all over asia

won't you take me to tacky town?

2006-02-18T17:44:00.000-08:00

so after the bike ride of doom and a night of me moaning in pain, tim and i had to go into town to return those bastard bicycles. i managed to ride all the way into town (standing up the whole way) and was only too happy to hand over the evil creation. on our way, tim saw it: A MINIBUS DEPOT, shining like a beacon! o, minibus, you go so fast and have seats big enough for two western-sized people! no thighs need spill over the end of the seat, like water in a waterfall! we immediately ran over and booked two seats back to chiang mai. unfortunately, the bus was not as promising as it seemed--i was stricken with CAR SICKNESS and was unable to both read my book and enjoy the 6732847823-mph drive as we careened dangerously around corners and whizzed past other cars. we eventually got to chiang mai, where, after a week of nothing but delicious thai food, we decided to eat CRAP. so, we went to one of the american-style restaurants and ordered the cheese plate. note: when outside of actual cheese-eating countries, do not order cheese. yick. after dinner, we stopped at a convenience store to get some water, and the smiling cashier surprised us as we were leaving. WAIT! he screamed, and ran around us toward the door. i thought he was going to open the door for us, but instead, he opened his cooler and gave us two free ice creams. THAI PEOPLE LOVE US!

thus, i left chiang mai the second time with another fuzzy feeling. the fuzzy feeling evaporated quickly when we arrived in bangkok for our flight to phuket, and there it was; TACKINESS. we had managed to avoid most of the narsty package-holiday-going/tiger beer wife-beater-wearing/generally white trashy crowd, but BAM! there they were, like an international convention, in bangkok, all waiting to get on our plane. on the plane, which WAS one of those low budget free-for-all seating deals, it got even worse. i sat next to the window, and tim sat in the middle seat, and next to tim, she sat. some kind of euro with SOME KIND OF B.O. o man, i had to stop breathing through my nose. i don't know how tim made it all the way to phuket without fainting. i have never smelled stench like that in my life. the homeless people in new york had nothing on this woman. i feel dizzy just thinking about it! the flight was longer than it needed to be, sitting next to her, and was, of course, full of white people. not an asian in the bunch. ah, the joys of going to popular tourist destinations.

but, oh, phuket...our hotel made up for it all. i knew i would love it when we were being given the tour of the place, and we saw a 4-year-old elephant, belonging to the hotel, just walking around. for anyone contemplating a trip to phuket, i can highly recommend le meridien. i don't know if it was hit by the tsunami or not, but it was right on the (private) beach, in a horseshoe shape, overlooking the pool. one end was under construction, but that was the only problem i could see. the bed was big and soft and beautiful, the food was pricey but good, the beach was gorgeous with clear, warm water, they had cable TV, and THERE WAS A HOTEL ELEPHANT! what more could you want?? if that wasn't enough, the elephant played the frickin' harmonica! i never wanted to leave. so, we stayed an extra night.

on the other hand, patong. in one word? ew. patong was like coney island, or blackpool (tim says), or old orchard beach, or any other tacky beach destination you can think of. it was the epicenter of white trashiness. neon lights everywhere! wife beaters as the uniform of choice! drunken english people staggering around! tacky souvenir shops on every corner! and, no good restaurants. it was terrifying. but, because it was the nearest town to our hotel, we went there almost nightly because it was cheaper than eating at the hotel. however, one funny thing happened in patong, when i was buying a t-shirt for colin's friend jon.

me: (trying to do the recommend tourist thing and haggle with the t-shirt woman) how much for this shirt?
salesgirl: XXX baht
me: how about 40 baht less? (abt $1)
salesgirl: 20 baht less
me: how about 40?
her: NO! 20! WHERE YOU FROM?
me: america
her: YOU FROM AMERICA? THIS ONLY $XX! WHY YOU NO PAY? WHY YOU CHEAP CHARLIE?
me, horrified
her: CHEAP CHARLIE! YOU CHEAP CHARLIE? WHY YOU NO PAY ME MONEY?
me, still horrified, whispering to tim about whether we should go

and? i ended up paying the lunatic what she wanted, because i was:
a. scared
b. ashamed that i was trying to barter over $1 with a woman who probably makes in a year what i make in one story, DESPITE the fact that you are supposed to do it
c. happy to have a t-shirt that was the right color and size, and that came with such a good phrase. cheap charlie! how rad!

a guy in pai (where i almost died!)

2005-12-18T04:18:00.000-08:00

when we decided to leave mae hong son, we had two choices for a morning bus: 8am or 10 am. being the lazy bastards we are, we decided to go for the 10 am. babs at the guesthouse had told us that the 8am bus was another minivan, so we decided to be adventurous and go for the local bus (which takes almost twice as long). so, we showed up at the bus station, giant bags in hand (or on backs) and tried to figure out what to do. the local buses are basically big school buses painted in a charming shade of orange, with constantly open doors. there was a luggage rack on top, but no luggage on it. we walked over to the bus and tim went in the back door with the bags, thinking maybe we could leave the bags in the back and sit in the back row. as he did that, 10 little monks, all decked out in monk gear (bright orange robes) turned to look at him and he remembered that OH! the back row is monk seating. thus, we clambered onto the bus with all our gear (now totaling 5 bags--two giant backpacks, a booty bag full of presents, and two other bags just holding a variety of crap) and tried to fit it all into one seat.

HA. the seats on these buses are built for thai people (how inconsiderate!). that means that the seats are big enough for tim's skinny rear and maybe one of my giant thighs. and certainly not for two 40-pound bags. eventually the ticket guy took the giant bags and put them in the back row with the monks. and our journey began. now, let me explain about these buses. apart from the beautiful paint job and the open doors and the tiny seats, they also have no air conditioning! they have little fans nailed/glued/stapled to the ceiling and they run intermittently, in a sad attempt to cool down the bus. fortunately, we were in the north of thailand and not back in cambodia with a stinky frenchman sitting in front of us again, so it wasn't too big a hardship. what was worse was the fact that the bus only seemed to run at a maximum of about 40MPH, which meant that we lurched along the VERY twisty roads, with a lovely view of the mountains, and an even better view of the very steep, terrifyingly dangerous-looking cliffs that rested about 6 inches away from the left side of the bus. ah, there is nothing like a slow view of your potential death.

