2009.07.08 by Daniel
Trip to Vũng Tàu
My layover between Vientiane and Saigon was Phnom Penh. I thought this would be great because I could call Tien using my Cambodian SIM card and let her know that my flight was an hour late, but she didn't pick up. We were on the ground for about 15 minutes, then I boarded the same airplane in the same seat and we flew away.
Along with arrival and departure cards for passport control, the spread of H1N1 has prompted governments to require incoming visitors to fill out questionnaires about the state of their health. Previously the questions had been something like "Have you had dizziness, cough, diarrhea, fever, nausea within the last 10 days? What countries have you visited in the last 10 days?"
The Ho Chi Minh airport has had the most outbreaks of H1N1 that I've heard of yet which explains their additional diligence. "Have you come in contact with anybody who has had fever, cough, diarrhea, nausea within the last 15 days." I couldn't even remember everywhere I'd slept in the last 15 days.
I managed to find the slowest line at passport control. This is something I have a real knack for. I also had done this in Thailand when I was trying to catch a flight that was already boarding and in Laos with the whole pen incident.
As I was walking outside I felt distinctly different from the last few times I was in Saigon and I thought about how much I'd done in the past few weeks that had given me a new confidence in international travel.
As I walked outside Tien was waiting for me in a black blouse and a white skirt, looking beautiful and beaming with joy. I never quite know how I'm supposed to express my feelings within cultural affection allowances, but I managed to find something that was acceptable to show my joy at having her back. She grabbed her sister Mai, who I was not expecting to see, and we went off to find a taxi.
This was where my travel experience came in handy. I cut through the timidness that Tien has, kicked the first taxi driver to the curb and found a ride to the hydrofoil station at a quarter the cost. This is what you learn from getting ripped off at the Saigon airport. "Fool me once, shame on ... shame on you. If you fool me... We can't get fooled again."
We got to the hydrofoil station and I was quickly reminded how utterly chaotic Saigon traffic is. Smoggy, loud, and chaotic. What sense is there in calmly walking across a six lane river of continuously flowing traffic?
We bought our hydrofoil tickets for the Vina Express to Vũng Tàu, but it wasn't leaving for over two hours, so we found a place to sit and wait while drinking coffee and eating some noodles. Then it began to rain. Then it began to pour. Then we realized that we would miss the glorious sunset we'd hoped to see from the hydrofoil just as we were to arrive in Vũng Tàu.
The hydrofoil was awesome and pretty freakin quick. It skimmed over the water and made big splashes up onto the window. It was also very agile in the water, so agile that sometimes we thought it'd tip over, but it skimmed by tug boats and ferries and barges and oil rigs down the Saigon River and off into the pacific ocean. A girl came by and told us that because of the weather there were oceanic problems at the port so we'd have to go to a different port and take a bus into town. This frustrated us beyond the mere absence of a sunset, but that's how travel goes in these places. There was also the standard TV display of random entertainment and most of what we saw was some weird kung fu movie with four people who would wring out a shirt and drink water from it, then use it as a weapon.
Right at dusk we pulled up near a dock in an industrial area a little ways up a calm river just south of Vũng Tàu. It was still gently raining as they made us climb over 3 ships with no planks between them while carrying our bags to get to the actual dock. Tien was still wearing her nice clothes but we managed to cross with few issues. She admitted that she'd dressed poorly for traveling because she wanted to look nice for my return and this was fine by me.
Some of us managed to pile into a bus and fill it completely up while others remained outside in the rain haggling with taxi drivers. Soon it was completely dark, the rain had returned to a pour and we were stuck on a one lane dirt road behind a car that had no driver. I was reminded of those idiots in SF who double park on the train tracks and lock their car then disappear inside of a building. One time I sat on a train for 30 minutes while they towed the car. This time it only lasted 5 minutes though, which was nice because traveling can really wear you out and I'd been traveling all day and had already been off schedule twice.
We arrived at the bus drop off and stood under an awning at the local KFC while people tried to figure out where they were going to stay, then tried to find taxis to take them there. It's interesting having people who speak the language with you because they can actually get useful information, but this information is rarely passed on to you. I kept flipping back and forth between "let me handle this" mode and "you handle this" mode. In the end Mai found us a place next door to the house of a girl who was trying to find a taxi, so the four of us got in the taxi and headed off. It appeared to be nowhere near the beach by the time we got there on the back streets, but in fact ended up being only two blocks from the beach. We dropped our stuff in the room, took a little rest and went off to find dinner.
After dinner we walked down to the beach. It was great to finally be there... aside from the fact that the waves on the shore were lined with trash, it was beautiful. With Tien on my back we waded about 50 feet out into the warm water and stood there watching the lightning storm that was going on way out in the Eastern Pacific. It felt great to be back at the ocean. I had been by the ocean for the previous year and a half while living in San Francisco, but in the previous two months I was away from it and it was great to have it back. Even more, it was great to be in warm water as opposed to the cold SF Pacific, and it was great to have my girl with me to experience the lightning show, which was reminiscent. It was, I guess, a mix between old good memories and new joys.
The following day we got breakfast and then headed out to a large Christian monument on top of a hill just south of the strip where we were staying. This was the first real Christian anything I'd seen on my trip. There wasn't a word of english or french on any of the plaques so I have no idea what it was about, but there were angels and moses and cupids and at the top of the walkway up the hill, a huge statue of Jesus with his arms outstretched.
By the top of the hill I was drenched in sweat. I sat with Tien and talked about some of the hardships we faced in getting married and bringing her back to the USA. There are a few big hurdles to pass this month and I wanted to make sure she was still with me on all of our plans. She was, so we were happy. Her sister arrived with a bag of fruit after we'd been there a while, so the three of us sat and ate lychee and rambutan. We stayed at the top for a while, then headed back down the hill and off to the hotel.
Our plan was to clean up and go swimming, but the climb up the hill and the heat of the day had wiped us out, so we ended up falling asleep for an hour or two. This was fine though, we needed it, and afterwards we headed down to the beach. We found three chairs to rent and Mai stayed to watch our things while Tien and I ran off to go play in the water. As it turns out, swimming is not one of the things that is taught in Vietnamese school. Later I had a good conversation with Tien about the differences between an average first world education and an average third world education. The fact that Vietnam is about halfway covered with water yet they don't teach swimming blew my mind. Tien said that 15 students had died the previous year from drowning while riding a boat to school in heavy rains.
This lack of swimming education made Tien terribly frightened by the waves and it took me a while to chase her through the water and coax her out past the breakers to where the water was more calm. Unfortunately she couldn't always touch the ground out there. She had seen a photo I took in Ha Long Bay of a boy floating on his back and wondered how he could do that, so I taught her how and in typical Tien style, she learned very quickly. In 15 minutes she was floating on her own as large waves that were on their way to breaking passed her by. We ended the swim lesson, took a few minutes to enjoy the water and the fact that we were finally traveling together, then headed back to the shore to let Mai have her turn in the water.
There were women walking around with eggs and fish and baskets containing metal cans with fire that was boiling water where they would cook you fresh seafood. Many women were walking around with baskets of fresh fruit, and some guy was riding his bicycle by with a huge speaker system on it that made me think of the pillow fight in SF this year. A few people rode down the beach on their scooters. A group of kids next to us had collected a few dozen shells with crabs inside of them and as we were leaving one of the crabs tried to walk its way off the table. A man nearby picked it up before it got off the table and showed it to the group of friends he was sitting with.
Mai, Tien and I headed back to the hotel. The path to the beach is a typical Vietnamese path, which means it is free to ride scooters on and do whatever else you feel like doing on. Some kids were parked on their scooter talking on the phone. One woman was cooking up some weird fish that looked like a flat octopus.
The next day was Monday, but still Sunday in the USA which means I still had time to post my weekly photo set, The (d)SPOT. Because there was an elevator shaft between our room and the AP, I had to sit in the hall next to the elevator to do my work. I caught up with some co-workers and did other assorted online stuff as I was posting my photos. Just as I was finishing up and saying goodbye to some folks, the power went out. At first I thought the AC had just gone off, but then my internet connection was interrupted. I finally verified that it was indeed the power being out by checking the elevator, which was nonfunctional. I thought about how awful it would be to be trapped in an elevator in a small hotel in a third world country and was thankful that I was not.
• • • • •
2009.07.01 by Daniel
Bye bye Bangkok, hello Laos
I'm in one of those mid range SE Asian guesthouses again. The kind with the mini fridge stocked with soda, water and local beer. They're nice enough to have an air conditioner, but not nice enough to have free wifi. There's a shower, but no bath tub. Along with the bidet they do provide toilet paper, but you're not allowed to flush it down the toilet. Instead you have to put it in a little bucket. My bucket came with some already used tissues and a used condom. This bathroom has two tiny extras: a phone in the bathroom next to the toilet and a clothes rack on the door.
One nice constant on my month-long trip has been the availability of american power plugs. They're not always grounded plugs, but there are always plugs. The ones that aren't grounded sometimes make your gear sting you with a tiny flow of stray electrons.
I'm in Laos at the Douang Deuane hotel in Vientiane. This was the 4th place I had to try before I found an open room. My room wraps in an L around the elevator shaft, but it's quiet so far. I'm on the 4th floor which is second to the top. You can find me in room 404.
I have yet to check into a hotel that has 4 digit room numbers, let alone get lucky with room 2046.
Room 410 would've been mildly amusing too, and if I had Tien here we might have had to play charades.
It took me 5 modes of transportation to get here: taxi, motorbike, train, car, and airplane. I was somewhat hoping for a sixth being a tuk tuk, but you can't win them all. I suppose the sixth could be my feet since I had to wander around in the dark of night looking for a place to sleep.
Yesterday was Tuesday and My had school. We caught a taxi to the Sky Train in Bangkok and she went off to class leaving me to do what I wished in Bangkok. I took some photos and soon got lost inside of an enormous mall next to six or seven other enormous malls located in Siam Square. I basically wandered around and took some photos and gawked at all the different things. I tried to find some photography gear that was decently priced but everything was just slightly more expensive than in America. I wonder if photographers in Thailand are inherently better because of the higher cost of entry.
That night Mint and I sat up watching The Usual Suspects on Thai TV. They blurred out guns pointed at people at point blank. They blurred out people smoking. They blurred out people's lips when they said certain thing. They let you hear every cuss word.
Today I looked at my schedule and decided that I better get a move on and get out of Thailand. I was enjoying the company of My and her family, but I was longing for the freedom and the lifestyle that comes with it. I also only have a few days left until I need to be back in Saigon and I have a whole country to see. With that in mind I logged onto ye handy internette and bought a plane ticket to Laos, surprising My and spoiling her day at school. She called her friend to answer her name and fill out her homework for her, then spent the day with me. We once again performed our taxi and sky train maneuver to get downtown, then got coffee and headed off for the backpacker district, Khaosan Road.
Khaosan Road is just about everything I hate about backpacker culture, all wrapped into a very long block. We were only there for 90 minutes, but that was plenty time to see what there was to see. I could go on and on about how much BS there is there, and I plan to do so over at Dream Not of Today where I post photos and from time to time write logical criticisms of culture, other assorted diatribes and whatever else fits the edgy dynamic of that site rather than the personal angle of this site.
Long story short, we hit the road in a taxi that went so slow we both fell asleep and woke up 1 block later. My paid the 45 minute 100 baht fee that took us around 2 sides of a single city block, and we walked. We had to do something, I was now 45 minutes late for my projected timeframe of going to the airport.
A block or so later she found us some motorbike taxis. This was not only a fantastic way to kill the 5km of gridlocked traffic between us and the sky train, but it was reminiscent of Vietnam, the country where four days from now I will return into the arms of my fiancé.
took the two us through gridlocked traffic on that motorbike the way I'd handle just myself on a bicycle, which is more aggressive than most, passing between cars and taxis and busses like he was navigating a maze and knew the way through. We used the oncoming lane to pass hundreds of cars. We ran gridlocked red lights with police sitting right there or doing the same thing on their motorbikes in the opposite direction. We passed a traffic cop stopping cars that would otherwise have a clear shot and hit 50km on the open 5 lane road and were passed only by a CBR 150 before diving back into the gridlock. We passed through more maze like traffic, turned down and alley and went through a parking structure and ended up right at the stairwell for the sky train. Why did we ever get into that stationary air conditioned automobile?
I thought about how there are never any traffic jams in Vietnam unless there are automobiles involved. I shared this thought with My. Later on that night her dad would share the same thoughts with me.
We got off the sky train, got into a taxi and got stuck in traffic again and I loathed the automobile. I wondered how on earth so many cars could contain so many drivers that were so fucking stupid as to sit there in the street burning up and smoking dead dinosaurs when they ought to be going somewhere at a very rapid pace. I thought back to when I first bought a motorcycle in San Jose in order to cut through traffic and give up the sitting and dinosaur smoking lifestyle.
We eventually got home, I packed as fast as I could, which gets harder every time I buy a bamboo flute or a man purse or a pair of broken swimming shorts, piled into her dads car and headed off to the airport. I arrived at the airport 45 minutes before the plane left. I got my ticket 30 minutes before the plane left. I got through passport control and security 15 minutes before my plane left. I got to my seat on the plane 10 minutes before my plane left. I didn't know things could go so well after going so badly.
The flight was nice, I was nearly asleep when they gave me a delicious meal and a small pour of wine. I listened to Halcyon + On + On and One Perfect Sunrise. Orbital is always great traveling music.
When I got off the plane I still hadn't filled out my arrival card, which is standard procedure on the plane in order to make passport control quicker. There were no pens, so I just went to the line and stood there. The man turned me away to go fill it out at the desk where there were no pens, so I went. There were about 7 people standing around sharing a single pen. It belonged to an Asian man of a descent I couldn't discern, but he gave it to me when everybody was done with it and walked away with his wife and child. I filled out my stuff and left the pen there as goodwill, but then thought I should've done differently when I ended up next to him in line. He didn't care, he just smiled and waved it off. It was late and we were tired, who cared about a pen? It's always good to have smiles and laughs from strangers, and there's something extra when there's no other communication beyond the rudimentary.
I changed my remaining Baht to Kip. Kip is another currency with 4 or 5 trailing zeros. My taxi ride to the hotel was 52,000. I got dropped off by the waterfront of the river that separates Thailand and Laos, so basically I was only a few hundred meters into the fourth country on my journey. The hotel I had found in the guidebook was full. The place next door was full. I had predicted this and had scoped out a few places on the way in. They were also full, including the one that had wifi. I had picked the right neighborhood though and the 5th or 6th place I went had a room open, and that is where I am now.
I like Beerlao. I'm not sure if the beer here is great just because I haven't been drinking as frequently, of if it's just better, but beer here in Asia is nice. Maybe it's the property of ones being applied to a heat factor that is well above what I'm used to. Anyhow, I'm safe and sound in Laos. I have 4 days here, then it's back to Saigon to be with my fiancé and handle visa stuff for her trip to America with me. Beyond that, I'm not sure how my trip is going to go, but I think I will only be able to see Malaysia and not Singapore. Perhaps I can shift in a different sixth country to make up for it...
That night Mint and I sat up watching The Usual Suspects on Thai TV. They blurred out guns pointed at people at point blank. They blurred out people smoking. They blurred out people's lips when they said certain thing. They let you hear every cuss word.
Today I looked at my schedule and decided that I better get a move on and get out of Thailand. I was enjoying the company of My and her family, but I was longing for the freedom and the lifestyle that comes with it. I also only have a few days left until I need to be back in Saigon and I have a whole country to see. With that in mind I logged onto ye handy internette and bought a plane ticket to Laos, surprising My and spoiling her day at school. She called her friend to answer her name and fill out her homework for her, then spent the day with me. We once again performed our taxi and sky train maneuver to get downtown, then got coffee and headed off for the backpacker district, Khaosan Road.
Khaosan Road is just about everything I hate about backpacker culture, all wrapped into a very long block. We were only there for 90 minutes, but that was plenty time to see what there was to see. I could go on and on about how much BS there is there, and I plan to do so over at Dream Not of Today where I post photos and from time to time write logical criticisms of culture, other assorted diatribes and whatever else fits the edgy dynamic of that site rather than the personal angle of this site.
Long story short, we hit the road in a taxi that went so slow we both fell asleep and woke up 1 block later. My paid the 45 minute 100 baht fee that took us around 2 sides of a single city block, and we walked. We had to do something, I was now 45 minutes late for my projected timeframe of going to the airport.
A block or so later she found us some motorbike taxis. This was not only a fantastic way to kill the 5km of gridlocked traffic between us and the sky train, but it was reminiscent of Vietnam, the country where four days from now I will return into the arms of my fiancé.
took the two us through gridlocked traffic on that motorbike the way I'd handle just myself on a bicycle, which is more aggressive than most, passing between cars and taxis and busses like he was navigating a maze and knew the way through. We used the oncoming lane to pass hundreds of cars. We ran gridlocked red lights with police sitting right there or doing the same thing on their motorbikes in the opposite direction. We passed a traffic cop stopping cars that would otherwise have a clear shot and hit 50km on the open 5 lane road and were passed only by a CBR 150 before diving back into the gridlock. We passed through more maze like traffic, turned down and alley and went through a parking structure and ended up right at the stairwell for the sky train. Why did we ever get into that stationary air conditioned automobile?
I thought about how there are never any traffic jams in Vietnam unless there are automobiles involved. I shared this thought with My. Later on that night her dad would share the same thoughts with me.
We got off the sky train, got into a taxi and got stuck in traffic again and I loathed the automobile. I wondered how on earth so many cars could contain so many drivers that were so fucking stupid as to sit there in the street burning up and smoking dead dinosaurs when they ought to be going somewhere at a very rapid pace. I thought back to when I first bought a motorcycle in San Jose in order to cut through traffic and give up the sitting and dinosaur smoking lifestyle.
We eventually got home, I packed as fast as I could, which gets harder every time I buy a bamboo flute or a man purse or a pair of broken swimming shorts, piled into her dads car and headed off to the airport. I arrived at the airport 45 minutes before the plane left. I got my ticket 30 minutes before the plane left. I got through passport control and security 15 minutes before my plane left. I got to my seat on the plane 10 minutes before my plane left. I didn't know things could go so well after going so badly.
The flight was nice, I was nearly asleep when they gave me a delicious meal and a small pour of wine. I listened to Halcyon + On + On and One Perfect Sunrise. Orbital is always great traveling music.
When I got off the plane I still hadn't filled out my arrival card, which is standard procedure on the plane in order to make passport control quicker. There were no pens, so I just went to the line and stood there. The man turned me away to go fill it out at the desk where there were no pens, so I went. There were about 7 people standing around sharing a single pen. It belonged to an Asian man of a descent I couldn't discern, but he gave it to me when everybody was done with it and walked away with his wife and child. I filled out my stuff and left the pen there as goodwill, but then thought I should've done differently when I ended up next to him in line. He didn't care, he just smiled and waved it off. It was late and we were tired, who cared about a pen? It's always good to have smiles and laughs from strangers, and there's something extra when there's no other communication beyond the rudimentary.
I changed my remaining Baht to Kip. Kip is another currency with 4 or 5 trailing zeros. My taxi ride to the hotel was 52,000. I got dropped off by the waterfront of the river that separates Thailand and Laos, so basically I was only a few hundred meters into the fourth country on my journey. The hotel I had found in the guidebook was full. The place next door was full. I had predicted this and had scoped out a few places on the way in. They were also full, including the one that had wifi. I had picked the right neighborhood though and the 5th or 6th place I went had a room open, and that is where I am now.
I like Beerlao. I'm not sure if the beer here is great just because I haven't been drinking as frequently, of if it's just better, but beer here in Asia is nice. Maybe it's the property of ones being applied to a heat factor that is well above what I'm used to. Anyhow, I'm safe and sound in Laos. I have 4 days here, then it's back to Saigon to be with my fiancé and handle visa stuff for her trip to America with me. Beyond that, I'm not sure how my trip is going to go, but I think I will only be able to see Malaysia and not Singapore. Perhaps I can shift in a different sixth country to make up for it... • • • • •
2009.06.26 by Daniel
Ancient Siam and the King’s Museum
When I woke up this morning the first thing I noticed was the sound of songbirds outside, which has so far been absent from my Asian trip.
Michael Jackson had died while I was asleep.
Everybody was gone from the house except Max. I had coffee and a muffin and caught up with an old friend, Aimee Rich, who I hadn't talked to since high school. It's interesting to get the summary of somebody's life and to summarize my own. "I went to college for a semester, dropped out, worked in tech hardware manufacturing for a few years, was a video editor for about 6 months, then started my career in computer technology which took me from Colorado to California. I recently quit my job to travel around SE Asia and am about to marry a Vietnamese girl and take her back to America with me."
We went for breakfast and had a typical Asian breakfast in that it was no different from any other meal. Thai iced coffee is delicious. The menu was in English, as are many many things in Bangkok. My had said that almost everybody here speaks English.
I asked Max about his career and he said he had been in IT, mainly Oracle, and retired at 48. He's 54 now and plays stock market.
We were on our way to The Ancient City and drove for a while. Bangkok is a very spread out city. I've noticed that there are many five story apartment buildings, some with pillars and balconies. These building are like an entire San Francisco block as a single building.
I wondered what it would take for Saigon or Long Xuyen to become a city like Bangkok. Hanoi is already halfway there. Bangkok has very little litter and I've seen people cleaning up on the side of the road. There are several driving ranges nearby. There are many carson the road and a stellar tollway system. Traffic in Bangkok is still a little crazy, just in cars rather than on scooters. There is graffiti done by locals rather than foreigners. I saw men in a water tanker watering plants in the median of a boulevard. It's not that I want Saigon or Long Xuyen to be Bangkok, it's just interesting to consider the steps between.
We arrived at The Ancient City, or Ancient Siam, which is a collection of large scale replicas of famous sites in Thailand. They are smaller than the originals, but still large enough to walk into. We got two bicycles to ride around. They both had baskets on the front which turned out to be a great setup for easy camera use. The sights were cool and it was an easy way to get a feel for what Thailand had to offer. Many of the temples were familiar as I'd already been tromping around Angkor. I took a lot of photos.
I saw a turtle running across the street and would've missed seeing it had it not been for the sounds his feet were making as they scraped the street.
