lost in translation

Back on the boat we managed to coerce the captain to drop anchor away from the other boats for the night so we could enjoy the peace and quiet a bit of solitude might provide from the obnoxious tourists aboard the other boats. We did stop away from the rest of the boats, but not quite far enough away. As everyone was standing on the roof of the boat contemplating whether or not to jump the whopping 20 or 25 feet, I got a running start from the other side of the boat and launched myself into the warm night air landing in even warmer water. Besides feeling like I was swimming in pee, it was extremely salty, so I became incredibly buoyant. I’m a terrible back floater usually but in this bay I could lounge around for hours on end without so much as an arm underneath me to keep pushing myself up. A few others followed in suit and finally jumped in, most of which were doing the stereotypical-one arm over their head, the other hand plugging their nose-dive, and a couple even screamed the whole way between roof and water. We all jumped and swam around for a solid 20 minutes when a couple of the people we were trying to stay away from came swimming over and asked if they could jump off of our roof. I assured them it would be fine, so they climbed up and jumped off, well, two of the three jumped off, the third one climbed down because she got scared. They were around my age and had American accents, so when the guy jumped off he swam over and we started talking. We rifled through the obligatory questions, “where are you from” being the key one here. As it turns out, when we cycled through the country, state, county and city that we were born and raised in, we both grew up in Huntington Beach, CA and knew a couple of the same people. I was absolutely blown away. I know it’s a “small world”, but holy shit. I was swimming in a bay half way around the world and I run into probably the only other Huntington Beach native in the country at the time. We spent a few minutes treading water, talking about our respective purposes in the country, mine, of course, was just to see it whereas he was working for the American embassy in Hanoi and he was living there for six months. He offered to buy me a drink when I came back through Hanoi, which I was fully entertaining the idea of, and then I got out of the water to climb up and jump off again.
Growing up in Huntington Beach was interesting. There are a great number of really cool people I grew up with who I still hang with on a regular basis; my very best friend is from Huntington Beach, however, the cool ones are definitely the exception rather than the rule. There is a very large concentration of “bros” in Huntington who have a bad reputation for being obnoxious, loud, pious, and tactless, driving raised white trucks with “SRH” stickers on them, wearing flat-billed baseball hats turned 45 degrees to one side with oversized dickies shorts, black socks pulled up and puffy skate shoes despite the fact that the vast majority of them can’t skateboard to save their lives. I’ve spent the better part of my youth doing everything in my power to not be a part of this uniquely grotesque subculture, and am perplexed every time I run into one of them by their demeanor, their lack of appreciation for things other than fake boobs and lifted trucks, and their rhetoric.
The Malay import had a very comprehensive appreciation for all things Western, including a lot of the slang and jokes used profusely in my hometown. He, like myself, was not a fan of the aforementioned type of people, and jabbed countless jokes at me about being American, especially being Californian, albeit his admittance that I was by no means a stereotypical Orange County guy.
That said, The Malay and I are standing on the roof of the boat, getting ready to jump, when the three roof jumping mooches from across the way announce that they will be swimming back over to their boat now, so we say farewell, and as a parting act of idiocy, my fellow guy from OC sticks a fist up in the air and yells, “Later man! Represent H.B. bro!”, which he said with absolute conviction, like, he isn’t just from H.B, he is FROM H.B. and it literally summed him up in one statement for me and innately placed him in the demographic which I just described. I was in shock for a second that he so quickly lost my respect, and I gave him a, “Will do, bro” from which he didn’t catch even five percent of my sarcasm. As the three of them swam off, I hung my head with shame and my Malay buddy nudged me and mimicked the guy, “Yeaaaaahh, H.B. bro!” Again, he had a very in-depth understanding of the jokes and slang from my part of the world, so he caught on to how shitty the call was. Having just spent the last few hours trying to convince this guy and the two Australian girls on board that all Californians aren’t like the kids in the show The OC, the one guy we run into in the middle of the ocean in Vietnam totally proves my point wrong.

Halong Bay is gorgeous. It is a massive body of water with nearly 2,000 uninhabited islands that look straight out of Jurassic Park with their entire surface area covered by unnavigably thick forest. The islands are very tall, protruding out of the water, sometimes several hundred yards high, and not much more in diameter. The Vietnamese legend about them says something of a dragon coming through and doing something and the islands are the spikes on his tail popping out of the water; I sort of tuned out while the captain was telling us the story, he told us the story before I found out she was fifteen.
We spent a couple hours slowly putting along through the labyrinth of islands, some of them less than 20 yards from the boat at times, our massive pirate ship, then we dropped anchor somewhere among them and took some kayaks for a spin. The Belgian transplant and I got along really well, he was in the computer business so we talked work mostly, so we grabbed a couple kayaks and headed off around a couple islands together. We found a cool island with a big cave on one side of it and beached our kayaks on the little secluded beach leading into the cave. There were bats in said cave, it was a bit creepy. After getting lost for a while we managed to find our way back to the boat where we got back on board and were told we were headed to the largest cave to be found on all of the islands. The cave has a name, but I suppose it’s irrelevant.
