luang prabang province, laos people’s democratic republic (longest location ever)

sitting in the late 70s airport terminal waiting for my flight to leave vientiane was like a scene in a movie it felt like. i was in some weird trance just staring straight ahead and it seemed as though everyone around me was moving in fast motion, speaking loudly, all in a hurry, while i was sitting amongst them, hungover and slow as can be.
 
the night before i met back up witht he american im yet to make my mind up about at an internet cafe and we headed down to the riverside with this swedish guy that we had met earlier in the day to have a drink. sitting on the bank of the shit-brown mekong over a candle lit “beerlao”, the national beer and claim to fame, may be one of my new favorite time killers. its always interesting meeting people from different countries and speaking with them about their culture. ignorantly, i have always just lumped europe together like i would lump the states together, as one country; when its clearly not. learning how sweden differs from norway on an economic level, as well as culturally and socially are things that you cant read in the encyclopedia and are all things that are of interest and typically manage to have never occured to me. the swede was awesome, one of the only people ive met on this trip that id hang out with at home. 
 
we parted ways, and my flight wasnt until 11 the next morning but their trains were at 6, so when they decided to go to bed, i decided to rage. i went to a new bar that just opened up and was instantly caught in a group of lao girls’ tractor beam. i sat at the bar across from them and could feel them staring at me so i did what i could to not make eye contact. that only lasting about 10 minutes before i got stuck looking at one from across the bar, they waved me over and i conceded. one of them told me to sit down next to her and we tried to talk for the next half hour. the language barrier was so difficult i considered just getting up and walking away several times. not only does the language barrier present a problem, but what the hell do i have in common with her? this presented serious conversational problems and lead to many awkward silences turning into laughs from me and confusion for her. after awhile she and her friends told me they were taking me to what i finally managed to guess was a karaoke bar, so she gave me her keys, and jumped on the back of her motorbike and off we went. the bike shifted terribly though, so everytime id let off the gas to shift, the gear wouldnt catch and when id give it gas again id still be at the top of the same gear, pushing her forward into me and me almost flying over the handle bars. finally i got the hang of it and just had to virtually jump on the pedal to make it jump into gear. 
 
we arrive at said karaoke bar, and walk in to find a relatively big room, a band on stage singing unintelligible lao pop songs, and maybe 3 or 4 other people in the place. not only was i the only guy, but i was the only american, and i just came in with 4 lao girls. and im really tall. the girl i went with, whose name i didnt understand when she told me and thus have no idea what it was, is quite the karaokeist. she sang like 5 songs over the course of the next hour and everytime she would go sing, the singer of the band would come over and sit next to me, uncomfortably close, and would continually raise his glass for me to cheers him and we would drink. theres a weird custom it seems in laos that i didnt become aware of until i was sitting at a table in a bar with all locals where when one person drinks, everyone drinks. and when one person drinmks, they, 9 times out of 10, lift their glasses up for a toast, none of which i understood. this presents 2 problems, one, i vbery well may have been toasting to them making fun of me and my having no idea, and two, you burn through your drinks real fast. 
 
after several awkward moments with the singer, equally as many songs sung by the girl whose name i dont know, and that many beerlaos later, she said we were going dancing. now we all know im an incredible dancer, so this sounded right up my alley. for those who dont know that im an incredible dancer, you surely know that im incredibly sarcastic and dont have an ounce of rythm in my body. again, i drive down the way to the discotheque with her and one of her friends on back. id always admired the skills of the locals who were able to drive a motorbike with multiple people on back, and here i was chauferring two lovely young lao babes on one of their scooters. we arrive at the hotel with the rooftop bar and make our way through hoards of people lined up to get in. apparently she knew one of the main guys because we didnt have to wait at all. and i was subtly pressured into paying for him. it cost 2 dollars. bummer. walking up the stairs to the 5th floor was as strange as walking into the karaoke bar. it wasnt until i got into the club that i saw another white face, so getting there every person we walked by was staring at me with one of two looks, either a) what is this tourist doing with this babe, or b) haha, sucker, shes gonna steal all your stuff and you have no idea. extremely aware of the possibility of b, i had decided early on in the night that i would make sure that wasnt an option. we “danced” we had a couple more drinks, and we decided to take off. we ditched her friend i think, and when we got to my guesthouse, i told her i had a flight at 6 am and that i was going to bed. she didnt seem to like that, so i told her id be back in a few days and she was to meet me at the bar again so we could hang out. i think im supposed to be there right now actually. yeah i feel a little bad for lying to her, but based on how quickly and haphazardly she picked up on me in the bar, ill assume she isnt very picky and probably has some other guy driving her around trying to figure out how to shift her damn motorbike as we speak. 
 
next morning i made my way out of bed, felt like shit, got a coffee, felt worse, hired a tuk-tuk to the airport and sat drinking water for over an hour. by the time my flight was ready i felt good as new and ready to take on a new city.
 
not once since landing in bangkok have i boarded a plane any way other than walking onto the tarmac. and i laugh everytime. this time, walking from the terminal to the plane i was laughing even more than usual because flying on lao airlines provided me with the opportunity to be a passenger on board a converted military plane. this plane absolutely dropped bombs somewhere in its former life. its new reincarnation consisted of the squareish body that bombers have with one wing fixed atop the plane instead of two wings coming out the sides. of course there were no jets, but only two semi-rusted propellers hanging down off of the wing (singular) at about window level. i board the plane expecting the seats to be running along the walls facing eachother with straps hanging down from the roof that they would attach to our parachutes so when we were over top of luang prabang we would just jump out the door clutching our bags parachuting down to the tarmac. everyone knows how to fly a parachute. no such luck. it had “normal” seats. by normal i mean half the size of normal, but at least reminiscent of a normal seat from an aesthetic perspective. sitting in the seat was awesome. it came up to about my shoulder blades, and there were flies buzzing around the cockpit to boot. i ket trying to sleep, which was a cross b etween a balancing act for there was nothing to lean on, and a joke, because it seemed like everytime id nod off, id hear a loud clap sound and would look up, startled, to see someone slowly opening their hands outstretched above their heads to see if theyd gotten the fly they were trying to subdue. it beat the 11 hour bus ride which i later found out about that several people got sick on becasue it was the windiest road any of them had ever been on. 
 
landed in luang prabang and made my way through the small town to a guest house that came in at a cool 6 dollars per night with the most intense fan ive ever encountered that is colder than most a/c units somehow, a WARM shower, a huge comfy blanket, and wood paneled, 70s style ski lodge-esque walls. sold!
 
after taking a much needed nap i got out and cruised the city. luang prabang (pronounced lang pra bang) is a unesco world heritage site in and of itself. coming here i was trying to figure how a whole town could be a unesco site, but after spending five minutes walking around, it all made sense. geographically, luang prabang is set at the convergance of the kha san (i think thats the wrong name actually, but theyre all bleeding together) and the mekong, and is set up high in the mountains far away from any other cities of any size resulting in the inability to really easily reach it before recent decades. the mekong was the main way in to the town, and the mekong isnt navigable year round so people didnt really come here very regularly. thus the town has retained its old charm very well despite having become relatively well traveled by backpackers and tourists in recent years. there isnt mush sign of urban sprawl, and there are still no atms in the city, so its done a pretty damned good job of maintaining its small town vibe. this region was colonized by the frence a few hundred years ago so the architecture here is a very interesting, very amusing combination of french colonial and traditional asian. the buddhist religion is very prevalent here, there are upwards of 20 - 25 wats, or temples spread around the city providing the package tourists with plenty of stop off points. walking around the city it struck me as the type of place i could come and spend a few years just walking aimlessly up and down the street stopping every so often for a cup of lao coffee. you never want to walk fast here, im always in a hurry to slow down and take everything in and enjoy it all.
 
the bakery/cafe i found down south in vientiane, joma, seems to be a laos chain, because there is one here as well, and i adore it. the pineapple shake is amazing, it gives the egyptian chain, cilantro’s mango smoothie a run for its money. and coming in at a whoping $1.20, ive had like 5 since landing here two days ago. they toast a mean bagle with cream cheese as well.
 
the last week i started thinking about work. having not had anything solid lined up before departing, i was starting to worry about finding a gig when i got back, but one of my clients emailed me the other day and said shes got a bunch of work waiting for me, so it looks like ill be ridiculously busy right when i get back again. this is the longest i have gone without using a phone i think in my life. ive managed to not turn my cell phone on once since arriving which is a feat for me. on my other trips id check voice mails, check text messages, or even make a random phone call. ive quite enjoyed being entirely disconnected from everything aside from email. my liufe at home is spent very easily accessible, and its refreshing to actually not be able to be gotten ahold of on a whim if one so chose.
 
i caught an epic sunset over the mekong. i found a stairway that led down the 40 foot bank down to the rivers edge and watched it go down over the river and tuck down in between two mountain peaks. great moment.
 
