k*spot: Vietnam and Cambodia 2006

I like afternoon tea with Barrie

Tue, 02 May 2006 01:30:37 GMT

That's the phrase of the day that we were trying to say while drinking beer on the street in ho chi minh. Lu and I had to use british accents, and owen and carole had to use canadian accents, it was horrible as you can imagine and even more horrible since we were (ok *I* was) all giggly with beer.

Anyway, Lu shared some pictures w/ me via Messenger which were hilarious. Between the two of us we must have over 1100 pictures, most of them too stupid and embarassing to post publicly, except for maybe the day when we went to that cave in Ha long bay and decided to feed the 'penguins' (also known as what can you do to annoy the crap out of our guide Sonny). Do you like how i used one of Carole instead of revealing a stupid one of me and Lu?

However the BEST PHOTO EVER, has the be the one that Lu took of our nasty ass guide Thoa at the Waterfalll near our homestay in Ban Ho or wherever the heck we were (middle of no where). He asked Lu to take a photo of him swimming, and well, see for yourself - here he is posing on a rock. If you had the full res you'd see that he's actually wearing his boxer briefs to swim - he's pin up calendar material, dont you think?

my lovely knee

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 20:42:23 GMT

After arriving yesterday at noon back in Seattle, Kurt took me straight to the ER at my favorite hospital, Virginia Mason. It's funny when you have been there so many times that you get 'repeat beds' (ie, rooms or beds I've been treated in before in previous visits).

Anyway, the stitches are out (and I will be forever scarred with a very ugly scar - damn vietnamese doctor with bad stitching skills) and now I have to go see a Orthopedist since I have a lot of fluid around the joint and I can't bend my knee. Otherwise though, I'm doing just fine and hopefully the rehab won't be too horrible.

Here's me the day I fell off, enjoying a drink with Luen and Carole somewhere in Marble mountain ("you buy marble? You buy just one? You come to my shop? Why you no like? Where you from?")

angkor what?

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 15:37:02 GMT

ha ha, because no one has ever heard THAT one before.

I'm now in Cambodia. The Kingdom of Cambodia. I love how that sounds. Siem Reap to be exact - which to me is the oddest thing I have ever seen. Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in south east asia and yet, Siem Reap is like Vegas (massive extravagent hotels) meets new orleans (pub streets where every bar has multiple floors and balconies). Kind of weird but kind of nice to end our vacation here.

Today we hit up a bunch of Temples, including Angkor Thom, Ta phrom, Preah Khan (and I couple more whose names I dont recall without our map). Tomorrow we're going to hit up Banteay Srei and Angkor Wat. We also climbed to the top of some ridiculous hill (Phnom Bakheng) and climbed up the temple to watch the sun set. You can imagine how easy that was with my gimpy leg and those steep steep steps. It was (of course) incredibly hot today and now I'm even more tan than before making my sock tan more noticeable. The temples are breathtakingly beautiful - they're so amazing to look at. I hpe the pictures I took turn out okay - it was really really sunny so everything was looking a little washed out.

I had the most amazing dinner last night at the Khmer Kitchen. A traditional Khmer soup with rice. I dont know what was in it but it was fantastic - I love trying the local food. This evening we went to In Touch and had some Amok (a kind of curry) and Lok Lak (beef with garlic). I think I'm getting fatter and fatter by the day because the food is so good.

Only two more days and then I get on a plane to come home. Boooo-urns. I wish I could be travelling forever.

(aside: I'm in the weirdest internet cafe ever. There's a lot of screaming going on in the back room. I don't think I want to know what is going on over there)

bia hoi

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 06:37:01 GMT

yesterday was the ultimate day for dispelling all of our myths and answering our questions about ho chi minh city.

we found the meat man and it was fantastic. he leaves when he runs out of meat so you have to get to him before 8pm
we finally got a seat at the street bia hoi place - that's 3500 Dong for 1 litre of beer. That's like 30 cents. you can't go wrong. you can imagine we drank a lot of beer, especially when we saw Carole and her friend Owen walking down the street. Funny stories about Matilda - Carole's bitchy lesbian dorm room mate, telling owen about our sapa experience w/ thoa.
we figured out what those shakey spoon things are - basically these dudes ride around on bikes shaking their little shakers. Turns out they give massages! But really, no one wants a massage from a guy on a bike.
the squid is cuttlefish and he presses it in his iron after he roasts it a bit. its ok, though it makes your beer tastes like metal.

