My Protanoptic Life

On the morning of May 28th our alarm failed to go off, or at least we didn’t hear it, but I somehow managed to wake up about 15 minutes before our bus arrived. We hurriedly packed and got downstairs with just a few minutes to spare. Tien tried to find us some breakfast but the neighborhood we were in was mostly construction type shops so she only managed to find some snacks before the bus came and took us away.

There were many europeans on the bus, it was almost entirely full of white folks. The narrow streets of Hanoi were already full of life and packed with motorbikes. We passed by the lake where a street was closed off for a festival that was just beginning. We stopped at a few hotels to pick up other folks, and then stopped at the cathedral to wait for somebody. It was at that time that Tien realized she’d forgotten her bag at the hotel. The bag that had the iPad in it. In her typical stressed out mode, she forgot all english and began blabbing away in Vietnamese with the bus driver and some other folks, and didn’t really say anything to me or answer any questions. She told me to wait, and went to hail a moto taxi. I chatted with a girl from The Netherlands for about 10 minutes before Tien came back, relieved to have her bag in hand.

At 9am we headed out for Ha Long City. Traffic was heavy on the way out of Hanoi, and I noticed again how the number of cars just seemed to mess up the flow of traffic. Tien and I drank water and ate Oreo cookies for breakfast.

We passed the charred frame of a motorbike that stood up in its own ashes as if it had immolated itself at the side of the highway, probably protesting the rise of the cars.

We passed factories for Canon and Foxconn in the countryside.

We pulled off at a travel stop for 20 minutes. Tien and I got some pomelo and bananas. I was hoping to find a better breakfast, but they don’t know how to make breakfast sandwiches yet in Vietnam. I could make millions selling them… Millions of Dong.

We passed a few auto accidents along the way to Ha Long, one involving a motorbike and one where a car had driven up the side embankment and crashed into a pole, finishing sideways, squished between the pole and the hillside. It was a remarkable sight, I’m not sure if anybody died, but it looked like they should have but didn’t.

Soon after the car crash we arrived at the outskirts of Ha Long City where the bus dropped us off at the docks. Tien and I were the only two folks on the bus left who weren’t going on the cruise, and it felt kinda nice to be sitting there with just the two of us, ready to do whatever we felt like, far away from obligation. The tour guide from the group came over and asked us if we wanted to go on their boat to Cat Ba Island, which is precisely where Tien and I were headed, so we agreed to take their tour for 250k each. It was expensive for a boat ride, but included the Ha Long Bay tour, dinner and a cave tour, so it was a pretty good deal.

The boat we boarded was a typical asian junk. Ours had three levels: rooms downstairs, a dining room in the middle and an upper deck. Dinner was served shortly after taking off. Tien and I sat and chatted with some other travelers and it was good to be back in the company of english speaking, active people. Only one of them was from America, the rest were brits, french and other countries that I never learned. Tien was the only Vietnamese person on the tour that wasn’t working. She mostly listened while I blabbed away with the brits about traveling, culture, food, work, and destinations. One of them, a man named Paul who we’d run into many times on the island, was traveling from London to Australia to work. He’d been traveling for a few months and had a few weeks left. Most other folks were just traveling for fun, some for weeks, some for months.

After dinner most of us went up on the deck to take in the sights as we approached the islands of Ha Long Bay. The boat pulled into a bay and docked with a bunch of other junks and we all got off to explore Thien Cung cave. It was a cool cave, but there really isn’t much to see inside most caves. There was an opportunity to go to another cave, but Tien and I declined and instead went to take some photos and relax.

Everybody returned to the boat and we traveled onwards, through the islands and into a market area where there were many floating houses that were used as a fish market and other business related things. There were girls floating around on boats with their fruit all laid out for sale. They paddled up next to us and shouted out, sounding like retarded people with a heavy lisp, saying “eck-u me, pine-appo” and things like that. It was cute, and their boats were beautiful with the colored fruit, but Tien and I already had some fruits we’d bought earlier so we didn’t buy anything. Instead, we decided to go with a small group on a little tour of an enclosed part of the bay, completely surrounded by cliffs, almost like a lake except it was salt water. We took a small local boat in and a few of us swam around for a while before returning through another natural tunnel.

A short rest on the boat later we were pulling up to Cat Ba Island, which looked like a pretty treacherous place, and seemed like it would be more than one island. Indeed it would be if the water were deeper, the landscape rose and fell just like the islands sticking out of the water, but came down to land at the bottom.

Anybody who wasn’t sleeping on the boat was dropped off on the island. We were, once again, dropped on the completely opposite side of the island from the town. Tien managed to negotiate some kind of bus ride, still with the tour, and after sitting for 10 minutes or so a group of us got in and headed over the crazy terrain.

There was one sign at the front of the bus, and it was written in Korean. I’m sure nobody on the bus knew what it said. The ride took 30 minutes and we passed by many, many beautiful views. The steep hills fell down to flat fields where different foods were grown, some ponds and rivers, and countless steep hills. On top of one of the hills was a tower standing tall, and I made a joke about climbing up it. A lot of other people were blabbing away in their native languages, and a group behind us was chatting in english about their travels.

As we pulled into town, Paul and some of the folks he was talking to were trying to find a hotel in the guide book. We all got out right at the main intersection of the town, and after looking at one hotel that had no vacancy I decided Tien and I would probably be better off walking around trying to find a hotel. We went one block and found a place where we negotiated with a slimy guy who I didn’t like much. Tien said she also didn’t like him much because of some things he did or said that showed he looked down on her. The hotel room actually kinda sucked too, no AC, no internet, and a bed wrapped in plastic with a tiny blanket.

We took a short rest and then went out for dinner. There were a lot of people riding tandem bicycles around and we thought about getting one, but decided to do it another day. Instead we returned home and fell asleep. Some time during the night, Tien got up and found some towels to use as blankets. The next morning we woke up and the power was out. It was a dreary morning. We decided to find a new hotel.

Finding a hotel has become much easier now that I know to use my iPhone to do it. I don’t look it up online, that’s pretty tough over here where there are no centralized review sites like yelp. Instead, I go into the network settings and look for wifi hotspots with hotel names, then I go to that hotel. Any hotel who has wifi that my iPhone can find from the street has got to be good. The only downside to this is that sometimes these hotels are expensive, but at least it helps weed out the crummy places.