The boat pulls into a very small harbor type area where upwards of ten boats were docked at what appeared to be the base of the cave. As soon as we got within a visible distance, I could tell it was going to suck because of all of the souvenir shops lining the dock and the stairs leading up to the cave’s entrance. Our guide was going on and on in 10% understandable English, telling us things I still don’t know about the cave. It looked less like a natural marvel and more like a now defunct ride at Disneyland that was shut down 20 years ago. Granted there were impressive stalagmites and stalactites growing out of the ground as well as the roof, but they were all strategically and artificially lit by orange, green, yellow, blue, and red flood lights to give it a serious rave vibe and it took every ounce of potentially natural beauty out of it. The rudimentary exchange between the guide and myself was quite comical however. Encountering the same thing as happened back in Thailand, the young guide was itching to talk about sex, so as we’re walking through the cave, and I’m trying not to hate it for it’s artificiality, Quang pulls me aside, and under his breath says, “Meestah Daveed Willem, what these rock luk lie?” I looked at them and pondered, “Well, Quang, it slightly resembles a penis.” As though he’d just won the lottery, he was overjoyed with a massive smile and exclaimed, “YES! Hahahahahahahahaha, you ah rie!”

A mini-bus to the dock was included in my price paid for the next three days so I had to get my things together and check out before 10:00 a.m. as the mini-bus was to be there shortly after. Mustache bid me a farewell, having taken me for quite a bit of dough, and said I could stay at his hotel anytime if I ever came back through, for the regular rate, of course, but it was nice of him to offer to let me pay him to stay in his hotel.
As always, the mini-bus was ultra-late, leaving me waiting around for the better part of 30 minutes, in which time I could have walked to the dock, but that wasn’t the point. When I finally arrived at said dock, my false illusion of a tourist-free journey was fantastically obliterated as the dock was filled with Mickey Mouse visors, walking sticks, the token college graduates, and a wide array of fanny packs. I stood completely perplexed for a moment trying to figure out where the hell all of these people came from. They certainly weren’t there the night before, so I can only assume they shipped them in by the bus full that morning; they probably bought a combo pack from Hanoi all the way up to Halong City then out to Cat Ba and back, essentially cutting out the godforsaken bus ride I took. Part of Mustache’s sales pitch was that the boat I was going on would be less crowded than the average boat taking people out, so I was concerned for several moments that I was played and was going to be packed like sardines on one of the ships.
Finding my boat didn’t come easy, but I made it happen and hopped aboard. I was rushed from the mini-bus, rushed through the crowd and thrown onto the dock, told that I needed to find my boat as quickly as possible because it was in a huge hurry, then, staying true to form, once I got on the boat, I sat for nearly an hour with my twelve new two day friends, all of whom turned out to be pretty cool. Luck was certainly on my side with respect to my travel mates, I could have ended up with some serious assholes, but there was an Australian family of four, two daughters, the nicest woman available serving as mother/wife and a pretty young, but trying really hard to be even younger man acting as father/husband and they were doing three months together, the first month of which was spent entirely in India, which is very impressive. Next there were two Aussie girls in their early 30s, a Vietnamese expatriate living in Paris and a fellow ex-pat who fled Belgium for Kuala Lempur, Malaysia; he was 29. There was also a younger French couple, but hardly worth a mention, I mean, they were French, after all.
The boat ride was to be four hours today, then we would drop anchor and hang out, do some swimming, kayaking, eating, etc., spend the night, then do another couple hours in the morning to Cat Ba Island. The boat was made up of three floors and was a nice boat for floating off the northeast coast of Vietnam. The first floor is where all of the rooms were located, there were probably twelve to fourteen of them, and were surprisingly nice, much nicer than a lot of the rooms I’d stayed in on land, the second floor was the dining/chill/karaoke room, and the roof was a roof, from which I had every intention of jumping later on in the day. There was also a massive yellow dragon hanging off the front of the boat, much like I envision the pirate ships of hold having a mermaid cruising on the front.
Lunch was ready to be served before we even left the dock, and I opted to sit with the Aussie family for whatever reason. The older daughter was incredibly cute, and we hit it off really well, joking with one another, flirting, etc., so when I sat with her parents for lunch it felt like I was being brought home to meet the family for the first time, it was super bizarre. Mom and dad were totally giving me the third degree, asking me far more personal questions than normal for meeting a fellow traveler, they were incredibly nice, but very inquisitive, and they kept referring to their daughter, Georgia, as though she wasn’t there, telling me how well she does in school, about extracurricular activities, places she’s been, and how popular she is, which is a type of conversation I imagine taking place when a young man is auditioning for a set of parents’ daughter. I was eating it up, they were all quite likable, especially the daughter, and then, it came out that she was fifteen and my jaw must have hit the ground before I regained my composure, they had to have noticed. At that point I made a concerted effort to change the direction of the conversation towards the parents and abruptly stopped any and all cute talk going on between me and Georgia, the fifteen-year-old girl I would have put closer to 22 or 23. The lunch was good though.

