Trip Update #12

As I briefly mentioned in my last correspondence, I left out a key piece of info in my previous update - namely the shaving of the head. Seeing as though I had another month to go before I get back home, it was clear to me that this may be the last chance at hair experimentation I would have without having to suffer the consequences of a disastrous outcome in front of friends and family. So, I had them set the razor to 1 and clip off anything they could find - which admittedly was not much to begin with. And all this for the equivalent of $1.33 - almost as cheap as what I pay Marcus to cut my hair. Those of you with short hair have experienced the ticklish sensation that you get when you run your hand across the freshly clipped hair. So, I've found myself at random times unconsciously playing with myself... err... running my hand across my head... err... well just forget it. So, ummm, yeah. How 'bout them Mets? Sunday, July 28th Went with 10 other random people strategically summoned from around the globe to Halong Bay for a 3 day/2 night adventure, including two who were very fine eye candy indeed. As my brother would say, rrrrrrrr... So the breakdown of peoples: an older couple from New Zealand, 5 Caucasians on vacation from jobs teaching English in South Korea, 2 female medical students from England, and a Taiwanese-American girl who just finished 2 years of teaching English in Japan. And me. You know me. Halong Bay (insert your own "Halong ago did you go to Halong Bay?" joke here) contains over 3000 islands. And these aren't your everyday normal J.C. Penney catalog islands either - they're special. The only way I can think to describe it is to imagine a flat piece of shale. Now imagine 3000 of them sticking out vertically from the sea. Defies imagination? Damn skippy. I spent the entire trip waiting for Judge Gravity to knock 'em down. The first stop on the boat cruise was a very large grotto. I don't know whether it was a grotto or not - looked like a cave to me. But I suppose they can call it whatever they want to, so grotto it is. It was nice, but it was packed with tourists and, of course, naturally occurring paved walkways and neon fluorescent lighting. The sooner we got away from the crowds, the better. The other passengers agreed. We anchored for a little while for a brief swim. I preferred diving to swimming though. Actually, I should say that I attempted to complete dives off the second level of the boat - back flips, front flips, pikes, triple axles, you name it. The dive usually ended with comments approximating "That had to hurt" from the audience that was cheering me on. We had dinner served on the boat, and it was excellent – it wasn't chicken fried rice! Our hotel for the evening was this very same boat. A number of people slept up top. By the time I got up there, all the spots were taken so I slept below. Monday, July 29th Though the dinner was fantastic, we had a ho-hum breakfast. A baguette and some scrambled eggs. I have never eaten so many darn eggs in my life. That's pretty much all they'll serve at any establishment for breakfast. And I am now thoroughly sick of them. I want my oatmeal. We headed to Cat Ba island (a few of us sang "Rock the CatBa"), where we deboated and had a nice long hike up a mountain to get a different view of Halong Bay and the islands contained therein. Nice hike. Very hot. Lots of sweat. But a beautiful view. I think you all may be sick of me talking about beautiful views. After another rousing exhibition of incomplete dives (which resulted in severe calf cramps as well as some "pain in the ass"), we deboated again on the other side of Cat Ba to go to our hotel for the evening. There is a ton of construction going on here to help support tourism - apparently Vietnam is very new to the tourist circuit. We all hit a nightclub tonight, which was an excellent peek into the Vietnamese pop culture. First, we got to witness several karaoke acts of Vietnamese songs. Then, we were treated to Michael Jackson's "History" video montage (which felt eerily right at home in Communist Vietnam). Finally, there was dance music. Normal dance music. But nothing else was quite normal. Let's see... there was the one big screen showing music videos that had nothing to do with the dance music being played, there was another big video screen showing old Tom & Jerry cartoons (my favorite part), there was a long repeated sound clip of cheering fans being played alongside said dance music non-stop, and to cap it all off there was the occasional sound of a horse neighing (over the sound system). The horse was the clincher by far. Never saw it coming. Tuesday, July 30th It rained all night long, and this continued all day today. After we boarded the boat to head back to the mainland, the wind picked up as well. Soon, it was difficult to see anything outside, and there was a rumour of a typhoon in the area. I started singing the "Gilligan's Island" theme song. But, we got to the harbor just fine. Everything was soaked in the brief walk from the boat pier to the bus though, and we were treated to a very wet and crammed 3 hour drive back to Hanoi. Back in Hanoi, I did a lot of nothing for three hours before heading on my next trip - an overnight train to Sapa, not to be confused with Napa, which is similar but very different. Wait... most of you probably didn't get that joke - a common phrase that everyone hears in the broken English from locals in Southeast Asia is "same, same, but different". I have decided to make this phrase part of my daily vernacular when I get back to the States. I urge you to consider the same. Anyway, there was only one other person on this trip with me - Valerie from France who works in marketing/sales for, strangely enough, Kimberly Clark. So I thrashed her and told her that P&G is king and that we take no prisoners. Okay, I didn't. And I didn't ask her for a job either. Wednesday, July 31st Arrived in the Lao Cai train station of northern Vietnam (right on the Chinese border) at 6:00 am. From there, we had another short and cramped minibus ride to Sapa. I quickly learned that all the travel agencies in Hanoi prettymuch sell their Sapa area tours to a hotel in Sapa, who then figures out who just came and for what tour and attempts to organize it all at the last second. Since I paid a budget price, I don't really have any room to complain. But it's pure unbridled chaos. This Sapa tour is kinda like the Chiang Mai tour I did in Thailand. Same, same, but different. And better. Though not little and yellow as well - that would be Nuprin. It's supposed to be a trek in the middle of nowhere to see the ethnic minority villages in the hills. So this was to be educational as well as adventurous. The countryside is very hilly - yet these villages still manage to somehow grow rice on the mountainside. Impossible you say? Ludicrous? Flabbergasting? I dare say not. Not. What they do is carve out steppes (that's British for steps) in the mountainside so as to have many many level surfaces to retain water for the rice crop. Yes, the retaining water phrase does have potential for a joke, but I would fear for my life upon my return if I made such a wisecrack. But I digress... So we headed off with our guide Trang down into the valley to check out some of the hill tribes. The first village we came across was a Black Hmong village. This tribe is especially adept at training the very pretty little girls to be very skilled salespeople of their woven goods. You can't imagine how hard it is to turn these children away. If you buy something from one, the rest try to give you a guilt trip by saying "But you didn't buy something from meeeeeeee." All of these kids speak very good English too - after all, they have been peddling these wares every day since they could walk to English speaking strangers. Needless to say, these hill tribes were far from untouched by civilization. Our first night was spent at the home of a family in the Giay tribe. Trang cooked us an expansive meal - six dishes plus soup and rice. Unbelievable. And very stomach expanding as well. Our beverage of choice during the dinner? Shots of rice wine, which were eerily reminiscent of the lao lao rice whiskey that I had consumed in Huie Xay, Laos. This was not all though - Trang and I shared three very large bottles of Chinese beer to cap it all off. I slept well that night. Other than having to get up to use the facilities. Thursday, August 1st Happy 28 and 1 month birthday to me! It rained nonstop last night. And it had been raining virtually nonstop yesterday as well (even during our trekking). This made for very muddy ground and overflowing streams. On more than one occasion, our hike forced us to walk shin-deep in water thus thoroughly soaking my non-waterproof sneakers. I spent the rest of the day making squishy sounds with my feet. Nonetheless, the trek was still really nice. Just soaked up the scenery and visited a few more tourist-overriden ethnic minority villages. Even so, I was happy to end the trek and get back to the hotel where a shower happily awaited me. And my feet were happy to be out of the wet shoes and into some wet sandals. Friday, August 2nd Today was low key. The rains stopped, so the heat became overbearing again. Thankfully, I only had a short 3 hour hike on the menu this morning. Saw some waterfalls and then soaked in the scenery a little more. Same, same. But different. Late in the afternoon, a minibus took a bunch of us tourist types back to Lao Cai to catch our train. There was still over an hour to pass before the train left, so a few of us decided to eat at the "Friendly Cafe" - not to be confused with the misspeled "Frendly Cafe" across the street. This restaurant/cafe/eatery-of-some-sort had a dish listed and then a price under a column labeled "Good" and another price under a column labeled "Better". In other words, you could pay a little more for a little extra something-something. But this something-something was at the sole discretion of the restaurant and the menu gave no hint as to what the difference was – you had to ask. In some cases, the better version would have skin-off chicken, or you'd get mushrooms in the dish as well or something like that. It was just different. Not same same at all. Shared a cabin with three Frenchies on the train. There's a whole lot of Frenchies visiting Vietnam - an inordinate number. I've met very few French travelers prior to arriving in 'Nam, but now it seems over half of the travelers are from there. Saturday, August 3rd Arrived in Hanoi early this morning. Since I had scheduled a night bus to the town of Hue (without the News) later that evening, I had all day to wander and roam the city. So, I went shopping. Shopping in Hanoi is