Exploring Hanoi

The last couple days in Hanoi have been very busy! Friday was spent exploring the Old Quarter, walking around Hoam Kiem lake, seeing the Hoa Lo prison (the "Hanoi Hilton"), and eating a lot of good food.

Touring the Hanoi Hilton was incredibly interesting. It has been largely torn down, but what remains has been preserved as a museum. Most of the museum is devoted to the period of time when the French used the prison to house Vietnamese revolutionaries, though there are also two rooms devoted to the American POWs kept there during the Vietnam War. The propaganda is laid on pretty thick - first with the discussion of the noble patriots kept there by the oppressive, brutal French, contrasted with the display on the American POWs, which claimed that the prisoners were kept "under best possible conditions despite economic difficulties in Vietnam." (Yeah, right.) This was accompanied by photos of pilots receiving medical treatment and playing basketball and volleyball - they made life look pretty good. I guess that's their story and they're sticking to it - no matter what! They made no mention of torture or abuses. They did have a flight suit on display that they claimed was John McCain's along with a photograph of him being pulled out of his downed plane. (McCain returned and visited the prison in 2000.)

On a much happier note, everyone in present-day Hanoi has been quite friendly and we've had some great food! My favorite thus far has been "bun cha". The guidebook described this as "pork served with rice noodles and mint" but the place we went for it was much more exciting than this. The bun cha restaurant looked full from the outside, but the waitress waved us in and gestured towards a narrow, steep flight of stairs in the corner. We climbed those stairs and found another totally packed floor of the restaurant! The waitress there indicated that we should keep climbing, so we went up another flight and finally were seated on the third floor! Then food just began appearing! This bun cha restaurant ONLY serves bun cha - which, in this case, was basically a "create your own soup" project. We were presented with bowls of pork meatballs in broth, a large plate of vermicelli noodles which were dramatically chopped up with scissors, a plate heaping with various fresh herbs (I could only recognize mint and basil), and a variety of small bowls - garlic, chili, water chestnuts. Also a big plate of spring rolls. We dug in, trying to follow the lead of the Vietnamese sitting next to us. Eventually this turned into just tossing ingredients into the bowl - delicious!

Other good food has included pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) and steamed pork buns purchased from a lady on the street for 8000 dong - about $0.45. Delicious!

Yesterday we went to the very excellent Museum of Ethnology, which I'll try to get pictures from posted soon. Today - an exciting round of temples INCLUDING the "Temple of Literature". Woo hoo!

The World's Longest Bus Ride

After carefully considering all our options, my friend Greg and I decided that the absolute WORST one would be to take a 24-hour bus ride from Vientiane to Hanoi. We did some Google searches about the trip, which got us a variety of horror stories such as, "The bus broke down and we had to spend the night sleeping on the ground" and "I spent 19 of the hours sitting on a plastic chair in the aisle with my feet on a bag of rice." Obviously, we decided to pursue this option.

Each bus ticket cost us 140,000 kip, or about $17. This included a ride from the travel agent to the bus station, the bus ticket on an "ordinary" bus (in order to have the most "authentic" experience, we eschewed "sleeper" or "VIP" options), and a small bottle of water. We stocked up on some snacks ahead of time: Bugles, blueberry Oreos, and more water. We arrived at the travel agent at the designated time and hopped in the back of a pick-up truck to be taken to the bus station. Also in the truck with us was an Australian guy, although he was booked on the "sleeper" bus. We got dropped off at the bus station at around 5:30 PMaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA88888888888888888888888888 (<--- this portion of the entry brought to you by a cat)

We got on the bus at 5:30... and sat there. At the bus station. At around 6:30, the driver appeared and turned on the bus, along with some sort of Vietnamese sitcom on the TV. Three episodes later (which involved a lot of riding around the countryside on motorbikes), we began to leave the bus station. However, it somehow took us around 25 minutes to leave the bus station. We were off to a great start! We celebrated by eating a bag of Bugles.

For the next several hours, we rambled through the dark Lao countryside. We had watched out the window at the bus station as all the other Westerners got on the VIP/sleeper buses, but actually, things were not that uncomfortable. For me, at least. The woman sitting in front of Greg had immediately reclined her seat upon the bus leaving the parking lot, so he was pinned into place. Following the lead of several of the Vietnamese passengers, I had harvested a couple extra blankets, so I was comfortably ensconced in my seat, wrapped in two fleece blankets. The Vietnamese sitcom continued - somehow the plot line involved lots of beating people with sticks - and a couple of the locals on the bus attempted to make conversation with us, but we couldn't get much further than pointing to ourselves and saying our names and nationalities. (I was a little nervous about proclaiming my American-ism, but my tentative "Chicago" was greeted with smiles and enthusiastic nods and "SHEEE-ca-go! USA!" so apparently my fears were for naught.)