i went to bed pretty early and got up to do some of the books recommended walking tour of the local wats. i quite enjoyed them with all of the monks doing their day to day things, the old traditional architecture, the primitiveness of their way of life, and the way they are all preservedf as though this was a few hundred years ago. no matter how commercialized a city seems to become (this one excluded) the temples provide a glimpse of what the culture used to be like, and are thus one of my favorite parts. that said, im also pretty sick of seeing wats. wats in asia and museums in europe. everyone told me i was supposed to spend 3 days at angkor wat and my friend chris told me that 3 days at the lourve (im sure i spleed that wrong) in paris was barely enough, but i manged to get through the lourve in 3 hours, with a 45 minute nap on a bench, and angkor wat in a full day.
 
theyre playing a song from karate kid in the background at this internet cafe. the music scene hasnt really progressed with that of the western world.
 
i was walking along the river after lunch and found these two dogs playing aorund with eachother and so i got regretably close to take their photo. this dogs were admittedly sketchy looking, probably rabid, and not inviting me to photograph them, but i did anyways. they were cool with me looking at them and talking to them, but as soon as i got my camera to my eye to shoot them, they started snarling at me and then one took off after me and the other followed in suit. thank god id been running a lot before i came here and was in relatively good shape, because i was running at full speed down this narrow street along the river, by women selling vegetables, kids playing with eachother, men playing bacci ball, holding my sunglasses, desparately trying not to fall out of my flip flops, and constantly looking over my shoulder to see them nipping at my heels, all the while everyone i passed just looked at me and laughed as the dogs were barking hysterically at me. i got a couple cool shots of them though before all hell broke loose.
 
i asked around at all of the bike shops to see if anyone rented motorbikes, and the common concensus was that know one in town rented them to foreigners. quite defeated, but not in a hurry to accept this defeat, i started talking to younger kids my age asking them if they could get me on a motorbike the next day. finally one said he could get something worked out with one of the shops and i was in! ive been spoiled with the motorbike deal in all of these other cities and now i feel like im wasting time just walking cuz im not seeing as much as if i were on a motorbike.
 
2 of three nights here ive eaten dinner at a sketchy little stall that is part of this massive street market on the main street with the most amazing wares ive seen. if my life over here wasnt in one backpack id pick up tons of stuff. instead i got zayne a rad shirt and called it a night. this town is so small that im constantly running into the same people over and over. i repeatedly see the same tourists at wats, or just on the street, or in a restaurant. i was walking down the street and saw this gorgeous girl the other day, we said hi, and like the schmuck that i am i spent the next 10 minutes explaining to myself how i should have stopped to talk to her. so, of course, the only foreigner that i havent seen multiple times is the one that i actually wanted to talk to. figures.
 
the only time i feel a bit lonely when i travel by myself is when i have to eat alone. i dont mind breakfast alone, and i dont mind lunch alone, but eating dinner alone sort of sucks. throughout the entire rest of the day, walking around, motorbiking around, siteseeing, being lost, whatever, i love doing all of it by myself, but dinner, it always sucks having to sit down to dinner alone. then as soon as i get up and walk away im glad im alone, but conversation with a good friend over dinner would be a welcomed change.
 
i picked up a new book about the khmer rouge and pol pot and the genocide he committed in camboda that i told you guys about a couple weeks ago and after reading it last night before going to bed i was unable to sleep because i kept waking up with terrible nightmares about everyone i know being killed like the friends and family of the author, the only one of the 17 people in his family who survived. as unhappy as ive become with american politics, i will say that its incredible living in a coutry where this sort of atrocity is ludicrously impossible. this took place a mere 30 years ago. its absolutely insane reading about the events that took place and the control that is so easily achieved over people. the result is an entire generation of uneducated people leading to one of the poorest economies in the region.
 
i arranged to meet with my motorbike connection at 9 am , so i grabbed some breakfast and arrived early to our agreed spot as to not miss him. he threw me on the back of his motorbike and drove me to the back door of this little place off a sidestreet. i wheeled and dealed like a champ and drove off on the worst motorbike ive taken possession of to date, and off i went. there are waterfalls some 32km outside of townn that id heard were legendary so without a map, i took off in the appropriate direction, hoping for the best. after about a nhour of driving i foud myself way up in the mountains looking down on the city with spectacular views. evetually i realized i was nowhere near the waterfalls but decided to continue anyways. i stumbled across some of the most seemingly primitive villages that ive seen in this country. set way back up in the hills with no reason for tourists to be up there, everyone that i drove by was shocked/excited to see me. the people were completely livign off of the land it seemed, all of the villages were built along a lonng running stream providing there water, and many of them had massive fields opening up amongst the tress that were obviously used for growing the food vegetables that they presumably live off of. at one point i pulled off the side of the road and hiked down the hill maybe a hudred yards to take some photos of this one village that was particularly awesome. as i was crouching on the opposite side of the stream next to the bridge that lead to the village, without a single sound to alert me, a local guy walked right by me from behind, crossing the bridge, carrying a very large machete, giving me a quick questioning look back over his shoulder. that was enough to make me take off, so i climb back up to the road only to find that my motorbike wont start. i start laughing and weighing my options. i hadnt seen another mode of transportation aside from an ox in nearly an hour, was about a 4 - 5 hour walk from town, and was really not looking forward to it. i started wishing that id takenn auto class in highschool instead of photo, cuz i figured it was something stupid, but the simplest of engines may as well be a space shuttle as far as im concerned, they are completely foreign. the bike was really hot, so i sat for a while thinking maybe itd overheated. i donnt even know what that means, but ive heard it used before, so that was my guess. after 10 minutes i tried kickstarting it again to no avail, so i start pushing it back towards town. after maybe 5 minutes and a couple hundred feet, i thought of something. maybe i should try turning the key to the on position. sure enough, it started without an issue. 
 
i made my way back downn through the serenity that was the random mountain id driven all the way up and got to the bottom where there was a massive sign clearly indicating that i was supposed to have veered right at the base of it imstead of going straight up it. 
 
another hour of riding through beautiful farmlands, miniature villages, and a plethora of smiles and waves from local school kids, i made it to the acclaimed kuang si waterfalls. and holy shit. here is a photo of them… http://www.toddadams.net/images/wallpaper/hires/Kuang%20Si%20Falls,%20Luang%20Prabang,%20Laos.jpg they were spectacular. mikey and i hiked to a waterfall in thailand and were severly let down, so my expectations were really low, but they were far surpassed by these falls. incredibly high, multileveled with aturally damed off swimming holes consisting of carribean blue water, and a massive set up atural steps leading up the side of the falls that i quickly regretted starting up about half way. being way up in the mountains with thinner air, being pretty out of shape, and at a scorching 90 something degrees, a hike didnt sound all that appealing. it was really cool though, the path lead up to the top of the falls where there was a little pool just before dropping a few hundred feet. had it not been for the spiders the size of my outstretched hand, i would have continued on. however, not being a huge fan of little spiders, brushing elbows with spiders the size of a small dog was enough to make me turn back. jenny- i picked out the sketchiest one i could find and threw a huge stick at it for you. then i ran because i was sure it was going to get up and chase me.
 
i rode back down the mountain cosiderably faster than id ridden up, in 4th gear the whole time, listening to my ipod, and it became one of those memories to not soon be forgotten.   
 
the more i travel, the smaller the world becomes. for 2 main reasons. 1) im in a place that i frankly didnt know existed a couple yeas ago and had never in my wildest dreams thought that id ever be somewhere like this, and 2) im continually running back in to people i have seen in other places along the way. there is a canadian couple that i met in thailand who i ran into in cambodia, and both cities here in laos, and discovered we were on cat ba island in vietnam at the same time as well. SO weird how these things keep happening to me. seeing my co-worker in london, flying over to egypt with one friend on accident and flying back with my business partner and another good friend on accident as well, meeting some guy from my hometown in the middle of halong bay in vietnam, and running into the same couple over the course of a moth in 3 separate countries. its insane. im still trying to wrap my head around it. 
 
i met my new favorite ex-pat last night. her name is debra, shes from pennsylvania, shes been here almost 2 years, shes in her late 40s, and she is the manager of my favorite coffee shop in town. i dig her.
 
i still have a week left. i cant believe it. it feels like ive been gone for sooo long, but i could keep going for soooo much longer. it seems like the more i travel, the more i want to travel. everytime i see a new place, it just makes me realize how many more places there are to see. while id like to think that going all these places would satisfy my desire to go places, it seems to only make it that much stronger. that said, im also looking forward to coming home and getting back to work.
 
i fly out of laos in 4 hours to chiang mai, thailand.
http://www.travelmarker.nl/media/foto/postkaarten/thailand_chiangmai_dans_ja.jpg  
that is what google came back with when i searched chiang mai, so im looking forward to it, haha.