We walked out to the end of the pier that stuck into the bay where dozens of boats were docked. Some were fishing boats, some were floating hotels, some were restaurants. It was a good way to get a view of the shops that went along the waterfront.

We had a disappointing breakfast in a restaurant that seemed like it was closed. I was getting tired of fake coffee. One great thing though was we invented a new food. It’s the stir fried beef and noodle egg breakfast sandwich. Tien orders stir fried beef and noodles, I order egg with bread. I put the egg in the bread with some soy sauce, and she puts some beef and noodles in with it. It is *so* delicious, I’ve been eating it frequently ever since.

We went back to a place we saw the previous night while walking around looking for dinner. It was a hotel that was built into the rock cliff. There was a big room with two beds available for not much money, and we took it. We didn’t need the second bed, but it’s nice to lay things out on when you’re organizing, and for lazing around on like a couch. So, we spent the mid day heat being lazy at our hotel room.

We went to rent a tandem bicycle, but the prices were like 20k for 1 hour. A motorbike was as low as 60k a day. We had already paid the girl before we knew it was per hour, and I finally decided to let her keep the damn bike and the money because we didn’t need a bike for an hour. She finally gave my money back as I was walking away. Instead of a bike, we decided to get a moto from our hotel though, for 100k a day.

We cruised some local beaches and then headed northwest on the island into territory we hadn’t seen yet. We found a place where they were filling in a bay with mud to build a golf course. Beyond that there were beautiful, natural places, some caves, farming villages, roaming goats, and eventually a beautiful pink sunset. We stopped a lot along the way and took photos, and at sunset we decided to speed back to the town to go swimming at the Cat Co 2 beach. Unfortunately, by the time we got there the water was off limits, so we sat and had some drinks on the beach instead. I dipped my feet in the water and was suddenly not disappointed that I couldn’t go in, the water was cold. Too cold to enjoy a swim in, that’s for sure. It was a huge difference from the beautiful, clear, warm waters of Phu Quoc. Instead of sticking around, we headed back to town to get dinner at an awesome spot on the water front called Bamboo. It was recommended in the guidebook, but also looked appealing. The staff was nice and the food was great, and it was a very satisfying end to the day.

On the morning of May 27 we woke up, rented a motorbike and immediately got lost in old town Hanoi. We got really lost too, and didn’t find our way back to the lake for about an hour or two. When we finally did we stopped for breakfast. I had a western breakfast, a delicious omelette and a cappuccino. It was delicious, and a welcome change to the otherwise mediocre breakfasts I’d been subsisting on.

I managed to avoid getting a ticket for riding our motorbike on the sidewalk when Tien spotted the cops who were pulling people over, then continued on to the Ngoc Son temple. Tien had seen Hoan Kiem lake in a lot of books and on TV as a child and had always wanted to go there, and now she was finally there. It’s a special place for Vietnamese people because it has historical significance dating back a few centuries.

We went into the Jade temple and looked around. Tien went to the buddha’s and prayed in the standard way, with her palms together, raising and lowering them three times towards the statue. Watching her, I got a great idea for an iPhone game that would use the accelerometer. You’d run around a temple and pray to as many buddha’s as you could as quickly as possible. I’d call the game Buddha Blitz.

We proceeded on to the mausoleum where Ho Chi Minh was, but it ended up being closed. I was having fun riding the moto though so I didn’t mind so much. I had sold my last motorcycle a year prior and had missed riding most of that year. We cruised by some other spots on the way back to the hotel. It began raining just as we arrived, so we stayed in for the afternoon and geeked out.

We had dinner at a small restaurant that sold mostly chicken and rice, and I thought about self identity. I saw a man come in with tattoos and piercings, two things that I had at one time wanted but never gotten. I thought back about how I’d wanted to dye my hair and pierce my ears, but my parents didn’t let me do that when I was younger. By the time I was old enough to do it I didn’t want to anymore, it wasn’t part of my identity. I thought about how this detached my physical appearance from how I perceive myself. Because I couldn’t distinguish myself when I was younger, I lost the will to do so. I remembered a daydream I had while driving down 280 a few years ago. I dreamed I was running through the grass fields of the Stanford Campus by the dish. What was remarkable though was that it was the first time that I could remember since I was a kid that I saw myself from a third person perspective in a dream, I usually dream in the first person perspective. I have ended up with a weak style of physical appearance for expression, and primarily a sense of style for what is easy for color blind people to do without thinking about it. I thought about how this related to my disconnection from a lot of my own people, white american men or white people in general, and a disconnection from what people my own age “ought” to behave like.

On the way home we got Oreo cookies, potato chips, juice and beer. I got online with the wired ethernet cable I found coiled up outside the door to our room while Tien went and booked us a bus ticket to Ha Long City leaving the next morning at 8am.

Tuesday morning we woke up with the intent to go to some white sand dunes that were about 20km north. We got breakfast at a place just up the road on our way. There was a modeling show on TV and I was watching it to see what gear the photographers were using. They were interviewing the models a lot and I wondered what they were talking about. I guessed that the show was in English, but the sound was down and drown out by really loud Vietnamese music.

Over breakfast we talked about our plans and decided to go straight to Nha Trang instead of stopping along the way at some temples. Tien wasn’t excited about our bad luck finding things to do in Mui Ne, and since the second place we had planned to go was pretty remote she expected it to be much of the same.

Back on the road, we headed off into unexplored territory that looked not much like what I’d seen in Vietnam before. I caught the scent of a Colorado summer in the air. We saw a lot of farm animals, including geese that were hanging out with cows and goats and water buffalo. We passed by a lot of sand and the landscape turned into rolling hills with trees scattered around it, much like the high Colorado prairies.The road turned into dirt and sand mixed together and the motorbike became a bit wobbly because of the sand shifting under the bald tires. We could see the white sands in the distance on the far side of a lake by a small forest.