With a propensity to get motion sickness, especially on boats, I had gone through my assortment of motion sickness pills already by the time I got here, so I asked Mustache if there was a pharmacy nearby. I’m unsure of whether it was closing soon, it was far away, or if he was just in the mood, but he insisted he put me on the back of his motorbike and drive me to the pharmacy. Now a seasoned veteran at holding on for dear life, I swung my leg over, held onto the handles under my butt, and off we sped through the town, over a couple hills, and down the way to a pharmacy where there was one woman whom probably owned it, sitting outside in the standard plastic chairs smoking with a friend. It is a bit odd buying pharmaceuticals from someone smoking, but who am I to question their ethics? At this point I was very thankful Mustache had come along, because the lady didn’t speak a single word of English, and without his translation I’d have been completely lost. Explaining that you want a room through hand gestures is doable; telling someone you need medication for your boat ride because you get seasick is a little tougher to communicate with your hands. Finally my medical needs were realized and fulfilled and off we sped, back through the city, to a café from which he surely receives a commission. He dropped me there and told me how to get back to the hotel when I was done eating, and I couldn’t have been happier to sit down for an actual meal.
I hadn’t eaten anything since early that morning since the only place we stopped in between Hanoi and Halong was the dodgiest side of the road market I’ve ever been to which was appropriately accompanied by both the worst and dirtiest toilets imaginable and fruit that was inedible at best. That said, I ordered a large Tiger beer, one of Vietnam’s prized beers, and was very buzzed by the time dinner arrived. The shrimp fried rice was in good form and didn’t disappoint, and neither did the second large Tiger Beer I had.
Fairly inebriated, I stumbled around town for a while, getting a few weird looks from locals hanging out in front of their houses as my lanky Western self wandered around their streets. The city grew on my very quickly; it didn’t seem very touristy despite its close proximity to the very well known Halong Bay, and it seemed to retain its small town atmosphere and charm. My room was in a hurry to be slept in though, so I retreated pretty early to the coldness unrivaled by anywhere in Southeast Asia that was my room and crashed into a sleep that was unlike any I’d experienced in a while, deep and heavy. It was good.
The next morning came early for some reason, and I woke up in that scene in Apocalypse Now where Martin Sheen is laying on his back staring up at the ceiling fan and watching it spin. It must have gone around a few thousand times before I threw the blankets off and jumped in the shower to rinse the hangover off. Blankets were something I’d grown completely foreign to since being over here because it was always so hot in my rooms. It was nice to bundle up for a bit.
Becoming a creature of habit is unfortunate, but I find myself latching onto places I find that have good food and frequenting them for my time in a particular place, so for breakfast I shot down to the same café at which I’d eaten dinner and had a terrible “American breakfast” with runny eggs and cold toast.
After a sub-par couple cups of coffee I set out to dig the town a bit more before my ride left for the bay. Still very slow paced and lacking the excessive tourist presence I had been expecting, I came to really quite enjoy the narrow winding streets that comprised Halong City.

The bus finally comes to a grinding halt in what appears to be pretty close to the center of a charmingly small town built around a body of water and ascending up into the hills looking out over bay. Off in the distance, out on what appeared to be a peninsula, I could see the massive signs attached to the uber-classy high-rise hotels that surely began sprouting up on in the last five years or so.
Being the only westerner, I was the only one who got off at this stop because I assume the rest of the passengers were headed further along the coast, but the driver knew I wasn’t a local somehow, so he dropped me where I would most easily find a room, also known as where his buddy would be waiting for me to sell me a room.
Rapidly approaching me when I made my graceful exit from the bus, both legs and ass asleep, was a wiry Vietnamese guy, taller than most, with a mustache that would rival the best in the world. His English was very good and he, of course, had “a good room for good price.” Continuously assured that I would like the room and that if I didn’t like it I was free to go elsewhere to stay, he urged me to come in and have a look. So incredibly sick of these salesmen, but equally as tired and ready to lie down for a few minutes, I followed him into what turned out to be a really nice hotel. It was “his families” hotel, as they always are, and he had a big room on the fifth floor with a balcony, air conditioning, hot water, and two beds, only one of which I needed, for fifteen dollars. I scoffed at the nearly 300 percent increase from my ideal price range, and began playing the game, inevitably not making much headway and only getting him down to twelve dollars. The room was far and away the nicest I’d stayed on so far; with its mini-bar, comprised of two cans of coke and a few bags of pretzels, legitimately nice bathroom, unforgivingly hard beds, and marble flooring with actual air conditioning, the room was a couple hundred dollar room anywhere in the US, so the twelve dollars I paid was beginning to seem actually worth it.