the mafia is after me. all 5 feet of them

ha noi turne dout to be a really cool town. i stayed in the historic “old quarter”. with its super busy streets, seemingly untouched culture, and women walking around with baskets on their heads, i was very exited about the city. it seemed so authentic that when id see a tourist, they actually seemed out of place. where most times, it almost seems like the locals are built around the tourism, and the culture is impeeding the freny that is tourism, in ha noi, it seemed starkly different, which presented an awesome vibe. when a tourist walked by they seemed gravely out of place, and the city seems to be doing its thing despite the rampant invasion of people like myself (i hate categorizing myself with the people wearing birkenstocks, but at the end of the day, i have to accept the facts.)

unlike europe where with the european union, you can move freely to and fro, not worrying about visas and border crossings, here it is quite the contrary. ive heard stories of people getting caught in “airport limbo” which is what happens if they dont know they need a visa before departing for a country, and then once landing, arent admitted to the country, so are unable to move forward, yet cant get out of the no mans land to purchase a return flight. obviously these people manage to coerce the authorities to let them out of this predicament, how, im not really sure, but i think ill keep it that way, so i arrange my visas in advance. doing so, however, is a hassle! all of the hotels and traveling offices have them arranged for you, but you have to part with your passport for at least a day, pay some 45 dollars, and present a passport photo for the embassy to hang on their wall. sometimes it takes 4 - 5 business days to get it handled, but the lady at my guesthouse managed to get it handled for me overnight, it was just considerably more expensive than id anticipated.

foiund an awesome bistro/cafe called “baguette and chocolat”. very not vietnamese, but exquisite. the decor came straight off the pages of the newest modern interior design magazine, and the rum crepe i enjoyed must have been imported straight from paris. bear with me while i relive its glory… called the “crepe montmarte”, this extraordinary piece of culinary genius was a perfectly made crepe, folded over pears, with a bit of sugar sprinkled over it mixed with orange marmalade; as much better as it couldnt get from here, they serve it with chocolate ice cream to boot! my second favorite part about this place, coming in just after the crepe, and just ahead of the decor, is that 10% of the revenue goes to helping former street children with no families and no homes to get an education. there is a phenomenon in vietnam called “amerasians” of which i was completely unaware, as are most of you im sure, because it isnt something that our history teachers want to concede to. this is a large portion of an entire generation who are the product of americans who either slept with prostitutes, or got married while in vietnam for the war, got them pregnant, and fled the scene after the war, leaving countless women to raise these children on their own, none of which were 100% vietnamese, and are, as a result, treated as an outsider and not accepted by the culture. there are countless stories like this ending usually with the children being disowned by the mothers and being left to fend for themselves froma very young age on the streets. this is still a very large problem but is slowly being cured over time. and a result of soldiers not taking responsibility for their actions outside of battle while over seas.

very rarely do i feel like going out at night over here, usually im so tired from waking up early and running around all day that i dont have it in me, but my first night in ha noi was calling my name. i set out in search of 2 specific bars, the first a locals type bar and the second a popular backpacker bar in case i wasnt feeling the locals vibe. after being lost for over an hour in an area no larger than 2 square blocks, i managed to find my way to both bars, neither of which had a single person in them. awesome. i did manage to find a jazz bar though, which, aside from the ludicrously expensive drinks, was quite enjoyable. it was strange watching 4 little vietnamese guys on stage playing a sax drums, a bass, and a guitar, but they pulled it off very well and presented a good show. but shit, the drinks were more than my room that night. i then found a little crossroads of sorts where a couple streets came into a little square area where each corner had a little outdoor bar on it. and when i say bar, i actually mean, a room where two old vietnamese ladies were in charge of a keg, and they had little plastic stepstolls arranged in front of their storefront for people to sit on. the beers were 2000 dong. also known as 15 cents american. overheard a conversation between a few of the people that id rather not encounter while traveling. one guy was being all defensive, repeating something someone had asked him earlier that day which was “what, you think youre hard-core just cuz youre traveling for 3 months?” and this guy, clearly thinking he was a “hard-core” traveler was defending himself to a group of eager peers reassuring him that he was in fact tough for being gone that long. this made me think, and it made me question peoples motives for taking these trips, and it made me wonder if on some level, everyone isnt doing it to prove to others that they can. this guy clearly felt threatened that someone who was travelling longer than him accused him of being a wimp because his time over here was shorter than his. im only here a month, but it literally hadnt occerred to me that someone might walk away from a conversation with me feeling that they are a “superior” traveller for being gone for a longer period than i. i meet people who are merely gone for 7 - 10 days, and i have an equal amount of respect for them as i have for the people i meet who are gone for a year. i hope im not fooling myself and taking these trips to try and prove myself worthy of something. i hope that my intentions are proper and that, again, im not one of these condescending assholes that give tourists a bad name.

sidenote: i just finished paulo coelhos newest novel “the zahir” and it was awesome. id recommend it to anyone. two quotes i most enjoyed were “its not life that matters, but the journey.” thats actually quite cliche, but its nice to hear that every once in a while and be reminded of it. the other was awesome as well, and i read it after spending the day sort of disregfarding the “sites” in the lonely planet book and just taking the day to dig the city and its eccentricities on my own. “one day im going to write a travel guide containing only maps and addresses of hotels, and with the resat of the pages blank. that way people will have to make their own itinerary, to discover for themselves restaurants, monuments, and all of the magnificent things that every city has but which are never mentioned because ‘the history we have been taought’ does not include them under the heading ‘things you must sees’” sometimes i sit and wonder what youre “supposed to do” when youre in vietnam. am i going to be blowing this incredible opportunity if i dont go clear across town to see another monument that ive seen in pictures my whole life? i wonder that quite a bit and it was answered both by what paulo said in his book, and what neumann just said in an email, “its what you make of it.”

i ate breakfast at a little cafe called little hanoi, it was just ok. walked outside and hired a motobike driver to take me to ho chi minhs masoleum. he quoted me one dallar for the ride across town. once there he insisted that he drive me to the other two places i wanted to hit within 5 minutes of eachother. the whole way hes talking to me about america, people he’s driven around from amaerica, and listing all of the cities he knows the names of in america. people always do this, they ask where im from, i say america, they say oh! america! san francisco, new york, chicago! its quite funny, because obviouly they never say costa mesa. its rad though, they make the effort to try and identify with where im from, where as if i met someone from vietnam at home, i wouldnt say hanoi! saigon! cat ba! but, to each his own. so this motobike driver was really very nice, and i ask him to drop me at this restaurant to get some lunch, and things start getting weird. i ask him how much since wed agreed to 1 dollar, or 15000 dong for the one ride, but we’d gone on to take 3 or 4. i was planning to give him 2 dollars, which is a lot for a vietnamese guy to get for an hour, and he says he wants 300000 dong, or 20 dollars. i laugh and assume he means 30,000, so i get out the 30,000 and try to hand it to him. he pushes it back in my face and tells me i owe him 300,000 because he drove me more places and was a god driver for me. i told him he was a good driver but that there was no fucking way i was paying him 20 dollars for an hour of his day. he told me he was going to call his friends to come meet him and they were going to make me pay him 20 dollars. i asked why he was being such an asshole all of the sudden and he told me he had all thee expenses that he had incurred like gas, wear and tear on his motobike, and his time while driving me around and that he had someone he reported to who he had to pay and if he came back with less than 300k than he’d be in trouble. i tell him hes full of shit and he can have 30000 dong or he can take a hike, then he tells me hes going to call the mafia and have them settle it. he gets out his phone and starts pushing buttons, so i oiffer him 50k as my final offer. i knew he was full of shit when after telling me his life depended on getting 300k, he said ok, 200k. i laughed at him again, tried to hand him 50k which he shoved back in my face and became more irritated, he started dialing again, so i said im out of here, take your 50k or dont, but i know youre not calling the mafia and im sick of arguing with you. he says, ok, ok, 100k, i tell him hes out of his mind, i throw the 50k in his basket and walk across the street. hes yelling something about the mafia coming to get me for the other 16 dollars i owe him. and in the back of my mind im thinking, what if he does know someone sketchy, but am quickly reassured that theres no way that any mafia dudes are going to come after an american in the middle of the day for 16 dollars, and i spend the rest of the day smiling everytime i remember that he actually had me a little stressed out over it. the one thing i dislike about these countries is that there are so many tourists that will concede to give these people what they ask for without questioning whether or not its absurd, gives them all the audacity in the world and the idea that they can rip everyone off that isnt vietnamese, so youre constantly haggling and chipping away at numbers that are absurdly inflated becasue im white. i like to help out people that are genuine and dont ask for help, the ones that think theyre owed my help and try to get it underhandedly really irritate me.

sat on a bench overlooking a lake in the midle of the city for awhile when a young vietnamese guy sat down to practice his english with me. we talked about the insane difference between the upper and lower classes and how there really isnt a middle class, he asked me all about where im from, traded stories about people he knows who have been to america as though they were baseball cards, and, of course, he started talking to me about sex, a topic which i was unable to get him off of. he took down my email address so he could continue practicing his english, he invited himself to dinner which was my excuse for needing to leave, i decline, and off i went to a dinner on the 5th floor verranda with a spectacular view overlooking the fountain at the convergance of 3 major streets at the north side of the lake.

