Photos: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2059952&l=4eadc&id=1101094
My overnight bus arrived in Hanoi the following morning at 7:30, and I dropped my pack at a guesthouse and set off to Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum to view Ho Chi Minh’s preserved body. Immediately I came face to face with Hanoi’s wretched traffic. Though Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, has two million fewer people than Ho Chi Minh City, its traffic is less tolerable because of its narrow streets. And because the entire sidewalk is taken up by street vendors, the only place to walk is on the road, where you’re constantly dodging motorbikes and half-expecting one to ram you from behind at any moment.
As I made my way through the busy streets, I realized two more things about Hanoi: it’s the dirtiest city that I’d seen in Vietnam, and its people are the least friendly. Here, when I refused a motorbike ride (which happened approximately every thirty seconds) I was met with glares and grumbles. Is it so wrong that I prefer to walk? Plenty of Vietnamese people were walking along with me, and not one of them got asked if they wanted a motorbike ride.
I ate breakfast at a dirty looking pho stand, and despite appearances had the best bowl of noodles of my entire stay in Vietnam. I guess this shouldn’t have surprised me considering pho originated in Hanoi.
When I arrived at Ho Chi Minh’s tomb, it was closed. Though my guidebook told me that it was closed on Fridays, apparently it’s really closed on Mondays. This was disappointing, mostly because I was excited to add another Communist leader to my bodies count. I had already seen formaldehyde-Lenin and formaldehyde-Mao; all that was left was formaldehyde-Ho Chi Minh! But my disappointment was tempered by the realization that I would be back to Hanoi in a few months on my way into southern China. I just need to make sure I’m not here on a Monday again.
I spent the rest of the morning wandering around the Old Quarter of Hanoi which, if not for the trash, the river of motorbikes, and the blasting of motorbike horns, would be quite attractive. Colonial buildings line the narrow alleyways, and in the middle of it all is an attractive lake called Hoan Kiem. I visited a quiet temple in the middle of the lake and stayed there for over an hour, enjoying the break from the stress of the city.
Directions in Hanoi are complicated by the fact that roads change names every few blocks or so. During my 900m walk from the lake to my guesthouse, the road changed names four times. And the one time I took a motorbike, I asked to go to the intersection of two major roads and the driver had no idea what I was talking about. I think people talk about directions here in terms of landmarks rather than road names.
That afternoon I visited Van Mieu (Temple of Literature), an 11th Century complex that served as a university dedicated to the education of mandarins. As in Hoi An, here again Vietnam’s historic links with China are clear: the temple was dedicated to none other than Confucius upon its construction in 1070.
Given its age, the buildings of Van Mieu are very well preserved, and the many courtyards and reflecting pools that surround the buildings made for a relaxing walk, not least because of the absence of crazy motorbike drivers.
On the way back to my guesthouse I passed a huge statue of Lenin. Clearly, Vietnam is much enamored with the man, as the major city park in Hanoi is also named after him.
That evening I attended a traditional water puppet performance at the municipal theater. Though I had low expectations going in (the tickets cost $1.25), the performance was actually quite entertaining despite the fact that I had no idea what the puppets were saying. The music was good, and many of the scenes involved fishing or fighting, which are easy enough to follow even without understanding the language. The performance was short—just over an hour—but it was one of the most entertaining hours I spent in Vietnam.
After the puppet show I downed my last round of Vietnamese food and topped it off with a few French-style pastries (clearly the best remnant of colonialism). The following morning I’d catch a flight to Kuala Lumpur and then on the Bali.
Overall impressions of Vietnam? Not so different than those I expressed back in Ho Chi Minh City. The traffic is terrible, the people are less friendly than most anywhere in Southeast Asia, and everything from food to accommodations is more expensive than in neighboring countries. But the food is excellent, the scenery is stunning, and the culture and history are fascinating. I came away liking the place, though not in any big hurry to return (besides a short stay in Hanoi, Halong Bay, and Sapa in two months).
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Days 139 – 141: Hue
Photos: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2059950&l=817c7&id=1101094
The following morning I caught a bus to Hue and experienced my first daylight intercity travel since I’d entered Vietnam. The road wound along the South China Sea coastline, and the views from the cliffs were at times spectacular, and I found myself half-wishing that I’d taken fewer night buses on the way up the coast. But twelve hour bus rides really are far more painful when they don’t include at least ten hours of sleep.
The weather worsened throughout the five hour journey, and by the time we reached Hue the sky was dark and a slight drizzle was falling. The temperature had also dropped considerably—I’d guess it was only 60 degrees or so. Seeing as I had two more days in Hue, I decided to wait for the weather to get better before wandering around the town, and I spent most of the afternoon reading in a café near my guesthouse.
But the following morning the weather was even worse. The air was just as cold, and the drizzle had turned to a steady rain. I ate a leisurely breakfast and waited for the clouds to clear, but they never did, so in the late morning I set out to see Hue in the rain.
Hue has historically been a very important Vietnamese city, although today it seems like more of a museum. Hue served as the political capital of Vietnam during the Nguyen dynasty, from 1802 to 1945, and it was during this time that the impressive Citadel was built. Situated on the north bank of the Song Huong (Perfume River), the Citadel measures four square kilometers and is enclosed by a thick 6m wall. Though the structure was heavily bombed by the US during the Vietnam War, most of the important imperial buildings still remain, although most of the rest of the land inside the walls is now used for agriculture.
I spent the entire afternoon wandering around the grounds of the Citadel. Though the architecture of the temples and palaces was impressive, the cold rain hardly added to my enjoyment of the place, and by the late afternoon I was cold and covered in mud from the knee down. I walked over the Song River bridge and back to my guesthouse, excited for a hot shower. Unfortunately, the hot shower lasted only two minutes and was followed by a frigid shower. Hot water heaters are not Southeast Asia’s forte.
I was hoping to take a riverboat down the Song Huong the following day to visit an important temple and a few royal tombs, but I awoke to more cold rain and I bagged the idea. Instead, I walked four kilometers down the river and visited the temple, which was called Thien Mu Pagoda. Apparently the temple is one of the most holy temples in Vietnam, but I saw far more tourists with cameras that worshipers in the two hours I was there. The thing I found most interesting about the temple was that it was the home pagoda of Thich Quang Duc, the monk who burned himself in Saigon in 1963 to protest the oppressive policies of then-president Ngo Dinh Diem. I’m guessing you’ve all seen the famous photo of the burning, but if you haven’t it’s on the cover of Rage Against the Machine’s self-titled album.
By midday I had seen all I cared to see of Hue, and the constant rain meant that wandering around the city was a less-than-appealing option, so I stopped by the city market and then passed the last few hours before my bus came in a café, finishing Pride and Prejudice and starting Love in the Time of Cholera.
The following morning I caught a bus to Hue and experienced my first daylight intercity travel since I’d entered Vietnam. The road wound along the South China Sea coastline, and the views from the cliffs were at times spectacular, and I found myself half-wishing that I’d taken fewer night buses on the way up the coast. But twelve hour bus rides really are far more painful when they don’t include at least ten hours of sleep.
The weather worsened throughout the five hour journey, and by the time we reached Hue the sky was dark and a slight drizzle was falling. The temperature had also dropped considerably—I’d guess it was only 60 degrees or so. Seeing as I had two more days in Hue, I decided to wait for the weather to get better before wandering around the town, and I spent most of the afternoon reading in a café near my guesthouse.
But the following morning the weather was even worse. The air was just as cold, and the drizzle had turned to a steady rain. I ate a leisurely breakfast and waited for the clouds to clear, but they never did, so in the late morning I set out to see Hue in the rain.
Hue has historically been a very important Vietnamese city, although today it seems like more of a museum. Hue served as the political capital of Vietnam during the Nguyen dynasty, from 1802 to 1945, and it was during this time that the impressive Citadel was built. Situated on the north bank of the Song Huong (Perfume River), the Citadel measures four square kilometers and is enclosed by a thick 6m wall. Though the structure was heavily bombed by the US during the Vietnam War, most of the important imperial buildings still remain, although most of the rest of the land inside the walls is now used for agriculture.
I spent the entire afternoon wandering around the grounds of the Citadel. Though the architecture of the temples and palaces was impressive, the cold rain hardly added to my enjoyment of the place, and by the late afternoon I was cold and covered in mud from the knee down. I walked over the Song River bridge and back to my guesthouse, excited for a hot shower. Unfortunately, the hot shower lasted only two minutes and was followed by a frigid shower. Hot water heaters are not Southeast Asia’s forte.
I was hoping to take a riverboat down the Song Huong the following day to visit an important temple and a few royal tombs, but I awoke to more cold rain and I bagged the idea. Instead, I walked four kilometers down the river and visited the temple, which was called Thien Mu Pagoda. Apparently the temple is one of the most holy temples in Vietnam, but I saw far more tourists with cameras that worshipers in the two hours I was there. The thing I found most interesting about the temple was that it was the home pagoda of Thich Quang Duc, the monk who burned himself in Saigon in 1963 to protest the oppressive policies of then-president Ngo Dinh Diem. I’m guessing you’ve all seen the famous photo of the burning, but if you haven’t it’s on the cover of Rage Against the Machine’s self-titled album.
By midday I had seen all I cared to see of Hue, and the constant rain meant that wandering around the city was a less-than-appealing option, so I stopped by the city market and then passed the last few hours before my bus came in a café, finishing Pride and Prejudice and starting Love in the Time of Cholera.
Days 137 – 138: Hoi An
Photos: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2059947&l=3ae2b&id=1101094
I caught an overnight bus north to Hoi An, and this one was far less restful. Would someone please explain the need to stop at midnight for dinner and turn on the interior bus lights for half an hour? And don’t get me started on the A/C issue again.
I arrived in Hoi An around 7am and checked into a guesthouse with an Argentine girl I had met on the bus. I napped for a bit and managed to get a few solid hours of sleep, and then headed into the Old Town, which was centered around the Thu Bon River.
