I added a selection of recent photos to flickr. You can see them in the photos page or in the photo albums page. I still advise that you try Pic Lens… I am having a ton of fun playing around with it.

These photos are from Ha Long Bay and Hanoi, Vietnam.

Cat Ba Island

Ha Long Bay

Again, Ha Long Bay

I have to say that for all of the bad experiences I have had in Hanoi, I am actually liking it a lot right now. The city is vibrant and full of life, the Old Quarter where I am staying is chaotic and impossible to find your way around, so I end up taking a different way each time I go somewhere, and the weather is now crisp and cold, but not rainy.

At night, the city is lit up and beautiful, and the food is amazing. I will go around taking pictures today and post a bunch (I have some from Ha Long bay as well) tonight.

I have not felt this disillusioned by travel since I left Atlanta. Vietnam, while beautiful, is full of obnoxious, money hungry people who have no shame when it comes to over charging foreigners. When asked how much something costs, a can of Coke for example, they pull a number out of their ass and look at you with an expression of hope on their face. Here is a sample conversation.

“Hello, how much for a Coke?”
“Ehh… three dollar?”
“You must be joking… I will give you 4,000 dong (25 cents)”
“Ok ok, how about one dollar?”
“No. I’ll give you 4,000 dong.”
“ok ok, you give me 7,000 dong?”
“Fine.”

And so it goes. It would not be so bad if it were not for the fact that it happens with every purchase. It makes everything take so long, and you know that no matter what you pay, it is still more than the local price. I saw a Vietnamese guy buy a loaf of bread for 1,500 dong, so I went up to the woman and asked for bread which she handed me, then I handed her a 2,000 dong note, to which she looked up at me and said:

“No no, 10,000 dong…”
“But I just saw you give it to him for 1,500!?”
“He Vietnamese, your price 10,000 dong.”
“Screw that, give me my change…”
“Ok, you give me 5,000 dong?”
“Piss off.”

And so I walk off without my change, but at least I didn’t spend 10 times the amount it cost.  I once talked a moto driver down from $3 to 50 cents… but I had to walk off before he came after me and said ok. I have found this to be the best way. Just act like you don’t actually care if you get it or not, and walk to the next vendor. The first vendor will give chase. This enables you to pit them against each other and actually get a decent price.

What would happen if we started charging a higher price for foreigners in the states? Hell would ensue. But since it is almost impossible to speak the language over here if you are not local, there is not much to do about it.

This recent trend of pessimism stems from the trip I just took to Ha Long Bay. I had been looking forward to it for quite some time, as it is one of the natural wonders of the world. There are around 2000 limestone karsts climbing out of the ocean in an area that is some odd hundred square kilometers. It was truly breathtaking. However, the trip I had booked made me feel like a cow in a herd of cattle. We were picked up at our hotel, crammed into a van for three hours, with a stop at one of the bus stop restaurants where they sell products made by the handicapped children and if you don’t buy something you obviously want to kill all the children and are going to hell. They keep you here for half an hour so that you at least buy a soda to stay awake. Afterwards we got to the bay, were herded to some steps and had to wait an hour before we finally got onto a boat. This was an overnight trip, so we were going to sleep and eat the next four meals on this boat. We were told where to sit, served a set menu, then told to wait. We ended up just chilling on the roof for a while, but it was rainy and cold, so that was a bad idea.

We did get to go kayaking in the bay, which was a lot of fun. There were a good amount of vendors out on boats, and they were charging about half of what the prices on the boat were, so the guy I was rooming with and I stocked up on beer and snacks which we enjoyed later with a group of people in our room since they told us we could not bring outside food and drink on board and tried to charge us for each item. We said piss off once again and went to our cabin with the two brits I have been hanging out with who were as sick of them trying to eak out every cent from us as I was.

I don’t know, just an overall depressing experience. I returned back to Hanoi today more ready than ever to leave the hustle and bustle of Vietnam for the openness of Nepal. Since I fly out of here on Friday morning I am not to worried about spending one more day here. The Iceman has finally caught up to me, and I might meet up with him tonight.

The one good thing is somehow the guest house I am staying in is run by the nicest man I have met in this country. He is helpful, wants us to enjoy our time here, and is full of energy. It is also only $3 a night with hot water and all the free tea I can drink. Really nice when you come out of the rain.
I owe everyone an updated travel map, and will work on it tonight and tomorrow. It will take me some time because I have to backtrack, and figure a way to show it all. When I get to Nepal, I will be out of contact for a few weeks. There are no roads, much less internet access.

I will throw the pictures from the bay up online once I have had a chance to take a look at them.