We eventually made it to a spot where a few motorbikes and jeeps were valeted at a little shack, so we did the same and began walking through some trees next to the lake that was at the foot of the white sands, through some shops, past some other tourists and up towards the sand dunes. A kid followed us much like the two from the night before, asking us to rent his sled and pointing things out to us.

We walked around a bit, but sand is sand so there wasn’t really much to see. We took some photos and the kid kept asking if we wanted him to take our picture. Eventually I conceded, thinking he might charge us for it. He took two, then had us stand somewhere else and took two more. When I looked at them I was very pleasantly surprised at his composition, each pose taking one wide and one close shot. I tipped him a few thousand dong and we headed back to our bike. He trailed behind and complained endlessly in Vietnamese that the money I gave him wasn’t clean enough and he wouldn’t be able to use it to buy cake.

Tien had driven on the way out so I got to drive on the way home. This was my first time in like 12 years riding a motorcycle on dirt. We quickly sank our rear tire in a spot where I had gotten off to walk before. We both laughed and Tien got off so I could wobble my way up out of the sand and across to where the dirt was solid again.

As we headed back the way we came, over the rolling hills and through a pretty countryside I thought again about buying a motorcycle one of these days so we could just cruise the countryside at our own pace, not having to rely on buses. I also changed my mind about Mui Ne being a lame place to go, it’s pretty nice outside of town in the countryside.

There was a herd of cattle that had been grazing in a field where there were many graves marked with swastikas, a symbol of power and not of Nazi affiliation, and now these cattle were taking up the whole road. I squeezed by and then stopped and watched a big truck make its way by, something I wasn’t sure would be easy for it to do.

When we arrived back at the hotel we returned the bike, packed and checked out, but our bus wasn’t coming for two hours. There was a warm breeze coming in through large open windows and blowing around the chandeliers in the lobby where the Internet was still broken. Tien and I decided to go wait by the beach. There were no hammocks, which was a disappointment, but we found a little table to sit at and enjoy some drinks while playing cards with the ocean waves breaking about 50 feet away. Tien kicked my ass at the game I had taught her, I only won twice.

We got one last meal in Mui Ne, then went upstairs to wait for the bus. I explained photographic composition and exposure to Tien while we were waiting, but had to finish the discussion on the bus.

After exhausting the topic of photography I realized I forgot my headphones in my backpack which was stored in the cargo area. This was a pretty bad thing to do since I was then forced to endure the most epic movie I’d ever seen and then hours of loud Vietnamese theatrical comedy.

The bus had headed north beyond the white sand dunes, introducing us to even more beautiful countryside and coastline. The bus was comfortable too so it was an enjoyable ride. We even stopped for 15 minutes at the first rest stop I’d seen that had Internet access. My iPhone GPS worked too, which kinda made sense because we were near Da Lat and it had worked there. It continued to work as we headed north and I wondered if the norh of Vietnam had the mobile infrastructure to accommodate the retarded assisted GPS in the iPhone. After all, my phone hadn’t been unlocked when I was in Hanoi, so I wasn’t sure it didn’t work there.

It began to rain right at dusk. I also began to feel sick in my throat. I had been feeling a few symptoms once in a while for the past day or so, but this was the first real evidence that I was coming down with something.

When we got to Nha Trang it was still raining lightly. As I was getting into a hotel shuttle I noticed a motorbike stashed in the cargo area of a bus, a brilliant idea that I wouldn’t have expected to be permitted.

We checked into a hotel that I’d seen reviewed somewhere online, The Manchester. Our room was on the sixth floor with an ocean view and deplorable wifi access.

On our walk to find dinner, just when I thought we’d gone the wrong way from restaurants we came across an authentic Italian restaurant where two men were talking loudly in Italian. After sitting down an older Italian man, the cook, came out to introduce the specials and show us the list of Italian wines. I got the chefs special and as I sipped my wine I pulled out my iPhone and found an Actiontec wireless network. It almost felt like we were sitting in Sunnyvale.

I dreamed about Sarah Palin doing art projects for President Obama while he was busy running all over Washington DC trying to escape the secret service because they were holding him back from doing the things he wanted to do. I woke up with Doe-A-Dear stuck in my head.

I went to take a shower, and upon increasing the “heat” dial on the electric hot water heater that was attached to the shower, the light in the bathroom flickered and went out. In the pitch black with my hand still on the dial, I decreased the temp and the light flickered back on.

After showering I got dressed I poked my head out the front door of our room and some mysteries from the previous night were unraveled. Beyond some local fishermen taking their nets out of the circular boats and emptying them there were many boats anchored not far out in the ocean. Two guys on a motorbike rode down the beach and parked near the fishermen. I wanted to ride a motorcycle on the beach.

Tien and I went to get breakfast, which was supposed to be included in the price of our hotel. On the way we passed some older Vietnamese men with a lot of missing teeth who were drinking beer and eating crabs for their breakfast. We also saw some chained up monkeys, a golden lizard that I was not familiar with, and a dozen small dogs. We found our way to the large dining area of the hotel restaurant. It was an open walled lodge type of building with a tall peaked roof and only one of the 50 or so tables was occupied.

The owner of the resort interrupted our conversation to sit with us while we were waiting for breakfast. He had much the same character as the sleazy guy on the bus the previous night and the guy we stayed with in Binh Duong. Later Tien and I would talk about how many of the Vietnamese men who go to America and come back have this very haughty attitude, and she would express her hopes of not becoming like that.

The bread was stale, the food was bland, and the price was not included with our room. Bien Nam was probably the worst deal I’ve ever gotten on a room, and I do not recommend it to anybody who is going to Mui Ne. With that in mind we went for a walk on the beach which we now saw was home to many other hotels. We walked along the beach, stopping at each to inquire about vacancy, price, wifi and to see a room. There were varying qualities of hotels and we settled on one that had wifi in the lobby, a friendly staff, a much cleaner room, a halfway decent view of the ocean, and for 25% less per night.

As we were walking along the beach there were numerous jet ski’s parked on the shore. I hadn’t seen a jet ski in Asia except on the river in Thailand, and wondered why because they’re so speedy and nimble, the aquatic equivalent of the ubiquitous motorbike. Here they were on the Pacific Ocean being used for entertainment.

