There are a few things worth noting about living out of a backpack. The first thing is that it is never hard to decide what to wear. I have never been one to get too stressed out about the contents of my closet, but having just a few shirts and shorts certainly takes out a lot of the guesswork. The second thing is that since everything is always being folded up and packed down tight it certainly takes on a new look. So it is important to be prepared when you meet a lovely swedish girl on the beach and she agrees to meet for a drink later and you show up looking like a bit of paper that some one practiced making paper cranes with. Its not as easy as it sounds to project the smooth and composed image that you are going for when your shirt looks like a relief map of the rockies. Ah but so it goes.
Hoi An was a nice little town. Small, manageable, and great to cruise around on bikes. The beaches are a short distance from the town, which is split by a little river. Good food here: fish with ginger and lemongrass grilled in a banana leaf, lots of vietnamese sandwich spots. Oh and the best part about this little town is that is appears to be the tailors' capitol of Vietnam. The little shops line the streets with all sorts of different dresses, shirts, coats, and suits displayed on the sidewalk. Everything is custom made from your measurements in the fabric of your choice. So your right in guessing that I bought a goddamn suit! My first. Oh what a proud moment. Nate did too. We shopped about a bit and settled on a friendly spot run by a local family. They measured us in all the appropriate spots and told us to look through the fabrics.
Its not easy to decide on a fabric, pattern, color, and cut, when you are faced with an entire wall of options. It was very hard for me to remain reserved and not choose something like cream with blue pinstripes. I settled on a dark blue with some darker stripes, cashmere wool. Very classy. Nate choose a lighter color as he wanted something "a bit more casual." We come back the next afternoon for a final fitting. Their workmanship is excellent and our new suits are ready to go. The price for a fitted jacket, dress shirt, and pants came to something around $130. Now there are not many opportunities in little Hoi An where a suit is necessary or even appropriate but to be sure I busted it out of its bag for a bit of a strut around our room.
The post office system here is also very handy. They show up at your door with everything to ship something and just wrap it all up right there and take it away. We decided to use seamail as it is much cheaper. Another lovely benefit of seamail is that by the time things actually make it to their destination a few months have elapsed and you have completely forgotten about shipping anything.
We are in Nha Trang now, about twelve hours south of Hoi An. More of an oceanside town than Hoi An, with more of a vibrant nightlife. The plan is to stay here for a few more days, eating lychee nuts and walking on the beach.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Nate sweats more than all of Vietnam combined
We took an evening bus out of Hanoi going south. There is only one road that runs up and down Vietnam, nh-1, and its only a two lane road. So we picked this little town called Dong Hoi, about 10 hours south of Hanoi, to spend a couple of days. It was supposed to be very quiet and have beautiful beaches. After spending so much time in busy cities, especially Hanoi, we wanted something a bit more tranquil. But the kicker here is that there arent any bus stations in Dong Hoi and 10 hours from departure puts us into Dong Hoi at 530 in the morning. And since there arent any bus stations the driver just decides to pull over somewhere and let us off.
The sun is just coming up, we are tired, and now we need a place to stay. We eventually wake this lady up who is sleeping in a hammock inside of a dark hotel and ask for a room. Since we are foreigners her first instinct is Lets take these foreign bastards for everything they've got. So we bargain our way around until we settle on a price of about 5 dollars a night. The town is deserted. Obviously so at 530 in the morning but also in the middle of the day. Just a few people here and there: sitting around drinking iced coffee, smoking cigarettes, and cruising on scooters.
But we spend a couple of days here, trying to find the merits of this little town. The beach is very nice. It bends along the coast for miles with no one in sight. The water is warm but still refreshing. But two dudes really can only have so much fun on a deserted beach together. One day of that proved to provide the tranquility we were searching for. Now, I think I can say with some assurance that there is a reason we could not find a map anywhere of the town or any mention of it in guide books. There are no computers in the town, thats why we have appeared incommunicado, and no english is spoken. An authentic experiance to say the least.
The food was also fairly limiting in this town. About a million pho shops and not much else. Don't get me wrong I love pho. Its like noodles and soup, oftentimes with chicken or beef (or some kind of reddish meat). Soup and noodles are maybe two of my favorite foods so pho is right up my alley. But a town where all they serve is pho is kind of like going to a town and finding out all there is to eat is pizza. Or cheerios.