after about 4 1/2 hours, we arrived in pai and called the guesthouse where we were supposed to be staying. it's a good thing we did, because the last time our guisebook was updated was 2002, and many things have changed since then. including the location of our guesthouse. the owner of the guesthouse, a charming frenchman named guy (pronounced ghee, of course, car il est francais, bien sur!) answered and immediately came to pick us up at the bus station. sweet action! he popped us in the back of his truck and drove us a little way out of town to his little restaurant/guesthouse, made up of three little rooms, which looked like condos, all facing the mountains. when we arrived, he told us if we didn't like it, we didn't have to stay. so sweet! of course by this point, i had decided that i would stay no matter what, since he was such a nice man. and i was right. the room was immaculate, with a great big double bed, a little porch, and a giant, beautiful bathroom with hot water AND a western toilet. we had hit the mother lode. guy then drew us multiple bike routes around town, and told us the best restaurants and bars to visit, and then drove us back into town, before recommending another place to eat lunch. guy is a god. oh, and also? guy has a great big giant yellow lab named either buster or wooster. allie likes dogs she can play with!

pai is basically a sweet little town that has hit it big with dirty hippie tourists. it's a quiet little place in the middle of a little valley, with a river running through, and is full of restaurants and bars and coffee shops and internet shops. but not yet in an offensive i-want-to-get-out-of-here-before-i-am-attacked-by-a-billion-germans kind of way. more like a central american i-think-i-could-maybe-stay-here-for-a-while-and-eat-delicious-thai-food-and-do-yoga-and-be-far-away-but-still-speak-english kind of way. we had lunch at a restaurant called na's, which was absolutely delish. i had pad see ew, and tim had some kind of curry and the grand total of the meal was $4 with drinks. HOORAY THAILAND! we walked around town for a while and bought some postcards and then went back to the guesthouse, where we took HOT showers of love! o, hot water, you are so underrated in life!

for dinner, we decided to go to la terrasse, guy's restaurant at the guesthouse. it was perhaps not our most inspired decision. guy and his wife swan had owned a restaurant in pai for years, which was highly recommended in our book. of course, the book, having not been updated in almost 4 years, did not know that guy and his wife split up and the wife sold the restaurant to an englishman with a burmese cook and guy started a new restaurant, la terrasse. anyway, we went over for dinner, and i was desperate for a croque monsieur, thinking that HOORAY! it was a french restaurant--they will know how to make one! first, they brought me an omelette. when i tried to explain what i wanted, the poor girl got all confused and kept pointing at the omelette. finally, she understood that it's a SANDWICH, and she went back to the kitchen. meanwhile, tim is chomping away happily on his steak, and i am getting crustier by the second. finally, they bring me a croque--an asian croque. which means a cheese toastie. it actually wasn't bad, but i was a little unimpressed. tim thinks the restaurant (and the guesthouse) has just opened and that's why they don't know how to make everything on the menu yet. all i know is that the english-owned-french-restaurant-with-the-burmese-cook in town was sounding pretty damn good.

the next morning, we decided we would be ACTIVE TRAVELERS and rent bikes to ride around. the whole trip, we have been wanting to rent bikes, and something has always happened (usually rain) to stop us. guy had given us two bike routes, and since tim didn't want to rent a motorbike, we decided on bikes. old-school raleighs instead of the shiny new mountain bikes for rent, because mountain bike rental man was nowhere to be found. so, off we went on our 20K journey to the hot springs and the canyon. no problem, said guy, it's very flat. GUY LIED. about a half mile into the trip, i was remembering that I HATE BIKES. about a mile in, i hated bikes, the people who made them, the freeks who ride them actively, and everyone who ever thought about riding one. oh, and tim, for not just renting a motorbike like everyone else in thailand. i had visions of us riding along, through the valley, laughing and stopping to look at the view. instead, it was me grunting and trying to get up the hills, and then stopping to yell at tim.

eventually, we reached the hot springs, which was about halfway. at this point, i was walking like a cowboy and sweating like a hog (no one ever said this trip was romantic). we stopped for a while and played with a little thai girl in the water (she was about 6 and was splashing around like a little fish). and then, i made my colossal mistake: i listened to tim. he said we could either go back the way we came, or keep going. then he spewed forth some math theory designed to confuse my liberal arts brain about how we would be going down more than up, blah blah. TIM LIED. we knew there was a big hill just after the hot springs, so we walked up that. then, there was some beautific downhill cruising, but then, when i was hoping we would just keep rolling on downhill...A GIANT HILL! i think maybe bigger than the first one. at this point, thai people in trucks are driving by and waving (and laughing?) at us and i am ready to throw the bike in front of a truck and get a ride back into town. i think i walked part way up the second hill, having grunted my way up the first one, and by the end of the second hill, divorce was calling my name.

finally, we got to pai canyon, which meant we could get off the stinking bikes and look at pretty things. of course, it's hard to look at pretty things when sweat is pouring down your brow and obscuring your vision, but ssh. tim offered to take a picture of me and was almost pushed into the canyon, and then it was time again to get on the bikes. fortunately, from this point, it WAS all downhill (at which point old hill was triumphant, despite the fact that his theory was completely flawed). we swept downhill, and rode through the quiet part of town (which was quite lovely) and finally made it back to pai. in pai, we ate at another guy-recommended restaurant baan banjaran. OHMYGOD. it almost made up for the hellish torture that was the bike ride. we had a banana leaf salad and beautiful crispy gourds and it was absolutely delicious. of course, it then meant we had to ride our bikes back through town in the darkness, but it was completely worth it.

that night, we slept (well) and in the morning, we got a bus back to chiang mai, and i was crippled for days. people, take note. i have now voluntarily arisen before sunrise and ridden a bike for 20K. do you know what this means? get ready, kids--the end is near!

sweet garlic love

2005-12-06T22:00:00.000-08:00

by the time we left chiang mai, i was getting pretty fed up with thailand. sure, the food was great and the country was pretty, but where was the action? where was the adventure? where were the hundreds of people trying to thieve from us, giving us great blog entries? WHERE WERE THE ADORING FANS?

thus, at the chiang mai bus station, i was unimpressed. we booked our ticket to go to mae hong son (after some confusion--the woman pointed us in another direction, and when we started to walk over there, she called us back and booked the tickets), and then we went where the woman had pointed. tim tried to distract me from my extreme grumpiness by pointing to the newstand, with what looked like english magazines. standing in the newstand, glaring at the thai version of OK! magazine (who knew?), i was hating thailand. suddenly, the girl at the cashier called out to me and we started talking. she is a university student who speaks 7 languages. she works at the newstand to make money for school, and she eventually wants to travel the world. i LOVED her. i loved her so much that she is going to be my new pen pal! suddenly, thailand didn't seem so bad. there WERE nice people, hiding out in newstands, wanting to be my friend! i gave her my address and as i was walking away, she called out, 'allie! have a good trip!' oh, new friend, how i love you!

