Gettin Sexy in Hoi An

The super-high-speed bus ride got us into town around 8am and Leighton and I had somehow managed to get a lot of sleeping done. We strapped on our packs and hit the road, with only a vague idea of where we were staying. We stopped in at a few places, wary because we had read some very bad reviews on a lot of the low-cost hotels in town. We were avoiding one place in-particular. We got lucky and found a great little hotel with friendly staff and a nice room. The shower is pretty spectacular, but the hot water doesn't last very long.

Hoi An is filled to bursting with tailors. Every other storefront of yellow plaster and chocolate-brown shutters contains suits and dresses of every style and color. Every hotel has a place they recommend and every tailor wants you to stop in and "buy my clothes." Not pushy enough to be annoying the town is inviting and beautiful. It reminds me of Luang Prabang in Norther Laos, but the infrastructure isn't as refined. Unfortunately, the terribly weather has continued and we're so cold and cranky at this point that we've spent a couple of days lying around watching TV.

The riverfront at dinnertime... lanterns all lit up for Tet.

Mostly we have just walked around and popped in and out of shops, bakeries, and cafes for delicious local food. The local specialty is cao lau, a noodle dish served on a bed of herbs with chicken and bean sprouts. Yum! We tried to get our favorite dish, bun thit nuong, but we kept missing the hours of operation for the barbecue at the food-market. Bummer!

The big thing to do here, as I said, is visit the tailors. We found a place that was recommended highly and stopped in. The two girls working were silly and fun. One of them, who mostly helped Leighton, had a penchant for slugging me in the arm. We laughed a lot and had a really good time with them. The owner, Bu, is also known as the "Queen of Hoi An" because he is a fabulous wee man. Not one to doubt the styling advice of either Leighton or Her Majesty, I picked out a fabric and guided my assistant in planning out my suit.

Chic Couture, the best place in town.

Leighton was a bit more forceful with his arm-punching friend (who only hit me, for some reason) and got a much better price for his suit made of more expensive fabric than I did for mine. Actually, they were the same price. Fail, Mike. I had a shirt made, too, though.

Leighton being measured by the Queen Herself, Bu! We loved Bu and his staff!

The next day we went back and had our fitting. They were perfect! The shirt was spectacular and the suit fit like it was made for me... that was a joke. Get it?

We both looked stunner in our black suits and Leighton couldn't resist ordering up another one in gray. I held off though because they told us we could email them and order more suits at any time... One is enough for now but if I need another suit I'm calling them up!

Looking like a movie star!

We leave tomorrow morning for Hue, the ancient imperial city of the Cham. Thursday (Feb. 3rd) is Tet, the Chinese New Year in Vietnam. It is the biggest holiday of the year and bus prices are double for 2 weeks before and after. The whole country seems to be taking the 1st-5th off, the entirety of our stay in Hue. Hue is supposed to be a good place to be for the celebration. We're excited.

We've booked our bus with our favorite company again and reserved a very highly rated (97%) hotel just outside the main backpacker's area. It should be a fun week. See you on the other side and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Nha Trang is Muddy

What can I say about Nha Trang? It is a great little city with a proper beach and lots to offer in the way of bars, cafes, shops, and restaurants. Unfortunately the bad weather followed us from Dalat and we didn't have a single day of sunshine or warmth, so the beach was out. FAIL.

When we arrived 1.5 hours early our hotel wasn't there to pick us up so we had to walk and find it. Sucked. But we got there and checked into one of our favorite hotels to date. Up on the fourth floor we had a spacious and quiet room with a clean bathroom and two big beds. The ladies who ran the place were sweet and friendly and kept our room spic and span the whole stay.

We did make it into the water one day. It wasn't too cold and the rain clouds had abated for the afternoon. We donned our swimmers and headed for the shore to find 6-8 foot waves crashing like drunken rockstars. The wind was strong and churned the surf hard. I was the first in and had a hell of a time keeping control of myself.

Water and I go way back. We're pals, almost like brothers. We have a deal: take care of each other. We've never had a fight.