So yesterday, in the rain, we decided it was time to get the fuck out. Getting a bus is kind of the exact opposite of leaving one: you stand on the side of the road and wave like a crazy person when you see one coming. Then there is always the awkward moment when you step onto the bus and feel about 40 pairs of eyes. I thought I might like the feeling of being completely different, but actually it just makes me blush. Everyone turns around in their seats to watch you as you try and fold yourself into seats not built for a six-one frame. Plus we are dripping wet from standing in the rain. Then again with the godamn bargaining until we end up paying a reasonable price for a ticket to Da Nang (about 7 hours and five dollars) We'll probably spend a few days here before going to Hoi An, which is supposed to be great and where a group of four swedes are waiting for us. We met them in China and they are funny shit. All 19 years old and straight out of highschool. Tall, blond, and beautiful. They really crack me up.
p.s. I got my first sunburn. It's on my nose.
The sun is just coming up, we are tired, and now we need a place to stay. We eventually wake this lady up who is sleeping in a hammock inside of a dark hotel and ask for a room. Since we are foreigners her first instinct is Lets take these foreign bastards for everything they've got. So we bargain our way around until we settle on a price of about 5 dollars a night. The town is deserted. Obviously so at 530 in the morning but also in the middle of the day. Just a few people here and there: sitting around drinking iced coffee, smoking cigarettes, and cruising on scooters.
But we spend a couple of days here, trying to find the merits of this little town. The beach is very nice. It bends along the coast for miles with no one in sight. The water is warm but still refreshing. But two dudes really can only have so much fun on a deserted beach together. One day of that proved to provide the tranquility we were searching for. Now, I think I can say with some assurance that there is a reason we could not find a map anywhere of the town or any mention of it in guide books. There are no computers in the town, thats why we have appeared incommunicado, and no english is spoken. An authentic experiance to say the least.
The food was also fairly limiting in this town. About a million pho shops and not much else. Don't get me wrong I love pho. Its like noodles and soup, oftentimes with chicken or beef (or some kind of reddish meat). Soup and noodles are maybe two of my favorite foods so pho is right up my alley. But a town where all they serve is pho is kind of like going to a town and finding out all there is to eat is pizza. Or cheerios.
So yesterday, in the rain, we decided it was time to get the fuck out. Getting a bus is kind of the exact opposite of leaving one: you stand on the side of the road and wave like a crazy person when you see one coming. Then there is always the awkward moment when you step onto the bus and feel about 40 pairs of eyes. I thought I might like the feeling of being completely different, but actually it just makes me blush. Everyone turns around in their seats to watch you as you try and fold yourself into seats not built for a six-one frame. Plus we are dripping wet from standing in the rain. Then again with the godamn bargaining until we end up paying a reasonable price for a ticket to Da Nang (about 7 hours and five dollars) We'll probably spend a few days here before going to Hoi An, which is supposed to be great and where a group of four swedes are waiting for us. We met them in China and they are funny shit. All 19 years old and straight out of highschool. Tall, blond, and beautiful. They really crack me up.
p.s. I got my first sunburn. It's on my nose.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Im going to make her eat that flag
Tonight is our last night here in Guilin (pronounced gwaylin for all you round eyed folk). Small city, big cliff promontories called karsts, and huge terraced rice paddies. The rice paddies were quite a draw for us. They shoot up the steep hillsides for hundreds of feet, forking and branching with the many ridges. The problem with visiting them is that they are a few hours away, deep in the mountains near a series of villages that had no road in or out until 1997. That alone is quite fascinating. The area is home to one of China's minority groups. The woman in this group cut their hair only once in their entire lives, when they are eighteen. Not only that but the long piece that gets cut off is then bound at one end and tied back into the new frock. They comb it and comb it and then wrap it all up tight around their heads. It makes quite a tidy bundle but I really cant imagine the weight. In honor of their incredible dedication to hair growing Nate buzzed his head last night. It cost him two dollars and took ten minutes. I doubt anyone even thought about saving any of the clippings.