We're leaving for Siem Reap today to check out Ankor wat. Bye bye vietnam, its been fun!

dragonfly and gecko party in our room

Mon, 17 Apr 2006 15:48:21 GMT

well, that was the intent but unfortunately none of them came and instead of the dragonflies and geckos eating the mosquitos in our room, the mosquitos ate us. And when I say ate, I mean mosquito bites on places like our foreheads and the tops of our shoulders and other (what I tend to think are) unappetizing places for a mosquito to bite. The big problem was, that we were staying in the ghetto-est of ghetto back alley hotels in Can Tho - this town somewhere in the middle of the mekong delta. What they didn't tell us when they gave us our room (and thank god for my gimpy leg, we got a room on the second floor instead of the 5th like our german friends) was that you could pay extra for AC! So here we are in our room, staring at the non-functioning AC debating between sweating to death with the window shut (and therefore not getting any sleep and lying in a pool of sweat, or opening the window and getting some air but risking mosquitos. Apparently we chose wrong because we now look like we have leprosy. All of this could have been avoided for a mere 5 dollars. When everyone here peddles everything, you'd think that when the dude behind the desk handed us our key he would have tried to upsell?

other than that minor sleeping ordeal, the rest of the mekong delta trip was fun - makes you really realize how poor people are in vietnam and what kind of conditions they live in. They bathe in the same water that the motorboats dump their fuel, where the wholesale fruit sellers dump their rotten fruit and toilets empty into. The water was brown as you can probably imagine. We also visited a lot of the local industries (read: kick back commision on sales brought to the businesses) that turned out to be really interesting (though Lu and I being the cheap bastards didn't buy anything) - we saw how they make all sorts of things from rice - from processing the rice out of the husks and making popped rice (for vietnam rice krispie squares/treats) to rice noodles to rice crackers to rice wine (which tastes like rubbing alcohol)

We got stuck with a bunch of geezers on our bus, so we banded with the other under 40s - two germans who were pretty fun, especially when talking about stereotypes about canada and germany over dinner (snake wine isn't all that bad after all). There was the most obnoxious couple and a group of french speaking tourists. Now, Lu and I complain about how hot and itchy we are, but we complain to each other. These people were getting mad that the water wasn't cold enough to non-english speaking vendors, pushing people out of the way to be 'first' to see something or to get on/off the bus, and knocking people (and sometimes tipping the boat to the point that the driver was getting mad) to take pictures. It was really annoying. I was so glad when the groups split and some of them went away and some cooler people hopped on our boat. We even bumped into Ebony twice (a girl we met when we were at China beach at Hoa's place) on the way back to the city.

The leg is still gimpy - it rained while we went on this 3km walk around some island on the delta and I had to wrap a plastic bag around my wound to keep it dry. Thankfully it wasn't anything like the down pour the other day in Ho Chi Mihn or it would have been all over. It ended shortly and made everything even more humid than before (it was 36C today in the shade and about 40C in the sun). Not bending my knee is giving me some serious leg cramps, I'm not sure what to do about it though.

Tomorrow we're taking it easy in the city - more shopping, reunification palace, some pagodas and hopefully we'll be able to track down the elusive meat man - this dude on the street that grills up some tasty smelling barbeque. Problem is, every time we see him we're not hungry. When we're hungry, he's always wheeled his cart of somewhere else. Typical.