id heard about vietnamese waterpupetry and that the show in ha noi was the best one in vietnam, so i decided to spend the 2 dollars for a front and center seat to the acclaimed traditional show. it was outstanding. they had traditional music being played which served as the soundtrack and these intricately carved dolls with several moving parts were controlled by guys behind a curtain in a pool of water which acts as the stage. the play tells several stories of old vietnamese culture and was incredibly entertaining.

i went back to baguette and chocolat to immerse myself in the pleasure that ive found in the crepe montmarte. while sitting there reading my book, the strangest song came on. it was an interesting rendition of jingle bells. it sounded like it was being played by some people from a rastafarian settlement on some remote hawaiian island. it had that sort of happy islandy feel, with a bob marley twist. it was super weird. then i realized it was even more bizarre because i was in vietnam, hearing a christmas song, and its only october. they sure knew how to set the mood.

i had a wake up call at 630 yesterday morning at my guesthouse and was up and packed in 5 minutes. it always surprises me how quickly i pack, but then realize the only thing to it really is finding a way to fit all ten books that i have with me. ive read all but 2 which im fairly confident ill get through in the next few days, at which point i may pick up a few more and instantly regret the additional weight in my pack.

i went outside to try and hire a motorbike to get to the bus depot where i could grab a 33 cent hour long bus to the airport. i had cairo flash backs when i was stranding on the street trying to explain airport to this guy with a look of complete befuddlement as i stood there, arms outstretched making airplane noises and saying different cities, with the added bonus of trying to explain to him that i wanted to go to a bus to take me to the airport. as always, he told me he understood, but when we got on the highway to go to the airport, it was clear he didnt, so i had him stop a few times by someone young who i thought may be able to translate. aftrer 45 minutes i was at the bus depot which was maybe 7 minutes from my guest house and on the bus waiting to depart.

3 hours, airport mayhem, a cheeky “departure tax” of 14 dollars for leaving the country, a canadian girl, a terrible sinus headache on the plane only cured by blowing my nose for several minutes and unloading what seemed to be a pound of snot into almost a full roll of toilet paper later, i landed in laos.

i was instantaneously blown away by the difference in laos and vietnam, indicated merely by the airport itself. very clean, very small, very laid back and very quiet. the town is exactly the same. vientiane is the capital of laos so i expected, like every other capital ive been to, for the city to be overflowing with commercialism, tourism, and to be once again defeaned by the noise. as it turns out, there is a midnight curfew which is very laxly enforced, none of the above are problems, and it sits right on the mekong river which is very beautifula nd peaceful in some very strange way.

also not knowing what to expect, i rented a motorbike for 2 days so i could see the whole city, and after 20 minutes of riding, i realized id already covered the entire city. i checked out the wat that the country is known for and it was very cool. huge gold temple with ornate walls and thresholds.

found a room for 5 bucks. the water isnt just not warm its freezing.

fell asleep in a park overlooking the river for nearly two hours on accident. thankfully my bag was still sitting next to me when i woke up. ate dinner at a small italian restaurant and had a mixed seafood dish which was amazing and a glass of wine all for 7 dollars, and i was a little shocked at the price. im going to have the worst culture shock when i get home and get back to spending 20 dollars on a nice meal that costs 3 over here, haha. had a drink at this little outdoor bar thing that has tables feet away from the river and talked to a few local guys about the same thing i talk to every local about: america, miscellaneous cities theyve heard of in america, the local economy, and of course, girls. met up with the canadian girl from my flight and an american that i cant decide whether i dig not not, and we played pool at a mexican bar on the street where my guesthouse is located. i lost very badly.

my beard is amazing. still wearing the same shorts i was wearing when i landed in bangkok, which have developed several new holes by now one of which is in the ass, but i checked out my ass in the reflective doors of an elevator after noticing the hole, and its placed in such a spot that its not really obvious when i walk, so im still good.

i leave vientiane tomorrow for a northen province called luang prabang, and then head west to chiang mai in northen thailand to wrap up my trip. i want to try and go further northeast onto burma, but i dont know that ill have time.

would “good morning vietnam” be too cheesy of a subject?

early mornings in saigon are like the 7th inning stretch of a world series game, EVERYONE is walking around, and everyone is yelling. usually happily, but yelling nonetheless. the morning noise is like nothing ive heard before.
 
i was up early to get to the airport for my flight up north. had breakfast at the same cafe, was hit on by the same server, and ordered the same weird coffee that you have to let brew for like 10 minutes once at your table. not nearly the quick turnaround you get at home. headed out to the airport via 2 dollar taxi and boarded my flight for hanoi. this plane is what i expected airplanes to be like in asia. i was pleasantly surprised on the way over, it was a normal airplane; i fit. this plane, not so much. had i been 6′ 6.5″ instead of a mere 6′6″ i literally would have had to lay down in the aisle to fit. it was the tightest squeeze ive ever perfomed to get into an airplane. and it sucked. thank god it was only a 2 hour flight. the food on asian airlines is weird, as expected. there is something not proper about airline sushi. havent really gotten into that one yet. i hate flying when i travel, it takes a lot of the adventure out of it for me, but the train from saigon to hanoi was 40 hours, SO, in the name of saving time/sanity, i decided to take the plane. flights here are very cheap anyways, so it works out.
 
landing in hanoi was just like the other times ive landed somewhere over here, you climb down the stairs and hop into a bus, a la the US 20 years ago. they dont have those airplane accordian hallways here. while the economies are recovering after decades and decades of turmoil and conflict, they havent reached the zen-like airplane accordians we have in the west. its just as well, this way you get a feel for the weather straight away instead of being fooled by the pleasant a/c in the airport only to have you vision of harmonious temperatures shattered once you walk out the front door by a blinding wall of heat like you do in LA sometimes. i hate LA.
 
this was actually a really full day of travel come to think of it.
 
so, airplane lands, i head outside, i ask the tourist desk how to get to halong bay, which is about a 4 hour bus ride from hanoi. halong bay is off of the far north east coast of vietnam. its quite lovely. the concierge at the airport tells me the bus station is the last stop on the local bus number 17. i proceed outside to the bus stop where i am mauled by small vietnamese men offering to take me whereever i want to go for a couple bucks, but while i can hang with riding on the back of one of these little guys’ mopeds for a few blocks, 40 minutes isnt in the cards, so i turn them down, shatter their dreams of retirement (unfortunately) and proceed to the bus depot. unlike in cairo, i didnt take a cab across the parking lot to get to the bus station. on the bus i go and away we go.the drive is stunning. very primative vietnam. a lot of farms and old people milling around that you could tell have been living in this middle of nowhere in between towns town forever. i dug it. it started pouring, i was very glad i decided against the moped. thebusdriver slammed on the brakes, screeching to a hault, people flew over the seats in front of them, people were worried, people had no idea what was going on. we look towards the front of the bus. look out the windows, and just as im about to declare idiocy on the driver, a cow emerges from nearly being smothered by local bus number 17. damn cow. we forged on. picked up a large number of school children. all wearing the same thing. blue pants, white button up, and a red scarf/tie kind of thing. there was no more room, so i offered one of my two hogged seats to a little vietnamese boy who sheepishly took me up pn my offer and had a seat next to me, frequently looking at me out of the corner of his eye to seeif i was looking at him. there were quite a few other kids sitting around us, 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 hadnt 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, what my name was, and that was actually it. he was probably in 3rd grade, so i assume thats all the further theyve gotten with english. it was awesome. when the got off they were all hi-fiving him and patting him on the back and as the bus moved ahead, all 20 something of the school kids now located on the sidewalk waved at me and said good bye. i enjoyed them.
 