A delicious specialty of these rice-growing, long-maned folk is callef bamboo chicken and bamboo rice. Basically large pieces of bamboo are opened at one end, stuffed with either rice or raw chicken along with ginger and mushrooms, and then plugged back up with a corn cob. The whole cylinder is then thrown onto the grill. The green bamboo slowly chars and releases its water into the food, cooking it in a most tender fashion. Satiated on this we were prepared for the long upward climb through the terraces and humid sun.
I mentioned that the area is hard to get to. What I mean is that no public busses go in that direction so one is forced to sign on with a tour group. We did that and our guide nearly managed to ruin every redeeming quality of a thousand years of history. We were the only westerners in a group of twenty-five chinese. For those that have never had the pleasure of encountering a Chinese tour group know these three things: the leader carries a flag, the tour guide uses a microphone no matter how close you are to them (even if it is less than a foot), and pictures of EVERYTHING are a must. So our guide would rattle off a few thousand words in Chinese and then HELLO!! YES!! HELLO!! WAKE UP!! to Nate and I and then procede to yell for a few minutes in broken english about the area around us. Of course all accompanied by healthy flag waving. You may have noticed that I was cleverly avoiding the name of said minority group. Not my fault. I blame in on unintellible english filtered through a kareoke microphone.
But all that aside, the country here is beautiful. We are leaving tomorrow, on a boat in fact. The boat, apparently made of bamboo, is going to take us down the river for a few hours to our next stop. We only have another week or so in China before we enter Vietnam.
I have received a few calls for more photogrpahs. Heres the thing: Blogger along with facebook and other similar sites are all banned in China. There are a few sneaky little programs that allow you access. But when we can get in it is usually with limited access. So we have not been able to put pictures up. Sad, yes.
A delicious specialty of these rice-growing, long-maned folk is callef bamboo chicken and bamboo rice. Basically large pieces of bamboo are opened at one end, stuffed with either rice or raw chicken along with ginger and mushrooms, and then plugged back up with a corn cob. The whole cylinder is then thrown onto the grill. The green bamboo slowly chars and releases its water into the food, cooking it in a most tender fashion. Satiated on this we were prepared for the long upward climb through the terraces and humid sun.
I mentioned that the area is hard to get to. What I mean is that no public busses go in that direction so one is forced to sign on with a tour group. We did that and our guide nearly managed to ruin every redeeming quality of a thousand years of history. We were the only westerners in a group of twenty-five chinese. For those that have never had the pleasure of encountering a Chinese tour group know these three things: the leader carries a flag, the tour guide uses a microphone no matter how close you are to them (even if it is less than a foot), and pictures of EVERYTHING are a must. So our guide would rattle off a few thousand words in Chinese and then HELLO!! YES!! HELLO!! WAKE UP!! to Nate and I and then procede to yell for a few minutes in broken english about the area around us. Of course all accompanied by healthy flag waving. You may have noticed that I was cleverly avoiding the name of said minority group. Not my fault. I blame in on unintellible english filtered through a kareoke microphone.
But all that aside, the country here is beautiful. We are leaving tomorrow, on a boat in fact. The boat, apparently made of bamboo, is going to take us down the river for a few hours to our next stop. We only have another week or so in China before we enter Vietnam.
I have received a few calls for more photogrpahs. Heres the thing: Blogger along with facebook and other similar sites are all banned in China. There are a few sneaky little programs that allow you access. But when we can get in it is usually with limited access. So we have not been able to put pictures up. Sad, yes.
Im going to make her eat that flag
Tonight is our last night here in Guilin (pronounced gwaylin for all you round eyed folk). Small city, big cliff promontories called karsts, and huge terraced rice paddies. The rice paddies were quite a draw for us. They shoot up the steep hillsides for hundreds of feet, forking and branching with the many ridges. The problem with visiting them is that they are a few hours away, deep in the mountains near a series of villages that had no road in or out until 1997. That alone is quite fascinating. The area is home to one of China's minority groups. The woman in this group cut their hair only once in their entire lives, when they are eighteen. Not only that but the long piece that gets cut off is then bound at one end and tied back into the new frock. They comb it and comb it and then wrap it all up tight around their heads. It makes quite a tidy bundle but I really cant imagine the weight. In honor of their incredible dedication to hair growing Nate buzzed his head last night. It cost him two dollars and took ten minutes. I doubt anyone even thought about saving any of the clippings.