Hoi An was at one time an important port, visited by Chinese, Japanese, and even European traders. As I wandered through the narrow streets of the Old Town, I saw evidence of these foreign influences—a Japanese covered bridge, a Chinese temple, and Chinese and Japanese characters on many of the buildings. And when I visited an old house that was once owned by a Vietnamese merchant, I found Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese architecture all in one house.
But today Hoi An’s status is much diminished, and the Old Town is now little more than rows of yellow colonial buildings, most of which house silk tailors. There must be several hundred silk tailor shops in Hoi An, which is all the more shocking when you realize that the population of the town is 75,000. I’m a little mystified as to how all these shops stay in business, though I’ll admit that every tourist I saw (except for me) was scooping up hand-tailored clothes with both fists. I would have been right behind them if I’d had the faintest idea when I’d next need fancy clothes on a daily basis.
Wandering around the quaint Hoi An center was quite pleasant, especially after the hustle and bustle of Ho Chi Minh City, and even of Nha Trang. Life in Hoi An seems to move at a slower pace than elsewhere on the Vietnamese coast, and the hassle was diminished as well; while I did frequently get asked if I wanted a motorbike ride, not even one tailor asked me to come into his store. But maybe that was because they all looked at what I was wearing (faded t-shirt and torn jeans) and decided that I clearly had no interest in buying new clothes.
I visited a few temples, one of which was built by Chinese immigrants, as well as a colonial home and even a museum that detailed Hoi An’s architectural history. Though nothing in particular struck my fancy, the overall peace and laid-back attitude of the town made the day one of the most enjoyable that I’d spent in Vietnam.
And that night it got even better. I ate dinner with my Argentine friend at a restaurant overlooking the river, and we sampled some of Hoi An’s traditional dished: white rose (a fancy name for shrimp dumplings), fried wonton topped with shrimp and vegetables, and cau lao (flat noodles, croutons, vegetables, and pork in a tasty broth). Though none of the dishes sounded particularly exciting on paper, everything was excellent, and besides I was grateful to get a break from my usual pho routine.
After dinner the real fun began. It was the first full moon since the Lunar New Year, which meant that the town held a festival along the river. Stages were set up for traditional singing and dancing, and though I had no clue what was going on most of the time, I enjoyed the sudden liveliness that swept over the town and its residents. I even participated in some sort of lottery that involved singing; apparently each person selected three words, and then as the singer in the middle of the circle sang, we checked off our words as he sang them. The first person to hear all their words sung won; needless to say, that person was not me.
Toward the end of the night the festival moved onto the river, and children began lighting candles, placing them in paper floats, and sliding them out onto the water. Coupled with the row boats that glided through the water carrying young Vietnamese lovers, the whole thing made for a wonderfully romantic scene. I toggled between smiles and snickers, though in the end I must admit that I enjoyed myself even in my state of singleness.
After the festival I went for a few beers with the Argentine girl, and at her urging we switched exclusively to Spanish, which gave me the chance to remind myself just how bad my language skills are. I really must live abroad sometime soon or I’m destined to be monolingual for life.
The following day I had planned to rent a bike and ride to the beach, which was 5km outside of town, but I awoke to clouds and rain and spent most of the day working on my Foreign Service application. For those of you who keep track of these things, I take the test March 6th in Jakarta.
By the afternoon the clouds had cleared and I wandered around the Old Town a bit more before visiting the central market (always a delight in Southeast Asian cities) and then going for pizza at a restaurant run by an Italian immigrant. By the time I returned to my guest house, I had grown quite fond of the town and its relaxed ambience. And I’d learn to miss it even more once I encountered Hue’s weather and Hanoi’s whirlwind.
I caught an overnight bus north to Hoi An, and this one was far less restful. Would someone please explain the need to stop at midnight for dinner and turn on the interior bus lights for half an hour? And don’t get me started on the A/C issue again.
I arrived in Hoi An around 7am and checked into a guesthouse with an Argentine girl I had met on the bus. I napped for a bit and managed to get a few solid hours of sleep, and then headed into the Old Town, which was centered around the Thu Bon River.
Hoi An was at one time an important port, visited by Chinese, Japanese, and even European traders. As I wandered through the narrow streets of the Old Town, I saw evidence of these foreign influences—a Japanese covered bridge, a Chinese temple, and Chinese and Japanese characters on many of the buildings. And when I visited an old house that was once owned by a Vietnamese merchant, I found Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese architecture all in one house.
But today Hoi An’s status is much diminished, and the Old Town is now little more than rows of yellow colonial buildings, most of which house silk tailors. There must be several hundred silk tailor shops in Hoi An, which is all the more shocking when you realize that the population of the town is 75,000. I’m a little mystified as to how all these shops stay in business, though I’ll admit that every tourist I saw (except for me) was scooping up hand-tailored clothes with both fists. I would have been right behind them if I’d had the faintest idea when I’d next need fancy clothes on a daily basis.
Wandering around the quaint Hoi An center was quite pleasant, especially after the hustle and bustle of Ho Chi Minh City, and even of Nha Trang. Life in Hoi An seems to move at a slower pace than elsewhere on the Vietnamese coast, and the hassle was diminished as well; while I did frequently get asked if I wanted a motorbike ride, not even one tailor asked me to come into his store. But maybe that was because they all looked at what I was wearing (faded t-shirt and torn jeans) and decided that I clearly had no interest in buying new clothes.
I visited a few temples, one of which was built by Chinese immigrants, as well as a colonial home and even a museum that detailed Hoi An’s architectural history. Though nothing in particular struck my fancy, the overall peace and laid-back attitude of the town made the day one of the most enjoyable that I’d spent in Vietnam.
And that night it got even better. I ate dinner with my Argentine friend at a restaurant overlooking the river, and we sampled some of Hoi An’s traditional dished: white rose (a fancy name for shrimp dumplings), fried wonton topped with shrimp and vegetables, and cau lao (flat noodles, croutons, vegetables, and pork in a tasty broth). Though none of the dishes sounded particularly exciting on paper, everything was excellent, and besides I was grateful to get a break from my usual pho routine.
After dinner the real fun began. It was the first full moon since the Lunar New Year, which meant that the town held a festival along the river. Stages were set up for traditional singing and dancing, and though I had no clue what was going on most of the time, I enjoyed the sudden liveliness that swept over the town and its residents. I even participated in some sort of lottery that involved singing; apparently each person selected three words, and then as the singer in the middle of the circle sang, we checked off our words as he sang them. The first person to hear all their words sung won; needless to say, that person was not me.
Toward the end of the night the festival moved onto the river, and children began lighting candles, placing them in paper floats, and sliding them out onto the water. Coupled with the row boats that glided through the water carrying young Vietnamese lovers, the whole thing made for a wonderfully romantic scene. I toggled between smiles and snickers, though in the end I must admit that I enjoyed myself even in my state of singleness.
After the festival I went for a few beers with the Argentine girl, and at her urging we switched exclusively to Spanish, which gave me the chance to remind myself just how bad my language skills are. I really must live abroad sometime soon or I’m destined to be monolingual for life.
The following day I had planned to rent a bike and ride to the beach, which was 5km outside of town, but I awoke to clouds and rain and spent most of the day working on my Foreign Service application. For those of you who keep track of these things, I take the test March 6th in Jakarta.
By the afternoon the clouds had cleared and I wandered around the Old Town a bit more before visiting the central market (always a delight in Southeast Asian cities) and then going for pizza at a restaurant run by an Italian immigrant. By the time I returned to my guest house, I had grown quite fond of the town and its relaxed ambience. And I’d learn to miss it even more once I encountered Hue’s weather and Hanoi’s whirlwind.
Days 134 – 136: Nha Trang
Photos: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2059945&l=fa338&id=1101094
I arrived at Nha Trang the following morning after a surprisingly restful ride on the night bus; although I hadn’t paid extra for a sleeping bus, I ended up on one anyway, and so I spent the night in a “bed” of sorts instead of a seat.
I escaped the clutches of the motorbike drivers who had swarmed around the bus, walked into town, found a dorm bed for $3, and dropped my pack. After a day wandering around frenetic Saigon, I wanted one thing: peace and quiet on the beach.
I found the beach without problem, but the peace and quiet was a bit harder to come by. Actually, it was nowhere to be found. Even at nine in the morning, the beach was swarming with locals selling everything from books to fruit to massages. I was one of the first foreigners on the beach, but as I learned in visiting India during the low tourist season, that doesn’t make things any better: when you’re the only foreigner, you get all the attention.
All I wanted was to sit on the beach and read, but every minute or so a different hawker would walk up and try to sell me something. I tried ignoring them, but that didn’t work—they just kept saying, “Sir, you buy something?” until I acknowledged them. Then, even after I glanced up and said, “Kom, kam ern” (No thank you), or just “No” if I was feeling lazy, they continued to stand there and ask me to buy something. One of their favorite lines was “You buy now, happy hour! Cheap for you!” Apparently, it is always happy hour in Nha Trang.
Despite my insistence that I didn’t want to buy anything, it took anywhere from fifteen to 30 seconds to get rid of each hawker, and it was only another minute before the next one arrived. And the worst part was that there was no end to the game—the same hawkers kept returning, somehow expecting that my willingness to buy a French romance novel had changed in the past fifteen minutes.
One little girl was so annoying and so persistent that I agreed to buy a bag of chips from her if she would agree to leave me alone for the rest of the day. That was the best 30 cents I ever spent.
Not surprisingly, I got very little reading done. I tried taking a nap for a while, but that didn’t work either, because the hawkers woke me up to ask me if I wanted something to eat or drink. “NOOOOOO!”
The beach itself was wide, golden, and fringed with palm trees, though it wasn’t particularly clean. I was always impressed with how clean Thai beaches were, even when there were loads of tourists on them, but the same thing doesn’t seem to be true of Vietnamese beaches. One fellow backpacker that I talked to argued that Thailand is more aware of the benefits of tourism, and as a result keeps its natural treasures clean to keep the tourists coming. That logic could also explain the exuberant friendliness of Thais compared to their Vietnamese counterparts.