The water in Vietnam was having a cranky day. He just about had his way with me, but I convinced him to relax a bit and let us have a swim. It was fun. Leighton came in and played too... a bit of diving under waves and then riding in the biggest ones. Hard work but so much fun!

We went to the Oceanographic Institute as well, which had a great little outdoor aquarium including lots of turtles and some sharks and one lonely (but playful) seal. Then I got a massage while Leighton walked to the local market to stock us up on canned tuna and baguettes for lunch.

On our last day we had booked a night bus to take us to Hoi An for 7pm and decided to spend the day at the local hot springs since we had to check out of our room. We rented some bikes and on the way there we stopped at some ancient Cham temple. It was the Cham that the Angkor people conquered and then were conquered by, and then conquered again in the era of Angkor Wat. It started raining a bit (for the 8th day in a row at this point) and then, in km 4/5, started pouring! We were completely drenched by the time we got to the hot springs centered. It was such a cloudy and cold day that we didn't expect to see many people. The places was pretty well attended though.

We opted for the cheapest package of a public mud bath ($5) and full access to the site. Since there wasn't a crowd we got our own private bath for 2.

It was cold but silky soft. It was so viscous that we floated in it like astronauts! I felt like I was weightless and whenever Leight and I bumped into each other we spun around like gravity didn't exist. We met some ladies from California and chatted with them while we soaked and scrubbed. Then we showered off and headed for the hot mineral bath.

It felt so good because the mud and the air were so cold! Not an ideal day to be out in a bathing suit but as soon as we hit that hot water we wondered if a better day for the springs could have come our way! How lucky for us that the day stayed chilly and the baths stayed hot!

Then we made our way to the swimming pool, wary at first of going swimming and leaving our little hot tub. Luck held out though and we plunged into a vast pool filled with water as hot as we just got out of! It felt amazing to be in a giant mineral water swimming pool. We tried swimming around but felt like soggy toast! The hot water just sapped us of energy and made wading through the water almost impossible. It felt so nice to just relax for a few hours before getting on a bus.

Our favorite (and most tourist-friendly) bus company was sold out so we had to buy from another company. For some reason we wanted to say $3 and chose the "sitting" bus instead of the "sleeping" bus for our 11 hour bus ride to Hoi An. Mistake. We both got off the bus at 8am feeling like our necks were broken. Watching Leighton's head roll around and flop back and forth with every bump was almost as painful as having it happen to me. My neck still aches!

The Central Highlands Have a lot to Offer

Let's see... From Mui Ne we were headed to Dalat in the central highlands. We were going from a hot desertish seaside-town to the mountains almost 2000m above sea level. We were destined for the cold. And our hearts were frozen over with fear that we'd left our passports behind.
When we checked out of the hotel we didn't think to ask for our passports back and Mr. Massage forgot to give them back. It was only in Vietnam that we had to start leaving them with the hotel and Mui Ne was our second stop. Still, we felt stupid and irresponsible for having left them behind.

Naturally, when we arrived in Dalat we talked to the bus company and they called and basically couriered it for us (after they forgot the next day we got worried but they arrived on the third day and it was all good). Never going to make that mistake again, but it did lead to a rather funny situation with the manger of our new hotel, who will always be known as "Basthma".

Doing our normal walk from guest house to guest house we found a nice little place down the road run by a friendly elderly couple. They were very pleased to show us a couple of different rooms until we decided on one off the street with a gracious bathroom and two big beds. We got our packs off and changed into pants and long sleeve shirts to accommodate the mountain air and then walked downstairs to complete check-in. At this point our hostess pointed to herself and said "Basthma" while smiling. I repeated her and then gestured to myself and said "Mike"! Very excited to be communicating I informed Leighton of our hostesses name.

"Leighton, this is Basthma."
"Mmm, Basthma," she said, again gesturing to herself.
"Leighton," with a smile and gesture.
"Mike," with a smile and gesture.
"Basthma," more forcefully with a gesture and fading smile.
As we turned to walk away, having gotten our key and towels she headed us off and told us her name again. We get it lady, your name is Basthma. What a strange name for a Vietnamese person. "Basthma! Basthma!"
Something was up...
Turns out Basthma wanted our passports, and Basthma wasn't her name at all.
Oops.
Luckily she took our driver's licenses instead.