We checked out of our old hotel without so much as a word from the owner asking us why we were leaving or asking us to stay and I thought that he was probably used to having one-night guests. We checked into our new hotel and took a nap. Tien was sleepy, but I was not, so after a few minutes of restless napping I got up and shaved my face and head.

When Tien finally got up we were both pretty hungry, so we decided to go to town. We stopped by the lobby to return our key and I played on their wifi just enough to discover that they had a wireless with no connection to the internet.

We went out front to try to wave down somebody to give us a ride into town. Not many people were passing by, and most already had passengers, so I thought we might as well walk down the road while trying to hitch a ride. It was remarkable though that I had been asked innumerable times before if I needed a motorbike when I did not, and here I was without one in sight. It wasn’t like Malaysia either where a taxi mysteriously appeared from behind a building just when we needed it.

We walked for a while and found some guys sitting in front of a hotel with some motorbikes there. Tien talked to one of them and he said he could find another person so we could both ride into town for 25k each. Just after he left to go find another motorbike rider willing to give us a ride, the valet told Tien that we could probably rent a motorbike for the day for not much more than 50k. A second man on a motorbike came by, then the first man came back with a third guy on a motorbike and what ensued was a long bickering argument about how we needed to rent from the guys we first spoke to even though they were not going to allow me to ride their bike, which was something we wanted. In the end I said “fuck it” and we left the three stubborn motorcyclists there and started walking down the road again.

We walked for a while and it was actually pretty nice to use my body, something I’m so used to doing in the USA but don’t get much chance to here in Asia. There were beautiful trees with flowering leaves, and the ocean was visible through a thin line of trees between the road and the beach. Eventually the second motorcyclist from the argument came up to us on the road, talked to Tien for a while and we agreed to rent his bike for a day for 180k. I’d never driven a manual without a clutch though, and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to do so without first watching Tien. As soon as she took off down the road I realized that it was just like riding an auto except you could kick a pedal to change gears without worrying about the clutch.

Renting the bike was a great idea. We were now cruising down Highway 1 of Vietnam right by the ocean with warm air on our face on our way to find food for our hungry bellies. We passed a herd of water buffalo and a bunch of people who were drying fish on screens and then found ourselves at a dead end. We were lost again.

We wandered around some coastal villages, finding several dead ends, and were just about to make some progress on finding our way to town when we got a flat tire. Obviously this was incredibly lame since I was hungry and it wasn’t our bike anyway, but at least there was a moto shop right there where we had it repaired within 30 minutes. We had to buy a new tube and kept the old one as well as the contact information of the shop who did the work. I also took some photographs, but mainly because that’s what I do.

With our new tire and some instructions on how to get to town, we headed off still in search of food for our bellies. I honestly was beyond the point of hungry and didn’t care much anymore, though I knew I should eat. We rode and rode and rode. We saw a lot of cool things, like the harbor where most of the boats anchor, some cool buildings, forests, animals, but amazingly we couldn’t find a restaurant. We passed all the way through town and out to where the sizzler was, though we never did find that, and all we saw along the way were cafes with snacks, but no real food.

We found a sign for The Mui Ne Easy Riders that said “I’ll show things the lonely planet did not.” I thought that was awesome, and it was accompanied with pictures of vietnamese bikers on proper motorcycles geared up with luggage and white people on the back.

We went all the way back through town and found ourselves lost at the first dead end we had found, which was a kite surfing camp.

Finally we gave up and went to get some gasoline and as dumb luck would have it, we found a restaurant. Too tired and frustrated to show our joy, we pulled over, ordered some food and drinks, and were promptly attacked by about 50 flies. I’d never seen a place with so many flies. I ordered a beer and the man went and pulled the bottle out of a crate of empty bottles, a hat, a helmet and other miscellaneous things. When I was done with my beer I set the glass down there were like 15 flies crawling all over it within 30 seconds. It was probably due to all the dead fish, since we were in a fishing village. We got our food to go because the flies were too much.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped to get a hot dog, which is not the same as it is in America. In Vietnam a hot dog is some kind of triangular crepe thing with no meat in it. We took a different route home and found ourselves riding along a big field of sand and trees where kids were jumping into the sand the same way I did when I was their age. We found our way up the big roads and vacant round-a-bout from the night before and were soon cruising that beautiful section of the coast again. The day was beautiful, the ocean was beautiful, I had my fiancé with me, I had hot food to put in my belly, and we weren’t lost. I was happy. So happy I had Tien stop so I could take her photo. As I was composing my shot a used trash bag blew up against my leg.

Back at the hotel we sat on our bed and watched the ocean beyond the tin roof cabana where nobody was sitting. Since it was so late, just about sunset, the heat had worn off, so we decided to go back to the sand dune park nearby and have a look around.

Children greeted us with sleds for rent to slide down the sand dunes. We valeted the bike and started hiking up the dunes. Two kids followed us trying to rent us a sled for 30k, which we were not interested in. There were a lot of other people there watching the sunset, even many white people. I always try to smile and nod a greeting to other travelers as I pass them if it’s appropriate, and it always amazes me how white people don’t want to talk to each other or acknowledge each other’s existence.

Before heading home we got some snacks and a deck of cards. Back at the hotel the internet was still down and they didn’t know why. I knew why though. It was misconfigured and was getting no responses to its DHCP queries. It probably needed PPPoE, but those settings were not remembered in the firmware, which means it may have been hard reset as a last ditch attempt to fix what is probably an unreliable DSL connection. I hate DSL.

Back in the hotel room Tien washed our clothes and we hung them to dry on a rope that I brought to use for just such an occasion, then I taught her how to play a card game that I know but don’t know what it’s called.

Saturday was a pretty lazy day. Tien and I were still recovering from our motorbike trips and I swore off ever going long distances on Tien’s scooter ever again. We did, however, plan to head north from Saigon to Mui Ne and Nha Trang the following day by bus, and hopefully also by train.

We stayed around the house all day, but that evening we went for a ride around town at sunset. I brought my camera gear and photographed some boats in the river. We turned this way and that while riding through her village, going along waterways and over bridges, waving to the folks on the boats I was photographing and to the locals we passed who beamed at the sight of a white guy.

