|
| We left Phnom Penh and headed off to Battambang. We weren't sure what
to expect, but the LP was pretty gracious in its description of
Battambang. I believe the word "elegant" is even used. If I had to
choose one word to describe our three days in Battambang and make a
list of the top 300 words I could pick up, "elegant" would not be on
that list of 300 words. Now don't get me wrong, Battambang wasn't bad,
it just wasn't elegant.
We pulled into Battambang after another 6 hours on the bus, passing
countryside fields, trees, and the skinniest cows I've ever seen in my
life. Let's just say if cows could be fashion models, they'd come from
Cambodia. We pulled into the bus station and walked around looking for
a hostel, trying to orient ourselves in a place without streelights and
paved roads. Both BFF and I had the same imression of Battambang, "Hey
it kinda feels like Songpan." Songpan was the place in Sichuan province
where for 3 days, we rode horses for 6 hours by day and froze in a
tibetan guesthouse by night. Ominous, indeed. We awoke the next day and
took it easy, waking up late and lounging around.
We weren't further impressed at all when hearing news of BFF's solitary
breakfast. Hint: If when describing what you just ate, the colour
"yellow" is followed by the words "gelatinous jelly-like thing in a
jar", and then "unwashed communal drinking cup" also follows, its
probably not a place warranting a repeat visit. Lunch was better, but
the yellow gelatinous-like thing moved through BFF pretty quickly and
in his own words "I'm gonna start walking quickly back to the hostel."
America has Los Angeles, named the City of Angels. Cambodia has
Battambang, named for "Disappearing Stick." Seriously. It's named after
a stick.
Battambang managed to be a laid-back chill place for us (the only way
you can describe a place with no paved roads and stores that close at
4pm) where we took some time to decompress after visiting the Tuol
Sleng Museum. In other words, this meant sitting in our room watching
such gripping movies as The Patriot and Charlie's Angels, and then
listening to BFF sing "Independent Woman" along with Destiny's Child at
the end credits of the latter movie. We (µ and I) were entertained. It
was fun.
The saving grace of Battambang? White Rose Restaurant. It is here where
we "discovered" their $1 vegetable curry and $.75 butterscotch sundae.
That's right, butterscotch sundaes. Might be ho-hum for you (North)
Americans, but for us Tianjiner's, it was liquid gold. Our biggest
complaint that day was the difference in butterscotch between our two
orders of butterscotch sundaes. BFF actually called over one of the
staff to point out the difference in the void in his glass and the
liquid goodness in mine. The staff worked went back, brought out the
butterscotch and poured some more onto the top of BFF's sundae. If he
hadn't, I imagine some 'bows would have been thrown by BFF.
Monday we watched the Super Bowl and as a Bears fan, it sucked. In a
way I'm glad for the Colts that they finally won, but the Bears handed
it to them. Well, mostly Rex Grossman handed it to them. We rented some
moped drivers to take us around some sights, and afterwards I thought
to find out whoever invented asphalt and send them a nice email. When
you're on a moped/bicyle/motorcycle on dry dusty unpaved roads, its not
a pleasant thing. We came back covered in red dust. It was messy.
The highlight of the day was the last thing we did. We found out that
there was an american-run orphanage nearby, and so we ditched the $5
"have the foreigners sit on a rickety cart stuck on the train tracks
for an hour" ride and went to visit the orphanage. It wasn't what we
expected, but eventually we took them outside and taught them games
that they uh, already knew. We had a great time playing with them. It
was remarkable to see how such a large group of kids could take such
enjoyment and pleasure from a simple game of tag. It was such a change
from the utter horror of the S-21 prison, it nearly broke my heart when
after only being there about an hour and a half and communicating in
halting english, kids would cling to us and ask if we were gonna come
back the next day. We had to tell them that we were leaving the next
day to go to Siem Reap. We left them after they all grabbed our hands
goodbye and said "God Bless You" to each of us.
Our boat trip to Siem Reap was a mess. We met a girl who came to
Battambang via Siem Reap who told us the 6hour ride actually took 10
hours, so we went out and bought water and food to last us. The next
morning, we were brought to the dock, but then herded onto 2 trucks and
told we would drive for 40 minutes to a different spot where the water
level was higher. The truck ride was the most enjoyable part for me.
Imagine 16 people and their packs crammed into the back of the cab. We
were all sitting, with BFF and another man standing, facing backwards.
