotel room door, appear to be exaggerations. Or maybe that’s Saigon, I dunno. But I see a lot of people working hard for little money, which is more than I can say for the United States as a whole.

The Vietnamese do love to sing to themselves too. It’s cute.

I’m off on a train to the south tonight. Hue and Hoi An next up on the agenda.

I’ve been thinking about the “7 wonders of the world” since the beginning of my trip, but neglected to blog about it until now. I was of course wondering whether I should plan my trip around any of them, cause I wouldn’t want to miss one if I was in town.

Waaaaaay too often people casually throw out, “isn’t THAT one of the 7 wonders of the world?” Like the Hong Kong skyline. Great Wall of China? Or Borobudur. Or the Golden Gate bridge… After a while you begin to wonder, how many “wonders” are there REALLY? and why have I heard about so many different ones?

I even brought this up several weeks ago, with Tom, Cristina, Giovanni, et al, when we were traveling through Java. None of us could remember and we were all trying to play guessing games at what they were, which of course made it more confusing.

So I went to wikipedia after I got back online in Bali to clear it up. There are several lists of 7, including natural wonders, and man-made wonders of different time periods. Then there has been the “8th Wonder” of each list granted to things which seem to be conflicting. Then more recently there have been lists of official nominations, and updated lists, because those original 7 Wonders were done like a centuries ago or something.

So no wonder we’re all confused. Clear it up for yourself here.

So Ha Long Bay – ON THE LIST my Rough Guide says? No! It’s fighting the Grand Canyon for 8th wonder!

I like the Top 21 nomination list, but maybe a list of 10 or 14 would be best. More than 7 but less than 21. But what a mess. What do you think?

Vietnam gallery has begun…

So today I needed to sleep in, take it easy, and just walk around by myself and eat lots of food.

Norway girl was not going to make a good travel companion cause she was slowin me down and talked way too much. I might hang out with Chris from Scotland tonight though, as we both have cell phones.

The “Old Quarter” of Hanoi is almost impossibly crazy to try and find your way around in. A tight maze of streets that all change names after a few blocks. But I started to get the hang of it today.

My only thing I HAD to do was arrange my traveling trip that will take me the next 3 days and 2 nights to Ha Long Bay. I leave early tomorrow for that. So I’m going to presume that there will be no internet, one night on the boat and one night is in a hotel, so you never know…

Description of food was requested, so I went back and bugged the sandwich lady today. I don’t think she liked me, but her friend was helpful with the food and helping me with my Vietnamese.

Meat: Beef and Pork combo rotating next to a gas powered flame like gyro meat.
Purple cabbage (a nice touch i’d never seen before)
white onion, cucumber, cilantro (of course)
a healthy squirt of mayo
and then mystery was the hotness cause I didn’t see any peppers, but then I saw it was a bottle of red pepper sauce. that adds the kick.
all of course on a big French roll.

10,000 dong, or about 65 cents.

I bought a cool 60’s Communist propaganda poster.

I think I’m also finally figuring out this cell phone thing. In Indonesia I didn’t buy and international SIM card and was cursing out my phone trying to call the U.S. and then the instructions are never in English. But I’ve figured out that the people behind the counter will usually fix it for you cause you are in there spending money.