interesting. Stores selling similar wares are often clustered around one another. So you end up with a street with nothing other than stores selling electronics, and another street selling metal cabinets, and even a street (Al Bundy's own personal nightmare) selling women's shoes. I didn't buy much... just wandered around. Got a fake adidas fishing hat for a little more than a dollar - the acclaimed black Puffs hat (donated by one Edmund J. Miller) that can be seen in many of the photos posted online was alas stolen by pirates in Chiang Mai. That, or I left it on the bus - I forget which. Before hopping on the bus to Hue, the tour agency guys asked me to join them for dinner. So, I got to eat what Vietnamese people actually eat for dinner after all. Pretty tasty stuff - presented in a Tupperware container too. Sunday, August 4th Got into Hue early this morning and checked into a dorm room at a hotel for $2.50 a night. Can't beat it. I just think it's kinda neat that so many places quote prices in US Dollars. Well, perhaps neat isn't the correct word - how about freaky? After settling in for all of 1.5 seconds, I hit the town. Hue was an old capital site for Vietnam back in the day (a phrase which means "I don't know when"). So, one of the big ticket tourist traps is to go check out the ruins of the old capital. I tried to do this as best I could without suffering from heat exhaustion. For the afternoon, I joined a 5 hour motorbike tour of the surrounding areas arranged by a lady named Thu. There were 8 tourists and only 6 brothers of Thu to drive the motorbikes, so I got to drive my own. This proved to be a pretty risky proposition, but for Mom's sake, I'll spare the details. The bike tour was neat - saw more ancient ruins, and tombs, and pagodas, a Buddhist monastery, and a Japanese covered bridge. You know, all the standard stuff. And no, there were not Japanese people covering the bridge - the bridge is both covered and in Japanese style. Took a very well needed shower, and unfortunately the weather is so hot here that there is no cold water coming out of the tap. It sucks. Can't even count on a shower to cool you down. Kicked off what was certain to be a banner evening by watching a really really bad movie on Cinemax (no idea how they get Cinemax here), and then a Will Smith concert on MTV. You can imagine my ecstasy. 7 of the 8 of us from the bike tour met up at Thu's cafe for drinks - we ended up hanging out here till midnight or so, when Thu's brother threw us out. So we decided to wander the streets. Immediately, tons of bicycle rickshaws offered their transportation services, which we promptly declined. Then someone got the bright idea that it might be fun to drive one of these things. Before I knew it, we had commandeered 4 bicycle rickshaws, loaded our group (which now was about 11 people) plus the rickshaw drivers on them, and began racing up and down the empty streets. I didn't win, but I did have 4 passengers on mine, so at least I have an excuse. I have a vague recollection of racing someone on foot over a bridge... and somehow we ended up at a makeshift bar (it was a bunch of plastic chairs under a tarp) and ordered a round of beers for everyone - rickshaw drivers included. Finally, I decided to stumble back to the room because I had yet another bus to catch in the morning. As luck would have it, my opinion of where the hotel was located was incorrect, so I wandered around the streets aimlessly for about 30 minutes before figuring it out. But by then I was hungry, so (being the smart guy I am) I decided to get some food at this shady nighttime roadside restaurant operation - consisting of large pots with food, undersized plastic furniture, and a what amounted to a Sterno can. I think I had some sort of chicken soup - with a quarter of a chicken (it was cooked). I haven't had any digestive problems yet, so I think I got lucky this time (that's twice today!). Okay, this is pretty dern long. I'll leave you be now. Hey - only two more updates before I'm home to write the last one. I'm sure that my mother is very happy to know this. Love you too Mom. -Paraag Tidbits: 1. The unit of currency of Vietnam is the dong, which offers up all sorts of crude typical male jokes like "How much dong do you have on you?" and the like. Sheesh... men. Can't live with 'em... can't kill 'em. 2. A whole lot of travelers from other nations ask me who I voted for. When I reply Gore, they tell me that every American that they have met has replied similarly, and so they cannot understand how Bush won. And in case you haven't guessed, our faithful leader is not all that popular outside of the States. And two interesting items courtesy of the 5 teachers from Korea: 3. Kids in Korea begin going to school from roughly the age of 3 or 4. Many children go to private schools at night in addition to public schooling during the day. And they literally spend all their free time studying - often till 1am. Then they wake up at 6am and begin the cycle again for 6 days a week. 4. When President Bush's proclaimed that North Korea is part of the "Axis of Evil" during his State of the Union address is extremely negative, South Koreans were pretty upset. Public sentiment there is that there is even now only one Korea, that unification was just around the corner, and that Bush's comments set them back 5 years. No word on what governmental sentiment is.