“the last stop” must have meant several stops before the last stop, because when i got to the last stop, i looked and asked around for the bus station and they all looked at me as though id just asked them how to get to the nearest theme park, and they pointed wayyyyy back that way. shit. duped again. so i hired a motorbike and we zipped through traffic like it was nobodies business, gettting me to the bus station in another 10 minutes. get pushed onto a bus heading for halong and 30 mibnutes later we actually left. the south east asian phenomenon that ive noticed is that they are always rushing me to get somewhere for something, and then i sit and wait because they are always running late. its just expected now.
 
the bus ride sucked. i somehow managed to get the seat above the wheel well, so not only was there no leg room between myknees and the seat in front of me, there was little room between the bottom of my seat and the ground. because the wheel was there. so my knees were in my chest. and it was a smaller, commuter type bus with no area for luggage. the vietnamese never take bags with them anywhere apparantly, because i was the only one with nay stuff, and with nowhere to put it, i had 4 hours of this near fetal position with a 50 pound backpack on my lap. it was stellar. it was the only time thus far where i have wanted to be home. and as soon as i got off the bus, that feeling departed very rapidly and has yet to return. i was greeted at the door of my bus by yet another service salesman who had a “good room for good price” so i followed him. the price wasnt that great, 12 bucks a night, but the room was spectacular. by far the best ive had on this trip yet. it actually had air conditioning! i obliged and took the room. the owner of the hotel, with his sleazy mustache, then threw me on his scooter to take me to the atm and the pharmacy so i could replenish my motion sickness pill addiction. i hadnt eaten anything since early that morning since the pnly places we stopped to get food in between hanoi and halong was an ultra dodgy side-of-the-road market with the worst bathrooms iver ever seen couple with the shittiest fruit ive ever seen, so when i went to dinner on an empty stomach and ordered a beer, i was drunk before my food got there. i ate, i stumbled around the town a bit, which i quite enjoyed, halong city, at least the part i was in, is a cool town. right on the water, small and charming, still pretty authentic, and not seemingly very touristy, yet. give it 5 years, im sure its going to boom. then i slept. like a rock. and it was good.
 
woke up at like 5 am for some damn reason and stared at the ceiling for a few hours. got up and shot down to the cafe i had dinner at the night before and had “breakfast”. the asians have nailed lunch and dinner, its brilliant, their breakfast, not so much. soup for breakfast is a bit odd. i strolled around for a few hours in halong city, and headed back to the hotel to check out and get picked up for my boat ride to the bay.
 
got down to the dock in my hired mini-bus and my hopes and dreams of a tourist free get away were shattered. the dock was filled with mickey mouse visors, walking sticks, the token college graduates, and fanny packs. awesome. i find my boat and hop aboard. id paid a tad more to be on a less crowded boat, so i was hoping all of these people werent going on one ship. after rushing me to get to the dock, and rushing me to get on the boat, i sat with my 12 new 2-day friends for like and hour waiting to leave the dock. the people i ended up with were actually pretty cool. i definitely lucked out. there was an australian family of four, 2 daughters, the nicest wife imaginable, and a younger, still trying to be even younger/overcompensating for his age/still really cool dad. they were doing 3 months together, and for that i seriously commend them. there was also 2 aussie girls in their early 30s, a vietnamese ex-pat now living in paris, and a fellow ex-pat having fled belgium for kuala lempur, malaysia, he was 29. there was also a younger french couple. but hardly worth a mention; as they were french.
 
the trip was to be comprised of a 4 hour cruise through halong bay, sleeping on the boat, some kayaking, then another couple hours through the bay in the morning where we wouldbe dropped off on cat ba island, spend the day there, stay the night and head back the following morning. i opted to spend an extra night on the island because id heard so many good things about it. and all meals were to be included. unreal deal.
 
i sat with the aussie family of four for our first meal and the beginning of the boat ride. oh, also worth a mention, the boat was awesome, 3 floors, the bottom were the rooms, which were actually pretty nice, much nicer than many of the hotels ive stayed in, the second floor was the dining/chill/karaoke room, and the roof was a roof. with chairs. that we could jump off of. and there was a big yellow draggon hanging off the front. so i sit with the aussies, and did i mention the elder daughter was really cute? that lunch was super bizzare, the daughter and i kept joking around with one another, flirting, whatever, so when i sat down to eat with her parents, it seemed as though it was a firtst meeting for a new boy. i was totally getting ythe third degree, all very nicely of course, but they were incredibly inquisitive, and they kept referring to their daughter, georgia, as though she wasnt there, which seems like the kind of thing parents would do if eating dinner with a young man auditioning to take their daughter out. i liked the whole family. then i found out she was 15. and they may have noticed my jaw dropping a good 2 feet before regaining my composure. needless to say, the direction of my conversation was now geared towards the parents.
 
halong bay is gorgeous. http://www.pacificvillage.org/villagevoices/vietnamstudent05/halong%20bay.jpg go to that link to get a sampling of the beauty. it is a huge bay of the north eastern coast of vietnam that has over 2500 of these uninhabited, jurrassic park looking islands that is like a labryinth just waiting to be explored. the vietnamese legend says something about a dragon coming somewhere and doing something and the islands are the ridges in his tail. i think hes dead in the water but his tail sticks out. i dont know, i tuned out while hearing about it because it was before i found out she was 15.
 
we cruised through these islands for a few hours, some of them less than 20 yards from the boat at times, our massive vietnamese pirate ship, and then we dropped anchor somewhere among them and took some kayaks for a spin. the beliun transplant and i got along pretty well so we decided to split the kayak and headed out around some of the islands. obviously it got dark and we got lost, so it took a bit longer to get back than expected, but it was really fun. we found a beach that went into a cave at the base of one of the islands, there were bats, it was rad. we also stopped earlier in the day at the most famous (god forsaken) cave in the bay. i knew it had “shitty” written all over it when i saw the souvenir shops at the entrance. the guides were going on and on in 10% understandable english, about how this is the most beautiful cave and yada yada yada. it looked less like a natural marvel and more like a ride at disneyland that they closed down because its not 1985 anymore. granted there were impressive stalctites and stalagmites (impressive, huh?) all over, but when they are artificially lit by orabge, green, yellow, blue, etc. flood lights to give it a rave vibe, it takes a lot out of the beauty. for me at least. i did enjoy the rudimentary exchange between the guide and myself. i dont know if maybe i look like a pervert, so vietnamese dudes are always into talking to me about sex stuff, or if they just talk aboutit with anyone, but as we’re walking through, the guide, quang, pulls me aside and, under his breath says, “meestah daveed willem, what thees rock luk lie?” “well, quang, it slightly resembles a penis.” “YES! hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha, you ah rie!”
 
back on the boat we coerced the driver to stop away from other boats so we could go swimming by ourselves without all of the assholes on the other boats coming over. didnt work. but we did stop, and while everyone was standing on the edge of the boat roof considering whether theyd die if they jumped off of it and into the deep dark, ocean a mere 20 feet below, i got a running start from the other side of the roof and launched myself through the barrier of weirdos i was on the boat with and soared a good not very far before hitting the pee warm water at 8 pm. some other followed in suit and did the one hand above their heads, other hand plugging their noses jump screaming all the way down. swimming and roof jumping for about 20 minutes brings me to the next biggest bumout of the trip. well, maybe not to you guys, but it ended up bumming me out. im swimming and the assholes from anpother boat we were trying to stay away from swam over and asked to jump off our roof. i said sure, since its myboat and all, and they climbed about, one hand over head, one hand on nose, yelling something stupid. the guy swam over to me and we started shooting the shit, and as it turns out, he graduated from ocean view in 2001. holy shit, erin, i just realized you did too, you probably totally know him, i have no idea what his name was though, i tried really hard to forget. we were both in shock that swimming halfway across the world we would bump into someone that grew up in the same town. the world is becoming smaller and smaller as i get older, its really quite strange. hes working in hanoi for the us embassy, so i figure hes not the typical huntington beach guy that would say things like “represent hb bro!” which is totally not something i would say and innately narrows the person into a very sterotypical demographic, but as i climb back onto the boat and homeboy swims away, he stops, we exchange nice to meet yous, he offers me lunch if i swing by the embassy (mind you im in ha noi right now and have NO intention of taking him up on it) and he seals the deal with “later man! represent HB!” which he said with absolute conviction, hes not just from hb, he is FROM hb. i gave him a yeah yeah, will do “bro” and off he swam, not even catching 5% of my sarcasm. like, what am i supposed to be doing? walking around vietnam with “HB local” stickers putting them on lampposts and cab windows? come on man.
 
dinner was good, the aussie girls, the malay import, and myself shared a bottle of vietnamese wine which was actually pretty good. oddly enough, theres rice in the ingredients, who would have thought? late night, roof top conversations took us into the wee hours and off to bed we went.
 
woke up to a beautiful sunrise in the bay, some mroe swimming, a solid breakfast, and a couple hour float to cat ba island, the biggest, and only inhabited island in the bay, population, 7000. my first memory of cat ba was driving through jurrassic park, looking for a trex, buzzing around curves at speeds WAY unsafe, with a little vietnamese guy behind the wheel he could barely see over, blaring vietnamese techno music. its definitely something ill never forget. i actually kinda got into the beat and was foot tapping and head nodding digging the scenery. our first stop was the national park, which sucked. a two hour hike for a view that was replicated easily 25 times on my own later that day. grat view, not worth the pain in the ass hike.
 
go to the hotel, checked in, sweet room, good lunch.
 
id convinced malay guy to rent a scooter with me since those are my new jam for digging cities, and off we went, for 4 dollars each, for the whole day. it was outstanding, saw the entire island, i think i actually saw all 7000 residents, rode on close rodes, we both crashed on separate occasions, and the hilight for me was finding old bunkers that were hidden that once found boated a MASSIVE gun aiming out towards the ocean. it was the kind that is on wheels and has a barrel about 20 feet long with a diamater of about 8 inches. that gun seriously sank some ships in the war. ended the day with a romantic sunset on a secluded beach with maybe 20 people on a huge stretch of silky white sand.
 