We returned to the car and headed off. I saw a sign that said simply "Modify Dog" and thought of Repet.
We went to a local mall to figure out some issues with my phone's data plan. When I got my SIM card it came with a data plan, which I was unaware of, and my automatic e-mail drained most of the balance in my account. I turned off the auto e-mail check but still needed to fix the balance and the data plan. I gave them 100 baht more, which is about $3, and got 6 hours of data with 50 baht more for calling. This way of doing things makes so much sense it's a shame that it's not more prominent in America.
We also stopped off at a few shops to look at camera gear. The D700 is just as expensive here as it is in America, and the LX3 is just as hard to find.
We headed home. I decided to try out Skype on my data plan and was incredibly disappointed to find that the Skype app on my iPhone was preventing me from making phone calls "due to contractual agreements" that did not apply to my circumstances. Damn poorly programmed software, damn AT&T.
Shortly after we arrived home My came walking tiredly in and showed us her fresh new driver's license. 20 years old and finally able to drive. Max had told me earlier that she would probably get the nice 2006 Toyota SUV we've been cruising around town in.
Mint also came home soon and we all went to dinner at the same restaurant we had dinner at last night and breakfast this morning. The food is great, the drinks are good. At the back of the restaurant one of the employees was changing her baby's diaper. On TV there were elephants dressed up like panda bears, then they were lifting a yak out of an oil change pit at a gas station that it had fallen into, then a yak gave birth to a baby yak, then they were testing cell phones for lightning attraction.
Yak birth is not appropriate dinner media, and cell phones do not attract lightning.
The TVs here support multiple audio channels and some shows broadcast in both Thai and English. You can switch between them just like a DVD.
They have pizza delivery motorbikes. I'm going to take this idea back to San Francisco and make a million dollars.
I saw a girl at a bus stop with a t-shirt that said "I <3 6/9". That date has no significance in Thailand so I assumed it was a sexual engrish t-shirt.
We went to a nearby park where there are waterways, big grass lawns and the Kings museum where you can read blurbs about the king and see what kind of things he's into. As we approached the museum a man blew a whistle and everybody in the park stood up. "National song." We all stood there, most with their hands at their sides as the custom goes, until the song was over, then we all returned to what we were doing.
We saw the museum. The King seems like a great man, great leader and a great role model for a well rounded lifestyle. My and I went for a walk around the park as the sun was setting. We found a Chinese garden and inside of the garden I found a very large weird animal which I thoguht was a baby crocodile but ended up being an ant eater. We saw several more ant eaters swimming around and got lost in the park while we were looking at them and talking about animals. We found our way home, found her sister and father and went home for the night.
I thought about the next few weeks and about what I'll do with my time. The dynamic change between backpacking solo and being a hosted guest is pretty significant. As a backpacker you can go where you want when you want and do what you want, but as a hosted guest there is a shift towards group outings and to the lifestyle of those hosting you. It's an interesting shift and it's easy to lose sight of the fact that you are in fact traveling. I don't want to outstay my welcome or expire the hospitality of my hosts, and I want to continue my travels to northern Thailand and Laos. I have 9 days until I need to be back in Saigon to meet Tien. I really need to figure out a tentative schedule...
We arrived at The Ancient City, or Ancient Siam, which is a collection of large scale replicas of famous sites in Thailand. They are smaller than the originals, but still large enough to walk into. We got two bicycles to ride around. They both had baskets on the front which turned out to be a great setup for easy camera use. The sights were cool and it was an easy way to get a feel for what Thailand had to offer. Many of the temples were familiar as I'd already been tromping around Angkor. I took a lot of photos.
I saw a turtle running across the street and would've missed seeing it had it not been for the sounds his feet were making as they scraped the street.
We returned to the car and headed off. I saw a sign that said simply "Modify Dog" and thought of Repet.
We went to a local mall to figure out some issues with my phone's data plan. When I got my SIM card it came with a data plan, which I was unaware of, and my automatic e-mail drained most of the balance in my account. I turned off the auto e-mail check but still needed to fix the balance and the data plan. I gave them 100 baht more, which is about $3, and got 6 hours of data with 50 baht more for calling. This way of doing things makes so much sense it's a shame that it's not more prominent in America.
We also stopped off at a few shops to look at camera gear. The D700 is just as expensive here as it is in America, and the LX3 is just as hard to find.
We headed home. I decided to try out Skype on my data plan and was incredibly disappointed to find that the Skype app on my iPhone was preventing me from making phone calls "due to contractual agreements" that did not apply to my circumstances. Damn poorly programmed software, damn AT&T.
Shortly after we arrived home My came walking tiredly in and showed us her fresh new driver's license. 20 years old and finally able to drive. Max had told me earlier that she would probably get the nice 2006 Toyota SUV we've been cruising around town in.
Mint also came home soon and we all went to dinner at the same restaurant we had dinner at last night and breakfast this morning. The food is great, the drinks are good. At the back of the restaurant one of the employees was changing her baby's diaper. On TV there were elephants dressed up like panda bears, then they were lifting a yak out of an oil change pit at a gas station that it had fallen into, then a yak gave birth to a baby yak, then they were testing cell phones for lightning attraction.
Yak birth is not appropriate dinner media, and cell phones do not attract lightning.
The TVs here support multiple audio channels and some shows broadcast in both Thai and English. You can switch between them just like a DVD.
They have pizza delivery motorbikes. I'm going to take this idea back to San Francisco and make a million dollars.
I saw a girl at a bus stop with a t-shirt that said "I <3 6/9". That date has no significance in Thailand so I assumed it was a sexual engrish t-shirt.
We went to a nearby park where there are waterways, big grass lawns and the Kings museum where you can read blurbs about the king and see what kind of things he's into. As we approached the museum a man blew a whistle and everybody in the park stood up. "National song." We all stood there, most with their hands at their sides as the custom goes, until the song was over, then we all returned to what we were doing.
We saw the museum. The King seems like a great man, great leader and a great role model for a well rounded lifestyle. My and I went for a walk around the park as the sun was setting. We found a Chinese garden and inside of the garden I found a very large weird animal which I thoguht was a baby crocodile but ended up being an ant eater. We saw several more ant eaters swimming around and got lost in the park while we were looking at them and talking about animals. We found our way home, found her sister and father and went home for the night.
I thought about the next few weeks and about what I'll do with my time. The dynamic change between backpacking solo and being a hosted guest is pretty significant. As a backpacker you can go where you want when you want and do what you want, but as a hosted guest there is a shift towards group outings and to the lifestyle of those hosting you. It's an interesting shift and it's easy to lose sight of the fact that you are in fact traveling. I don't want to outstay my welcome or expire the hospitality of my hosts, and I want to continue my travels to northern Thailand and Laos. I have 9 days until I need to be back in Saigon to meet Tien. I really need to figure out a tentative schedule... • • • • •
2009.06.25 by Daniel
24 hours from Cambodia to Thailand
As I was planning, and thankfully the hackers were keeping up, I was able to jailbreak my iPhone and install network unlocking software on it which would enable me to use it as a phone outside of AT&T's network. I downloaded the tools to do this and did so while I was also diagnosing and reconfiguring the shoddy wifi signals at my hotel. I was able to successfully unlock my phone while doing nearly all I could do with the wifi network in order to make access at least a little more than non existent to the 4th floor. There was still one huge core change I wanted to make but didn't want to risk taking down the upper floor networks due to inaccessible 802.11 APs which were acting as chained repeaters rather than point-to-multipoint bridges, which would've been more efficient.
In the end I had chat and e-mail worthy and nearly web surf worthy wireless access in my room, and a jailbroken and unlocked iPhone 3g. With that completed, I headed out to get dinner and to find a SIM card to test out the network unlock. I was already to select from a list of about 10 carriers, but my AT&T card wasn't working on any of them so they were no more use than information on what was available.
I got dinner at a chain restaurant I've seen around here called NYDC which serves east coast American food and offers free wifi to its patrons. I had pizza and my first glass of wine in nearly a month as I played with Cydia, which was somewhere between the glory of my first jailbreak experience and the horror of my second. Some of the things I wanted weren't immediately available, like iPhysics and Trism.
After dinner I walked around looking for SIM cards and ended up at the Siem Reap night market, which was just like the day market but more cozy and warm and quiet, but with still the same "hello sir, can i help you sir, you buy a t-shirt sir" people. I was offered about 50 tuk tuk rides that I didn't need, motorbike rides which was maybe a first for Cambodia but was frequent in Vietnam, weed and cocaine among countless trinkets and novelties. I was really just out to see it though, just to verify that there wasn't anything worth seeing beyond the experience of having visited the night markets in Cambodia. Many people were having fun bartering and buying, but progressive minimalists like myself had no business in a place like that. With that in mind I went to a market, bought a bottle of Singha and an international SIM card and headed home.
I stayed up late chatting with Tien and friends who were waking up on the other side of the planet. Unfortunately I wasn't able to open the tray that held my AT&T SIM card, so I wasn't able to try it out. That was OK though, in time I'd figure it out. It was more of an educational experience anyway, I didn't really need it.
In the morning I woke and chatted, listened to music, which had surprisingly been missing in my entire Siem Reap experience, showered and headed out for the much needed coffee and breakfast. I found a restaurant I wished I'd have found a few days earlier. It was a little hole in the wall stall across the street from the more ritzy western restaurants, and they had bread, eggs and white coffee for $2. I was delighted. I also managed to find a cool trick to get the SIM tray on an iPhone open without using a paperclip. Just shove a round toothpick into the hole snugly, then pull the tray out. There is enough grip to open the tray, and so I was able to swap my SIM and being trying out this Asian mobile scene.
I couldn't figure it out. I forgot which provider was mine, and the girl at the restaurant didn't know the logo.
I was getting tired of Siem Reap and wanted to leave, so I wandered a block and found a travel agency to check out what options I had for leaving. It turned out I could leave to Bangkok in 3 hours for $145. I went back to my hotel, grabbed my passport and three $50's, checked the SIM card provider info I'd gotten, headed back to the travel agency to buy my ticket and on the way saw a man at a fruit stand showing a tiny ~.22 caliber pistol to a local boy of about 13. What followed was a hurried series of events which involved me paying for my ticket and handing over my passport, hiring a tuk tuk driver to take me back to the hotel and wait, packing my bags as fast as I could because it was exactly check out time and I had to be at the airport in 30 minutes, checking out, going back to the travel agency to pick up my ticket and passport and then heading straight to the airport. To top it off, my tuk tuk driver barely spoke english and drove a slow tuk tuk which was passed by more than one on the way to the airport.
I was happy though. The rush was a little bit of excitement in my very lazy Cambodian experience, and I was finally leaving Siem Reap. It was a western town with lounges and western restaurants and expensive drinks and meals. I was tired of not being able to look people in the eye, trying to avoid contact with people for fear of being hounded instead of smiling and greeting and talking with people.
On the way out of town I saw a kid with a Che Guevara t-shirt on, which was more interesting in Cambodia since he was a communist who murdered hundreds of innocent people senselessly, just like the Khmer Rouge.
On the way out of down town I set my iPhones cellular network to the one correlating to the SIM card I had and it soon began working. I had a phone for the first time since leaving SF almost 4 weeks ago.
We passed many large hotels, bigger hotels than any downtown, five star resort style hotels. I felt like I was driving through Aspen until I saw a guy on a scooter with about 20 dead chickens hanging by their legs. I then saw a Nikon D200 advertisement and wondered if it had really been there for years.
We arrived just after noon which gave me slightly less than the suggestion of checking in two hours before departure. That was ok though because checking in at the airport, passing through security and passing through Cambodian passport control was easy. There were few people there, it was a tiny airport with only 4 gates and only one was in service. There were 3 flights scheduled within the hour. Prices were astronomical, $3 for a small bottle of water, $3.50 for a can of soda. I bought a bottle of Japanese "wine" and found out it was 20% alcoholic soju after I poured a glass. I didn't bother finishing the bottle since it tasted like vodka and I had no intention of getting wasted. Plus there were ants crawling on the marble bar.
I decided to use my international minutes while I still had the chance and called My, my friend in Bangkok, and told her I was pretty much on my way there. It was short notice, way shorter than I'd planned on giving her, but it was notice all the same and if she couldn't pick me up I was planning on finding my own way. Luckily she had nothing going on and said she'd see me soon.
I walked around a bit and looked at the airport. It was a nice building with decent tropical landscaping outside. It felt like the kind of airport you'd see in a tropical resort, and then I remembered that's pretty much what it was. A sign in the bathroom instructing men not to wash in the urinals reminded me that I was still in a 3rd world country.
I walked around the shops in the airport and as happy that I could actually look people in the eyes without the fear of them aggressively hawking their goods. It was nice. I was tired of having to pass through a crowd as if I saw nobody, it felt alienating and I was the alienator. I took some photos of the airport and as I passed the bar the bartenders teased me about being drunk, but I wasn't since I hadn't finished even half of the bottle. It was funny and we laughed about it. I played around with the networks and stuff on my phone, trying to figure out the details of this SIM swapping thing that is so different from the US. At one point two Japanese girls came running by, quickly passed through the gate and ran for an airplane that was out on the tarmac.
I boarded the plane and the flight attendant gave the usual speech about disabling communications devices and I thought about that annoying sound that the iPhone puts into some speaker systems. There was no safety demo and we were quickly in the air. I was sitting underneath the wing with a prop engine outside my window. We had a meal and I ate my first muffin since leaving SF where muffins were a pretty usual breakfast with coffee. I had coffee with my meal and it was the worst coffee I've had in years. It reminded me of the hot black tar we'd drink at Actiontec.
As we flew I looked out at the beautiful clouds and remembered my flight from Hanoi. I looked down at the earth and thought about all of the beautiful places that were hidden in those green polygons. I saw the reflection of the sun passing from rice paddy to rice paddy and then the earth disappeared behind a turbulent cloud.
On our descent I noticed that the land surrounding Bangkok was back to the familiar Vietnamese landscape of rice paddies for miles. The next thing I noticed was that people were driving on the left side of the road. I only had time to listen to two orbital songs before I had been told to take my headphones off for landing, the entire flight was less than an hour and at 2:50 I was in Thailand. The new airport in Bangkok is eye catching and modern. Entering the country was very easy and no visa was required.
After passing through passport control I went and found a new SIM card with a phone number that people could call me on. In Thailand, inbound minutes are free. With Skype, you can have an inbound number in any country that they support, and any state in America. I have a California Skype number. I also have an unlimited world calling plan. Those three things together allow people to call my Skype number in California and ring my cell phone in Thailand without incurring any additional fees for international calling. My SIM card also provided data access, which is actually a little irritating since any network activity on my phone will drain my phone balance, and I can't disable only data. I had a working phone though and I was again thankful that the iPhone cracking team got the 3.0 unlock out just in time for my arrival in Thailand.
I called My on the phone and told her that I was several hours earlier than I had expected and she said she'd be at the airport in 15 minutes. In the time between I walked around and took in the crowd. There were many beautiful girls, many fashionable people, many people who looked like transvestites, and many girls who looked manly kinda scary and made me wonder about this sex change capital of the world.
My was there in the 15 minutes she said and her father whisked us away in a luxury Toyota sedan. I hadn't been in a car that wasn't a Saigon taxi in a long time. The highway system was very modern, the airport surroundings were very modern, the landscape was clean. This was very 1st world and it was odd. There wasn't a single scooter around, which made sense since we were going over 120km/h. When we got off the highway though things started to look more familiar. I saw some bicycles and scooters and cement apartment buildings that weren't painted and it felt like the SE Asia I know.
My's family's place was more modern though, more like what I'd expect to find in Korea given the Korean movies I've seen. It was a three story building with air conditioning, several laptops set around on desks, wifi, and a Wii. There was a book called "Engineering Mechanics Dynamics 11th Edition" that was full of complex mathematical algorithms with diagrams applying the principles to real world things like cranes and roller coasters. There was a piece of paper inside with a hand sketched on it and delicate decorations around the word "sleep" and I could tell what My's classes for her automotive design major were probably like.
We played on her hacked Wii for a bit, did a round of golf and a round of bowling and played Wario something else that was really crazy, then she, her father Max and her sister Mint went to dinner. I hadn't had a Thai meal in about a month. I quit eating Asian food a week before leaving San Francisco in order to get my fill of American foods so that I wouldn't crave them, but I love Thai food and had been anticipating eating here. It was delicious. I got a desert and it was also delicious. It was heavenly. I can't wait to eat again.
We talked about school and America mostly. Mint is My's younger sister and she will be going to the USA in a few years for a foreign exchange program. This is the same program that introduced My to Alaska and my aunt Wendy, which is how I met her. My said that she travels 2 hours one way to get to school, which I think is ridiculous.
After dinner we walked around a little sidewalk market and then went home to do what any wired, high tech group of people does; we geeked out. They have a room that they keep air conditioned where most everything happens. There's a TV, refrigerator, a few computers, cups, a sound system, a few couches, a few guitars, a bunch of desk toys, etc.. Basically a really playfully packed office living room kitchen. The cool room reminded me of my grandmother's sitting room in Texas where she would sit and cross-stitch while watching the discovery channel or the movie channel.
My friend George helped me test out the inbound calling setup that I had rigged with Skype and it worked great. We talked for about 30 minutes about life and what we've both been up to and it was good to catch up with an old friend one-on-one, essentially off the grid. It was also great to have at least the inbound function of my phone working again. It is also good to be in Thailand. I wasn't really sure what to expect since I'd heard so much about it and it has so many different reputations. I'm still not entirely sure what to expect, or even what I'll do tomorrow since My is going to be busy all day, but I'm sure I'll figure something out. There are certainly more options here than in Siem Reap.
I walked around a bit and looked at the airport. It was a nice building with decent tropical landscaping outside. It felt like the kind of airport you'd see in a tropical resort, and then I remembered that's pretty much what it was. A sign in the bathroom instructing men not to wash in the urinals reminded me that I was still in a 3rd world country.
I walked around the shops in the airport and as happy that I could actually look people in the eyes without the fear of them aggressively hawking their goods. It was nice. I was tired of having to pass through a crowd as if I saw nobody, it felt alienating and I was the alienator. I took some photos of the airport and as I passed the bar the bartenders teased me about being drunk, but I wasn't since I hadn't finished even half of the bottle. It was funny and we laughed about it. I played around with the networks and stuff on my phone, trying to figure out the details of this SIM swapping thing that is so different from the US. At one point two Japanese girls came running by, quickly passed through the gate and ran for an airplane that was out on the tarmac.
I boarded the plane and the flight attendant gave the usual speech about disabling communications devices and I thought about that annoying sound that the iPhone puts into some speaker systems. There was no safety demo and we were quickly in the air. I was sitting underneath the wing with a prop engine outside my window. We had a meal and I ate my first muffin since leaving SF where muffins were a pretty usual breakfast with coffee. I had coffee with my meal and it was the worst coffee I've had in years. It reminded me of the hot black tar we'd drink at Actiontec.
As we flew I looked out at the beautiful clouds and remembered my flight from Hanoi. I looked down at the earth and thought about all of the beautiful places that were hidden in those green polygons. I saw the reflection of the sun passing from rice paddy to rice paddy and then the earth disappeared behind a turbulent cloud.
On our descent I noticed that the land surrounding Bangkok was back to the familiar Vietnamese landscape of rice paddies for miles. The next thing I noticed was that people were driving on the left side of the road. I only had time to listen to two orbital songs before I had been told to take my headphones off for landing, the entire flight was less than an hour and at 2:50 I was in Thailand. The new airport in Bangkok is eye catching and modern. Entering the country was very easy and no visa was required.
After passing through passport control I went and found a new SIM card with a phone number that people could call me on. In Thailand, inbound minutes are free. With Skype, you can have an inbound number in any country that they support, and any state in America. I have a California Skype number. I also have an unlimited world calling plan. Those three things together allow people to call my Skype number in California and ring my cell phone in Thailand without incurring any additional fees for international calling. My SIM card also provided data access, which is actually a little irritating since any network activity on my phone will drain my phone balance, and I can't disable only data. I had a working phone though and I was again thankful that the iPhone cracking team got the 3.0 unlock out just in time for my arrival in Thailand.
I called My on the phone and told her that I was several hours earlier than I had expected and she said she'd be at the airport in 15 minutes. In the time between I walked around and took in the crowd. There were many beautiful girls, many fashionable people, many people who looked like transvestites, and many girls who looked manly kinda scary and made me wonder about this sex change capital of the world.
My was there in the 15 minutes she said and her father whisked us away in a luxury Toyota sedan. I hadn't been in a car that wasn't a Saigon taxi in a long time. The highway system was very modern, the airport surroundings were very modern, the landscape was clean. This was very 1st world and it was odd. There wasn't a single scooter around, which made sense since we were going over 120km/h. When we got off the highway though things started to look more familiar. I saw some bicycles and scooters and cement apartment buildings that weren't painted and it felt like the SE Asia I know.
My's family's place was more modern though, more like what I'd expect to find in Korea given the Korean movies I've seen. It was a three story building with air conditioning, several laptops set around on desks, wifi, and a Wii. There was a book called "Engineering Mechanics Dynamics 11th Edition" that was full of complex mathematical algorithms with diagrams applying the principles to real world things like cranes and roller coasters. There was a piece of paper inside with a hand sketched on it and delicate decorations around the word "sleep" and I could tell what My's classes for her automotive design major were probably like.
We played on her hacked Wii for a bit, did a round of golf and a round of bowling and played Wario something else that was really crazy, then she, her father Max and her sister Mint went to dinner. I hadn't had a Thai meal in about a month. I quit eating Asian food a week before leaving San Francisco in order to get my fill of American foods so that I wouldn't crave them, but I love Thai food and had been anticipating eating here. It was delicious. I got a desert and it was also delicious. It was heavenly. I can't wait to eat again.
We talked about school and America mostly. Mint is My's younger sister and she will be going to the USA in a few years for a foreign exchange program. This is the same program that introduced My to Alaska and my aunt Wendy, which is how I met her. My said that she travels 2 hours one way to get to school, which I think is ridiculous.
After dinner we walked around a little sidewalk market and then went home to do what any wired, high tech group of people does; we geeked out. They have a room that they keep air conditioned where most everything happens. There's a TV, refrigerator, a few computers, cups, a sound system, a few couches, a few guitars, a bunch of desk toys, etc.. Basically a really playfully packed office living room kitchen. The cool room reminded me of my grandmother's sitting room in Texas where she would sit and cross-stitch while watching the discovery channel or the movie channel.