At around 11:00 PM, we stopped for the night. We had reached the Lao/Vietnam border and would be spending the night in a parking lot so that we could cross the border as soon as it opened in the morning. Things started to go a bit downhill here. The sitcom was turned off but was replaced by some sort of Vietnamese pop/opera. Imagine that you are in a good mood, on a summer day, and you hop in your car with the windows rolled down, and decide to play some good, loud, music. Yes. This is the approximate volume that the pop/opera was played. Behind me, a man decided to provide his own soundtrack for sleep by playing some sort of Vietnamese crooner on his cell phone, but then promptly fell asleep and began snoring loudly - music continuing to play. My fleece blankets 67yyyy4h (<---- more cat) quickly became inadequate, and I huddled in my seat, unable to get comfortable, shivering slightly, until I finally drifted off to a less-than-restful sleep.

In the morning, we set off again. It was raining outside and things were COLD. After about 20 minutes, we reached Lao exit control and were herded off the bus to get our passports stamped. Some people brought their blankets from the bus with them but I was too proud to present myself at border control wrapped in a blanket like some sort of refuge. Once our passports were stamped, we stood in the rain waiting for the bus to be searched and I resolved that in the future, I wouldn't let anything like "pride" or "dignity" prevent me from being wrapped in a blanket at all times. We reloaded the bus and continued another few minutes to the Vietnamese border control, where we once again disembarked.

I thought about taking a picture of myself at this point, because I was soaked with rain from the first stop, wrapped in an orange and grey blanket, bleary-eyed and messy-haired from lack of sleep, and wearing rain-speckled glasses. I was going to post in on the blog along with a caption saying, "Would YOU let me into your country?" but then I realized that A) there is no need for a permanent record of how I looked and B) my camera would probably be swatted out of my hand by a Vietnamese border official.

Words than can be used to describe the Vietnamese border are "grim", "bleak" and "humorless". When we crossed into Lao, we took a little boat across the Mekong, waited a few minutes for visas, and then had our passports stamped by a friendly border official who then took a few minutes to teach us to say "thank you" in Lao, laughing at our poor pronunciation, and cheerfully waving goodbye when we set off into town. The Vietnamese border guards demanded 1 US dollar per passport, regardless of nationality (a French girl kept weeping, "I am not American!"), and then looked dubiously at everyone's passport photo. (To be fair, I don't think ANYONE looked like their pictures.) There were no "lines" or "organization" - basically we just fumbled our way around, shoving our way through crowds of people. If you went in the wrong direction, you were quickly corrected by angry shouting, so eventually we got through passport control, had our bags x-rayed, and, inevitably, were shoved out into the rain to wait for our bus to be searched.

I chatted with a Vietnamese man who worked in the steel industry and had been working in Dubai for the past few years but was now working in Lao. He spoke fairly good English but our conversation dwindled when he told me that in Vietnam, being 25 and unmarried would be "bad, very bad, because WHY no one marry you?? HAHAHAHA." (Thanks, pal.) Eventually, we were allowed back on the bus. One more Vietnamese official boarded, checked all our passports again, and we finally set off.

Vietnam was EXACTLY how I expected it! Acres and acres of rice paddies, tended by people in conical hats. The rain continued all day and the bus was unheated. My blanket was wet from standing in the rain so I had to switch to my back-up blanket but was still really cold. After a few hours, we stopped for lunch at a roadside restaurant. I asked for fried noodles and was given instant noodles mixed with a hearty amount of partially cooked cabbage - YUM! At least it was hot. Also, I saw "eel gruel" on the menu so I guess things could have been worse. We befriended one of the girls from our bus who turned out to be Korean.

We got back on the bus with slightly higher spirits. Greg had gotten coffee at the restaurant, which made things a lot more bearable for both of us. Things got slightly warmer in the afternoon, and things began looking up again. My blankets had dried and my feet slowly warmed up, and soon we would be in Hanoi! We already had rooms booked at a guest house, so we figured things would be smooth sailing from here on out.