Over the course of the day the beach gradually filled with foreigners, and the hawker visits because less frequent, although they never ceased entirely. The weather was quite nice—lots of sun, and plenty warm for a swim every once in a while. But in the afternoon the wind picked up, and by 4pm sand was flying into my eyes and I decided to call it a day.
That night I ate at an Indian restaurant that was run by an immigrant from New Delhi. We talked about my travels through India a bit, and he told me about his new life in Vietnam. Apparently, things are going quite well for the guy—after his restaurant in Nha Trang did well, he opened satellites in Hoi An and Hue, to similar results. I guess after nonstop noodle soup, every tourist likes a little Indian curry.
The following morning I caught a boat to Hon Mun (Mun Island), which sits about 10km off the Nha Trang coast. The idea was to do some snorkeling, but at the first place the boat stopped it was so windy that waves kept knocking me onto my back. And the waves also kicked up the sand from the ocean floor, making visibility practically nonexistent.
The second stop was inside a semi-sheltered bay, which mostly fixed the wind problem. The reef here was decent, but not quite as good as southern Thailand, and not anywhere near as good as Sumatra. And the species of fish were largely the same. I spent an hour or so in the water, but after that I got quite cold—the water temperature, after all, was only about 72 degrees.
Back in Nha Trang, I spent the afternoon on the beach and dealt with similar hassles from the hawkers. The strange thing is that I didn’t see anyone buying anything from these folks, especially from the ones selling sunglasses, books, and hair clips. I assume that the business must be profitable considering the number of people who do it, but the mechanics of the thing are a mystery to me.
The next morning I rented a motorbike and explored greater Nha Trang. I visited a few temples and some ruins of the Cham civilization that were originally built in the 7th Century, and then I swung back to the coast to visit a rock formation called Hon Chong Promontory that was essentially a collection of granite boulders jutting out into the ocean. I was overjoyed to find an attractive beach just north of the promontory—it wasn’t quite as wide as the main beach in Nha Trang, but it was free of hawkers, and at this point that was all I cared about. Unfortunately, after only a half hour on the beach the clouds rolled in and the wind picked up, and at one point the gusts were so strong that they knocked my motorbike over. Eventually I gave up on the beach, drove back into town, and spent my last hour in Nha Trang reading of the scandalous behavior of Miss Lydia Bennet and Mr. George Wickham. Thank goodness for Mr. Darcy.
I arrived at Nha Trang the following morning after a surprisingly restful ride on the night bus; although I hadn’t paid extra for a sleeping bus, I ended up on one anyway, and so I spent the night in a “bed” of sorts instead of a seat.
I escaped the clutches of the motorbike drivers who had swarmed around the bus, walked into town, found a dorm bed for $3, and dropped my pack. After a day wandering around frenetic Saigon, I wanted one thing: peace and quiet on the beach.
I found the beach without problem, but the peace and quiet was a bit harder to come by. Actually, it was nowhere to be found. Even at nine in the morning, the beach was swarming with locals selling everything from books to fruit to massages. I was one of the first foreigners on the beach, but as I learned in visiting India during the low tourist season, that doesn’t make things any better: when you’re the only foreigner, you get all the attention.
All I wanted was to sit on the beach and read, but every minute or so a different hawker would walk up and try to sell me something. I tried ignoring them, but that didn’t work—they just kept saying, “Sir, you buy something?” until I acknowledged them. Then, even after I glanced up and said, “Kom, kam ern” (No thank you), or just “No” if I was feeling lazy, they continued to stand there and ask me to buy something. One of their favorite lines was “You buy now, happy hour! Cheap for you!” Apparently, it is always happy hour in Nha Trang.
Despite my insistence that I didn’t want to buy anything, it took anywhere from fifteen to 30 seconds to get rid of each hawker, and it was only another minute before the next one arrived. And the worst part was that there was no end to the game—the same hawkers kept returning, somehow expecting that my willingness to buy a French romance novel had changed in the past fifteen minutes.
One little girl was so annoying and so persistent that I agreed to buy a bag of chips from her if she would agree to leave me alone for the rest of the day. That was the best 30 cents I ever spent.
Not surprisingly, I got very little reading done. I tried taking a nap for a while, but that didn’t work either, because the hawkers woke me up to ask me if I wanted something to eat or drink. “NOOOOOO!”
The beach itself was wide, golden, and fringed with palm trees, though it wasn’t particularly clean. I was always impressed with how clean Thai beaches were, even when there were loads of tourists on them, but the same thing doesn’t seem to be true of Vietnamese beaches. One fellow backpacker that I talked to argued that Thailand is more aware of the benefits of tourism, and as a result keeps its natural treasures clean to keep the tourists coming. That logic could also explain the exuberant friendliness of Thais compared to their Vietnamese counterparts.
Over the course of the day the beach gradually filled with foreigners, and the hawker visits because less frequent, although they never ceased entirely. The weather was quite nice—lots of sun, and plenty warm for a swim every once in a while. But in the afternoon the wind picked up, and by 4pm sand was flying into my eyes and I decided to call it a day.
That night I ate at an Indian restaurant that was run by an immigrant from New Delhi. We talked about my travels through India a bit, and he told me about his new life in Vietnam. Apparently, things are going quite well for the guy—after his restaurant in Nha Trang did well, he opened satellites in Hoi An and Hue, to similar results. I guess after nonstop noodle soup, every tourist likes a little Indian curry.
The following morning I caught a boat to Hon Mun (Mun Island), which sits about 10km off the Nha Trang coast. The idea was to do some snorkeling, but at the first place the boat stopped it was so windy that waves kept knocking me onto my back. And the waves also kicked up the sand from the ocean floor, making visibility practically nonexistent.
The second stop was inside a semi-sheltered bay, which mostly fixed the wind problem. The reef here was decent, but not quite as good as southern Thailand, and not anywhere near as good as Sumatra. And the species of fish were largely the same. I spent an hour or so in the water, but after that I got quite cold—the water temperature, after all, was only about 72 degrees.
Back in Nha Trang, I spent the afternoon on the beach and dealt with similar hassles from the hawkers. The strange thing is that I didn’t see anyone buying anything from these folks, especially from the ones selling sunglasses, books, and hair clips. I assume that the business must be profitable considering the number of people who do it, but the mechanics of the thing are a mystery to me.
The next morning I rented a motorbike and explored greater Nha Trang. I visited a few temples and some ruins of the Cham civilization that were originally built in the 7th Century, and then I swung back to the coast to visit a rock formation called Hon Chong Promontory that was essentially a collection of granite boulders jutting out into the ocean. I was overjoyed to find an attractive beach just north of the promontory—it wasn’t quite as wide as the main beach in Nha Trang, but it was free of hawkers, and at this point that was all I cared about. Unfortunately, after only a half hour on the beach the clouds rolled in and the wind picked up, and at one point the gusts were so strong that they knocked my motorbike over. Eventually I gave up on the beach, drove back into town, and spent my last hour in Nha Trang reading of the scandalous behavior of Miss Lydia Bennet and Mr. George Wickham. Thank goodness for Mr. Darcy.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Days 132 – 133: Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
Photos: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2059291&l=c6726&id=1101094
I left Phnom Penh at 7:30 the next morning and, though the trip to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) was only supposed to take six hours, I didn’t arrive in the former South Vietnamese capital until nearly 3pm. Counting the stops on either side of the Cambodian/Vietnamese border, the bus made six stops, two of which were half-hour stops for food. Apparently Cambodians have no interest in getting anywhere quickly, nor do they know what getting food “to go” means.
We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (hereafter HCMC) to a swarm of motorbike drivers and guest house owners, despite the fact that I was one of the only foreigners on the bus. Lucky me. My arms were pulled in about seven directions before I even managed to get my pack out from under the bus, and though I said “Kom, kam ern” (“No, thank you”) over and over again, no one seemed to notice. In the end I just walked down the road with a parade of touts in tow.
I checked about ten places before finding a room; everything was either full or expensive. I ended up paying $9 for a room that was inferior to a room I had paid $2 for in Phnom Penh. So far Vietnam is no bargain.
I dropped my pack and wandered around Central HCMC a bit; the first things I noticed were 1) the incessant motorbike traffic and 2) the unwillingness of motorbike drivers to take “No” for an answer. Ever.
Traffic on most HCMC streets is so bad that you have no hope of finding an opening in which to cross. Similar to Cairo, you just have to walk. But while the method of choice for crossing streets in Cairo is “Close your eyes and open your heart,” in HCMC there is a little more that the pedestrian can do to ensure he doesn’t get popped. The basic strategy is to walk at a constant pace, making eye contact with the motorbike drivers and allowing them to flow around you without making any sudden movements. This can be more difficult than it sounds when piles of metal are whizzing by you at 60 mph, but with a little practice it becomes easy. And, actually, the system is quite convenient for the pedestrian: forget waiting for the “Walk” signal, just go whenever you want.
Motorbike drivers in HCMC are something like rickshaw drivers in India; every one of them wants to give you a ride, and despite all your claims that you do not need a ride, they are completely unwilling to believe you. The average numbers of times I told rickshaw drivers in India “No” before they left me alone was probably ten. For motorbike drivers in HCMC, it’s about five. That may not seem that bad, but when you consider that the figure is two or three in Cambodia and Laos and barely over one in Thailand, you can begin to understand why this is a bit of a shock to the system. I’ve gotten soft since India. Guess it’s time to learn to be emphatic again.
My favorite part about motorbike drivers is that they seem to think that they’ll actually convince you that you need a ride. It’s as if they assume your internal monologue is, Do I need a motorbike ride? Hmm. Where am I going? I have no idea. Do I have anything better to do? Not really. Should I take a motorbike ride? Gosh, maybe I should. “OK, how much?”