We took back roads, bumping and jostling every which way. Every once in
awhile I'd have to yell "duck" so BFF and the other man wouldn't get
smacked in their head by a low-hanging branch. Eventually BFF decided
he didn't like facing backward so he turned around to face front, which
was difficult consdering how tightly packed we were. This meant that
whilst in the process of turning around, BFF was rubbing his butt in
the face of a Cambodian woman, who let's just say was not displeased in
the slightest. Unbeknownst to BFF, as his butt did its best impression
of the Macarena in this woman's face, she smiled and laughed. I'm sure
if she could have reached into her pocket for some money, BFF would
have later found a 1000Riel note tucked into his shorts. At the end of
the "show", when BFF finlly managed to get himself facing the correct
way, she patted his butt. For some reason he doesn't seem to have
noticed any of this.
We on the sides of the truck also had to do our share of ducking
inwards as the branches along the side of the road began to have
thorns. Long sharp ones. Soon the sight of upcoming branches had
everyone pushing towards the middle of the truck to avoid getting
pricked. BFF and the other man aldo ducked, shoving their butts into
the fray.
Call it karma, call it whatever you want, but soon the left cheek of my
face was (COMPLETELY UNINTENTIONALLY) rubbing against the left cheek of
BFF's butt. It was weird.
After an hour and a half of this, we made it to our boats, and enjoyed
a 5 and a half hour boat ride to Siem Reap, much of it spent on the
roof of the boat catching some more sun. We eventually made it to Siem
Reap and met up with Rob, he of no nickname. Yet.
I seem to have unestimated BFF's paleness. Compared to µ and I, BFF
looks like the hairest albino in the world. When standing besides Rob
though, BFF looks like a guy who's tanned a bit. Yes, the difference
between Rob and BFF is quite stunning, for Rob, who spent the better
part of the last month and a half listening to a googleplex of chinese
doctorate student presentations (in english, nonetheless), has a
paleness of skin that Korean female drama stars dream of having.
After some time and miscommunication, we met up with our contact Nikki
and her fiance Ben, as well as Scarfgirl. We've now spent a day and a
half enjoying Siem Reap, and we'll get started this afternoon to Angkor
Wat. This entry is (much) shorter than the previous entries, as I
really want to go check out this McDermott Gallery, which looks
stunning. Speaking of stunning, our first night in Siem Reap, µ and I
went to a bakery to get some 50% pastries for the group, when we ran
into the beautiful Swedish twins again. We chatted with them for a bit,
and then I turned around and somehow µ had gotten over Long and found
another (older) male admirer, this one by the name of Steven. He's a
beekeeper from Alaska. The people you meet when you travel.
| | |
| I've been thinking about the length of these emails. For those that are new my travelogue emails, they're long, eh? I've scanned through the previous ones, and I've come to lay the blame on their length on our nicknames. Henceforth, Scarfgirl will be referred to as Sg, BFF will continue to be referred to as BFF since its only 3 letters long, and "The Muse formerly known as Momma Hen" will now be referred to simply by "µ", which for the uninformed is the greek letter mu. The street sale ended up being typical of Southeast Asia; everything was either too ugly or too small. I'm talking about the clothes, not the people. That would just be mean. The only impressive thing was how quick everything was taken down and covered as the police drove by while we were walking along the street. One quick yell from a clothes seller, probably saying "police" or something in vietnamese (we'll never know since I'll never be able to reproduce those sounds, she might have just been clearing her throat of some phlegm), and within seconds everything was wrapped up in blankets and run into stores and vans. µ got it on video, but I'm not sure if you can tell what's going on. The next day we went to the Dan Sinh market, where BFF and I were looking to get some sidebags. BFF cuz he's all about the fashion (I know you can't tell, but I'm being sarcastic right now) and myself cuz mine got stolen in Nha Trang. I found a small sidebag for 4 bucks, a replica of one that Americans used to hold their gas masks in. BFF found one he liked, but balked at the asking price of $12.50US, which seems pricey for a bag probably scavenged off the ground sometime after the war. We then walked to the camera place, where I was dismayed to find out that the Lomo camera that I was hoping to be repaired was in pieces; according to the store owners, the earliest they could fix it by was the following day, which wouldn't work since we would be on a bus leaving the city. I make no pretense at being an actual "photographer." I know a bit about photography (adjust some dials and then press a button, remembering first to remove the lens cap) and I like looking at and taking pictures, so I place my photographic skills somewhere above "chimpanzee holding a rock" and below "people liking my pictures so much they pay me for them". However, in the past 3 years, I've almost always had a camera