Siem Reap (Angkor Wat et al)

The two days I spent visiting the temples of Angkor Wat and the surrounding environs were sublime. I had heard widely varying advice on the amount of time one should spend there ("Oh you can do it in a day" to "I've been here a week and still want to stay longer"). Since I made up my mind to push back my return flight home by a few days, I happily didn't feel at all rushed and decided to just play it by ear.

Our bus got into Siem Reap (the town next to where the temple are) in the evening and had a guy with my name on a sign waiting for me ("Hello Mr. Andrew Hagen!")--it's quite common for guest houses in Phnom Penh to sell the names of people heading to Siem Reap and get a commission. The place in PP was pretty decent so I was fine being lead by the hand to an unknown guest house (which ended up being just fine). Also waiting for me was a motorbike driver-cum-guide who would take me to the temples bright and early the next day to see sunrise over Angkor Wat.

Unfortunately, I overslept and got a later start on the day. So I decided I would take at least a second day in the area to hit the hugely popular temples which by that time were probably crawling with tourists and we drove for a very long time out to some of the more far-flung and less frequented temples. I don't have my guidebook in front of me so I couldn't say the name right now, but this one of the highlights--a temple of the less common rose-colored limestone and covered in beautiful carvings:





On the way back, I visited the landmine museum created by a very diligent (and obviously careful) landmine clearer. The guy who was recruited into the Khmer Rouge when he was a child became and expert landmine planter but was captured and defected to the Vietnamese army. After the war, he felt remorse and made it his life mission to clear as many of the landmines remaining in Cambodia as possible which continue to kill and maim people to this day. By his estimates, he has cleared over 50,000 mines in his life (still has every limb intact) and has a sort of shelter for child victims of landmines. Here's a shot showing some of the UXO (unexploded ordnance) in the museum:



After this, we went on a tour of the peripheral temples, all interesting in their own ways, but it was of course all warming up to the big boys the following day.

Day 2

On the second day, I did manage to wake up at four-damn-thirty so that we could see sunrise over the glorious Angkor Wat--the largest religious monument in the world (you could play hide-and-seek with the Vatican in there and not find it for some time). It was a bit overcast so I knew the sunrise wouldn't be overly spectacular, but all the same, I staked out my spot amidst the other early risers and mounted my tripod. The following is the best shot I got before I decided a change of plans was called for...



First though, a diatribe. I am admittedly a very selfish person when it comes to touristing. Most others detract from my experience: there's the crowds that slow everything down, the people that act rude or inappropriately, and the photographers I resent for treating the world like a scavenger hunt and just snapping a picture of something mentioned in their guidebook and walking away before really even looking at the wonders they're ostensibly documenting for posterity. So anyway, before the sun had risen (and I got tired of shaking my head at people with thousand-dollar cameras who thought a flash might help illuminate the wat from 300 meters), I struck off on my own. Angkor has a main entrance and you more or less wander around the enormous structure, looking at the Hindu mythology rendered in bas relief etc. etc. and exit at a specified location. My recomendation to anyone planning a visit is to do as I did, and sneak in through the exit when there's no guards nearby. By virtue of it being just before the sunrise crowd entering and being at the end of the huge loop, I had Angkor Wat all to myself for enough precious minutes to really absorb the awesomeness of the place. Walking bare-foot alone through the enormous temple was amazing and the chanting and gongs from a nearby Buddhist temple only added to the atmosphere.

I savored the moment as long as I could before I decided it was time to move on. Since most people follow a defined temple-visit route, if I maintained my head start and kept at a reasonable pace, I would be far from the madding crowd the whole day, and indeed that is how it panned out for the most part. Here are some more photos from that wonderful day:


Bayon temple


In some temples, it seemed the invasive jungle was the only thing holding them together


I think this is the "Tomb Raider" tree--was in a scene in the movie


A troupe of musicians--all victims of landmines

I finished the whole circuit around noon (sounds early but when you start at 5:00...) and had the rest of the day to revel in the memories of the experience and hang out with some people I bumped into that were on the Mekong Delta boat tour with me. So two days was the perfect amount of time for me and that evening I made arrangements for a bus to cross the Thai border and go to Pattaya, where I would see Jess again and go to the birthday party of one of her co-workers before heading down to the islands.

Phnom Penh

Phnom Penh generally speaking doesn't have much attraction aside from the gruesome history it bore. With the staggering impact of the War Remnants Museum in Saigon fresh in my mind, I was extremely apprehensive about visiting the killing fields and the genocide museum (Tuol Sleng).