Sorry, guys, but I know whether I need a ride or not. Asking me ten times is not going to change my answer. And if I did need a ride, chances are I would have gotten it from one of the ten thousand other motorbike drivers that I passed before I got to you. So how about you let me figure it out from now on, OK?
That night I sampled Vietnam’s most common dish, pho. For those of you who haven’t had it in the US, it’s a bowl of white rice noodles in beef broth and some kind of meat (usually beef) along with garnishes of onions, lime, cilantro, and bean sprouts. But most importantly, it’s cheap and it’s good. I figure I’ll be eating it at least twice a day for the next two weeks.
On the way back to my guesthouse, I was accosted by at least six prostitutes. I’m going to go ahead and assume that I was a popular target simply because I’m a man walking by himself at night, because it’s far too depressing to consider the possibility that I look like someone who would require the services of a prostitute. In any case, apparently there’s something to the term “Saigon whore.”
The following morning after a bowl of pho in the main market, I checked out the sights of HCMC, which revolve around the Vietnam War, or, in the local nomenclature, the American Aggression War. I first visited the Reunification Palace, which was called the Independence Palace from when it was built in 1966 until the Viet Cong overran it in 1975. Today, it’s nothing but a museum, and it’s been left in the exact state that it was in back when it was taken by North Vietnamese forces in April 1975 (well, minus the battle scars).
The inside resembles a Western-style palace, with fancy dining and entertaining rooms as well as a “gambling room” and a movie theater. But the most interesting part was the film that was shown in the basement. Clearly made by the Vietnamese government, the film gives an account of the Vietnam War that doesn’t even attempt to be unbiased. The narrator refers to the North Vietnamese army as “our army,” American forces as “the American imperialists,” and the war as “the American Aggression War” and “the unjust war.” Another favorite soundbite of mine was “the Americans said that the targets of their bombings were military, but they were really civilian.” Perhaps a bit harsh.
The next stop on my tour was the War Remnants Museum, which is filled with even more propaganda than the Reunification Palace. The general theme of the museum is “The Americans came in here with their guns and bombs, and look what they did to us.” Hundreds of photos of dead or dying Vietnamese soldiers and civilians are on display, as are American (but not Vietnamese) guns and tanks. Strangely, the museum felt much like the Tuol Sleng prison that I visited in Phnom Penh—but that was a former prison where innocent civilians were tortured and murdered by an evil regime. The War Remnants Museum, it seems, conveniently left out that all these atrocities happened during a war; yes, perhaps an unjust war, but still a war. It’s not as if the Americans came in, rounded civilians up, sent them to prisons, and systematically murdered them.
In any case, it’s clear that the Vietnamese government is determined to advance the theory that the war was nothing but an unjust American intervention into the affairs of a free and independent country. Whether the local population feels the same way I can’t say. I haven’t brought the subject up and I don’t plan to.
Having eaten nothing but pho since my arrival in Vietnam, I decided to get my Western food kick at the local KFC that afternoon. As far as I can tell, KFC is the only foreign fast food chain in HCMC. That may sound strange, but for some reason KFC is immensely popular in Asia. In China, for instance, it comes a close second to McDonald’s; Burger King and Wendy’s are not even in the race.
But KFC in Asia is not quite the same as KFC in America. First off, there are no biscuits. You’re probably saying, “What’s the point of KFC if there are no biscuits?” My answer: “I’m not sure.” When I first visited KFC in Shanghai and asked for a biscuit only to find it wasn’t on the menu, I was devastated. And in Vietnam the situation isn’t any better.
But KFC in Vietnam does have rice covered in heavy gravy. In case that’s what you were craving. And you’ll get your Pepsi in a glass rather than in a paper cup. And an employee will open the door for you as you enter and leave the restaurant. This place is high class, baby.
I tried to keep things as Western as possible, considering that was the entire point of the visit, and ordered a “Zinger” (spicy chicken) “burger” (sandwich), fries (fries at KFC? WHAT ABOUT BISCUITS?), and a Pepsi. I’m now ready for a few more meals of pho.
That afternoon I walked down to the Saigon River, which isn’t particularly attractive, and roamed around the posh Dong Khoi section of town, which is home to a Louis Vuitton, a Burberry, and a Tag-Heuer, as well as the largest church (Notre Dame Cathedral), mosque, and Hindu Temple in town. As the day went on I began to find the city, which at nearly 6 million people is Vietnam’s largest, more attractive, although the traffic and the smog limit the aesthetic appeal. Nevertheless, by the evening I was more than ready to head north to cooler weather and, more importantly, the beach. Next stop Nha Trang, for some swimming, snorkeling, sunbathing, and all those other "S" words.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Day 131: Battambang to Phnom Penh
The following day I left for Phnom Penh; I’d layover there before heading for Ho Chi Minh City, in Vietnam, the next morning.
The day was uneventful, and I used the free time in Phnom Penh to post some blog entries and pictures and catch up on emails.
But before I turn to Vietnam, I’ll mention a couple interesting things about Cambodia that I haven’t yet discussed. First of all, of all the ATMs in the country (in contrast to Laos, there are many), not one of them dispenses riel, the country’s official currency. They all dispense US dollars. Though I had been using dollars throughout my stay in northeast Cambodia, I had only done so because there were no ATMs; I hadn’t considered the possibility that US dollars were actually a semi-official form of currency. This marked the first time I’d been able to withdraw US dollars from a foreign ATM since Central America.
Secondly, no matter where you are in Cambodia, you’ll see countless signs displaying the names of the country’s major political parties. And these aren’t homemade signs—they’re large, metal, official, standardized signs that resemble ones you might see posting the distance to the next exit on an American highway. Apparently Cambodian political parties spend a good deal of money manufacturing these signs and then giving them to people to put in front of their homes. In some villages, more than half of the houses have a sign in front. The whole thing makes the campaign signs that we put in our front yard in the US look rather second rate.
Finally, I’ve never visited a country whose buses made more stops per hour than Cambodia’s. As I mentioned before, many of the stops I witnessed were necessary to keep the engine from overheating, but even when I was on buses that had no need to stop, they stopped anyway. On my five hour bus rides from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap and Battambang to Phnom Penh, the bus stopped twice for people to use the bathroom, and twice more for food—and not snacks, mind you, but sit down meals! I added up the total stoppage time on the trip from Battambang to Phnom Penh, and it came to over an hour and a half. All of it jives with the prevailing Cambodian mindset, though—“What’s the hurry?”
Oh, and Happy Valentine's Day.
Days 129 – 130: Battambang
Photos: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2059207&l=fad49&id=1101094
I set off the following morning on a boat for Battambang, which, at population 158,000, is somehow the second largest city in Cambodia. The boat first motored down the Stung Siem Reap (Siem Reap River), then across the Tonle Sap, Asia’s largest lake, and finally up the Stung Sangker (Sangker River), on the banks of which Battambang sits.
I had taken the boat (as opposed to the bus) for two reasons: the road from Siem Reap to Battambang was notoriously bad, and the boat ride was supposed to take in some of the finest scenery in all of Cambodia. Sure enough, the scenery did not disappoint; we wound through green countryside, palm trees, and villages of bamboo houses, many of which were floating on the water. In every village we passed, children ran out to the riverbank to wave at us and then splashed into the river to play in the waves of the boat’s wake. I was struck by how friendly and happy everyone seemed, despite that fact that most of the villages we passed were dirt poor.
The one thing that no one had mentioned about the boat trip was that in the dry season, when water levels are low, the boat can hardly fit up the Stung Sangker. As the bends in the river became sharper and sharper, the boat began sticking in the mud every few minutes; at one point, the engine even stopped from sucking in too much mud. In the end, the six hour trip to Battambang became a ten hour marathon.
That night in Battambang I ate dinner at a local ex-pat hangout called the Riverside Balcony Bar. Though I usually stay away from such places, the food at this one was supposed to be excellent, and besides, after Siem Reap package tourists Battambang ex-pats would be a pleasure. Over burgers, fries, and apples crepes, I talked with two Canadian couples who worked for agricultural NGOs in and around Battambang. They had lived in Cambodia for nearly four years, and seemed more than ready to leave. Their main claim to fame was that Angelina Jolie’s NGO was just down the road.
The following day I rented a motorbike and explored the countryside around Battambang. Everywhere I went I was the subject of stares and shouts of “Barang, Barang!” (Westerner). I visited two temples, one of which, Wat Banan, was built in the 12th Century, a century before Angkor Wat, and looks like a mini version of the famous temple. The locals tried to tell me that it served as the model for Angkor, though that may be a stretch.
The other temple was at the top of a mountain called Phnom Sampeau. On the way up the mountain, I passed two guns that were used in the Vietnam War, one German and one Russian, as well as a cave used by the Khmer Rouge. The temple itself, at the peak of the hill, was once used by the Khmer Rouge as a prison.
On the way back to Battambang, I took a ride on the bamboo train, which is really just a small bamboo platform on wheels that is powered by a tiny motor. It runs on the main rail line, which is all but abandoned now (only one train per week traverses the line), and locals use it to get from their villages into Battambang.
Back in town, I had a quiet dinner at a local cooking school that has an attached restaurant. Sitting there on the patio, I decided that I really liked this town, though for a while I couldn’t put my finger on why. In the end I think it’s a combination of the pace of life, which is a welcome slowdown from the constant buzz of Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, and, as one of the few tourists around, the feeling that I was actually experiencing the real Cambodia that makes the place so appealing. In some ways the town reminds me of Chiang Mai, Thailand, though far less discovered.
Days 127 – 128: Siem Reap
Photos: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2059206&l=19eaa&id=1101094
I caught a mid-morning bus to Siem Reap the following day, taking special care not to end up on the same type of bus that I’d been on for the last two trips. That wasn’t very hard to do, considering the Phnom Penh to Siem Reap route is the most popular in the country for both locals and tourists. I ended up on something akin to a Greyhound and slept for most of the six hour journey.