The travel agent had told us we would arrive in Hanoi at 4 PM. At 4 PM, we were in the middle of a rice paddy. At 5 PM, we were in the middle of a rice paddy. At 6 PM, we were in the middle of a rice paddy. At 7 PM, we were in a small town!! We finally arrived in Hanoi at 8:30 - good spirits totally evaporated. We disembarked the bus into pouring rain and were immediately accosted by taxi drivers. We had been warned about the prevalence of taxi scams in Hanoi - drivers who tell you your hotel is closed and take you to one where they get a commission. Not wanting to deal with any sort of shenanigans, we ran away from the bus station and eventually found a cab from a company listed as reputable in the guidebook.

Unfortunately, our taxi driver had NO IDEA where our guest house was. We showed him on a map, and he gazed at the map as though it were from a completely foreign city. Finally, we agreed that he would drop us off at a landmark several blocks away. We left the cab and began hurrying through the rain towards the guest house. This could have gone better. We kept getting slightly lost, although we were mostly headed in the right direction. We hadn't eaten since the terrible noodles at lunch and it was nearly 9:00. Finally, we found our guest house and tumbled inside, looking like drowned rats.

The icing on the cake would be if they didn't have our reservation, but luckily we managed to choose a guest house that is EXACTLY the place you would want to turn up if you were cold, miserable, and exhausted. It is run by a Vietnamese family who are the nicest people in the world. The mother (who appears to be in her 60s) immediately pushed mugs of hot tea into our hands and worried in broken English at our wet clothes, insisting that if we didn't have any other clothing, she would give us warm clothes. The daughter (maybe 30?) took our bags and told us that there was no hurry to get to our rooms and we should warm up for a few minutes. After drinking our tea, moving into our rooms, and getting changed into dry clothes, we were given a map with restaurant recommendations - we went and got some delicious hot noodle soup a few blocks away. We had survived the bus trip! And today we begin to explore Hanoi! 

Vientiane

I'm spending a few days in Vientiane, the capital of Laos. Most guidebooks describe this town as "sleepy" - their nice way of saying there's not a whole lot going on here. But it's a perfect town to wander/bicycle around, even if seeing all the "sights" takes only a day.

It's been really hot here, too! Much hotter than Northern Thailand or Luang Prabang. The ride here was interesting. While waiting for a bus in Vang Vieng, suddenly a sawngthew (pickup truck with benches in the back) pulled up and the driver shouted, "VIENTIANE??" He agreed to charge 40,000 kip ($5) for the four hour drive to Vientiane, so our backpacks were tied to the top and we set off. This was a very "authentic" experience. Most people along the route weren't going all the way to Vientiane, so we got to watch a revolving cast of characters riding with us. There was a woman stationed in the back to take payment, and the driver would typically pull out onto the road while new riders were paying for their journey, standing on the back bumper of the truck. Some kids rode the truck home from school. One man climbed in with a box from which concerned squawks emanate when we hit a bump. We finally arrived in Vientiane and I am now staying a guest house near the Mekong.

I am going to try to upload pictures but apparently Laos is still operating on the internet circa 1997, so I may have to be very selective in what gets uploaded. I looked at the pictures from Luang Prabang and saw that many of them did not upload correctly.

Okay, forty-five minutes later... not a single picture has uploaded so I guess you will have to see them when I get home!

Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami

Just wanted to let everyone know that I am still in wonderful, land-locked Laos - we have had no earthquakes or tsunamis here. Currently, I am in Vientiane, the capital city. This is probably the smallest capital city I have ever been in, although they do have their own Arc de Triomphe and Champs Elysees! Doing an extensive walking tour today so I will try to post pictures tonight or tomorrow morning!

Loving Everything About Laos... Except the Internet

Laos is amazing!! I will write more about it soon, but it took an hour and a half for these pictures to upload and now I'm out of internet time for today!! I will come back and put the pictures in order and write descriptions of my past several days but here's a brief summary: slow boat down the Mekong, swimming in waterfalls, exploring wats in Luang Prabang, and swimming with local kids in the Nam Kong river. Such fun!!

Something About Thailand

Note: I asked Alexa to come up with a title for this post - you can see above what she decided on.

After a couple days exploring Bangkok, Alexa and I decided to get out of the big city and head west, to Kanchanaburi. Kanchanaburi has its place in history for being the location of the "Bridge Over the River Kwai" and a city along the Thai/Burma Railway - AKA the "Death Railway" built by POWs during WWII, but it's also an incredibly charming little town and has some beautiful surrounding scenery.

We caught an early afternoon train from Bangkok. While we were waiting for the train, we met Patt and Ady, also traveling to Kanchanaburi. Patt is a young Thai woman who has lived all over the world, and Ady is a young English guy who is traveling with her. In a style we would soon get used to, Patt asked if we had booked accommodation, and when I said that we hadn't, she informed me that we would all team up to look for a place to stay.