For the historically disinclined, the Khmer Rouge was a communist regime that took over the country in the mid-seventies backed by the North Vietnamese (and doubtlessly won support after America's campaign of carpet bombing in the late 60's and early 70's). The regime led by Pol Pot began a radical social restructuring that sought to turn "Democratic Kampuchea" into a classless agrarian state by evacuating cities and forcing everyone into labor camps. Thousands of dissidents were executed as were intellectuals and educated people (or even those that showed signs of learning such as wearing eye glasses). It is estimated that about 1.5 million--1/5th of the population--died, approximately half by execution and half by over-work or starvation. The fact that everyone knows about Hitler yet far fewer are aware of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge I think is an egregious deficit in our educational system and also suggests some real anglo-centrism.

So after breakfast, I hired a motorbike and we drove out of the city to the killing fields which are where many were executed (some simply bludgeoned to death to save ammo) and buried in mass graves. The first thing you're greeted with is a stupa erected to house many of the exhumed skulls--the most macabre pagoda I think I'll ever see:


Floor to ceiling were these...



Out in the fields there are just some footpaths that lead around the excavated pits. For some reason, I was able to hold it together there. Maybe the fact that we were just out in a field made the experience too abstract? I remember visiting a Nazi concentration camp with Arete in 2001 and nearly falling apart seeing the gas chambers and cremating ovens. Perhaps something in my brain just couldn't connect the grassy fields and chirping birds with the horrors that occurred there (it also didn't help that there was a group of Americans chattering away, laughing at who knows what and completely destroying any aura of solemnity. I was so very close to giving them a well-deserved shaming).

Back in town I visited Tuol Sleng or S-21, a school-cum-prison where people were "stored"for a lack of better word before heading to the killing fields. One part had a room full of the meticulously documented and photographed inmates. This is the saddest portrait I may ever see--a woman who knows and is utterly resigned to the terrible fate of her and her new born.



As I was leaving the museum, I bumped into Volker, jovial German guy who I was with on the Mekong Delta tour. He was just getting a start on the day and asked good-naturedly how my day was going. I couldn't find the words.

The rest of the day I spent between visiting the rather underwhelming national museum and the royal palace. It was very similar to the one in Bangkok so I'll leave it at that. The next morning I took a bus to Siem Reap which is the little town by Angkor Wat and have been here since. I'm too exhausted to give a full run down of the mega-wattage (nyurk nyurk) for now (got up at 4:30 this morning to see the sunrise over Angkor Wat!) but it was truly awesome. Look forward to some pictures soon!

Saigon and the Mekong Delta

Saigon

After arriving early in Saigon early in the morning, I checked into a nearby guest house and took a nice snooze (until noon...oops, little longer than I had meant to). Earlier upon disembarking, a French girl who I had chatted briefly with invited me out later to hang out with some friends so I had my evening plans set.

Despite its bigger size, I found Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City) to be a little more relaxed and less stress-inducing compared to Hanoi. There wasn't too too much I was interested in doing there so I decided to just spend one day there and booked a 2-day, 1 night boat trip through the Mekong Delta ending in Phnom Penh for the next morning. I started out checking out a large market where I got some souvies and food. Thus phởrtified (admit that's some of my better word play), I headed to reunification palace. This was really just a place of historical interest to me, as it was when the North Vietnamese army crashed a tank through the front gate of the palace that the war was symbolically won by the Vietcong.




The restored gate

After the palace, I headed to the nearby War Remnants Museum. It was a very mixed experience at the museum to put it mildly. At times I was inspired by the heroism of armed forces (misguided as their missions may have been) or the journalists who risked their lives to document what was really going on over there. Other times I struggled to choke back tears--seeing photographs of panicked mothers and their terrified children fleeing bombings; the effects of phosphene, agent orange or napalm on living things or the barbaric treatment POWs were subjected to. I don't know why, but these things hit me really hard and it's hard to know what to make of it. Does my over sensitivity make me more empathetic and help with interpersonal relations, or does it just make it harder to live in a world with a history and present of such intense suffering. The thought occurred to me that the world can be neatly divided into two groups: those that can see the images of war and say it's a necessary evil and those that see the same images and are pushed violently towards pacifism. On some intellectual, pragmatic level, I understand that armed conflict is a reality; that some things need to be fought for, but in my heart it is just destruction, misery, chaos, wrong.

