Halong Bay and Hanoi Part II

I hopped in the van provided by the hotel at about 8am and introduced myself to my fellow travelers: a Canadian girl from Edmonton and two Israeli guys. After about three hours we arrived at the port and hopped on our Chinese junk sailboat where we ate lunch and set off for the bay.

There's nothing I can really say to go into detail about this place. It was MUCH nicer than I had expected it to be - 1,000 times more beautiful and peaceful that what I had read and seen in pictures. For the next two days, our boat chugged along through an endless sea of karst rock islands, passing small floating fishing villages and fellow tourists. We did some kayaking the first evening and spent about an hour diving off the top of the boat into the refreshing, emerald green water below. That night we all hung out on the roof deck and had some great conversation over a few cool beers. We were dropped off at the harbor again the next afternoon and shuttled back into Hanoi.

Now I had to figure out how to spend the next five days in the capital, already feeling like I had seen everything there was to see. I explored every last inch of the Old Quarter, and went to see a water puppet show, which was actually fantastic! If it were in New York, I could easily see paying 100 bucks for the show, but of course this being Vietnam, I paid a little over a dollar.

I spent a few days lounging around hopping from cafe to cafe reading a book I picked up called The Catfish and the Mandala. I got a counterfit street copy for $2.50 after haggling it down from 15 bucks. It's about a Vietnamese guy who escapes from the south with his family as a child during the war and decides to do a bicycle trip back to his homeland to explore his roots as an adult. It's a teriffic book in general, but what I love most is that it takes everything I have seen in this country and articulates it back to me through the understanding of an American-Vietnamese person, giving depth and meaning to all the crazy phenomena I see every day but can't figure out how to describe.

I befriended a slightly insane Vietnamese girl who is living indefinitely in the bed across from me at my hostel, and have been listening to her ramblings non-stop ever since. I've spent plenty of my nights at the bia hoi corner, befriending travelers, drinking 10 cent beers and getting a kick out of their abundant stories of Southeast Asian antics. I met some Canadians and an English girl when I went to see the perfume pagoda, and we have had some interesting Hanoi adventures.

Last night for example, we were hanging out at one of the beer stands on the corner when the fun police shut it down at 11pm. We went to a bar down by the lake, which was known to stay open illegally until the wee hours of the morning. Around 2am, the not-so-fun police showed up and started screaming at everyone in Vietnamese to leave immediately. Not wanting to mess with the intimidation Socialist police, we obediently left - I don't even want to know what happened to the owners of the bar.

Time to hop on my train though, I'll add a final post about Vietnam when I arrive in Beijing.

Hanoi Part I

Our first full day in Hanoi --

We wandered around checking out the thousands of little shops the line narrow streets of the Old City, and eventually made our way over to the train station, where I tried to buy a ticket to Beijing. No such luck, I would either have to catch the train that left in two hours or take one on September 25! Class starts on the 3rd -- I would have to resort to flying...

We found a chic, French-Vietnamese style cafe for some drinks and to get out of the scorching heat, and then headed up to a gourmet Vietnamese buffet restaurant in the renovated courtyard of an old Buddhist temple for lunch. Finally we had some good Vietnamese food!! Almost none of our expectations had been met up until now with regard to food in Vietnam, but this place was fantastic. We left happy and with full stomachs for the first time in weeks.

After lunch we went to visit the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, where the former president who had explicitly demanded to be cremated after dying, is preserved and put on display for all to see -- Lenin style.

We explored the streets around our hotel that evening and ended up at a bia hoi place (10 cent draught beers) where Brian met a crazy Irish guy who invited us to come see the illegal street races with him at the lake. We went down to a balcony bar to watch the insanity unfold, but the police had their way and shut down the festivities before they could begin.

After spending some more time at one of the shady, hole-in-the-wall bia hoi places (they are basically closets on the street with a few kegs and a ton of plastic chairs that spill out onto the sidewalk), we found out that the city completely closes down at 11pm. Apparently the "fun police" have decided that all sinful behavior takes place after 11, so there is a city-wide curfew that causes scrambling and lowering of steel gates in front of every store, bar, restaurant, and hotel each night. The night was still young in out books, so we took hopped in a cab to take us to an Irish pub called Finnegans. The driver assured us it would be open, but when we pulled up the steel gate was down. He honked his horn and the gate quickly lifted just enough for us to squeeze underneath and enter the lively, very still-open pub. We met everyone who was in there - all Irish and ALL named Brian, and had a great night chatting with everyone about politics, business, Vietnam, the people, the food, you name it. At one point, all the light and music were turned off and we were told to be quiet. The police were doing a rove of the street outside and they might hear us (sounds like the dorms at TCNJ). After they passed by, they lights and music came back on, and the beer continued to flow.

When we were ready to leave, Brian, Irish Brian, and I crawled back under the steel gate and back onto the ghost town of street where a cab had been called for us. We hopped in and realized that no one knew the name of our streets. (They all sound the same!!) We made up a few names that sounded right and imitated any combination of "Nguyen" "Pho" and "Long" that we could think of, hoping the driver would have any idea where we wanted to go. He didn't. A guy on a motorbike passed our taxi and had a map, so we took it and showed the driver where to go. After a crazy adventure through the streets of Hanoi and harassing the taxi driver, we made it back to our hotel only to find out that the hotels all put down steel gates at 11 also. We were locked out! After knocking and yelling for a few minutes we figured out how to pry open the gate. We crawled under and found our way back to the dorm room where we were sleeping.

The next day we explored more of the streets, which are all named after what product is sold there. "Bat Dan" - wooden bowl street, "Hang Cot" - bamboo lattice street, "Lo Su" - coffin street, "Hang Khoai" - sweet potato street, etc... The shops really all do sell the same things. It's amazing how they are organized. We came across a store selling war propaganda posters. Some were translated into English:

"The Southern female guerrillas are truly full of guts."

"Determined to defeat the American invaders so our children can sleep in peace."

They would have made great dorm decorations if they weren't being sold for 25 bucks each. Oh well.

We visited the "Hanoi Hilton" -- the POW camp where John McCain was held during the Vietnam War. It's unbelievable how blatant the propaganda and lies are that the signs and pamphlets provide. "American soldiers were treated as our fellow brothers. They enjoyed the luxuries of basketball games, delicious Vietnamese food, and care packages from home. Many were sad to leave when they were released." Are you kidding?!? This place is infamous for the torture that took place here.

For Brian's last-night dinner we went the fanciest Vietnamese restaurant in town, wearing shorts and t-shirts (oops). The food was fantastic. We had some more bia hoi and went to the lake to watch the illegal motorbike racing again. This time the action was much better than the night before. Police were everywhere with their clubs ready to beat people off their bikes, and government trucks were spraying water all around the loop to make it dangerously slippery. We saw a few racers going damn fast, dodging through heavy Hanoi traffic, but we got tired and went to sleep before the real races began.

The next morning Brian left for the airport for his 30 hour flight back home, and I hopped on a bus to go to Halong Bay.

The Adventure of a Lifetime

Off the train and into Hanoi. My first impression was that this was a more crowded and chaotic version of Saigon - but I digress. I'll discuss the city more in my next post - on to the good stuff... Prepare for a long read.

--- DAY 1 ---

We took a cab into the Old City where we picked up a pair of Russian beauties: two Soviet-era "Minsk" motorcycles. Four-speed, manual transmission, 2 stroke engine, loud, powerful, smelly, and perfect for a week long adventure into the rugged, isolated mountains of the northwest.