Right before dusk I spotted a big rice paddie that hadn’t been harvested, the same one I had photographed tien at a few days earlier but on the opposite, remote side. There are so few places in Tien’s village where you can get right next to the rice paddies and I was excited to find such a great spot. On top of that, Tien said she had never been there. I was happy to have shown tien a beautiful new place in her own village. Unfortunately the light was dark and I had no tripod so I couldn’t take the photos I wanted, but I did the best I could. We sat a minute and enjoyed the vast green before us, then turned on our dirt path and headed back home.

This neighborhood was distinctly different from most of the places she had taken me. It was pretty hard to get to and far from the main roads. Most of the houses had open front walls, giving you full view into the living rooms where people were watching TV, playing with their kids, praying. Many of the houses had only a fence, not hard steel locking gate. Some had only glass windows on a locking door. I liked this neighborhood, it was like a tiny remote village tucked just 1km off the main road.

We woke up at 6am on Friday to get a head start on the floating market which only lasts the morning. When we fetched our motorbike from the valet there was a tiny blob of bird crap on my seat. Only after trying to flick it off and getting it on my fingernails did I consider bird flu.

We gassed up the motorbike on the way to breakfast. All of the gas station in Vietnam are full service, but this was the first time I noticed that their pumps are configured to turn off at 20k dong and every 10k afterwards, making it easy for them to count without looking as they fill numerous bikes.

We cruised through the city and through more construction. Bridges are the most common project after new buildings. I wished that I had a compass so I could better know where I was. I wished I had an iPhone 3gs and considered the idea of leaving my 3g with Tien. I thought maybe it wouldn’t be good to force her into an Apple world where Apple had such little penetration and thought about other smart phones, like the Droid, and contiuned down a line of thinking that many technologists have gone down where they end up damning the circularly innovating companies like Nokia and Motorola who have been busy doing nothing remarkable until Apple lit a fire under their ass by releasing the iPhone. Now everybody is releasing new platforms for smart phones that sync data (omg what an idea), have real browsers and email, and have standard platforms for app development (no thanks to Sun and Java here either.) I then continued by damning every carrier who locked their customers into contracts with a particular network and no way to get a device outside that network. iPhone, droid, pre… Three new smart phones, all locked to their providers. I silently thanked the hackers for breaking through this asinine misbehavior and allowing us to actually use the devices we have paid for. I still had no compass.

At breakfast I ordered eggs with bread and iced coffee and proceeded to burn myself on the platter my eggs were served in, then ate the peppers that were in the pan with my eggs. This day was not off to a good start.

I thought a lot about Colorado. I had decided to go back to Colorado for December to see my family and stay with my brother now that he’s out of the army and back in America and was really excited about it. It had been a long time since I’d spent a good chunk of time there, and I hadn’t spent much time with my brother in years. Hiking and video gaming, here we come.

We scooted on over to the market and found ourselves on a road running parallel to the river. We stopped so I could take some photos of the floating market and a guy who was loading watermelon into a boat offered to ride us around the market for 100k. I thought that might be a little steep, especially since he was on his way out anyways. Tien didn’t want to go with him because he didn’t have any life jackets. Even after I pointed out that he was an experienced captain and that there was a whole river full of boats that people were busy not falling out of she still didn’t agree so we went back to the corner market, valeted the bike and hired a boat with life jackets for 100k. These life jackets sat untouched and barely noticed at the front of the boat for the duration of our voyage.

It was just Tien and I with the captain as we cruised up and back down the river through innumerable boats exchanging fruits and vegetables. There were a few common styles of boats, most being the big junkers that were anchored to each other and the riverbed. Most people in junkers would sit with some of their goods on top of the cabin waiting for somebody to come by. They had bamboo poles sticking up off of their boat with example fruits tied to them so people could spot what was available at a glance while passing by. Some people were cruising around in smaller ferrying goods from here to there.

Sometimes we would be right next to the other boats and sometimes we would be far away. I kept switching between my 10-20mm lens and my 50mm, wishing I had an 18-55mm or a second body.

There were many other tourists, some in large tour groups and some with privately rented boats like ours. I saw a slightly heavy slightly balding white guy with an SLR on the back of a boat taking a lot of photos and thought I probably looked just like that. I watched my other self for a while and didn’t care much for how I looked.

As we were pulling back into port our captain gently and accidentally ran the boat into a brick wall sticking out from the steps leading I to the water. He looked back and laughed then corrected his parking job.

Back at the market we found a place to get some drinks. I got a fresh sugar cane drink that was delicious. We sat and enjoyed the drinks for a while and I thought again about smart phones and realized that the iPhone doesn’t have a Vietnamese keyboard layout.

We didn’t stay at the market long and opted instead to cruise the city. After having been the driver in Da Lat and the fact that my ass hurt so bad sitting on that seat, I really disliked being a passenger. I was missing the five contact points of a bicycle, having really only one since the motorbike was too small for the foot pegs to do me much good. I tried to enjoy the ride while looking at the river, some parks and all the local daily things, but I was honestly really happy to return to the hotel for a rest before starting the journey home.

We grabbed lunch at the restaurant that we had intended to visit the night before and then began our long and painful ride north under the mid day sun.

I saw a John Deere sign and wondered how much business they got in the Mekong where so much of the work was done by hand.

A steam roller came driving down the road going the opposite direction. Apparently in Vietnam they redo the roads while still letting people drive on them.

The billowing clouds in the sky reminded me of that song “little fluffy clouds”, which I first heard incorrectly as being by Orbital, and I decided to put them on my iPod.

After one and a half orbital albums we stopped to take a break. We looked in vain for a place with wifi and decided to settle for hammocks instead. Laying there with an ice cold drink, staring up at the ceiling of our wooden hut, tien asked me if I knew about those kinds of houses. She told me that the roof was made of coconut leaves and said that when she was a little girl her family lived in a house made that way. That was amazing for me to think about, having come from living in a house made from bamboo and coconut leaves to now, and the unknown future.

As I paid for our drinks I realized that Ho Chi Minh was on all the bills in Vietnam. I wondered why it was that only this one man was so important and how that had steered the Vietnamese culture.

