Keith and Lacey

It’s been raining almost solid since we arrived this morning and I took a sweet hike down to Cat Cat Village. I bought a good dark green rain poncho from a shop next door to Mountain View Hotel where we are staying. It was not enough to keep me dry though. It was raining wolves and snakes. The hike starts out going down the road. After a half mile or so you break off from the main road and start down a stone pathway. The scenery kicks butt but the torrential rain made the hike. At one point there were some stairs and the water was pouring down them like a man-made stream. Black H’mong villagers, who are the main hawkers in Sa Pa, live down there and under shelters along the way they were sewing the colorful clothing and bags that they sell. I’ll describe some of the local village tribes later. Of course, once I put pictures up there won’t be much need to describe them. I was glad I walked down there without a guide because a guide is totally unnecessary unless you want to learn history or culture. Basically, once you get all the way down to the river at bottom of the valley, there is a high path and a low path. I think most people, especially the tourists with their guides, take the low path but I of course took the high road and it was well worth it. It was funny to find a lone boy sitting under a tarp shelter towards the top selling soda and water. You find that everywhere here. I didn’t buy anything but I felt bad later because he was alone so I started back up but there were other people there by that time so I figured he was fine. The stone path goes through the terraced farms and houses they live in. I encountered a large water buffalo along the way who decided to block the path for a bit. A little later I had to let a small herd of goats and their shepherd pass. During my walk a moto driver kept asking me if I wanted a ride at least back up but it was in good humor. Instead, I fired my own pistons and booked back up the road to get some much needed exercise.

Before my jaunt to Cat Cat, I had maybe the best breakfast I’ve ever had, a place called Friendly Restaurant. It was simple: eggs, bread (the hoagie kind I mentioned before), chips (french fries, which are not uncommon up here because they have potatos), and an onion, green pepper, mushroom mix bursting with flavor.

I didn’t think there would be Internet here but it’s probably the best I’ve used so far. The weather is much cooler and nicer here but a ton of rain. Anyway, we’re leaving on a 3-day trek through the traditional very uninfluenced tribes tomorrow so I’m stoked for that!

The train last night was dodgy. Since the hotel and taxi driver had royally scammed us, I think we were both a bit sensitive to dodgyness so at first we wondered if we were even at the right place. There wasn’t really anything written in English at the train station but as I spotted what appeared to be Station B, the one we needed, a kind young man appeared and offered to help us find our way. Or more like just started helping us. We were wary but he ended up being completely legit, helpful, and nice, like most of the people we’ve encountered besides the last few I described.

We followed him down to the sleeper car where it’s four soft beds to an air-conditioned room. We shared a room with two other travelers, who occupied the second-level beds. One guy originally from New York who’s taught English in South Korea and Kyoto, Japan for the past 8 years. We didn’t talk to the other guy but he looked like maybe a tourist from Japan. The train provided a bottle of water and a long jelly-”filled” piece of bread (ban, which is similar to a hoagie roll but larger). A lady came around knocking on the doors saying, “Hello, would you like cold beer?” Sounds nice. But actually the train is filthy and overall pretty gross. Since the trains are notorious for having stuff stolen they made us store all of our packs in the compartments below the first-level beds. Then they showed us how to close and lock the door and as a final security measure they gave us this sturdy rope to wrap around the door handle and the metal step for climbing up to one of the second-level beds. Nothing compares to the bathroom though, absolutely horrible. It appeared to simply be a hole with a pipe leading directly to the side of the car and going outside. Since it’s a squatter hole in the floor, there was overshot urine and water floating around all over. An emptied Fanta bottle sat in the sink refilled with what I’m pretty sure was urine. In one of my trips to the loo I was slipping and sliding the whole time and came very close to falling in the muck. Sick.

Before I fell asleep, I wrote the following in my notebook:
“The sound of Danica’s new mp3 player somehow cuts through the loud screeching, crunching sound of rusty metal as the train lurches forward and once again I’m jerked backwards. The military-like voice of a woman blares through an intercom outside the sleeper door and a minute later we come to a jerky halt. The voice outside the door stops but seems to transfer to an intercom outside the train at whatever station we have pulled up to. I just returned from the WC where someone pee’d in a cup and left it in the sink. I wonder what inspires us to leave clean homes and muck around in places where simple communication is a challenge. But you know it was worth it once you get there.”

We arrived in Lao Cai early this morning after a pretty solid sleep despite being on a screechy creaky train and caught our pre-scheduled minibus to Sa Pa. Fifteen minutes later I know it was worth it because the 38 km drive up the 10% grade to Sa Pa reveals amazing terraced rice fields, jungle, and misty mountains, all fresh and green.