After dealing with all the mandatory bullshit of contracts, deposits, passport copies, learning the correct combination of oil and gasoline, and taking pre-ride pictures to cover our asses when they undoubtedly would try to charge us for "damages" upon our return (we learned our lesson in Thailand with the dirt bikes), we began the first and most anxiety-inspiring leg of our journey - the escape from Hanoi. Recall my description of the traffic in Saigon, then multiply that by 1000 in terms of volume, speed, and insanity. There are no rules, and the other drivers are ruthless! Before we could finally relax out on the open road, we had to weave and dodge our way through about 15 miles of the clusterfuck that is Hanoi - hell. After almost losing each other a few times in the sea of scooters, stalling out at "traffic lights" while quickly learning the quirks of our bikes out of survival necessity, and a few close calls with homicidal tractor trailers, we made it out onto the highway and breathed our first breath of oxygenated air (don't come to Hanoi if you have any problems with respiration). By the way, it was night at this point, which made our escape all the more exciting.

About an hour outside the city we stopped for the first time to let our adrenaline levels settle, check our map, and grab some water at a small night-market. The women and kids at the market all crowded around us to check out these crazy "Canadians" who had somehow found their way to this tiny, obscure corner of the world (the anti-American sentiment in North Vietnam is still prevalent enough to warrant a temporary change of nationality). We used our handy-dandy phrasebook to answer their questions about who we were, how old we were, where we were from etc... They told us which direction to go, and we continued on our way after picking up a bag of delicious peaces from one of their stalls. About one hour later, we arrived in a small town called Hoa Binh, where we spent out first night. (Still pretty close to Hanoi, but we didn't want to drive any farther in the dark.) We went out to find some dinner and we were called over to a tent with a stove and a bunch of plastic chairs by a group of locals in their late 20s. They collectively knew about 15 sentences in English, but it was still a lot of fun trying to communicate with them. They offered us round-after-round of the local rice liquor, which we had to politely decline after about the 10th shot. We decided not to order the monkey-brain soup that they were all eating, and we opted for pho beef noodle soup instead - a little monotonous at this point but much more appealing. They paid for our dinner and said good night. (We still gave the owners a few bucks.)

--- DAY 2 ---

Hoa Binh - Son La

Today was the most amazing drive of my life:

We woke up early to hit the road and were blown away when the daylight revealed how quickly the scenery had changed since Hanoi. Already we were well on our way up into the mountains. We began to see our first Montangards - the local hill tribes of the northwest who have no cultural, ethnic, or linguistic relation to the lowland Vietnamese. Gliding down smoothly paved roads past bright-orange August corn ripe for harvesting, ambivalently fat grazing water buffalo, smiling hill tribe children, sun soaked valleys with a mixture of jagged peaks in the background and rolling green hills in the foreground, and miles of clear blue skies - we began to let go of the tensions that had been building up over the past few hectic days of travel through Vietnam.

As we began to ascend our first serious hills, we quickly learned how to manipulate the gears to help us maintain speed and control. It didn't take very long to get comfortable with the bikes. (And yes Mom, I finally wore those dog tags you gave me just in case I fell off the side of a cliff and someone needed to identify my body.) We navigated a few sections of wide, winding switchbacks up and down the small mountains in the lower regions and dropped into flat valleys with straightaways that took us past vast fields of rice paddies and cornfields. Every now and then the beauty was too much for us to bear and we stopped to take some photos. (Most of the time, however, we stayed on our bikes through the really dramatically beautiful sections, so the pictures I have don't even come close to doing our experience justice. We arrived in a town called Son La after about 250 kilometers and settled down for the night. Brian tended to his severely sunburnt arms, and I boasted about the benefits of sunscreen. We did a little exploring of the markets, but there wasn't too much to see in the small, dusty town.

--- DAY 3 ---

Son La - Dien Bien Phu

Today was the most amazing drive of my life:

We were jolted awake, bright and early, by the bugling of "Reveille" as the town's troops were called to assemble in the sports stadium below our window for morning exercises. Without being able to get much more sleep, we set off. It took us a few tries to get the bikes started, and we were a little concerned, but we figured out that after a cool night in the mountains we needed to switch the choke down before trying to kick start them. (Another step that feels like second nature in retrospect.) Once again, immediately and dramatically, the road and landscape changed completely. The smooth pavement and then short (very random) six-lane highway leading up to Son La gave way to a tiny one-lane dirt road which snaked up through the steep hills to the northwest. Not sure if we had accidentally taken the wrong route out of town, I asked around a few times and we were assured that this was the only way to Dien Bien. After clearing the first set of 10% grade dirt switchbacks, we dropped into a beautiful valley of low, terraced rice paddies being worked by hordes of hill tribe members. We encountered almost no ethnic-Vietnamese from here on out. As we ascended the mountains and continued our journey, the locals became increasingly more colorful. The hill tribes are known for their ornate dress, and they really do look like they are shown in pictures. This is no tourist gimmick, just a patch of sincere, untainted, traditional lifestyles in one of the most remote parts of Southeast Asia.

We tried to take some pictures, but we felt like we were invading their privacy and treating them like zoo animals, so we refrained until we got to Sapa a few days later. Furthermore, some of the tribes believe that photographs steal their souls, so they try to hide every time they see a camera - another reason for the lack of hill tribe pictures (sorry! you'll just have to come see for yourselves!)

The novelty of the open road soon wore off, and the adrenaline rush that accompanies an awakened consciousness of our fragile mortality soon kicked in as we entered the most humbling 100km of our trip. Not only were the jagged peaks of the massive mountains that soared thousands of feet above our heads enough to make anyone feel insignificant, but we also entered the zone of rainy season landslides, which cause such horrible road conditions that you begin to thank God for your life after every heart-pounding switchback over rocky, gravel and dirt "roads" with potholes that looked big enough to be remnant bombing scars from the French or American wars. I am positive that some of these potholes were bottomless, and that every now and then a little Vietnamese kid falls through and pops out on the other side of the world somewhere near Paterson, New Jersey. To make matters worse, trucks the size of battleships come barreling down the one-lane roads at lightning speed, with no regard whatsoever for us puny motorcycle drivers. I'm convinced that some of them try with all their might to knock us off the sheer cliffs at every chance they get. Almost worse than having a truck race around a bend toward you is being stuck behind one. The dust they kick up is blinding and burrows into the darkest depths of the tiniest alveolar cavities in your lungs, leaving no option to stay behind the trucks, you have to pass them. This must be done quickly and with complete blind faith - the only time to pass is when the truck slows down while taking on one of the hairpin switchbacks. At the exact moment your intuition tells you to go, you hit the clutch and pop the bike down into 2nd or 3rd gear, pray for your life, and race around the truck as fast as you can while trying to avoid any oncoming traffic on the narrow turn.

Whenever we were able to take a break from concentrating on the road and enjoy the scenery, we were blown away by the astounding valleys, peaks, villages, and locals. The English language doesn't offer a way to accurately convey the extreme beauty of the landscape, and I can only use the same 10 adjectives so many times before I start getting repetitive, so I won't even try -- look at the pictures. The scenery for the rest of the trip was really really really really really nice. Period.

The last 30km into Dien Bien Phu was some of the bumpiest terrain we had crossed all day (I say terrain instead of road because I can't bring myself to call what we were driving on a "road"). Hours of violent bumps took their toll on my bike and two of the screws broke off the rack to which I had strapped my bag. The bungee cords began snapping and by the time I noticed, I had lost my water bottle and the map. We spent the rest of the trip navigating by the sun and the stars (and asking people where to go, the signage is not too shabby either). After 6 hours, we arrived in Dien Bien Phu and found a hotel. I'm not sure the owners could tell that there were humans beneath the layers of dirt caked onto our faces and clothes, and they showed us directly to the shower, somewhat confused. We fell asleep as soon as we showered and plopped onto the beds, woke up for dinner a little later, and went back to sleep for the night. What an exhausting day!!! We noticed that as we got further from civilization, fewer and fewer people could speak any English, so we decided to try our luck with learning some more Vietnamese phrases. We taught ourselves how to count from 1 to 999, and it became a vital tool for the rest of our trip. We used our new number skills to do everything from negotiating the price of a hotel room to explaining to fascinated locals that, yes, Brian is indeed almost 2 meters tall.