Saturday morning Da Lat was colder than it was the previous day. I couldn’t tell if it was going to clear up or pour down rain on us. Regardless, Tien and I decided to rent a scooter for the day and go explore the town.

A man who worked at the hotel said we could rent a motorbike from him for 70,000, which is roughly $8 USD. We walked across the street to another hotel that was owned by the same people and Tien told them we were there to rent a moto. A girl from the hotel disappeared under the stairs into what I thought was a fountain but ended up being the way into the car port. We sat there for 5 minutes listening to that poor girl trying to start that motorbike and I couldn’t help but wonder when the last time it had been ridden was.

Eventually they brought round another moto for us that had very little trouble starting. They said that the cops in Da Lat wouldn’t pull me over for not having a license, which made sense since it’s one of the most popular tourist destinations in Vietnam. Tien was happy that I would be driving. She is a bit timid on a bike, then there is the masculine feminine factor, and then there is romance. Of course, it could also be that she just doesn’t like driving… Anyway, I got on in front, started it up and headed off in the wrong direction. As I was pulling a U turn I realized that riding a scooter is different from a motorcycle, and riding and automatic is different from a manual. Also, I had only once ever taken a passenger on a motorcycle, and that was just to give Lisa a ride around the block on my Honda CM450C before I sold it. This scooter took some getting used to, but I got the hang of it in a few hours and felt as comfortable as ever on two wheels.

The first thing we did was buy a map of the town that showed local attractions. This proved to be both useful and useless, depending on just where we were busy getting lost.

The first place we went was Da Lat University. Tien said she had seen it on TV and it was beautiful. We got gas and got lost before finding it on top of a hill north of the lake near downtown. We parked and walked into the campus and discovered that this was not the place Tien had seen on TV. While I took some photographs Tien cleared up the confusion by asking a student where the place she was looking for might be. He showed her on the map where it was, the Teacher Training College.

We left the campus and got lost again before finding the other college which was on a hill opposite the big lake in the center of town. It was indeed more picturesque, but Tien was disappointed that it wasn’t more beautiful. There was a couple taking wedding photos by the brick archways along side the building.

It was mid day by then and I got the brilliant idea to have lunch on the lake. The day was bright, and too breezy to open the awnings to shade is from the mid day sun. The restaurant was a tourist restaurant and the food was accordingly disappointing. Tien barely ate any of it and I was just hungry enough to choke most of it down. Beer cost 4x what it was other places and the “classic club sandwich” had eggs on it.

While we were at the restaurant I tried out the GPS on my iPhone and for the first time ever in Vietnam it worked. I pulled up the geocaching app and found that there was a geocache by Trúc Lâm. I also pulled up lonelyplant.com and found a few choice attractions, one of which was not on the map. We paid for our terrible food and left.

After what must have been 30 or more minutes of driving around in circles we found our way to the Hang Nga Crazy Couse. This place was not at all what you’d expect to find in Vietnam. In fact, this was more like Disneyland or something, but it was actually a persons house at one time. An employee there who was very hard to understand told us that the architect had gone to school in Russia and had come home to build this in 1990. I couldn’t understand much else of what she said, and I wondered how on earth people who spoke such awful english got jobs at tour places while the man at the front desk of our hotel spoke English almost impeccably.

Tien and I wandered the house for a while and I took a bunch of photos. It was a very dificult place to photograph though because of the odd shapes and orientation of everything. One of the interesting things about the house was that so much of it was made from wood. Vietnam is a country that does not have much timber. Most of the homes are made from brick and mortar or cement, even up in the highlands like Da Lat where there are evergreen trees. The crazy house was almost entirely wooden on the inside.

We found our way to some parts that were still being built; there is always construction in Vietnam. We found a really old car in a glass garage and I wanted to photograph it but had a poor time through the glass even with a polarizer. I photographed some construction in a new mountainous tower and then we left.

Next stop was the geocache, but we certainly couldn’t do that without first getting lost and finding some more construction. We ended up taking a narrow muddy road, which was precarious on a scooter, and then merged onto what must be the smoothest street in Vietnam. It was welcome and I enjoyed it much as it swayed through a small farming valley and up into a forest.

We were unable to find the geocache by Trúc Lâm, partly because I didn’t want to reach into a hole in a brick wall that was guarded by a large spider, though I suspect the cache might be missing anyway. I didn’t care that we came all that way and didn’t find the cache, I had wanted to return to Trúc Lâm anyway since we got rained out the previous time we were there.

A tour group of older people had just gotten off of a gondola that stops at the temple and we had to wade through the crowd to get to the temple. This time it was sunny and beautiful. There were beautifully tuned wind chimes making wonderful tones in a gentle breeze and I hoped in vain that I would be able to buy such a beautiful chime at the gift shop out front. I am a fan of neuroacoustic science and had learned that monks use chimes to entrain their minds. It was evident here because you could hear the slight detuning, the binaural beat. I started to explain the science of it to Tien, but decided it was too complex for her vocabulary or at least better suited for another time. This was photography time.

We went down by a small lake where there were picnic tables looking over a forest on a hill and down to another lake with gentle forested mountains beyond it. We sat for a while and rested, then decided to head back to town. The sun was beginning its descend and I wanted to find somewhere to watch it set.

We headed to a train station where there was a museum of old trains but it was closed. We went to look for the Buddha and got severely lost and never once even caught site of it sitting up on its hill. Giving up, we got smoothies from a shop in the town center and went back to the lake. The ride there was cold because the sun was almost completely set by then and when we finally found a nice lawn it was mushy and wet. We opted to sit on the sidewalk to see the last bit of the sunset. The smoothies were awful and added to the coldness. We called off our miserable sunset experience and headed back to the hotel to rest for a while.

We were soon hungry since we hadn’t eaten much for lunch so we decided to go back out for food. We took our moto down to the town center and got hu tieu, headed back to the hotel, returned our moto, decided to head back to Saigon the next day and went to sleep.

Tuesday morning at breakfast Tien’s mom brought over a young boy who was big for his age. His older sister showed up soon afterwards and we all ate some snacks. They were Tiens cousins and I recognized their father from our engagement party when he came to pick them up on his scooter.