That's all for now. Today is Carole's (our Irish friend we met in Hanoi) birthday.

mekong delta

Sat, 15 Apr 2006 16:57:55 GMT

we're heading off to the mekong delta tomorrow so I'll be MIA for a bit - today has been a full day of shopping at ben thahn market, eating at the street food off the stalls and general lazing around. It's nice to not do anything for once and just hang out.

my fave things so far

hanoi backpackers hostel, carole, barrie and kevin (and our secret notes)
family style dinners at Hoa's place by candlelight
the ridiculously amazing coffee everywhere
getting clothes made at sarah's in hoi an
the cutest grandmother ever at our mini hotel thing in ho chi minh city
pho bo (and saying it over and over again like bau nhieu)

weirdest things

people wearing their pyjamas on the street at all hours in hanoi (we're talking matching pink patterned tops and bottoms
the squid vendors on the street
that you can never ever ever find a tissue or napkin when you need one
that the buildings (like houses) are really really tall and REALLY REALLY narrow
that the traffic is even crazier than shanghai

ho chi minh or bust

Sat, 15 Apr 2006 05:27:13 GMT

I'm now in Ho Chi Minh city - we arrived last night after flying out of Danang. it's funny, for 30 bucks we could have taken a 19 hour train, or for 50 bucks we could take a 1 hour flight. Yeah, I think this time around since I actually have a job (vs. back when I went after university) that splurging on that extra 20 bucks is not going to break the bank.

Ho Chi Minh is SO different from Hanoi - its more modern and reminds me a bit of hong kong and shanghai, just less developed/commercialized. I miss Hanoi though, the combo of the city and the people we met there made it one of my favorite places. Who knew how good we had it back at the Hanoi Backpackers' Hostel with Barrie (aka Bah-ree)? Our own personal tour director/nightlife coordinator/transportation finder/giver of free tank tops - trusty people are hard to find. We had a tough time finding a place when we got in last night - everywhere was booked so we wandered our way around the streets with our packs looking for somewhere to stay that didn't have ants in the bed. We finally found a place that was fairly cheap (10 bucks USD between the two of us) but unfortunately, there were ants, mosquitos and a gecko. Oh well, you cant win them all.

Anyway, Vietnam is insanely hot and even at night its over 30C. Ridiculous! With the sun it feels like 40C and we have to walk really really slowly to prevent severe sweating and overheating. Basically that shower fresh clean only lasts for about 5 minutes before you start sweating again. It's highly attractive and we smell like roses each day - that is if we have deemed the bathroom clean enough to even bother showering in, really, when everyone is sweating and smelling is it really worth the effort and potential for some weirdo foot fungus? We've also given up on wearing deet (because its ant and gnat bites more than mosquitos that are killing us) and sunscreen (except on our faces because no one likes wrinkles). It just makes our skin feel stickier and ickier the more we sweat. I'm painting a lovely picture for all of you, aren't I? I swear, this is just on vacation and everything will go back to normal when I get back.

As for the knee, its looking OK - there were two nurses and a doctor staying at the Hoa's place (the last place we were at when I hurt myself) and they gave me some instructions on what to do since the doctor at the hospital didn't speak a lick of english and all I could do was point and gesture. Stitches are looking ok and the codeine helps for the hurting. Mmmm. Codeine.

Maybe I'll upload some photos later, I forgot my card reader back in our room. I think we're going to hit the market today (as if we didn't fill our backpacks in Hoi An with custom tailored clothes yesterday), and figure out how we're going to hit the mekong delta.

later skaters!

what's a vacation with out a motorcycle accident?

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 10:30:29 GMT

We're somewhere in between Hoi An and Danang - to be honest, I dont even know the name of the town except that its very close to marble mountain and its not really on the map. Anyway, I fell off a motorcycle, really I'm just retarded so don't ask. I will never ever ever try to drive one again. Anyway, I was carted off (on a motorcyle of course) to the nearest hospital in town which luckily wasn't too far away.

I was expecting to be horrific because Vietnam is poorer than Thailand and the hospital I saw when I was in Ko Phi Phi a couple years back would have made me pee my pants had I had to go to something like that. This one thankfully had an actual operating ROOM that was seperate from the waiting area which was seperate from the paying area. The one I had seen in Ko Phi Phi was all the same room. I was also comforted by the autoclave (aka the big heater) though really, the purple plastic operating bed gave me the chills. Three really crappily done stitches later (read: going to have a horrific scar for life), a tetanus shot to the ass (thank GOD today I decided to wear clean underwear - yes, we are not the cleanest girls these days) and a lot of bloody gauze, I was discharged from the hospital with antibiotics the size of horse pills, codeine (thank god), various dressings and a marriage proposal from the vietnamese doctor who stitched me up. hot damn.