At the bus station in Siem Reap I got my first taste of aggressive tuk tuk drivers since India. As the bus pulled into the station, the drivers sprinted alongside the bus waving signs for their services, and by the time the bus had come to a full stop the tuk tuk driver sea outside the bus door was at least 50 people thick. We walked down the bus steps into a tangle of groping arms, sweaty bodies, and paper signs. I’d forgotten how much I missed India.
I found a tuk tuk driver from the guesthouse at which I planned to stay and caught a free ride into town. On the way I negotiated with the driver to take me around to the Temples of Angkor the following day. I’d hoped to rent a motorbike and explore the temples on my own, but apparently tourists have been in so many wrecks in and around Siem Reap that the local government banned motorbike rental for foreigners. Given that it was Siem Reap, the package tourist capital of Southeast Asia, I wasn’t surprised.
I agreed to meet my driver the following morning at 5:30 so I could catch the sunrise over the temples, and then I went into town for some overpriced Thai food before turning in early for the night.
Sunrise over Angkor Wat was indeed spectacular (as was the temple itself, which is the largest religious building in the world), but it was hard to enjoy given the thousands of tourists that were crawling all over the thing. At least when I visited the Taj Mahal at sunrise I had the place mostly to myself; here, I was in a tourist city. The causeway that led to the temple itself was so crowded that I had to wait my turn to climb the steps. I felt like I was back in Times Square.
Apparently, all the package tourists go for breakfast right after watching the sun rise at Angkor Wat, so I deliberately skipped breakfast and headed to the second most popular temple, Bayon. My strategy worked—I was one of only about ten people at the site. As I was leaving I saw the tour buses pulling up and breathed a sigh of relief.
I’ll pause for a quick history of the temples at Angkor—they were built between the 9th and 13th Centuries by the Cambodian devaraja (god-kings), they number in the hundreds, and they’re spread out around Siem Reap, though the most famous are clustered due north of the city. Though the whole site is often called “Angkor Wat,” in reality Angkor Wat is just the most famous of the temples.
Later in the day I visited Preah Khan, Ta Keo, and Ta Prohm, the last of which was used to shoot the film Tomb Raider. I’ll leave descriptions of the temples to my photos. Overall, the temples were impressive, though perhaps not quite impressive enough to justify all the hype. The jungle setting adds to the mystique, but it’s tough to feel like you’re stumbling upon ruins in the jungle when you’re walking along a swept trail with hundreds of foreign companions. I actually got a sharper tingle down my spine during the approach to Machu Picchu.
By the end of the day I was all templed out, and I bought a boat ticket to a town called Battambang, where I was guaranteed to find far fewer tourists. Then again, I could have taken a boat (bus, train, plane) just about anywhere and achieved that goal.
Days 125 – 126: Phnom Penh
Photos: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2059205&l=79201&id=1101094
I left the next morning on a 7am bus for Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital; based on my experience so far in Cambodia, all buses leave by 7am. Maybe that’s because it’s too hot to travel in the afternoon.
The bus was an exact replica of the junkpile that I had take to Kratie the previous day; in fact, it may have been the exact same bus. Having learned my lesson about putting luggage into a luggage compartment that doesn’t close, I kept my pack at my feet for the entirety of the journey to Phnom Penh, a decision which ensured that my legs would spend the seven hour ride in agony. Of course, this time all the roads were paved and the bags underneath the bus stayed perfectly clean, but isn’t that always how it works?
We arrived in Phnom Penh at 3pm and I quickly found a guesthouse, dropped my pack, and headed for the Indonesian Embassy to drop off my visa application. While one-month Indonesian visas are generally available on arrival, I hoped to spend two consecutive months in Indonesia and had been told that I could get a two-month visa by visiting an embassy prior to my visit.
When I arrived at the place where the Indonesian Embassy was supposed to be, I found an abandoned building that looked as if it hadn’t been occupied in years; sure enough, the embassy had moved to the other side of town nearly three years ago (thank you, newly revised and updated Lonely Planet), and I didn’t have time to make it there before it closed for the weekend.
Annoyed that I would have to wait until Monday morning to drop off my application, I headed down to the riverfront, which was alive with a strange mix of tourists and people celebrating the Lunar New Year. Apparently there are a large number of Chinese immigrants in Cambodia (as evidenced not only by the celebration but by the many signs around Cambodia that are translated from Khmer into both English and Chinese), and they were all out celebrating that afternoon. The party continued into the evening, and as the sun started to set kids began setting off firecrackers, which mostly scared the tourists shitless—they probably thought they were being fired at.
I ate dinner at a riverfront restaurant called Bali Café, which served the Indonesian food that I missed so much. The chicken satay, drowning in just the right amount of peanut sauce, was wonderful, and made me wish I was back in Bali eating fish satay made from the mahi mahi that I’d pulled from the water that morning. But for that I’d need to wait at least another few weeks.
The following morning I rented a motorbike and visited the sights of Phnom Penh, most of which are horribly depressing: the Killing Fields, where Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge murdered thousands of its own citizens, specifically those who were educated or knew foreign languages; Tuol Sleng Prison, where the Khmer Rouge imprisoned and tortured thousands of people before sending them off to the Killing Fields to be exterminated; and the Royal Palace, which was depressing mainly for its admission charge, which rose from $3 to $7 in the past two years. That’s some wicked inflation.
I assume most of you know your history well enough to be familiar with Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, so I won’t rehash the details here. I will say that the country still seems haunted by the terrors of the regime, which I suppose isn’t surprising considering it all happened only 30 years ago. Most scholars estimate that nearly two million Cambodians were killed under the regime, which would represent nearly a quarter of the 1975 population. In those terms, Pol Pot is the worst mass murderer in history.
I finished my tour of the city by mid-afternoon, and because I didn’t have to return my motorbike until 6pm I decided to zip over to the Indonesian Embassy just to make sure I knew where I was going for Monday morning. The trip turned out to be incredibly worthwhile, as the embassy, though closed, had a sign posted stating that two-month visas were not available. Apparently, only certain embassies grant such visas, and Cambodia’s is not one of them. The good news was that I could leave for Siem Reap the following morning instead of waiting until Monday; the bad news was that I now have to go back to the drawing board on a plan for March and April, as I’ll need to leave Indonesia at the end of March to renew my visa.
Day 124: Ban Lung to Kratie
Photos: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2059204&l=b072f&id=1101094
The following morning I rose with the sun to catch a 6:15 bus to Kratie (pronounced kra-cheh), five hours southwest of Ban Lung and halfway to the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. There wasn’t much to do in Kratie, but I planned to check out the market, wander around town, and maybe take a trip up the Mekong to see some freshwater dolphins if time permitted.
When the bus finally arrived at the Ban Lung station at 7am, my sleepy fellow passengers and I were rather annoyed, but the reason for the delay soon became apparent: the bus was a total piece of trash. Falling apart inside and out, it was a wonder that the thing was still running at all. We packed our luggage into the compartments under the bus, which didn’t even close properly, but the inside of the bus was full and so there was little else we could do.
The first half of the ride, over dirt roads, was horrendous, despite the fact that two days earlier in the minibus it had been quite alright. I attributed the difference to a lack of shocks on the current bus. The second half of the trip was considerably better, as the road between Stung Treng and Kratie had been paved only a year earlier.
The whole way to Kratie we stopped every half hour for what I at first assumed were bathroom and cigarette breaks. But when I finally ventured outside the bus at one of the stops to see what was going on, I realized that the bathroom and cigarette breaks were ancillary; the real reason we were stopping was to dump water over the bus’ overheating engine. Once we even stopped at a stream to refill the water bottles that we being used to store the engine-cooling water. Clearly, this bus was in tip-top shape.
We finally arrived in Kratie, to the relief of everyone aboard, but when we pulled our luggage out from under the bus all we saw were orange blobs. It seems that due to the fact that the luggage compartments wouldn’t close, the dust from the dirt road had blown in and covered everything in a thick layer of orange. That night I spent half an hour scrubbing my pack until it was decidedly black again.
I found a $4 room in town, and the guesthouse owner convinced me to come along on a trip up the river to see the rare Irrawaddy dolphin, one of the few marine animals that can live in both salt and fresh water. I had an hour to kill before we left, so I headed for the market, which turned out to be cleaner and far less interesting that the ones in Stung Treng and Ban Lung had been. Only a few women were screaming out prices, dead animal carcasses were nowhere to be found, and everything had a depressing degree of organization that seemed unfitting for a place where chaos is so often king. Apparently the dirtier the Cambodian market, the more interesting it is. I guess that shouldn’t surprise me.
The trip to see the Irrawaddy dolphins was surprisingly successful; though my guidebook had warned that seeing even one dolphin wasn’t a certainty, my boat saw at least ten, and some of them multiple times. The closest one surfaced a mere four feet from the bow of our boat! Unfortunately, by the time I swung my camera to snap a photo of one of them, it had usually vanished under the surface of the water; even my best photos show only a dorsal fin or a tail breaking the surface. Nevertheless, the chance to see these rare creatures (fewer than 100 remain in the world!) was well worth the trip.
Days 122 – 123: Ban Lung
Photos: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2059204&l=b072f&id=1101094
The next morning I caught a minibus to Ban Lung in Ratanakiri province, which is the northeastern-most province in Cambodia and which borders both Vietnam and Laos. I had planned on taking a shared taxi, but as it turned out the minibus was cheaper and I was even guaranteed my own seat, an offer I obviously couldn’t refuse.
Though I’d heard horror stories about the potholed dirt road from Stung Treng to Ban Lung, in the end the minibus handled the bumps quite well and the ride was surprisingly comfortable. We arrived in Ban Lung at 11am, and I managed to find a guesthouse that had rooms for $5 with cable TV—crucial for watching the Super Tuesday results come in.
I dropped my pack and headed into the town, which is really just a market surrounded by three or four dirt roads. Still, at population 17,000, it’s the largest town in the province. If indeed I was looking for the middle of nowhere, I had found it.