The train ride was mostly uneventful. We chatted briefly with an older Thai man, mostly about how large the United States is, and how we are lucky not to be Indian. When we arrived in Kanchanaburi, we quickly found a nice place to stay - our bungalow right next to Ady and Patt's.

In the evening, Alexa and I went out looking for a place to eat dinner. We ran into Ady and Patt. Patt informed us where we should eat dinner, dragged us there, and then instructed us what to order. (She may sound bossy - she is - but she was quite endearing and the fact that she is about 4 feet tall made the whole thing more hilarious.)

We ate at a restaurant called "Mangosteen", which also doubles as a book shop. Alexa enjoyed her iced Thai tea while we read a travel book:

After dinner, we met up with Ady and Patt for some pool at a nearby bar and soon met Roman, a Russian guy who was also traveling in Thailand. We all went out to a "club" afterwards - although really it was just a tiny little bar with loud music playing and flashing lights. We stayed out quite late and enjoyed all sorts of quality music, and decided that the next day, we would rent motor bikes and explore the surrounding countryside.

The next morning (okay, afternoon), we rented our bikes and set out for a national park with some of the most gorgeous waterfalls in Thailand. We stopped for lunch at a tiny roadside restaurant along the way - having Patt with us opened a lot of doors since she speaks Thai. The scenery along the road was beautiful but I was too busy hanging on to take any pictures.

The waterfalls have several "tiers", so visitors climb up and up to see each level. This is the first level:

The second level had a lot of people and a sign that said, "BEWARE OF FIERCE MONKEYS" so we didn't pause there long and continued to the third level:

The pool at the base of the waterfall was perfect for swimming. A little cold, but fine once you got in, and a little more than five feet deep - I could stand with my head out of the water if I was on tiptoe in most parts of the pool. The fish were very friendly and nibbly - a sensation Alexa and I were used to from our time at the fish spa, but Ady nearly had a heart attack about the whole thing.

We swam at this pool for quite a while, and then attempted to head further up. Unfortunately, we were soon turned back by a park ranger type person, who said that it was going to rain and the park would be shutting soon. We got sent back down, where Roman decided to go for one last swim and play behind the level two waterfall. Alexa and I kept watch against FIERCE MONKEYS.

It was a long day of swimming, hiking and motorbiking, and by the time we got home, we were all quite tired. We went to a night market for dinner, and then everyone was happy to make it an early night.

The next day, Alexa and I got up and went to go see the famous Bridge Over the River Kwai. It's not that great, and the movie that makes it famous wasn't even filmed in Thailand. (It was filmed in Sri Lanka.) Still, here's the bridge:

Near the bridge is a museum which has exhibits both on Thai history and the history of the railway. The museum was interesting - the exhibits weren't really that good or well maintained, but there was a wealth of information written on the walls which made for some interesting reading, both to learn about the actual history and to try to understand the Thai perspective on WWII.

The day was the hottest one we have had recently, so we laid low during the afternoon - reading, resting, and getting laundry done.

In the evening, we met up with our usual gang (Patt, Ady, Roman) and went out for dinner. We ate at a restaurant called "The Jolly Frog" and learned all about high quality Thai customer service (NOT). By the end of the meal we were carefully rationing our water because we had given up hope of ever getting more. After eating, we went back down to the bridge to see it lit up at night, and to have a drink on a floating bar!

Standing on the bridge at night:

The next day, it was time to head back to Bangkok. We were sitting in the reception area of our guest house when the skies opened and soaked everything with a torrential downpour:

The train was running on "Thai time" - although the timetable said it would be arriving at 2:44 PM, it did not arrive until nearly 5:00. We played poker for bahts on the train platform until Patt ran out of money and announced the game was over. We sat in the very last car so we had a great view out the back:

We didn't arrive in Bangkok until nearly 9:00, and hurried to our hostel. Or tried to - as we were driving along, our cab driver suddenly announced that he had to pull over, and then proceeded to get out and tighten the lug nuts on the back two wheels of the car. He turned off the meter while he did this, so it didn't seem to be a scam but was just kind of confusing.

We checked into the hostel and then decided that we should go out for Saturday night drinks. We had explored the Khao San Road and Patpong areas of Bangkok earlier in the week, so decided to go to Sukhumvit, the swankiest part of town. Stupidly, I didn't bring my guidebook, so once we got off the metro, we wandered around, hoping a nice bar would just sort of appear. It didn't. We found out later that we were one street away from the happenin' night life, but we gave up too soon.