in my bag with me. A lot of times it was the only thing in my bag. To be a complete sap for a moment, I felt somehow incomplete walking around without a camera to take pictures with. I decided I was on a mission to find the Dorothy Boyd camera to my Jerry Mcguire (Yes, I had to IMDB Jerry McGuire to find the name of Renee Zellwegger's character). Well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration. Since I currently have no access to cash outside of the benevolence of µ, I didn't need to find the camera that "completes" me, which would probably be a Hasselblad medium format camera. I would be happy with an old, but working (read:cheap) 35mm or medium format camera that wouldn't extend my tab on µ's account. I found plenty of old and working cameras in Saigon, but aside from the Lomo, I didn't find anything that came (relatively) cheap. Oh well, maybe in Cambodia. Probably the only time I'll ever say that. After a quick meal of pho and some pastries, we walked to the War Remnants Museum, set up to memorialize and remember the actions of foreign military on the Vietnamese people. Its quite a thing to see a museum from such a different perspective than what I'm used to, which is usually "America, America, we're the greatest". If you can allow me a slight side, most of the time there is little reflection involved when it comes to food. Unless it involves Schwartz's smoked meat sandwiches, Tianjin's "The Rib Place", or the previously mentioned Nha Trang street seafood, any reflection regarding food can generally be summed up in the following maxim; Good/Edible food=Happy Steve, as well as the converse Bad/Overly priced food=Unhappy Steve. Seeing as thus far we've been basing our travels around food (no point denying this), there has been little need for any deep reflection. However, when going through the War Remnants museum, one is forced to reflect. I can't believe that one can go through the War Remnants museum without being affected. And one is constantly reminded that war is an ugly thing. Graphic photographs and descriptions bring you close to what was going on at that time. The devastation wreaked on the country and its civilians were enormous. Its quite incredible to look back at the places and people we visited in the previous days and to see how in one or two generations the change that has taken place. Its another thing to read comments and captions recalling "the victorious effort to liberate south Vietnam from its oppressors" and then look around now to see Vietnam striving to increase foreign tourism, and to see little children who should be playing with their friends but whose time is spent trailing tourists asking for money. I found it interesting that sandwiched between exhibits on the debilitating effects of Agent Orange, guns used by foreign military, photographs documenting massacres by American troops on villagers and depictions of torture cells and prisons was an exhibit by a Japanese woman named Iwasaki Chihiro (http://www.chihiro.jp/english/chihiro/works.htm), who was an activist for peace and painted beautiful watercolours of children. I found myself walking back and forth, seeing the best and worst of human nature. On one side of the building were pictures of the aftermath of Agent Orange; children of exposed parents, born with such incredible deformities it broke your see proof that people could create such a compound that causes so much pain and hardship. 60 feet away on the opposite side are paintings on walls depicting the hope and beauty in children. I wondered if I was ready for the stories of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. After another round of cheap fruit shakes and dinner, we relaxed at Sozo Cafe, a business created to help families break the cycle of debt and to teach them usable skills. True to form, we bought all the discounted cookies could afford ("Which cookies should we buy, the white chocolate chunk, the raisin ones... um, lets get the ones that are broken already, I think they're 50% off") and spent the next bit just hanging out and talking. Our bus left early in the morning to Phnom Penh, and true to form, we stopped every hour or so along the way. We initially planned on getting the Cambodia visa ourselves, to save $5US as opposed to going through the travel agency. We relented at the border after the tour agency guy on the bus told us of all the potential hassle that could happen. Afterwards, we were thankful we didn't try to do it on our own. From the border it was about 2 hours to Phnom Penh, and what a 2 hours it was. I've never been to India, but we all agree what we saw outside the bus windows was what we picture India to be like, minus the uh, billion or so people. Dusty roads, motorcycles, vans with 20-30 people packed in/on them, utter chaos in other words. The countryside was mostly unused, but the biggest shock was pulling into Phnom Penh. Picture an utter mass of people, food/market stalls, loud noises, and then 5 minutes later it looked like we hit the suburbs. Gas stations nicer than ones in the US, mobile phone stores, toyotas and Lexuses all around. It was odd. For dinner, we sampled some sub-par cambodian food (Üh, if I wanted meat in teriyaki sauce, I would have gone to Japan"), and befriended the beautiful Swedish