For a town of 17,000, the roads in Ban Lung had a surprising number of cars and trucks on them, and considering the roads were dirt and it hadn’t rained in months, it wasn’t surprising that the entire town was covered in orange dust. The roadside plants were orange, the wooden buildings were orange, and when I bought a bottle of water from a shop, even that was orange. The dust in the air was so bad that the vast majority of residents wore surgeon’s masks when they drove their bicycles and motorbikes; some even wore them while walking around town. I, of course, had no mask, and so I spent most of my time in town holding my breath.
I ate lunch in the market—a tasty bowl of noodles, bean sprouts, and other vegetables in a coconut milk-based curry. Once again I attempted to make conversation with locals (with limited success), and once again my lunch cost 1500 riel. Apparently these market prices are standard.
When I’d had all I could take of the market, which was somehow even dirtier than its counterpart in Stung Treng, I rented a bicycle ($1) and headed east 5km out of the town center to a place called Boeng Yeak Laom (Yeak Laom Lake). There I found one of the most peaceful places I’ve come across in all of Southeast Asia—a clear blue crater lake, nearly a kilometer in diameter, created 4000 years ago by a volcanic eruption. Still covered in orange dust and sweat from the bike ride, I wasted little time admiring the lake from the shore and quickly plunged into the refreshingly cool water.
I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in and around the lake; I found that it was too hot to spend much time on the shore but too cool to spend all my time in the water, so I rented a raft from a local kid for 2000 riel (50 cents) and before long I was floating comfortably half in and half out of the water in the center of the lake. A few local kids swam out to talk to me, though no one spoke enough English to get past “What your name? Where you from?” I thought back to the beloved Four Questions from India: what’s your good name, where are you from, how old are you, are you married? Southeast Asians seem to be far less concerned with marital status—I don’t think I’ve been asked once since leaving India.
As the sun started to set I reluctantly paddled back to shore and set off on my bike back to town. A dozen trucks passed me between the lake and Ban Lung, and by the time I reached my guesthouse my hair, t-shirt, and swim suit were orange again. I decided to rent a motorbike the following day and hopefully stay a bit cleaner.
That night for dinner I ate the famed sach kooang Ratanakiri (Ratanakiri grilled beef), which is brought to the table uncooked on a plate and grilled at the table, something like Korean barbeque. Though the meal was expensive ($2.50) compared to normal Cambodian prices, the beef, which was marinated and covered in spices, was more than worth the splurge.
The following morning I rented a motorbike ($5) and drove west out of town toward three waterfalls that were scattered off the road back to Stung Treng. One of the waterfalls plunged into a beautiful jungle gorge, and I swam through the pool to the rocks underneath the falling water for a much-needed high pressure shower. A group of local kids showed up a few minutes later, and we splashed around for a while before my back started to get sore from the powerful falls.
On the way back to town, I passed a Khmer family riding down the road on an elephant, marking the first time I’d seen an elephant in Asia being used for anything other than tourism.
Back in town, I stayed out of the sun for most of the afternoon and tuned to CNN for the Tsunami Tuesday primary results. Sitting there watching US politics in remote Ratanakiri province in already-remote Cambodia, I couldn’t help but ponder how the world was getting smaller. And does a smaller world mean fewer adventures?
That night I went to a local Khmer restaurant—one that didn’t even have English translations on its menu. I asked for fried noodles with vegetables and chicken (always a safe bet), and the restaurant owner, in laborious English, said “Chicken… bone… ok?” I assumed he meant that the chicken had bones in it, which I said was perfectly fine. But when my food came, the chicken turned out to be only bone, presumably added just for the flavor. I guess I should have taken the broken English a bit more literally.
Day 121: Pakse to Stung Treng
Photos: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2059204&l=b072f&id=1101094
As my bus pulled into Pakse station, I awoke to the first blue sky I’d seen since Thailand. As promised, southern Laos looked like a different world compared to Luang Prabang and Vang Vieng; green hills and rice paddies had been replaced by golden flatlands with sparse vegetation and clouds of orange dust. A less beautiful landscape, perhaps, but the blue sky and the warmth meant that the fleece and the poncho could go back into the backpack, and that was good enough for me.
Pakse itself was of no particular interest to me beyond the fact that it was the southernmost town of any size in Laos; from here I could get transportation to the Cambodian border. I walked from the bus station into town and found a sawngthaew driver who was headed to the border; he said we’d get going just as soon as we could round up enough people to fill the back of the truck. And when he said fill, he was not exaggerating.
By the time the pickup finally pulled out of Pakse, I was stuffed into the most crowded vehicle I’d ever seen. I’d called the vehicle a sawngthaew previously, and that’s what the locals called it as well, but, to be specific, what I was riding in was not a sawngthaew but a saamthaew: sawngthaew means two benches, saamthaew means three. It seems that two benches did not quite fill the truck bed to capacity, so the driver had added a third bench right down the middle, and it was packed with rear ends just like the other two. This left no legroom whatsoever; our legs were interlocked like metal teeth on a zipper.
Though I could hardly move my head, I decided I had to do a count of the people on board; after all, there was a decent chance that we had broken some sort of record. In the end I counted eight people on each bench, three standing on the rack on the back (the same rack I had stood on two days before on the ride from Vang Vieng to Vientiane), and three in the cab. Yes, that’s right—there were 30 people in this little Toyota pickup truck. This was going to be one interesting ride.
One would have assumed that with a vehicle this full we’d press on to our destination as quickly as possible, but the driver had other plans. Every fifteen or twenty minutes we’d pass a village and a crowd of women would run into the road with food to sell, and the driver would stop for all of them. I guess he had negotiated some sort of commission from their sales, because he stopped at literally every village over the course of the next four hours.
At each stop, the process was the same: ladies would run up to the truck and stick everything from ears of corn to bamboo chutes filled with rice to mystery meat on a stick into the truck, and, shockingly, the locals would fork out cash and buy up everything. By the time we reached the Cambodian border, every one of the passengers (except for me) had bags full of food to take home; it was as if this was their method of grocery shopping. The whole thing was quite strange, although it made for quality in-flight entertainment.
All of the locals got off at the town of Voen Kham, just north of the border; I was the only one actually bound for Cambodia. Though I’d heard horror stories of forced bribes on both sides of the border at this particular crossing, I didn’t experience anything of the sort—I had to pay $1 on each side for “overtime” (despite the fact that it was Monday at 1pm), but other than that the crossing was a breeze.
Once on the Cambodian side of the border, I jumped into one of the famed “share taxis” that provide much of the transportation between small towns in Cambodia. There are a couple of requirements for share taxis in Cambodia: they must be Toyota Camrys (I’m not joking—somehow, every single share taxi I’ve seen in Cambodia is a Toyota Camry; in fact, four out of every five cars I’ve seen in Cambodia have been Toyota Camrys), and they must be packed so full that no one’s rear end is actually touching the seat.
My share taxi fulfilled both requirements: it was a 2002 Camry, and by the time we set off for Stung Treng, the nearest town of any size, there were five people in the back seat and three in the front. And because all cars in the developing world have manual transmissions, three people in the front seat actually meant two in the passenger seat, one of whom was me. I spent most of the hour-long ride with my face pressed against the window. I tried sticking my head out the window at one point but I swallowed too many bugs that way.
We arrived in Stung Treng around 2:30, and I dragged my aching body out of the car and made my way to the nearest guesthouse. I paid $3 for a room with a private bathroom; that may be the cheapest accommodation of the entire trip.
Stung Treng, situated on the banks of the San and Mekong Rivers, is nothing more than an outpost town of 25,000 that serves as a transport and trade hub. As there wasn’t much of tourist interest in the town, I made for the epicenter of any Cambodian town: the market.
Though markets in Thailand and Laos certainly do exist, they don’t come close to rivaling Cambodian markets in terms of filthiness, chaos, and pounds of dead animals. As I walked through the Stung Treng market, I did my best to keep the dead fish smell out of my nose and the flies out of my mouth. But as I wandered deeper into the countless rows of vendors, who were hawking everything from produce to red meat to plastic toys, I began to warm to the chaos and the filth; after all, I had plenty of experience with both from my time in India.
I ordered a late lunch of noodles, vegetables, and mystery meat, and though I consumed a bit more gristle than I normally like, for 1500 riel (30 cents) the meal wasn’t bad. I hung out in the market for most of the afternoon, talking to vendors in a combination of broken English and butchered Khmer. Everyone wondered what I was doing in Stung Treng; apparently few tourists stay in the town for more than an hour between minibus connections.
The market shut down at dark, so I ate dinner at my guesthouse, though paying 4000 riel ($1) for a plate of noodles, vegetables, and chicken seemed like highway robbery after my cheap eats in the market. At least the extra 2500 riel meant that the skin and tendons were cut off the meat this time.
Day 120: Vientiane to Pakse
I awoke early in the morning, packed up my stuff and tiptoed out of the dorm room; the Irish/British “couple” were still asleep in the bunk above me, and I had no interest in witnessing round two when they woke up. I figured that since I was stuck in Vientiane for the day, I might as well walk around and check the place out; but when I walked out the front door of the guesthouse, I hit a curtain of rain. Lao weather and I were not getting along.
The rain continued all day, so I spent the ten hours until my bus left restaurant hopping and reading. The great thing about restaurants in the developing world is that you can sit there for as long as you want and no one will say a word; at one restaurant, I ordered less than a dollar’s worth of food and sat there reading for four hours.
Vientiane’s ex-pat scene is surprisingly vibrant—I think due to a number of NGOs headquartered in the city—and as a result the restaurant selection is quite good. I ate breakfast in a western-style coffee shop, lunch at a Thai place, and dinner at a local Lao joint. I shouldn’t have to tell you which meal was best.