thus, i was in a pretty good mood as we tried to find our bus to mae hong son. it seemed we were in the wrong place, and we were eventually directed back to the original ticket counter, where the woman pointed us to a minivan. A MINIVAN. say goodbye to the good mood! we climbed into the back (after watching some poor tiny thai man try to strap our 5436284552-pound bags onto the roof) and prepared for a long ride. as it turns out, the ride was about 2 hours shorter than it should have been! our driver careened (hurtled?) around the twisty, curvy roads of the northern thai mountains so fast we could barely see the scenery. we stopped for a break halfway through, and tim bought some food at the local store. when he said thank you in thai to the salesman, the man gave him a thumbs up and said 'number one!' tim was so happy, he called himself 'number one' for days. (okay, weeks. he STILL calls himself number one. i am going to hunt down that cashier and kill him!)

finally, we arrived in mae hong son, another dusty old-west-looking town. the owner of our guesthouse pulled up in a black jeep to take us to the hotel and straight away, i knew i would like it. THERE WAS A DOG IN THE JEEP! hooray! babs, the german owner of sang tong huts, is a lovely woman who has been running the place for 12 years. her husband died a few years ago, and now her boyfriend runs it with her. unfortunately, the boyfriend speaks barely any english, so our first night there was...awkward. the way it works there is that you can sign up for dinner, and the cook, muk, makes dinner for everyone. you all sit together at the table, in the yurt, next to the fire, and eat. our first night, it was just the four of us. until babs started making conversation, it was a quiet meal. the good news is that muk is the best cook on earth. dear god, the food she made was amazing! of course, it didn't hurt that she included 4637825 pounds of garlic with everything, which pleased us immensely.

our hut had a very luxurious bathroom (without hot water, sadly), with a FLUSHING EUROPEAN TOILET! we had a nice porch with pillows to sit on, and a big bed with a giant mozzie net over it. yay! and, babs has 7 dogs, so there were always dogs to play with.

our first day was spent walking around town doing errands (email, booking flights, sorting out our aussie visas), and booking a tour of the local hilltribe villages for the next day. we found a restaurant called the salween river restaurant, run by an englishman named allen, which was just like cheers! it was full of expat locals, and there was some damn fine green curry (which, i am sorry to say, was my last green curry in thailand because i am officially overloaded on green curry).

our second day, we had to get up early and go into town to find a phone because it was thanksgiving! we managed to find a phone card after about 3 tries, but then, MOST INCONVIENTLY, all the international phones were broken! argh! we ended up calling my parents from the tour office, and having them call back. then, we went on the tour. i forget our guide's name, but he was a very sweet and gentle man who spoke excellent english (we had been told he barely spoke at all and to ask back at the office if we had questions). we rode in the back of a pickup again, to see some fish caves and then to a waterfall, and then to the villages. we snaked up and down the hills by the burmese border, and stopped first at mae aw, a chinese tea village, where we sampled the merchandise. then we went to a meo (hmong) village, nicknamed 'switzerland of thailand', which was lovely--on a lake, with little huts along the shoreline. then, we went to another village, which is made up of four tribes, and then back again. and then? DINNER AT THE HOTEL! finally, some more guests had arrived--2 more germans, and 2 hilarious chinese guys, who entertained us all night. we chowed down big style on muk's delicious garlicky feast, and asked the guys all about china. (if you go to china, go to beijing and then to tibet, they say. also, be prepared for china to kick ass at the olympics--the rest of us have no chance.)

after 3 nights in mae hong son, it was finally time to leave. waaaah! the town itself is not much, but the hotel was lovely and the food (if you haven't yet noticed) is delicious, and the surrounding area is gorgeous. and so, on we went to pai.

(sorry these posts are so boring...with no one around to try and cheat us, there is not much action in thailand--everything is easy! how repulsive!)

a mountain, an elephant, and a really cold river

2005-12-06T21:14:00.000-08:00

man, am i behind on this thing! i am almost five posts behind--please forgive me! tim and i got the schmancy overnight bus to chiang mai from bangkok--it was almost as nice as the nice bus in singapore, but this time, we had a thai movie (subtract five points for non-english filmmaking) and a back massager (add three points for traveling in lumbar-assisted comfort). we got in early early morning, and at the time, i hoped maybe it was just the sleepiness or the darkness that made chiang mai so ugly. sadly, it was neither.

we got to our guesthouse, and miss pissamon, our hostess, immediately handed us the reviews of her treks and left us to sit for a while before she took us to our room. we took this to mean that we should book a trek. feeling rather hardy (or sleep-deprived) and unimpressed with the concrete-ness of chiang mai, we agreed. a three-day trek through the mountains it was. we then went immediately to bed. when we awoke, we wandered around town a little. it was still ugly. we tried to get some delicious falafel for lunch, but it was friday, duh. israelis don't work on friday. so we went to an english-owned establishment, bought some books and ate cheese and pickle sandwiches. hurrah! that night, we were off to the night market, which is a series of stalls selling just about everything. we wandered around a little bit, and then bought some things (maybe for you!) and then went home again. oh! and, on the way to the night market, we walked down this skankatron road full of cheesy bars with hookers inside. THE HOOKERS PROPOSITIONED TIM! WITH ME STANDING RIGHT THERE! i could not believe it. chiang mai was rapidly declining in my books. listen, ladies, don't try to seduce my husband when i am standing right there! at least distract me with some chocolate or something!

the trek took off at 9 am, which was not so bad. what was bad was that tim and i were the only english speakers on the trip, and we were all (12 people) crammed into the back of a pickup truck. me, tim and 10 germans. now, i am not normally such a fan of german tourists (call me racist, you already know it's true from the spanish tourist posts), so i was not too thrilled by this new event. tim speaks about 1.5 words of german (i can ask for a beer, which is odd since i don't drink beer) so it was us, sitting in silence while the germans chatted away. it was actually us, 3 swiss kids and 7 germans, to be precise.