--- DAY 4 ---

Dien Bien Phu - Lai Chau

Today was the most amazing drive of my life:

Another day of incredible luck with the weather, it was sunny and warm and beautiful. The roads were still winding and exciting, but they were paved and smooth! Hallelujah! We were deep within the heart of hill tribe country, and we were still climbing in altitude -- over 1 mile at this point. As we dipped through valleys and climbed over high passes into river gorges and over rolling hills, we passed through a sequence of varied micro climates - some hot and dry, some cool and damp, and some with an occasional misting of light rain. We crossed over mighty rivers, so silted that the water was a darker brown than chocolate milk. We dodged suicidal cows and water buffalo who thought the middle of the road was a perfect place for a nap. And we waved to the endless flow of smiling children who always jumped up to greet us with a hearty "hellooo!" even while there parents stared on with confused glares.

This was the day that I experienced motorcycle Zen. There is something hypnotic about the natural flow of zigging and zagging, leaning left and right, gliding around smoothly paved switchbacks at regular intervals on a warm sunny day in one of the most beautiful wildernesses on Earth. It inspires a feeling of peace unmatched by any experience that I can use as a justified comparison.

After only three hours, we reached the town of "Lai Chau" only to find that it had been renamed to Tan May, or something like that. The government had decided that another town about 80 kilometers to the north would make a much better Lai Chau, so they swapped names. Since we had planned on spending the night in Lai Chau, and since we were hours ahead of schedule, we decided to continue on to the new Lai Chau to spend the night.

While we were stopped taking pictures of a pool full of water buffalo, Brian's bike slipped off the kickstand and the clutch handle cracked very slightly. We didn't notice until about an hour later when we slowed down to navigate a patch of mud puddles, and he found the handle dangling by the cable. The crack had worked its way all the way through, and the handle had completely cracked off. By an act of God, this happened just as we were approaching a small village that just happened to have mechanics who just happened to know exactly how to fix Minsk motorcycles. Twenty minutes and 4 dollars later the handle was fixed, and we were about to head off, but the mechanics called our attention to a massive storm that was building just over the hills across the Chinese border. A wall of black clouds descended upon the village and it began to downpour. We spent about an hour at a little restaurant eating lunch and enjoying the serenity of the storm and small village life. We made it to the new Lai Chai just before it started to rain again, and had some horrible food in town for dinner. (We hadn't been to impressed with Vietnamese food up to this point.)

--- DAY 5 ---

Lai Chau - Sapa

Today was the most amazing drive of my life:

Of course - the one day we REALLY wanted clear, sunny weather, the clouds and fog rolled in with a vengeance. The dreary weather and change in landscape made me think of the English countryside with small farms bordered by piled stone walls and little brooks flowing alongside the winding road. (Except this version of the English countryside had 10,000 ft high mountains in the background.) We had tons of energy for the drive, and the thick air made everything very peaceful. We zoomed across the rolling hills, enjoying the lack of other cars or people in this VERY remote corner of Vietnam. After stopping in a hut at the peak of a hill for lunch, we continued on to the Trom Tan Pass - the highest mountain pass in Southeast Asia next to the tallest mountain in Vietnam. The views were awesome. We stopped at the edge of a cliff overlooking the mountains, and laid out on some rocks for a while to take in the scenery and relax in the brief patch of sun. We were joined by a young hill tribe kid who sat down to watch us before running off to climb a 50 foot sheer cliff behind us by pulling himself up from vine to vine (show off).

Sapa had always seemed like some far off fantasy destination in my mind. The unattainable. The beacon at the end of a the tunnel, but finally - 5 days and 800 kilometers later, we arrived. We didn't expect much from the former French hill station - judging by the many dreary towns we had passed through on our way up, but we were pleasantly surprised by the charm of the place. It is a small, quaint town with European efficiency and layout, inhabited by hill tribes, and bombarded with tourists. I was disappointed to see Westerners again, having successfully evaded them for the past five days, but we really appreciated the tourist infrastructure that had followed them to Sapa: good food, hot showers, ENGLISH, etc...

We randomly bumped into the Spanish people again that I had met a week earlier on the train to Hanoi, and we chatted for a while about our respective adventures and where to get a decent dinner. They re-extended their offer for me to visit them in the spring, which I might just do.

Finally we felt comfortable taking pictures of the colorful locals. We felt that as long as they were hawking us and trying to nag us into buying their goods, it would be okay to snap some photos.

--- DAY 6 ---

Sapa - Hanoi

Sapa was very nice, but we decided to leave early the next day and try to make it all the way back to Hanoi in one long stretch. As soon as we were nearing the edge of the city, my bike started puttering and stalling every time I tried to start it. I was getting pretty worried, thinking maybe the gas attendant had put in the wrong combination of gas and oil. A Vietnamese guy came over and helped us change the spark plug, which we thought might have been the problem, but that didn't help. We rolled the bike across the street, where by an act of God once again, there just happened to be a mechanic who knew Minsks. He immediately removed the carburetor and cleaned it out. Huge blobs of gook and dirt splashed onto the floor, and he reattached it and started up the engine which revved to life and purred like a kitten. He charged me about a dollar and we went on our way. (Gotta love cheap labor!!)

It was another cloudy day, and the first few hours of the drive were cloudy and a little depressing. We stopped for lunch at our 6 hour halfway point, and by the time we got back on the road the weather had gotten sunny and warm again. As we drove further back into civilization the roads got wider and we could finally pick up some speed. When we got out of the mountains and into the lower, flatter region around Hanoi, the landscape began to look exactly like how I would have imagined Vietnam - dense jungle with miles of rice paddies, a snaking road winding around the lowland hills, and women with conical hats carrying goods over their backs. Finally, we began to see signs of urban life. Traffic increased tenfold and the roads again became hectic and maddening. We relearned the tricks to dodging other motorbikes and suffered the black exhaust fumes of government trucks. After following signs that lead us through an impossible maze of side roads, we began to approach the city. Four land highways became dirt roads which became town centers which became industrial wastelands. Cows were everywhere, and they have the right of way. About 60 kilometers from the city we could see an enormous storm rolling in, so we stopped to put our ponchos just in time as torrents of heavy rain began to pummel us with its stinging cold. We had nowhere to stop, and we wanted to get back into the city before the bike rental place closed, so we continued through the storm - probably the most unenjoyable experience of my life. My sunglasses were fogging up, so I had to take them off and rely on squinting to keep the rain out of my eyes. The roads got muddy, and traffic got crazier. We were going as slow as our bikes would go, and it seemed like nature was doing everything it could to prevent us from getting back into the city. We were lucky as hell that this was our only experience with rain -- being the rainy season, it usually rains every day in the mountains, but we had pretty great weather the whole time.

After a total of 11 hours (a hell of a long trip!!) we made it back to the rental place just after it closed. We locked up our bikes and went back to the hotel to collect our bags and find a room.

We made it. Alive. We conquered 6 days and 1,200km (800 miles) of some of the most challenging motorcycling terrain in the region. We climbed to an altitude of 10,000 feet and back down. We explored beautiful landscapes and experienced an exotic, traditional way of life. Truly this has been the experience of a lifetime, and what a way to culminate an already inredible adventure!