A delicious specialty of these rice-growing, long-maned folk is callef bamboo chicken and bamboo rice. Basically large pieces of bamboo are opened at one end, stuffed with either rice or raw chicken along with ginger and mushrooms, and then plugged back up with a corn cob. The whole cylinder is then thrown onto the grill. The green bamboo slowly chars and releases its water into the food, cooking it in a most tender fashion. Satiated on this we were prepared for the long upward climb through the terraces and humid sun.
I mentioned that the area is hard to get to. What I mean is that no public busses go in that direction so one is forced to sign on with a tour group. We did that and our guide nearly managed to ruin every redeeming quality of a thousand years of history. We were the only westerners in a group of twenty-five chinese. For those that have never had the pleasure of encountering a Chinese tour group know these three things: the leader carries a flag, the tour guide uses a microphone no matter how close you are to them (even if it is less than a foot), and pictures of EVERYTHING are a must. So our guide would rattle off a few thousand words in Chinese and then HELLO!! YES!! HELLO!! WAKE UP!! to Nate and I and then procede to yell for a few minutes in broken english about the area around us. Of course all accompanied by healthy flag waving. You may have noticed that I was cleverly avoiding the name of said minority group. Not my fault. I blame in on unintellible english filtered through a kareoke microphone.
But all that aside, the country here is beautiful. We are leaving tomorrow, on a boat in fact. The boat, apparently made of bamboo, is going to take us down the river for a few hours to our next stop. We only have another week or so in China before we enter Vietnam.
I have received a few calls for more photogrpahs. Heres the thing: Blogger along with facebook and other similar sites are all banned in China. There are a few sneaky little programs that allow you access. But when we can get in it is usually with limited access. So we have not been able to put pictures up. Sad, yes.
A delicious specialty of these rice-growing, long-maned folk is callef bamboo chicken and bamboo rice. Basically large pieces of bamboo are opened at one end, stuffed with either rice or raw chicken along with ginger and mushrooms, and then plugged back up with a corn cob. The whole cylinder is then thrown onto the grill. The green bamboo slowly chars and releases its water into the food, cooking it in a most tender fashion. Satiated on this we were prepared for the long upward climb through the terraces and humid sun.
I mentioned that the area is hard to get to. What I mean is that no public busses go in that direction so one is forced to sign on with a tour group. We did that and our guide nearly managed to ruin every redeeming quality of a thousand years of history. We were the only westerners in a group of twenty-five chinese. For those that have never had the pleasure of encountering a Chinese tour group know these three things: the leader carries a flag, the tour guide uses a microphone no matter how close you are to them (even if it is less than a foot), and pictures of EVERYTHING are a must. So our guide would rattle off a few thousand words in Chinese and then HELLO!! YES!! HELLO!! WAKE UP!! to Nate and I and then procede to yell for a few minutes in broken english about the area around us. Of course all accompanied by healthy flag waving. You may have noticed that I was cleverly avoiding the name of said minority group. Not my fault. I blame in on unintellible english filtered through a kareoke microphone.
But all that aside, the country here is beautiful. We are leaving tomorrow, on a boat in fact. The boat, apparently made of bamboo, is going to take us down the river for a few hours to our next stop. We only have another week or so in China before we enter Vietnam.
I have received a few calls for more photogrpahs. Heres the thing: Blogger along with facebook and other similar sites are all banned in China. There are a few sneaky little programs that allow you access. But when we can get in it is usually with limited access. So we have not been able to put pictures up. Sad, yes.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Where do they serve panda?
We have just concluded a lovely four night stay in Chengdu. This relaxed city is located in the southwestern part of China, in the Sichuan province. It is protected by mountains so enjoys a subtropical climate. The warm and moist weather creates an incredibly lush landscape that is perfect for a huge variety of plants to flourish, especially tea. You really cant walk more than a few blocks here without running into another tea house. They are always very casual affairs with big umbrellas, wicker chairs, people playing cards and majong, and lots of napping. Now some of our more discerning readers may remember that Nate doesnt actually like tea. Playing to his loveoffood I suggested that maybe he could just think of tea as a very thin soup. Progress has been slow but positive. I started him out on the more mild jasmine and chrysanemum teas, then moved him up to the woolong varities. To be honest I dont think he is yet ready for the strong green teas that the area is famous for. It is delicious but served very strong. Served loose in the cup along with a thermos of water, what greeted me appeared to be a clump of greenery that resembled a much different product and if bagged up and sold in the United States could probably commands triple digits.