we stopped at a market on the way and made a little small talk with a few of them, mostly with martin, this rad swiss kid who just finished uni, speaks perfect english, and is en route to japan for a year-long internship. we stopped for lunch a little further along, and then began to trek to a waterfall. up, up, up and then the waterfall, which was COLD. then, down, down, down, and back to the truck. we finally started the 'trek' at about 3 pm, and i think mr chan, our guide was in a rush, because we virtually sprinted up the side of the mountain and across and down, to get to our first hilltribe village, where we spent the night. finally, at the village, we started to befriend the germans. the two swiss girls, jasmin and claudia, started to talk to us, and two of the german girls, irina and bettina, also made some conversation. mr chan made us some delicious green curry and eventually built a fire, and we all made friends.

let me tell you about our deluxe accomodation for the trek: it was much like our deluxe longhouse accomodation (though this time, no one robbed us). we slept in wooden huts, side by side on the floor on mats that have probably been slept on by every western visitor in the north of thailand since 1950. we got some scabby blankets and no pillows, and the bathrooms were, of course, the fabulous squat toilet with a shower head beside. irina was terrified of the bathrooms, since she is an arachnophobe, and would regularly go to pee and come screaming out of the toilet because she had spotted a spider. it got to the point where the poor thing had to bring bettina in to pee with her.

the next day, we trekked some more, but went a little more slowly this time. the mountains were not far from the burmese border, and the views were spectacular. the pain in my behind from walking uphill for hours on end, not so much. tim and i spent most of the second day trek talking to irina and bettina about bettina's love for british film, and eventually, we reached the elephant camp. at the elephant camp, we decided to swim in the river, which meant that we would walk to the middle and then let the current carry us downstream. only at the end did i notice the giant pile of elephant dung next to the water. mmm, tasty. suddenly, it was elephant riding time! i almost fell off, because you have to step on its HEAD to get on, and i felt badly. but soon, we were both on board, and we were lurching down the river. our elephant had a baby girl who accompanied us on the trek, which meant that she mostly rolled around in the water, kicking up her baby white feet, and flopping around so that we could only see one eye, blinking up at us. let me tell you: riding an elephant in the water is ok, but going downhill is no fun! it requires some serious thigh muscles and no fear of death.

we got to the second hilltribe village after a couple of hours (tim was unimpressed by the elephant ride and swore it off forevermore), at which point i was exhausted (having been unable to sleep on the ancient mattress with the scabby blankets and crusty mosquito net). while we were having dinner, irina and bettina came shrieking into the cabin and ran out to the beds, from which they soon emerged with the news that tim and i had a virtual river of termites climbing up the wall next to our bed. we switched to sleeping next to them. we read our books for a while, and then ate dinner, and then i went into our 'bedroom' to read some more. after a while, i got bored and couldn't sleep, so i went out to the fire with everyone else. tim was chatting it up with our other guide, chai, who spends most of the treks poking people with sticks or yelling, 'SNAKE! SNAKE!' chai was some kind of hilarious, and a very sweet man. he used to be an elephant rider at the camp, where he earned the princely sum of $30 a month. now, he is working on his english and trying to be a proper trekking guide. we loved him. he took my book and tried to read to us, and then taught us some thai, all the while patting tim on the shoulder or the leg, and cracking up laughing. the interesting thing about thai men is that they are very affectionate with each other--more so than with women!

the next day, we woke up and it was time to raft. rafting meant that half of us would stand on one raft, which was composed of several planks of bamboo roped together, and raft down the river. the water was cold, and the currents weren't too bad, but of course, our boat (led by the mischevious chai) hit a big one halfway down and jasmin, tim and i all keeled over (we didn't fall in, but were wet from the waist down, and of course it was the one day that it was about 50 degrees). soon enough, we were back on the road to chiang mai. we stopped briefly at an orchid farm, and then we were back.

we went to dinner (we finally got our falafel and sweet tzaziki of love!), but even with our delicious middle eastern feast, i was depressed. as we were getting ready to go, a man came in with a thai woman. the man was geeky and nerdily dressed, and the thai woman was beautiful, and clearly, an escort. the man was desperately trying to entertain her (he even had a book of thai phrases) and she was totally unimpressed. it was so depressing. the poor man, having to go to thailand and hire a girl to go on a date! usually, i feel badly for the women, and loathe the men, but this time, i wanted to slap that girl silly and tell her to listen to him talk about dungeons and dragons! we had made plans to play snooker with chai at 7.30 (he is a snooker nut), but when we arrived (at a abandoned-looking building full of men smoking and playing snooker, with 5 policemen on the floor in the back playing cards), he wasn't there. tim played for an hour with a man named jee, and then we met the other kids from the trek for drinks. the germans were lovely kids, and i really liked them, but we had to get to bed early because i was making tim go to the elephant conservation center the next day--at 6.30!!

o man, the elephant conservation center was the best thing about chiang mai, and it's not even there! we got the 7.30 bus out of town, and 90 mins later, the bus pulled over to let us off. we got on the elephant bus with a little boy and his sister, who were ecstatic to be seeing the elephants, and it dropped us near the baby cages. there were two babies at the center, and we got to feed them and their mothers. feeding them basically means you hand them a banana, which they either suck with their trunks, or curl around in their trunks and then flip into their mouths. it was great. then we saw the show, in which about 20 elephants demonstrate how they worked in the jungle, and play music, and paint pictures, and raise and lower the flag and all kinds of other human-taught tricks. they even bow to the audience. they all seemed very well cared for, and man, were they smart. I WANT AN ELEPHANT!!

blah bangkok

2005-11-26T01:59:00.000-08:00

so it turns out, for all the hoopla about bangkok, it's a lot like the other cities we've seen on this trip. not too dirty, not too clean, lots of people, great transportation system (in part of the city, anyway). we didn't see any prostitutes or dirty thai massage shops or ANYTHING. man, what a disappointment!

we decided that we would be decidedly unmotivated in our room at the marriott. o, what sweet action was our room at the marriott! the hotel was beautiful and it had about 372138 restaurants, and our room was very big and had a nice tub and NO ROACHES or anything. and, even, a western toilet (you come to appreciate the little things here). our first day, we had breakfast at the hotel and then took the hotel boat to the other side of the river, where we got the skytrain to the emporium shopping center. that's right, i voluntarily went shopping. not because i wanted to buy things, but because i wanted to be around bright and shiny things, and BOOKS! so many books, and not even photocopied!! i spent a lot of time in the bookshop fondling a variety of tomes, until tim dragged me away (after he made out with the math books. nerd.). then, we went to see a MOVIE! in a real movie theater! in english! with candy! we saw flight plan, which was mediocre, but the experience was long-awaited. then, we went to dinner at an indian restaurant (somewhat disappointing after our banana leaf love and the gorgeousness in saigon), and then we went to bed. yay.