I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around town, trying to parse the earlier events of that day. Fortunately the evening ended the day on an upbeat note. I met up with Delphine at our arranged meeting point and she said, "OK, now I have to find my friend." She got a text, walked across the street into the large park area in the Pham Ngu Lao district and asked a Indonesian-looking girl sitting down looking at her phone, "Are you Natasha?" I was a bit confused about how Delphine wouldn't know what her friend looked like but soon found out that this was going to be a couch-surfer meet-up. I had heard of, but never checked out http://www.couchsurfing.com/ but after that evening, I'm determined to sign up. For those who don't know, you make up a profile and then host or crash with people from all over the place. There's an ebay-style feedback mechanism so you can be reasonably assured you don't end up in the home of a psycho and you make friends from all over the world in the process. Among the 12 or so people that ended up joining us in the park for some casual drinking were Vietnamese students; American, Aussie, Norwegian and Finnish English teachers and some itinerant Argentinians with guitars in hand. We had a great night hanging out in the park and eating cheap food at the nearby noodle house.

I walked the 15 minutes or so back to my guest house most satisfied with my one and only day in Saigon and set my alarm to be ready to depart early for my trip through the Mekong Delta the following morning.

The Mekong Delta

It took a few hours to drive south to our boat departure point by bus, but we were still on the river before the late morning. We spent a few hours chugging along the river, stopping at floating markets and floating villages on the way.



At one stop, we saw how coconut candy was made and I bought about a kilo of the stuff it was so good. We also stopped and learned about some really evil cure-all liquor the rice field workers drink to ease back pain and increase virility. It's basically some sort of distilled rice whiskey that they throw a bunch of poisonous snakes (sometimes scorpions as well) into, with a whole dead bird for good measure on top. The brew is sealed and left to steep for months--the longer the better.


Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god

Free samples were poured and I surprised myself by actually taking a shot. Remarkably it wasn't all that bad, but the hell if I'll drink it again. Another snake encounter came later in the day at the place we stopped to eat lunch:


This guy wanted down

Later on that day we stopped in a little town and had some free time to wander around for about 1.5 hours. I had befriended the two other solo travelers on the boat and we decided to try and check out some purported rose gardens outside of town. As this was a small little village off the tourist track, it was surprisingly hard to find any tuk-tuks zipping around and we ended up hailing down the first motorbike we saw with a cart in tow. Everyone who caught sight of the three of us in town thought we were riotously funny and shouted hellos from every direction. We never ended up finding the roses (despite extended and nervous trespassing though a couple properties) but it was a hoot just being carted around town feeling like rock stars. These are the moments of travel that you have to work a little harder to find and be willing to venture off the beaten track for but almost always end up being highlights of any trip.

We had a nice evening on the boat puttering up the Mekong, knocking back beers and chatting. The next morning we visited a Cham village (an ethnic, Muslim minority in Vietnam) and then headed for the river border crossing into Cambodia before switching boats and heading to Phnom Penh. We were scheduled to arrive at 6, but due to our motor breaking down and resisting all repairs, we ended up getting towed up river and didn't make it until about 9. I would have liked to have booked a charming little guest house on the river in PP, but due to the late hour and lack of food in my belly, I ended up just checking into the cheap (but decent and clean) guest house we were dropped at. After a meal and a quick shower, I was ready to hit the hay.

Nha Trang to Phan Thiet to Saigon

Well yesterday was book-ended by, in a word, hell so I'm gonna start with the positive and if you don't want to read paragraphs of bitching and moaning at the end, just skip to the next entry.

The object of yesterday's travels were two-fold: To make my way to Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City) and to make a stop in Phan Thiet, a city where my old man was stationed during the Vietnam war. I was curious to see where dad had spent his time in 'Nam and of course he was interested in seeing how the city might have changed/been influenced by the American presence.

The nearby town of Mui Ne is along the tourist track as it's a small beachy town known for some Saharaesque sand dunes and kite-surfing on it's several kilometer long beach front so I began my day by taking a bus there. Upon arriving in the early afternoon, I rented a motorbike and rode the 30-odd kilometers to Phan Thiet. To be brutally honest, there's nothing really worth seeing in Phan Thiet--it's not even mentioned in my guidebook and the Vietnamese people where totally perplexed when I explained that's where I was heading. In any case, I'm glad I went due to the familial/historical connection and here's some snaps.