We returned home, packed for our trip to Nha Trang, had lunch and caught the bus right outside Tien’s house at 2pm.

The bus was not the usual bus service we take, Mai Linh. It took a different route through narrow back country roads that were more jungly than the main roads. I recognized the route from the trip we took where the man was joking about fighting with me. The bus seemed to be going pretty fast but that may just be because the road was so narrow. After a while we got to an area with muddy dirt roads with huge puddles and many bumps.

The driver turned on some pop Vietnamese music and I wondered what a Vietnamese reggae fusion would sound like.

I got out a book, Iron Orchard, and read. Brianna had found the book on the street and gave it to me. It was entertaining light reading that was good for a trip. After we stopped for a break I continued reading until it was too dark, then I just enjoyed music and watched the lights pass in the darkness.

We came upon an accident, the first serious one I’ve seen in Vietnam so far. The diver of a large truck was standing by the back where a bloody man was wallowing in pain on the ground. His motorbike was stuck between the front and rear axels and there was an anonymous pool of liquid coming from the darkness under the truck. I wasn’t sure if he was the only passenger.

Tien looked at the scene then looked away with a shriek. She looked at me with worried eyes and said “He died.” I thought this was an odd way to say it. Later I came to the conclusion that her phrase told a story from a scene that she hadn’t experienced which was why it sounded weirder than saying “he is dead.” I told her that he hadn’t died. The bus drove on and I never heard a siren or saw an ambulance.

As we came into Saigon it was clear that it had been raining hard. Pools of water were standing near intersections and the sidewalk by the river was reflecting the tail lights of motorbikes that rode down it.

The ride seemed endless and my ass hurt from having my buttock muscle stretched in the same position in that tiny seat for so long. We rode through some interesting neighborhoods in Saigon including going over a bridge that we’d seen near the new roads on our way out of town last time. Eventually we arrived at the bus station where we caught a taxi to a hotel I’d stayed at once before, the Bui Phan. The issue with the bed bugs at the ruby star made us not want to go back there, plus I wanted a bath tub.

The hotel was conveniently right next door to Viva Coffee, so we ate there for dinner. In Vietnam, most cafes are also restaurants. Tien’s mom called up worried and told us that the weather was bad in Nha Trang. Her mom worries about everything, but this time she was right. The latest AP headline read something about 32 people being dead from flooding up towards Hanoi. There was a photo o a man motorbiking in Nha Trang in over a foot of water that covered a whole street, and it was still raining.

Wednesday morning I got out of bed, picked up my laptop and found tiny bugs crawling on it. The Bui Phan had them as well… On top of that there was heavy construction going on outside our hotel.

Tien and I had a late breakfast and talked about cultural differences like how multicultural different cultures are and how conservative they are. Afterwards we went online and looked up new destinations. Traveling as a pair was expensive and airfare was also looking more expensive because it was nearing time for peoples fall and winter getaways. We thought about going to Thailand and I even got in touch with a friend of a Sara’s whose family owns a resort north of Phuket. We didn’t decide on anything then.

Instead we went out for a walk to look for an external hard disk that I’d meant to install in my laptop before leaving America. As we left the hotel I saw a Yamaha R6 parked at the motorbike shop next door. It was remarkable because nobody rides anything over about 110cc in Vietnam and this was at least 600. Also, almost nobody rides real motorcycles, just scooters which are more practical.

We walked a long way stopping at computer shops and explaining to them what exactly I was looking for, a FireWire 2.5″ SATA external hard drive case. Amazingly this was t all that hard. For one, I had one with me so I could just show them and then point out that I just needed the case, a d two, there were plenty of computer part shops with drive cases. To my dismay, none had FireWire ones so I had to settle for USB. the sad life of a technology enthusiast.

On the way home I saw a shirt that said “Hollister California” and hated fashion. What on earth is so great about Hollister? I’d never liked that brand and I liked it even less knowing that it could be found in Vietnam, knock-off or not.

Back at the hotel a confusing technological coincidence happened where my old 500gb drive had mysteriously quit working while we were out looking for a new case, which meant I didn’t even need a new case. It also meant I had lost all of my photos and music. On top of that, I broke my only screwdriver while I was right in the middle of investigating the problem so I had a pile of computer parts on a hotel bed and no way to assemble them.

Wednesday we got breakfast at a new place. It was in the tourist area in Pham Ngu Lao and had a menu in English, French and Vietnamese. We both ordered orange juice that was fresh squeezed and not sweetened. Its natural flavor was delicious and a nice contrast to the MSG overload from the previous night. The food was so so, you really can’t male a tomato omelet too bad or too good.

We headed back to the hotel where I heard from David that he thought he might be contagious and didn’t want to expose us, so he declined a meeting and wished us well. With that we decided to plan our return to binh hoa. Tien heard that her cousin was driving to Saigon and back that evening. At first we thought this would be great, but she changed her mind after hearing that there were many people coming along because it was a bus. She said that because we would be guests it would be a cultural obligation for us to buy food for everybody, which would be fine if it were just a few people in the car, but not with a bus full of people. We decided to get bus tickets instead. She arranged them, we packed our bags, checked out and headed off to the bus stop in a taxi.

The taxi took a route that was unfamiliar, through new, wide streets with overpasses and bridges over a river. It was unlike any roads I’d seen in Saigon. It was modern, something I’d expect to find in Hanoi. It made me happy to see Saigon taking on this sort of project.

We were dropped off at a bus stop that I don’t think we’ve ever been to before. After getting our tickets we had thirty minutes left so we got food and coffee. This may have been the dirtiest bus stop I’ve ever seen, but the food and coffee were delicious.

We boarded our bus and it was very familiar. It’s interesting to be familiar with something when you don’t understand any of the words that are being said there. I doubt I could navigate this bus system myself. Incidentally though, the man sitting next to me spoke English, which may be a first for Vietnamese buses. Tien and I played wurdle until the bus pulled out of the parking lot, which felt like it was pocked with craters. The music went on and tien fell asleep. I wrote this, and now the man on my right and tien on my left are Leaning their heads on my shoulder as I peck away on my iPhone. I wonder if the camera on the iPhone has a wide enough angle to capture this scene…

Our bus stopped at the usual spot to refuel and let us all move our legs, freshen up and get food. Tien and I ordered pho and it was absolutely delicious. This was great not only because I have a head cold, but I have had a long string of mediocre or bad pho for I don’t know how long. Coffee and tea were also nice. We headed off again and got to Binh Hoa after dark.