twins sitting beside us and then one of kids selling copied books on the street. Regrettably, I denied the twins' invitation to try some of their food (it looked a better than what we had), so we were left reminiscing about how great Vietnamese food is. We then treated Vhana, the bookseller, to a chicken dinner and sat and chatted with him. And when I say "we", I mean µ and BFF, since I was tired and close to falling asleep at the Happy Herb Pizza place (be careful of what you order). Vhana just about stole µ's heart with his smile and his story, adding to the total number of children we've met that we want to take back with us. I'm not sure of the total now, but its above one and somewhere less than ten. Yesterday we took in Tuol Sleng museum, also known as the S-21 prison, one of the secret ones that the Khmer Rouge set up in a former high school. This along with the War Remnants museum ranks as the top worst things I've ever seen. Over the course of its use, S-21 prison had 20,000 inmates, and all but 7 were executed. What made this place even more tragic was the Khmer Rouge's choice to precisely catalogue everything. There are rooms filled with the portrait shots of every inmate, along with the people that worked at the prison. Its easy to walk through these rooms and to not let your eyes focus on anything; its a strenuous exercise to force yourself to look at all the faces, to see each of them for what they were/are: people. Across their eyes you can see the gamut of emotions, but mostly you see fear. From there you walk through the former cells and see the bars that held each prisoner down; you can see the implements of torture as well as pictures of inmates after they've been tortured and paintings depicting the acts. There are biographies from relatives of inmates, as well as a small collection of skulls. Its not an easy place to walk through. That was yesterday. Since then I've bought a camera and we've moved on to another city. In the interests of length and subject matter, I'm going to leave those matters to the next email. I'm having a hard time writing about else, since I'm still trying to process what I've seen at the War Remnants Museum and at S-21. | | |
| Monday was, sigh, yet another day at the beach. Yes, we are suffering.
Ok, so maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but what is taking work is
trying to get BFF's skin to get some colour. The Muse formerly known as
Momma Hen's skin is a deep reddish-brown, my skin's well on its way to
Filipino boat driver levels, but BFF's still looking somewhere between
a corpse and those Crayola flesh-coloured crayons. He insists his skin
is getting some colour based on his forearms, but they're so hairy who
knows what his skin's like. Same with his legs; they're skinny like
pipe cleaners and just as hairy. We read on the beach, and then read
some more. Lunch was some more awesome street food, and then we all
split up. I went to the internet cafe, Jon took a walk, and The Muse
formerly known as Momma Hen went and, um, her muse thang. Yup, she met
up with Long, the famous (and later we learned, rich, well, by
Vietnamese standards anyway) photographer for coffee, who's like 56 and
married with 2 daughters. *cough cough*
We met up in the hostel again and then went out for, um, food again. If
you haven't guessed, food is an (ever)constant theme for (me)us. What's
surprising though is The Muse formerly known as Momma Hen and BFF's
belief that I eat a lot. Now for those TO folks who know George Ohki,
I'm not even in the same level as that. Ricky, when he first came to
UW, that one would eat his weight if there was that much food on the
table. I love these two guys both, but I'm nowhere near their
potential/peak eating abilities. However, I. do. love. to eat. food.
And dinner... ohhhh, dinner. Dinner was street seafood again. We had 2
small(er) lobsters, but BFF and I had 4 of the biggest tiger prawns
I've ever seen. They were almost the size of small lobsters that sell
in North America. They were so big, and tasted so good... it was an
emotional experience. If I had anymore estrogen in my body, I probably
would have shed a tear or two. But then that'd mean I'd have what the
Black Eyed Peas refer to as "My Humps, My Humps, my Lovely Lady Lumps,"
and that would just be weird. Regardless, no tears were shed, but I was
speechless at times.
Tuesday we rented a private boat to Hon Mieu. The boat didn't go all
the way to the island so we had to jump in these circular bamboo boats
and get rowed to the island. The rowers were Vietnamese women who again
thought I was vietnamese, but seemed cordial enough. We got to shore,
and they started asking for (an exhorbitant amount of)money, so we
shrugged them off and hiked through the little village. It was a small
fishing village, and it was really nice to walk around somewhere and
not be hassled to buy postcards, or sunglasses, or photocopied books,
or well you get the point. We hiked along the coastline trying to get
to what we thought was a big statue of a boat. Imagine our surprise
when we made it far around to see that it wasn't a big statue of a
boat, it was a statue of a giant shellfish-like thing doing something
completely inappropriate to a statue of a giant boat. Welcome to the
ugliest aquarium in the world.