Here are the new pictures ---

http://picasaweb.google.com/MxMrshll/Asia3

Racing Up the Coast to Hanoi

We casually caught a taxi to the train station for out 10pm departure, with plenty of time to spare. However, when we arrived we were told the train had already left!! We pulled out our tickets, and sure enough they said 20:00 - damn international/military time! We had been doing so well up until that point. We reluctantly spent another 15 bucks and hopped on the next train to Nha Trang - the "beach capital" of Vietnam.

The train was packed and noisy, and it reeked of durians, but we settled into our top-bunk hard sleeper beds and tried to sleep (the ear plugs only help so much). Like roosters at sunrise, every Vietnamese person on the train woke up at 5am and started yelling - so we didn't sleep very late. We got off the train at about 6:30, had some pho for breakfast, left our bags at a hotel, and walked down the street to check out a Buddhist temple.

This was definitely an impressive one. It was a bigger and more elaborate temple/monastery complex than most of the simple pagodas we have come across - covering an entire hill that overlooked the city with its campus. We were greeted by a friendly monk at the entrance to the main prayer hall who asked where we were from. When we said Canada he became very excited and pulled up his shirt to reveal a maple-leaf belt buckle. He gave us a tour of the complex, explaining the various Buddha statues and making us "pray" to him (shake incense at him) before we took pictures. After climbing to the peak of the hill where there was a 25 meter tall white Buddha, he asked us for a whopping 200,000 dong donation "because monks need to eat". We gave him 6 bucks, and he tried to take my compass, but I assured him it was worth way more than 30,000 dong. He left us, pissed, and we escaped down the hill.

We spent the rest of the day laying on beach chairs by the cool water of the South China Sea. I finished off another book while Brian went to explore some Cham towers and a small fishing village where he spent the afternoon with some locals. After a week of intense traveling and exploring, a lazy day on the beach was exactly what I needed.

We hopped back on the train for another night ride up the coast to Da Nang. We arrived 4 hours late and hopped in a taxi with some German girls we had met for the ride down to Hoi An. We stopped at rock formation called the Marble Mountain, where we went to explore some caves and pagodas.

Before I left for this trip I read a book called Fourth Uncle in the Mountain - about a Vietnamese boy who grows up with the influences of a local animist/mystical religion in the Mekong Delta. (If you haven't read it, you should - if you have, this will make sense to you.) There is a scene in the book where the boy ventures into the remote jungle mountains by the border of Cambodia to study meditation with a 200 year old Buddhist monk. Hiking up the Marble Mountains and squeezing into narrow cave entrances that open up into huge caverns with tiny beams of light peaking through the ceiling, illuminating the smoky, incensed air brought me right back into the story of that boy - very cool.

We made it down to Hoi An before sunset and checked into a hotel in the middle of the Old City. Hoi An is a former Portuguese port, which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is filled with beautiful colonial, stucco buildings that glow a deep yellow in the evening sun, women with traditional conical hats, and tailors and cobblers that produce custom clothing and shoes in only a few hours. We found a tailor and ordered suits and shirts to be made for the next morning. I got a black cashmere suit and a pastel green shirt for only 60 dollars. Later along our stroll through the town, I found a cobbler to make me a pair of very nice suede sneakers for less than 20 bucks - custom made to fit my feet. We spent the evening on the waterfront drinking bia hoi, the world's cheapest draught beer - 15 cents a mug!

The next day we did a walking tour of the city, got some great photos, drank a few more bia hois, picked up our clothes, bought duffel bags for 2 bucks to put our suits in, and got back on the train for the 18 hour trip all the way up the coast to Hanoi.

This ride was much worse than the last one. They only had one hard-sleeper, air-con bed available. Brian made the sacrifice and took the bed in the fan room with a piece of plywood, a straw mat, and 20 inches of head room, where he suffered for the duration of the 24 hour ride. (Yes, of course it got to Hanoi 6 hours late.) We spent a lot of time standing in the hallway of the air-con car - there is nowhere else to go unless you are sleeping in your bed that has no room for sitting up. I met a couple from Barcelona with whom I had hours of great conversation to distract me from my boredom. Unfortunately for Brian, this all took place in Spanish, so he was left out of the loop. (At least he could pick up the general topics.) We exchanged information at the end of the ride and they invited me to visit them when I study in Spain this spring.

Once again, like clockwork, the Vietnamese were awake and screaming at 5am. I've come to the conclusion that there is some obscure linguistic quality to the Vietnamese language which necessitates screaming everything said to ensure successful communication in the early hours of the morning. Fed up, Brian and I began screaming English to each other in retribution, and no one seemed to notice.

We spent the rest of the day on the train doing whatever we could to distract ourselves from not being able to sit or sleep or do anything comfortably. Finally, we got off the train at 4pm and headed into the city to begin our adventure into the Tonkinese Alps of the northwest.

Saigon? Ho Chi Minh City?

So I guess Vietnam is supposed to be a Socialist country? It doesn't seem like it. The government may control the people's lives a little bit, but Capitalism is king when it comes to business. There was not much of a drastic change when we crossed the border from Cambodia - more rice paddies and lots of motorbikes, but we could read the signs at least (they use the Roman alphabet).

We arrived in Saigon in the middle of the afternoon, and decided to drop our stuff off at a hotel and wander the neighborhood. (Officially it is known as Ho Chi Minh City, but all the signs still say Sai Gon and all the people call it Sai Gon -- just don't say Saigon to a government official!) We unloaded ALL of our clothes at the front desk to get our first laundry done since Thailand, and set off for the central market to buy a shirt or two for the next day. After being violently manhandled by the women in the clothing market who really know how to force you to buy their products, we managed to escape back to the street with a few $4 knock-off Polo shirts (good quality!). We briefly explored the waterfront of the Saigon River before getting some dinner and passing out.

The next morning we started our day with a bowl of pho - the traditional Vietnamese beef noodle soup breakfast. Lonely Planet has a suggested itinerary and map for walking around Saigon and seeing all the sights in one day, so we decided to follow it. The beginning of the route brought us through some of the ordinary streets of the city, full of cone-hatted women selling fruit (yes - everyone really wears the cone-shaped hats), charming French buildings, and thousands of motorbikes. The roads here are so chaotic that the traffic lights are generally disregarded, which means crossing the street can seem like a death wish - but after watching the locals do it a few times we got the hang of it. There is a constant flow of vespas and motorcycles, and they never stop for pedestrians. You have to step directly into traffic and slowly move across the road as the bikes swerve around you. It's pretty exhilarating. Brian describes it as a game of human frogger.

We stopped at the city's cathedral and walked through some of the European-looking parks. The charm of Saigon's layout, architecture, and concern for aesthetics is definitely unmatched by any city we have been to in the region (once again, thanks to the French I'm sure).

We visited the War Remnants Museum (formerly called the Chinese and American War Atrocities Museum) to get an idea of the Vietnamese perspective of the "American War." It was a very small museum with an enormous impact. They leave nothing to the imagination in the photos and descriptions of the crimes committed against their people. I'll probably have nightmares about what I saw that day - it was just as moving as Yad Vashem - the Holocaust museum near Jerusalem. The weapons we used against the Vietnamese were unbelievably barbaric. Bombs filled with thousands of nail-darts to increase "enemy" casualties? Phosphorus bombs that melt the skin away from the victims without killing them completely?? Agent Orange?!? No wonder people were rioting in the streets back home - this wasn't a war it was a rampage of civilian mutilation. The scars are still seen everywhere. Special bikes have been invented to accommodate the hundreds and hundreds of agent orange victims who's limbs are too deformed to pedal a regular bicycle - we saw these every few blocks. Although the exhibit was clearly biased, it got the point across and reconfirmed my belief that no war is justified unless it is immediate self defense. Nothing gets accomplished and the civilians are the ones who suffer most of the aggression. Look at Iraq - approximately 70,000 civilians killed?!? Insane.