My friend George helped me test out the inbound calling setup that I had rigged with Skype and it worked great. We talked for about 30 minutes about life and what we've both been up to and it was good to catch up with an old friend one-on-one, essentially off the grid. It was also great to have at least the inbound function of my phone working again. It is also good to be in Thailand. I wasn't really sure what to expect since I'd heard so much about it and it has so many different reputations. I'm still not entirely sure what to expect, or even what I'll do tomorrow since My is going to be busy all day, but I'm sure I'll figure something out. There are certainly more options here than in Siem Reap. • • • • •
2009.06.22 by Daniel
First Day at Angkor Wat
Along the way to Siem Reap it began raining heavily and shortly afterwards we pulled off for a rest. Some kids were playing in the warm rain that was dripping off the roof, running back and forth under it. Some of us ate little meat filled buns. Taka ate some scorpions and grasshoppers. I told him I fully intended to try them, just not in the middle of a bus trip.
A little while later I decided to take a photograph so I could see where we were by looking at the GPS data, but after I took the photo the GPS info was missing from the file. Further investigation revealed faulting wiring in the proprietary connector on my Geomet'r. So there I was on my way to one of the largest most beautiful man made sights in the world and my GPS wasn't working. "Wonderful..." I thought.
We arrived in Siem Reap in the dark about an hour or so after I had expected to be there. It was muddy when we got out because it had been raining, and it was nearly pitch black because wherever we were dropped off had like one light. So, in that darkness Taka and I negotiated with a tuk tuk driver to take us to one of the hotels we'd found in the buide book. He wanted to take us somewhere else but we made him take us to where we wanted to go. I'm not so sure this was the best idea because after I'd checked into the hotel I realized that their free internet was not working. Internet was pretty much the only thing I had wanted from a room. They said it might be working the next day.
Taka and I agreed to meet at the gate of the hotel the following morning at 5am, and so we did. When I went to gate it was locked with me on the inside. One of the employees of the hotel happened to be sleeping under a mosquito net on the front porch and he opened the gate for me. Taka wasn't there yet, but the employee went and woke him up for me. We negotiated a day trip around Angkor with a tuk tuk driver, $10 for the day, and headed out to see the sun rise at Angkor Wat.
As a side note, Angkor Wat is only one temple among many many temples that are in the same locale, and as glorious as it is, it may not be the most beautiful and is probably not the most enchanting of the temples.
Angkor Wat was larger than I thought. I thought we were driving around a lake, but this lake ended up being merely the moat that surrounded the temple grounds. The driver dropped us off at one of the only two places where you can pass over the moat. There were two monkeys sitting at the waters edge preening each other. These were the first monkeys I'd seen on my trip. They were extremely cute and adorable and human like. I took a few photos of them, which seemed silly when there was the glorious sunrise behind the glorious temple.
Angkor Wat ended up being very large. I think that is really the appeal of it... it's like many of the smaller temples, just enlarged. It's not more complex, it's not more beautiful, it's simply on a larger scale. It's really awesome, and it's in better shape than a lot of the other temples too. The problem for us was that there was scaffolding on two of the towers and it didn't look good. Throughout the rest of the day we would end up seeing tons of scaffolding, some cranes, tarps, and all sorts of other temple reconstructive devices. The trick was to get as few tourists and as little construction equipment as possible in a photograph.
On the way out we were talking about breakfast just about the time we came upon some stalls. We were introduced to the familiar chants of persona that could easily be programmed as bots in an Angkor simulation. "Three bracelets, one dollar! You buy!" and "You want cold drink? I have cold drink for you! Water for one dollar! You want beer?" and "You want buy shirt? I have many colors! You buy table cloth! You give to your girlfriend or mother! Just one dollar!"
We went outside the moat and found cheaper breakfast with some nice folks. Sweet milk coffee, eggs with vegetables and bread. Yummy. A good breakfast for what would be a long day of climbing steps and exploring temples in the hot humidity and sun.
As we were leaving there was this little girl following us trying to sell us bracelets, five for one dollar. She was adorable. She was 10. She kept putting on this sad face, but I'd smile at her and she'd smile, look away and try to put her sad face back on. I didn't buy anything from her, but I took her photo and gave her 100r which she took very reluctantly. She was the first of many adorable children I encountered throughout the day who would try to pity me into buying shit that I didn't need or want.
When we got back to the tuk tuk my glasses fell apart. It just wasn't my day. My GPS broke, my hotel internet broke, and here was the right-hand lens of my glasses falling out because a tiny screw had come undone.
Never fear, our handy tuk tuk driver pulled out a crescent wrench, a pair of pliers and a nail and used the pliers to hammer the nail onto the crescent wrench like a blacksmith-to-go. Within 2 minutes I had a makeshift micro-screwdriver to use to screw my glasses back together. What a life saver he was. I ended up tipping him $2 at the end of the day partly because of this and partly because he took us to some awesome sights that we didn't ask to go to.
We went on to see so many sites that I can't even describe them all unless I do so with globals like "they were made mostly of stone, they were falling apart, they were being restored, and they were pretty ƒ amazing."
At each stop, before the tuk tuk had even slowed down, people would begin shouting at you about water, shirts, flutes, postcards, scarves, table clothes, bananas, beer, and honestly just a few other things. It seemed like everybody was selling the same exact crap. Taka and I suspected that the whole show was run by one organization who only allowed these people to sell certain things.
At one stop there was a particularly beautiful girl trying to sell us water, which we did need, and numerous other things that we did not, including shirts. Taka decided to try to bargain with her by trading his shirt for the one she was selling. She said she didn't want his shirt because it smelled bad, and when I teased her about insulting my friend she gave this beautiful smile and said "oh my gaaaaaad!" We teased her some more about various things and it was nice to have some genuine interaction with these people beyond bartering for novelties. I did end up coming back to her to buy a soda and some water. Smiles and sincerity go a long way.
We climbed up a steep temple and when we got to the top Taka started chatting up the backpacker girls like he likes to do, which is actually very useful because you end up seeing the same people over and over and you get to share info and stories and make a lot of friends.
I took some photos and found some Cambodian guy who started telling me all sorts of information about the place we were at. It ahd been struck by lightning and so it was never finished, hence no carving sin the stones. It was made from rocks brought in from Thailand on elephants and bamboo poles, hence the round holes in all of the stones. He showed me a mountain range in the distance that was the border to Thailand. He showed me how to climb up onto the roof of the temple, which was illegal, but he said you could see the tops of three of the Angkor Wat towers over the forest from up there. He showed us the library and the gallery, both of which were in ruins. He showed us very quick ways to descend incredibly steep stairwells that were more like stone ladders. He showed us some great spots to take photos. He said he'd been living in the area for 15 years and was a high school student. He spoke very good English and was really helpful so I tipped him $1 after he showed us the way back to the front.
Another one of the really notable places we went was the "tomb raider temple", which is where Tomb Raider was filmed. It was really, really cool. There were trees that had been growing for hundreds of years that had destroyed much of the place in an really beautiful way. It was so beautiful that there were about 50 people walking around and you could barely get a photo without half a dozen people in it. It was definitely one of the coolest spots we saw today and we intend to go back tomorrow morning before the crowds are there.
While we were in the tomb raider temple we found a group of three girls from Steamboat Springs who had rented bikes. They were cool and we talked with them for a while. It was nice to run into people from a tiny place near where I had once lived. We walked with them a while but split ways when they had to go back for their bikes. Every time I say goodbye to somebody I meet I wonder if I'll see them again down the road. So many of the travelers I've talked to so far say they keep bumping into people in various cities and countries that they met previously on their travels.
We went to get some food and found a nice spot with a few women managing an empty shop. We got coffee and ramen and ate some really really spicy peppers. They had a really strange bird that sounded like a trained parrot with its vocal sounds and very beautiful calls, but was black and yellow with some weird flaps on the back of its neck. It didn't like me and tried to attack me, but I loved it anyway.
One of the girls was turning this wheel that was attached to a glass cylendar with a golden liquid in it, which I thought was juice or beer. She was filling 1 liter bottles with the liquid, then she'd turn the wheel and fill the glass cylendar again. I nearly ordered one just to try it. Taka asked her what it was and she said it was gasoline.
At one point in the afternoon we were walking around a mostly flat temple with hallways and small courtyards. It began to thunder, then it began to rain lightly, then it began to rain heavily. We happened to step into a pile of ants and were being bitten by the ants as we ran to take cover in one of the hallways of the temple. We were trapped by the rain with a couple from the Czeck Republic, so we found a dry spot for us all to sit and we talked a while about their trip to Phnom Penh and back to Thailand. When it cleared up they headed out ahead of Taka and I, who were both taking photos like mad. The rain had increased the contrast of the stones and the saturation of all of the colors and the grass in the courtyards was more beautiful than before.
The threat of rain lingered as we saw a few more temples, and then as we were on top of a very tall one it began to actually rain some more. This made the stones slippery so we took shelter and had some beer at a local shop. There were several women and children around trying to sell us flutes and shirts and things. Taka and I talked for a while and one 10 year old girl kept showing me these horribly photoshopped postcards of Cambodian life. I had discovered earlier that if you start asking questions they quit trying to sell you things, so I asked her the normal things and then began teaching her english words for things found in the photos on the postcards. It seemed like out of nowhere, all the sudden I had like 6 girls trying to get me to buy them stuff. One woman was saying she wanted me to buy here a beer, a deaf kid a coke, and a flute for myself for $4. I agreed to do it for $3 and we all had a good time making jokes and sparring in this sell/buy situation. Taka had bought a mouth harp and was trying to talk to them through it while he tried to make noise on it. I was trying to get a girl who was trying to sell me a mouth harp to twang it while I played the flute while blowing out of my nose. The deaf kid was just laughing at everything and enjoying his coke, and the young girls were were just frustrated that we wouldn't give them a dollar for little bamboo stars and flowers and crummy post cards. It was a really fun time and we took some funny photos, ate some bananas and then headed out into the rain. It was nice to have some fun with the locals... I find them incredibly frustrating when they're selling me things, but when we drop that whole thing and let me buy what I feel like buying and just have fun everything is a lot more enjoyable.
It was getting late and the gates were closing soon so we had our tuk tuk driver take us to the last big temple. This last temple ended up being one of the coolest temples we'd seen, but we didn't have time to explore it. It was really really large, it was raining and it was late. Taka and I went in a ways expecting it to be small, but after finding several large intersections of hallways into really cool looking places we decided to give up and go home, then come back tomorrow.
We left that temple in the pouring rain walking on stones, in puddles and in the mud, all underneath the trees that reached out to each other above. The whole scene was really beautiful, the kind of thing from a great movie, and it was a really great way to finish the day.
It rained all the way back to the hotel. When we got there I asked about the internet and they said that it was broken. They said it might be working the next day.
It was too late to check out, so I went to my room and took a much needed shower and washed my clothes in the sink and hung them to dry on whatever I could find to hang them on. I need to get a clothes line type thing.
I decided to take a nap, but it began raining really heavy and I couldn't sleep so I wrote this instead, and if only I had internet I could post it right now.
Angkor Wat was larger than I thought. I thought we were driving around a lake, but this lake ended up being merely the moat that surrounded the temple grounds. The driver dropped us off at one of the only two places where you can pass over the moat. There were two monkeys sitting at the waters edge preening each other. These were the first monkeys I'd seen on my trip. They were extremely cute and adorable and human like. I took a few photos of them, which seemed silly when there was the glorious sunrise behind the glorious temple.
Angkor Wat ended up being very large. I think that is really the appeal of it... it's like many of the smaller temples, just enlarged. It's not more complex, it's not more beautiful, it's simply on a larger scale. It's really awesome, and it's in better shape than a lot of the other temples too. The problem for us was that there was scaffolding on two of the towers and it didn't look good. Throughout the rest of the day we would end up seeing tons of scaffolding, some cranes, tarps, and all sorts of other temple reconstructive devices. The trick was to get as few tourists and as little construction equipment as possible in a photograph.
On the way out we were talking about breakfast just about the time we came upon some stalls. We were introduced to the familiar chants of persona that could easily be programmed as bots in an Angkor simulation. "Three bracelets, one dollar! You buy!" and "You want cold drink? I have cold drink for you! Water for one dollar! You want beer?" and "You want buy shirt? I have many colors! You buy table cloth! You give to your girlfriend or mother! Just one dollar!"
We went outside the moat and found cheaper breakfast with some nice folks. Sweet milk coffee, eggs with vegetables and bread. Yummy. A good breakfast for what would be a long day of climbing steps and exploring temples in the hot humidity and sun.
As we were leaving there was this little girl following us trying to sell us bracelets, five for one dollar. She was adorable. She was 10. She kept putting on this sad face, but I'd smile at her and she'd smile, look away and try to put her sad face back on. I didn't buy anything from her, but I took her photo and gave her 100r which she took very reluctantly. She was the first of many adorable children I encountered throughout the day who would try to pity me into buying shit that I didn't need or want.
When we got back to the tuk tuk my glasses fell apart. It just wasn't my day. My GPS broke, my hotel internet broke, and here was the right-hand lens of my glasses falling out because a tiny screw had come undone.
Never fear, our handy tuk tuk driver pulled out a crescent wrench, a pair of pliers and a nail and used the pliers to hammer the nail onto the crescent wrench like a blacksmith-to-go. Within 2 minutes I had a makeshift micro-screwdriver to use to screw my glasses back together. What a life saver he was. I ended up tipping him $2 at the end of the day partly because of this and partly because he took us to some awesome sights that we didn't ask to go to.
We went on to see so many sites that I can't even describe them all unless I do so with globals like "they were made mostly of stone, they were falling apart, they were being restored, and they were pretty ƒ amazing."
At each stop, before the tuk tuk had even slowed down, people would begin shouting at you about water, shirts, flutes, postcards, scarves, table clothes, bananas, beer, and honestly just a few other things. It seemed like everybody was selling the same exact crap. Taka and I suspected that the whole show was run by one organization who only allowed these people to sell certain things.
At one stop there was a particularly beautiful girl trying to sell us water, which we did need, and numerous other things that we did not, including shirts. Taka decided to try to bargain with her by trading his shirt for the one she was selling. She said she didn't want his shirt because it smelled bad, and when I teased her about insulting my friend she gave this beautiful smile and said "oh my gaaaaaad!" We teased her some more about various things and it was nice to have some genuine interaction with these people beyond bartering for novelties. I did end up coming back to her to buy a soda and some water. Smiles and sincerity go a long way.
We climbed up a steep temple and when we got to the top Taka started chatting up the backpacker girls like he likes to do, which is actually very useful because you end up seeing the same people over and over and you get to share info and stories and make a lot of friends.
I took some photos and found some Cambodian guy who started telling me all sorts of information about the place we were at. It ahd been struck by lightning and so it was never finished, hence no carving sin the stones. It was made from rocks brought in from Thailand on elephants and bamboo poles, hence the round holes in all of the stones. He showed me a mountain range in the distance that was the border to Thailand. He showed me how to climb up onto the roof of the temple, which was illegal, but he said you could see the tops of three of the Angkor Wat towers over the forest from up there. He showed us the library and the gallery, both of which were in ruins. He showed us very quick ways to descend incredibly steep stairwells that were more like stone ladders. He showed us some great spots to take photos. He said he'd been living in the area for 15 years and was a high school student. He spoke very good English and was really helpful so I tipped him $1 after he showed us the way back to the front.
Another one of the really notable places we went was the "tomb raider temple", which is where Tomb Raider was filmed. It was really, really cool. There were trees that had been growing for hundreds of years that had destroyed much of the place in an really beautiful way. It was so beautiful that there were about 50 people walking around and you could barely get a photo without half a dozen people in it. It was definitely one of the coolest spots we saw today and we intend to go back tomorrow morning before the crowds are there.
While we were in the tomb raider temple we found a group of three girls from Steamboat Springs who had rented bikes. They were cool and we talked with them for a while. It was nice to run into people from a tiny place near where I had once lived. We walked with them a while but split ways when they had to go back for their bikes. Every time I say goodbye to somebody I meet I wonder if I'll see them again down the road. So many of the travelers I've talked to so far say they keep bumping into people in various cities and countries that they met previously on their travels.
We went to get some food and found a nice spot with a few women managing an empty shop. We got coffee and ramen and ate some really really spicy peppers. They had a really strange bird that sounded like a trained parrot with its vocal sounds and very beautiful calls, but was black and yellow with some weird flaps on the back of its neck. It didn't like me and tried to attack me, but I loved it anyway.
One of the girls was turning this wheel that was attached to a glass cylendar with a golden liquid in it, which I thought was juice or beer. She was filling 1 liter bottles with the liquid, then she'd turn the wheel and fill the glass cylendar again. I nearly ordered one just to try it. Taka asked her what it was and she said it was gasoline.
At one point in the afternoon we were walking around a mostly flat temple with hallways and small courtyards. It began to thunder, then it began to rain lightly, then it began to rain heavily. We happened to step into a pile of ants and were being bitten by the ants as we ran to take cover in one of the hallways of the temple. We were trapped by the rain with a couple from the Czeck Republic, so we found a dry spot for us all to sit and we talked a while about their trip to Phnom Penh and back to Thailand. When it cleared up they headed out ahead of Taka and I, who were both taking photos like mad. The rain had increased the contrast of the stones and the saturation of all of the colors and the grass in the courtyards was more beautiful than before.
The threat of rain lingered as we saw a few more temples, and then as we were on top of a very tall one it began to actually rain some more. This made the stones slippery so we took shelter and had some beer at a local shop. There were several women and children around trying to sell us flutes and shirts and things. Taka and I talked for a while and one 10 year old girl kept showing me these horribly photoshopped postcards of Cambodian life. I had discovered earlier that if you start asking questions they quit trying to sell you things, so I asked her the normal things and then began teaching her english words for things found in the photos on the postcards. It seemed like out of nowhere, all the sudden I had like 6 girls trying to get me to buy them stuff. One woman was saying she wanted me to buy here a beer, a deaf kid a coke, and a flute for myself for $4. I agreed to do it for $3 and we all had a good time making jokes and sparring in this sell/buy situation. Taka had bought a mouth harp and was trying to talk to them through it while he tried to make noise on it. I was trying to get a girl who was trying to sell me a mouth harp to twang it while I played the flute while blowing out of my nose. The deaf kid was just laughing at everything and enjoying his coke, and the young girls were were just frustrated that we wouldn't give them a dollar for little bamboo stars and flowers and crummy post cards. It was a really fun time and we took some funny photos, ate some bananas and then headed out into the rain. It was nice to have some fun with the locals... I find them incredibly frustrating when they're selling me things, but when we drop that whole thing and let me buy what I feel like buying and just have fun everything is a lot more enjoyable.
It was getting late and the gates were closing soon so we had our tuk tuk driver take us to the last big temple. This last temple ended up being one of the coolest temples we'd seen, but we didn't have time to explore it. It was really really large, it was raining and it was late. Taka and I went in a ways expecting it to be small, but after finding several large intersections of hallways into really cool looking places we decided to give up and go home, then come back tomorrow.
We left that temple in the pouring rain walking on stones, in puddles and in the mud, all underneath the trees that reached out to each other above. The whole scene was really beautiful, the kind of thing from a great movie, and it was a really great way to finish the day.
It rained all the way back to the hotel. When we got there I asked about the internet and they said that it was broken. They said it might be working the next day.
It was too late to check out, so I went to my room and took a much needed shower and washed my clothes in the sink and hung them to dry on whatever I could find to hang them on. I need to get a clothes line type thing.
I decided to take a nap, but it began raining really heavy and I couldn't sleep so I wrote this instead, and if only I had internet I could post it right now. • • • • •
2009.06.20 by Daniel
First day in Cambodia
The road north to Cambodia was immediately nicer than other roads I've taken into or inside of Saigon. They were more like the roads on Hanoi, more modern and maintained, and this gave promise to the many construction site billboards showing the future office complexes and industry sites that I've seen on my travels.
I was traveling on a Mailinh tour bus and had taken a Mailinh taxi the day before and had gotten a good price. At the front of the bus which was at first playing an episode of a Vietnamese variety show but then began playing popular internet videos. This was interesting because once again there was this mix of cultures. There were videos where white men were driving luxury sports cars that I'd seen a thousand times in San Jose but hadn't seen once in Vietnam. There were several videos with overt sexuality that I hadn't seen yet in actual Vietnamese culture. Nobody cared about the robot dancing kid in the orange shirt but they loved the video of the man who got attacked by the mule he was trying to have sex with. I couldn't believe such a business from such a conservative culture would be playing some of these videos.
The nonfunctioning GPS feature on my iPhone really began to bug me again when we stopped for gas and I wondered where I was. I remembered that the iPhone 3.0 firmware had finally gone public and had probably been cracked since the hackers had been keeping up on 3.0 and I resolved to network unlock my phone ASAP in hopes of restoring GPS functions and if nothing else to give me a phone rather than a PDA.
When we got to the border we all got off the bus, picked up our luggage and went into an air conditioned building with an x-Ray machine and a group of 80 or more people waiting beyond it, and so we waited.
There were a lot of white people, most Australians. A Japanese man from Hiroshima spoke with me in English. He asked if I had a visa already and when I said yes he said "fuck..." and it sounded good to hea familiar English slang. He said he was unemployed and was traveling from Saigon up to Thailand and back down to Singapore, nearly the same route I was taking bu in a mere 10 days. I told him he could probably buy a visa at the checkpoint and he agreed and wised he'd brought more American dollars. He was from North Carolina.
One by one our names were called and our passports were returned including arrival/departure cards. A man checked my passport and I went outside, exchanged my book for my camera, gave my backpack to the storage guys and boarded. Off we went for a mere 200 meters, then we had to ge off again. This was the real border.
Inside a man checked my passport and directed me to a line. A sign at the counter said they were having trouble with their computers, which were running windows and had motorized logitech webcams. They took my passport and scanned it, took my photo, stamped the passport a half dozen times and let me pass. A woman checked my passport as she talken on her cell phone and let me pass into the health quarentine where there was a x-Ray machine and a crowd of people. I filled out a health declaration and they let me pass. It felt like I was on level 3 and just needed to find the person to check my passport so I could continue, but I guess level 3 doesn't require that so I went and got back on the bus.