We flew to Ha Noi from Hue so not too much excitement there but we did have a little excitement once we arrived.  It was a little after 10 pm and we needed to find a ride into town from the airport.  We started talking to a couple different taxi drivers and one nice fella offered a good price.  The nice fella quickly turned from nice to suave, somewhat aloof, and suspicious.  He kept looking around like he was watching for something or someone and we followed him around a bit.  He would calmly ask us a standard question (where you from? how long in Vietnam? what’s your name?) and then not seem to listen but look around.  There was a mini-bus that a lady tried to get us on but we kept following the guy.  Once we crossed the small airport street, another taxi guy came up and said, “Don’t go with him, he’s mafia, mafia taxi.”  He then motioned for us to head back towards the mini-bus.  We hesitated for a second and then decided on the mini-bus since there were other foreign tourists on it.  Mafia taxi?  We don’t know if it was true but strange nonetheless.  We tried to ask a few different people in Ha Noi later but with the language barrier it was a bit hard to get a clear answer.  Hopefully we avoided being robbed if that was his intention.

The hotel we stayed at, the Kim Tin, screwed us over pretty well.  It’s the first place that’s been shifty with their methods of service.  They charged $15 a night for rooms and wasn’t near as nice as the ones in Hue or here in Sapa (both are $8).  The rooms smelled funny so we tried to use that as an excuse for them to lower the price but they wouldn’t, knowing it was late and we didn’t really have any other options.  Everytime we went by the front desk they would try and get us to schedule something through them, a tour, or a bus ride, or a taxi ride.  Last night we let them call a taxi for us and they said it would be 20,000 dong to take us to the train station.  When the taxi got there we said, “20,000, right?”  “30,000.”  Once again we were stuck though because we didn’t have time to do anything else.  The train station ended up being pretty close and the meter only said 17,000 dong.  But since he made us set the price at 30,000, we had to pay him that.  A fair amount of vendors try to squeeze extra dong out of you too.  They “accidentally” give you insufficient change or make an excuse they can’t find quite enough change so you end up paying like 1000 extra dong, which is only cents but still.

Despite the racket I just described, Ha Noi is a pretty cool city.  There’s a lake that looks completely green near the hotel we were at.  We’d booked train tickets in Hue and we had to pick them up in Ha Noi so I grabbed a cyclo in the morning to take me to the office we’d booked through.  It was my first cyclo ride and provided a lot of opportunity to look around.  A cyclo is a bicycle with a big seat on the front of it.  You sit in the front with a great view and the driver trucks you around.

On the cyclo, I had fun checking out a wide assortment of vendor shops and one lady on the back of a moto wearing a black dress with the words “love,” “flirt,” and “sexy” in bright pink.  Motorcycle helmets (although I didn’t see any one of the thousands of motorcyclists in Ha Noi with one on), motorcycle seats and wheels, refigerators, a Vespa Boutique (I never saw a Vespa on the road though), and a ton of Nokia and Samsung stores.  Later, after more wandering of the streets, we found that the stores tended to be differentiated in the city quite noticeably.  As in, there’s the shoes area, the sunglasses area, the tailor area, the souvenoir area, the camera area.

The camera area.  After picking up the train tix, I decided to become familiar with the camera area.  That’s because about 10 minutes into the cyclo ride my digi-cam broke!  The lens simply stopped moving in and out.  Totally stuck and giving me E18 in the lower left corner of the screen.  Boo!  I asked the peep’s at the booking office if they knew a place I could get it looked at and they found out where I was staying and graciously directed to a nearby camera area.  I had the driver drop me off there and I started looking around.  The second shop I went into said their repairman was off that day.  Yikes!  I kept trucking down the road around the lake and to my happy surpise, the next shop I went into seemed to know exactly what was wrong and said they could fix it by the afternoon for 400,000 dong.  Better than having to buy a brand new one for $400.  The shops had the Asian version of my camera so the though of buying a new one definitely crossed my mind.  I’m just glad it happened in a large city where I had the option of repair or buying new!  Luckily, they fixed it on schedule and I’m happily plugging away on pictures again.  Whew!

Random ladies carry anything from fruit to bras on two baskets attached to a long piece of wood and they carry it on their shoulders.  Impressive.  Something else I find interesting are the red banners with yellow Vietnamese writing put up by the government that I assume is propaganda.  Once in a while we come across a random speaker attached to a telephone pole or something and it also sounds like propaganda that’s being spoken.