-- read the caption --

Ugh.. back to Saigon - it is really really hot. 100 degrees and 100% humidity. Ouch! We found an air conditioned restaurant in a French neighborhood and enjoyed some great cheap French food before stopping in a French bakery/cafe for dessert. Colonization is a greedy and unfair system, but it sure does leave a charming legacy behind. We ended our tour of the city at a beautiful Buddhist pagoda where some famous incidents of monk self-immolation occurred during the war.

We spent the evening wandering the energetic streets around our hotel, watching the crazy locals go about their capitalistic endeavors with humor and determination. We stopped at a cafe to look at the menu. Once we saw the prices and started to leave, the young woman who owned the place cried out "Oh my God! Whyyyy??" Later on we were strolling down the street when a few restaurant owners whipped out a stack of fake 100 dollar bills and started burning them on the sidewalk. (Americans are not too popular here, which is why we're from Vancouver now, eh?) During dinner a young street performer started spinning burning sticks and then proceeded to feed a meter-long, live snake into his nose and pull it out through his mouth. A little later, a small girl came up to us with a case of cigarettes. Brian asked her "aren't you too young to be smoking?" She instantly replied - "you no smoke you die!" These people will stop at nothing to get your money.

Aside from the brutal reminders of an unjust past, Saigon is by far my favorite city here. It is clean, modern, and organized, yet it is also home to a profoundly rich culture and delicious cuisine. And the women are beautiful - Vietnam wins.

Cambodia

If Singapore is like a Western city, and Thailand is a mix between the Caribbean and Disneyland, then Cambodia is nothing short of an adventure into an ancient and untainted land. Even though some aspects of the country seem more American than the other places we have visited -- for example: they use the US dollar and they drive on the right side of the road -- it is as far from home as I've ever felt.

Our bus from Bangkok reeked of the usual Thai tourist extortion, but we made it to the Cambodian border without losing our minds/wallets completely. After departing Thailand officially and entering the "no man's land" between the two kingdoms, we were given a preview to the desperate poverty of the Khmer nation. Hordes of small children, no older than five, walked through our group from person to person begging for food or money. After an American girl we had met gave one of the kids a bag of crackers, a little girl who must have just learned to walk a month before hobbled over and started pulling at a Canadian guy's pant leg with tears in her eyes and dirt on her face. He had just given some loose change to the boy with the crackers, so the little girl must have thought he was an easy target. He had nothing else to give her, and we started walking toward the immigration counter on the Cambodian side. She followed us for another few yards but then gave up and turned back into the crowd of people walking the same direction as we were. The last image in my mind of the Cambodian border is that little girl tripping over someone's foot and tumbling into the sea of people before I lost sight of her.

We hopped on another bus to continue our journey into the Cambodian heartland across 8 hours of unpaved roads. When I say unpaved I mean a crater-pocked moonscape of a dirt road. I'm pretty sure some of these potholes were bottomless, and although it was probably bumpier than riding a jackhammer, it was an incredibly scenic drive. The people we passed look like they hadn't changed their lifestyle for the past few hundred years. Families in the vast expanses of rice paddies harvesting their crops, renegade Brahman cows playing chicken in front of the bus, naked toddlers throwing rocks at each other, you get the picture... By the time we got to Siem Reap it was late and we were all exhausted. The American girl, Ashleigh, shared a room with us at the hotel where we were dropped off, and we bargained the room down to $2 each. We passed out - a full-day bus ride will drain every ounce of energy from your body and mind.

The next morning we woke up at 4 o'clock to catch sunrise at Angkor Wat (the biggest and arguably most famous ancient religious complex on the planet -- Tomb Raider was filmed here for those of you who don't know where I'm talking about). Continuing our bad luck streak with weather, it was cloudy and the sunrise wasn't too impressive. However, "not too impressive" is a relative statement when the soft morning light slowly unveils an enormous and magnificent temple that you've only seen in pictures. It was still fantastic.

I really can't begin to describe the overwhelming intricacy of the detail and the massive scale of the structures, so I won't -- look at my pictures of it. My camera died early on in the day so what I have is what I have.

http://picasaweb.google.com/MxMrshll/Asia2/photo#5097404702127704930

We had a great time riding around the ruins on our hired tuk tuk, and had seen everything our exhausted bodies were willing to see by around 1 pm, when we headed into town to find some food. We stumbled upon a traditional Khmer restaurant in the middle of the town and decided sample the local cuisine and beer. (Khmer is the adjective for the people, culture, and language of Cambodia if you were wondering.) It was surprisingly delicious, and it definitely rivaled the culinary behemoth of a neighbor that is Thailand. I had a dish called amok, which is a spicy curry with fresh water fish and vegetables.

After a good 4 hours of napping, the three of us met up with two Germans from the bus and headed into town to find dinner at a restaurant that we heard had crocodiles. It was a very nice place with a chill atmosphere, where we sat on pillows on the floor of a loft overlooking a live band to the right and a crocodile pit below us to the left. The beer was disgustingly cheap, and the food was once again terrific. We went for an after-dinner snack at a place called "Happy Pizza" and enjoyed another fine example of Cambodia's local cuisine. On our walk back to the hotel, we strolled through the very energetic town and stocked up on mangosteens and dragonfruit.

The next morning, Ashleigh, Brian, and I hopped on a bus to Phnom Penh - the capital. Luckily the road was paved, but it still took forever to get there. We checked into a hotel, bought our bus tickets to Vietnam for the next morning, and set off to explore this new and intriguing city. Walking down the wide, organized streets, it was obvious that the colonial French had done a lot for this city. It was immeasurably more logical and relaxed than Bangkok, and it had a very charming energy. We reached the riverfront, which is at the junction of the Tonle Sap River and the Mekong River, and headed toward the Grand Palace and Silver Pagoda to check out the main tourist must-see sights. On our way we ran into a few monks who were around our age and were more interested in our friend Ashley than a good, pious monk should be, but it was great to interact with them. There wasn't much substantial exchange, but they were curious about life back in the states, and they really wanted to know about our national museum...?

We continued on to the palaces and walked around the complex admiring the detailed and ornate architecture. The pagodas here and the grounds surrounding them were more tasteful and interesting that their counterparts in Bangkok, in my opinion at least. Out of nowhere it started to downpour and we huddled under a pagoda with a bunch of monks who were once again very interested in Ashley and tried to invite her back to their house. Is that kosher? Who knows...

When the rain stopped, we wandered out to the waterfront and watched the sunset against the golden roofs of the royal compound. What was great about being out there was the fact that most of the people around us were Cambodians enjoying their evening. This was probably the most famous place in the capital, and it was not mobbed by tourists! Amazing!

This was one of my favorite aspects of Cambodia -- it is the least touristy destination in the region. The roads are too rough, the people too poor, and the memory of the brutal reign of the Khmer Rouge still fresh in international collective memory. Because of this it is still unique, it is still untainted, and it is still raw. It is a true gem of a destination, and I really hope the road between Thailand and Siem Reap NEVER gets paved because once it does the world will discover this place, and it will be ruined forever. I'm truly lucky to have seen it before that happens - I give it five more years.

The next morning, we said goodbye to Ashleigh and hopped on another bus to Saigon.