the next day, we decided to be motivated. so we went to breakfast, and then came back to the room where i promptly fell back asleep. oops. when i finally awoke, we ended up going into town to the grand palace, which was just like disneyland but more crowded and garish. after fighting our way through, we escaped and walked down the road to wat po. outside the wall to wat po, a man intercepted me. where was i trying to go? he asked. i pointed to the wall, and he told me it was closed. he then began a very animated explanation of where we should go instead, drawing in our book and jumping all around. suddenly, his friend came around the corner on a tuk-tuk. 'he will take you!' the man cried. oh no he won't, tim said. as we were walking away, the man shook his fist in fury at us!

of course, the stinking wat was totally open, and very lovely. it was much quieter than disney palace, and much less flashy. we walked around, past the kids playing soccer, and the other tourists and the funeral, and then went in to see the giant reclining buddha. it was a big buddha, i'll tell you what. and, on the way in, the guard gave me an apple! so nice! THAI PEOPLE LOVE ME!

after the wat, we decided to walk to khao san road to find this place that supposedly has the best massaman curry in thailand. of course, we got lost. so we ended up walking in circles around a neighborhood with no english signs, snarling at each other until we ended up in the right place. the massaman was GOOD, but we ended up screwing up our whole schedule. we had planned to eat early and then run over to the train station, get our tickets for the train to chiang mai, and then get back to the hotel in time for the loy krathong (i think) festival on the river. it took about17 hours to get to the train station, and when we got there, the A/C private cabins were all taken, so all they had left were top bunks in a 40-bunk room with fan. um, no. i'm paranoid enough about people stealing my crap on a train with 4 people in a room--no need to multiply it by 10!

so, back into a taxi and back to the hotel. except the traffic. was. not. moving. at. all. it took us almost an hour to get back to the hotel, when it should have taken maybe 15 minutes. at one point, we sat at a red light for literally FIVE MINUTES while the light just sat there, mocking me. our taxi driver was so annoyed he got out of the car to see what was going on! we finally got to the hotel, 75 mins. after the festival was supposed to start, and we went to the bar (even i needed a drink at that point). what we saw of the festival was nice--families going down to the river with ornate little floral decorations with candles in them, to ask for good luck in the new year and forgiveness of all their sins. the river was all full of shining little lotus baskets--very pretty. then, FIREWORKS AGAIN! from our porch, we could see them perfectly, and they was good. real good. my mother called soon after that, and then i decided to take a bath (note to self: don't try to get into a slippery bathtub while holding a newspaper). needless to say, i wiped out. the good news? i have a WICKED bruise on my right leg which takes up almost all of my thigh (which is saying a LOT, as most of you know).

the next day, lazy again. we checked out of our room at the last possible minute (i blame it on the fact that i was hobbling around on the bruise-thigh) and went to the shopping arcade for lunch. mcdonald's! mcdonald's in thailand has CHILLI SAUCE for french fries! it is even better than sweet and sour! then, back to the boat to go see jim thompson's house. jim thompson was one of the masterminds behind the thai silk empire, until he vanished in the 1960's, leaving behind a tremendous house filled with beautiful antiques and paintings. it was tremendous: a beautiful garden, all different little buildings, and wide teak floors. very pretty. the design students among you would have approved.

and then, it was hot. so? we went to see ANOTHER MOVIE! we saw proof, with tim's much loathed gwyneth paltrow. we both liked it, even tim, and agreed it is her best work. it was really very good--if you haven't seen it, i would recommend it. and then, we got some sushi for dinner at another shopping center, and then skytrained it back to the hotel in time for our night bus to chiang mai.

one sad story about bangkok: our taxi drivers were very nice the whole time in the city, and the one to the bus station was no exception. the hotel told us we would have to pay the meter and then the toll on the expressway, which was fine with us, since the station was waaaaaay across town. on the expressway, the driver suddenly started asking for money. tim gave him exact change for the toll. then he started saying, 'big money, big money' and repeating over and over that he had no money as he asked for 200 baht. we pretended not to understand what he was saying, thinking we were being scammed AGAIN. he would start the whole routine, and we would say we didn't understand, and he would hit his head and try to explain better. cute, we thought, but we're too smart for you, pal. after all, we have been in asia almost THREE months. we're wise to your ways. when we got to the bus station, tim tried to pay him with a big note. the driver has no cash, he says. yeah, right, thinks tim. 'can i get change from over there?' tim asks, annoyed as all frig with this guy. 'yes! yes!' cries the man, thrilled that we have finally understood him. HE WANTED THE BIG MONEY SO HE WOULD HAVE CHANGE FOR US! we are such bastards. asia has made us suspicious of everyone--even nice taxi drivers! needless to say, he got a pretty nice tip. and we still feel guilty.

shaken, not stirred

2005-11-22T00:50:00.000-08:00

after a few days in siem reap, tim and i realized it was time to investigate our onward travel plans. unfortunately for us, onward travel = broken down old cambodian bus, because flights to bangkok were $150 EACH!! (+ $25 airport fee, those dirty thieves!) so, we asked the boy at our guesthouse about the guesthouse bus to bangkok. the boy, lihoung (who will tell you his name is 'not your business' if you ask and then collapse into giggles) said he could get us seats on the bus for $12 each. is it a good bus, we asked? 'it's not a bad bus,' he answered. for those of you who may not know this, when a cambodian tells you the bus isn't good but isn't bad, this means that by western standards it is completely useless.

our third day at the temples, we ran into elena, from our trip up the mekong. elena is a sweet spanish girl who almost completely redeemed her fellow spanish travelers in my mind. almost. she was with two other young spaniards who had just come from bangkok. they proceeded to tell us the horror story of their journey (complete with photos!): they had a nice bus to the border, and then were ushered onto a pickup truck on the cambodian side, without even a roof (thai pickups have rooves when they are used for transport) for 17 HOURS. tim and i blanched at the news, and ran back to the guesthouse to find out if we would be taking a bus or a truck. we asked not your business' father. 'is it a truck? we heard people take trucks to siem reap sometimes,' we said. NYB's father squirmed uncomfortably and pointed to a picture of a modern-looking, fairly large, bus on the wall. 'no, this.' satisfied, we booked two tickets and prayed for the best.

the next morning, we sat in the guesthouse with not your business, and he and tim talked about soccer. again. our bus was about 15 minutes late, and we were teasing him about when it would come. 'there is no bus, is there? you are using our money to buy football DVDs!' NYB would laugh hysterically. then, a pickup truck pulled up outside. i pointed to it and said, 'it's the bus!' NYB laughed even more hysterically just as a man came up and said, 'the bus is here.'