I'm annoyed more than anything that its sort of an inconvenience to gimp around and bleed all over the place but at least my mosquito bites no longer itch. To make myself feel better, Lu and I went to Hoi An to get some custom clothes made. Nothing like some retail therapy to cheer me up!

Anyway, expect a gimpy scarred looking me when you see me back at work/seattle. I'm off to Ho Chi Minh tomorrow, trying to hit part of the mekong for a day or two, shopping some more in Ho Chi Minh, and then flying out to cambodia to see Ankor Wat. No stupid injury is going to slow me down :) (in fact, it makes me less cheap and instead of taking 30 hour train rides, I'm taking a 1 hour flight.)

Later skaters! Pray I dont get like gangrene or something nasty like that!

ho chi minh or thoa?

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 03:33:02 GMT

Our trip to Sapa was quite an adventure. Our hostel was awesome and put us in a cab so that we didn't have to try to muddle our way to the train station to take the night train over to Lao Cai. The ride up was horrible, we were in a hard sleeper which meant that there were 6 beds. Too bad that the other three beds were taken by a family of 4. Ghetto. It was damn crowded in there and even more so when they cut the air to the cabin. We arrived to Lao Cai and took the most horrible bus ride up the hill to sapa. I swear I was going to barf with the winding road.

From there, we met our guide who would take us down to Ban Ho - this tiny village of about 400 (and I'm not sure if that included the buffalo and ducks because i didn't see 400 people unless you count all the tribes we saw in the region). It was close to 40C out and in the blazing hot sun we trekked up and down for close to 14 km. I thought we were going to die from either 1. rolling down a hill or 2. heat exhaustion. Ridiculous. Our guide, Thoa, was the nastiest fellow I have ever seen in the physical sense. nasty nasty teeth. he was nice, but kind of trying too hard to be funny and sort of dirty. Thank god there were three of us.

our homestay was in Ban Ho, which wasn't too far from Ban Den. A nice little house with a veranda over looking the rice paddies in the valley. we hung out for most of the afternoon after we arrived (read: put our feet up and drank as much water as possible), and soon after another family showed up - the cutest family ever. They were from the US but have lived internationally. The kids were so well behaved and you could tell they were such a happy well adjusted family. We ate dinner together and got eaten alive by moquitos, beetles jumped in and out of the food, and a frog jumped down from the balcony onto our table. It was lovely. Sleeping was an ordeal, with the mozzies everywhere. There were some holes in our mozzie nets which we patched with bandaids. We are such wimps.

the next day lu and i hiked another couple miles to see one o the more remote villages before heading back for lunch. It was stupid hot again and we made an executive decision to take motos back up the hill instead of dying of heat stroke hiking for another 2 hours. Motos are fun!

Night train back was better this time, and playing who would you screw was hilarious. Apparently Thoa is worse than Uncle Ho, who has been enbalmed for like 20 yrs. haha. :)

Anyway, we're off to Danang today and headed to the beach! Yay! Later skaters, all is well with us.

what is erosion?

Sun, 09 Apr 2006 13:24:58 GMT

Ha Long bay was super fun, despite some not so fantastic weather, we ended up having enough sun and good weather to have a fun time. Except for the ants in the bed (like ew) and the creepy bug lattice wall, the whole sleeping on the boat thing was a lot of fun, and the scenery was beautiful.

We ate like kings (because of the double servings for vegetarians), Seth and I polished off a shit load of clams, Carole threw her veggie squid out the window, and the one time we asked her to try a squid ball she got the biggest tentacle possible.