Bangkok and Why I Couldn't Wait to Leave

Our "overnight" bus from Chumpon (the city on the mainland where we were dropped off from the Ko Tao ferry) was scheduled to leave around 10pm and arrive in Bangkok at around 7:30 the next morning. However, as we have learned the hard way, travel agencies that offer joint ticketing (which is usually much easier and more popular than figuring out public transportation) do everything they can to screw you over. Our bus left at 8pm and arrived at 3am. It stopped every few hours to force us off the bus and into a restaurant that was paying them to stop there. Needless to say, we did not get any sleep, and we were very cranky when we pulled into the city.

To make matters worse, as we got off the bus we were bombarded by tuk tuk and taxi drivers demanding that we get a ride from them, to a degree which bordered on insanity. I have never seen such desperation. Ten people running up to you grabbing your arms and bags, trying to pull you into a tuk tuk at 3am is enough to make you scream, and I thought Brian was about to hit someone. They were charging about 5 bucks to drive us to Kao San Road (the famous backpacker Mecca in Bangkok). We had no idea where the bus had dropped us off so some people gave into the pressure and took the ride. Scam! After finding ourselves on a map we realized Kao San was the next road over, so we walked.

However, the frustration was far from over. As we walked tuk tuk drivers would pile up on the side of the road honking at us and following us screaming "friend! where you go! what's your name! where you from! I take you! tuk tuk!!" After screaming at them to leave us alone we ducked into a McDonalds where we found sanctuary for the next 3 hours until the sun came up and we resumed our search for a hotel. We could only check in after nine, so we wasted some time on the streets until we got into our AC room (with a HOT shower!!!!!) and passed out until the afternoon.

The first thing on my agenda was to take care of my visa for China, which has been my only anxiety throughout the trip. We walked over to the Chabad House where I had told CIEE to deliver my acceptance information to look for the rabbi who would hopefully have the package for me. He wasn't in, so I tried explaining my situation to another rabbi who unlocked a drawer and pulled out a big yellow DHL envelope.. THANK GOD!! I was so relieved to have the paperwork in my hands that I agreed to wrap tefillin. I thanked him again and he told me in Hebrew how to get to the Chinese embassy (his English wasn't good enough to explain), and we set off for part to of my visa.

When we got to the embassy (one hour by taxi) it had already closed, and they told me to come back the next day. We walked around Chinatown for a little while, grabbed some food and headed back to Kao San Road. That night we had a pretty good time exploring the neighborhood, and we ended up going to see a ping pong show.... I will not go into detail. All that I'll say is that it was the most impressive and horrible thing I have EVER seen, and I feel like a terrible person.

I got up early the next day to submit my visa application at the embassy, and the taxi took about an hour and a half in the traffic and didn't even bring me to the right place. I soon learned that Bangkok taxi drivers know nothing about the city. Even when I showed him a map and told him where to go, he was clueless. My patience with this place was getting thinner, but I got in my application and breathed a sigh of relief. I went back to the hotel and met up with Brian. We walked around exploring the dirty, smelly city for most of the afternoon and tried our best to fend of the incessant assaults by tuk tuk drivers. We visited the royal palace, which was pretty marvelous, and then headed back to the embassy to hopefully collect my visa. I got it!! I was so relieved that I just had to sit in the waiting area and breath for a few minutes. I now have nothing to worry about for the rest of my trip.

We headed back to find Wat Mahathat, where we had heard that a friendly monk with a descent grasp of English enjoyed teaching visitors how to meditate. We got to the temple compound and started walking around, exploring the alleyways and architecture. Eventually we made our way over to "sector 5" where there was a sign that said International School of Meditation. We entered and asked the first person we saw about meditation classes. She handed us a 20 page pamphlet to read before we began. After finishing it, an old monk decked out in the usual saffron robes sat next to us and began asking us about our travels and why we had come to learn to meditate. He was disappointed that we only had one day to study because he thought that in order to really learn meditation, one must have a constant master to be his guide - which he was willing to do. We talked to him for hours about religious theory and his positive perceptions of Americans, and he explained to us the intricate details of the impermanence of existence and reincarnation. After blowing our minds, he sent us off with his female assistant whom I can only describe as a New Age, Buddhist, hippie monk princess. She brought us into a meditation lounge with an Israeli guy who was going along for the lesson too and brought us through the theory and step-by-step process of walking meditation and sitting meditation. Four hours later, we left our new yogis and headed back into the city completely blown away by the intensity of the short encounter. Apparently there are some amazing things to see in Bangkok, but you REALLY have know what to look for... or you just have to be really lucky.

We spent the night on Kao San Rd again, and woke up early the next day to begin our adventure into Cambodia. Though we had enjoyed ourselves thoroughly, we were ready to leave the harassment, grunginess, and tourists behind.

--- I ran out of room on my other photo album, so I'm now posting here: http://picasaweb.google.com/MxMrshll/Asia2 --

Ko Pha Nga, Ko Tao, and My Birthday

I'm pretty behind on my blogging right now -- way more happens in a day than I can capture in the limited hour of internet time I get a few times each week -- so I'll have to leave out a few details in this part.

Back to Ko Pha Ngan --- Being the beach party capital of Thailand, we decided to check out the bars and see what the nightlife had to offer. We went up to a very chill lounge on the rocks at the end of the bay where a few groups of backpackers were sitting in circles of floor cushions. We sat down and started talking to the people sitting next to us who were Japanese kids around our age that didn't speak much English. I pulled out the few Japanese phrases I had been storing in the recesses of my brain for a moment like this, and we immediately broke the culture barrier and clicked. We had a great time drinking, dancing, and laughing at each other. We walked down the beach toward the fire shows where we parted ways (the Japanese guys were getting jealous that we were stealing the attention of their girlfriends... oops). When we sat down to watch the fire show at another beach bar I thought I heard people speaking Mandarin for the first time in a while. The beer had been flowing readily, and I was feeling pretty confident, so I approached them to try out my Chinese skills. The whole family of Beijingers - parents, kids, grandparents, uncles - was blown away when I started speaking their language. We talked about where I was from, where I was going, why I knew Chinese, where they were from, the details of their travels, the food in Thailand, the meaning of the character on the bead bracelet the monk had given me in Kuala Lumpur, and the father gave me his phone number and said I had to call them when I got to Beijing. I felt bad leaving Brian out of the linguistic loop, so I said goodbye and left - adrenaline rushing from my first extended encounter with native Beijingers. I think I might just be able to survive my semester!

We walked back into town to find some more Pad Thai and ran into a group of Irish girls, some Italians, and some Israelis - with whom I used a little Hebrew, just to see if I could. There are more Israelis here than I've seen anywhere outside Tel Aviv. Half of the signs are completely in Hebrew, and most people have no idea that the writing is not just some strange Thai script.

We ended the night fairly early and caught a ferry the next day to Ko Tao - the most famous diving resort in Thailand. As we pulled into the town we were once again rushed by tuk-tuk drivers, taxi drivers, hotel reps, and travel agents trying to force us to give them money. "Where you go, friend? You need taxi! Taxi boat, taxi boat!" After successfully restraining each other from stabbing the next person who asked us "where you go?" we found our way to the less hectic northern part of the beach which was WAY cool. This part was a mix of the backpacker vibe and clientele of Ko Pha Ngan and the relaxed boardwalks of Saltaire, Fire Island. We scouted out the best beach cafes as we looked for a hotel.

Our first night there was pretty relaxed, and we spent most of the evening sitting at a cafe with a balcony over the beach that had pillow recliners next to low tables, where we watched the sunset and ate dinner. The next day we switched our room to a nicer bungalow (I wanted to have a better place to spend my birthday - the first night was kind of just a last-resort, cheap room), which we shared with a bathroom gecko the size of a small child. I woke up early to do some scuba diving with a group of two Italians, a Dutch girl, and an English girl. The guides were English and Australian, and they thought my accent was southern Irish because they were so unaccustomed to seeing Americans. (I don't see the resemblance - maybe because we both pronounce our 'r's?)