While we’re on the subject of food, I should mention that as I travel more and more, there is one thing that continually tickles my fancy: eating. If I never saw another Buddhist temple, I might not be disappointed, but trying different foods never gets old, especially when you can throw in the odd western meal every time you’re in a big city. And eating in the developing world is such a luxury: who needs a supermarket and a stove when you can walk into any restaurant you want and get a meal for one or two dollars? I’m in for a rude awakening next time I live in the states for an extended period of time.
The other thing that I continue to enjoy is meeting locals and picking up bits of new languages. Thailand and Laos have given me backpacker overload, but the locals I still enjoy, and I never get sick of butchering the pronunciation of a new word. Did I mention that both Thai and Lao are, like Chinese, tonal? That means that even when I get the sound of the word right, I’m still most likely using the wrong tone. Luckily the restaurant and guesthouse owners I practice on have far more patience than I do.
That night, back at the southern bus station, I finally got my bus to Pakse. Southern Laos is supposed to have entirely different terrain and climate from northern Laos; instead of mountainous, cool, and wet, I was headed for flat, hot, and dry. I couldn’t have been more excited.
Day 119: Vang Vieng to Vientiane
The following morning I packed up, said goodbye to Mr. Phai, and headed for the Vang Vieng bus station. Predictably, the 9am bus to Vientiane was full, as it had been the previous morning, and the 10am was full too. But this time all the sawngthaew were packed to the brim as well, so I had only one option: the 12:30pm public bus. I bought a ticket and headed back to town for a leisurely breakfast and some On the Road.
When I arrived back at the bus station at 12:15, I found the bus already full. Apparently buying a ticket for the public bus in Laos does not actually guarantee one a seat. I appealed to the ticket collector, and he asked two people to stand up, pulled the seat cushion out six inches from the wall, and voila, I had a seat. I put my feet in the aisle, braced myself, and prepared to balance on six inches of cushion for the curvy five hour ride.
Meanwhile, my pack had been put on top of the bus. Most buses in Southeast Asia have storage compartments underneath for luggage, but public buses in Laos do not, so all luggage went on the roof. I assumed everything would be covered with a tarp in case of rain. Bad assumption.
Not surprisingly, the trip was miserable. And while I admit that I usually prefer the “real experience” to the cushy, VIP version of travel, this bus ride made me long for anything but reality. To add to my uncomfortable perch on the end of the seat cushion, the bus picked up something like 30 additional passengers en route to Vientiane, and before long the aisle was so full with people that I didn’t have anywhere to put my feet. That meant I kept sliding off the seat and into the aisle on sharp curves, which came about every thirty seconds. And, graciously, the two people sitting on the seat with me kept shifting toward the aisle, cutting my six inches of cushion to three.
The rain started soon after we left Vang Vieng (it’s now rained every single day since I’ve been in Laos, and this is the dry season) and continued all the way to Vientiane. I didn’t think much of it because I assumed my pack was safe, but when we arrived in Vientiane I realized that there was no tarp covering the luggage. My pack was soaked. At least I didn’t have a computer or anything else important in there.
I stopped by the only international ATM in all of Laos (!!!) and then headed for the southern bus station to catch an overnight bus to Pakse, in southern Laos; I had seen all I cared to see of Vientiane the previous day, and besides I was sick of the rain. But when I got to the station I found that all the night buses to Pakse were full—I would have to go tomorrow. That makes four straight full Lao buses.
I was less than excited about spending the night in cold, rainy Vientiane, but I didn’t have another option, so I headed back into town and walked into the first guesthouse I saw. Success! It had an open dormitory bed, and it only cost $2. I dropped my pack, went and ate Indian food for dinner (why there are Indian immigrants in Laos I have no idea), and then, exhausted from the day’s uncomfortable bus ride, collapsed in my lower bunk by 9pm.
Around 2am, I awoke to my bed shaking and moans coming from the bunk above me. It seems an Irish guy and a British girl thought the dormitory would be an appropriate place to have sex. Lovely.
Days 116 – 118: Vang Vieng
Photos: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2058269&l=b7688&id=1101094
Turns out all I needed to feel I was back in the developing world was a nice long ride on a public bus. After spending a couple hours in a fancy Wi-Fi café in Luang Prabang, I headed down to the bus station, and back into non-gentrified Laos. I bought a ticket for a night bus to Vientiane; it left at 7pm (the 6pm was full) and took twelve hours, so by my estimation that would put me into the capital in time to get to the Cambodian Embassy right when it opened to drop off my visa application.
This bus was unlike anything I’d seen since India. The top of the bus was loaded with boxes of food, huge brown sacks of God knows what, and even several motorbikes. The inside of the bus was a disaster: the seats were falling apart, all the windows were either stuck open or stuck closed, and the whole thing smelled like rat feces.
We boarded the bus, and just when I thought the thing was packed full, the bus driver started filling the aisle with stools. By the time we left, every seat was filled and the aisles were overflowing with sweaty bodies.
It would be an understatement to say that the road to Vientiane was curvy. It’s more accurate to say that I don’t think we drove more than 30 seconds at any point without taking a sharp curve one direction or the other. An hour into the ride, the girl next to me wretched out the window. I nearly followed suit.
The road was so curvy and the bus driver was so crazy that I literally had to hold myself in my seat to keep from falling into the aisle. And when you have to hold yourself in your seat, you can forget about sleeping. I think I dozed for about 30 minutes the entire ride, and I paid for the nap by being tossed into the aisle. So much for sleeping on the night bus.
We pulled into the Vientiane bus station, and I thought it looked rather dark for 7am. That's because it was 4am. Somehow we had arrived three hours early. I guess the bus driver could have taken those curves a bit slower.
But I really shouldn’t have been too surprised—after all, the rule of bus arrivals held true: the only buses that arrive early are the ones that you don’t want to arrive early. What was I supposed to do at 4am in Vientiane?
I tried napping in a chair at the bus station, but soon a swarm of mosquitoes encircled my head, and besides the back of the chair wasn’t high enough to allow for any real sleep. So I got a tuk tuk to the city center and started looking for a guest house, but every one of the ten I checked was either full or locked for the night.
I finally found a hotel that had a sofa on its front porch; I collapsed on it and went to sleep. But I woke up 20 minutes later with mosquitoes buzzing around my ears and fresh patches of bites on my arms, legs, and neck.
Giving up on sleep for the night, I walked 3km out of the town center to the Cambodian Embassy and planted myself outside the locked gate. At this point it was 5:30, which meant I only had to sit and wait for two and a half hours before the place opened. Damned overnight buses.
I dropped off my visa application and passport and told the man I’d return Friday to pick it up, although it would be ready for pickup as soon as tomorrow morning. Then I headed back to the bus station to get a bus back north to Vang Vieng.
I arrived at Vang Vieng at 1pm, exhausted. I wandered around town for a bit looking a guest house, and finally a man who spoke excellent English approached me and asked if I wanted a room with a private bathroom for 40,000 kip (~$4). That sounded ok to me.
It turns out the man, Mr. Phai, was quite an interesting guy. He had gone to school for five years to become an English teacher, and now he taught English to kids in Vang Vieng—and got paid $30 a month. He had borrowed money to open the guesthouse, and now it provided him with a crucial supplementary income. His family lived in a small hut outside the guesthouse.
Vang Vieng, unlike Luang Prabang, has very little to offer in the way of culture; travelers stop here for the many outdoor activities that the area has to offer. Set on the banks of the Song River and surrounded by limestone cliffs, Vang Vieng and its environs allow for kayaking, tubing, rock climbing, trekking, and caving. I signed up for a caving and tubing trip for the following day with a few other people from my guest house.
I ate some Lao food for lunch—noodles with vegetables and chicken. Though nothing I ate was objectionable, Lao food continues to consistently underperform Thai food.
I took a much-needed nap and had an even more necessary shower and shave, and then, feeling refreshed, I walked into the center of town looking for some nocturnal action. What I found shocked me. Every single restaurant in town had a TV, and on that TV every single restaurant was playing reruns of Friends. There were no exceptions to this rule; no restaurants lacked a TV, and no restaurant was playing something other than Friends. Why Friends? If it were Seinfeld, maybe I’d have some sympathy, but Friends?
I closed my eyes and pointed and sat down at one of the restaurant clones. Sick of Lao food, I decided to order pizza and beer. If I was going to sit here and watch Friends, I was going to get drunk doing it.
Beer is one of the pleasures of a visit to Laos. Beerlao, the only brand that matters, is sold everywhere, and it’s quite good, and it’s dirt cheap. A 650mL (nearly 24 ounces) bottle of Beerlao ordered in a restaurant or bar costs between 8000 and 10,000 kip—so you’re getting the equivalent of two cans of beer for less than a dollar.
Four episodes of Friends, three bottles of beer, and one Hawaiian pizza later, I was actually enjoying myself. Sure, Friends is awful, but I was beginning to appreciate its stupidity. But was I going to sit here and do this for the rest of the night? Everyone else at the restaurant showed no signs of budging, that’s for sure. Was this really the best nightlife Vang Vieng had to offer?
As if reading my thoughts, two Irish kids walked into the restaurant, looked at me, and said, “You don’t want to be here.”
“Uh, what?” I said, totally unprepared for the interaction.
“You don’t really want to spend your whole night watching Friends, do you? Come with us. We’re going to a party on an island in the river.”
Within seconds I was on my feet, ready to go. Marcus and Jack, my Irish saviors, laughed at my enthusiasm.
“You really didn’t want to be here, did you?” Jack chuckled. “Guess we picked the right guy.”
Five minutes later we were walking across the river on a bamboo bridge, and what we found on the other side was like another dimension compared to the Friends restaurants in town. Two bonfires blazed in the center of the island, and crowded around them were more than a hundred revelers, both Lao and foreign. Music was thumping, Beerlao bottles were more than one to a person, and a cloud of pot smoke hung over the whole scene. Standing there taking it all in, I felt I was observing a cross between a high school keg party and a rave. But however strange and un-Lao this gathering was, I was happy to be there.