So we spent a couple days bumming around and did a day tour as well that took us around the countryside. Our first stop was a flower and coffee plantation with loads of beautiful scents and colors. The coffee stretched out for miles and made me very happy. All I really wanted to do was drink the stuff and seeing it growing and drying and the seed casings being used as fertilizer and burning fuel all around me made me want to find the coffee swimming pool I was sure they had hiding somewhere. I knew that I'd be the first and last one in that pool and that it would for sure be empty by the time I left. Alas, no pool.

So then we went to the rice wine factory. It was smelly and intoxicating and reminded me of a lot of old men's breath in Korea. But, we got to taste it and then were served complementary tea. This is where I got my first cup of yummy fresh coffee! Delicious. Two Singaporean folks on our tour were equally coffee-addicted and we
asked for more hot water like gluttons and continued to fill up our glasses. You see, in Vietnam the coffee comes served as it's brewing in a steel pot that sits on top of your glass. It is fresh and chocolaty coffee but takes a few minutes to brew and there's never ever enough of it. So I usually ask for a thermos of hot water with my coffee to get my fill.

Then we went to the silk worm factory. Amazing. I have always been curious how silk comes from worms. Well, they're caterpillars. They make their little cocoons from a natural silk and then we humans evil-like split open the cocoons, eat the worms (optional), boil the silk and then use magic machines that grab the threads and weave them into yarns. From these silk yarns you can weave anything. Pretty things mostly.Silk worm cocoon before being boiled.

The looms hard at work. You can see the cocoons with worms still inside on the right and the yarn in the foreground to the left.

Then we made our way to the cricket farm where the insects are bred and raised for 6 months before they're ready to eat. Don't say "gross" too quickly. They're pretty tasty when you fry them up and dip them in a little sauce. They're an eco-friendly protein source as well. To get 1kg of beef or pork you have to use about 10kgs of feed. But 10kgs of the same feed will produce 9kgs of crickets, locusts, and other tasty 6-legged treats. Additionally, insects are about as far from the human genome as possible, so cross-infections are virtually impossible. Never heard of the Cricket-flu, have you?Yummy crickets for lunch! Okay, just for a snack.

Dalat was quaint and cute, not as quiet as we'd have liked, and plenty cold. But that's okay, we were headed to the beach! Nha Trang, here we come!

Leighton of Arabia and The Case of The Missing Beach

Heading away from Saigon we made for the beaches of Mui Ne.  Only problem was there weren't any beaches in this beach town. That us, unless we paid triple the price for a hotel on the beach. Bummed to the max we moped around the first day in the sun. At least our hotel was nice. The manager seemed very interested in us in an uncomfortable way. He kept offering us free massages. No Thanks, Buddy!!!
We did hire bikes on day 2 and ride out to the sand dunes. Mui Ne is called the "Sahara of Asia" because that's basically what it looks like. Vast seas of red sand stretch for kilometers and form pretty impressive dunes. Little children who should have been in school begged us to rent their vinyl sleds but the dunes just weren't steep enough (the price for a sled sure was though). The Red Dunes were just 5-6km from our hotel... but the White Dunes were a bit further: 25km further. So of course we rode to them! How could we resist? It was a stunningly sunny day and the coastal road crept through the seaside hills in languid fashion. Or so it seemed until we had covered half the distance and faced our third hill of epic proportions! Thank God I had "the good bike" because I was struggling! Not Leighton though, he pedaled on like a beast. He really pushed me to keep going and fight through the pain in my quads. We made it to the White Dunes, took some photos, and turned around. Another 45km back to the hotel. In the full midday sun.
We stopped at a little cafe where the locals were partaking in rowdy card games and noon-time iced coffees. We guzzled Pepsi's and some isotonic drinks for lunch since food was not on the menu. When we got back to the hotel we both collapsed into bed after adamantly refusing massages from the manager (who was dusky impressed that we rode all the way out and back). For the North Americans, 70 kilometers is about 43.75 miles. Call it 44!
The next day we vamoused from the beachless beach town and headed for Dalat up in the mountains. Only problem was we forgot to get our passports back from Mr. Creepy Massage. Didn't realize til we had been on the bus for an hour. 
Would Mike and Leighton ever see their passports again?
Would Mr. Creepy Massage find another pair of foreigners to scare?
Find out in the next episode of Leighton of Arabia!