THANK GOD the bus was around the corner. and it was a bus and not a truck (though it was a glorified minivan bus with very tiny seats, no A/C to speak of, and tim and i had to sit above the wheel, all crunched up). the A/C worked until we got out of siem reap, at which point tim and i noticed that the frenchman in front of us stank of ripened cheese. maybe camembert, maybe a really ripe brie.

but still, the roads were ok. UNTIL about an hour into the journey when we suddenly hit a dirt road. being the optimist (read: fool) i am, i thought the dirt road was only temporary. WRONG. we were on the dirt road for FIVE HOURS. now, let me describe for you the dirt road. imagine the worst dirt road you have ever seen. it is red and dusty and dirt flies everywhere when you drive down it. at the same time, the A/C in your vehicle is no longer working, so it becomes necessary to open your window, thus getting all the dust all over you. the driver of your bus is desperately trying to avoid the potholes (of which there are many), so he drives back and forth across the dirt road, hitting only 1 out of every 3. 1 out of 3 sounds like good odds, but it means you still hit a pothole every 30 seconds or so, and your bus has no shocks. for some of you, this analogy will work better: picture being inside a martini shaker for 5 straight hours. fun, right?

again, the redeeming trait of the journey was the people on the side of the road. being kind of a whore for the smiles, i eventually made tim move away from the window so i could meet and greet the kids along the road. as always in cambodia, the kids were thrilled to see the bus, and even more thrilled when people waved (or even smiled) at them. kids on the backs of trucks, kids walking down the street, kids biking home for lunch, and kids in the rice paddy waters along the road all jumping around, waving like lunatics and yelling 'haaaaallo!' and there i am, doing my best princess diana, caked in red dust and sweat with my hair in pigtails, waving and smiling until i thought my face would crack.

after about five hours on the road, i saw it, shining like a friggin' beacon: PAVEMENT! about an hour later, we got to the border, and we went through cambodian customs, and then thai. at the thai border, we saw the irish girls (whom we had never seen in siem reap, but whom elena told us were leaving the day before). they caught up with us just before we boarded the minivan to take us to the big bus to bangkok. we couldn't talk long, but we did manage to confirm mags' email and discover her mother had forgotten her 25th birthday.

we got on the minibus, where i sat next to matt, who taught in red hook in brooklyn before setting off to find himself. also on the bus were the welsh kids from our hotel in hoi an. we were deposited at a roadside cafe, and had been sitting around (waiting for the bus to arrive, we thought) for about an hour when one of the welsh kids asked where the bus was. turns out it was right there the whole time! the driver had let us sit for all that time because they thought we were buying things. so, on we went to the BEAUTIFUL 21st century bus with air conditioning and soft, squishy seats, on to a PAVED road with MULTIPLE LANES and REAL FLASHING LIGHTS!

we arrived in bangkok at about 10pm. the cost of a ticket to bangkok on a dodgy cambodian bus: $12. the time spent on the journey: 14 hours. damage done to our spinal column along the way: incalculable.

more, from angkor

2005-11-18T00:10:00.000-08:00

after phnom penh, tim and i got a bus (the mekong express) to siem reap. we had heard various horror stories about the journey, but it was fine in the end--we got some weird cambodian pastries and the roads were good. we went through village after village of neon green rice paddies and wooden houses on stilts, all of which were very beautiful. we stopped halfway in a town, and we bought some bananas and some pineapple. while we were standing outside the bus eating the pineapple, a little boy came by, begging. i gave him two bananas. he gave me a radiant smile and ate them immediately. another boy came by. same routine, same response. kids in cambodia are hungry, man, and they like bananas. we ended up giving the first boy the remains of our pineapple as well, and on our way onto the bus, we gave some money to a landmine victim with a fake leg and a blind baby. i know we said we weren't going to give anyone any more money, but sometimes you have to make exceptions.

when we got to siem reap, i got off the bus and was immediately in a scrum of tuk-tuk drivers. no joke--about 30 men surrounded us and tried to take our bags to their tuk-tuks, and would only back off when the policemen with whistles and sticks kicked in. tim went with the guy with the sign for the guesthouse we wanted, and pissed a bunch of the rest off. there was room for us at the guesthouse, but our tuktuk driver seemed to think he would be driving us to angkor the next day. tim told him no and paid him for the ride. i think it's normal for you to go with the driver from the station, but we didn't know, which was great because we ended up going with theary, the guy from our guesthouse, who is the sweetest, most gentle man. he told us he was a tuktuk driver when we arrived, and the next morning, when we asked him to drive us, i have never seen anyone as happy. he was the best driver ever, as well, and we just loved him. if any of you go to siem reap, i will give you his number. he is the greatest!

tim and i loved siem reap. i think it was the best destination (apart from sa pa) on this entire trip. tim thinks so too. it was in siem reap that i fell in love with cambodia and with the children (who for me, were just as good as the temples). let me be clear: siem reap itself isn't too pretty--it's sort of like a town from the old west, with all one-story buildings and dusty roads. also, there are dozens of children and women and men with missing limbs begging in the streets. i have never seen poverty like that in my life. there are families who sleep on the sidewalk at night. on our block alone, we had a family of 4 (one mother, 3 kids) sleeping on a mat on the corner, and a man with a whole mossie net/mat setup right by the hotel.