After a solid and long awaited shower, returning, of course, to the same clothes I’d been in all day and much of the day before, and a quick catnap, I headed downstairs to grab some food. My immediacy to do so was thwarted by Mr. Mustachio who assumed correctly that I was in town with the intention of heading out through Halong Bay the next morning. We discussed prices, options, accommodations, the works, regarding cruising out through the bay and out to the largest of the 2,000 islands, Cat Ba Island. After all was said and done he ended up convincing me to go with a package that was 100 dollars. It sounded a bit pricey, but I was tired, eager to go eat, excited about the trip, and all things considered, it seemed like a good deal; my 100 dollars got me a boat ride out into the bay, two freshly cooked seafood meals on the boat, swimming and kayaking in the bay, a tour through a massive cave on one of the islands, sleeping overnight on the boat, fresh breakfast in the morning, more swimming, the rest of the way to the island, two nights stay with all meals covered on the island and a tour of the national wildlife park, and of course a ride back, with lunch, through the bay. That sounded like a hell of a lot of stuff for 100 dollars. Of course I later found out that people were getting the same deal for less than half that, but that’s beside the point; I got sold on it, simple as that.

nicest room in 5 weeks…

Under the impression, based on my specific directions, that the bus stop I wanted was at the last stop of the local bus route, I just hung on for dear life and waited for the bus to stop. Nearly every other passenger had gotten off by that time, so when the bus came to a halt, only three of us got off. Once again I was nearly mauled by motorbike drivers trying to take me places, none of which understood that I thought the bus station was there. Convinced I was in the right place I just started walking around looking for the bus station. A young Vietnamese guy approached me whose English was exceptional compared to that of the moto drivers, so I asked him where the bus station in question was located. His expression led me to believe I’d received bad advice, because he couldn’t figure out why I thought there was a bus station near by. It turns out the place I was looking for was only 20 minutes from the airport and was halfway back the way I’d just come. Fortunately it had stopped raining by this time, so, a bit defeated, I hailed a motobike driver, hopped on with my flip-flops flapping in the wind, and held on as we zoomed through traffic, across intersections, over bridges, and through the old capital of Hanoi en route to the elusive bus station.
My motorbike driver was pretty awesome, he got me where I needed to be, and was as helpful as he could be; he delivered me to his buddy whom he surely gets a kick back from who rushed me onto a very comparatively lavish bus with ample legroom, and only four or five other passengers. I asked several times if the bus was heading out to Halong Bay, each time assured that it certainly was, and that the bus was going to stay fairly empty and comfortable. As usual in Southeast Asia, I was rushed from the motorbike and onto the bus with an alarming fury, as though the bus would be leaving in exactly two seconds with or without the second half of my body through the door; and then we sat and waited, for god knows what. Taking advantage of the fairly empty bus and exorbitant amount of time between boarding the bus and taking off, I made myself exceptionally comfortable, taking two seats for myself and my bag, and stretching my legs in between the seats in front of me, I thought I had it made for the next four hours. They more and more people began getting on. We would go about 20 feet in a forward motion every five minutes or so, a few more people would get on, rushed like I was, then we’d stop again, and wait.
Finally, all of the stragglers seem to have made it on board so we get out of the parking lot it took us nearly an hour to get across and set out for Halong. While many more passengers had boarded, I managed to retain my dual seats, which was nice because I could turn my body 45 degrees to the side and stretch my legs out a bit. Again, I thought I made off like a bandit and was in for a roomy ride for the duration. Then we started out on the highway, and I managed to forget about all of the little towns sprinkled across the countryside in these countries, each one of which having a bus stop that we would stop at to see if anyone needed a ride. There were two men working on the bus, the driver and the salesman. We drove 90 percent of the way with the side door of the bus open and this guy hanging out of the bus from only a few fingers allowing his opened button up shirt and Eric Estrada hair to flow in the wind. At every one of these towns the bus driver would slow down enough for the salesman to jump off, landing in a full stride, at which point he would run around the bus stop yelling things I couldn’t understand, presumably trying to get people to come with us, to take my extra seat away from me. Each time we stopped, we’d pick up a person or two, and each time I grew more and more resentful of this guy for getting me that much closer to losing my extra seat, selfish of me, I know, but these buses aren’t made for tall travelers.
About an hour into the journey, my dreams of a comfortable ride are shattered when we stop at what is to be our last small town stop and pick up a young couple. The man grabs a seat all the way in the back, and the woman comes to my row. Being the gentleman that I am, I give her the aisle seat and slide over to the window. Just then I realize I was sitting in the row where the wheel well is located, and my feet are now up on this thing, about eight inches off the floor, leaving me with my knees tucked up towards my chest, with no room between them and the seat in front of me, and my now hideously heavy bag on my lap. I look around for a pair of sympathetic eyes, but not a soul has any idea about my discomfort, and I’m the only westerner, so my chances of explaining the situation to someone in hopes of a seat swap were slim to none. I had to suck it up and remove myself for the situation.