-Ben

I skipped out on Hue because it just seemed like another city full of temples and ruins…which were interesting a few months ago, but have ceased to amaze me. After Angkor, nothing can compare. So I stayed on the bus as it was going to Hanoi, and I wanted to get there to see Halong Bay. I have been told this can sometimes be a three day, two night trip, and I only have a few days left in Vietnam. The people next to me on the bus were a British couple about my age, and they were going the whole way as well. The whole trip had a slight edge of madness to it. We had to switch buses at the last second for reasons unknown, and Hannah, the British girl, left her bag on the first bus, but a guy on a motor bike brought it back just as the second bus was pulling up. We got onto the nicest bus I have been on yet this trip. It was a full sleeper bus, two stories of leather reclining bed seats with leather pillows and aircon. It even had a bathroom. I put in my ear plugs and my sleeping mask and passed out until around 5:30 this morning.

We got in to Hanoi at about 6:30am, and were told that there was a free taxi waiting to take us into the old town because the bus was too big for the small streets. We asked if we had to stay somewhere, as that is how these things are usually free, and were told no. While we were driving in, I noticed that a little guy from the place we got in was following on a motor bike. When we got out, he led us to a hotel that was drastically overcharging. We said no, and began to walk out. When we got outside, they went crazy and told us we had to pay for the taxi. We said no, we didn’t, but they were insistent. When we flat refused, they started grabbing us to keep us from leaving, then one guy pulled out a knife and held it to Harry’s throat. We kind of froze, then saw that it was a butter knife, and shook him off. The little guy was on me at this point and grabbed the knife from his friend, pressing it into my stomach. I was nervous, but not afraid because a butter knife was the biggest weapon they had pulled, and I knew I had a bigger knife I could get to if I needed it. I was a little concerned that he may know kung fu or something, which would mean my size advantage would be nullified. (He only came up to my shoulder.) They were even reaching for Hannah, who kept slapping their hands away. It was looking like this would not end well when they got on the phone, and I knew that if they called their friends, we were screwed, so I handed over a dollar, and so did Hannah and we took off.

A great introduction to the city of Hanoi. We walked around, fuming for a while and plotting revenge that will never happen before we found a different guest where the owner is a kind older man who made us feel welcome right away. A hot shower and some tea and I am ready to go again. The three of us are sharing a room at $3 each. Now I am starving and am going to try to find breakfast. I may even pocket the butter knife.

Click on the map to see more of where I am.

All the pictures I just uploaded are from Saigon however…

When I realized that I would be coming home on April 18th after all, I began to move very quickly. I am now halfway up the coast of Vietnam, and the trip has been amazing. The coastline is dramatic, with grand sweeping views that go on for miles. The coast line is rimmed with huts, coconut palms and white beaches, or it drops far away, only to be seen as a white ribbon hundreds of feet below the road which borders the sea cliffs.

As we pulled out of Mui Ne, flocks of alabaster birds soared over the tops of the palms, drifting gently on the sea breeze. Alas, I think it will be the last of the good weather I will see for quite some time. By the time we arrived in Nah Trang, the sky had turned slate grey and was begrudgingly sending misty rain to earth. We had come here to SCUBA dive, and diving was what we were going to do.

We got up early and jumped into a van that had come to take us to the pier, windshield wipers running the whole time. We helped move all of the gear form the van to the boat and headed off. Three minutes into the ride and we are wide awake. We have already rammed another boat in the harbor. Slowly, and in reverse, but the jarring crunch of wood and dried, crackling paint was enough to throw us back into our benches. We are the only two people who thought diving would be a good idea today, and so we have the boat to ourselves.

Huddled in the small, cramped captain’s cockpit, we stayed warm by cramming six people in to the compartment and sipping the local rice wine that was handed out by the dive master. (this is after the dives…) The cabin smelled of incense, diesel and old wood. It was both enticing and at the same time overwhelming. The incense comes from the alter on the front hub where the captain has been lighting sticks as offerings nonstop all morning, apparently without success because it drizzled the hole time.

The dive was fun, if uneventful. Visibility was so so, but I enjoyed it none the less. The Iceman loved it and has stayed there to get certified. (Once he got over the jelly fish stings he got by putting one in his mouth… it had clung to his regulator.) He will be one of four people in Iceland to have both his pilot’s license and his SCUBA license.

I will post pictures when I get a chance, internet here is slow. I am currently waiting for people to move out of a dorm room so I can grab a spot. I am now in Hoi An, which is a rainy old town, but I like it. Off to Breakfast!

I always forget how much I like moving quickly through a region. I don’t get quite the same involvement with the locals as I would if I moved slowly, but because I am stepping from one place to another with relative speed, I get to take in the country as a whole, not a series of individual locations that I may or may not like.

I am currently reading a book called Catfish and Mandala, which is about a Vietnamese-American who returns back to Vietnam with his bicycle. He starts off the book by biking up the west coast, and I immediately identified with him. I find myself still having dreams about biking down the PCH-1 in California. Reading about biking is making me want to jump back on my bike right now.