We passed through the ugly (I do mean ugly, The Muse formerly known as
Momma Hen's got pictures) aquarium and made it out to a (almost)
secluded rocky beach. There was a few people eating at a little
restaurant, but after BFF almost bought a beer, they disappeared. This
is how cheap we are: We found out to rent beach chairs on this beach it
cost 5000 VND (30-something cents) for a day, and instead of paying we
chose to spread out on the cement dock nearby. Yeah, that's how we
roll. We had the whole stretch of beach to ourselves for the hour and a
bit we were there laying on our Korean Air *cough cough* uhhh I mean
Burberry *cough cough* blankets doing our best impression of a grilled
prawn.
We made it back to the fishing village in record time (The Muse
formerly known as Momma Hen guessed it would take and hour... it took
about 3 minutes) thanks to a path behind a locked gate behind the
aquarium. The fun began once we ran into our very (and I do mean
grumpy) boat captain. He looked at me, and muttered some likely dark
words and sent a very angry glares my way before leading us to the
boat. Of course, I didn't understand a word. Do I really look
Vietnamese? We had to go with the bamboo boat ladies again, and they
were all cordial. Til we reached the boat. Thankfully we were
forewarned of their coming tactics by a friendly local tour guide, who
told us what they'd do and how much the correct fee was. As I tried to
get out of my boat, they wanted me to give them 20,000 VND for each
boat, meaning 40,000 total. The price should have been 5,000VND per
boat, and really we all should have been in one boat. When we first
arrived they split us up into 2 boats, trying to get more money from
us. When I offered to give them 5,000VND they threw a huge fit at me.
The acting performance they pulled probably would have gotten them an
Emmy. Not an Oscar though, but an Emmy for sure. The Muse formerly
known as Momma Hen and I gave them 5,000VND, but BFF caved and gave
them a little extra. Nothing like the locals trying to scam you to put
a damper on the day.
I wanted to ask Long some questions about cameras and stuff, so The
Muse formerly known as Momma Hen put on her sultry voice, called him up
and invited him to the cafe where we were at. He came over on his Vespa
and we chilled for a bit, and then he invited us to dinner. We went to
this place called Crazy Kim's. BFF and I walked, and The Muse formerly
known as Momma Hen rode with Long on his Vespa. Crazy Kim's is an
interesting place, mostly cuz of the owner, Kim. She came by (Long
joke's that she's his 7th wife) and we talked with her too. She escaped
by boat from Vietnam 26 years ago when she was 20, landed in Singapore
at a refugee camp, went o Holland, then eventually made her way to
Ottawa working for Oracle as some sort of analyst. After 10 years of
that, she moved to Vietnam to teach at a university. On a whim she
bought out a tiny bar and then started running a bar. They've moved
locations and have renovated 3 times, and she's running a school in the
back for street kids. The school's open to any kid who comes by in the
morning, and they tutor english for free in the afternoon. All the
teachers are there on no pay, its a pretty cool setup. She also on a
whim decided to open up a new spa. We asked her how she does all this,
and she just shrugged and just said she doesn't, she just does it. She
tries something, and then just continually changes and adjusts it as
she goes. We offered to try out her new jacuzzi for her, but it won't
be ready til next week. Oh, and she runs a campaign trying to stop
child pedophilia in Nha Trang. Pretty cool lady. Long paid for dinner
too, which was sweet, since I'm not sure we had enough between the 3 of
us to pay for it. Yeah, that's also how we roll. hahaha.
After saying goodbye to Long and Kim, we grabbed our bags from the
hostel and said farewell to our next closest friends, the street
seafood vendors. Again, I'd shed a tear if I could. We hit up the five
dollar night bus to Saigon (as opposed to the twenty dollar train) and
I promptly tried to sleep. I managed to sleep but it wasn't restful,
and at least twice I think I remember rolling towards/onto BFF, who
then pushed/shoved me back towards the window. For some reason it
seemed we also stopped every hour for a ten minute break. The only
conclusion I can make of this is that the bladders of the Vietnamese
are correctionally proportional to their body, making their bladders
about the size of a thimble. In that case, I suppose a ten minute stop
every hour is wholly appropriate. If not, its just a big waste of time.
Saigon's a pretty cool place with a big city feel. The Muse formerly
known as Momma Hen and BFF crashed in our hostel room while I jogged
around looking for potential places to eat, buy/trade books, and browse
for second-hand cameras. I was initially fine with my bag/cameras/plane
ticket/house keys, etc... getting stolen, but hitting up some of the
used camera stores were bringing up some anger/frustration once I heard
some price quotes. Uh $6000 for a Leica with a non-interchangable lens?