I made a list of common motorbikes.  The most popular is the Honda Wave.  There are older and newer versions of them, the newest being the Wave II I think.  Other prevalent bikes are the Honda Future, the Suzuki Best, and the Suzuki Viva.  Less common are Attila, Classica, Panaka Sirius, and an old one, the Honda Dream.

Danica purchased an mp3 player filled with pop music and Vietnamese music and we shared it while taking a cyclo tour around the city, since she hadn’t been in on the fun earlier in the day.  Adding some music to the journey was sweet and if I do more traveling, I will definitely bring an mp3 player.  Unfortunately, it’s already out of commission because we can’t figure out how to charge the stupid thing or replace the battery.  It has Sony written on it but I’m thinking we may have been spoofed.  We both read the manual and there’s no indication of how to charge the battery or replace it.  Plus, the manual does not say Sony anywhere on it.  Huh?

Another attempted scam.  The cyclo driver had agreed to take us on an hour tour for 50,000 dong but at the end he says, 50,000 for each and since there are two of us, 100,000.  Yeah right, I’d given him an 100,000 bill because I didn’t have a 50,000 so Danica grabbed back out his hand, said “No way” and ran across the street to get change.  Haha, we were able to avert that scam.

That concludes my stories of Ha Noi.

We wandered around until we found the road that goes to Thanh Tuah Bridge, a 6 km journey that LP recommends doing, not for the bridge but for the journey.  The rain and mud and people walking, bicycling, and motorbiking around us commingled into a very sweet trip indeed.  The first part has straggling hawker-type shops and stalls but there are a couple jungly streams flowing perpendicular to the road.  On our first attempt at finding the road we stopped at a bridge over one of these streams and spotted a banana boat with husband and wife slowly navigating through large green river paddies (don’t know what else to call them). Five to ten minutes later on the right road we stopped at another stream only to find the same boat crossing underneath us. To clarify, the stream is maybe 15-20 feet across and the bridge just high enough to allow the small boat to pass underneath.

About 1 km out the straggling shops completely disappear and it opens up to beautiful rice fields and trees and misty mountains in the background. Needless to say, stunning. Often when we come across areas like this I wish I could take thousands and thousands of photos to try and capture it all. While I know we are getting some amazing photographs, there’s nothing like experiencing it. You’re surrounded, encompassed, enveloped by miraculous nature. We stopped at one point where the road bends and I stood in the bend and every direction I turned was a photo opportunity.

We stripped off our ponchos a couple kilometers into the ride when the rain stopped. There were old rundown paint-chipped temple places along the way that had some fantastic artwork. I’m not into the temple thing but these ones were kind of cool. There were a group of girls standing in the entrance to the yard of one of them. Danica asked them if they were at school and they said they were but it’s always hard to tell if they know what they are saying yes to. I’m sure we do the same thing, we don’t know what they say so you just smile and nod. But if that truly was their school, converted from an old temple, it was a pretty amazing place to have school. I don’t have the temples figured out. Most of them seem fairly old, rundown, and out of commission but then I think if we were to go in them we might find a Buddha shrine with burning incense. Even though they are decroded I think they are in commission and people randomly use them at random times. The other people who use them may be decroded and elderly people with nothing better to do than rot away in a temple. I don’t mean that to sound as harsh as it came out.

Before we knew it, we were at the covered bridge, which of course wasn’t all that cool. We didn’t see a single other tourist on the trek out there but as soon as we got there a bunch of them on motorbikes magically appeared with nice rain ponchos that wouldn’t tear. Danica went up on the bridge so I could snap a pic and this old Vietnamese lady in a stunning white dress, eyeliner, red painted nails, and a cone hat immediately pounced on her and began telling her she had an American husband who died a while ago and blah blah and that’s her story and now she would like to read Danica’s palm and tell her her future story. Inside the bridge (since it’s covered) was a little Buddha shrine with burning incense of course. They are everywhere. Inside the hotels, sometimes almost hidden but they seem to be always be there. Anyway, we got some pics and Danica began peeling and eating a pamello, a tasty fruit.

I had to take a leak real bad but there wasn’t a good spot to hide and do it. So I started wandering around a bit until I found a spot not too conspicuous. While standing in my spot, I looked down the river and lo and behold I see kids swimming! Thinking of Aqua Dulce’s request, I started down the road to investigate. I got down there and when they spotted me they charged out of the water, which included climbing over a banana boat, to request pens and money. I had nothing to give but I had my camera and they said, “Picture! Picture!” and made clicking gestures with the hands. So I took a couple pictures and then of course they wanted money. I said sorry but I didn’t have any and one of the boys understand and said, “It’s ok.” Another boy began to gesture for money again but the boy who understand pushed him and said, “No, it’s ok.” Then they wanted to take pictures with my camera but I wasn’t willing to hand it over so they settled with me taking more and more pictures. Three of them stood on the boat, which acted as a sort of gate to get into the river, and when I took they shot they jumped off backwards into the river in unison. Right then Danica pulled up her bike. I quickly threw aside my pack, shirt, and sandals and charged into the river, following the example of the boys by climbing into the boat, standing on the edge, and jumping in. The water was only a few feet deep so I hit the ground but it was soft. In the center it was a little deeper, maybe to my chest, but the ground was super mucky and sick feeling on the feet. I swam around a bit, jumped off the boat some more and had a great time. A large crowd of children had gathered by this time to watch the gangly white dude jump into the river like a 10 year boy. Outstanding.