the temples are amazing. easily the most tremendous thing i have ever seen (man-made, anyway). we started at angkor (in the scorching sun) which is simply spectacular. we climbed to the top and walked all around. it's hard to envision it being lost in the jungle, but once you see the other temples, it's easier to imagine. and it's perfectly clear why it is the cambodian national emblem. from there, we went on to the bayon, which is a pretty massive complex itself. the temple is full of 51 towers with 4 faces each. inside the temple, there is also a very aggressive little buddhist nun who grabbed us, thrust some incense in our hands, made us pray with her and then made us pay. it was kind of a neat experience, but she was surprisingly sassy. outside the temple, we were trying to get to the terrace of elephants when we were approached by a cambodian kid who just started directing us around and giving us information about the temples. it was good he came along when he did, but we knew we were going to have to pay in the end. he told us his story: his parents were killed by the khmer rouge and he had only his sister, who was killed by a landmine. now he is in school, living with his friend and the monks. he told us he was in his early 20's (i forget exactly), which means his parents would have died when cthe khmer rouge was fighting vietnam. but can you question it? no. at the end, he told us he couldn't go any further and asked us for thai baht. we didn't have any, so he told us he wanted $5 each. (he had taken us for about 15 mins and we were paying theary $10 a day). we gave him $6. that night, we went to watch the sunset with everyone else in siem reap. it was beautiful, but there were clouds which meant the sunset itself was obscured. oh, well.

we liked angkor so much that the second day we got up BEFORE SUNRISE (please, let me repeat: TIM AND I WERE AWAKE, VOLUNTARILY, BEFORE THE SUN) to watch it rise over angkor. it took ages, but i think it was worth it in the end. afterwards, we had breakfast nearby, which was uneventful except for the fact that I TOUCHED A DOG! hooray! after 2 months of dog-free life, a dog loved me and jumped in my lap. and he didn't even chew on me! yay for the dog love!

after that, we decided to have theary take us to the faraway temple and a waterfall in the jungle, about 35k from town. this was the best day ever. the ride to the waterfall was amazing--so many kids and parents along the road, waving and smiling at us. and the scenery was stunning. i have never seen green like that in my life. tim and i took about 4394372 pictures before we figured out how to get them right, but we still have some good ones. the waterfall was at the end of a half-hour hike through the jungle, and was so pristine and quiet. a polish woman was there and she told us to walk along the river to see the carvings, so we did. when we got to the top of the waterfall, there was a man there who started pointing them out to us. he showed us vishnu, and the 1000 linga, and a frog and all kinds of carvings we never would have seen on our own. when he was done, we expected him to ask for money, but he didn't. tim gave him $2 and he was very pleased. it turns out he works there, so he probably shouldn't have shown us around, but thank goodness he did! and he was one of the first people we saw who asked for nothing. bless him.

then we went to banteay srei, the faraway temple. i think this one was my favorite. it looks like a big pile of bricks from a distance, but when you get up close, it has the most ornate carvings i have ever seen! after that, theary took us back to town for lunch. the next day, we went to see the smaller temples, and ta phrom. ta phrom is where tomb raider was filmed (which means nothing to me because i never saw it), and the whole complex is covered with giant trees and their roots. it's pretty amazing, and it's the place where you get the best idea of how these places could have been hidden in the jungle for so long.

the temples were completely magnificent, but i think the thing which has stuck with me most about cambodia is the people. from the boy at our guesthouse, who befriended tim over football talk (who goes to private school and is fluent in english) to the kids begging on the street, to theary, the people were just beautiful. we stopped giving the kids money in siem reap and started giving them bananas and pencils, which worked for the most part (it worked best at the temples, when the kids selling stuff would be so pleased to get a present that they would just beam at us).

we had one ugly altercation with some local kids who wanted more than we were going to give them, and it ended up with one girl following us around town telling me "f*ck you, f*ck your mother, f*ck your father, f*ck your dog". she was angry because we had bought baby formula for some of the kids with babies and we were going to buy her fruit. she wanted shoes instead. but there was another day when tim gave me some money and he went to do a photo cd. i ended up using most of the money for food for kids. there was one beautiful little girl with a baby named mom (the girl's name was ray-something) and i bought her some formula and a giant orange, and she was just so happy. of course, once people saw me with her, they all wanted something, so i ended up buying some other kids some food, and then giving some money to a man with one leg and a woman with a baby in leg splints. but again, they were so grateful, as most of the people were. just for a friggin' banana.

it's hard to say how i feel about cambodia. i think the best way i can explain it is that it stole my heart and broke it at the same time. the country is enormously beautiful, but you can't really explore it because of the landmines. the people seem to have survived the khmer rouge and are trying to look ahead, but the poverty is still pretty devastating. and it's a nation of paradox--you see lexus SUVs all over the place, and then you have a family sleeping on the curb. one night, tim had a man with stumps for arms following him down the street, whacking him with his arms. another night, we saw a little girl no older than 2, carrying around an infant. the country used to have one of the greatest kingdoms in the world, and now it's been reduced to poverty and landmines and the simple survival of the khmer rouge. it's awful, and so sad, and yet the people are so beautiful that you just have to believe if they have gotten this far, they will keep on going.

death is everywhere, or, people suck part II

2005-11-17T23:28:00.000-08:00

tim and i awoke totally exhausted in phnom penh, but tim made me get up anyway and go get breakfast (which we thought was included in the room price). two slices of toast and an orange juice later, i was fed and ready to go. WAIT! breakfast ISN'T included in the room price, and we owe $28! crap.

we decided to begin our trip to cambodia on a happy note--by visiting the tuol sleng museum, otherwise known as S-21 prison, otherwise known as the genocide museum. most of you know that between 1975 and 1979, pol pot and the khmer rouge took over cambodia in an attempt to create an entirely agrarian society, by beginning again in "year zero". (if you know all this already, move ahead.) in their attempts, they managed to kill off 2 MILLION cambodians (let me repeat that again: 2 MILLION, or two maines, or a brooklyn, or some other equally horrifying number) in a variety of hideous ways: shooting them, beating them with bamboo sticks or spades, or shooting them, or, in the most shocking of all, bashing children and babies against trees so as not to waste precious bullets.

back to tuol sleng. it is widely known that there are two must-see memorials in phnom penh: the tuol sleng museum and the killing fields (where 3,000 people were killed and left in mass graves). we decided to start with the prison. S-21 is where 20,000 cambodians were imprisoned (according to our guide) and only 7 survived. they were kept in tiny cells, with shackles on their ankles. most of the cells had no light, and they had no toilet facilities. the prison, which had been a high school before the evacuation of phnom penh, also had a gallows (formerly for gymnastics) and a bunch of mass graves in the back. the whole place was pretty horrific--we began with the graves of the last 15 prisoners to be killed there, moved on to the cells where the 15 people were found (with pictures to commemorate their gruesome deaths, which i shall not go into here), went on to a section with the photos of the khmer soldiers/cooks/guards who worked there, and then photo after photo of the prisoners, who most certainly all died. from there, we saw the cells, and then moved on to a section devoted to the history of the khmer rouge. our guide was a lady in her mid-50's, and in the last section, she pointed to a map of cambodia which had the routes by which everyone left phnom penh. completely expressionless, she showed us the route that her family used to flee the city. her little sister (5 years old) died somewhere outside of phnom penh. then, in their first destination (near the vietnamese border), her 6-month old baby and father died of starvation. then, one brother and an uncle died at their second destination. another brother and his wife were killed at the killing fields. her husband, a pilot, was beaten to death with bamboo, she told us as she pointed to a painting depicting the same act. she was the only one to survive. she was sent to the rice fields, and, being mid-to-upper class, she had no farming skills, and she had to work very hard just to survive.