I think not. Even the Fed 3, which was the camera I just got that sells
for $25-40, I got quoted for $250. The haggling just didn't seem worth
it. One my way back however I stopped by one last place, and in the
corner of a shelf, I spied a used (and I mean well-used) Lomo, quite
possibly my favorite camera. Its a slap in the face to Long, but I'll
send him an explanation over email. Frankly when you have zero cash
flow, you go with the $30 well-used Lomo over the $700 medium format
Hasselblad. Sorry Long, another time. The test film I shot didn't work
as it turns out the shutter's not opening, the but the guys returned my
money and promised to fix it by tomorrow. so we'll see.
We went around with a friend of the Yim's today, and it was great. He
was really friendly and was our de facto tour guide as well. He's been
here for 17 years and confirmed our suspicions (now almost a theorum)
about the chances of a foreigner learning (we're not even gonna say
mastering) Vietnamese. Let's just say it doesn't look good. He also
took us to a fantastic restaurant that cost around 5 bucks a person.
Dang. It was gooood. Don't worry Hedi, Ant, I got business cards.
We're about to check out a street sale somewhere that's got like
flip-flops for 37 cents and tshirts for 62 cents. Should be fun, unless
we get lost along the way. But that'll prob be fun too.
| | |
| This was an email update I sent out Jan 26, 2007. I forgot to update this in xanga as well... "Scrumptuous seafood lunch" was a scam. "Scrumptuous" meant a table of 5 people received 3 veggie dishes, 1 fish, and 1 squid/mixed veggies dish. We ate 3 meals through this company, and after every meal, everyone was still hungry. At one point I was shoving a chopstick into the fish's eye sockets trying to get some more, um, edible stuff. Probably yet another reason why I don't have a girlfriend. Complaining was useless though, as every tour boat is owned by the same company, and judging by the cattle herds of foreign tourists, nothing's gonna change anytime soon. Halong Bay was a lot like Sapa in terms of beautiful scenery marred by massive amounts of fog. Imagine the limestone rock formations in Guilin/Yangshuo, China, but in the open water. Pretty cool, but woulda been better if we could have seen a little more of the horizon. All was not loss, as we met some pretty cool people on board; a Columbian couple studying in Japan, and a brit gal who owns a bar and is an amazing Ultimate frisbee player. As in, World Championships amazing. She also was a professional horse jumper for a while.
Since Halong Bay however, the food and scenery have been getting better and better. Hanoi was awesome, the only downer being that we were only there for a night. Jon had been in Hanoi for already, so he totally took over and was our guide and did a great job at it. And might I say, Hanoi has some great food. Jinju's classmate at Nankai is Vietnamese, so I met up with her before coming to Vietnam and asked for some food advice. So we went to the place where she said was the best pho in Hanoi, and... it was stinking good. BFF also busted out some Vietnamese "What time do you close". Its awesome, if you see him you gotta ask him to show it to you. Suffice to say, the person that he asked just turned around and ignored him. I also got to get rid of a bunch of my old books and picked up some more second-hand ones; a book by Douglas Copeland and a collection of stories from McSweeny's. We also had some awesome fruit juice and street food, with a walk around the lake and the Old Quarter.
BFF on Tintin, the cartoon that everyone that's not American knows about: "So is it like, interesting?" [said in a typically arrogant American style, you know, as in when an American shows surprise that something can be good and interesting without having originated from America]
10 minutes later, BFF's looking to buy some pretty sweet Tintin book covers. I found some sweet old Air France posters, but I didn't get 'em. I almost left some money with Samara, a.k.a. Scarfgirl to go back to the place to get them for me since she has an extra day in Hanoi, but Jo (Horse-jumping-frisbee-bar owner) said that they have 'em cheaper in Saigon. So there. Meh, so I was given/stuck with the same nickname that I had in Mongolia; Tintin. Something to do with my hair, and how it sticks up I think. I'm noticing people pointing at my hair here.
We left Hanoi at the buttcrack of dawn to go to Nha Trang via the worst taxi driver listening to the worst music.
Tintin (yours truly) on Vietnamese music: From what we've heard so far; it sucks. Our driver this morning busted out some Vietnamese techno-muzak. It was bad. Ask BFF for an imitation sometime.