went back for dinner, showered, and went out to suck at pool with the malay and the aussie family, then over to the karaoke bar, which is huge in asia, and was bought a couple too many local beers by the dad. turns out he and his daughter were trying to get me to sing billie jean because i told them about how my thai buddy in arranya prathet came out of the bathroom in his boxers dancing to that song. unfortunately i let them down and adamantly refused to sing michale jackson. thank god. i still have a bit of dignity. even if only a small bit.
 
everyone left the following morning and i had a massively leisurely day of scootering, sunbathing, reading, eating, and interneting. i finished my hemmingway novel, and was a bit disappointed. im not really thrilled about the way he writes, nor can i see how he is acclaimed as one of the great literaries of our time. se la vie.
 
today was a fairly exhaustive travel day, relatively uneventful, and not yet complete. i started at 6am with some breakfast, shower, packed, still cant believe how little stuff i brought and havent felt like i missed bringing a single thing yet, got the boat back to ha long, and the bus back to ha noi. that was 12 hours ago, and ive been here for about 3 now. walked around some of the old town ha noi, which is an incredible little town, had a rad dinner on a little veranda overlooking a street exploding with activity, and found a cool internet cafe with a 6 year old vietnamese boy who has been popping out from around my chair trying to scare me for the last 30 minutes. i catch him everytime though. and he speaks no english. but hide and seek is a universal language, so we get along just fine.
 
of all the countries ive been to, which i counted today and comes to a grand total of 13 less the US, vietnam and italy are the two that i would most like to come back to and spend 3 months exploring every nook and cranny of. this place is oozing with culture, and the history pertaining tpo the war is exceptionally fascinating, and well worth coming back to delve into head first. id love to go to the dmz, id love to go to the mekong delta, id love to do everything here, just dont have time. i keep meeting people who are spending months upon months over here, giving one country and entire month, sometimes more, and it makes me fee like im missing out on al the small stuff i skip over by just hitting a couple cities, but, i decided that what im doing is going tons of places now and getting a feel for them so i can come back later and spend a lot more time in a place that i know will keep me interested for an extended period of time. maybe its merely justification, who knows.
 
im going to a delectible pastry shop right now where i can get gourmet sweets for 45 cents, then to a water puppet show? not sure what to expect, but apprantly its awesome, very vietnamese, and the best to see in ha noi. then im here all day tomorrow, tomorrow night, and then im off to laos!  
 
hope all is well.

phnom penh/saigon

so just after i finished the last email, the girl that i was hanging out with in siem reap was with my at the internet cafe and she tried to have the guy that worked there unload her memory card and burn a cd so she could take more pictures, and the guy erased it. so the german and i made cds for her of our pictures so at least she would have some of the places we all went. i would have lost my mind if that happened to me. not many things really piss me off, but that certainly would have. she handled it very well all things considered.

after the internet cafe we went to a solid cambodian bbq joint where once again we were the only non-cambodians. it was awesome. it was a buffet style too so for the first time in asia, i actually got full during a meal. there hasnt been one time where ive sat down, ordered something, and not been able to finish it. yeah, the proces of the dishes are really inexpensive, but i have to buy two of them usually. i had to wake up early the next morning to go south to phnom penh on the river, so i retired early, saying my goodbyes with the canadian and the german, both of whom i actually miss, they were very cool having around.

the boat left at 7 so i had to be up at 6. not that big of a deal since i wake up super damn early every day anyways. our tuk - tuk driver from the day before, savaht, came back and picked me up and shot me out of town to the port. the boat was really long, had like 50 seats inside, no rails around the outside, and a platform on top that you could sit on that ran the length of the boat. i arrived relatively early so i grabbed a rad seat on the very back of the boat, outside of the cabin so i could see everything as we went down river. seemed like a great idea. several other people followed in suit, and off we went. most of the people went up on the roof of the boat leaving me on the back solo which was fine with me. then it starts pouring. not raining, not raing pretty hard, but pouring, and instantaneously. the door to the inside is way up at the front so all the people on the roof were able to just climb down and go in while i had to make my way up the 9 inch walk way of the side of the boat with no rail, a super slippery surface, in flip flops. had i not almost fallen in the river in a number of occasions, it would have been funny. by the time i got into the cabin, i was drenched, and everyone looked up at me as i climbed in dripping witht he rain that they all dodged.

i thought the ride was a cool 3 hours but it turned into 5 and a half hours. schedules here are mere ideas of how long something may take or what time it may arrive, but they fluctuate up to 100% either way. sometimes buses just leav an hour early without notice or reason, sometimes they leave 4 hours late. its a crap shoot anytime you want to go anywhere here.

arrived in phnom penh and walking up to the street a local guy with a huge smile on his face approaches me with a sign that says “mister david, from savaht”. haha. my driver from siem reap called his buddy in phnom penh to have him pick me up. i liked savaht a lot, so i figured i might as well go with this guy. i get in, ask for the embassy to get my vietnamese visa, and away we go. the visa process was actually considerably easier than id heard and less expensive as well. 36 dollars and the next day got me admittance to nam. lim, my new driver, took me to the hotel i asked for, and i checked in. 3 dollars a night, and offers to buy weed from each of the hotel employees. i didnt hear anything about weed the whole time i was in siem reap, and have already been approached upwards of ten times sonce havinbg arrived in phnom penh. MUCH different vibe. the city was strange. not as welcoming as siem reap, much, much bigger, and considerably dirtier. reminded me a lot of cairo without the muslim charm. my hotel was right on the river. it had a huge deck that went out onto the water where all of the shitty hippy tourists sat and smoked weed and watched movies instead of enjoying the city. aside from them, i dug the hotel.

2 interesting things. 1) everywhere ive been over here, and i expect it to continue for the duration of my trip, you have to ask to get toilet paper. the bathrooms done have toilet paper, they have little hoses next tot he toilet. its like a b’day but you can aim. kinda weird getting used to. 2) in cambodia, there are many, many homeless people that are missing legs. i saw quite a few in siem reap, but the numbers went up exponentially in this bigger city. i didnt see any in thailand or elsewhere in the world, so i started trying to figure out why a lot of cambodians were missing legs, and then it came to me. i read a while ago that cambodia has the most undetonated land mines of any contry in the world. and these people all found one each. sucks bad. good old war.

i started my first hemmingway book, “the sun also rises”, ive been told id love it, so we’ll see how it goes.

lim picked me up around 9 and we headed off for some sites. we first went to the royal palace which would have been pretty cool, but only about 20% of it is accessible to foreigners. with that the case, it was a bit of a bumout. the aqrchitecture was fascinating though. very traditionally asian like id expect in japan. i didnt expect it in cambodia though, ignorantly i never grouped cambodia in with the asian cultures like vietnam, korea, japan, and china. i learn much more about the world from seeing it than i ever did in any history class. if youd asked me where cambodia was after my geography 100 class at occ i would have had no idea.

after that we went out to the “killing fields” which is phnom penhs best known attraction. it is the site where the genocidal pol pot conducted many of his murders. there were upwards of a hundred mass graves with as many as 450 bodies in each one. there was a very eerie and creepy vibe. the story of pol pot is a very interesting one that i knew nothing of but have managed to get a pretty good handle on it after tagging along with the guided tours that youre supposed to pay for. he killed off half of the cambodian population in the late 70s and imprisoned and tortured countless people, women, children, farmers, engineers, politicians, school teachers, anyone who he felt was opposing his revolution. he is a big reason why cambodia is in the state of affairs that it is today, pol pot killed all of the educators of the last generation, so there are countless uneducated people in the country and are unable to get work.

i read before i came here that for 100 dollars i could shoot a cow with either a bazooka, an m-16, or an ak-47. i decided to forego the please of obliterating a cow but i did take the opportunity to shoot a fully automatic ak-47 for a mere 20 dollars. my shoulder is still bruised. the range was waayyyyyyyy out on the middle of nowhere and they have metal gates they open and close when a tuk tuk driver brings someone out there. had i not trusted my driver, it would have been pretty sketchy.

then we went to the tuol sleng museum. another site of pol pots reign. it was an old high school converted into a prison where they held, tortured, and interrogated countless prisoners. the class rooms were all converted into prison cells that made my jail cell look like the taj mahal. thats what comes of not having any rights over here. at home they have to adhere to guidelines making sure not to treat someone inhumanely, here thats not even a concept. the most touching part of the museum was in one big room they had blown up images of some of the people who were killed there with 2 - 3 paragraph stories written about the people by relatives who expressed their not knowing what happened to their family members. incredibly sad.

went back to pick up my passport and grabbed a bus ticket for vietnamt he next morning. i loved siem reap and angkor wat, but phnom penh wasnt really doing it for me. it is the only city with a vietnamese embassy though so i needed to make a stop there to get my visa taken care of. the bus ticket was on $5 and the ride was to be 6 hours. the bus left at 7 am.

headed down to a restaurant right on the water in the downtown area for dinner. figured id “splurge” and spend like $6 dollars on dinner. the shrimp with curry was pretty good.