Enticed by what looked like a rooftop bar, we wandered into a really nice Sheraton, but were soon thwarted by a bellhop and realized there was no rooftop bar. Determined to find somewhere good, we got off the elevator and walked down the stairs, and went to the concierge to ask where we could go for a drink, neglecting to mention that we were not guests of the hotel. He recommended a bar called "LongTable", and sent us on our way with directions - the 25th floor of a nearby building.

We got our wish for swankiness at this place! I tried to take a picture but it didn't really work out:

The bar is a trendy place which has a great view over Bangkok. Here is a much better picture of the view, and the inside of the bar. We got some expensive drinks and sipped them while people-watching and gazing out over Bangkok. We stole the coasters.

Leaving LongTable, we went to one more bar in the nearby area, and then headed home. We got up early today (or tried to - I am still in my pajamas - oops!) to go to the weekend market! More pictures to come!

Favorite Penang and Thailand Pictures (Thus Far)

Following the unfortunate demise of the card reader which is incorporated into my computer, I finally got an external card reader and so am able to upload some pictures! I've got a LOT of pictures to share, so I chose some of my favorites and added some short descriptions! Enjoy!

The first one is from my last destination in Malaysia - Penang. Penang, aka Georgetown, was the colonial capital of Malaysia - it is an island off the very Northwest coast. Here's the view leaving the Butterworth harbor on the ferry to cross over to Penang:

 [click any photo to enlarge]

While in Georgetown, a friend and I decided to see how many places of worship from major world religions we could visit in a single day. (The answer? Five: Christianity (two churches, one Catholic and one Anglican), Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Chinese ancestor worship (three Chinese temples). Why is there no synagogue in this town!?) We had the most fun at a Chinese temple where the dragons were dancing to prepare for Chinese New Year. (This is the explanation we got from a bystander.)

We arrived just before the dragon celebration was to start, and soon the whole temple was full of these giant, fuzzy dragons dancing all over the place to loud drums, while the air was thick with incense smoke. These two boys did NOT expect the dragons to suddenly turn around and face them - the younger one was terrified but the older one held him in place. Notice the full grown man trying to slink away.

Each dragon was composed of two people - a head/front legs, and a hindquarters. The temple was very full of people, dragons and altars, so there were a couple people like the man in the yellow polo shirt in the picture below. Their job was to wrangle the dragons in the correct direction. He often had to nudge a hindquarters over to make room for others, and he would tug at the dragons when it was time to move to a different part of the temple. He handled the dragons the way I am used to handling horses, which really made me forget that there were people in the costumes!

Another Chinese temple across town, this one much quieter. Very beautiful:

This is from a Chinese clan house in Georgetown - it's the front porch. The level of ornateness and intricacy is astounding:

From Malaysia into Thailand. Here are boats which are gathered to take us from Ao Nang to Rai Lay Beach. Even though it is on mainland Thailand (not an island), Rai Lay is only accessible by boat thanks to some giant cliffs. When you catch a longtail boat, you have to wade out in the water to climb in - I got paranoid and held my bag above my head even though the water was never more than waist deep.

A view from Rai Lay:

This next picture is one of my favorite pictures of all time. Two Thai boys were pulling in their boat at sunset, and I love the silhouette of the boys, the boat and the rocks against the soft colors of the ocean and sky as the sun went down. This was on Ko Lanta.

The view from the front porch of our bungalow on Ko Lanta, just after sunset:

Here is the cat who lived in the bungalow!! The cat is not dead! She was just really, really secure in her ownership of the bed.

Before sunset at Khao Lak:

The next two photos are of our idyllic beach (Hat Yao) on Koh Phangan. The water was very shallow and warm - you could wade out in the water for 50 feet and still have it be only thigh-deep.

Not too crowded here, either!

From Koh Phangan, time to leave lazy beaches and travel North to Bangkok! The Grand Palace complex is incredible and sparkles to such a degree that photographs can hardly do it justice!

Love this guy:

More Grand Palace:

You would look stressed, too, if you were holding up an entire building!

The next two are also some of my favorite pictures I've ever taken - elegant sculptures inside the Grand Palace:

Buddhist temple near the river in Bangkok:

Now Alexa and I are in Kanchanaburi! We will write more about our time here soon, but here's a teaser just to get you excited/jealous:

That's our new Russian friend, Roman, swimming in a lagoon at the base of a gorgeous waterfall. Today was waterfall day!!