The first thing I noticed in Cambodia were numerous casinos, none o which were open. There were no casinos in Vietnam.
The next thing I noticed was that they reluctant on the Thai alphabet, which I thought would be a problem for me until I saw that everything was translated into two to four written languages: Thai, some sort of Chinese, Vietnamese and English, and I can read one and somewhat pronounce another. The money is in Thai and English numerals.
At lunch I sat with the Japanese man, who was able to buy a visa at the border, and talked about phnom penh, which is where ou bus is headed, and Angkor Wat.
I drank an Angkor beer and thought about San Francisco.
The Japanese man mentioned both lonely planet and the backpacker subculture of travelers, which was promising, and mentioned that staying near the lake rather than downtown was cheaper and hence attracted more backpackers. I had the address of one guest house in my phone, but if that didn't pan out at least I knew where to go to find English speakers and cheap lodging.
I stared out the window and noticed that this road was not as busy as just about any road in Vietnam that I'd been on.
I opened a bottle of Aquatien and thought of Tien. Then I thought of Adult Swim.
I saw ducks, hens, chickens, horses, cows and fields of grass, not rice. I saw dogs, kids playing volleyball, children playing with sticks, a naked child running in a dirt yard.
I saw orchards.
I saw scooters, modern cars, a bare 4 wheeled vehicle that looked like a stripped down truck, and many small structures like fences and ladders made from thin, tall trees that grow naturally. The landscape here was notably different and had been sectioned off for ranching livestock and not just farming crops like Vietnam. The fenced off open fields looked more familiar to me since almost all of America is fenced off in much the same way. Not all people had fences though, some would tie their cattle to palm trees or simply let their cattle wander into the middle of the highway.
The architecture was mostly the same as Vietnam near the border but turned mote to wooden houses on stilts farther in. Some had hammocks strung between the stilts, most used the shade as a garage for scooters.
We stopped at a ferry where locals were selling strange fruits that I'd never seen that looked like a mix between a cactus and a muffin and other strange things. People bathed in the river. Tori Amos sang "we may be on this road but we're just imposters in this country" in my ear and I concurred.
I wondered why the vegetation seemed so different and when I checked the location data for my last photo I found that we were at only 11° N and still at sea level, which led me to no conclusion.
I saw a man on a scooter with a barrel of piglets.
I was glad to have photography as a purpose because I didn't feel like being lost with no purpose.
Phnom penh was different. There were expensive cars, gas stations like suburban America, and the first real graffiti I've seen in Asia. It wasn't done by locals.
My Japanese friend and I shared a tuk tuk and went to a place on the lake that he had found in the lonely planet. It was all the way at the end of a narrow and winding alley and stood on stilts over the lake. It was a $5 night guest house and the crummiest room I've had so far. The room was about the quality of a summer camp dorm and there was no internet. The drain in the sink went straight onto the floor and the drain on the floor went straight into the lake. However, it was right on the lake and there were other English speakers around and a cafe and bar right there. The man who showed us in offered me drinks, cigarettes and weed.
I went to get a drink with my Japanese friend and ended up with my first real dose of backpacker culture. Most people were speaking in English. Most people had tattoos. Most people had piercing. I think I'm still the only American because all the white people have English or Australian accents and everybody else has dark skin. It was happy hour and beer was $.75 a glass, whiskey was $.50 a shot. The bar tender offered us weed, which wasn't on the menu.
We sat with a couple from London who had been traveling for six months from the opposite direction I was headed and had lots of stories, recommendations and insight. They were smoking weed and lounging around a couched area. I had a double whiskey and a beer while they talked about how they didn't recommend Phuket, they did recommend tubing in Laos and only a day in Angkor Wat, and talked about the lunar dance parties on the beach in Ko Pha Ngan, the very conservative and honest culture in Laos, and the interesting and religious mix of culture in Malaysia. I wondered how Tien would like this and wished she were there with me.
I soaked in the knowledge, enjoyed the English conversation and then went for one last beer which I drank on the deck by the shrinking lake after being offered weed.
There are no mosquitoes here. It is the perfect temperature. There are pillows and matts at the edge of the deck where you can relax and watch the sun set at the waters edge.
This was awesome for a while, but club dance music began playing and the party turned up. It would've been the kind of thing I would have loved at a different point in my life but I was now looking for something a little quieter and more serene. I retired early and slept until 5:30 or so, about the time the sun rises, and went for breakfast, photos and to find a bookstore I'd seen on my way in.
Phnom penh was different. There were expensive cars, gas stations like suburban America, and the first real graffiti I've seen in Asia. It wasn't done by locals.
My Japanese friend and I shared a tuk tuk and went to a place on the lake that he had found in the lonely planet. It was all the way at the end of a narrow and winding alley and stood on stilts over the lake. It was a $5 night guest house and the crummiest room I've had so far. The room was about the quality of a summer camp dorm and there was no internet. The drain in the sink went straight onto the floor and the drain on the floor went straight into the lake. However, it was right on the lake and there were other English speakers around and a cafe and bar right there. The man who showed us in offered me drinks, cigarettes and weed.
I went to get a drink with my Japanese friend and ended up with my first real dose of backpacker culture. Most people were speaking in English. Most people had tattoos. Most people had piercing. I think I'm still the only American because all the white people have English or Australian accents and everybody else has dark skin. It was happy hour and beer was $.75 a glass, whiskey was $.50 a shot. The bar tender offered us weed, which wasn't on the menu.
We sat with a couple from London who had been traveling for six months from the opposite direction I was headed and had lots of stories, recommendations and insight. They were smoking weed and lounging around a couched area. I had a double whiskey and a beer while they talked about how they didn't recommend Phuket, they did recommend tubing in Laos and only a day in Angkor Wat, and talked about the lunar dance parties on the beach in Ko Pha Ngan, the very conservative and honest culture in Laos, and the interesting and religious mix of culture in Malaysia. I wondered how Tien would like this and wished she were there with me.
I soaked in the knowledge, enjoyed the English conversation and then went for one last beer which I drank on the deck by the shrinking lake after being offered weed.
There are no mosquitoes here. It is the perfect temperature. There are pillows and matts at the edge of the deck where you can relax and watch the sun set at the waters edge.
This was awesome for a while, but club dance music began playing and the party turned up. It would've been the kind of thing I would have loved at a different point in my life but I was now looking for something a little quieter and more serene. I retired early and slept until 5:30 or so, about the time the sun rises, and went for breakfast, photos and to find a bookstore I'd seen on my way in. • • • • •
2009.06.19 by Daniel
Photographed and gone to Cambodia
I spent the morning on the subject en of a Kodak DSLR in a photo session reminiscent of that in "Lost in Transaltion". The photographer was good though, and Tien looked ƒ incredible. I felt like a doofus next to such stunning beauty, but her sisters flattered me into a comfortable state of mind. It was fun and some of it was silly. We went through several outfits and lighting setups and it was interesting to see their techniques, so different from what I do. It was surprisingly tiring though, partly because of the waiting while Tien changed from one stunning outfit and hairdo to another. After the shoot we went and had lunch at the place where I got ill and got the same thing, but this time I didn't eat the vegetables. Afterwards we wnt to look through photos of the shoot. Nobody has taken photos of me in a long, long time. It was odd to see myself, looking my age, balding, gaining a little weight. I quickly got over my self consciousness and we picked out all the necessary photos, paid and went not home but to a flower market. All I wanted to do was sleep at this point, but thu bought like 10 pounds of flowers and I carried them in my arms as we scooted home.
Sleep at last... Tien and I talked and I drifted off into a Lon nap. When I woke up we discussed the details of my third attempt to get to Cambodia. We would go to saigon by bus early the next morning, leaving from long xuyen.
We woke up at 3:30. I thought about how many times I've gotten up at odd hours of the night on this trip. Tiens brother went to find somebody to take us to the station but didn't come back in time and we ended up motorbiking down with her dad and sister.
It was completely dark, it was warm and there was a crescent moon shining through haze in the sky. We shared headphones and listened to the garden state soundtrack. There weren't many people on the road, but it seemed that when there were they'd pass us in groups and the headlamp would shine a bright circle onto their backs.
We arrived at the bus top late and had to wait 45 minutes for the next one. Tiens dad shook my hand and smiled big, then rode off on his motorbike. I thought about how interesting it is to communicate things nonverbally, like saying goodbye to your future father in law.
The morning light began to show the details of the rainclouds that had been sneaking up on us in the dark, and as I photographed them they retaliated with a gentle sprinkle. It was pretty dark and my f/4 was not giving me much as far as shutter speed and I thought about how nice it would be to have a tripod. Incidentally the guys at gorillapod.com emailed me the other day asking to use a photo I took on their website and offered to send me some gear. I wished that I had it with me already and later told Tien that when I get back to Vietnam we'd have to go take photos in the morning light if I had received a tripod yet.
As we were boarding the bus I realized that I didn't have any earplugs. Luckily I had brought a second set of headphones so Tien and I could both listen to music, but we couldn't share it on a single iPod. I made a mental note to remember earplugs from now on.
We made our way down the bumpy and now familiar route to saigon, the first time in dayligt. At the ferry station I watched crowds of people passing. I saw a guy on a bicycle flirting and joking with the girl he was with and thought about how great it is that mannerisms transcend spoken language. These two were happy and I could see that. Some women behind them were happy and I could see that. Another woman was in a hurry and I could see that. When you're surrounded by people who don't speak your language you begin paying attention to such things and they take on a bigger weight in the absence of words.
I saw a half white girl on a bicycle, easily distinguishable because of her brown hair, and realized I had seen another in a restaurant a few days earlier. I wondered if these were products of war.
I saw people taking a motorcycle riding class.
When we stopped for a break Tien and I got breakfast, eggs and bread and coffee, which made me very happy. When a skillet was placed before me I touched it to move it and burned my finger a little and cursed. Instead of the American ever-liable reaction of sympathy and placation, the employee who had set it down laughed and smiled at me and said something in Vietnamese. I thought this was awesome. People need real world conditioning, not the legal shelter from physical reality and responsibility that so many liability lawsuits in America display.
When we got to Saigon the traffic was terrible. I realized that even though Saigon is great for so many reasons I really don't like it all that much. It's not bad to stay a day in, but I wouldn't recommend an extended visit over Hanoi or more rural places. Then again, maybe it's different if you speak the language, know the hidden gems, or at least have your own transportation.
Tien and I checked into a mildly crummy and hence overpriced hotel and caught up on missed sleep. We sat on the bed and ate pringles and drank soda from the fridge and went back to bed. The best thing about vacationing is a lack of responsibility. We were free to do whatever we wanted with our time and chose to be lazy. Eventually we got up and had lunch, discussing some details of her immigration, then realized we wouldn't see each other for a few weeks and had a sad goodbye. I gave her a few billion dong, the Vietnamese currency, put her in a taxi and was alone again in Saigon.
I spent the rest of the night in my hotel room catching up on computer stuff and being lazy some more. In the morning I shaved my head, checked the charge on my gadgets, checked out of my hotel and headed for an Australian cafe I'd seen.
Apparantly Australian cafes are not the same as American cafes, which I stupidly expected because of the shared language. I did have a cappucino though, my first in weeks, and a Vietnamese breakfast of bread and beef stew.
A Filipino man was sitting at the next table and began talking to me. He asked about my travels and my work and said he was looking for a cheaper hotel. It was nice to have a conversation and I hoped to find more English speakers on my journey through more popular tourist destinations.
I wnt to the bus HQ and checked in for my ride. I was required to hand over my passport and was told it would be given back at the border of Cambodia.
As we boarded the bus I was asked to let them pack my backpack. When I asked to take it on the bus they said no, so I took my book and gave it up. This was the first time letting it out of my control while traveling.
I got on the bus, found a seat centered between the axels and read until we began to drive away. We passed the bus station where I proposed to Tien as we crawled a crooked trail out of the city. I wished that I had my bag, or more accurately my camera.
I've wished several times on this trip that I had just brought along a panasonic LX3. I've even considered buying one and mailing my D300 back to America, but have not. Maybe I'll buy a messenger bag instead, something easy to carry a few accessories in. A man purse.
So here I am on the bus to Cambodia, writing again on my iPhone. I really wish the iPhone had real GPS support. I thought that it did, and the accuracy of the 3g iPhone made it seem so, but I have not been able to get a GPS signal on it since leaving SF even though my Geomet'r works fine. It sucks because it's not like I knew that before I left, it's not something I could've tested. Maybe if I put in a local SIM card it'll work...
We arrived at the bus top late and had to wait 45 minutes for the next one. Tiens dad shook my hand and smiled big, then rode off on his motorbike. I thought about how interesting it is to communicate things nonverbally, like saying goodbye to your future father in law.
The morning light began to show the details of the rainclouds that had been sneaking up on us in the dark, and as I photographed them they retaliated with a gentle sprinkle. It was pretty dark and my f/4 was not giving me much as far as shutter speed and I thought about how nice it would be to have a tripod. Incidentally the guys at gorillapod.com emailed me the other day asking to use a photo I took on their website and offered to send me some gear. I wished that I had it with me already and later told Tien that when I get back to Vietnam we'd have to go take photos in the morning light if I had received a tripod yet.
As we were boarding the bus I realized that I didn't have any earplugs. Luckily I had brought a second set of headphones so Tien and I could both listen to music, but we couldn't share it on a single iPod. I made a mental note to remember earplugs from now on.
We made our way down the bumpy and now familiar route to saigon, the first time in dayligt. At the ferry station I watched crowds of people passing. I saw a guy on a bicycle flirting and joking with the girl he was with and thought about how great it is that mannerisms transcend spoken language. These two were happy and I could see that. Some women behind them were happy and I could see that. Another woman was in a hurry and I could see that. When you're surrounded by people who don't speak your language you begin paying attention to such things and they take on a bigger weight in the absence of words.
I saw a half white girl on a bicycle, easily distinguishable because of her brown hair, and realized I had seen another in a restaurant a few days earlier. I wondered if these were products of war.
I saw people taking a motorcycle riding class.
When we stopped for a break Tien and I got breakfast, eggs and bread and coffee, which made me very happy. When a skillet was placed before me I touched it to move it and burned my finger a little and cursed. Instead of the American ever-liable reaction of sympathy and placation, the employee who had set it down laughed and smiled at me and said something in Vietnamese. I thought this was awesome. People need real world conditioning, not the legal shelter from physical reality and responsibility that so many liability lawsuits in America display.
When we got to Saigon the traffic was terrible. I realized that even though Saigon is great for so many reasons I really don't like it all that much. It's not bad to stay a day in, but I wouldn't recommend an extended visit over Hanoi or more rural places. Then again, maybe it's different if you speak the language, know the hidden gems, or at least have your own transportation.
Tien and I checked into a mildly crummy and hence overpriced hotel and caught up on missed sleep. We sat on the bed and ate pringles and drank soda from the fridge and went back to bed. The best thing about vacationing is a lack of responsibility. We were free to do whatever we wanted with our time and chose to be lazy. Eventually we got up and had lunch, discussing some details of her immigration, then realized we wouldn't see each other for a few weeks and had a sad goodbye. I gave her a few billion dong, the Vietnamese currency, put her in a taxi and was alone again in Saigon.
I spent the rest of the night in my hotel room catching up on computer stuff and being lazy some more. In the morning I shaved my head, checked the charge on my gadgets, checked out of my hotel and headed for an Australian cafe I'd seen.
Apparantly Australian cafes are not the same as American cafes, which I stupidly expected because of the shared language. I did have a cappucino though, my first in weeks, and a Vietnamese breakfast of bread and beef stew.
A Filipino man was sitting at the next table and began talking to me. He asked about my travels and my work and said he was looking for a cheaper hotel. It was nice to have a conversation and I hoped to find more English speakers on my journey through more popular tourist destinations.
I wnt to the bus HQ and checked in for my ride. I was required to hand over my passport and was told it would be given back at the border of Cambodia.
As we boarded the bus I was asked to let them pack my backpack. When I asked to take it on the bus they said no, so I took my book and gave it up. This was the first time letting it out of my control while traveling.
I got on the bus, found a seat centered between the axels and read until we began to drive away. We passed the bus station where I proposed to Tien as we crawled a crooked trail out of the city. I wished that I had my bag, or more accurately my camera.
I've wished several times on this trip that I had just brought along a panasonic LX3. I've even considered buying one and mailing my D300 back to America, but have not. Maybe I'll buy a messenger bag instead, something easy to carry a few accessories in. A man purse.
So here I am on the bus to Cambodia, writing again on my iPhone. I really wish the iPhone had real GPS support. I thought that it did, and the accuracy of the 3g iPhone made it seem so, but I have not been able to get a GPS signal on it since leaving SF even though my Geomet'r works fine. It sucks because it's not like I knew that before I left, it's not something I could've tested. Maybe if I put in a local SIM card it'll work... • • • • •
2009.06.17 by Daniel
Rings and things
The fact that I didn't have a ring when I proposed to Tien did not mean I didn't intend to get one for her, even if Vietnamese girls don't traditionally get them. I wanted to get something for her before I headed off to travel so she'd have something to remind her that Id' be coming back for her soon.
Monday night she, two of her sisters and I went down to Long Xuyen to go jewelry shopping. We found a nice shop and I told her to pick out whatever she wanted. The styles were a little gaudy, not delicate, and neither of us immediately saw anything we liked but we managed to find something that suited her. She also picked out some earrings and we were both happy about it all.
In English, the words million and billion are only one letter different. In America only the filthy rich have a problem with those kinds of monetary figures. Out here in four-leading-zeros land we do have those kinds of problems from time to time. When it came time to pay, she thought I was joking when I said I didn't have that kind of money on me, even though I'd just gone to the ATM. I thought she was upset when she said "fine, we'll just go home." In reality she was joking and I had misheard the price as being in billions, not millions, 1000 times more than it actually was. This is still a source for a good laugh.
We went out to eat afterwards and had some kind of omelet that you'd wrap inside leaves. It was really good, perhaps better than simply having an omelet. During dinner a man rode a scooter through the restaurant and nobody cared. Lizards crawled on the walls. The owner asked about my soul patch and said I was too young to have one.
On Tuesday Tien and I went out for breakfast. We found a restaurant with tables under grass huts with puppies and chickens running around. She picked out some new foods for me to try, including some weird seafood that I amazingly did not completely dislike. It began pouring rain during breakfast, and our grass hut did a good job of keeping the rain off of us as we laughed at the chickens running around looking for shelter away from the humans. We ordered some more food to wait the rain out with. Then it didn't stop so we just motorbiked home in the rain.
Later I began feeling ill and attributed it to dinner the previous night. My doctor had warned me not to eat raw vegetables because they had probably been washed in water that had bacteria that my body was not used to. I guess she was right. It began raining and didn't stop for hours. We tried to find ways to enjoy ourselves indoors, and I ended up finding some string and teaching her nieces how to make knots that come undone by pulling on them and other silly things.
It was a lazy day. Tien and I talked about visa and passport plans and did research about how all of that stuff works.
During one of the lulls in the rain I heard car horns from the street and dogs barking. I thought about how there might be feral dogs out running in the road, and it occurred to me that I haven't seen any roadkill here. I suspect that because of traffic dynamics the average Vietnamese driver is more alert than the average American driver.
I decided that I would go to Cambodia the next morning. The bus left really early though and the stop for it was about 2 hours away on motorbike. Her family had been trying to coerce me into staying, they love me and were pointing out that I had some wet clothes and was a little bit ill, but I had places to go and I didn't have much to do in Binh Hoa. I was worried that it would rain though, so I told Tien that if it was raining in the morning I wouldn't go yet.
We stayed up a bit later chatting and preparing for my trip. I was eying one of the books that I helped Tien pick out for her English student: New Era English Conversation for Absolute Beginners. Most of this book is very, very useful, but I happened to open it to probably the least useful but most comical page. In chapter 5 the following phrases were used as conversational examples for describing things:
On Tuesday Tien and I went out for breakfast. We found a restaurant with tables under grass huts with puppies and chickens running around. She picked out some new foods for me to try, including some weird seafood that I amazingly did not completely dislike. It began pouring rain during breakfast, and our grass hut did a good job of keeping the rain off of us as we laughed at the chickens running around looking for shelter away from the humans. We ordered some more food to wait the rain out with. Then it didn't stop so we just motorbiked home in the rain.
Later I began feeling ill and attributed it to dinner the previous night. My doctor had warned me not to eat raw vegetables because they had probably been washed in water that had bacteria that my body was not used to. I guess she was right. It began raining and didn't stop for hours. We tried to find ways to enjoy ourselves indoors, and I ended up finding some string and teaching her nieces how to make knots that come undone by pulling on them and other silly things.
It was a lazy day. Tien and I talked about visa and passport plans and did research about how all of that stuff works.
During one of the lulls in the rain I heard car horns from the street and dogs barking. I thought about how there might be feral dogs out running in the road, and it occurred to me that I haven't seen any roadkill here. I suspect that because of traffic dynamics the average Vietnamese driver is more alert than the average American driver.
I decided that I would go to Cambodia the next morning. The bus left really early though and the stop for it was about 2 hours away on motorbike. Her family had been trying to coerce me into staying, they love me and were pointing out that I had some wet clothes and was a little bit ill, but I had places to go and I didn't have much to do in Binh Hoa. I was worried that it would rain though, so I told Tien that if it was raining in the morning I wouldn't go yet.