We are off and running now to catch a ride to the airport and fly to Ha Noi. It only takes about an hour and will be a nice break from boring bus rides. Tomorrow night we board an overnight train to Sa Pa, which I doubt will have any Internet. Hasta river swimming!

As we were walking down the streets of Hue to search out a Lonely Planet recommended hostel, a 25 year old Vietnamese bloke came running after us and says, “Stay at my hotel, it’s brand new, 8, 10, and 12 dollars.” I looked up at it and it was pretty impressive, skinny and tall, 5 floors, which is quite tall in these towns. We checked it out and got him to us nice air-con rooms on the fourth floor for 8 bucks. He showed us pretty much the exact same rooms on the 2nd floor and said 15 dollars, so apparently the price goes down the higher you go. Weird.

But that little story has nothing on weird compared to what we just came from, a traditional musical performance on dragon boats out on the Perfume River. The “resessinist” (receptionist) ended up walking us all the way the river from the hotel because the man who was supposed to lead us took off on a motorbike. Ok. We had no idea really what was going on but we just followed our resessinist, along with a Vietnamese family staying at the hotel. The walk wasn’t too far, maybe a quarter mile and we started seeing dolled-up Vietnamese women in traditional dresses and men carrying cases containing traditional musical instruments.

The river and the gobs of dragon boats came into view obviating any questions as to what a dragon boat is. It’s basically an old rickety barge decorated in like a 1960’s Vegas-style dragon frame. There were smaller boats with a single large dragon head on the front and then the dualies with two large dragon heads, one on each side of the front. After mucking around on the dock area for a while (our resessenist seemed to be looking around for a random boat that had enough room to squeeze us on), he finally led us to a small plank which got us onto the boat. The boats are quite hilarious. It looks like they decorated them about 40 years ago and have never bothered to upgrade. There’s curvy gold colored curtains lining the top of the windows, 4 little beach balls hanging from the ceiling, and a fakey porcelain chandelier swinging in the middle. Every time I took a step on the floor I was waiting for my foot to go through. In the center of the floor was a table with single bagged roses lying on it. The rest of the floor was full of red plastic chairs, maybe 40 or so. The whole scene was pretty classy…

We found a seat in the back and watched the boat fill with Vietnamese tourist families, or maybe families out for a fun evening on the town. It was bizarre to see these Vietnamese families who looked like middle-class Americans in style and dress out enjoying some traditional music in dragon boats. I don’t know how to express it but it was unlike anything I’ve seen over here. It was this strange mix of traditional Vietnamese music, Las Vegas, and middle-class America.

To start the boat, a blue collar Vietnamese man with a cigarette hanging from his mouth, went over to a corner of the room we were in, cleared out a few chairs, lifted up a loose board in the floor, jumped down in the hole, and fired her up. A second later he popped back out, replaced the board and the chairs, and then disappeared. Our boat, along with scores of other boats coming and going randomly, puttered out into the river, the instrumentalists set up their instruments, and the singer girls adorned their heads with traditional hat things to complement their dresses.

Once out in the middle, the man with the cig descended into his hole again and shut the engine off. Shortly after, announcer/singer, began speaking in Vietnamese, introducing the performers and talking about who knows what. We did not know this activity is for Vietnamese, not English-speakers. Not that they care we aren’t Vietnamese, but that’s the whole deal, they don’t care that we don’t understand Vietnamese. I loved it though because we were totally apart from the crowd with no idea what was really going on. After the short introduction they quickly went into the music. It’s very twangy and Asian sounding. The singing is bendy with quarter step intonation clashes. I dug it but don’t think Danica was very keen. At first, the instrumentalists played a song with the singer girls rhythming with teacups and wood sticks, then the 4 or 5 girls sang with the instrumentalists and then each girl took a turn soloing with the instrumentalists. Basically, just like many other normal musical performances.