Welcome to Phan Thiet


In town




Beautiful boats...awfully fishy smell

For the bridge shot I parked my motorbike alongside a long row of other bikes nearby and immediately a young guy from a nearby shop came out and started sorta petting the bike and stuff. After trying to ask if it was ok to park there, I soon realized he was mentally challenged, gave up and just assumed it was no problem.

After snapping the bridge shot, I hopped back on my bike to explore the town further and quickly realized my rear-view mirror was missing! Dammit, I was sure the motorbike rental place was going to try and charge me an arm and a leg for "bike damage" so I tried to get back to the shop ASAP. Unfortunately, Phan Thiet is a bonafide city--not like the little towns or countrysides where I rented my other bikes. Left turns through busy, traffic-lightless intersections were a terrifying ordeal and I took to passing them, and doing the old three right hand turn trick to make my intended turn. Unfortunately this didn't always work out due to one-way streets, dead-ends etc. so it took me some time to get back to the shop.

When I got there, I tried to pantomime that my mirror was stolen (as this was not a tourist town, no one spoke any English whatsoever). I was afraid to point in dubious accusation at the mentally challenged kid who had shown intent interest in the bike before, fearing this would greatly offend them and finally the presumed father gestured that we would go take a ride (me driving, him on the back). Predictably he was underwhelmed with my progress through the city but eventually we made it to an auto repair shop where I bought and had installed a new rear-view mirror ($2.5 all together). When we got back to his shop, I was grateful for the help (even though I suspected some sort of racket was going on) and intimated I'd be happy to buy him a drink or something for the help. He just shook his head and held out his hand...seems even off the beaten track, the people know how to milk the foreigners for all they're worth.

I zipped around the city for a little longer, trying to find any landmarks that my dad might recognize, including the old landing strip but didn't have much luck. For one, I was too afraid to park my motorbike again, and for another the communication was a real challenge. So with that, I biked back to Mui Ne and pondered how to kill a lot of time before my sleeper bus to Saigon was scheduled to pick me up at 1:30 a.m. I was on my way to a bar or something around 5:00 when I passed a couple and asked them if they knew any good place to go. They suggested a place they were on their way to and invited me along which I was tremendously grateful for. They were a Belgian couple, Cliff and Lisa, in a similar time-killing situation although their 1:00 a.m. bus was headed in the opposite direction to Nha Trang. We spent a good amount of time chatting over cocktails and dinner and they were even so kind as to invite me to their hotel room which they had booked for the night to take a much needed shower and just hang out until the wee hours.

So now the ugly. We were all nodding off around 11:00 and woke up about a quarter to 1:00 a.m. so they could wait outside for their bus. I was told to be at my stop at 1:00 as well though it was scheduled to leave at 1:30 so we parted ways and I walked over to my stop. I will say that sitting alone in a sleepy little town in Vietnam at 1:00 a.m., waiting for a bus is quite an exercise in existentialism. 20 minutes later, Cliff and Lisa come by and say their bus hasn't arrived yet. 1:45 rolls by and neither of our buses have arrived and we really start to fret. To make a long story short, both of our buses were about 80 freakin' minutes late and all we could do to pass the time was be frustrated and get ravaged by insomniac mosquitoes. The bus ride to Saigon is only about 4.5 hours anyway so needless to say I did not get much sleep last night.

The bus ride from Nha Trang in the morning was equally unpleasant. Due to the incessant and unbelievably loud honking from the bus, I didn't get a moment of peace even though we were driving through some very nice countryside. Word of the wise to bus travelers in Vietnam: Sit in the middle of the bus to attenuate the sounds coming from your bus ahead of you, and vehicles behind.

So early this morning, I checked into a guidebook recommended hotel in Saigon and slept luxuriously in until noon.

SCUBA training

Gonna fill in more text later since the space bar on this keyboard is a bit temperamental, but check out pics from my recent PADI Open Water Diver Certification!