We stayed up a bit later chatting and preparing for my trip. I was eying one of the books that I helped Tien pick out for her English student: New Era English Conversation for Absolute Beginners. Most of this book is very, very useful, but I happened to open it to probably the least useful but most comical page. In chapter 5 the following phrases were used as conversational examples for describing things:
"His long mustache framed the side of his lips like fire from the window of a burning house." "The expensive cut of his suit and the quite dignity of his expression belied the single bullet hole in the left side of his head."Wednesday morning Tien's alarm didn't go off when we thought it would. We were up an hour late, and although we probably could've made it in time if we went really quickly I didn't want to do this because motorbiking on wet streets and wet dirt paths is not a good idea, especially with Tien having to steer with the heavy load of me and my backpack. Instead of going to Cambodia I spent most of the day sleeping. It felt like my body was fighting something off, so it may have been better that I didn't go to Cambodia yet. I also got in touch with my friend Scott from San Jose who has a cousin in Saigon who works at a travel agency. Small world. I'll probably end up going through them to get to Angkor Wat. When I wasn't sleeping Tien and I were doing more research on her visa situation. We called the US Embassy at three different numbers and sent a few e-mails to which we got one reply. It rained some more. That evening we went out to Long Xuyen to look for portrait studios and so Tien could go to school. On the way in it rained on us. It was warm though and actually felt kinda nice. When it stopped raining the air was dry and warm and it was fully night. Tien went to school and I went with her sisters to get some dinner. Other than simple containers with no moving parts, I don't think I've seen a single toothpick holder in Vietnam that isn't broken. After dinner I headed out with Thu and Mai to hit up the wedding portrait studios. We went to a large shop on the corner of a main street. There were large books with photos of couples in many different scenes with romantic phrases written in engrish. A lizard crawled across the ceiling. A lizard crawled across the face of a beautiful girl in a photograph on the wall. Thu and Mai talked away in Vietnamese with several girls at the shop, not another English speaking person in sight, and I just through the books and critiqued the photography which was mostly very good. It was really funny to me that I'd be taking photos like this the next day, and I thought about traditions. I think that ceremony often puts a bad cover on an otherwise great book. This photography thing is not the kind of thing I would choose to do on my own, but because it's traditional and because Tien wants to do it I'm happy to do it, even if I feel a little silly doing so. The really good stuff comes later, and that's what I'm looking forward to. Going to America, traveling around, discovering new places, rediscovering old places and living out this dream.
• • • • •
2009.06.14 by Daniel
Living the Dream
After a morning out with Tien walking around Saigon in the hot sun, after I asked her to marry me, we did what most people do during the mid day heat and napped it away in a cool place. We talked and were happy with all that had happened and the new direction things were going with the two of us. We talked about traveling to America.
At dinner we found ourselves on a side-street with many english speakers and restaurants that had Asian and western cuisine. We shared a ham and cheese crepe along with a VN dish, and I had a Saigon Red. It was very satisfying to taste a bit of home and to drink that cold beer on that hot day with my new fiancé. I thought about asking the other English speakers about traveling to Cambodia, but decided not to since my plans were not set.
We went back to the hotel room and took a short nap, checked out of the comfort of the hotel and instead chose to (try to) sleep on the bus on the way to Binh Hoa where we would tell her parents about our decision. I got just about no sleep, and was hardly comfortable until we got to Long Xuyen where other passengers got out. This was like 2 miles from her house. It was 1am.
I'm not sure what all was said because Tien is the only english speaker in her family, but later she told me that she had told them and they are happy with our decision and give us their blessing. I wasn't sure when she was going to tell them and having learned that they already knew I felt a little weird being past what would've been a moment in the spotlight for me to ask for their permission and thank them for their blessing. I really have no idea how this works in Vietnam, and I doubt I'd be much good at it even in American culture. I guess I'm just used to doing things my own way so when it comes to doing things the way of tradition I'm lost.
We had a delicious breakfast at the market and talked things over. We decided that she would stay here to finish a class she is taking, get her passport and her visa to come to America, and that I would continue traveling as I had planned. This tears me a little because I had so hoped that she would be able to come with me, but it's just not possible. It will be good to continue to travel though, but it would be good in a slightly different narrative as well.
I spent the evening on skype and on chat with friends and family, telling them about how our engagement came about, and everybody was very happy and congratulated me as I knew they would. I had at one point thought about calling a close friend to ask his advice on the situation, but thought better of it knowing exactly what he'd say. I was right, and it was great to have the support and excitement of my friends and family.
Several people told me before I left to come to Asia that I was "living the dream." I never really thought about it like that, I just thought I was doing what I wanted to do. Now though I am having dreams and making them come true and so I do feel like I am doing as they said, I am living the dream.
• • • • •
2009.06.12 by Daniel
Engagement
As I finished my whiskey the flight to Saigon began boarding, so with Kaskade in my ears I took my seat. I gave up the music for some more Jack Kerouac, which I'm really enjoying. My aunt recommended "On the Road" to me, and Rob had gotten it for me as a going away present.
On my VN flights there has been a view from the cockpit of the runway displayed on all of the video displays during take off and landing. It's pretty neat and I'd never seen that sort of thing before.
I wondered how many miles I had traveled so far. It's too bad there's not a tool to go through my flickr page, order by date and create a rough estimate of distance traveled.
The controller for the entertainment system on this plane was labeled on the back as an "Enhanced Passenger Control Unit." I had to laugh at that, envisioning myself being controlled through some enhanced method.
After reading several pages, which is about how much I tend to digest of books at a time, I put it down and turned the music back on. I had beautiful, inspiring music in my ears and outside of my window were huge billowing clouds, some of the most beautiful clouds I've ever seen. I took some photos with my iPhone but they came out pretty bad. The motion of passing them was also part of their wonder. I became really inspired and began dreaming about the future... what I would do with my future, where I would go. My mind kept wandering away from my trip to Cambodia and so on, I was dreaming about a girl instead.
I was deep in the zone. "The Zone" is one of those things you have to experience to know exactly what it is. Some call it The Ether. I was having great dreams of great things and a great life. There are people that dream great things and let them go, and there are those of us who dream great things and make them happen. I had dreamed about quitting my job, selling my things and flying away to Asia and I made it happen. Now I was having new great dreams and I wanted to make them happen...
I landed in Saigon, only the name of a hotel in a note on my iPhone. Walking out to the front of the airport I thought Tien might be there waiting for me, so I stood by the window and looked for a while. I didn't see her, so I went outside and found a taxi driver who said he knew where the hotel was and we headed out.
Rush hour traffic was nuts, I've never seen traffic so chaotic, so packed. People were driving their scooters on the sidewalks through the park just to get around the gridlock. A man on a scooter ran into the back of another scooter and knocked her over. People were intentionally driving the wrong way down one way streets to get closer to where they were going. We drove down tiny one lane alleys with scooters coming at us and passing us. One of them hit the mirror of the taxi and knocked it inwards.
It took us a long time to get a short distance, but my taxi driver was on top of stuff and got us to the neighborhood quicker than others would've. The problem was that when we got there he didn't know where the hotel was. We had a minor argument in broken english and written amounts of money and he dropped me off at the Ruby Star hotel.
The Ruby Star ended up being a good choice. The staff was nice, the woman at the counter spoke english, there was WiFi in my room, a stocked fridge, and it was a block away from where all the backpackers were staying. I stayed in for the night, catching up with friends and checking e-mail, facebook and flickr. I chatted with Tien and she said she was in fact in Saigon and had intended to meet me at the airport, but traffic had been so bad she couldn't make it. I was happy that she had even tried, and more so that she was there in Saigon. We agreed to meet at my hotel the next morning at 8am.
She showed up right on time and we headed out for breakfast and to see what was nearby. Breakfast was good food and good company and good conversation. I was happy as could be to have her back, I'd missed her a lot on my trip and was sad that she couldn't go, especially since she'd spent so much time setting the whole thing up. I thought about the dreams I'd had the day before and was happy. We talked about life and traveling and I don't really remember what else...
Then we went and got lost in the city trying to find a book store. We didn't really get lost in the city as much as lost from the bookstore. People kept telling us to go different ways, and then when we found the bookstore it was closed so we had to find a different one. We finally found the other one and it was quite a ways away from the hotel, especially given the late morning sunlight beating down on us.
The book store was cool inside. We found some ESL books for her to use in teaching her neighbor. There were a lot of books, many of them with incorrect info about customs, typos, etc.. I found two that looked good though, things that I'd use if I were teaching english. We looked for another book to use that would teach small business conversation. I picked up one that had silhouettes of business people with one man talking on his cell phone and no words on the cover in English.
To my surprise, when I opened it up the entire book was all about graphic sexual things. There were diagrams of body parts and translations for things like exhibitionism, bondage and masochist. I flipped through it and sure enough, it was not at all about business and entirely about sex. I thought for a minute about buying it for my friends in San Francisco as a joke, but I thought the novelty of it was only worthy of a story and not of the book itself.
A Vietnamese girl spoke to me in very clear English, I was impressed with her pronunciation. Like all conversations with white people in Vietnam, she started out by asking where I was from. Then she went on to ask me why on earth the word "bad" meant "really awesome." Aside from using Michael Jackson as an example, I explained to her that Americans use a lot of negative things as slang to mean "really awesome." Phrases like the bomb, the shit, dope. It never occurred to me that this is how it worked until that moment. She looked so inquisitive, like she couldn't possibly comprehend why on earth we would do such a thing.
Then she asked if Tien was my friend. Tien thinks that everybody looks at she and I because she's so short and I'm so tall next to her. I think this is partly true, but people stare at me all the time anyway.
We went out and got some strawberry smoothies to cool off. Even in mid-day heat in Saigon you can still get brain freeze from drinking a smoothie too quickly.
We walked and walked and walked and got sorta lost and found our way back near the hotel. I was a little irritated with how loud the city was, how smoggy it was, and how hot it was. Saigon is an ubiquitously noisy city. There's nowhere you can go that isn't noisy. This noise is created mostly by scooters, and thus there is almost nowhere you can go where it isn't smoggy.
I found a park looking area at a central bus stop and found some shade on a short wall under a tree for us to sit in for a while. Tien began talking about sad things... about how she had missed me and how our cultures were different and how we could only be friends and she was going to have to accept that. I've regarded her as a girlfriend, so this was disheartening, and I didn't feel like leaving it at that since I knew she was giving up.
I asked her about what she would have if she could have it her way. If things could be great, how would they be? What were here great dreams? She didn't want to tell me, so I told her I'd tell her my great dream if she told me hers.
She said she wanted to be a pharmacologist, which is true and is great but wasn't related to what we were talking about.
She said she wanted to be with me, to travel around the world with me.
I told her my great dream that I couldn't get off my mind. The great dream that had been growing in me for a long time and had blossomed on the plane from Hanoi.
I asked her to marry me and to come back to San Francisco with me.
I told her that whenever I thought about the future of my travels I quickly ended up on thoughts of her and I traveling and discovering great things together. I told her that all of the great things I thought about for the future somehow ended up with her. I told her that we had an opportunity to have a great, amazing life together, in love, seeing the world, enjoying each other side by side from now on.
There was some confusion and reiteration and assuring her that I was serious and not just speaking hypothetically.
It was not traditional, it was not a Hallmark card. There in the mid-day heat on a little wall under the shade of a tree in that crummy park at the bus station surrounded by construction and oceans of noisy, polluting scooters in the middle of Saigon, without a ring but without any hesitation or doubts, with just a shared dream of being happy together I asked Tien to marry me and she said yes.
There was some confusion and reiteration and assuring her that I was serious and not just speaking hypothetically.
It was not traditional, it was not a Hallmark card. There in the mid-day heat on a little wall under the shade of a tree in that crummy park at the bus station surrounded by construction and oceans of noisy, polluting scooters in the middle of Saigon, without a ring but without any hesitation or doubts, with just a shared dream of being happy together I asked Tien to marry me and she said yes. • • • • •
2009.06.11 by Daniel
Last day in Hanoi
This morning I woke up in Hanoi and went to work developing the photos I had meant to develop before I laid down. Around 7am I went upstairs and ate breakfast by myself. I peeled a banana for myself and thought about meals with Tien.
I looked around the building tops and noticed that the clean lines of the architecture were more prominent without fire escapes. I haven't seen a single one since I've been here.
At checkout I caught up on some internet stuff on the lobby. My brother says he probably won't come to Bangkok, which is pretty disappointing. I really need to find a traveling companion.
The tour split into two groups, and unbeknownst to me I would not see many of them again. I lost the English speaking couple from Miami and my two favorite children. I ended up with the brat, but also with the Parisian couple. We piled into an SUV and headed out.
I saw a girl on the back of a scooter with a cute backpack on her lap and a crowbar in her left hand.
I saw soldiers doing target practice with rifles on the side of a city street.
We went to the capital campus. Here we entered an area where no cameras, water or cell phones were allowed. No talking, no hands in pockets. Lots of soldiers standing at attention. We were a large group of tourists walking silently on a red path through a huge building that looked like a CTF flag area. Instead there was the preserved body of Ho Chi Minh himself, laying in a glass box in a dark room with 4 soldiers posted around him. I was trying to stay close to the Parisians and for some reason all I could think of was the word "morte" as said by the frail man in Amelie. Morte indeed, but he looked just asleep, laying there with even his beard still in tact.
We left and the tour guide gave me my gear back, the we went the Presidential Palace is, which is the equivalent of the Whitehouse, and a few other places that were packed with us lemmings. Some of the Vietnamese people looked at me as much as the sights. There were a lot of white people and it was weird. I think I just hate to be associated with the mainstream American ideal and all the white people reminded me of that.
There was a place called the house on stilts that wouldve been awesome to stay in. There were too many people so I didnt bother taking a picture. Outside the house there were a dozen people standing around a sign that was in French, Vietnamese and English: Do not stand here.
Like a million other placess in Vietnam this place had a shrine. Like other shrines and temples, outside of it were loud children and pedalers. Vietnam is definitely a religious country and the business minded people are monetizing that. I've never seen this in America. Nobody set up an ice cream cart and a religious souvenir shop outside of a cathedral in any city I've been to in America.
We left the capital and headed to the largest market in the city, both indoor and outdoor. I walked in and out, through streets and up stairs and down small ailes and down stairs. I thought "what the hell is there for me in a place like this?" Then I wondered why I had come on this trip in the first place. Feeling the need to have a purpose I have settled on photography as my primary purpose. Photojournalism, I guess. So with that in mind I began taking photos and wished I had my 10-20mm lens on me.
I saw a dozen k ock-off apple products. They put the apple backwards though. I almost decided to buy a knock-off iPhone just to see what it was like.
I found an ATM and pulled out 2,500,000 to pay the tour guide back the money I owed him and have some left over.
Iistened and thought about bow much easier Vietnamese is than Chinese. For one thing, when I ask what something is called people don't get into an argument about exactly what it's called in whatever dialect, they just answer. There is the intonation thing still, which makes sense thinking back to all the VN people I worked with at Actiontec. I think Vietnamese is much prettier when it's spoken clearly.
It was down to just me and the Parisians on the tour now. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant where the hostesses had tropical patterned shirts emblazoned with the names of placess not on this continent, like Jamaica. As we had only a few words of common language between their broken English and my broken French, we ate in silence and listened to the swank jazz music playing in the nearly empty restaurant.
We talked a little towards the end. They recommended Da Lat like the Couple from Florida had.
On the way to the airport I thought about how the scooter makes the dynamic of the cities here so much different. I wonder what SF would be like with thousands of electric scooters. I thought about what it would be like to roll up to The Irish Bank and just park in the alley, and then I realized that I hadn't seen a "no parking" sign anywhere in Vietnam, nor parking meters, just garages an paid parking lots.
I saw a banner ad for a resort and golf club and thought about how playing golf in Vietnam is good enough for some people. I wonder what is good enough for me.
I saw an ad for Ford SUVs and thought "who the hell over here would buy a Ford?" I looked at the steering wheel of the SUV I was in and found the answer.
At check in I said good bye to the nice Parisian couple who was finishing off a 40 day tour. On the wall behind the check in counter there was a stencil of Santa Clause which may have been the first graffiti I had seen on the trip yet. There was also a man in shined shoes, pressed slacks, a striped button down shirt and a bright green baseball cap with the word "groove" on it.
I saw a Windows XP terminal and wondered how on earth these people could afford XP Pro, especially with Linux as an alternative. I guess it's bundled with the PC like in the US, and that's still expensive.
In the airport I heard English announcements with English accents. I found the business lounge that had internet and food for $10, which is just too much so internet will have to wait. Instead I sat down and wrote this on my iPhone then went and had my first taste of whiskey in Vietnam and listened to Kaskade, got on my plane and flew away.
We left and the tour guide gave me my gear back, the we went the Presidential Palace is, which is the equivalent of the Whitehouse, and a few other places that were packed with us lemmings. Some of the Vietnamese people looked at me as much as the sights. There were a lot of white people and it was weird. I think I just hate to be associated with the mainstream American ideal and all the white people reminded me of that.
There was a place called the house on stilts that wouldve been awesome to stay in. There were too many people so I didnt bother taking a picture. Outside the house there were a dozen people standing around a sign that was in French, Vietnamese and English: Do not stand here.
Like a million other placess in Vietnam this place had a shrine. Like other shrines and temples, outside of it were loud children and pedalers. Vietnam is definitely a religious country and the business minded people are monetizing that. I've never seen this in America. Nobody set up an ice cream cart and a religious souvenir shop outside of a cathedral in any city I've been to in America.
We left the capital and headed to the largest market in the city, both indoor and outdoor. I walked in and out, through streets and up stairs and down small ailes and down stairs. I thought "what the hell is there for me in a place like this?" Then I wondered why I had come on this trip in the first place. Feeling the need to have a purpose I have settled on photography as my primary purpose. Photojournalism, I guess. So with that in mind I began taking photos and wished I had my 10-20mm lens on me.
I saw a dozen k ock-off apple products. They put the apple backwards though. I almost decided to buy a knock-off iPhone just to see what it was like.
I found an ATM and pulled out 2,500,000 to pay the tour guide back the money I owed him and have some left over.
Iistened and thought about bow much easier Vietnamese is than Chinese. For one thing, when I ask what something is called people don't get into an argument about exactly what it's called in whatever dialect, they just answer. There is the intonation thing still, which makes sense thinking back to all the VN people I worked with at Actiontec. I think Vietnamese is much prettier when it's spoken clearly.
It was down to just me and the Parisians on the tour now. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant where the hostesses had tropical patterned shirts emblazoned with the names of placess not on this continent, like Jamaica. As we had only a few words of common language between their broken English and my broken French, we ate in silence and listened to the swank jazz music playing in the nearly empty restaurant.
We talked a little towards the end. They recommended Da Lat like the Couple from Florida had.
On the way to the airport I thought about how the scooter makes the dynamic of the cities here so much different. I wonder what SF would be like with thousands of electric scooters. I thought about what it would be like to roll up to The Irish Bank and just park in the alley, and then I realized that I hadn't seen a "no parking" sign anywhere in Vietnam, nor parking meters, just garages an paid parking lots.
I saw a banner ad for a resort and golf club and thought about how playing golf in Vietnam is good enough for some people. I wonder what is good enough for me.
I saw an ad for Ford SUVs and thought "who the hell over here would buy a Ford?" I looked at the steering wheel of the SUV I was in and found the answer.
At check in I said good bye to the nice Parisian couple who was finishing off a 40 day tour. On the wall behind the check in counter there was a stencil of Santa Clause which may have been the first graffiti I had seen on the trip yet. There was also a man in shined shoes, pressed slacks, a striped button down shirt and a bright green baseball cap with the word "groove" on it.
I saw a Windows XP terminal and wondered how on earth these people could afford XP Pro, especially with Linux as an alternative. I guess it's bundled with the PC like in the US, and that's still expensive.
In the airport I heard English announcements with English accents. I found the business lounge that had internet and food for $10, which is just too much so internet will have to wait. Instead I sat down and wrote this on my iPhone then went and had my first taste of whiskey in Vietnam and listened to Kaskade, got on my plane and flew away. • • • • •
2009.06.10 by Daniel
A day among the islands of Ha Long
So there I was, back in the bathtub in my room at the Chains First Eden Hotel in Hanoi Vietnam. I was drinking a Tiger beer and had just used up all the hot water washing away the sweat from a long day of hiking and boating in Ha Long Bay. The photographs from the last 24 hours were importing from my D300 into LR2 and were instantly being backed up to my external hard disk where they would be safe in the event that my laptop gets stolen.
This hotel room is different from my other one which was directly across the hall. That one had a view of the downtown park out its window. The window here can be opened about 2 inches before it hits a hot water pipe. I guess I won't get anything like the sunrise awakening I got today on the 5th floor of the Bach Dang.
This morning when I woke up there was sand and a bunch of rocks where there used to be water, and I remembered that we were on the Pacific Ocean. The tide had gone out. I got ready, went downstairs and ate my breakfast with the parisian couple, caught up on some online stuff and then we headed off for the boat. On the way I saw an image of a bay with a speed boat circling another boat. A minute later I saw that same bay and the same speed boat circling two rocks sticking up from the water where the 2nd boat had been. I wondered why on earth in a place with such blatant and obvious beauty did somebody feel the need to embellish with a composited image. Advertising spits in the face of true beauty.
As we were going to be outside all day long I put on a bunch of sun screen, and I managed to find and buy a hat with the bartering help of one of the VN mothers who is on my tour. I got a good price on it, something like $2. This is especially nice because when I was shopping with Tien for hats I couldn't find one that fit, and this one fits perfectly. It is emblazoned with the Vietnamese flag and the name of the country, my first souvenir and a functional one at that.
When I got on the boat I found the tour guide and got down to business. I was in debt to him a healthy 5,131,000 and had to come up with the money in the next day. I forked over 4 millions on the spot and told him I'd get the rest to him later. I thought about "Coming to America."
We headed out across the wide bay on a junker style boat, an open upper deck and a covered gallery below, no handrails on the front end by the stairs and one mast that is clearly not used for sails. The sky was hazy and provided a diffused shield from the sunlight, which was very nice. Unfortunately as soon as I noticed this it went away and we were attacked by direct sun rays.
Everybody began taking photos on the upper deck even though the cliffs were still a few miles away. It continued, however, until the cliffs were right there, and then it wasn't so ridiculous. The cliffs are great... they're strange. They remind me of the cliffs by my house in Almont, except completely overgrown and with an ocean at the bottom. They were immediately impressive and I can see exactly why this place is being nominated for one of the 7 natural wonders of the world.
There were little groups of boats and floating houses that were tied together. We stopped at one that had little square openings in a floating deck, holes where different kind of sea life were swimming around. Crab, shrimp, all sorts of stuff I didn't recognize. There was a man with bloody hands chopping up a fish. There was a man pouring boiling water onto two large fish in a large pot. A man took a fish out of the water and clubbed it three times before it quit flopping around and died.