The whole scene was really funny, definitely the most bizarre thing I’ve come across. During the intermission, the singer ladies brought out all these square paper bowls in bright colors with a candle in the middle and began lighting them. All the kids and many adults pounced on them and took them out to the front of the boat and placed them in the water. So all these lights are floating in the river.

Remember the single dragon head boats I mentioned? These boats that must be for the poorer Vietnamese because they somehow latched on to the side of us and leeched. After the “light” intermission, in which I scored an opportunity to sit in the middle of the singer girls and get a picture taken, they began musicking again but this time random people from the crowd would grab one of the roses on the table, slide over next to the girl singing, hand them the rose and then their family would take a picture of them. The performance wasn’t all that long, maybe an hour total, but towards the end the spectators were getting louder and louder talking and laughing and drowning out the singers. Perhaps an analogy would be a free symphony concert in a park or something. They were selling soda and snacks and Danica was able to haggle with them a bit and get a good price on some sweet orange Miranda soda.

All in all it was a very strange cultural experience. On the walk back we shared a lot of head-shaking, laughing, and puzzled looks.

A funny thing happened earlier in the day I forgot about. As I was walking away from the hotel, a Vietnamese moto driver stopped and asked if I needed a ride and where I’m from (as usual). In very good English, he told me his son lives in Massachusetts so I think he was excited to see an American. Apparently he’s learned a few other American things besides the language because he then proceeded to give me a gangsta handshake: standard to arm wrestle to thumb war concluded with the 3 fist knock – top, bottom, front. It felt like I was back in the hood.

The bus ride from Hoi An to Hue is pretty scenic. A healthy amount of green jungle fawna adorns the roadway and beyond. There is even a mountain pass.

I haven’t filled in the names of the previous blog of the girl we met on the bus to Da Nang and her boyfriend so they are Mai and Viet. Viet, the boyfriend, is an electical engineer and Mai told us he worked a bunch on a recently completed 6 km tunnel between Hoi An and Hue.

6 km is a long tunnel. As we went through it you couldn’t see the light at the end even though is was almost perfectly straight. They said that the tunnel has made the bus trip much faster, which we are thankful for after riding so much already.

While waiting to baord the bus at the hotel in Hoi An, another white traveler dude noticed my Special Olympics t-shirt from Montana.

He said he grew up in Billings but has been teaching English in Japan for the last 7 years or something. He had just come from checking out some sports info about University of Montana, Montana State University, and Eastern Washington University.

He told me EWU is slated as number one this year for football. Interesting that I get updated about my alma mater’s football team while in Hoi An, Vietnam. Ha. He also said that he goes home once in a while and works construction to make some real money.

The interesting thing is that he worked on the road to ritzy area I think Dayne has been working at near Bozeman. Anyone know the name of that area? This guy told me and it sounded right but I don’t remember now.

The last notable thing about this bus ride was this super skinny backpacker tourist girl who looked anorexic. Her arm diameter was no larger than 3 finger widths. There is so much rad food over here I don’t know how on earth she would choose to stay so boney.

Child exploitation seems to be pretty common over here. Since the younger kids tend to know a little English, their parents like to use them for trying to sell stuff. The girl waiting on tables at the Banana Split Cafe where I previously blogged from looked like she was about 12. Danica asked her how old and she said 16 so she just looked young. Despite that slight contradiction, child exploitation is prevalent. While getting some dessert at a cafe in Hoi An little kids were walking from across the street where their parents were at and coming up to all the tables outside containing foreigners. They are like, “Postcards? You want Tiger Balm? Tiger Balm very good.” You say “No thank you” and they retort, “Necklace? You like bracelet?” while holding up handfuls of the stuff. After a few minutes they finally give up and walk back across the street and talk to their parents. We don’t know what they say but we wonder whether it’s simply, “They won’t buy” or “Those stupid rich Americans are selfish.”

I read Danica’s blog for the first time yesterday and felt totally unworthy to blog about Hoi An but a day has passed and I’ve forgotten enough of her connotative imagery that I think I can use my words now.

We got up Monday morning at the crack of dawn, 5 am, to go on a sunrise boat ride. The boat is small, old, rickety, weather-worn, has eyes painted on the front for good luck (which are mostly worn off now), and is shaped like a banana. The shape lets it glide through the water like a champ. For this morning ride, we had 2 ladies rowing, Em and Cat. Em is 45 but Cat must be younger because she’s 7 months pregnant. 7 months pregnant and rowing us youngun’s around on the river at 5 in the morning. The ride was nice and peaceful, an awesome way to start the day. Sometimes the only noise were the 2 oars sliding gracefully in and out of the water. Each woman had only one oar and they were able to paddle on only one side the boat most of the time, which I suppose is due to the shape and make of the boat. Em said someone made the boat for her 8 years ago when she started giving boat rides to tourists instead of fishing. I wish I had a sweet boat like that, but not to give tours, just to selfishly use myself. Ha.