Gearing up


First open water dive a-OK


Underwater navigation training


Ee(l)k


Cheeky fellow




Potentially lethal


Jenny and instructor, Tri


Heading back after the final dive

Nha Trang and Scuba training

I said goodbye to Hoi An the night before last and have now been in the beach town of Nha Trang in South Vietnam for 2 days and a night. I've been getting around in Vietnam by bus--$50 buys you a get-on-get-off ride from Hanoi all the way to Saigon via Hue, Hoi An and Nha Trang on sleeper buses but I'm learning each ride is a bit different. From Hanoi to Hoi An, it was more or less bunk bed style with each person having their own little Asian-proportioned rectangle with a pillow and blanket. I must say that in the states I'm always hard-pressed to find clothes in small sizes (especially on the sale racks), but here in Asia I'm blessed to be sized more like the locals because I can only imagine how uncomfortable long transit rides would be for taller people all folded up like. Anyway, the bus ride from Hoi An was a bit more intimate, with nary a separation between fellow passengers. Here's a shot of me with my bus mates to give you an idea of what an overnight bus ride can be like in Vietnam:


When I woke up in the morning, the guy to my left was mysteriously gone. Thankfully my wallet was not

So we arrived in Nha Trang early in the morning and of course were dumped in front of some guest house in cahoots with the bus company. Still too groggy (and stoned from the sleeping pill) to put up a fight, I checked in and took a nice snooze before heading out to see what the town has to offer. Basically, I just signed up for a PADI scuba diving certification course which started today and hung out at the beach. At the diving office I was warned sternly to be vigilant about keeping an eye on my possessions and sure enough, I witnessed an attempted theft.

It's crazy how fast it all happened. I was just sitting on a bench drying off a bit when I noticed a Vietnamese guy quickly bend down and toss a handbag that belonged to some snoozing French group to a fellow accomplice. I shouted "Hey!" but already running towards the guys was a beach security dude that smacked one of them right over the head with a big ugly stick! The thieves were both apprehended and tied to a lamppost while I assume the police were en route--I didn't stick around to see their ultimate fate:


Bad seeds


Lovely Nha Trang beach

After the beach, I went back to my hotel room, did my scuba training homework (requires quite a bit of outside work I'm finding) and then went to a nearby restaurant/bar where I played the worst, most embarrassing pool games of my life (OK, I still won every one, but I was ashamed nonetheless).

Scuba Training Day 1:

So I can't believe it's taken me 25 years to decide to get scuba certified. Having always grown up with a pool, I've been a fish since 3 or so and will take any excuse to play around in some water. My favorite things to do were to a) take some of my dad's free weights, hold them to my chest and just lie on my back at the bottom of the pool staring up at the surface for as long as I could hold my breath or b) fill my goggles with water and walk around on land with my eyes open, pretending like I was breathing under water. So it makes sense that being able to sustainedly breathe under water (albeit with a bit of cumbersome gear) would be a thrill and now after just one day of training (in just a swimming pool) I know that diving is going to be a blast and something I'll be planning future vacations around for sure.

My instructor is Vietnamese but speaks very good English and just one other girl from Dublin is in the 3-day course with me. I've heard it can be done for cheaper than the $300 I'm paying, but the center is 5-star PADI rated and seems top-notch so I'm satisfied. In two more days I'll have my certificate and 3 days from now will get my two free dives and then be off to Saigon!

In a way, I'm a bit sad that I'm tied up in Nha Trang for 4 days since it probably means sacrificing a trip to Dalat in the mountains in order to give Cambodia enough time, but it does force me to kick up my heels a bit since after the dive course of the day, there's not much to do aside from hang out at the beach and knock back some cheap beers. I have to be reminded sometimes that this trip is as much about totally unwinding and relaxing before 5 years of indentured servitude (a.k.a. grad school) as about adventure and seeing exotic locales.

Oh yeah, and for anyone that follows the pageant circuit, you'd know that Miss Universe 2008 was held in Nha Trang the last few days. Apparently rather than drinking cheap beer and playing pool, I could have been schmoozing with Roberto Cavalli at one of the hipper beach bars last night. Oh well, he probably would have spit on me anyway considering I've been wearing the same cheap-ass clothes for the last few days straight.

Alright, time to hit the books...first open water dives tomorrow morning!

A moment of silence...

...for my dear clothes that have all been returned to me with bleach marks all over them after getting laundered this afternoon >=( It's not like I have all that many clothes to begin with, preferring to spend my money on other frivolities, so when every single t-shirts I bring (plus the nifty new ones I picked up in Thailand and Japan) are ruined, what am I to do? I just thank god the pricey shorts and pants I picked up from REI before I left didn't make it into the wash or I'd be really screwed. Damn damn damn. This means I have to spend the better part of tomorrow buying stupid kitschy t-shirts in vogue with the young backpacker crowd ("Same same," "Don't worry, be hap phuoc," Vietnamese flag tees etc. etc. if you were here you'd understand what I'm talking about). When the launderers that the hotel outserviced to are open tomorrow morning, I'm gonna do my best to awaken some latent genes I know I inherited from my dad and make a grand old fuss. Until then, a candle light vigil for the Wildlife Works shirt Chris got me for my birthday, the kawaii tee I picked up in Harajuku Japan and the quirky thing I picked up in Chiang Mai. (I'm overdue for some new underwear anyway so that's no big loss).