The truck ride that took us across the island to catch our boat was breathtaking. We all squished in the back of a pickup truck with our gear and climbed up and down STEEP hills with hairpin single turns on single lane dirt roads. The bay where we were dropped off was equally gorgeous - the ancient granite cliffs that had crumbled into the sea millennia before had left a picturesque bay rimmed by enormous granite boulders with no beach. These boulders extended down into the water for about 40 meters, and we did our first dive around and through the caves made by the stacks of underwater rock. This was the first cave diving I have ever done, and it was unreal - better than anywhere I've been by far. The fish life wasn't amazing on the east side of the island, but we did get to see some moray eels and trigger fish. (No sharks, and no whale sharks unfortunately... maybe next time..) The second reef dive was great too, but the visibility wasn't that spectacular.

We spent the afternoon on the beach and at that cafe again, reading, eating, and drinking pineapple shakes. We found a bar that night with fire shows and met some more English girls (they are everywhere). The fire shows were great at first, but when you dip a stick into kerosene and start spinning in quickly, centripetal force kicks in and sprays the kerosene everywhere, making for smelly, flammable clothes - not fun, we left.

Monday morning - my birthday! We rented dirt bikes and decided to explore the island for the day. After figuring out how to maneuver the clutch and how to shift (pretty straightforward)
we set off for the other side of the island. When I mentioned the conditions of the roads before I think I failed to go into enough detail. The island is about one mile wide and there is a mountain range in the middle that rises to about 1,500 feet - that's not much room for a slow grade, the island is steep. Unlike most mountainous places, Ko Tao hasn't figured out switchbacked roads or pavement. The roads are more like trails, and they go directly up one side of the mountain and straight down the other. Some of the roads we drove over were waaay too steep to walk on.

We tried a few routes that were too steep ever for the dirt bikes, so we settled on going back to the bay where I had set off on my diving trip the day before. We ran down to the end of the pier and jumped in to let the exhaust pipe burns on our legs sizzle in the cool water. We swam around for a while enjoying the tropical reef below through makeshift hand goggles before grabbing some drinks at the empty cafe before heading off to the next bay. We spent the rest of the day taking adrenaline-gushing rides over the steep hills and discovering the untouched beauty of the most remote parts of Ko Tao. Never having ridden a motorcycle or dirt bike before, and riding one for the first time on some of the most challenging terrain you can imagine for a beginner was the most exhilarating experience. My heart was racing more while navigating these so-called-roads that it was repelling down the sheer cliff on Ko Samui just a few days before.

After having a delicious dinner at one of the beach bars we found on the south end of the island, we headed back to shower and go out for the night. We went to watch the fire show for a little while, where we ran into the English girls again. On our walk back from that bar we found a Volkswagen bus-turned-beach bar and sat down with a circle with an Israeli girl, a Dutch guy, an English guy, and an Irish guy and had some great conversation as the night grew later. We all headed back to the first bar where a "doctors and nurses" party was going on that had become more of a Euro-style rave. I wiggled my way through the masses, enjoying the characters on the dance floor. Without really knowing what hit me, a short Thai girl and her friends latched onto Brian and me and wanted to dance. We danced for about 20 minutes and she was getting pretty wild until she pulled me down to her level and whispered in my hear ("1000 baht for tonight, you and me"). I politely declined my offer by the kind Thai hooker and Brian and I laughed our way back to the bungalow to call it a night - a birthday well spent.

Ko Samui and Why I Hate Tourism

Bright and early Patrick drove us to the pier to catch our ferry for Ko Samui - the legendary resort island in the Gulf of Thailand. We gave him money for gas in an awkward exchange that left us feeling like he expected something more, but what could we do? The trip was short and easy. As we pulled into the port we were surrounded by taxi drivers offering us rides and asking us where we were going (this foreshadowed the horrors we were to experience throughout the rest of our stay in Thailand), who we tried our best to refuse politely. We walked around the scummy, smelly town, which had very little to do with a tropical beach island, in search of some lunch. After a pretty good meal of Pad Thai (our staple) we found the public taxis -sawngtaew - and made our way around to the other side of the island.

Unlike the beautiful scenic drives we have had on other parts of the trip this ride was damn depressing. The poverty of the desperate Thais, who moved to the island in hopes of milking some money from the tourists, plagued the route around the island.

We had no idea when to get out of the taxi, and we were getting kind of worried when it passed through the town we wanted to go to without stopping, but eventually he pulled down a side street that brought us closer to the beach and we got out. The streets were full of sleazy bars, 7Elevens, internet cafes, and Europeans. It was very hard to find a hotel, so we made our way onto the beach and walked around until we found something in our price range - 2 dollars each for the night...

After we checked into our room we decided to walk down to the end of the beach where the famous "grandmother" and "grandfather" rocks were supposed to be. If you haven't seen pictures, they are a pair of rocks with a striking resemblance to intimate parts of the respective anatomies. (Why they have to be grandparents I have no Idea...) To get to the rocks we had to find our way around a series of ginormous granite boulders jutting out of the water. We hit a dead and turned around to try another route. An English girl was about to try the same route we were coming from, and she asked if we knew where to go - she ended up tagging along with us. As we continued around the boulders, we came to another dead end - a sheer cliff with a 50 foot drop onto jagged rocks. Buutttt we could see the rocks finally and the loads of tourists surrounding it, and it was too temptingly close to turn around to find another route. A Thai guy below us pointed to our left and yelled something that sounded like "rope", so I went to investigate - and sure enough there was a rope wedged between a couple boulders that hung loosely down the face of the cliff.

I - being the brave idiot that I am - shimmied my way down through a crevice on the rock to the rope and repelled my way down the sheer drop and onto a rock that was low enough to jump to the beach below. When I got to the bottom I had to force my heart to stop pounding as I looked up and Brian and the English girl about to try the same thing. We all made it (don't worry). The excitement wasn't over however .. we still had to make some nerve wracking leaps from boulder to boulder to get to the freak show. After taking our pictures and going for a refreshing dip in the warm sea, we took the road back to the hotel. As it turns out there was no need to risk our lives. Oh well, it was exciting.

We walked around the sketchy town that night, spent the morning on the decent beach, and booked it off Ko Samui - never to return.

We took a ferry to the next island - Ko Pha Ngan - which is the home of the famous full moon parties. Walking off the pier, we could already tell that this was going to be much better than Ko Samui. It had a very hippie-backpacker vibe. The town had some nice shops and restaurants and didn't look like a ghetto. We stepped onto the beach and were blown away by the beauty - soft white sand, palm trees, bungalows perched upon the rocky hills that enclosed the bay, and lots of backpackers. We sat around on the beach for a while, watched an amazing sunset, and found some dinner before checking out the bar scene.

More Shenanigans in Thailand

Among the many Thai oddities that were explained to us during our night out with the locals, the strangest was probably their claim that there was an abundant pink dolphin population in the waters around Khanom. Slightly skeptical, we told them to prove it to us. Patrick promised us that if we were up around 7:30 or 8:00 he would take us out to the pier to see the dolphins when the fisherman go out to feed them. Brian and I were kind of ambivalent, but when Pieda the Swiss girl knocked on our door at 9am, we said "hey, why not" and walked over to Patrick's with her. (Her sister Mara had a migraine and missed out.)