There are large fishing nets all over in the river. They are square and hang from their four corners. The corners are held high enough in the air on poles so that the entire net can sit above the water. The corners are then somehow attached to a pulley system off to the side so when they want to fish, they unleash the pulley system and the net falls flat into the water and sinks. Em told me they leave the net in for maybe 40 minutes to an hour (I’m not always totally sure of myself when I quote stuff like this though because communication is hard with limited English). When the net is pulled up their are hopefully nice fishes captured. I could see men in their banana boats, just like Em’s, riding around the raised nets pushing up on them so I’m thinking they were getting the fishes out the net and into their boats? I’m not sure how they process works. On the first boat ride with Em the night before, I asked her what kind of fish. She said, “In ocean, big fish. In river, small fish.” On the morning ride, we went towards the ocean but never reached it as it was quite a ways. A while into the ride, they asked if we wanted to keep going or go back and I said I wanted to keep going so we ended up going around a good sized island in the middle of the river. I felt kind of bad for making them row so much but it’s so beautiful out there. On the return ride, Cat handed me the oar so I got to row for a bit. I facing backwards though so I had to push with the oar instead of pull so my left arm got tired fairly quickly (plus, I can’t admit that some older lady could out-row me). When I started rowing, Cat says, “You very strong.” Haha, yea right. I’m definitely stronger than them but lack the toughness and stamina they’ve built from rowing daily for 8 years, 7 days a week. The first night just Em took us out, she asked us how much money we spent to fly over. “A thousand dollars each,” Danica said. Em replied, “For thousand dollars I work maybe 20 years.” Whoa. On a side note, I looked at my Savings account balance yesterday so I could see it in dong (the Vietnamese currency) and it was something like 188 million. Saweet!

After we returned from the sunrise boating, I crashed for a little more sleep and Danica went out with Em to start doing some shopping. Hoi An is known for the tailor shops where you can get anything and everything under the sun made, clothing that is. Shoes, shirts, jackets, suits, trousers, and it’s all super cheap. $200 suits for 50 bucks kind of cheap. It’s all hand made so you can make all your own designs too. The only bummer is that we had to ship it home, which cost about $80. But it’s handmade and unique so it’s worth it. For Danica’s shopping experience, read her blog, make sure you read the part about the fight that broke out between Em and a tailor lady! After I woke up, I too started my shopping journey. I decided to look around to have a long wool jacket made and maybe a suit. The tailor shops are everywhere, you can’t avoid them. Some are in their own shop along the streets and others are in a big central market area. Everywhere you go the shop ladies run out and almost grab you and start yelling, “Come to my shop, look, very nice. Come here and see my shop!” I wandered a bit and went with several ladies and they sit you down and hand you catalogs and start saying, “Find what you like, I make it.” The catalogs are real clothes catalogs and then they can just size you up and copy something from the catalog. You don’t have to do that though, you can have them make anything that you can describe or draw a picture of. It’s pretty sweet, it’s be cool to spend some time back home designing clothes and drawing pictures and stuff and then going there and having them make all kinds of crazy stuff. The shoes are the same deal, they’ll make anything. After a bit of browsing I figured out the best way (I speak for myself) to do the shopping: you look around for cool material ignoring (maybe saying “no thank you”) the persistent shop-ladies. Once you find cool material find a tailor shop you trust with a good price, find a style of something you want (or design it), and then figure some way to buy the material separate from the tailor. If you’re lucky though, the tailor and cool material may be at the same place. That’s how I had my jacket done. But the trousers I bought the material separate from the tailor, and like I said before I had no middle-man for my trousers. Anyway, the only real reason I’m blogging the process is in case I ever find myself back in Hoi An or as reference for someone who goes there. Since time was limited, I kind of just made up a few things. I ended up with a long brown wool jacket that goes past my knees for $40, 2 pairs of corduroy trousers cargo style in 2 different colors for $14 each, and a pair of brown and green casual shoes in soft leather for $18. Danica actually designed 2 pairs of shoes and drew pictures for them but I ended up with a design from the shelf but with my own color and leather choices. I’m not really the shopping type but it’s pretty cool to get handmade stuff in a day. The tailor I had my trousers done and where Danica had a few things made was a friend of Em’s so we went directly to the tailor shop instead of going through the middle man at the market. Em’s son works at the tailor shop. It’s just the tailor’s house but upstairs there are 6 or 7 sewing machines and a couple downstairs. When I went there to pick up our stuff the upstair’s machines were all full with men and women sewing and smoking. It’s not a sweat shop deal at all, the house is really nice (as are most of the houses on the island where this house was) and it’s just the people’s jobs. We got the feeling there is quite a bit of money on that island. The tailors seem to do very well for themselves.