Tintin, BFF and Momma Hen on Nha Trang: This place rocks. We spent a few hours lying on the beach, with somehow 100% of the sun rays hitting BFF's pasty white skin reflecting straight to Momma Hen. Seriously, I'm on my way to looking like a Filipino again, Momma Hen's red, and BFF's still looking like an anorexic hairy Casper. If that's not a testament to our awesome uniqueness as created beings, I don't know what is.
Our biggest difficulty here has been deciding which seafood place to check out for meals; however this problem has been solved. 100 feet away from our hostel, there are people selling grilled lobster on the street for 150,000 VND per kilo. That's just under 10 bucks per kilo of lobster. PER KILO OF LOBSTER. LOBSTER. LOBSTER. We had to see for ourselves, so we asked to weigh one of the SMALLER lobsters, and it was around .8 kilos. There are lobsters that looked at least 1.5 times bigger too. We talked to a couple eating there, and they said in restaurants its 700,000 VND. Suffice to say, BFF and I are gonna get our lobster on.
Edit: At this point my computer froze and we went off to get the lobster. We've just finished and I came back to finish this.] Here's why...
We had 6 big tiger prawns and a 1.1 kilo lobster on the grill, with drinks, and the total came to 5 dollars per person for the 3 of us. Let me repeat, 6 tiger prawns, 1.1 kilo lobster, drinks, all for a grand total of 15 dollars. As BFF so eloquently stated, "Nha Trang, where have you been all my life?" Oh yeah, in addition to being
grilled, the lobster also came out with this kick-ass sauce. To describe it, y'all TO folks know the black bean and lobster place in downtown? I can't remember the name of it, but its like that sauce. But a whole lot better. Suffice to say, we're going back tomorrow for crabs and squid. I'm pretty sure every night we'll be eating there for dinner. | | |
| You realize I can go on and on about food. The street food here is ridiculous, every little place we pass looks amazing. More often than not, we (at BFF's or my urging) stop and try it. If we don't try it then, we at least stare at everyone's plates to see what it is and make a mental note to come back later.
On one hand, Nha Trang is great. Beaches, food, cheap stuff, what more could you ask for? On top of that, the weather's been so nice that we've become so laid back we're practically horizontal. This leads to: left behind cameras, jackets, etc... while all that we remembered quick enough to go back and retreive said forgotten items, the ultimate culmination was when I didn't put my sidebag around my shoulder, I stuck it in the basket of one of the bikes we had rented for the day. Not 2 minutes later, 2 guys on a motorcylcle reached in and grabbed my bag and took off. I gave chase in my dinky china-ish bike, and followed them for 2 street turns before i lost them completely. Thankfully my passport wasn't in it, it was back at the hostel. Monetarily speaking, I didn't lose much in total, but regardless it adds a lot of hassle to my life. [Note: Charles, I think I'm winning again.]
I lost: 1) My Holga medium format camera, with about 1 or 2 pictures away from finishing that first roll. Its not worth much, maybe 15-20 bucks, but i do really like the pictures that come out of it. 2) My new/old Russian Fed 3 camera, a present from some friends in TJ. I got it 2 days before we left for vietnam, and while I did have 1 roll back in the room, I was just about change out the current roll and put in a new one when it got stolen. Again, it wasn't expensive, about 35 bucks, but again, it looked like it took nice pictures. I'm pretty bummed about this one. 3) My travel notebook from the last 2 years, which has all my phone numbers/emails/contact info from everyone i've met in korea, china, mongolia, etc... Also another bummer. 4) Extra passport photos. Apparently for Angkor Wat you need a passport photo for the 3-day pass, so now i have to go to a photo place and overpay for some passport photos. crap. 5) 200 kuai. I need chinese money for when i get back to kunming since i'll be there for a day or so hanging out with adam. Not that big a deal. 6) My good book. I'm hoping maybe one of the thieves can read english, and he'll get convicted after seeing and return it to me somehow. Realistically, it'll prob find its way to one of the used bookstores. 7) My bank card from canada. I was able to come back and cancel the card before they used it, but I can't access my account without it, so i'm stuck without money until, well until somehow i get a new card. My mom's coming to china late February i think, but that's over a month away. Thankfully Momma Hen's got enough to cover me for the rest of the trip, but again, extra hassle I didn't need.
On the other hand I now have less things to worry about getting stolen, since well, they got stolen. Literally the only things I have of worth are my passport and cell phone, which isn't even that great anyway. Oh yeah, crap, I had some chinese character flashcards in my bag too. Nuts.