I pride myself on being a good sport when I travel. I don’t let discomfort get to me, and I always maintain a positive outlook on my situation and my circumstances. Typically, if in a situation like this I start to get bummed out, I just remember that I’m on a bus flying east across Vietnam. A thought like that in and of itself is typically enough to bring me back to bliss and relinquish and feelings I may have about discomfort, and sitting on this bus, with my knees in my chest and my bag on my lap, I couldn’t have been less comfortable. This is the first time I was unable to beat the feeling and it started to get to me, I was getting annoyed, irritated, and having those feelings that I’d rather be at home, where things are comfortable, where things all make sense, where everything is on time, and “normal.” Demoralization can happen to the best of us, and it this bus ride started to get to me. One of the other ingredients to my dismay was the uncertainty of how far away Halong really was and how long the bus ride would actually be. I’d learned early on that the people selling tickets will tell you the journey will be considerably shorter than it really will be in an attempt to gain your fare, so when I was told four hours, I was thinking six, and at only two hours into it, I was petrified of the remaining four. This feeling is an unfortunately familiar one, it reminded me of the feeling I had in jail, not knowing what time it was, not knowing if the sun was still out, and unable to gauge the time by anything recognizable. The Paul Frank watch I carried was in my pocket, but due to my physical contortion I wasn’t able to get to it without asking the girl next to me to get out of her seat - and then what? – then I would just be staring at my watch, and we all know how quickly time slows to a painful stop when we watch it go by.

Landing in Hanoi was just like any other place I’d landed over there, you climb down the set of rolling stairs and hop into a bus, a la LAX 20 years ago. They don’t have those drivable accordion hallway things that Jim Carrey ran off of in Dumb and Dumber. While the economies are making a concerted effort at recovering after decades and decades and decades of conflict and oppression, they have yet to get to a place where the airports are comparable with the West; it’s just as well though, this way you get a feeling for the weather straight away instead of being fooled by the misleading pleasant temperatures provided by the a/c in the airport only to have you visions of bliss shattered when you step out the front doors and walk get hit in the face by a blistering wall of heat.
Once we were on the ground I did the Asian shuffle through the airport, the considerably smaller than Ho Chi Minh airport, and shot outside to be ambushed by a mob of Vietnamese men shouting at me and at one another lobbying for position and trying to get me to hire them to drive me on their motorbike to wherever I needed to go.
I was only swinging through Hanoi on my way out to the glorious Halong Bay, so I had my mind set on getting to the bus station a.s.a.p. The concierge outside of the terminal told me that the bus station was about 40 minutes away and that it was reachable by taking the local bus number 17 until it stops, and that would be the bus station. That sounded credible. Motorbikes are a great way to get around, and are generally cheaper and faster than buses, and a few blocks by motorbike is no big deal, but there was no way I was riding on the back of a little man’s motorbike for 40 minutes, that just wasn’t going to happen, so I went the bus route and bummed out all 20 motorbike drivers that were trying to get me.
The bus ride was fantastic. It revealed a very primitive version of Vietnam that Saigon very effectively covered up with its commercialism; there were many, many farms with cattle grazing in the fields accompanied by rice fields after rice fields. There were a great number of older people meandering about that seemed to have been born and raised in this middle of nowhere town between Hanoi and its airport. This was the Vietnam I had anticipated seeing, and I was very glad to be out of the chaotic metropolis that is Ho Chi Minh City.
Just as I was relishing in the wonder of this place I was in, the skies opened up once again and unleashed a tremendous downpour as quickly as any I’ve ever seen, making me ultra-thankful that I decided against the motorbike ride into town. The metal enclosure I was rolling in was ever so awesome as the gods dumped a plethora of water on us.
Twenty minutes or so into the commute, we’re cruising along haphazardly when all of the sudden, the bus driver slams on his breaks, literally screeching to a halt. I fly forward in my seat but am able to hang on and not fly over the seatback in front of me. Other people were not so lucky, kids were flung from their seats landing a couple rows in front of where they took off from, groceries were spilled from bags, purses were dropped, and people just toppled all over one another. Certain that someone died in the street, a few of us on the bus got up and raced to the front to see that everything was OK, the bus driver just sat shaking his head in annoyance. Right as I approached the front of the bus, a cow moseys out from in front of the bus; bell around its neck, ignorant as possible, and completely unaware of its life having just been salvaged by an eighth of an inch. It popped into view of the rest of the passengers on the bus and everyone cursed it in Vietnamese, “damn cow!”