We rode our bikes around on the island into some areas that not many tourists get to and it was amazing. The houses were beautiful as was their “yards.” The yards are jungly-cool. Everyone shouts out “Hello” when you ride by and kids run out and ask for pens. It used to be and probably still is, unfortunately, cool for foreigners to bring pens and candy to the “poor” children. We really did not get the feeling that these children were necessarily poor. It’s just a different way of life. But it was very cool to see how excited everyone out there seemed to be to see tourists. As we rode down a road right next to the river, one older man with a missing arm walked by and shortly after I stopped and turned around. Somehow he’d quickly grabbed his grandchild and was showing himer (him or her, i don’t remember) to Danica. More people started coming out of their houses and saying “Hello!” which I think was all they knew in English. Pretty much same deal for me for Vietnamese, “Sin chao.” Just after the mangrandchild there was a husband and wife working on one of those banana boats. We asked if we could take a picture and they were more than happy. The wife was playing around and poking her husband and laughing and stuff. All the neighbors were out watching and laughing too. Later down the road a group of five kids were out playing on the street and they ran up to us holding out their hands, “Dollar? Dollar? Pen?” We decided to give them a dollar if they let us take their picture. They all grouped up and smiled and laughed and after we took the picture they all ran up wanting to see the picture. I showed them on my digi-cam screen and they all pointed and laughed and jumped and squeeled like kids do. Then the grandmother (I think) came out while Danica was holding the dollar bill with 5 giggling/squealing kids marauding her. Somehow Danica wrestled the kids’s hands from her arm and hand to give the dollar to the grandmother. Then the grandmother said we could do another picture with her in it and I went over and joined in too. It was awesome to see their excitement. When that picture was taken they all ran over and enveloped Danica to see it of course. The last notable thing on the ride was shortly after when a group of 5 or 6 guys sitting on the road asked us to join them in drinking some beer. They looked friendly and it would have been fun, maybe if it was soda.

Before we explored the island via bicycle, we bicycled out to a beautiful beach 4 or 5 “keelo-meters” from town. This beach is more what we thought might be at Tonle Sap. By now we’ve learned not to expect what we envision. This beach was fancy resort georgous. A long line of lay-back beach chairs with colorful umbrellas. Fat white blokes in aqua colored spandex. White sand and hawker kids and ladies offering anything from soda to massages to 20 year old cigarettes to leg shaving to pineapple to Tiger Balm. I didn’t bring any money and I would tell them that but still they offered. I’m an American, I must have money. One oddity (for my part) is there were no waves. You could swim that way though, I was wishing I had a snorkel and flippers, but the water probably wasn’t clear enough anyway. So we cycled between water and laying in the sand until it was time to head back and pick up some clothes.

Later that night after we thought we were all done having clothes made we stopped at a shop where Danica saw a sweet jacket with a big full fancy collar. After a quick look at the materials, she found the key, bright pink corduroy!

We are now in Hoi An, which is in the middle of Vietnam. We had a horribly long bus ride starting last night from Ho Chi Minh City. We left at 5:40 pm last night and didn’t get here until 12:30 pm this afternoon. It honestly was not much fun. That is until we started talking to the one girl who knew some English. She was really cool (and pretty I have to say but she has a boyfriend, heh heh) and was incredibly nice. She was meeting her boyfriend for a summer break from school and when we arrived she invited us to eat lunch with them. We ate lunch with them and they wouldn’t let us pay and then they made sure we caught our bus from Da Nang to Hoi An. That bus from Da Nang to Hoi An was the slowest bus ride ever. But was kind of cool because it was average Vietnamese Joe bus and quite cheap. And it was nothing like the long bus trip we’d just come from.

I cannot believe how annoying the bus horns are. Luckily this time we were sitting towards the back of the bus. It’s like a constant honking noise. I woke up last night sometime to find us going over a pass and passing very large semi trucks on a windy tiny two lane road. I watched as the driver would start blaring his horn and flashing his lights and then cut into the left lane to pass on the inside of a corner and then narrowly make it back into our lane to miss the oncoming bus. Everything on the road was a semi or bus. I’m sure we actually missed the oncoming by seriously a couple of feet. That’s when I decided to just go back to sleep…

At 6 am they turned the Vietnamese TV station back on and had the volume cranked. Apparently it was comedy like the night before because the peop’s on the bus would all laugh, except us because we don’t know Vietnamese! But the cool girl we met assured me it was funny.