Mai and Thu met us down the street from Tien’s house with motorbikes and rode us home where the family was waiting. It was really great to see everybody and to be home. Tien and I sat in the living room with her mother and sisters and nieces enjoying each other’s company and catching up on the last few days. I passed out some gifts I had brought from America, jewelry for the ladies and Jelly Bellies for the kids. Tien’s brother said that he was raising frogs. Everybody thought I should take medicine for my cough and that I should eat food, but honestly I wasn’t hungry. Tien warmed some water for me, I took a shower and passed out. It’s amazing how traveling can wear you out sometimes.

I had a good night’s sleep despite that I had to wake up and pee twice during the night. At Tien’s house this isn’t such a simple thing. You have to unlock this huge steel gate and slide it back, which makes a loud screeching metal sound. The day was already warming up and I took a cold shower that felt nice.

Tien’s sister in law was out on the back porch mincing a bunch of tiny fish. I had seen a slap-chop in CA before I left and thought it might be a good gift. I still wonder how it would’ve gone over…

Tien and I went to the market for breakfast and had hu tieu and coffee. Familiar food and familiar faces. Afterwards we went to see Thu’s new house being built. It is a two story brick and cement house at the edge of the market in Binh Hoa, about a city block from Tien’s parents house. Later Tien would show me a rendering of what it will look like and it looks pretty cool. It has an upstairs patio, which I love. Thu found one that is similar but looks different and more to her liking, but the builders say they can’t make changes after they’ve started building.

We headed back through the market and went shopping for fruits and vegetables. This is an open air market with fruits and meats laying out in the open air. There were several fruits that I didn’t recognize. Thu bought one and cut it up for us to eat and it was very delicious. It tasted like a grapefruit but had a much thicker rind. In fact, it did end up being a grapefruit, but not the ones commonly seen in America.

We headed home and took a nap. I couldn’t sleep much so I played Field Runners, which I haven’t played in a long time and not since they upgraded some features. Tien gave me a massage, one of the things I really missed.

That evening we went to Long Xuyen and had dinner on a boat that cruised up and down the river. It was fun, but the boat was really loud and vibrated a lot. Nhi’s spoon kept shaking in her bowl, I guess she had the epicenter of the vibrations below her. I spotted a medkit and felt like I was in a video game.

On Sunday, my first morning back in Vietnam, Tien and I went to our old breakfast place. It was OK, but honestly it’s lost its sentimental value with the realization that it’s not that great of a restaurant. It is very convenient though. After breakfast we went back to the hotel room and did some online stuff and fell asleep for a long, long time.

When we woke up, Tien’s friend Trinh and her boyfriend Dat were on their way to visit us with a couple of motorbikes. Tien and I hadn’t eaten dinner yet so when they arrived we went out to find some food. We’d planned on getting pho, but Tien forgot about that and we ended up going to KFC. I was amused by this, expecting their menu to have interesting variations not available in America, but I didn’t see anything that was out of the ordinary. I quizzed Tien on what KFC meant and who that guy was, and she had absolutely no idea. Not much of a surprise there from a girl who didn’t know McDonalds or Starbucks until she went to Malaysia, and this is one of the things I love about her.

After dinner we headed out into the night traffic and instantly got separated from Dat and Trinh. Saigon traffic can be pretty crazy and Tien isn’t used to the big city so she isn’t assertive in her motorbiking. This later lead to us putting more effort into figuring out how to get me a motorbike license in VN. The four of us on two bikes cruised around the city a little bit in rain amounts varying between none and pouring, but it was warm so it wasn’t all that bad. We did get drenched though, and decided to just call it a night.

That night I found it very hard to sleep, most likely from how long I’d slept earlier that day.

Monday morning we woke up and tried to find a place different from the usual place we eat breakfast, but couldn’t find anything before our hunger took priority and we went back there. On our walk we saw a minor motorbike crash. I haven’t seen many traffic accidents here, and none have been bad since people tend to go pretty slowly, but this was the first of two that I saw that day.

Trinh and Dat came back to the hotel and we four headed out to a park where Trinh liked to go a lot when she still had free time, Bình Quoí 1. It was labeled as a tourist park, but was essentially a portrait photographers playground. There were barely any tourists there, but what there were plenty of was beautiful girls dressed to the 9′s posing in front of cameras. There were also several couples who were getting their engagement photos taken by professional photography crews, complete with off-cam lighting, props and makeup artists. The park was laid out with paths leading past backdrop after backdrop. A waterfall, a cart, a cyclo, a ruined brick wall, a ruined wall with pillars, a stone with flowers next to a pond, a bench on a lawn, a bamboo swing, a barrel and ladle, a causeway across a pond, a canoe in the pond, water lilies, flowers growing in vines up trees, stone statues, so on and so forth. This made it easy for photographers to play musical backdrops with each other, shuffling from one to the next to put their respective couples into the various scenes. Honestly it was pretty brilliant, and it didn’t cost anything for us to get in either. I assume they made their money off charging professional crews and selling food and water at the eateries that were scattered throughout the campus.

The four of us spent an hour or so walking around and taking photographs, then headed back towards downtown. We stopped on the way back and I got some absolutely terrible spaghetti carbonara while Tien enjoyed delicious vietnamese food. I resolved not to buy anything too culinarily distant from VN food from now on.

On the way home I saw a blind beggar holding a cane and a hat with his eyes rolled back in his head kneeling at the side of the road where hundreds of motorbikes were passing by.

Back near the hotel Tien and I tried to find a pharmacy for my malaria meds but couldn’t find anything. We resolved to find it later and went back inside to take a rest. I fell asleep and didn’t wake up for several hours. My sleeping schedule still hadn’t adjusted yet and it was taking a toll on my daylight hours and my energy.

We went briefly out with Dat and Trinh again to grab some dinner, then they headed home while Tien and I retired to the old Ruby Star.