We hopped in the back of the pickup truck with the Norwegian guy (already 2 beers in) and Patrick drove us into town to get some water and snacks (and beer for the Norwegian). The pier was much farther than we had thought - it took about an hour to get there, but it was the most incredibly drive through the Thai countryside. After town we turned off the paved road and cruised down bumpy, dirt, country side roads for the rest of the trip. We passed ornate temples, rubber tree farms, palm plantations, old Thai men on motorbikes carrying ten times their weight in oil palm fruit, scooters with three FAT hogs strapped to a cage behind the driver, women weaving and cleaning food in small raised huts along the road, stray dogs fighting next to school kids playing soccer in less-than-decent dirt fields, and beautiful scenery as we bumped along through the steep winding hills with views of the dramatic, coastal mountain ranges on our way to the fishing village where we would go on our hunt for the elusive "pink dolphins".

As we pulled into the tiny village, everyone watched us pass and greeted us with a hearty sa wat dii kaa (for women) or a sa wat dii kraap (for men). A group of women cleaning fruit playfully chucked a mangosteen fruit at our truck and fell over laughing when it missed.

The three of us got out of the flatbed of the truck and walked down to the water to photograph the scenery. This was Thailand. This was the most authentic thing we had seen and probably will see in our entire stay in this country. The people were completely un-jaded by tourism, and the fishing village lifestyle was untainted by commercialism and foreign influence.

To our surprise, Patrick walked over to us carrying life jackets and ushered us into a longtail fishing boat and said they were taking us on a cruise around the bay to hunt for dolphins. We hopped in and set off, dodging the Thai fishermen who were wading up to their necks scattered throughout the bay. A few women proudly displayed their morning's catch to us with wide grins. Although we never ended up seeing the dolphins, we enjoyed an amazing trip along the Gulf of Thailand's breathtaking coastline. As we drove back into town, we noticed pink dolphin sculptures along the sides of the road, and we finally got our pictures. (I just looked on google photos and the pink dolphins DO exist and they really ARE bright pink.)

Patrick offered to take us out to lunch at a restaurant in the middle of the jungle, but we decided that it would be good to go back to the beach and check on Mara. She was feeling better, so we headed out to the beach to spend the rest of the day in the sun - reading, swimming, listening to music/studying Chinese. As the sun began to set we headed over to the massage place next to Patrick's and got a two hour Thai massage for roughly 10 bucks US! Thai massage is VERY different from the calm, light Swedish skin-massage most Americans are used to - these ones HURT! They stretch and contort your limbs into positions you can't even imagine. It's more of a chiropractic beating than a massage, but we felt DAMN good afterwards.

We showered and headed out to a karaoke bar with the girls, where we enjoyed a bottle of Thai rice whisky and attempted to sing the transliterated subtitles of the Thai songs. (We butchered them, and I felt bad because we were probably insulting them horribly.. our singing sounded like a bad mockery of their language "ching chong hap woi tut lai ying yang walla walla bing bang") Oh well.. We had a great time. We danced a little with them and with our masseuses and headed over to the beach where we stayed up with the Swiss girls almost until the sun rose.

Why I Love Thailand (Part II)

We spent our day in Nakhon Si Thammarat exploring Thai wats (Buddhist temples) and sampling southern Thai food. After struggling with signs written in Thai script and employing the Lonely Planet Thai phrasebook to try to find the bus station, we managed to find a shared taxi station that would take us to a town called Khanom where we could hopefully find a beach that looked nice in the guide book. As we were walking up to the ticket window I heard English for the first time all day. Two Swiss girls, very happy to see Westerners, approached us asking if we were going to Nai Phlao beach - we were. They were having a difficult time getting affordable tickets or even communicating to the ticket seller where it was that they were trying to go. With four of us it was much easier to negotiate ticket prices, and I got us all a ride for half the price they were told.

We rode about an hour to the town of Khanom, where we were dropped off and approached by a horde of motorcycle taxi drivers who said they would drive us to the beach for 50 baht each. We tried to negotiate this down, but they pointed to a price list that was all in Thai and insisted that that was the going rate. (We had no way to know, the sign could have said 50 baht to Bangkok, but we can't read Thai) So we hopped on the motorcycles and zoomed down the rural roads to the beautifully isolated and non-touristy Nai Phlao Beach.

We checked into a bungalow just off the beach next to the Swiss girls, and we all went to a beach bar for lunch. After talking to the Swiss girls for a while, we decided that since it was the night of the full moon, we would have our own party on the beach. The famous "full moon party" takes place in Ko Pha Ngan, but we couldn't get out there in time. We walked out to the main road to find somewhere to pick up a few beers for the night, and we were called over to a small restaurant/travel agency by a table of Thais yelling "farang! friends! come sit!"

Assuming they were trying to sell us something, we were a little skeptical, but we sat down at the picnic table with them and they brought us some beers. There was a sign advertising their internet cafe, so I asked if I could use the computer, and the owner (who we later found out was named Patrick) told me I could use the computer in his office. "Friends for free! I can't charge you!" They started offering us rides to places and said they would bring us to the ferry when we had to leave. Now it made sense - they were trying to get us to use their travel agency and taxi services. But than Patrick said he would only charge us for gas. It seemed like these guys were actually just decent, friendly locals.

After some good conversation and a few beers, we asked if they knew of a good restaurant to go to for dinner. They said there was a great seafood place on another beach that they would drive us to if we treated for dinner. Sounded good enough to us, so we set off - Patrick and the Norwegian expat hopped on motorbikes and rode ahead of us, while Patrick's nephew drove a pickup truck with the four of us in the back. The seafood place was closed, so they took us to a restaurant in the main town that belonged to his brother. We sat down at a family-sized plastic picnic table in the middle of the road while they brought us plate after plate of the best Thai food we've had all trip -sweet duck sausages, rice soup, fried noodles, chicken and cashews, Chinese kale, fried rice, and a bunch of dishes I can't even describe. Meanwhile, the beer continued to flow. The owner brought out his son and sat him next to Pieda, one of the Swiss girls, hoping that something would click and she would marry him - no such luck, but it was pretty funny.

The other Swiss girl Mara and I were trying to figure out how much the bill would cost with all that food and all those people, and we were a little worried when the bill came because we did promise to treat them for taking us out. But before we could even ask how much we owed, they grabbed the bill and paid it - to our astonishment and great appreciation. On the way back, the nephew who was driving us in the pickup truck asked us to sit up front with him instead of the back because he was lonely, and even though he couldn't really speak English, wanted us to hang out with him. He started blasting some Thai music, and we all looked at each other surprised because the music was actually pretty great. He taught us the words to our favorite song "Hua Lai Tut", which is an upbeat party song which translates to "Head, Shoulders, and Ass" and we rocked out as we drove to a small cafe on the way back.

The one table at the cafe on the side of the jungle road was occupied by a Russian expat in the mafia, another Russian guy who spoke no English or Thai but decided to stay because he had fallen in love with the two girls who ran the cafe, and a few Thais who gave up their seats for us. We spent the next few hours hanging out with the Russian and Norwegian expats and Patrick's nephew - hearing stories of what it's like to live in Thailand, why the Thais are so crazy, and why they are never leaving. They told us, for example, that all Thais go to school until age 12 only to learn two things - how to love your parents and how to love the king. The Thai kid agreed. It seems pretty easy to love the king judging by the stories they were telling. He mandated that there would be no taxes and that he would fund the country's infrastructure. He built the highways out of his own (vast) pocket. He personally funds the health care system and national education. Other random facts included how killing a pedestrian while driving drunk is not that serious - it's only a 80,000 baht fine (about $4,000). "You were drunk - everybody understand."

We sampled about 10 different, exotic Thai fruits that they continued to bring out to us - including finger sized bananas and tiny apple looking things that are filled with lychee-like fruit. After a great night with our amazing Thai hosts, we went back to the hotel and went to sleep before another ridiculous day of adventures.