We got back on the boat and kept going. Some other folks that weren't on our tour were on the boat and one of them was a camera nut. He had an old nikon film cam with a 28mm ƒ/3.5 lens and a modest external flash. He was taking pictures of his family on the boat. We talked a little about photography through the only other english speakers on the tour. It always bugs me when people ask how much my gear cost. I always think back to that time where these two guys were trying to hustle me in SF.
We slowly circled counter clockwise and northward until we got to a place called Surprise Cave. I never found out what the surprise was, but we sure as hell found the cafe. It was really big, way bigger than I expected. The caverns stretched maybe 100m or so into the rock. It looked like something out of Half-life 2 and I kept looking around for head-crabs and corpses with spare supplies. It was the other two english speakers and I walking around and we had lost the tour but we quickly found them with the sonic assistance of a wailing spoiled brat. We talked about how awful that kid was. We agreed that he is a monster. We finished the tour of the cave and headed for the boat.
The day was incredibly hot at this point and I was pretty much showering in my own sweat, so I bought a cold drink off a vendor and took it back to the boat. As we pulled out of the dock we talked about weather, hot and cold. The girl was talking about how cold NYC was on new years. I told her that if she had the right clothes she'd be almost fine with the cold. She said that even with the right clothes her face would still be cold. I told her that there's no cold a bottle of whiskey can't help you withstand. She said that she doesn't drink. She was wearing a t-shirt that said "just add cocktails."
Next stop was a man-made beach. There's no natural sand in Ha Long bay so they had to bring in sand from other places. Since the waves are so small I imagine they don't have to refill the sand on the beach very often. It was a nice beach and we spent an hour on the island. I climbed up to the top of the precipice and took a bunch of photos. 
I was kicking myself for not bringing my tilt/shift lens with me. It was too heavy to bring, but the views from the top of this place would've been ƒ *amazing* in TS. I will just have to come back again.
Ice cream was never so good. I sat at the bottom of the cliff in the shade of a hut and ate an ice cream cone while the sweat shower I had taken on my way up the mountain evaporated. I looked at the ticket for the tour and saw that it cost 40,000 dong. That's about $2.50. The relativity of wealth is staggering.
We headed back to shore, got on the bus and started driving.
I saw a girl on a bicycle talking on her cell phone while the girl on the back held a parasol above their heads. I saw this again a few hours later.
I saw four adults on a 110 cc scooter.
I saw a man on a bicycle with a stack of colorful birds in little cages.
I saw a little girl sitting in front of her dad on the scooter, sleeping with her head on the dials.
I saw cows grazing in a cemetary.
I saw a woman on the sidewalk cutting a block of ice with a table saw.
Judging by the commonality of models, the Honda Wave 110 is the most reliable scooter.
We stopped at a little pottery place where girls were hand making and hand painting pots. They made all sorts of clay things, from lions to ducks to cups to chopsticks to pots to vases. They were pretty girls, quiet and attentive to their work. It was amazing to see them so smoothly stroke out the designs they were doing. I thought that they could make much more money being artists in America. They asked me to exchange $10 for them, so I gave them a good deal at 100,000 dong. They deserved it, I wasn't going to buy any of that novelty stuff anyway, even if it was skillfully made by hand.
We continued driving. Vietnam countryside is almost entirely rice paddies. Fields and fields of beautiful green rice with roads running through them. The people here are real farmers. They don't just drive farm equipment, they do the farming. They walk out in that field and cut that rice by hand. They wrap it into a bushel by hand, pile it into a package and wrap it by hand, then put it on a bicycle and ride it back to town where they they do whatever it is that they do to make it into small grains, and then they sweep it up and put it in bags. They also burn a lot of stuff, I don't know what that's all about but there were fires and smoke everywhere.
Seeing these fields I was reminded of the drive between Colorado and Texas, which I've done more times than I can count. I used to hate that drive, and I wonder how bad it would be right now because I don't get tired of staring out the window at rice paddies, listening to music on my iPod. I'm sure I will though.
In America, homeless people gather under bridges. In Vietnam, everybody does. A bridge provides shade from the sun, and you will see people selling drinks, bread, pho, anything you can imagine under a brdige in the middle of the country.
I saw a circle of houses around a large indention, a hole in the earth that had a pond in the bottom of it. I wondered if it was a bomb hole from the war.
We stopped for diner and even though it was nearly sunset, it was blazing hot. So hot that as soon as somebody put ice in my glass it immediately started spinning around as it melted in my glass. It was gone before I had finished my first glass of tea. My second glass was warm. The meal was good though. I don't know why they have to serve fish with the head still attached. Everything I chose to ate was good, right up until the end. There was a soup which I later found out was spinach and crab meat soup, but when I tasted it I could've sworn it was dirt soup. It was absolutely terrible. It literally tasted like eating dirt, and I do know this from experience becasue one time when I was running from the police I tripped on a fence and ate a mouthful of dirt, then just lay there still in the field hoping they wouldn't see me, so I got a good long taste of dirt. This soup tasted exactly like that, except it was liquid.
I excused myself and went outside to play with the nicer kids. I had brought my hacky sack and tried to teach them to play. The boy picked it up quickly, but the girl fell into the problem of trying to kick too high. I couldn't get her to kick low, and her brother kept treating it like it was a full contact sport so she soon left. The father of the brat came over and he, another guy and I had a good game and all ended up once again showered in sweat. We piled back into the van and headed back to Hanoi.
Because there are so many scooters in Vietnam there are also a lot of helmets. People express theirself through their choice of helmet. Some look like baseball caps. Some look like cowboy hats. Some look like military hats. Some look like girly sun hats. They have some pretty rad helmets here. I'm pretty sure they're not DOT approved though so I'm not going to bother buying one.
We made it back to the hotel and I made it to my room and this brings us to now. I'm sitting on the floor, a single protected wifi signal within sight, a little bit of beer left in the can, wondering once again if I should go out and make the best of Hanoi.
This is the same problem I've run into in America. Do you leave your comfy bubble where you can simply be lazy and go out into the big bad world and experience something exciting, or do you stay indoors where you're safe and cozy? Tonight, I'm not sure... I may stay in and develop the 300 or so photos I took today. Bleh, never enough time, even on vacation, if that's what this is.
This morning when I woke up there was sand and a bunch of rocks where there used to be water, and I remembered that we were on the Pacific Ocean. The tide had gone out. I got ready, went downstairs and ate my breakfast with the parisian couple, caught up on some online stuff and then we headed off for the boat. On the way I saw an image of a bay with a speed boat circling another boat. A minute later I saw that same bay and the same speed boat circling two rocks sticking up from the water where the 2nd boat had been. I wondered why on earth in a place with such blatant and obvious beauty did somebody feel the need to embellish with a composited image. Advertising spits in the face of true beauty.
As we were going to be outside all day long I put on a bunch of sun screen, and I managed to find and buy a hat with the bartering help of one of the VN mothers who is on my tour. I got a good price on it, something like $2. This is especially nice because when I was shopping with Tien for hats I couldn't find one that fit, and this one fits perfectly. It is emblazoned with the Vietnamese flag and the name of the country, my first souvenir and a functional one at that.
When I got on the boat I found the tour guide and got down to business. I was in debt to him a healthy 5,131,000 and had to come up with the money in the next day. I forked over 4 millions on the spot and told him I'd get the rest to him later. I thought about "Coming to America."
We headed out across the wide bay on a junker style boat, an open upper deck and a covered gallery below, no handrails on the front end by the stairs and one mast that is clearly not used for sails. The sky was hazy and provided a diffused shield from the sunlight, which was very nice. Unfortunately as soon as I noticed this it went away and we were attacked by direct sun rays.
Everybody began taking photos on the upper deck even though the cliffs were still a few miles away. It continued, however, until the cliffs were right there, and then it wasn't so ridiculous. The cliffs are great... they're strange. They remind me of the cliffs by my house in Almont, except completely overgrown and with an ocean at the bottom. They were immediately impressive and I can see exactly why this place is being nominated for one of the 7 natural wonders of the world.
There were little groups of boats and floating houses that were tied together. We stopped at one that had little square openings in a floating deck, holes where different kind of sea life were swimming around. Crab, shrimp, all sorts of stuff I didn't recognize. There was a man with bloody hands chopping up a fish. There was a man pouring boiling water onto two large fish in a large pot. A man took a fish out of the water and clubbed it three times before it quit flopping around and died.
We got back on the boat and kept going. Some other folks that weren't on our tour were on the boat and one of them was a camera nut. He had an old nikon film cam with a 28mm ƒ/3.5 lens and a modest external flash. He was taking pictures of his family on the boat. We talked a little about photography through the only other english speakers on the tour. It always bugs me when people ask how much my gear cost. I always think back to that time where these two guys were trying to hustle me in SF.
We slowly circled counter clockwise and northward until we got to a place called Surprise Cave. I never found out what the surprise was, but we sure as hell found the cafe. It was really big, way bigger than I expected. The caverns stretched maybe 100m or so into the rock. It looked like something out of Half-life 2 and I kept looking around for head-crabs and corpses with spare supplies. It was the other two english speakers and I walking around and we had lost the tour but we quickly found them with the sonic assistance of a wailing spoiled brat. We talked about how awful that kid was. We agreed that he is a monster. We finished the tour of the cave and headed for the boat.
The day was incredibly hot at this point and I was pretty much showering in my own sweat, so I bought a cold drink off a vendor and took it back to the boat. As we pulled out of the dock we talked about weather, hot and cold. The girl was talking about how cold NYC was on new years. I told her that if she had the right clothes she'd be almost fine with the cold. She said that even with the right clothes her face would still be cold. I told her that there's no cold a bottle of whiskey can't help you withstand. She said that she doesn't drink. She was wearing a t-shirt that said "just add cocktails."
Next stop was a man-made beach. There's no natural sand in Ha Long bay so they had to bring in sand from other places. Since the waves are so small I imagine they don't have to refill the sand on the beach very often. It was a nice beach and we spent an hour on the island. I climbed up to the top of the precipice and took a bunch of photos. I was kicking myself for not bringing my tilt/shift lens with me. It was too heavy to bring, but the views from the top of this place would've been ƒ *amazing* in TS. I will just have to come back again.
Ice cream was never so good. I sat at the bottom of the cliff in the shade of a hut and ate an ice cream cone while the sweat shower I had taken on my way up the mountain evaporated. I looked at the ticket for the tour and saw that it cost 40,000 dong. That's about $2.50. The relativity of wealth is staggering.
We headed back to shore, got on the bus and started driving.
I saw a girl on a bicycle talking on her cell phone while the girl on the back held a parasol above their heads. I saw this again a few hours later.
I saw four adults on a 110 cc scooter.
I saw a man on a bicycle with a stack of colorful birds in little cages.
I saw a little girl sitting in front of her dad on the scooter, sleeping with her head on the dials.
I saw cows grazing in a cemetary.
I saw a woman on the sidewalk cutting a block of ice with a table saw.
Judging by the commonality of models, the Honda Wave 110 is the most reliable scooter.
We stopped at a little pottery place where girls were hand making and hand painting pots. They made all sorts of clay things, from lions to ducks to cups to chopsticks to pots to vases. They were pretty girls, quiet and attentive to their work. It was amazing to see them so smoothly stroke out the designs they were doing. I thought that they could make much more money being artists in America. They asked me to exchange $10 for them, so I gave them a good deal at 100,000 dong. They deserved it, I wasn't going to buy any of that novelty stuff anyway, even if it was skillfully made by hand.
We continued driving. Vietnam countryside is almost entirely rice paddies. Fields and fields of beautiful green rice with roads running through them. The people here are real farmers. They don't just drive farm equipment, they do the farming. They walk out in that field and cut that rice by hand. They wrap it into a bushel by hand, pile it into a package and wrap it by hand, then put it on a bicycle and ride it back to town where they they do whatever it is that they do to make it into small grains, and then they sweep it up and put it in bags. They also burn a lot of stuff, I don't know what that's all about but there were fires and smoke everywhere.
Seeing these fields I was reminded of the drive between Colorado and Texas, which I've done more times than I can count. I used to hate that drive, and I wonder how bad it would be right now because I don't get tired of staring out the window at rice paddies, listening to music on my iPod. I'm sure I will though.
In America, homeless people gather under bridges. In Vietnam, everybody does. A bridge provides shade from the sun, and you will see people selling drinks, bread, pho, anything you can imagine under a brdige in the middle of the country.
I saw a circle of houses around a large indention, a hole in the earth that had a pond in the bottom of it. I wondered if it was a bomb hole from the war.
We stopped for diner and even though it was nearly sunset, it was blazing hot. So hot that as soon as somebody put ice in my glass it immediately started spinning around as it melted in my glass. It was gone before I had finished my first glass of tea. My second glass was warm. The meal was good though. I don't know why they have to serve fish with the head still attached. Everything I chose to ate was good, right up until the end. There was a soup which I later found out was spinach and crab meat soup, but when I tasted it I could've sworn it was dirt soup. It was absolutely terrible. It literally tasted like eating dirt, and I do know this from experience becasue one time when I was running from the police I tripped on a fence and ate a mouthful of dirt, then just lay there still in the field hoping they wouldn't see me, so I got a good long taste of dirt. This soup tasted exactly like that, except it was liquid.
I excused myself and went outside to play with the nicer kids. I had brought my hacky sack and tried to teach them to play. The boy picked it up quickly, but the girl fell into the problem of trying to kick too high. I couldn't get her to kick low, and her brother kept treating it like it was a full contact sport so she soon left. The father of the brat came over and he, another guy and I had a good game and all ended up once again showered in sweat. We piled back into the van and headed back to Hanoi.
Because there are so many scooters in Vietnam there are also a lot of helmets. People express theirself through their choice of helmet. Some look like baseball caps. Some look like cowboy hats. Some look like military hats. Some look like girly sun hats. They have some pretty rad helmets here. I'm pretty sure they're not DOT approved though so I'm not going to bother buying one.
We made it back to the hotel and I made it to my room and this brings us to now. I'm sitting on the floor, a single protected wifi signal within sight, a little bit of beer left in the can, wondering once again if I should go out and make the best of Hanoi.
This is the same problem I've run into in America. Do you leave your comfy bubble where you can simply be lazy and go out into the big bad world and experience something exciting, or do you stay indoors where you're safe and cozy? Tonight, I'm not sure... I may stay in and develop the 300 or so photos I took today. Bleh, never enough time, even on vacation, if that's what this is. • • • • •
2009.06.09 by Daniel
I am currently sitting on the patio of my hotel room on the 5th floor looking out over Ha Long Bay and the bridge, and watching the moon rise above the hills on the opposing shore. I'm just one girl and a bottle of wine short of the most romantic night ever.
This morning we departed for Ha Long bay and I finally realized that when our tour guide says 8am he means wheels rolling at 8am. I always seem to be the last one on the bus.
We headed out through early Hanoi traffic which seemed to flow mostly into the city instead of out, so it wasn't busy. We stopped for tea a long while into the drive and I was delighted to find a lot of art at this shop. There were paintings, mosaics, and sewn images showing traditional Vietnamese scenes, and surprisingly some showing nude female figures. Sexuality and nudity have so far been almost completely absent except mildly in advertisements for mobile phones and karaoke bars. There were a group of kids sewing images by hand into canvases, a lot like cross stitching, and it was nice to see art being made.
We stopped for lunch at a temple that had a gondola to take us to the top of a mountain, except the gondola wasn't running. This was pretty disappointing to many of us. Apparently the lore says that some king left his country behind to come seek enlightenment, then his people followed him and begged him to come back so he did for a while and then left again. He built the temple at the top of the mountain. In modern times the communist Vietnamese government owns both of the temples and doesn't use them for religious purposes at all but rather just to make money off of tourists like me.
We got back in the car and I adored my iPod as a savior from the wailing screams of this bratty little kid that's on the tour. He hits and kicks his parents and screams at the top of his lungs when he doesn't get his way. I'm amazed that his mother lets him get away with it because she seems like a strict type, but then I think he sees through her bluffing threats of discipline. He's a fucking brat though, that's for sure, so the music went up nice and loud. Rock and roll in Vietnam.
We stopped at another temple, this one used for actual religious purposes, and I walked around taking photos of the scenes. I was mildly scolded by a monk for setting foot inside a holy place without taking my sandals off. I photographed 3 monks talking to a girl with a motorcycle helmet on. I heard sounds of welding coming from below a secluded corner of a courtyard and couldn't help thinking that I was supposed to jump off the wall and pick the lock on the gate below, fight the fake monks and find the secret passage down to the nanotech laboratory where evil was being done behind a facade of Buddhism.
I thought twice about that and instead went off to play with some monk kids who surrounded me laughing and saying short english phrases, playing with my arm hair, wrapping their hands around my arms to see how big they were, and patting my fat belly. One of the monks talked in english with me briefly and brought me a book on Buddhism, and then I had to go so the whole group shouted "see you again!" as I ran down the steps of the temple towards the bus, last one in again.
We drove and drove and drove and I listened to louder rock music. Finally we arrived in Ha Long bay opposite its glorious side. We checked into the hotel and I stupidly tried to go make the best of the day. I say stupidly because I was soon drenched in sweat and nearly cheated out of money to use an elevator that goes up to this really beautiful bridge, and later found out that you're not really supposed to go out during the day. Apparently everybody here naps during the day so they can stay up at night when it's cooler, which makes so much sense I never thought an entire society would come to that conclusion.
After showering my sweat away I got a beer and sat in the restaurant mooching wifi. Other than the wifi and chatting with my brother about his meeting me in Thailand on the 26th this was a miserable experience. The beer was warm and the room was hot. I didn't even think to open the windows to let the breeze in until I almost had to go for dinner. Then dinner ended up being in the same room I had been sitting in.
After dinner we went down to the night market. Rows and rows of tables piled with completely worthless shit. Worthless to me anyway. Progressive minimalism and tourism do not see eye to eye when it comes to the importance of physical novelties. I saw a few cool engrish shirts though, so that was cool. The power went out just as I was crossing the bridge to an outdoor techno club on the beach, so I stayed there at the club and had a mango smoothie that cost approximately $1. Lot's of things here cost approximately $1. The music was freakin awesome and I was dissapointed that nobody was dancing, or rather that there was nobody there to dance. The place was empty, so I sat on the beach drinking my smoothie and enjoying the techno by myself, then I began walking home.
A Vietnamese guy approached me and began talking to me in good english, though with poor pronunciation. Vietnamese people are so nice it's almost creepy, like there's some hidden agenda. It makes it hard to guage who you can trust, but this guy and his group of friends were all cool so we walked a while and they took photos with me.
Then I ran into two people on the tour who are Vietnamese people from France. I walked with them, took some photos for them, and they bought me a beer at a stall where we sat and chatted it up with the owner. I barely understood anything they said, but they knew a little english. Charades was part of the game, and that's always fun.
I came home, checked online for some friends, and came upstairs to write in the comfort of my own room rather than in the hotel lobby. So now the moon is higher in the sky, I may have a few additional mosquito bites, and you know probably more details about my day than is really necessary. I'll try to keep it shorter tomorrow...
Catching up with Ha Long Bay
I am currently sitting on the patio of my hotel room on the 5th floor looking out over Ha Long Bay and the bridge, and watching the moon rise above the hills on the opposing shore. I'm just one girl and a bottle of wine short of the most romantic night ever.
This morning we departed for Ha Long bay and I finally realized that when our tour guide says 8am he means wheels rolling at 8am. I always seem to be the last one on the bus.
We headed out through early Hanoi traffic which seemed to flow mostly into the city instead of out, so it wasn't busy. We stopped for tea a long while into the drive and I was delighted to find a lot of art at this shop. There were paintings, mosaics, and sewn images showing traditional Vietnamese scenes, and surprisingly some showing nude female figures. Sexuality and nudity have so far been almost completely absent except mildly in advertisements for mobile phones and karaoke bars. There were a group of kids sewing images by hand into canvases, a lot like cross stitching, and it was nice to see art being made.
We stopped for lunch at a temple that had a gondola to take us to the top of a mountain, except the gondola wasn't running. This was pretty disappointing to many of us. Apparently the lore says that some king left his country behind to come seek enlightenment, then his people followed him and begged him to come back so he did for a while and then left again. He built the temple at the top of the mountain. In modern times the communist Vietnamese government owns both of the temples and doesn't use them for religious purposes at all but rather just to make money off of tourists like me.
We got back in the car and I adored my iPod as a savior from the wailing screams of this bratty little kid that's on the tour. He hits and kicks his parents and screams at the top of his lungs when he doesn't get his way. I'm amazed that his mother lets him get away with it because she seems like a strict type, but then I think he sees through her bluffing threats of discipline. He's a fucking brat though, that's for sure, so the music went up nice and loud. Rock and roll in Vietnam.
We stopped at another temple, this one used for actual religious purposes, and I walked around taking photos of the scenes. I was mildly scolded by a monk for setting foot inside a holy place without taking my sandals off. I photographed 3 monks talking to a girl with a motorcycle helmet on. I heard sounds of welding coming from below a secluded corner of a courtyard and couldn't help thinking that I was supposed to jump off the wall and pick the lock on the gate below, fight the fake monks and find the secret passage down to the nanotech laboratory where evil was being done behind a facade of Buddhism.
I thought twice about that and instead went off to play with some monk kids who surrounded me laughing and saying short english phrases, playing with my arm hair, wrapping their hands around my arms to see how big they were, and patting my fat belly. One of the monks talked in english with me briefly and brought me a book on Buddhism, and then I had to go so the whole group shouted "see you again!" as I ran down the steps of the temple towards the bus, last one in again.
We drove and drove and drove and I listened to louder rock music. Finally we arrived in Ha Long bay opposite its glorious side. We checked into the hotel and I stupidly tried to go make the best of the day. I say stupidly because I was soon drenched in sweat and nearly cheated out of money to use an elevator that goes up to this really beautiful bridge, and later found out that you're not really supposed to go out during the day. Apparently everybody here naps during the day so they can stay up at night when it's cooler, which makes so much sense I never thought an entire society would come to that conclusion.
After showering my sweat away I got a beer and sat in the restaurant mooching wifi. Other than the wifi and chatting with my brother about his meeting me in Thailand on the 26th this was a miserable experience. The beer was warm and the room was hot. I didn't even think to open the windows to let the breeze in until I almost had to go for dinner. Then dinner ended up being in the same room I had been sitting in.