i came out of the restaurant, and like usual, lim was hanging out waiting for me. i came out of somewhere earlier and he was playing chess, he jumped up to leave but i made him wait and finish his game. he killed the other guy. he sees me coming and he jumps up from the grassy knoll he was sitting on to get back on his tuk tuk. he had a beer in one hand and some fish jerky in the other so i made him sit back down and enjoy it. i think most tourists are in a huge hurry to go go go so they dont ever want to wait and let the driver finish what hes doing. lim was very surprised that i was so maleable and insisted that he go buy me a beer to drink with him. i obliged, and he scurried across the street, through the blanket of traffic, and came back with a warm beer id never heard of in a can, with a straw. everything is drank through straws here. we sat on the grass, he made me try the fish jerky, which was surprisingly quite good, and we started talking about cambodia. this is lims story..

lim is 32, he has been married for 3 years, and has a 20 month old baby. his father, his brother, and his sister were all murdered by the pol pot regime, and his mother just recently fell and broke her elbow; she is very old. lim lives in a room out in the country because the city is too expensive to live in. his rent is 20 dollars per month. he is 2 months behind. lim supports his wife, his son, his mother, and his wifes family. lims son was recently very ill and had to go to the hospital with bronchitis. the government and hospitals especially are so corrupt in cambodia that when he got his son to the hospital, the doctor said “how much money do you have?” you cant get into the hospital without paying. if your child is dying, but you have no money, your child will die. instead of telling lim how much it would cost, the dr asked how much lim had so that he could take all of lims money. lim considered selling his tuk tuk which he still owes money on, but that is the only way that he can provide income for his family. he emailed one of his old customers from new york that lim to to see his house and the man wired lim 100 dollars which saved his sons life. lims house is merely 4 walls with a door. there is no bathroom, no kitchen, no anything. him, his wife, and their son sleep on what sounds like is a twin bed because he said there is little to no room for the 3 of them. lim is educated. he has a degree in english from the university but can not find a job. all of the jobs in cambodia that can support a family are given to the family members of those who had it before them. you literally have to be born into a job. the only entrepreneurial thing they can do that doesnt consist of selling nail clippers on the corner is to drive a tuk tuk. the problem is that so many people are driving tuk tuk that there is not enough people to keep all of the drivers busy. lim and savaht are partners so that when people go from siem reap to phnom penh like i did, or vise versa, they call eachother and get eachother business. lim hadnt had a customer in 3 days. he told me his son, kevin, loves cocnuts which are 1200 riel. i asked lim about the education system for children and he laughed. you have to pay by the hour for schooling, and it is so expensive, only the people with actual jobs can send their kids to school. lim said he cant sleep at night because he is so afraid for his sons future. he stays int he city from 6 am - 2 am every day and then has a 30 minute drive to and from his house, so he sleeps 3 hours a night. if he can sleep for those 3 hours. he said he hopes that someone will adopt his son kevin and bring him to the united states, otherwise he will never have a fair chance. we talked for nearly an hour and a half on the grassy knoll before i asked to head back to the hotel to get some rest before the early bus the next morning. when lim picked me up the day before i asked how much it would be for the ride and all of the next day and he said “its all up to your kind.” basically saying it was up to my kindness. we paid 13 dollars for savaht for a full day and a half in siem reap, so all day i was planning on giving lim 10 dollars for the day. after getting to know him, hearing about how devastating the lives are for all of these people, actually attaining an appreciation for poverty instead of just seeing someone thats homeless and saying “oh thats poverty”, i paid for the last two months of his rent that he was behind and gave him an additional 1200 riel and told him to buy kevin a coconut, on me. its amazing how doing something generous nearly brings people to tears over here. and it feels really damn good to do it. at this point i felt like a total asshole tourist for having lim sit and watch me spend 20 dollars like it was nothing to shoot a machine gun, when that would have kept him in his house for one more month. went back to the hotel, sat on the deck, and stared. id ont think ill ever fully understand how good i have it. an i dont think its ignorance, i think its not possible.

trying to sleep was futile. i woke up at like 1 to literally the loudest thunder i have ever heard in my life. it actually scared me. sounded like the world was ending, and it was raining so hard, i wasnt surprised when the parking lot had 4 inches oif water on it in the morning. oh and my room was leaking. i was to wake up at 6, there was a shuttle picking me up at 630 and the bus to saigon left at 7. i go to check out at 620 and find that its actually 740. that my watch had been off by 80 minutes for who knows how long, and the once a day bus to nam had already gone. i was outraged. my own fault, so i couldnt get pissed at anyone, so i went to the airport to trty and get a flight out that day. i was completely ready to leave cambodia, and wanted to get on to vietnam. 100 dollars and several hours of waiting around later, and i was in saigon.

i fucking love saigon. i went to the war museum last night and was blown away by how starkly contrasting the views are from what they were in history class. it makes sense, but id never stopped to think about it from the vietnameses perspective. very interesting stuff.

walked around more, tried some pho, and felt really sick. took lots of medice, plus some tylenol pm and passed out. i went to have a drink on this famous rooftop bar as well, actually, but wasnt that impressed.

woke up today with my first full nights sleep since arriving here and felt like a million bucks. taking medicine actually works, who knew?

today is bar none the hottest day of my trip so far, so while eating breakfast decided there was no way i could bear walking around in denim shorts all day, so i decided to rent a scooter. this is the fastest scooter i have ever ridden. the speedometer goes to 160 kilometers/hour. i have no idea how fast that is, but it feels realy fast. i havent even gotten it to half that speed. its too fast. amazing idea though. ive been lost for several hours today, always managing to find my way back to a landmark to get me back on course. the traffic here is more chaotic than egypt, and there are more scooters being ridden than anywhere else ive been. it was really fun.

despite loving this city, im sick of cities, so im leaving tomorrow to the far north of nam to go to halong bay. it is a unesco world heritage site and its supposed to be spectacular. ill probably spend 4 days there because i want to slow down somewhere, but i dont want it to be a big city.

i totally just trailed off at the end of this. im as sick of writing as im sure you are of reading.

bye

thailand - cambodia

holy shit.

i hopped a 1 hour, ten dollar cab to the train station where a train was leaving to the cambodia/thailand border town in an hour. as alwasy i managed to get on just in time, and my 5 hour, frequently stopping train from bangkok - arranya prathet by way of every damn city in between only cost me 48 baht. or $1.20. it was a complete mess. unlike western europe transportation that is on time, clean, reliable, and comfortable, the train was none of the above. and thats why i loved it. the thai countryside was gorgeous. unfortunately for you guys, the vast majority of the things im seeing are indescribable, so youll have to be left with adjectives like “awesome”, gorgeous”, or “cool.” so bear with me… the train was in no hurry to get me there, it stopped at every twon on the way at which point peopels family members and friends from the town would jump on and hang out with them for the 5 - 10 minutes we were stopped, then jump off when we started moving again. super weird, and very “awesome”. i arrived in arranya prathet at about 7 p.m. and its not even in my travel book so i figured id find a hotel and go to sleep. holy shit if i wasnt wrong. i met a 20 year old thai dude right when i got off who worked for a hotel and convinced me to go to his. since it wasnt in my book i figured why not, it was only 4 dollars a night and it was pretty clean. his name was kay and he drives a moped. a moped made for one person. a small thai person. after sitting on my bed for maybe 5 minutes theres a knock on my door and kay is standing there, telling me he’s taking me out on the town. on his moped. im really jaded from people trying to hustle me everywhere i go in 3rd worlds, so my guard was up, but he turned out to be a very genuine, cool kid. he took me to a locals only type thai bbq restaurant, where we cooked our own food at the table. riding on the back of this little thia guys one man moped must have been an amazing site. id really like to have a picture of how stupid the two of us looked. but the town is incredibly small, you could walk it in an hour, so he took me around, showed me his school, where he likes to eat, etc. we went to his house. and it got a bit weird here. i had to take my shoes off. his parents were out of town. he made me sit in his living room. and he turned on michael jackson. he asked me if i liked the king of pop, i said who doesnt, so he started dancing and singing michael jackson in a thick accent. then he tells me he has to go “make shit” which means he had to drop a deuce, take the browns to the super bowl, drop the kids off at the pool, you get it. hes gone for 5 mintes and comes back in just his boxers for some reason. he dances some more, then disappears, and comes back in his clothes and says lets go. in thailand it is perfectly acceptable to pee in public. in fact, last night i ate at an all bamboo restaurant that was on the river and when i asked where the toilet was they told me to just pee over the side of the restaurant, from the table, into the river. when in rome…