Here’s an interesting piece of analyticalizm. The cool girl (I don’t want to say her name right now for some reason) is going to a university in Ho Chi Minh City. Previous year she worked part-time while going to school but had to stop because she failed some exams. Anyway, she made 800,000 dong a month working part-time as a real estate agent. That’s $50 a month. The rent for her flat costs 1,000,000 dong per month but her parents are supporting her. 1,000,000 dong = $63 a month. When she graduates with her economy degree she can probably get a job that pays 5,000,000 dong a month, which is a whopping $313 a month.

We’ve started using motorbike taxis for transportation as much as possible. They are cheap and very fun. I can’t stop smiling whenever I ride on them. They just weave in and out of traffic and honk like there’s no tomorrow and it works. We haven’t rented any to drive ourselves yet but plan to. Tomorrow we plan to do some bicycling.

We just got back from a sweet boat ride by a very nice lady. She had a single oar and sat on back. The boat is really small and shaped like a banana. She spoke good English and was quite humorous. She’s giving us a sunrise ride in the morning with coffee, and then she’s supposed to get us some authentic pointy hats, and then we may even eat authentic dinner at her house tommorow evening! Awesome.

Now we’re eating some dinner at an Internet cafe across from our hotel but I’m doing more blogging than eating so now it’s time to eat. Hasta spring rolls.

Last Wednesday we had a decent aircon bus ride from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City. The border crossing was nothing like Thailand to Cambodia; it only took maybe a half hour. The ride was pretty uneventful and when we arrived in Ho Chi Minh we set out to book train tickets north. However, we ended up cancelling the tickets and spent some time around Ho Chi Minh City with some cool people we met.

During that time some notable things happened.

I got a haircut, a Vietnamese haircut that makes me look “handsome.” It was sweet though. The lady knew absolutely no English but I had a translator just tell her to make it look good. Getting a shave was also part of the deal. I felt sorry for her in doing that because I had a week and half old beard, which is way more hair than a Vietnamese week and a half year old beard.

I lived the good life for a couple days in a nice $12 hotel with hot water and air conditioning. I actually woke up a little cold from the aircon. There was a bird in a cage there that thought it could speak so it and Danica spoke Vietnamese back and forth for a while, which was entertaining for obvious reasons.

We got to hit the beach for a while and get some swimming in. The water is warm! Not SoCal warm, actually warm! It was sweet except the waves weren’t real predictable so body surfing was quite difficult.

Woke up this morning feeling refreshed and ready to go. I had some tasty banana “pancakes” at the guesthouse, which is chopped bananas inside a crepe. It tasted awesome though and D had some scrambled eggs mixed with spices and stuff that was tasty too.

The bus was not what it was supposed to be, with no toilet and no two-levels. We may be able to get some money back because the lady in Siem Reap gave us a guarantee.

We did get the front row as promised but perhaps we should have not gotten the front seat on this trip. The driver honked his horn so much on the five-hour drive.

We couldn’t believe it, it was so annoying. We would not shut up with horn, letting everyone and their sister know we were charging though. And charging we were, with a couple near misses with oncoming traffic.

Despite the annoying horn going every 10-15 seconds, not joking, the countryside was beautiful. Beautiful wet rice fields and thatched houses raised up off the ground.

The countryside is very green and most of the houses are a nice brown that compliments the greenery.

When we arrived in Phnom Penh, a few hours ago now (Yay, i’m finally catching up on my blog), we were genuinely swarmed with tuk-tuks, motos, and guesthouse recruiters.

They were literally on me, I had probably 6 guys touching me and shoving guesthouse posters in my face and going “tuk-tuk, moto ride, you need ride? stay here at Lake House, tuk-tuk.”

It was crazy, so I worked my way over to the other entrance onto the bus and re-entered so I could grab my big pack without a swarm.

We had a couple ideas for guesthouses and found a moto driver (2 actually, one for each of us but they were together) to take us.

On the way they explained that their guesthouse is right next to ones we were interested in so they would take us there first to look at if that was ok. They pulled along side each other so D and I could discuss and we said that would be ok. They also offered us marijuana and my driver offered me ladies.

We decided to pass on the weed and women (this time…haha) but we did end up liking their guesthouse better than the one in the LP so we’re staying there at $3 a night. It’s right on the Tonle Sap River and has a cool place to hang out right outside of the rooms that looks out over the river. So, since I told Danica I’d be done in about a half hour and it’s been more like an hour, I’d better take off so we can get some dinner and watch the sunset over the river.