With everyone’s items and thoughts collected, our fearless driver forged on. We stopped several times picking up upwards of 30 school children ranging from about four years old up to perhaps twelve years old at most. The bus was relatively full by this time, so when the children got on board, it was downright crowded, and I was the sole representative of the West. No one really seemed to have the time of day for me, not that I was reaching out to speak with people, but I had asked a couple people where the bus stop I was looking for was located, and no one really seemed interested in helping me out, so I was keeping to myself, and for whatever reason, no one seemed to really want to sit next to me, so when the kids arrived, the biggest selection of seats was available next to, in front of, and behind me; and suddenly I was surrounded by school children. Blue pants, white button up shirts, and a red scarf/tie kind of things ruled the day; that seemed to be the uniform for all schools in the country. The little Vietnamese boy who sheepishly took me up on my offer for the seat next to me frequently looked at me out of the corner of his eye to see if I was looking at him. The other kids were looking over the seat behind them, at me; my neighbor was going to be all the rage at school the next day for sitting next to the dirty American traveler guy on the bus. The girl standing in the aisle, a couple years older, maybe his sister, kept nudging him. Finally he turned to me and said “hello” hoping he hadn’t pronounced it wrong, and as I replied with a hello, all eyes within earshot were on he and I and our newly kindled conversation. He would look at his friends for approval to continue and asked me how I was, and what my name. He was probably in third grade, so I assume that’s all the further he’d gotten with English, but it was awesome. When the got off the bus they were all hi-fiving him and patting him on the back and as the bus moved ahead, all 30 something of the school kids now located on the sidewalk waved at me and said good bye. It was incredible interacting with such innocence. They were completely unaware of the history between our two countries and were everything but jaded by the loud and obnoxious cliché that Western tourists carry with them and are invariably subjected to by a lot of adults.

I returned my motorbike to the Kodak guy, retrieved my passport from him and had several beers with a couple ex-pats with considerably better attitudes than the guy I’d encountered in the morning. They loved me and my attitude toward traveling, so I felt comfortable asking them questions about their decision to move over there. One of them was British and the other two were Americans, all three of which served in the war. The common consensus was that they fell in love with the country during the war and returned as quickly as they could, unfortunately that wasn’t until post-retirement for all three of them. Understandably, wartime talk wasn’t a preferable topic of conversation for them, so the bulk of our interaction revolved around me and my time abroad. Then one of their buddies came along, posted up with us, ordered a round for everyone and was beaming with excitement. The British guy asked him why he was so excited and he delved into an all too graphic story about how he had just “banged” a “very young” Vietnamese girl who ran off with his watch afterwards. His friends, the guys I had grown to quite enjoy, all patted him on the back for accomplishing such a feat, and I excused myself, and walked away. My admiration for their eagerness to live in the country in which they fought was immediately replaced with resentment towards them for more likely moving over there due to the ability to get laid by far younger, more attractive, and smaller girls for a fraction the price it would cost them in their home country. Making zero assertions about ex-patriots in general, because I’m am fully confidant that a lot of them have great intentions, I was disgusted by the few I had come across and became increasingly eager to flee the city the next day.
Once I decide I want to leave a city, the prospect of staying an additional day seems like absolute torture. It’s really quite strange how big a role the mind plays on ones happiness while traveling; this reinforced the happiness and contentment I possessed regarding my lacking an itinerary. People always ask me how long I’m going to stay and where I plan to go next, and I relish the fact that I can honestly say, “I don’t know” with absolute certainty.
In a drunken state I stumbled to a Vietnam Airlines office that littered the area in which I was staying and requested the next ticket out of town and up north to the old capital of the country, Hanoi. From there I would travel over land to Halong city and by boat out to Cat Ba Island in the middle of Halong Bay. I really hate flying when I travel because I feel like it takes a lot of the adventure out of it, but the Reunification Express train running directly from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi with stops at literally every city along the way takes a whopping 42 hours, and on a relatively short schedule, there was no way I was spending nearly two entire revolutions around the clock aboard a train watching the country fly by at the speed of sound.
Frankly, I don’t remember getting to my hostel after the number of beers I’d had with my new/old ex-patriot friends/enemies, but I know I made it there somehow because I woke up there the following morning.
Early mornings in Saigon are like the seventh inning stretch of a World Series Game, literally, everyone is walking around, yelling. They seem generally happy, but the morning noise is unlike anything I’ve ever heard.
Up early yet again, Vietnam Airlines beckoned my presence for my flight northbound. You can’t go wrong with a breakfast spot called Good Morning Vietnam, so I headed over there again, got hit on by the same server from the day before, ordered the same banana pancakes I’ve acquired a huge affinity for, and received the same weird coffee setup that you have to let brew for like ten minutes once it gets to your table; I managed to not spill it everywhere this time though.
The airport is quite a bit out of the center of the city, so it would have been a pretty serious ride had I hopped a moto, therefore I opted for the cab route. Two dollars later I was curbside at Ho Chi Minh Airport on my way to Hanoi.
This is what I expected planes to be like in Asia. Up until this flight I had had relatively comfortable flights with ample legroom and the ability to standup straight in the aisle; then there was this flight. Had I boarded this plane at 6’7” instead of a mere 6’6” than I legitimately would have had to lie down in the aisle to fit. It was the tightest squeeze I have ever had to perform in order to board an airplane, and it sucked terribly. There are flights in the US where I don’t have much legroom, where I have to sit virtually straight up as to pull my knees back as far as possible, and then there was this one. I was physically unable to sit straight in this seat, I had to turn my body 45 degrees to point my knees out into the aisle because the seat in front of me was simply too close. This plane was made for Asian people, not massive Americans. Thankfully it was only a two-hour flight.