On a happier note, I rented a motorbike today and biked about 30km to a white sands beach I had nearly to myself. The water was a sublime temperature and as far out as 400 meter from shore I could still stand with my head above the water. I've been hanging out with some lovely Irish girls whom I'm about to meet for a drink so I'm off.

Vietnam: Halong Bay

Halong Bay was absolutely stunning and despite being on the very lower end of the pay-scale, the accommodations were actually quite nice.

From Hanoi, a group of 12 or so of us took a minivan to Halong city where we embarked on our quaint yet charming junk. The scenery obviously was the highlight so I won't go too in depth into what we actually did, but we kayaked in the bay, swam, visited a cave and got our overpriced drink on at night. We spent just one night on the boat and then spent the next morning motoring back to the harbor where we were whisked back to the bustle of Hanoi. Here's some pictures from on the bay:


Despite looking overcast, the weather was quite pleasant


There's tiny little floating villages with submerged nets full of all manner of aquatic fauna


Sunset over Halong Bay

After spending a few hours in Hanoi, I embarked on my overnight "sleeper" bus to Hoi An--a city renowned for its excellent tailors. It's a real shame I never really have occasion to wear expensive threads since I could get a nice tailor made suit here for nothing...oh well. I was planning on only spending a day here before heading to Nha Trang but as tonight's bus is full, I'm going to have to wait until tomorrow. Time to hop on a motorbike and head to the beach!

Thai food

I forgot to post this sooner, but my friend Jess mentioned a while ago in my Pattaya post has been taking some really amazing pics of the food in Thailand. Check out her photo album here if you want to see some of the treats in the markets.

Bon Apetit!

Hanoi

Firstly, OTC valium is a godsend. I was literally conscious for about four hours during the whole 24 it took to get to Hanoi from Vientiane much to the envy of my fellow travelers. So I'm staying now for the second night in a cheap hotel in the old quarter of Hanoi with two British and one Belgium guy I met on the bus ride over. We all get along quite well and together the room only comes to $3 a person...sweet.

This morning, we basically just figured out how to get out of Hanoi. This city is madness. Not as big, dirty and polluted as Bangkok but the racket that is day-to-day life here is already grating at my nerves. There's maybe one car to every 100 motorbikes zipping around the narrow streets and it seems like the horn is used nearly as much as the accelerator. If bats use echolocation to maneuver around unseen objects, the Vietnamese do the functional inverse--honking copiously at anything that appears in their line of vision. It's a total mystery why they even bother because everyone here is completely inured to the sound of horns anyway.

So as I was saying, today we booked an overnight trip to Halong Bay leaving tomorrow morning. We'll stay in a junk overnight and have some time to swim around or kayak amongst the limestone karsts...looking forward to it. I also bought a get-on-get-off sleeper bus ticket that gets me all the way to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) by way of Hue, Hoi An, and Na Trang. It breaks my heart, but I decided I didn't have time to get to Sapa in the north (quite near the Chinese border) since it looks absolutely stunning:



Plus to get anywhere so picturesque requires a good bit of trekking which I'm frankly not really up for anymore. I'm not sure how long I'll hang out in Hue and Hoi An, but Nha Trang is a beach town so it'll be nice to get some sun and snorkeling in since after nearly a month in SEA, I haven't yet been to a single beach!

So today I taxied around Hanoi and took in the sights. Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum pictured below was unfortunately closed by the time we got there so I couldn't see Mr. Minh's embalmed carcass, but I remember Mr. Taylor mentioning a long time ago that it's not in very good shape compared to Lenin's which I saw way back in 2001 so maybe that's ok.

From Vietnam

It's in there somewhere


A view from the former residence

After that we took a look at the Temple of Literature and some other sights--none all too picturesque.

The highlight of the day was a water puppet performance I just got back from. There was live music which was awesome since I even recognized the look and sound of a few from my "Music of Asia and Oceania" music class in college and the performance was pretty whimsical. Basically the stage is water and there's some reeds towards the bag that hide the puppeteers with their puppets affixed to long bamboo poles. Here's a shot of the performance poached from some random person's blog...I'm almost positive this is the same theater though:



Right then, time to pack up and get to bed. Another UNESCO world heritage sight is on the horizon tomorrow so look for some awesome pictures soon!