Another thing Chendgu is famous for is its pandas. PANDAS! YEAH!! There is a huge reserve and research center where they are breeding them back from near extinction. And thank god for that as they are the rolliest polliest little creatures I have ever seen. I actually started laughing at the first oneIsaw. It is no wonder they have become the poster animal for all sad and underfunded campaigns.One must arrive early in the morning as by afternoon they have eaten far too much bamboo and are only able to lie around on the ground. But in the morning they are wrestling, climbing and rolling all over the place. I expected something a bit more ferocious and intimidating looking, something more like the rest of the world's bear poplulation. Not these little guys. I honestly dont think they would hurt a fly and all I could think of was how I wanted to run over and give them a hug, a great big bear hug.
Chengu is very famous for its food. It is spicy as hell, served with heaping piles of dried chiles, garlic, ginger and peppercorns. We went a a great open air seafood restaurent downtown in the night fish market. Oysters steamed and served topped with garlic and ginger, whole prawns cooked with chilis and bamboo shoots, braised fish. All served with lots of cold beer to combat the heat. Side dishes like fried rice are ordered from the vendors walking up and down the street.
We just arrived a few hours ago here in Guilin. Just a short twenty-five hour train ride. Those initiated in the Chinese rail system knows that there are two classes which every traveler must choose between at the ticket window. Not first or second (remeber this is a communist country) but rather hard or soft. We decided on the hard sleeper as it was 150 yuan cheaper. The real difference is that instead of four people in a berth there are six. And in hard class people are allowed to smoke, eat, and spit anywhere and at any time. But hey on the plus side the language barrier eliminates any of that tiresome chitchat. Just silence. Twenty- five hours of silence.
p.s. Some people took us to a singles club in Chengdu. They drink red wine mixed with coke and you can send messages between tables via a runner. Despite what some of you are thinking some of our notes did actually border on the polite and appropriate.
Another thing Chendgu is famous for is its pandas. PANDAS! YEAH!! There is a huge reserve and research center where they are breeding them back from near extinction. And thank god for that as they are the rolliest polliest little creatures I have ever seen. I actually started laughing at the first oneIsaw. It is no wonder they have become the poster animal for all sad and underfunded campaigns.One must arrive early in the morning as by afternoon they have eaten far too much bamboo and are only able to lie around on the ground. But in the morning they are wrestling, climbing and rolling all over the place. I expected something a bit more ferocious and intimidating looking, something more like the rest of the world's bear poplulation. Not these little guys. I honestly dont think they would hurt a fly and all I could think of was how I wanted to run over and give them a hug, a great big bear hug.
Chengu is very famous for its food. It is spicy as hell, served with heaping piles of dried chiles, garlic, ginger and peppercorns. We went a a great open air seafood restaurent downtown in the night fish market. Oysters steamed and served topped with garlic and ginger, whole prawns cooked with chilis and bamboo shoots, braised fish. All served with lots of cold beer to combat the heat. Side dishes like fried rice are ordered from the vendors walking up and down the street.
We just arrived a few hours ago here in Guilin. Just a short twenty-five hour train ride. Those initiated in the Chinese rail system knows that there are two classes which every traveler must choose between at the ticket window. Not first or second (remeber this is a communist country) but rather hard or soft. We decided on the hard sleeper as it was 150 yuan cheaper. The real difference is that instead of four people in a berth there are six. And in hard class people are allowed to smoke, eat, and spit anywhere and at any time. But hey on the plus side the language barrier eliminates any of that tiresome chitchat. Just silence. Twenty- five hours of silence.
p.s. Some people took us to a singles club in Chengdu. They drink red wine mixed with coke and you can send messages between tables via a runner. Despite what some of you are thinking some of our notes did actually border on the polite and appropriate.
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