The caves were hilarious, including our penguin shots (we were being brats about erosion) and shadow puppets. Some times we're immature, we can't help it. Kayaking was a no go as Sonny nearly got in a fist fight with the kayak watchers despite the police being right there, but sitting on the roof of the boat was awesome especially since it was just the three of us.

We're taking the sleeper train tonight to Sapa, we're dreading the spiders that Kevin insists are going to crawl all over us while we sleep in our homestay. Anyway, we're having lots of fun but we might be MIA for a while. Check out the pictures in my photo album of us wandering around hanoi and then ha long bay. later skaters!

off to ha long bay

Sat, 08 Apr 2006 00:58:48 GMT

I'm hanging out in the hostel right now killing time waiting for our bus to take us to ha long bay...

Yesterday afternoon we hired some bicycle rickshaws and we headed off to the temple of literature - on the way home, what a ride. Imagine being on a dinky little metal rickshaw driving INTO rush hour traffic. Trucks, cars, motorbikes coming at you HEAD on. I swear it was like being in a movie. People here seem to be really good drivers - traffic, despite there being no lines on the road and basically no lights at intersection, just happens. Being a pedestrian at first is daunting, but you realise that if you want to cross the street just start walking slowly and they'll avoid you. This also includes when you want to cross a 8 line highway (which we did last night on the way to find a bar).

Speaking of, last night Lu, Carole and I had the bright idea to go to the Bar Baracuda (where everyone else from the hostel was going) except that we wanted to eat first. We really should have knocked down Kevin's door and made him come with us, but we went on our own and of course, we got HORRIBLY lost (and by horrible, imagine walking on literally the wrong side of the tracks to buttfuck nowhere). Between the rabies dogs, the RATS, the motorcycle gang and the massive cockroaches, we were ready to turn around and throw in the towel. We gave ourselves 2 minutes to find the place once we had turned back to the place we thought it was (after walking probably an extra half a mile) and while walking down a dark alley I felt a hand on my arm and Lu and I both screamed. we turned around and it was Kevin. Holy crap other than the fact that we wanted to slap him, we couldn't have been happier to see him. We FINALLY found the bar (which is in the middle of buttfuck no where) and spent the rest of the evening hanging out with other brits and folks from the hostel. All in all a good night and thankfully we got walked home by some guys from our hostel so we wouldnt have to endure the scary walk home again.

Anyway, that's all for now, Hanoi has been a blast so far. Off to Ha Long Bay to lounge by the water and check out some caves.

hanoi!

Fri, 07 Apr 2006 08:51:49 GMT

so after a marathon flight (17+ hours + 3 hour stop over in taipei) I arrived in Hanoi. Of course, like any backpacker the second I got off the plane i was bombarded by people trying to get me to take their cab, and then some dude tried to get me to take some local bus which would have taken me to who knows where. Anyway luckily I found some french canadians who were on the right shuttle (the one that was supposed to take me to town) and we were off after some folks from LA jumped on making it economical for the drive to happen (they wait until the bus is full). Of course, the driver tried to take us to some random place so me and the two people from LA got out and walked in the hot humid city air to our hostel. We spent the rest of the afternoon drinking beer, and then I headed back to take a nap and wait for luen.

we picked up another backpacker, carole and today we spent wandering around the old quarter of hanoi - we checked out the '36 streets' including the street of towels, the street of tin shops and the street of candy. We also figured out our plan for the next couple days:

Saturday morning: leave for hailong bay
Sunday evening: Return from hailong bay, take the overnight train to sapa
Monday: Hike in sapa
Tuesday: Hike in sapa, take the over night train back to hanoi
Wednesday: Arrive in hanoi at like 5am, wander around and see ho chi minh's body and then leave on the 2pm flight to danang.
anyway, that's all for now...we're off to eat some dinner

Vietnam!

Mon, 03 Apr 2006 23:55:53 GMT

Yay! I'm headed to Vietnam on Wednesday with Luen.

Here's my itinerary:

Seattle --> Hanoi

(2.5 weeks of unplanned stuff here)

Ho Chi Minh --> Seattle

We're not really that big on planning we're just gonna play it by ear, so stay tuned for updates and photos from the road.