Escape from Vientiane: Redux

I may live to regret it, but I ended up getting the bus ticket to Hanoi departing tonight. The folks at the front desk even gave me my money back for the room I had paid for for tonight. That's the great thing about Laos, really...everyone is so nice and laid back. I'm actually a little bit nervous about Hanoi because I've heard from so many people how pushy and tiring the Vietnamese can be. For example, last night I was hanging out with an American couple who I met on the kayaking trip and at a little shop, I accidentally handed the shopkeep 20,000 kip instead of 2,000 (the notes can be confusing). The shopkeep just laughed and handed me back my money. Rebecka and Miguel told me that in Vietnam, that money would be gone. Furthermore, people will deliberately hand you back incorrect change and pass it off as a joke if you catch on and complain. It's such climates that can be especially taxing on the solo traveler since no one's got your back and you don't have the whole strength in numbers upper-hand during bargaining and negotiations.

Aside from such concerns though, I'm getting along well on my own. It's much easier to meet people on the backpacking circuit in Asia compared to some of my other travels in Europe, for example. Only a few times have I felt lonely--I think there have actually been more times when I would have liked to be off totally on my own during a hike or in the jungle for example. That being said though, there are so many experiences that would be enhanced by having a good friend along for the ride. The fact that I'm posting twice today definitely shows my lack of motivation to do anything at the moment...it'd be nice to have a friend along to at least chat with.

Anyway, today I just did some shopping and visited the Lao answer to the Arc d'Triomphe. I think knock-off shopping is my new favorite thing to do in the big cities. I picked up the 24-disc DVD box set of Studio Ghibli (makers of Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke etc.) for like $30...probably costs more than $150 in the states. If anyone has any movie/DVD/video game (wii games for $5!) requests, let me know.

The Arc d'Triomphe is a beast of concrete. The expats call it the "Vertical Runway" since it was made from cement the US donated to Laos to lay an airport tarmac. I love the sign on it...it's clear the Lao don't have much reverence for the thing either:


It's a lot more derelict looking inside


Lol

OK, that's it for Laos. I'll miss it for sure and am glad I saw it when I did. Something tells me this gentle country which is still more or less below most people's radar will see big changes as surrounding countries like Thailand and Vietnam become tourist-saturated and the spillover starts flowing into Laos. Wish me luck on my 20 hour bus ride to Hanoi (and time spent in Vietnam thereafter).

Escape from Vientiane

So Vientiane is nice enough...a sleepy capital town worth maybe a day but right now, having been here less than 16 hours, I'm feeling like there's no good way to leave.

I'm at a fork in the road at this point in my trip. From here, I can either take a grueling ride to Hanoi (20 hours!), work my way south through Vietnam, then cross overland into Cambodia and then to Bangkok where I'll catch a flight to the islands in the south. Or the other option is to head south now to Cambodia, go overland to Ho Chi Minh City, work my way north to Hanoi and then take a cheap flight to get to Bangkok. Either way it looks like it will take at least two days to get to my next destination and as it's Sunday here, all the booking agencies are closed, making it incredibly hard to try and arrange the multi-legged journey. I'd even be tempted to spend the money on a flight on Lao airlines to Hanoi (despite their dubious safety record), but the website says I have to book 3 days in advance.

Argh, I thought I was settling into the pace of things here, but now all of a sudden 3.5 more weeks in Asia does not seem like adequate time to cover Cambodia and Vietnam with some time for R&R on the islands in the south of Thailand, particularly when it's going to take days to get to my next destination. I guess another decision I have to make is whether it's worthwhile to extend my trip a bit and fly back maybe a week or two later. The fee itself is not inconsequential, however I'm more concerned about having enough time to find a nice place in Berkeley before school starts and also having a bit of time for summer in California. I still need to wrap up some things in the lab, would love to go camping for a spell and of course spend lots of time with friends who may sadly become seen less often once I start grad school in a different town.

Time to sign off...got some serious thinking to do.