Anyway, I am in Mui Ne, the fish sauce capital of Vietnam. If you don’t know what fish sauce is, consider yourself lucky. It is made by putting fish in a barrel to ferment for a while, then they mash them together and collect the runoff. This goes into bottles and is shipped around the country, where the Vietnamese (and the rest of the Southeast Asians) put it liberally on absolutely everything. It doesn’t actually taste so bad, but the smell is miserable. I mean, imagine fermented fish… blech.

Besides fish sauce, Mui Ne is known for its sand dunes and cliffs. We rented a motor bike and tooled around for a while, exploring back roads and the sand dunes. We took a sled ride down the dunes with some children who were playing on them, and had a blast. Once again, my camera is screwed, but I spent some time cleaning it and it is better now. I may pay to get it cleaned the right way in Bangkok before I go to Nepal.

Because we spent so much money ($9 each per night) on our nice place in Saigon, we opted to skimp last night, and used the hammocks we bought at the market to camp out between palm trees on the beach. The weather was perfect, and we just walked into one of the nice resorts on the beach today and used their pool as a shower. Chlorine does wonders for body odor… In the middle of the night we were woken up by a bunch of people asking if they could use the palm branches and coconut husks that we had piled up for our fire. We said yes, and watched lazily from our hammocks as they built a small fire on the beach and huddled around it. After a time, we got up and joined them. We had no idea what time it was, just that the moon had traversed the entire breadth of the sky by this point and there was still no pre-dawn light. We shared our crackers with them and they shared their fire. One of them was 70-years-old, which is ancient. The iceman mentioned that they had been around here for a long time, long enough to remember a lot of the crap that went on, so I when the one guy who could speak a little English asked where I was from, I told them Canada. Then we had to draw a map in the sand to show them where Iceland was.

We are waiting in the travel place to hop on a bus to Nha Trang, where we will do some SCUBA Diving…

The kids jumping off the Dunes

Some of the Boats in the Fishing Village 

The interesting little round boats the fishermen use

Our hammock beds

I have so much to update  everyone on. I am now in Saigon, also called Ho Chi Min City. I am currently typing on my laptop, which is now home to an ant colony that lives just under the keyboard and gets pissed off whenever I type and they try to go for my fingers. I picked them up in my hut on the beach in Cambodia. I don’t know what they eat to survive, possibly the wiring of my computer…

When we left Cambodia, and had an unexpected trip of luxury. Our bus turned out to be a full service bus, with food and drinks and we each got two seats to ourselves. There was a guide who told us what provinces we were going through and other facts of that nature. We switched in Phnom Penh, and had time to grab a pizza on the river.

At the boarder there was an issue with the Iceman’s visa departure card (which he was not given on the border) but a quick bribe to the customs guy and everything was taken care of.

We just got in to our place in Ho Chi Min. (it is $9 a night each!! So expensive) but we have a TV, a fridge, Internet in the room, and hot water in our bathroom… Only for two nights, but it feels good after those shacks for so long.

We went to the Cu Chi Tunnels yesterday via motorbike. Yes. I drove a motorbike in Saigon 50 k out to the tunnels.  They were pretty cool, but we had to watch this film first for about 15 minutes where they called Americans the Evil American Enemy a few times, and imperialistic enemy, and other things like that. Interesting to see their view of the war. We went crawling around in the tunnels for a while after that, just acting like kids crawling around in the dirt. At some points the holes were so small my hands were above my head and I was squeezing through.  Imagine people living in these for months on end. There are 250 kilometers of underground tunnels in the area. Crazy.

We also went to the Reunification Palace, also known as Independence Palace, which was stormed in April of 1975 to end the war. We found that it is a common trait of the guide programs here to show a room in this way: “So here is grand room of conference. Here they met to talk about important matters. The room is green. You know why the room is green? It makes you calm… Here is bedroom. He slept here in bed room when he was tired from the day. You can see the bed there.”

As if I was blind and mentally challenged.  I can see that this is a bedroom, and I made the logical jump to the fact that he probably slept here. However, What “his” name is and what “he” did would have been more interesting to me. At the tunnels it was the same: “Here is room where they ate meals. You can go inside and see the table.” Um… Ok. How many people were here at one time? How many people were killed in this area, how long did people stay underground… but to these questions I got no answer, so I proceeded to convince some of the little kids in the tunnels that we should go farther than we were supposed to, and we ended up down some random trail that led deep off to nowhere and smelled of rotten things, but it was more fun than listening to the guide. We popped up in the bushes about 15 meters behind the guide when we finally made it up, and he didn’t want the Iceman and I exploring anymore because we were ruining his tour since we kept popping up at places he was going to show us next, but we got there underground. As if the three Korean kids cared. They just wanted to craw around like us.

Today we are going to head out of town after seeing the war museum. Not sure where yet though.