so we get back on his moped and start to leave and his aunt lives right across the way so he took me over to introduce me which became his favorite past time for the night, his new tall american friend who just smiles when you speak thai around him. his aunt was very gracious and very welcoming. she was hammered, and insisted that i drink thai whiskey with her. so, when in rome. haha. i find myself saying that alot. like the eel soup i had last night. if i wasnt in rome right now i never would have eaten it. kays aunt kept feeding me shots of thai whiskey, i fed one to her cat which she thought was the funniest thing ever, and we split. i thanked her for the booze in thai, obliterating the pronunciation. we rode around a while longer, and saw some of his friends. one of his friends has a cart that he sells thinly sliced, dried fish off of on a corner. lets call it fish jerky. he had like 6 friends hanging with him at his cart all drinking beer and getting rowdy. so they fed me beer. they all loved me. kay spent the entire night asking me about sleeping with girls (which i know nothing about) and america, and all of the things that are faux paux for thais to do. so did his friends. not one of them spoke a word of english, so with kay as my interpretor, i spent the better part of a couple hours drinking thai beer with some thais on a corner at the fish jerky stand talking about boobs and things. it was great. another phenomenon in thailand are the “lady boys” or dudes that dress like girls. some are incredibly good looking and deceiving, and some are literally me, but shoreter, with lipstick trying to pull off the girl thing. after the fish jerky place, we met a german guy on the street and invited him to kays favorite bar. i expected a bar. what i got was another cart, with all lady boys, kay, myself, the german, and tons of booze. kinda weird. but aweosme nonetheless. the german and i got along and decided to try and get to cambodia together the next day and were both planning on doing angkor wat straight away so we were going to hang the following day. we leave the ladyboy bar/cart/weird scene and start heading back when we ran into his friends from earlier. im having trouble sitting up straight on the back of the scooter at this point, so it was a blast hanging with the thais again. on the street. in the middle of town. peeing on walls. then kay and i had to split because his freiends were getting in a large fight with another group of thais down the street. definitely a side of thailand i never thought id see. but am thrilled that i did. a shitty, middle of nowhere border town turned into a blast.

if someone told me 2 years ago that i would wake up hungover in a town bordering thailand and cambodia, i would have said, “where?” times have changed, haha. i woke up to kay knocking on my door teling me we were going to get food. so we did. kay 5 foot. me 6 and a half feet. one miniature moped. our bus to cambodia was to leave at noon. 230 rolls around and we take off for the border. what a cluster fuck. we took a “tuk tuk” there which is the common transportation in se asia, think moped in the shape of a lunchbox. theyre awesome. and cheap. and how i got to the border, with the german. once at the border we met witht he rest of the people from the hotel who were crossing into cambodia. we waited forever to get our visas, went through several unneccessary lines and stations to get through customs, and were charged an arbitrary amount for entrance. the govt. is so corrupt here its not even funny. crossed the border. im in cambodia. holy shit im in cambodia. bar-none, the most third world-esque place id been to date at the border. it got less hectic and dodgy as we left, but the border is a site for sure. we make our way to the arranged bus through the hotel which was nothing like the bus they showed us a picture of, we exchanged baht for riel. the exchange here is 4000 riel for one us dollar. so im currently walking around with a million riel. there are no atms in cambodia, so i had to withdraw alot on the thai side. the bus ended up being overbooked, surprise surprise, so the german and i and an aussie split a cab that the bus company paid for. it would have cost 2 dollars otherwise. i was told it was a 5 - 6 hur drive into siem reap, my first cambodian destination, so i figure its about as far as oc to san francisco. turns out its only about a hundred miles from the border, but the roads are so bad that it takes 6 hours to go one hundred miles. there wasnt 15 seconds that passed where we didnt hit a bump. the roads were flooded so we were half way up the door deep in water at times. how the driver stayed on the road is beyond me. the devastation and poverty seen on that drive is unlike anything i have ever seen. its going to get a “mind blowing” adjective and we’ll leave it at that. beautiful though. sidenote. it took us 5.5 hours in the air conditioned cab and the bus i was suposed to be on but jumped off last minute took 12 hours because it broke down. woo!

arrived in siem reap, walked around a bit with the german, we each found rooms for 9 dollars each, and we went to eat. the bill was 10 dollars for 2 grown men with wine. still dont get it.

also met a canadian girl at the border who i ran into later.

went to angkor wat the next morning all day. all day long enough to sun burn the hell out of me. i forgot sunscreen. sorry mom! i could go on for another 2 hours about angkor wat. if you have heard of it, or if you havent, google it. look at pictures. ill show you more later, but look now. breathtaking.

the german and i met a 21 year old monk who we ended up speaking with for nearly an hour. it was incredible hearing about his life, buddhism, his perspective on buddhism, all of the rules the buddhists practice, and i told him about the book the alchemist because we got on the topic of life and what we want out of it. it was incredible talking about what i want out of life with a monk and hearing his starkly contrasting views on things. he had never heard of the book, so he promised me when he can save up enough money, but he didnt know if hed be able to, hed buy it. so i said fuck that, im buying it for you, where do you live. he lives in a monastary down the way from my hotel, so i tracked down the book that night, it was 4 dollars, well worth making a difference in someones life, and planned to take it to him the next morning. we left angkor wat and went to the hotel for showers. im on my third shirt now. same shorts. havernt touched my pants yet. funny thing. i sweat like crazy here, and its so humid in the rooms with no air conditioning, that when i try and air the shirt out, it gets more wet. so im constantly wearing wet shirts, haha, sorry to gross you out, but im ok with it, so you should be too.

post shower, we went to a concert we had heard about. there is a swiss doctor in cambodia who has 4 hospitals he runs helping all children. the death rate from when he started to where he is at now went from 90 percent of tb cases died, and is now down to 1.5% AMAZING! he played classical music, talked about his program, showed some short films, i donated a bunch of moiney, and we left the concert hall. i was moved, to say the least. forgot to mention, that we were picked up by a tuk tuk driver at 9 am and had him until we got him drunk at 1 am for 10 dollars. he took us everywhere the entire day and waited for us while we did angkor wat, ate, showered, ate, went to the concert, it was unreal. his name was savaht. he was unreal too.

the night before the german and i went to a bar looking for some locals to shoot the shit with and were blown away by how touristy the bar scene was in cambodia. all the assholes were dressed in their sundays best diesel jeans with half buttoned shirts and faux hawks. in the first 10 minutes i heard 3 songs that i would hear on the radio at home. i liked the songs, but i didnt travel around the damn world to go to the bar across the street from my house. i was sick to my stomach with how shitty the people were at the bar. so this night we told savaht we wanted to go eat and drink where there were NO tourists, we wanted to be the only white people there. we met up with the canadian girl we met at the border at the concert, and the 4 of us went 30 minutes from the nearest white person out of town and found ourselves at an all bamboo restaurant, eating eel soup, fried fish, which was literally a full fish deep fried, mouth still wide open from being caught, and fried rice. i tried ordering chicken fried rice, but the chicken was still alive and running around the restaurant so they said it would be awhile. we went with shrimp instead. it was already dead. we had a case of beer brought to us, we all enjoyed it, including our newly drunk tuk tuk driver. we were DEFINITELY the only white people in that spot this month. everyone that came in did a double take to make sure we were not an apparition. this is where i peed out the side of the restaurant right next to the tables. meal was cheap, food was weird, and the atmosphere was unbelievably authentic. this is what i expected from cambodia at night.

woke up early, again, i havent slept past 730 since i got here, i hired a scooter driver to find the monastary to make my delivery. after some miscommunication we ended up in the right place, there was a foot of water, so i was up to my ankles in mud water getting to the monastary, but right when i pulled up, chin-savarra, my favorite new acquaintance was walking out of the temple and came over to me. i handed him the book and he nearly started crying. with an incredible language barrier, it almost moved me to tears when he managed to get out “i dont know how to ever thank you”. we talked about him studying hard, earning enough money to get out of cambodia, and making a better life the day before, so i said just say thank you, study hard, and let the book do for you what it did for me. he thanked me again, we bowed to one another and knew that we would never see eachother again.

went back to my hotel where i have a river front verranda that is my new favorite place to take coffee in the morning, and i read for a few hours. life is good. i had another prague epiphany. im fortunate. i dont realize it enough. we all have it better than every single person in this country. none of us fully realize it.

jennie, the canadian, came over at 10 this morning. we planned to ride bikes to some different temples with the german today. the german was real hungover so he took the day off, be she and i hired bikes for 2 dollars for the whole day and rode WAY further than we expected out of town to the other temples. the temples paled in comparrison to angkor wat, but the bike rides and the sketchy bus rides, and the local restaurants, and the things that arent in the damn lonely planet guide book, are the most touching experiences. my bleeding heart disables me from saying no the the 3-9 year old children begging for money everywhere, so im always findnig myself giving out money to the kids. theyre amazing. hopefully ive helped at least one.

got back tot he hotel, showered, put my wet clothes back on, and here i am typing the longest email youve ever read. i leave tomorrow for phnom penh at 6am so im sleeping early tonight. its a boat ride down the river. supposed to be spectacular. ill be in phnom penh as long as it takes me to get a visa for vietnam, probably 2 - 3 days depending on how many customs officials im willing to bride to make it happen quicker.

i apologize for skipping over angkor wat. it was magnificent. but in so many ways that i dont even know where to start. ask me about it when i get back and ill divulge.

more to come.