The food on Asian airlines is supremely dodgy; I’m a huge fan of sushi in general, but there is something a bit off about having it served at 10,000 feet. It lacks the feeling of freshness and the ability to be awesome when it comes wrapped in cellophane in an airplane. But the crackers were good. And the Pepsi.

My first morning I Vietnam was fantastic, albeit the fact that it was easily the hottest day of my trip to date. Breakfast was screaming my name so I set off down a little alley next to my hostel towards one of the main streets nearby. At the end of the alley, nearly on the corner of the major street, I stumbled across a clever little café called Good Morning Vietnam Café at which several late-50s ex-pats were lackadaisically taking their coffee and reading their paper, I figured if there was anyone who I should trust regarding a café, it’s the old guys who probably never left after the war.
With empty seats aplenty, I pulled up next to one of the guys I dearly wanted to rap out with only to get a look from him indicating he wasn’t a fan of mine straight away, so I decided to keep to myself. The flamboyant young Vietnamese guy taking orders weaved his way over to me and decided that, instead of just taking my order, he would sit down to discuss what I was going to order. He began asking me all kinds of questions about my trip, where I was from, etc. all leading up to asking what I wanted to order. I was jonesing for a good cup of coffee and attained an affinity for banana pancakes so I went ahead and placed my order. The jaded ex-pat didn’t seem to approve and looked a bit disgruntled by my order, or maybe he wasn’t into the blatantly gay waiter, or maybe he had a flashback, I don’t have any idea, but he grew increasingly annoyed by me; fortunately, I could give a shit what he thinks and certainly wasn’t going to let his bad attitude get in the way of my awesome day.
While the coffee was extremely good, I had to ask for a redo before I was able to actually embark on the experience. They served it in some weird setup where you have to let it sit for like ten minutes after it arrives to let it brew. Unaware of this, I picked it up to take a drink right when it showed up and not only was it not brewed yet, but they drop it off in a way where you have to let it drip from a cup on top into a cup on bottom, and if you pick it up wrong, it will spill out of the bottom all over the place. Needless to say, I spilled it all over the place, much to the disapproval of the guy sitting next to me, but the waiter got a kick out of it and came over when he saw me trying to wipe up a whole cup of coffee with the two sheets of Kleenex they leave on the table as napkins, and helped me out, then brought me a new coffee rig and explained to me how to do it. Sure, I felt stupid, but my gay flirting skills are on point, so he dug me. And boy, were the banana pancakes excellent, and small. I had to order two to tide me over to lunch, but they were good enough to just reorder the same thing rather than try something else out on the menu.
Having spent a lot of time walking around in the heat, I found early on, and only became more and more convinced of the fact that denim shorts are in fact, not, a good option when strolling in heat; to say they aren’t breathable is a vast understatement, and that fact coupled with the adoration I found for motorbikes back on Koh Samui in Thailand, I decided that I was going to try my luck at driving a motorbike through the streets of Saigon, one of the most chaotic and seemingly ruthless cities I’ve ever been to with respect to traffic.
Down the way from Good Morning Vietnam Café there was a little Kodak film developing storefront that boasted a sign indicating they also rented scooters. One thing that amazes me about the entrepreneurship of these countries is the diversification in their businesses. This guy, for instance, excels both at developing film and renting motorbikes, go figure. The cost was pretty steep relative to Thailand at seven dollars for the day. I tried haggling with him, but after a couple half-hearted attempts, I always feel like an asshole arguing over a couple dollars, so I generally just give in. He did require that I leave my passport with him though, which always leaves me generally uneasy.
Unlike Koh Samui, the scooter I rented in Saigon was brand new. This is literally the fastest scooter I’ve ever ridden. The speedometer goes up to 160 kilometers/hours; I have no idea how fast that is in miles, but it felt really, really fast. I didn’t even get it to half of that speed; it’s simply too fast. The one I rented in Thailand was a 125 cc scooter and this one measured in at 250 cc, doubling the engine size and power, and literally able to do wheelies if I popped the clutch from the start. It was so powerful that I would inevitably get a good jerk when I would give it gas, like, there wasn’t enough room on the throttle to ease into new gears, if you gave it more gas, it jumped up to the new speed ever so non-gradually; it took a bit of time to get used to.
The traffic, on the other hand, was legitimately scary at first, but once the initial shock of people not really stopping for you wore off, and I applied the same principles I’d learned about walking to my driving strategy, it all worked out for the best. I can’t think of a better way to have taken on the city, but I wouldn’t recommend the option to the sheepish or the faint-of-heart, because if you hesitate, you will absolutely get hurt; and a helmet wasn’t even an upgradeable option with the rental, so the distance between safety and a Third World hospital is tremendously narrow.