After dinner we went down to the night market. Rows and rows of tables piled with completely worthless shit. Worthless to me anyway. Progressive minimalism and tourism do not see eye to eye when it comes to the importance of physical novelties. I saw a few cool engrish shirts though, so that was cool. The power went out just as I was crossing the bridge to an outdoor techno club on the beach, so I stayed there at the club and had a mango smoothie that cost approximately $1. Lot's of things here cost approximately $1. The music was freakin awesome and I was dissapointed that nobody was dancing, or rather that there was nobody there to dance. The place was empty, so I sat on the beach drinking my smoothie and enjoying the techno by myself, then I began walking home.
A Vietnamese guy approached me and began talking to me in good english, though with poor pronunciation. Vietnamese people are so nice it's almost creepy, like there's some hidden agenda. It makes it hard to guage who you can trust, but this guy and his group of friends were all cool so we walked a while and they took photos with me.
Then I ran into two people on the tour who are Vietnamese people from France. I walked with them, took some photos for them, and they bought me a beer at a stall where we sat and chatted it up with the owner. I barely understood anything they said, but they knew a little english. Charades was part of the game, and that's always fun.
I came home, checked online for some friends, and came upstairs to write in the comfort of my own room rather than in the hotel lobby. So now the moon is higher in the sky, I may have a few additional mosquito bites, and you know probably more details about my day than is really necessary. I'll try to keep it shorter tomorrow... • • • • •
2009.06.09 by Daniel
I've been in Vietnam for a week and a half and have finally found wifi. It's in the lobby of the hotel I'm staying at in Ha Long Bay. It is not in my air conditioned hotel room. The lobby is hot, and they don't refrigerate their beer so the beer is also hot. I am dripping in sweat drinking a warm beer, and I'm happy to have internet. (A few minutes later I opened the window and let the cool breeze in, eliminating my sweat problem... duh.)
Ha Long Bay is gorgeous. I would absolutely love to take off across it on a jet ski and see all the tiny coves hidden in the cliffs on the opposite shore. My hotel room looks out across the bay from the non-interesting side, so my view is pretty good.
I'll write more info about my travels from today later, right now I'm going to enjoy this warm beer as best as I can and chat with my brother.
Finally found WiFi
I've been in Vietnam for a week and a half and have finally found wifi. It's in the lobby of the hotel I'm staying at in Ha Long Bay. It is not in my air conditioned hotel room. The lobby is hot, and they don't refrigerate their beer so the beer is also hot. I am dripping in sweat drinking a warm beer, and I'm happy to have internet. (A few minutes later I opened the window and let the cool breeze in, eliminating my sweat problem... duh.)
Ha Long Bay is gorgeous. I would absolutely love to take off across it on a jet ski and see all the tiny coves hidden in the cliffs on the opposite shore. My hotel room looks out across the bay from the non-interesting side, so my view is pretty good.
I'll write more info about my travels from today later, right now I'm going to enjoy this warm beer as best as I can and chat with my brother. • • • • •
2009.06.08 by Daniel
A day in Hanoi
Hanoi was immediately recognizeable as a more modern city than the rest what I've seen of Vietnam. There were many cars on the streets, there were less shanty shacks and more tall buildings, there were large bridges, a railroad, cleaner streets. There were mountains visible in the near distance and I liked it immediately. There was a lot of water, big bodies of water like lakes and wide rivers. There were people hanging around parks, having picnics, fishing from the shore wall, parked with their scooters under shady trees, and I thought that this would be a very fun city to live in. There are less mosquitoes and less geckos.
The building architecture here is as impressive as Saigon, only there's more of it since there are less shacks. I would love to come back some day with a guide and a tilt/shift lens and do a whole book on the architecture of Vietnam. The lines are so clean, the space is more... I don't know how to describe it... less monotonous than even the Victorians of San Francisco, which I love.
Another thing I noticed about Hanoi is there was art. Art had been mostly absent on my journey so far, except mass media like TV and ads which aren't a direct expression of the local people. Other than architecture there have been only small examples of art. Thu's manicure paintings which she had samples of. A man with a flute, a man with a guitar. Tien singing. But here in Hanoi, art is prominent. There are tiled mosaics along boulevards, many Chinese influenced decorations, and martial arts as well, but I'll get to that later.
The Hanoi tour started at the airport with a family of 8 and an older Vietnamese couple from France. I was the only white person, the only English speaker except our guide. He told me that we were going to pick up two more people then head out for some sights. We found our way to a hotel and found our two other people, a Vietnamese man in his 20's and his wife, a drop-dead gorgeous, beautiful Vietnamese girl with a figure that could start wars.
We drove on and came upon an old school of eastern philosophy. Around the outside of the school walls there were men with mirrors hanging off of trees or the wall itself giving people haircuts on the sidewalk. Inside the school there were Vietnamese, French and English translations of plaques describing what the school was about, but all of the original text was in traditional Chinese. I hadn't been aware of the heavy Chinese influence in Vietnamese culture until I came to Vietnam, but it's everywhere.
We went on to have lunch and I was seated at the end of one table. Next to me were the man and his beautiful wife, and to my surprise he greeted me in English. I asked him about it and he said he didn't speak English fluently, but had been living in Florida with his wife for several years. Then she began speaking to me in perfect English. She was a Vietnamese American, born in the south of Vietnam and raised in Miami. She wondered why on earth I joined a tour without a translator and I thought about Tien.
After lunch we went to the hotel. I got my key and went to my room on the second floor and discovered why this tour might have been more expensive than I had thought. This room was nice. It had a refrigerator in it. The refrigerator had beer and coke and bottled water in it. There was a bath tub with warm running water. There was air conditioning, but it didn't seem to be working. In fact nothing electronic except the refrigerator seemed to be working.
I later found out that they have this ingenius mechanism in this hotel where all non-essential electronics are hooked to one circuit and all essential electronics are hooked to another. When you enter the room you insert the room key into a little slot and this turns on the non-essential circuit. When you leave you take your key and all of the lights, TV, fan, etc. turn off. I imagine this is pretty important in a city where the power lines are in such atrocious conditions. I even saw a a power junction pole on fire yesterday.
I didn't know this about the electricity yet though, but that did not stop me from cracking open a Tiger beer, running a hot bath and relaxing in the tub under the light of a LED flashlight that Igor bought for me before I left. It was wonderful. I hadn't had a beer or a bath since before leaving America a week and a half ago.
The tour continued at 4pm and we went to another pagoda with a shrine inside of it. There are shrines everywhere around here. In Binh Hoa I saw something that looked like a doghouse, but really it was a small shrine.
We had dinner on the waterfront at a good restaurant, a modern restaurant, and there was a wedding reception going on. I saw the first Mercedes Benz since I'd been in VN. I walked along the shore wall and found several dead fish floating in the water and was glad I didn't see this before dinner.
After dinner we went back to the hotel and I was thinking about going out on the town for a while. Hanoi is rad and I really wanted to go out and see more of it on my own, but alas the lack of good sleep caught up to me and I drifted off on the king sized bed and slept for nearly 10 hours.
When I awoke at 5am the sun was already up beyond the trees and buildings and morning light was diffusing off the sky into the park across the street where 50 or so people were doing thai chi or some such. I took a shower, took some photos of the building, organized my backpack a little, and looked outside again to see even more people in the park. They were playing badmitton on the sidewalk, doing martial arts, thai chi, and dancing. What an interesting place Hanoi is... I hope to come back some day.
In 30 minutes we will leave for Ha Long bay, which is ~200km away.
I still haven't found free WiFi in Vietnam.
After lunch we went to the hotel. I got my key and went to my room on the second floor and discovered why this tour might have been more expensive than I had thought. This room was nice. It had a refrigerator in it. The refrigerator had beer and coke and bottled water in it. There was a bath tub with warm running water. There was air conditioning, but it didn't seem to be working. In fact nothing electronic except the refrigerator seemed to be working.
I later found out that they have this ingenius mechanism in this hotel where all non-essential electronics are hooked to one circuit and all essential electronics are hooked to another. When you enter the room you insert the room key into a little slot and this turns on the non-essential circuit. When you leave you take your key and all of the lights, TV, fan, etc. turn off. I imagine this is pretty important in a city where the power lines are in such atrocious conditions. I even saw a a power junction pole on fire yesterday.
I didn't know this about the electricity yet though, but that did not stop me from cracking open a Tiger beer, running a hot bath and relaxing in the tub under the light of a LED flashlight that Igor bought for me before I left. It was wonderful. I hadn't had a beer or a bath since before leaving America a week and a half ago.
The tour continued at 4pm and we went to another pagoda with a shrine inside of it. There are shrines everywhere around here. In Binh Hoa I saw something that looked like a doghouse, but really it was a small shrine.
We had dinner on the waterfront at a good restaurant, a modern restaurant, and there was a wedding reception going on. I saw the first Mercedes Benz since I'd been in VN. I walked along the shore wall and found several dead fish floating in the water and was glad I didn't see this before dinner.
After dinner we went back to the hotel and I was thinking about going out on the town for a while. Hanoi is rad and I really wanted to go out and see more of it on my own, but alas the lack of good sleep caught up to me and I drifted off on the king sized bed and slept for nearly 10 hours.
When I awoke at 5am the sun was already up beyond the trees and buildings and morning light was diffusing off the sky into the park across the street where 50 or so people were doing thai chi or some such. I took a shower, took some photos of the building, organized my backpack a little, and looked outside again to see even more people in the park. They were playing badmitton on the sidewalk, doing martial arts, thai chi, and dancing. What an interesting place Hanoi is... I hope to come back some day.
In 30 minutes we will leave for Ha Long bay, which is ~200km away.
I still haven't found free WiFi in Vietnam.
• • • • •
2009.06.07 by Daniel
Leaving Binh Hoa and Saigon
At 5:30 yesterday three long shadows headed for the bus to Saigon. Thu, Tien's sister, saw Tien and I off. One week after arriving in Binh Hoa we were headed back to Saigon, back to the airport.
One earbud and one earplug each, Tien and I lost ourselves in music as our bus flowed through mixed currents of scooters and buses through city streets and country fields, stopping a few times to exchange passengers with the outside world. At one stop I saw a slender american looking girl appearing somewhat lost, standing next to a bus and chatting with a metropolitan looking Vietnamese girl. I didn't get a chance to talk to her, though I would've liked to see what she was doing out in An Giang.
I saw a man on a bicycle with a trailer that said "hamburger" and was carrying two panes of window glass.
When we arrived at a ferry building some vendors poked into the bus selling sweet corn on the cob and tortillas and for a moment I forgot what continent I was on. As the ferry approached the far side of the river the bus driver turned on a light and yelled something back to Tien. "We need to pay more because you are a foreigner." I didn't care much to argue about it, and later when I gave the driver 50,000 more he took it and went to eat.
We went on listening to music and driving through the night. On my left, Tien fell asleep with her head on my shoulder, and the stranger on my right did the same. I couldn't sleep though, these seats were made for short people so I got no head rest. My neck was hurting and my head kept falling back. We drove a long way, sometimes down dirt roads with one lane bridges. There were countless bridges, including the beautiful My Thuân bridge.
Eventually we made it to Saigon and found a taxi to take us back to the house we stayed at on my first night in Vietnam. Two familiar faces unlocked the iron gate and let us in. By this time it was 11pm and we had to wake up at 3:30am. This didn't stop Tien and I from staying up late saying goodbyes and sharing the last of the time we'd have together for a long time.
The morning came too early and as soon as I was done showering a taxi was waiting outside to take us to the airport. The streets of Saigon were very empty at 4am, so it was a quiet, dark ride. I kept thinking of Late Night Alumni's Sunrise Comes Too Soon.
When we arrived at the airport we found our contact at the travel agency. He gave me a bright orange bag and a bright orange hat which I had no idea what to do with. I managed to stick them in my luggage though, I thought they might come in useful. Despite wishing me well a few times, Tien stayed with me until I was right at the security checkpoint, which is fantastically easier to manage than american airports. I gave her a 500,000 bill, said a final goodbye and stepped through security.
She had been my translator and guide from the time I had stepped out of the secure area, and here I was back inside it, once again without her, headed to Hanoi. I thought about this while I was sitting at the terminal, thinking about how she was probably crying in the taxi on the way back to the bus station.
I slept on the flight, somehow, and before I knew it I had landed in Hanoi and was out walking around in the terminal, wondering where the hell to go. I didn't see anybody with a sign that looked familiar, or any of the folks from the tour that had been on the flight. I decided to put on my orange hat, and no sooner had I done so than a man was welcoming me and telling me to sit and wait for the rest of the group to arrive.
So I did. I sat and waited. I ate a Snickers bar and drank a Sprite. I read some of On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I wrote most of this.
• • • • •
2009.06.05 by Daniel
One Week in Vietnam
Saturday morning in Binh Hoa, I've been in Vietnam for nearly a week now and I it's been a good gentle immersion in to Asian culture in the tropics. Tonight Tien and I will go by overnight bus to Vung Tàu Beach, which is about 20km outside Ho Chi Minh city, and spend the next day there. Monday I plan to fly to Hanoi and do a 4 day tour at Ha Long Beach. I'm not sure when I'll have internet access beyond today, but I expect to have it wherever I'm staying in Hanoi since it's going to be more of a resort style thing, a popular tourist destination.
My iPhone has been failing to function as a GPS receiver, which sucks because it's the only one I brought that has a screen. I was surprised to see that there are only 2 geocaches in Saigon, one of which was a virtual, and three in Hanoi. Looking at the standard of living here, it makes sense, but I still expected there to be a district where there were more, or in parks outside of town, or something.
Last night Tien, her sister and I went to the bank to figure out some money thing for my trip. For some reason they wouldn't let me pay with credit, so I ended up going to the ATM outside and pulling out 1m, took some cash from my wallet and put down 2.8m on the trip.
This is roughly equivalent to $160 USD.
When I first went to the bank and exchanged a several 20's for a stack of 50,000's all I could think of was Snow Crash's hyper-inflation. An average meal can cost 20,000. A taxi ride can cost 300,000. I wonder why they don't just drop those extra 3 zeros. I talked to Majed online and he joked about how I left my job a millionaire.
After we got the details of the money and registration for my trip worked out we left, and then were almost immediately called because of an error in my name, and then called again because we didn't put down enough money up front. When we got back to the bank it was closed. The problem is that I have to leave on Monday, and the bank won't be open until Monday, so I'm not sure how this is going to work out. But hey, that's part of the fun, right?
Later last night we went back to a nearby city and had some food and drinks and tried to find a US to Asian power adapter, which nobody has. As usual a lot of people were out enjoying the cool night. I've found that people like night here and I assume a big reason is because it's cooler and more conducive to style and enjoyment. Vietnam is the only place I've been where it's common to see a beautiful, slender girl in figure fitting clothes that you can vaguely see through wearing high heels and riding a motorcycle.
On the way to town I noticed how common it is to see platonic same-sex affection. From what I know about the conservative guy/girl relationships this makes sense. I saw girls walking hand in hand, and three guys with their arms on each others shoulders. This type of thing is common, but seeing those two in succession made me realize how prevolent it is. I thought about how it was starkly different from places like Paris where you see lovers when you're out at night, but here you see friends.
I saw a man on a motorbike using his right foot to push a man on a manual-pedal tricycle down the highway.
I could do a whole photo book on the spiral staircases in Vietnam. They're everywhere, and they're really pretty. Most nice houses have a spiral staircase going up to the roof. Most two floor houses have a spiral staircase going up from the back of the great room that takes up most of the bottom floor.
There seem to be two kinds of houses here. Single floor houses made from cement and wood, extended with tin walls and awnings. Then there are several floor houses which are painted, have balconies, big windows, etc.. It's the only big difference other than quality of motorbike that I've seen so far to distinguish poor people from rich people. It's really awesome that there is not a huge disparity between the rich and the poor here, not so much as in America at any rate. I like that the majority of the people are in the middle, not at the upper and lower ends. It's actually a lot like Yentown from Swallowtail Butterfly. I noticed this a few days ago and it was a slight revelation as to why I feel so at home here in VN. That is my favorite movie, after all.
Today Tien and I sat down at the market and ate breakfast and drank coffee again. This has been a pretty daily occurence, and I really enjoy it. I'll miss it. We talked about musical classification, and the larger issue which is general classification of information and its attributes. We talked about traveling, my trip, family, America, intelligence, jobs, what makes a good life. I think Tien is brilliant and she just doesn't know it. I told her so too. She asks questions beyond the obvious ones and understands things very quickly. I think she may be a genius.
Before I left America many people told me I'd have terrible digestive problems when I got here, but actually I think I've had less than I did in San Francisco. In fact I haven't had any problems until today, and they were incredibly minor. This is interesting to me because it's not like I've been sticking to the "don't drink iced drinks and don't eat vegetables" advice that my doctor gave me.
Last night Tien, her sister and I went to the bank to figure out some money thing for my trip. For some reason they wouldn't let me pay with credit, so I ended up going to the ATM outside and pulling out 1m, took some cash from my wallet and put down 2.8m on the trip.
This is roughly equivalent to $160 USD.
When I first went to the bank and exchanged a several 20's for a stack of 50,000's all I could think of was Snow Crash's hyper-inflation. An average meal can cost 20,000. A taxi ride can cost 300,000. I wonder why they don't just drop those extra 3 zeros. I talked to Majed online and he joked about how I left my job a millionaire.
After we got the details of the money and registration for my trip worked out we left, and then were almost immediately called because of an error in my name, and then called again because we didn't put down enough money up front. When we got back to the bank it was closed. The problem is that I have to leave on Monday, and the bank won't be open until Monday, so I'm not sure how this is going to work out. But hey, that's part of the fun, right?
Later last night we went back to a nearby city and had some food and drinks and tried to find a US to Asian power adapter, which nobody has. As usual a lot of people were out enjoying the cool night. I've found that people like night here and I assume a big reason is because it's cooler and more conducive to style and enjoyment. Vietnam is the only place I've been where it's common to see a beautiful, slender girl in figure fitting clothes that you can vaguely see through wearing high heels and riding a motorcycle.
On the way to town I noticed how common it is to see platonic same-sex affection. From what I know about the conservative guy/girl relationships this makes sense. I saw girls walking hand in hand, and three guys with their arms on each others shoulders. This type of thing is common, but seeing those two in succession made me realize how prevolent it is. I thought about how it was starkly different from places like Paris where you see lovers when you're out at night, but here you see friends.
I saw a man on a motorbike using his right foot to push a man on a manual-pedal tricycle down the highway.
I could do a whole photo book on the spiral staircases in Vietnam. They're everywhere, and they're really pretty. Most nice houses have a spiral staircase going up to the roof. Most two floor houses have a spiral staircase going up from the back of the great room that takes up most of the bottom floor.
There seem to be two kinds of houses here. Single floor houses made from cement and wood, extended with tin walls and awnings. Then there are several floor houses which are painted, have balconies, big windows, etc.. It's the only big difference other than quality of motorbike that I've seen so far to distinguish poor people from rich people. It's really awesome that there is not a huge disparity between the rich and the poor here, not so much as in America at any rate. I like that the majority of the people are in the middle, not at the upper and lower ends. It's actually a lot like Yentown from Swallowtail Butterfly. I noticed this a few days ago and it was a slight revelation as to why I feel so at home here in VN. That is my favorite movie, after all.
Today Tien and I sat down at the market and ate breakfast and drank coffee again. This has been a pretty daily occurence, and I really enjoy it. I'll miss it. We talked about musical classification, and the larger issue which is general classification of information and its attributes. We talked about traveling, my trip, family, America, intelligence, jobs, what makes a good life. I think Tien is brilliant and she just doesn't know it. I told her so too. She asks questions beyond the obvious ones and understands things very quickly. I think she may be a genius.
Before I left America many people told me I'd have terrible digestive problems when I got here, but actually I think I've had less than I did in San Francisco. In fact I haven't had any problems until today, and they were incredibly minor. This is interesting to me because it's not like I've been sticking to the "don't drink iced drinks and don't eat vegetables" advice that my doctor gave me.
• • • • •
2009.06.02 by Daniel
Trip to Câm Mountain
Yesterday morning I was greeted by a large spider on the floor of my hotel room. Mai showed up shortly afterwards and brought me back to their house where we ate and talked and showered.
We eat frequently here, though not a lot. There are 8 females in this house and it seems like every time I turn around one of them is offering me a fruit or giving me a drink or telling me to sit down while they point the fan where I should sit. It's a little overwhelming because I don't really know how to respond. I feel so indebted to Tien's family but I don't know how to repay them. They won't even let me pay for things.
After I showered, Mai, Tien, their mom and I piled onto two scooters and rode for a few hours to Câm Mountain.
I saw two girls sharing a bicycle. The one in front pedaled while the girl in back upshed off the ground, then when they got moving they both put their feet on the pedals side by side and pedaled off together.
I saw a white guy riding a bicycle and it was really odd.
We came across a boat race on the Hâu river while we were on our way to Câm Mountain. We rode along next to this river for a long time. The road was on a burm between two waterways that irrigated rice paddies. The rice paddies were some of the most beautiful sights I'd seen, so green and stretching on to the horizon with geometric lines running through them and flags placed here and there. The paddies were only visible through the gaps between shacks built off of the burm, standing up on stilts. These were some of the most poor shelters I've ever seen. Tin shacks on wooden stilts with wooden floors. Some had docks going down towards the water where people could board boats.
There were lots of boats. We passed a ship yard where people were welding together barge type boats. There were hand-powered boats that you'd row or push with a stick. There were boats with long outboard motors. There were wooden foot-bridges that rose up over the river in a large arc that was too steep for most bicyclists to bike over, but not too steep or weak for somebody to ride over on a scooter.
I tell you, Vietnam is all about scooters. Tien says you have to be 18 to ride a motorbike, but it doesn't seem that way. People go to street fares and never get off their scooters. They sit on them like they're chairs while they watch live performances on a stage in the center of a wide boulevard. They wait outside of to-go restaurants and the employees bring the food out to you on a scooter. They watched the boat race and never got off their scooters. They love their scooters. They wash them all the time. I even saw a guy washing his scooter wheels using the muddy water of a puddle at the side of the road.