Luang Prabang and Vang Vieng

Firstly, I'm sitting in an internet cafe where I'm trying to get my virus-infested memory card recovered. Pray it works or I'll lose all my pics save the few I've uploaded so far! =(

Luang Prabang

LP is a charming little town--so much so that it's a UNESCO world heritage sight. The French influence is apparent in the architecture and even more excitingly in the cuisine. There's tons of cheap baguette sandwich stands and delicious french-press coffee (mixed with sweetened condensed milk it's just lovely). Looking back, I didn't do all too much in Luang Prabang, really. Like all Lao towns I'm discovering, it's pretty laid back and I'm continuing to slow down to the pace of life here. I walk at about half the speed I usually do (any faster and you break into a sweat) and have begun limiting myself to no more than one adventure a day. There's so much to be done here but I'm learning that without looking back at the few pictures I take, I'm having trouble assimilating all the memories. The law of diminishing returns rules--the more you do, the less you get out of it (and the more god-awful tired/sore etc. you are the next day). Not to mention the budget constraints. In SE Asia, you can easily get by on $10 a day if you're just hanging out. This breaks down to roughly $5/night for a decent guest house ("decent" heretofore defined as clean, private bathroom, hot shower and fan. A "nice" guest house would also include A/C and have some ambiance...maybe $7-8/night), $4 for non-sit down meals (e.g. street food) and $1 for a beer with dinner. However a ride to a waterfall, inner-tubing down the river, rock climbing or what have you will inevitably add $5 to $20 a day so you can't always be doing something. After all, at home I would probably be lying around the pool reading my book right now so why can't I just lie by a river in Asia and do the same (with a cheap cocktail in hand)?

Anyway, so the first night in LP I just headed to a bar and bumped into a guy I met on the bus ride over and had a nice chat. The next day I took a 40 minute van ride outside of town to a public waterfall/water park that was totally awesome. It required some slippery hiking to the top pool but it was worth it to jump into the cool water at the top. Some pics





Later that evening, I met up with some of my fellow waterfall for a drink and the next day was off to Vang Vieng.

Vang Vieng

OK, so the more culturally attuned, sensitive and experienced backpacker (which I, at times, fancy myself to be) will generally avoid Vang Vieng because it has a bit of a sordid reputation. As if Khao San road in Bangkok ran amok and took over a whole little town, VV is a place crawling with cushiony video bars playing old Friends episodes where groups of young backpackers in fake dreadlocks languish and load up on cheap lao beer and other intoxicants quietly ordered from the "happy" menus. I came here mainly because I didn't want to be on a bus all day to get to my next stop, Vientiane (the capital) and because the other main attraction is inner tubing down the bar-lined river which is supposed to be a blast. I took a mini-bus here and was on board with four Dubliners and an English girl traveling with them and we shared a tuk-tuk into town from the bus stop and decided to share rooms at the guest house even. I shared a room with Sonya--large, gregarious and loads of fun and Aaron, a young lad on leave from the Irish army. The lot of us went out to dinner together but it was only Aaron, Sonya and I who were up for a drink afterwards so we bonded over lao beer.

The next day we got an early start on our tubing adventure. The 4 km stretch of river only takes about an hour to float down by tube, but the point of the whole thing is really to do it pissed out of your mind (stupid, and yes there are deaths every so often) so it can take quite a lot longer depending on how much time you spend in the bars. I took it relatively easy--for safety's sake and because drinking ALL day is not so pleasant of course, but mainly because I was having way too much fun on the various trapeze swings they had at each bar that went into the river! Some were probably high-dive height and by the end of the day, I was kipping into back-flips to the drunken crowd's applause. Unfortunately, early on as I was clambering out of the river I scraped my leg up on a hidden rock. The kind woman at the bar took a look at it and wasted no time pouring whiskey all over it (you think it's like fire in your throat...try an open wound). Even now it still hasn't scabbed over entirely...another scar another story I suppose.


Ouchie

Later on at one of the bars we played some beach volleyball and I gave my thumb a good jam. So really I guess when it comes down to it, there's no way to escape tubing in Vang Vieng without some corporeal damage. After recovering for a bit, I decided to move to a different guest house on the quieter west side of the river...some really nice simple bungalows. When I stepped out onto the porch this morning, I found a friendly roommate...



I took it real easy today and just took a walk through the wilderness and hiked to the top of one of the limestone karsts. The landscape here is enchanthing with rice paddies in the valleys and tree-covered, jagged peaks all about.


I went up there

Thank god my memory card has just been recovered, but sadly I lost a few recent pics of the awesome view from the top. On the way down, my shoes got so caked with mud that I started slipping around and gashed my hand open falling onto a rock. Now, this tired, sore, mangled lump of flesh is going to call it a night. Tomorrow I'm kayaking half-way to Vientiane and need some good rest!