If conquering Saigon via motorbike is possible, than I absolutely made it happen. I made it clear across the city, in and out of areas that I probably shouldn’t have gone but am very glad I did, across the Saigon river that borders the east side of the city where the standard of living seems to drop dramatically and the attitude seems considerably more grim. Having to plead ignorance as to why, I don’t have any insight as to the reason for this, but it was definitely noticeable. Several of the hours I spent riding were hours in which I had no idea where I was or how to find where I was going. All of the sites I saw the night before, on accident, I stumbled across again, on accident, and added a few to the list. The Reunification Palace is a pretty popular tourist spot, but I was far less than impressed and the fine art museum would have been a complete letdown had it not been for the semi-interesting photo exhibit that happened to be there while I was in town. All that negativity aside, Saigon remains one of my favorite cities of all-time. Despite being a massive city with a great deal of urban sprawl, commercial development, and a noticeable influx of tourism, it’s somehow managed to retain a great deal of its culture and its heritage. You can still see middle-aged women walking down the streets in traditional Vietnamese attire with the cone shaped hats on called “non la” carrying a pole over their shoulder with baskets tied to each side filled with an array of rice or miscellaneous vegetables perfectly balancing itself out passing a cell phone store while having their photograph taken by a Midwest college graduate wearing the famed “jesus sandals”, a tank-top, and a fanny pack. My motorbike rental turned a gigantic and potentially daunting city to undertake into a very manageable, well traveled city in one day. However, despite loving this city, I was absolutely sick of cities, the digital signage, the throngs of tourists, and the bouts with ridiculous traffic, so I decided to leave the next day for the north of the country to a Unesco World Heritage Sight called Halong Bay which I had heard is spectacular and while tourism is prevalent, it has done a wonderful job of retaining its charm.

Pham Ngu Lao is the Khao San Road area of Saigon. It’s loaded with budget accommodation, bars, restaurants, and cafes. Unbeknownst to me, it’s also where the vast majority of the major sites are located around. When I woke up a couple hours later with a medicine hangover, but feeling considerably better, and very rejuvenated, I set out for a casual stroll around town to find some dinner and have a drink. My inadvertent walking tour started at the Hotel de Ville, which is a throw back to the colonial era hotel in Paris, though not nearly as big. A bit further on down the way I stumbled across what looking like a spitting image of Paris’ Notre Dame, and sure enough, when I asked someone what the spot was called, it was called Notre Dame. Why all the French rip offs? I have no idea, but they are certainly the spots that people flock to, as these were two of the busiest places I visited that night. There is also a “French-style” post office right nearby that was getting quite a bit of attention, but I’ve been to France, so I wasn’t all that rushed to spend my time in Vietnam looking at French replicas. It seemed almost as though there were more people driving at night than there were in the day, the traffic was absolute chaos and seemed to grow busier as the night dragged on.
I’d been meaning to try pho for a number of years, dating back to when I dated Dona, the Vietnamese girl. She was always telling me about pho and how good it was but I never got around to trying it with her, so I figured what better time to try the traditional Vietnamese soup dish than my first night in Vietnam. There is a pho restaurant called Pho 2000 that everyone raved about that I spoke to, so I figured I’d give that a shot. It was certainly very crowded, so my hopes were set high, and if the pictures on the wall of a happening restaurant are any indication of a countries feelings about another, there were multiple pictures of President Clinton eating pho and shaking hands with the cook in that very restaurant. Perhaps it was called Pho 2000 after the Clinton administration. Suffice it to say, it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. The pho was good, but I literally had to eat an hour after because it was everything but filling, which is not a good attribute for food when you’re six and a half feet tall like me.
I found myself at the acclaimed and historical Rex Hotel for a nightcap. I couldn’t tell you where I’ve heard of it before, but I can assure you that it is indeed both acclaimed and historical. I’d put a new shirt on by this time, but was still kicking ass in my denim shorts and flip-flops, so when I swam through the bourgeois lobby I would have put money on them at least questioning my presence if not physically escorting me out of the establishment. No such luck though, because that would have made for a much better story. I took the elevator to a roof top bar and was pleasantly greeted with a number of things. First there was a terrible cover band playing brown-eyed girl. Then I realized I was, without a doubt, the only person at this rooftop bar who was under 35 and over nine, traveling by myself, staying in a hostel, looking to spend about 15 dollars a day, and not in the market for a variety of very “Asian” trinkets that were on display. Several of the middle-aged businessmen and their tag along wives were dancing and schmoozing with one another on the dance floor, but when I weighed my options against going to a bar that would be overrun with shitty backpackers discussing the meaning of life and smelling worse than me, I opted to stay put and order the most expensive cocktail I had during my trip. My Gin and Tonic and a Crème Brulee set me back three times as much as my room cost for the night, which, while that’s actually reasonable at home, I was expecting Third World prices, since, after all, I was in a Third World country.
An hour passed while I sipped my drink, trying to enjoy every cent of it, and while I listened to the classics of yesteryear, after which time I paid my bill, was vibed into tipping the waiter, which was something I hadn’t experienced in Asia, and headed back to my hostel where I swallowed three Tylenol PM with great pleasure and a desire to knock myself out for a solid ten hours for the first time on my trip, and passed out on my bottom bunk with a metal frame.