Onto a new topic. I've always known that my last name gives people fits, in that if you've never met me, its almost impossible to figure out where I'm from. Its not a Kim, Lee, Park, Cho or any of the obvious ones. Its also not a vowel-alternate japanese-ish name either, like tokagawa or the like, nor is its vietnamese-ish with a dong, nguyen or tranh. Its Chee, like cheese minus the last two letters. What has been surprising, to me anyway, is people's difficulty in guessing my nationality based on my looks. In every asian country I've been in, I've been mistaken for that nationality, or some other nationality. Chinese, Japanese and Korean are the most common guesses; however when I was in the Philippines last year I was mistaken for a Filipino. Back in Kunming, Samara's friend Emily was pretty sure I was chinese, and a woman at an art gallery there was pretty sure I was Thai. Yesterday a vietnamese woman thought I was vietnamese, and someone else thought I was from Singapore. I'm not counting Malaysia, since well they don't have a generalized "look." In addition to the southeast asia "look", some malaysians are descended from indians and mainland chinese that immigrated years back, so they're all over the place in terms of a stereotypical "look". I am a little confused by, well, everyone else's confusion over where I'm from. Let's just say this isn't helping the identity stuff I've been trying to work through recently.
Although, if it could mean getting some vietnamese food at a discounted price, I'd probably claim some vietnamese blood in me. Even if my shoe size is in the double digits.
Yesterday was a late morning, since Momma Hen went scuba diving (unfortunately, not with the Chuck Norris look-a-like) and so BFF and I rented bikes and headed north. Our grandiose plans were cut short with my bag got stolen however. After a late lunch BFF and I hit the beach, where he tried to sleep off a cold, and I got down to reading. After about 20 minutes of getting into a Douglas Copeland book, I was sexually harassed. Well, i suppose in North America it would be considered sexual harassment. Here apparently its just good selling technique. The harassee, moi, was lying on his stomach on the beach, minding his own business reading a book, when out of nowhere, the harasser, an old vietnamese woman selling fruit, snuck up on him and slapped him on the ass. After the harassee was startled out of his mind, the old (and I must reinforce this, olddddddd) woman just cackled, and then said, "you wanna buy some fruit?" I tried to combine the vietnamese words I knew (hello, thank you, 3, noodle in soup, beef, chicken, pork, motorcycle) into some sort of strong rebuke, but alas, my mind failed me. So did BFF. He said, "sure, do you have any pineapple?" I went back to my book, and after some mild haggling with BFF, the woman patted (I was going to say caressed, but that was just too freaky) my butt a few times, said sorry, cackled again, and then ambled off looking for her next customer/prey.
Last night, um, more lobster. it was properly scrumptious, not "scrumtuous" like a certain Halong Bay boat tour. Oh we had crab too. That was also really really good.
Today we rented mopeds after a late brunch of some more good food (yes I will have a fresh mango shake at 62 cents please) and rode around the coast. Defeated by the lack of continually coastal road, we turned back to Nha Trang and looked up the gallery of a vietnamese photographer that we read about in the LP. After a few wrong turns, we found his gallery and were pleasantly surprised to find him open. The LP says he's closed on Sundays; they're wrong. The photographer's name is Long Thanh, and you can see his work here: http://www.elephantguide.com/longthanh/galleries/index.htm
He was present in his gallery, and he gladly spent an hour or chilling with us, and generally putting up with our special brand of nonsensical talk. His friend had just bought a camera, so Long Thanh was testing it out for him, so he took a few pictures of us. Oh wait, he took pictures of Momma Hen. And just Momma Hen. He was full out posing her, having her sit on the ground by his vespa and everything. At one point Momma Hen even asked him, "Hey do you wanna take any pictures of them (BFF and myself)?" He looked at us a bit, and then resumed posing Momma Hen. We've now started (unofficially) referring to Momma Hen as The Muse. Anyway, he's an awesome photographer, and if I still had my cameras, I probably would have seen about hanging out with him more and picking his brain about photography. We went to his darkroom to watch him develop film, and looked at the dozen or so notes on the wall from other people/photographers whom he's spent time chilling with. We've invited him to come to Cambodia with us; but we'll see if he shows up. He doesn't seem to leave vietnam much.
I dunno how interesting the rest of our day will be to you, the reader, since it just involved more eating. A fair bit more. Momma Muse went for a jog this morning; I may have to join her tomorrow morn.
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