Saigon and Some Advice About Chickens

Sorry, this is a long post. I wrote it on the bus on my IPod so no pictures yet...

Have you ever kicked a chicken? Not like, "screw you Chicken, I will kick you," but more like, "OMG I just kicked a chicken!" well, if you haven't kicked a chicken I think you should. Not on purpose, but just because you were walking down the street looking for camera stores and there happened to be a chicken that also wasn't paying attention and then BAM! Kicked the damned chicken.
So then kicking chickens must be lucky because the very next store you walk into is the only one in Ho Chi Minh that has the camera you're looking for and it is the same color as the one that was stolen and $90 cheaper than the first time you bought it. Wow! Who knew kicking chickens was so lucky?

So anyway, we spent most of yesterday and the day before walking around the city exploring and stuff. We went to the zoo, which was pretty good, and saw elephants, crocs, and both white lions and white tigers.

Then we went to the war museum. If I may, for a moment, say that I have never met an American that "agreed" with the Vietnam war and I have been repeatedly taught from history and ethics professors that it was an unjust and largely immoral war among wars. Going into the museum armed with that knowledge and not much else left me unprepared for a lot of the information. I couldn't evaluate what was fact or propaganda. For example: there were some good exhibits about the torture techniques of the South Vietnamese army under the supervision of US administrators. I don't doubt that some CIA dudes encouraged this, but the degree to which it was done according to the exhibit seems beyond expectations. Make no mistake that there was a lot of very obvious misinformation. The details, though, were very muddled. There were some great photos and interesting stories of the journalists from both sides and neutral groups who covered the war. There were a lot of pictures and biographies of those affected by agent orange. That part was pretty awful.

I'll let that settle for a moment.
Okay, ready?

So we've been eating lots of great street food since we got to vietnam. This is the land of pho, a noodle soup served with beef (pho bo) or pork (pho something). We also ate delicious little shrimp spring rolls. The food has gotten so much cheaper too! Everything is less than $2 and comes in generous portions. Compare that to Cambodia where most places were $3-$5 for anything. Oh, and the coffee! I didn't even have to kick a chicken to find the best coffee (except Luang Prabang's). I might buy one of the little brewing cups to use in the future.
Anyway, I think we walked into more than 20 different shops looking for the camera model I wanted. We tried very hard t find shops, and saw lots of signs that claimed they had Olympus cameras. But they were all lying! Most had only one model. Not the one I wanted. But then I kicked that chicken and everything worked out.
So now we're headed to the Cu Chi Tunnels about 70km outside of town with two cameras and a tour guide who's singing Lionel Richie songs acchapella.

The tunnels were constructed by gorilla fighters opposing the Americans. Apparently they were big supporters of the Viet Cong in terms of food because the U.S. spent a lot of time dropping bombs on their rice fields. In response to constant bombing and village raids the people dug complex (but woefully low-ceilinged) tunnel systems that stretched over 200km.
Leighton decided to try the secret hiding place. Guerrillas hid in these when an American was around.Leighton and I inside the tunnels. I ditched out after about 20m, he made it the whole 100m underground!

They had little traps set up all around and inside the tunnels. When the Americans tried to flood them out they survived in special pockets that were a level above the main tunnels. When they used dogs to sniff out entrances the gorillas put chili-soaked rags around air vents to scare the dogs away. These people were brilliant in the techniques at evasion and, according to the propaganda video we had to watch before going in, equally brilliant at killing Americans. Many of them won the Killer of Americans Award or the American Killer Hero Award. Congratulations! We had takes, jets, and machine guns. You had sharpened sticks and leftover bombs we dropped on you that didn't explode. And the winner is...