We stopped in a town called Châu Dôc and went to a Budhist temple where we ate lychees and Tien's family prayed. The other women at the temple loved this blue accented straw hat I was wearing and wanted to try it on.
I saw chickens eating fruit that looked like a coconut.
We rode some distnace more until we got to the foot of the mountain where we found a local shop to watch our scooters. People never leave their scooters unattended. Part of going to a restaurant is that they watch your scooter and will park it for you if needed. This usually involves putting it in neutral and rolling it up tightly next to another scooter.
We had originally intended to hike up the mountain but it was getting late, so instead we hired 4 guides to give us a motorcycle tour of the mountain and the temple at the top. It was a steep ride up the mountain, 15% grade in some parts (thankfully grade signs are universal.) We rode over dirt and cobble stone sidewalks right next to vendors where people were walking until we got to this huge statue of Buddha where people were praying and vendors were selling incense and kids were plaing with toy laser guns that made irreverent noises.
Afterwards we went around a lake to the temple which had a large pagoda and two small ones next to it. One of the great things about temples is that street vendors can't go onto the temple property, which keeps them quiet and calm and peaceful. It's an amazing difference from the beeping of scooters, zapping of toy laser guns, jabbering of street vendors, etc..
Somehow Tien's mom managed to get one of the monks to unlock the 8 story tall pagoda and walk with us up to the top. Tien and Mai stopped at each level to pray, and I was allowed to take photos, unlike in the temple where I wasn't allowed to take photos or even go inside. The view from the pagoda was really great. It was hard for me to show how excited I was without being irreverent, and it ended up coming off as me being unimpressed, so I had to make up for it when we got back to the bottom by talking on and on about how beautiful it was. And it really was awesome.
One of the things I've gotten used to is attention. I've only seen 4 white people in Vietnam so far. Everybody turns their head as you pass, and some shout out "hello!" and wave to you. Some just say "oi!" At the bottom of the pagoda there was a guy with his family who I had seen at the Buddha. This guy, maybe a high school student, was unabashedly taking a photo of me with his cell phone, moving so that he was always in front of me. I posed and joked at him for taking too long, but I'm sure he didn't understand a word of what I said. His family all laughed and smiled and we all thought it was pretty funny. People here love my light eyes, straight nose and my dimples. As we were leaving they said "Goodbye! See you later!" which I thought was pretty funny since I would almost certainly not see them later.
We took a quick stop off at another small temple they were building at the side of the lake. This quick stop involved riding down a dirt trail and over a bridge with two large humps in it, then through a sparse forest up to the foot of the temple. There were vendors beyond the safety of the temple property, one was selling some kind of rodent, maybe a furry kind of mouse or a squirrel, in tiny cages. After this we headed down the steep mountain and wound up at the bottom reclining in hammocks eating lychees and relaxing.
We piled back on our scooters and headed the 75km or so back home. Mai and I listened to music, the sun set over the rice paddies, people were out on the roads relaxing and watching the traffic, all turning their heads at me and saying "hello" from time to time. We didn't get home until after a dark ride down what was basically a sidewalk that supported two-way foot, bicycle and scooter traffic through into the town where Tien lives.
I stayed at their place last night. It rained like a monsoon in the middle of the night. I awoke to the now familiar sounds of Vietnam: scooter and truck horns.
Today I need to figure out where I'll be going next... It's been difficult because Tien wont' be coming with me, so we have to find places where people will speak english. I'm thinking about taking a 4 day trip to Ha Long Bay, then maybe going to Singapore instead of up through Cambodia and Lao. This language thing sucks... where is Mandarax when you need it?
I saw two girls sharing a bicycle. The one in front pedaled while the girl in back upshed off the ground, then when they got moving they both put their feet on the pedals side by side and pedaled off together.
I saw a white guy riding a bicycle and it was really odd.
We came across a boat race on the Hâu river while we were on our way to Câm Mountain. We rode along next to this river for a long time. The road was on a burm between two waterways that irrigated rice paddies. The rice paddies were some of the most beautiful sights I'd seen, so green and stretching on to the horizon with geometric lines running through them and flags placed here and there. The paddies were only visible through the gaps between shacks built off of the burm, standing up on stilts. These were some of the most poor shelters I've ever seen. Tin shacks on wooden stilts with wooden floors. Some had docks going down towards the water where people could board boats.
There were lots of boats. We passed a ship yard where people were welding together barge type boats. There were hand-powered boats that you'd row or push with a stick. There were boats with long outboard motors. There were wooden foot-bridges that rose up over the river in a large arc that was too steep for most bicyclists to bike over, but not too steep or weak for somebody to ride over on a scooter.
I tell you, Vietnam is all about scooters. Tien says you have to be 18 to ride a motorbike, but it doesn't seem that way. People go to street fares and never get off their scooters. They sit on them like they're chairs while they watch live performances on a stage in the center of a wide boulevard. They wait outside of to-go restaurants and the employees bring the food out to you on a scooter. They watched the boat race and never got off their scooters. They love their scooters. They wash them all the time. I even saw a guy washing his scooter wheels using the muddy water of a puddle at the side of the road.
We stopped in a town called Châu Dôc and went to a Budhist temple where we ate lychees and Tien's family prayed. The other women at the temple loved this blue accented straw hat I was wearing and wanted to try it on.
I saw chickens eating fruit that looked like a coconut.
We rode some distnace more until we got to the foot of the mountain where we found a local shop to watch our scooters. People never leave their scooters unattended. Part of going to a restaurant is that they watch your scooter and will park it for you if needed. This usually involves putting it in neutral and rolling it up tightly next to another scooter.
We had originally intended to hike up the mountain but it was getting late, so instead we hired 4 guides to give us a motorcycle tour of the mountain and the temple at the top. It was a steep ride up the mountain, 15% grade in some parts (thankfully grade signs are universal.) We rode over dirt and cobble stone sidewalks right next to vendors where people were walking until we got to this huge statue of Buddha where people were praying and vendors were selling incense and kids were plaing with toy laser guns that made irreverent noises.
Afterwards we went around a lake to the temple which had a large pagoda and two small ones next to it. One of the great things about temples is that street vendors can't go onto the temple property, which keeps them quiet and calm and peaceful. It's an amazing difference from the beeping of scooters, zapping of toy laser guns, jabbering of street vendors, etc..
Somehow Tien's mom managed to get one of the monks to unlock the 8 story tall pagoda and walk with us up to the top. Tien and Mai stopped at each level to pray, and I was allowed to take photos, unlike in the temple where I wasn't allowed to take photos or even go inside. The view from the pagoda was really great. It was hard for me to show how excited I was without being irreverent, and it ended up coming off as me being unimpressed, so I had to make up for it when we got back to the bottom by talking on and on about how beautiful it was. And it really was awesome.
One of the things I've gotten used to is attention. I've only seen 4 white people in Vietnam so far. Everybody turns their head as you pass, and some shout out "hello!" and wave to you. Some just say "oi!" At the bottom of the pagoda there was a guy with his family who I had seen at the Buddha. This guy, maybe a high school student, was unabashedly taking a photo of me with his cell phone, moving so that he was always in front of me. I posed and joked at him for taking too long, but I'm sure he didn't understand a word of what I said. His family all laughed and smiled and we all thought it was pretty funny. People here love my light eyes, straight nose and my dimples. As we were leaving they said "Goodbye! See you later!" which I thought was pretty funny since I would almost certainly not see them later.
We took a quick stop off at another small temple they were building at the side of the lake. This quick stop involved riding down a dirt trail and over a bridge with two large humps in it, then through a sparse forest up to the foot of the temple. There were vendors beyond the safety of the temple property, one was selling some kind of rodent, maybe a furry kind of mouse or a squirrel, in tiny cages. After this we headed down the steep mountain and wound up at the bottom reclining in hammocks eating lychees and relaxing.
We piled back on our scooters and headed the 75km or so back home. Mai and I listened to music, the sun set over the rice paddies, people were out on the roads relaxing and watching the traffic, all turning their heads at me and saying "hello" from time to time. We didn't get home until after a dark ride down what was basically a sidewalk that supported two-way foot, bicycle and scooter traffic through into the town where Tien lives.
I stayed at their place last night. It rained like a monsoon in the middle of the night. I awoke to the now familiar sounds of Vietnam: scooter and truck horns.
Today I need to figure out where I'll be going next... It's been difficult because Tien wont' be coming with me, so we have to find places where people will speak english. I'm thinking about taking a 4 day trip to Ha Long Bay, then maybe going to Singapore instead of up through Cambodia and Lao. This language thing sucks... where is Mandarax when you need it? • • • • •
2009.05.31 by Daniel
Scooters and stuff
I haven't been in Saigon one day yet and I already know the one word that would sum it up. Scooters. It's like everything here is a scooter. I see people doing everything possible with them, from selling corn to hauling TV's 4 at a time. It's actually really really awesome, the dynamic of traffic with so many of these things. Everything looks so chaotic at first but as you experience it you find the order and it's remarkable. For instance, you'd think it would not be possible to cross a street where there are no stop signs and no cross-walks with like 100 scooters coming by every minute, but it's not true. You just cross the street. You do it slowly and calculated, and everything just flows around you.
The rest of this city that I've seen so far is amazing too, in some good ways and some bad ways that add up to awesome.
The architecture here is fantastic, I haven't seen one building that isn't interesting in some way.
There's this river that flows around here, more like a canal, and it's black as crude oil and smells like death with trash floating on the top and people actually fish in it.
There are chickens walking around outside of restaurants where they serve chicken.
Most of the people here have figures that americans would pay personal trainers big bucks to get.
I saw two girls sharing a bicycle eating ice cream. The one in front had her right foot on the right pedal and her left foot on the neck of the frame. The girl in back had her left foot on the left pedal and her right foot on the rear fork.
I saw a whole family on a single scooter passing us in heavy traffic at like 25km/h, something that is a bit frightening, but then you see these same people taking their kids to the amusement park to put them on a kiddie train that goes like 4km/h and call it entertainment.
They have these scooter repair shops where you ride up and let somebody fix your scooter while you sit back drink and smoke cigarettes.
People's houses don't have garages, they just have entry ways with double-doors where you ride your scooter straight into the house and park it there, inside the house.
Almost every shop on the street just has a wide open front, no front wall, and you ride your scooter right up to the front, park and walk in.
They have three-wheeled motor trikes with cargo areas in the front.
There are a million shops just selling scrap metal. You see people outside welding stuff together or running spools of metal through machines that straighten them out into rebar.
They have showers where there is no separate shower stall, you just shower on the tile floor of the bathroom and the water washes off to a corner drain, which I think is awesome.
Unfortunately I still haven't found any plugs that work with my laptop and haven't found a converter, so I don't have photos to post just now, but will soon.
The rest of this city that I've seen so far is amazing too, in some good ways and some bad ways that add up to awesome.
The architecture here is fantastic, I haven't seen one building that isn't interesting in some way.
There's this river that flows around here, more like a canal, and it's black as crude oil and smells like death with trash floating on the top and people actually fish in it.
There are chickens walking around outside of restaurants where they serve chicken.
Most of the people here have figures that americans would pay personal trainers big bucks to get.
I saw two girls sharing a bicycle eating ice cream. The one in front had her right foot on the right pedal and her left foot on the neck of the frame. The girl in back had her left foot on the left pedal and her right foot on the rear fork.
I saw a whole family on a single scooter passing us in heavy traffic at like 25km/h, something that is a bit frightening, but then you see these same people taking their kids to the amusement park to put them on a kiddie train that goes like 4km/h and call it entertainment.
They have these scooter repair shops where you ride up and let somebody fix your scooter while you sit back drink and smoke cigarettes.
People's houses don't have garages, they just have entry ways with double-doors where you ride your scooter straight into the house and park it there, inside the house.
Almost every shop on the street just has a wide open front, no front wall, and you ride your scooter right up to the front, park and walk in.
They have three-wheeled motor trikes with cargo areas in the front.
There are a million shops just selling scrap metal. You see people outside welding stuff together or running spools of metal through machines that straighten them out into rebar.
They have showers where there is no separate shower stall, you just shower on the tile floor of the bathroom and the water washes off to a corner drain, which I think is awesome.
Unfortunately I still haven't found any plugs that work with my laptop and haven't found a converter, so I don't have photos to post just now, but will soon. • • • • •
2009.05.29 by Daniel
My flight to Tokyo was fantastic, best flight I've ever had. There were video games, movies, fresh fruit, wine, two meals served with metal silverware complete with wine, hot tea and coffee and ice cream for dessert. I almost didn't want to get off when we landed...
So here I am in the waiting area of Narita International Airport where I've already gotten lost and ended up on the wrong side of the airport, but I had planned on strolling around anyways to check out the architecture, culture, girls, etc.. I found engrish shirts, crazy electronic devices and toys, stores with Japanese art. I wonder what it's like outside the airport though, airports never give the whole picture of the culture.
The people are great. It seems like everybody here has a different radiance. Even on the flight I was amazed at something extra in the stuardess' demeanor. Perhaps it's one of those eastern things. Many people seem jovial and friendly, though I can't understand almost anybody and they're not all speaking Japanese.
One thing is the same though, IT related stuff is still a pile of crap. I can't get online to save my life right now because Boingo has a crummy sign-in process with a glacial credit card authentication server. No phone signal either. The fact that it's midnight in SF doesn't help, airplane sleep barely counts and I'm tired as hell.
Made it to Tokyo
My flight to Tokyo was fantastic, best flight I've ever had. There were video games, movies, fresh fruit, wine, two meals served with metal silverware complete with wine, hot tea and coffee and ice cream for dessert. I almost didn't want to get off when we landed...
So here I am in the waiting area of Narita International Airport where I've already gotten lost and ended up on the wrong side of the airport, but I had planned on strolling around anyways to check out the architecture, culture, girls, etc.. I found engrish shirts, crazy electronic devices and toys, stores with Japanese art. I wonder what it's like outside the airport though, airports never give the whole picture of the culture.
The people are great. It seems like everybody here has a different radiance. Even on the flight I was amazed at something extra in the stuardess' demeanor. Perhaps it's one of those eastern things. Many people seem jovial and friendly, though I can't understand almost anybody and they're not all speaking Japanese.
One thing is the same though, IT related stuff is still a pile of crap. I can't get online to save my life right now because Boingo has a crummy sign-in process with a glacial credit card authentication server. No phone signal either. The fact that it's midnight in SF doesn't help, airplane sleep barely counts and I'm tired as hell. • • • • •
2009.05.29 by Daniel
Waiting at SFO
I am currently sitting in the check-in area of SFO's international area, waiting. I'm a little underwhelmed by having to wait in this boring section of the airport, but Lisa may come visit me before I pass through security so I have to wait out here.
I managed to pack all of my things into a small frame backpack (the Osprey Atmos 35) and despite it being slightly larger than regulation for carry-on baggage, the cute Japanese girl at ANA said I could carry it on.
Last night I slept well, deep, with little or no stressful worry. When my body began waking up it was only 5:30am or so. It's weird, but ever since I moved out of my apartment and essentially became homeless, I have become a morning person. I've been living in my car for a month now and I'm still getting used to my body wanting to wake up early. This morning I just fought it and tried to sleep more, but ended up just tossing and turning and feeling achy until 7. I finally woke up, let droog off the leash so he could run around, took some photos, said goodbye to Will and Maks and then got in my car with Lila driving.
We stopped for gas and coffee down in Saratoga. When the barista asked me how I was doing I said "Great! I quit my job and I'm flying to Asia!" It feels good to excitedly state exactly what I'm doing in life, even when it's mundane, but when it's something big it carries a little extra weight and helps me realize the whole situation.
• • • • •
2009.05.19 by Daniel
10 days left
Ten days left until I'm on my way to the airport.
Yesterday my replacement at work started his job. He fell right into step, so that's good as I don't want to leave my co-workers in a tough spot with IT support issues.
On my lunch break I had my last dental appointment before my trip. Nothing special there, but medical things are important to handle before leaving because not only will I be in some questionable spots as far as medical support is concerned, I will also not have medical coverage since I am leaving my job and all of its benefits behind. Goodbye free dental care. Goodbye $5 immunization shots. Goodbye 401k.
After work I headed up to SF to hang out with Shannon, but she was gone by the time I got there. She was in from out of town and left early for some reason. Such is the nature of the traveler; we have to enjoy their company when they are present.
I ended up going to dinner with Donna, Lily and Allison at a great Italian place near Allison's place up in North Beach, Sodini's. I have to say, their lasagna was on par with that of The Stinking Rose. It was good to catch up with Allison since she's leaving SF this Friday to move back to SoCal. When we were done the weather had turned from chilly to really really cold wind and fog, which is weird since it was 90º on Sunday. Donna and I headed back to 4211 where Brianna was nursing a boil burn on her leg and making some kind of Mexican dinner with Terresina. Somehow I drifted off to sleep on the couch, waking up several times during the night as people came and went, and woke to a foggy, wet Ocean Beach.
2 miles south in Daly City the fog was so thick you couldn't see more than 100 feet ahead.
3 miles south in Colma the sun was out and it was warm.
50 miles south in Cupertino I arrived at the office under an overcast sky. 8 more days of work.
After work I headed up to SF to hang out with Shannon, but she was gone by the time I got there. She was in from out of town and left early for some reason. Such is the nature of the traveler; we have to enjoy their company when they are present.
I ended up going to dinner with Donna, Lily and Allison at a great Italian place near Allison's place up in North Beach, Sodini's. I have to say, their lasagna was on par with that of The Stinking Rose. It was good to catch up with Allison since she's leaving SF this Friday to move back to SoCal. When we were done the weather had turned from chilly to really really cold wind and fog, which is weird since it was 90º on Sunday. Donna and I headed back to 4211 where Brianna was nursing a boil burn on her leg and making some kind of Mexican dinner with Terresina. Somehow I drifted off to sleep on the couch, waking up several times during the night as people came and went, and woke to a foggy, wet Ocean Beach.
2 miles south in Daly City the fog was so thick you couldn't see more than 100 feet ahead.
3 miles south in Colma the sun was out and it was warm.
50 miles south in Cupertino I arrived at the office under an overcast sky. 8 more days of work. • • • • •
2009.05.13 by Daniel
Rebranding
Today I am rebranding and redesigning my website. In the near future this is where you can keep up with me and what’s happening in my probably to be mostly off the grid life as I backpack around SE Asia.
• • • • •
2009.05.13 by Daniel
Tuesday in the Office
I slept on Gecko and Brian's memory foam bed last night! It was interesting, I've never slept on memory foam before. They are letting me stay in their Menlo Park cottage while they attend a wedding in Arizona.
A girl named Megan Lau from Logitech came to my office to let me and Ray Sennewald review some pre-release gear. For compensation she hooked us both up with some logitech gear, and ga ve me a cool travel mouse that will be very handy while I'm out on the road. I also got a webcam that I'm not sure what to do with. It would've been great back at 4211 when John was always stalking us at night.
After work I met up with Chelsea. We had dinner at Erik's and then tried out Beard Pappa's, which was underwhelming. Then we went hiking and photographing up on Long Ridge. It was gorgeous, as it often is, and this time it was nice to have a beautiful girl to photograph, and of course it was good to have good company. We cruised back to Cupertino and had tea at a coffee shop up on Foothills where cyclists often meet before heading out into the hills.
Back at Gecko's it was nice to have a cottage to come home to, quiet and homely. The Caltrain woke me up in the morning briefly, then sprinklers after that. Unfamiliar sounds. I should get used to that. It was nice to have a hot shower, which I sometimes have been going without lately, and it would've been really nice to have a hot bath but I couldn't find anything to plug the tub. I endured the patience testing madness that is 101 traffic via car and stopped off at Cafe Dolce for breakfast for old time's sake.
And now that I've finished my breakfast burrito and am sipping on a white mocha, I remember that I need to take my typhoid pills at least two hours after eating and at least one hour before. Hm. =/
After work I met up with Chelsea. We had dinner at Erik's and then tried out Beard Pappa's, which was underwhelming. Then we went hiking and photographing up on Long Ridge. It was gorgeous, as it often is, and this time it was nice to have a beautiful girl to photograph, and of course it was good to have good company. We cruised back to Cupertino and had tea at a coffee shop up on Foothills where cyclists often meet before heading out into the hills.
Back at Gecko's it was nice to have a cottage to come home to, quiet and homely. The Caltrain woke me up in the morning briefly, then sprinklers after that. Unfamiliar sounds. I should get used to that. It was nice to have a hot shower, which I sometimes have been going without lately, and it would've been really nice to have a hot bath but I couldn't find anything to plug the tub. I endured the patience testing madness that is 101 traffic via car and stopped off at Cafe Dolce for breakfast for old time's sake.
And now that I've finished my breakfast burrito and am sipping on a white mocha, I remember that I need to take my typhoid pills at least two hours after eating and at least one hour before. Hm. =/ • • • • •
2009.05.10 by Daniel
Went to How Weird with Karen today and had an awesome time. Afterwards I realized I probably would've had a more exciting time if I hadn't had my camera on me. I'll have to keep that in mind while I'm over in Asia... remember to have camera-less days. One thing I was thinking of taking is an instant-on voice recorder so I can just begin recording audio so I can dictate what I'm seeing. I suppose I could just get a video cam though... Hmm.
I came back to Sunset after How Weird and hit up Noriega Pizza with Donna to unwind. We hung out with Lauren in her new place for a few minutes before coming back to the couch and cozy chair at 4211 #1 to use laptops and do online things. I'm crashing here tonight.
I need to remember to get my typhoid inoculation from the doctor tomorrow.
Geeking out with Donna
Went to How Weird with Karen today and had an awesome time. Afterwards I realized I probably would've had a more exciting time if I hadn't had my camera on me. I'll have to keep that in mind while I'm over in Asia... remember to have camera-less days. One thing I was thinking of taking is an instant-on voice recorder so I can just begin recording audio so I can dictate what I'm seeing. I suppose I could just get a video cam though... Hmm.
I came back to Sunset after How Weird and hit up Noriega Pizza with Donna to unwind. We hung out with Lauren in her new place for a few minutes before coming back to the couch and cozy chair at 4211 #1 to use laptops and do online things. I'm crashing here tonight.
I need to remember to get my typhoid inoculation from the doctor tomorrow. • • • • •