We stayed until the party shut down at 1am—apparently the police come and start arresting people if a party goes any later into the night. Supposedly there was an afterparty somewhere in town, but a few of us walked around for half an hour and couldn’t find it, so we just ended up sitting on the side of the road and talking till nearly 4. Of the ten or twelve of us sitting there, we represented something like 7 nationalities on three continents. Sure, the backpacker scene can be lame, but that night I rather enjoyed myself.
The following morning my alarm went off at 8:45, waking me for my caving/tubing trip. But when I staggered outside my room, I realized that it was pouring. I found Mr. Phai, and he told me that we’d have to reschedule the trip for tomorrow.
The only problem was that I was supposed to pick up my passport and Cambodian visa tomorrow, and after tomorrow they’d be closed for the weekend. Not wanting to ditch the tubing trip, I decided to day trip to Vientiane to pick up my passport.
One thing that I experienced the entire time I was in Laos that I really haven’t experienced anywhere else was full buses. Every time I tried to get on a bus in Laos, whether public, express, or VIP, it was full. Apparently this wasn’t much of a problem for other backpackers because they book their tickets in advance. But what’s the fun in that?
So when I got to the patch of tarmac that serves as the Vang Vieng bus station, the 9am bus to Vientiane was full. No problem; I’d take the 10am. Full also. My only option was a sawngthaew—a pickup truck with two benches in the back that’s also common in Thailand.
But the sawngthaew was full, too—or, at least the benches were. My only hope of getting to Vientiane was to ride on the rack that hung off the back of the sawngthaew. So that’s what I did—I stood on the metal rack, prayed that it was fastened securely to the back of the truck, and surfed the four hours into Vientiane. The good news was that I had great panoramic views of the green, hilly landscape. The bad news was that it started to rain on the way, and rain hitting one’s face at 100 km/h feels less like rain and more like tiny pebbles.
We finally arrived in Vientiane and I picked up my passport without problem. I headed back to the bus station for my return trip and was back in Vang Vieng by 7pm.
I walked into town, picked a restaurant that had good Thai food, and sat down for my first real meal of the day. After I’d been sitting there a few minutes, I noticed a Lao girl a few tables over staring at me. I looked over at her, and she just kept staring. A minute later she was walking up to my table.
“You here… alone?” she said.
“Yes…” I replied slowly; was I about to be ambushed?
“You come sit with us?”
I looked over at her table—two Western guys and three Lao girls, including the one who was standing over my table. Uh oh—I was the missing link.
“Ok,” I said, not particularly excited to be chosen for this little gathering. But I had no excuse for not sitting with them—I was sitting by myself watching Friends, after all.
I switched tables and introduced myself to everyone; I was sitting with two Finnish guys, both named Mikel, and three Lao girls, named Nok, Nak, and Dak. I’m not great with names, but this table was a breeze.
Nok, the girl who had recruited me to join the table, continued to stare at my throughout the meal, which was uncomfortable at first and then especially awkward once it came out that she was Mikel #1’s girl. They had met in Vientiane about a week ago, and now she and her friends had come up to Vang Vieng with the Mikels. Apparently, Mikel #2 wasn’t in the Lao girl picture at all. How disappointed he must have been.
We finished dinner and played a few games of pool at a bar across the street, and the situation got more awkward by the minute. Mikel #1 would go to the bathroom, and Nok would walk up to me and put her arms around my waist and look up at me in the most scandalous way I can imagine, all while Mikel #2 stood there and watched. I assumed I’d be punched in the face momentarily, despite the fact that I had done nothing to encourage the advances.
But, strangely enough, the Mikels didn’t seem to care. Nok gradually got more bold and started hanging all over me even when Mikel #1 was standing right beside her. After a while I couldn’t take it anymore and suggested we go across to the island where I had been the previous night. At least there it was dark. Maybe I could run away.
By the time we got to the island it had started raining, so we bought drinks and sat in one of the bungalows that formed a wide circle around the two bonfires. Mikel #2 and Dak went to the bathroom, leaving Mikel #1, Nok, Nak and I sitting in a semicircle staring at each other.
But apparently that wasn’t awkward enough, because a few seconds later Mikel #1 and Nok started making out right in front of us. I gazed off into the distance, pretending not to notice. But a minute later Nok sat up and said, “Switch!” and before I could say anything her tongue was in my mouth.
I said all that stuff before was awkward. Forget all that. This was awkward. I was sitting there being kissed by a guy’s girlfriend (mistress? prostitute?) right in front of his face. I shuddered to imagine the look on Mikel #1’s face. I expected the tongue that was currently in my face to be quickly replaced by a fist.
But when Nok finally stopped mouth-raping me and went back to her seat, Mikel #1 just sat there and grinned. At first he grinned at no one in particular, and then he grinned at me. What kind of twisted party had I gotten mixed up in? I jumped up and headed for the bathroom.
When I came out, I went as far away from the Mikel/Nok bungalow as I could; I found some English kids I had hung out with the previous night and started talking to them. Within a few minutes I had forgotten all about the strange events that had just occurred and was back to having a good time. But just then a small, feminine figure approached from out of the darkness, and before I knew it I was being attacked again. And, as it turns out, Nok is a biter.
This particular assault lasted for about thirty seconds, and then Nok walked away, giving me the filthiest look you can imagine. The British guys were beside themselves; their mouths gaped open, and then they started clapping me on the back and cheering. I assured them that this was nothing to be proud of, and explained the situation.
“Ooo,” one of them said. “That is awkward.”
The next two hours progressed in much the same fashion: enjoyable conversation with the British guys, or some Irish girls, or some Aussies, interspersed with semi-hourly attacks, or attempted attacks, from Nok. By the third or fourth time I was getting good at spotting her from a distance, and I began to ward off the attacks with reasonable success, but that didn’t make it any less awkward.
Finally, just as the party was about to end, she walked up to me and handed me a scrap of paper that had her number written on it. “Call me when you in Vientiane,” she said. I touched my tongue to the back of my swollen lip and smiled. “You bet.”
The following morning I woke up to more rain, but by 9am it had stopped and the caving/tubing trip was on. We took a sawngthaew 10km north of town to a cave called Tham Sang. This cave wasn’t particularly impressive—it was small and contained some uninspiring Buddha images—but a short walk away were two caves, Tham Loup and Tham Hoi, that were far more exciting. Both Loup and Hoi were kilometers deep; we followed them each for about a kilometer, getting a look at classically formed stalactites and stalagmites along the way, as well as labyrinthine passageways and vast, open “rooms.” Both caves were damp and warm, but we actually appreciated the temperature given that it was 60 degrees and drizzly outside.
Next we visited the most exciting cave in the area, Tham Nam. A tributary of the Song River flows out its entrance, and when the water is high enough you can tube in. Despite the fact that it was the dry season, the water was plenty high for tubing, which came as no surprise to me given the whether I’d had so far in Laos.
We reluctantly stripped down to swimsuits, grabbed our tubes, and paddled up the stream; the water was freezing, and combined with the outside air the situation was nearly hypothermic. But none of us was going to give up the chance to tube inside of a cave, so we paddled on.
We followed the stream for about 20 minutes, and then the water got too low for us to clear the bottom, so we ditched the tubes and continued on foot. None of us had brought shoes into the cave, and in the darkness the sharp rocks cut our feet. But the whole experience was fascinating and, despite the fact that thousands had done it before us, we got the sense that we were trekking into the unknown.
After we paddled back out of the cave and hurriedly threw our warm, dry clothes back on, we headed for the Song River, where we’d begin tubing. On the way, the rain picked up and the temperature continued to drop. Hardly tubing weather, but once again we didn’t care.
Tubing the six kilometers back to Vang Vieng took about three hours, including stops at a couple riverside bars. Though no one was in the mood for cold beer, the bars had bonfires lit and we warmed ourselves by the fire before venturing back into the chilly river.
The highlight of the afternoon was the rope swing that one of the bars had built: you climbed a tower about 40 feet high, grabbed a rope, and swung out over the river before dropping down into the water below. Forty feet doesn’t sound high, but when I got up there and prepared to jump off I found myself a bit jittery.
Back in Vang Vieng, I showered, warmed up, and ventured down the main street for my final night in of Vang Vieng nightlife. I ate at the same restaurant I had eaten at the previous night; I figured the chances of Mikel and Nok eating there twice in a row was slim, so it seemed like a safe bet. Sure enough, the odd couple wasn’t there, but I did run into some Swedish girls with whom I had hung out on the tubing trip, and I ended up eating dinner with them.
One of them, Hanna, was blonde, blue-eyed, and boring; I don’t think I spoke more than four words to her the entire meal. The other, Honey (ouch), was dark-haired and dark-skinned, with brilliant green eyes and a personality to match. It turned out she wasn’t really Swedish, which came as no surprise; she was Persian, and had grown up in Iran and California before moving to Sweden with her family. She spoke Farsi, Swedish, and perfect American English, which she claimed came as a result of too many hours in front of the television.
The girls had a massage scheduled for after dinner, so we planned to meet at a bar later that evening. But an hour later when Honey arrived at the bar, Hanna wasn’t in tow; she had gone back to the guesthouse early, which of course was fine with me. That night was the most fun I had in weeks—I met quite a few interesting travelers, and towards the end of the night a Puerto Rican Rastafarian played a live show, capped with a performance of “All Along the Watchtower.” He gave me a high five after the song was over; I was the only one who had known all the words.
I spent much of the evening talking to Honey; we exchanged stories from our travels as well as tales from home. I informed her of my past experience with Persian girls, and she grinned and said, “It’s true, man, Persian girls are crazy.”
But my favorite moment of the night was when an Aussie guy walked up to us and said, “Let me guess—Canada and Canada.”
“Wrong on both,” I said. “America and Sweden.”
“Sweden? You’re from Sweden?” he asked Honey.
“Yup,” she said, apparently unwilling to go into detail.
“Wow. For a Swedish girl you’ve got a really good suntan!”
Eeeeeeee.
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