The "tiger trap" was formerly used to protect villages from being eaten by large, striped cats... then they were used to protect villages from large, gun toting Americans. Ouch!

On the way to the tunnels we stopped at a small production facility that made handicrafts. The people who worked here were all handicapped, most of them by left-over bombs or as the result of birth-defects from Angent Orange. It was sad that such a place had to exist, but inspiring that it did. These people all had jobs. They were artists. The things they made stunned us. If we had more money and then even more money to ship it home, we would have bought heaps of loot here.
They used polished and varnished wood, egg shells, mother of pearl, and paint to create incredible furniture, sculptures, utensils, wall-hangings, etc. Really great place doing really great work. Congratulations!

Here are the clams they use for the mother of pearl. They also used broken egg shells. Hard work done by true artisans.These are some of the workers. You can see their wheel chairs.This is the finished product. A beautiful serving platter.

Camera and Facebook

Well hello! Saigon is great so far! Only trouble is that there is no Facebook allowed here in communist vietnam. But I did get an email that my claim for my camera is all done! Buying a new camera ASAP!

Phnom Penh and A Genocide

So, let me start with this: bus companies love to get paid by tuk-tuk cartels. Tuk-tuk cartels pay bus companies to use stations far from the center of town and then pay police to make them the exclusive drivers for that station. When passengers arrive they have only 2 choices: pay the extorted price or walk.

Well, Leighton chose option 3: get his American on and flatly inform the driver we would not be paying twice as much to get to our hotel as we had for a 6 hour bus ride from Sihanoukville. They saw his logic (or the murder in his eyes) and agreed.

Fast forward to today. We've been here for 3 nights and 3 days and it has been pretty riotous! We spent Tuesday walking around and exploring a bit. We're staying near the river (Mekhong AGAIN!) and there is a fantastic river walk that runs the length of downtown. It provides a massive area for food vendors, street dancers, tuk-tuk and motorbike parking, and still leaves room for pedestrians to actually use the sidewalk! Now if only the rest of Asia got the memo...

We also visited the Royal Palace of Cambodia. It was somewhat impressive. No pictures allowed of the throne. I'm sure wikipedia has one. The Buddha with 2086 diamonds was pretty!



We also got a surprise on Tuesday night: Emily!!! Hooray for Emily coming back into our lives! She came in from Vietnam and happened to stay at the guest house just down the street from ours. How perfectly serendipitous. So we had a few drinks and caught up, met her new travel buddy, Zoe from Israel who also holds British citizenship and a US greencard (tired yet?), then turned in early. We had to get up early Wednesday for a breakfast buffet we found!

For $2.75 we enjoyed all-you-can-eat: coffee, tea, baguettes, toast, pastries of every ilk, dohnuts, fried eggs, scrambled eggs, omelettes with tomatoes, lightly-fried tomatoes seasoned with salt and pepper, pineapple, bananas, watermelon, butter and jam, and we got a free newspaper. We didn't eat lunch that afternoon... or this afternoon after we had the buffet again!

We visited the Killing Fields on Wednesday and the S-21 prison today. Think concentration camp with all the trappings of SE Asia cleanliness. Absolutely horrendous. Everyone should read up on the Cambodian Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot died a natural death and a free man. 80,000 people were tortured and killed at this ONE place just 15km from our guest house. This is a case of skulls at the killing fields. A small portion of those buried here in mass graves.One of the mass graves.This is the man who was in charge of killing over 80,000 people. Just a fraction of the more than 3 million, 3,000,000 killed nationwide.These are mug shots taken at the prison S-21 before they were were killed. Only 7 people sent to this former elementary school turned concentration camp survived. Seven people. Out of 80,000.

We spent Wednesday night out for the last time with Emily and visited the FCC, Foreign Correspondants Club, where the foreign press reported on a genocide that a planet largely ignored. Happy hour there was good.


Today we went to this post office and sent 14 post cards that have been accumulating since Luang Prabang.
Next stop: Ho Chi Minh, aka, Siagon. One more day here (laundry day) then were off!