these stories are everywhere in cambodia. if you ask practically anyone over about 30, they will tell you this story first hand. if you ask younger people, they will tell you these stories about their grandparents, parents, sisters, brothers. it's impossible to even contemplate.

in the museum, we ran into the irish girls from the bus. we walked back through the museum without our guide, and talked to elinor and catriona. then, we watched a movie about a cambodian couple who was separated and then killed by the khmer rouge. exhausted, overwhelmed and depressed, tim and catriona and i went across the street to a lovely cafe for lunch. the other two joined us, and we spent a lovely 3 hours in the cafe, out of the rain, talking about things that had nothing to do with genocide (like katie holmes and tom cruise: who are they kidding?). we had some beautiful sandwiches and bored tim out of his mind with girl talk. then, we went back to their hostel to see if we could book a bus to the killing fields for the next day. no. so, tim and i walked across town, back to our hotel in the dark. phnom penh is an interesting city--very modern and clean, but at night it seemed a lot more sinister. we stopped for some "dinner" (from a gas station--hooray for processed food!) and then bought some oranges (to counteract the pringles) and went home to sleep.

except i couldn't sleep. i stayed awake most of the night thinking about all those poor people and what even the survivors have been through. (tim, of course slept like a baby--insensitive creep!) and then, the next day, it was on to the killing fields! we got a taxi from the hotel, and as soon as we were out of the car, we were mobbed by children "lady, want picture? 1, 2, 3, smile!" we told them maybe when we got back, and we went in. despite the fact that so many people were slaughtered there, the killing fields are remarkably peaceful and serene, and even beautiful. they are out in the middle of green rice paddies, with flowers and trees and an inordinate number of butterflies. as you walk in, you are faced with a giant tower. as you get closer, you realize the tower is full of skulls. from the mass graves. row upon row of skulls. and as you walk around the grounds, you pass signs that say things like "mass grave. 1,576 bodies" next to a remarkably small hole. most of the butterflies are around the mass graves, which seems appropriate.

of course, there was drama at the killing fields. we were approached by a bunch of kids inside "1,2,3 smile!" and i said i would take their picture, knowing they would want money. so, i took the picture and then tim tried to give them the money. suddenly, another 5 kids appear and tim is surrounded. he tried to give the money to the head girl, but another (unbelievably cute) kid snatched it and ran away. cue the group tears. the first group of kids start wailing and telling us that they are so poor and the other kids don't go to school and they need money. so we gave them more money. it was at that point that we decided not to give anyone any more money in cambodia.

after the killing fields, we had our driver take us to the wat phnom, which was where we saw our first landmine victims (men with no arms or legs, sitting on the stairs to the wat, begging). the wat was nice, and then we had our driver take us to the national museum. upon arrival at the museum, we were immediately surrounded by a bunch more landmine victims selling books, but we went down the street to the friends cafe, which is an NGO supporting street kids in phnom penh. after lunch and visiting the store, we went to the museum, which was very lovely indeed. the best part is the garden in the middle, which is full of monks (smoking! am i wrong, or should monks not smoke?!) and other tourists. on our way out, we ran into the irish girls again. mags had just been to the palace, but she couldn't get all the way in because someone was visiting. it was the thai king, we told her-- our taxi driver told us! we said goodbye to the girls and went to the palace ourselves.

by the time we got there, we couldn't get in at all, but it was obvious there was some kind of state visit. we took some pictures of the palace (and of an elephant in the street!) and then got a tuk-tuk home to the hotel. in the tuk-tuk, our driver kept asking if the president was paying for our room at the intercontinental. no, crazy man...but suddenly, when we got to the intercontinental and went to the newly established metal detector, it became clear. the president (not the king) was staying in OUR HOTEL! now, just so you know, this is the second time we have stayed in the same hotel as important heads of state--a dutch prince was in our hotel in hanoi. anyway, we have now realized that it must have been the thai PM, because there is no thai president, but that's beside the point. the point is that we went to dinner in the hotel restaurant (tim was to grumpy to go anywhere else) and THE SECRET SERVICE WAS THERE! yes, we dined with the thai secret service, and despite the fact that i kept saying 'there's nothing i wouldn't do for the thai president', they didn't even shoot me. (of course, there isn't a thai president, so they probably just thought i was on leave from the hospital.)

also, it was cambodian independence day, so there were FIREWORKS! i love me some fireworks, and since we were on the 9th floor, we got to see it all from our window. it was some kind of fancy, let me tell you. it almost distracted me from all the death we had been seeing. almost.

delta ADVENTURE, indeed

2005-11-13T02:10:00.000-08:00

so tim and i thought it sounded like a great old idea to get a boat up the mekong from saigon to phnom penh. sounds good, right? so we went to a budget travel company in saigon called delta adventure, booked two trips on the FAST boat for $30 each and came home very pleased with ourselves.

we should have known something was up the minute we got there. first of all, they seemed to have trips of varying lengths going to the mekong, and they had no idea which bus to put people on. bad sign #1. after being sent to one bus and waiting, we were finally put on another minibus with a bunch of other people. there were some canadians sitting behind us, a quiet boy (of irish/british descent, i guessed) sitting next to us, and three girls in the back. and then, it happened. AMERICANS got on the bus. now, i don't know about you, but i hate american tourists. i shouldn't say that, being american, and i know it's wrong to generalize, but hey--i generalize about everyone else, so why should americans be exempt from my judgment? in my experience (and most other people's), americans are loud, pushy, and generally, pretty ignorant. the girls who got on our bus fit the description perfectly. the head girl looked like nicole ritchie's less smart twin sister, and her friend looked ok, but spent most of the ride making loud pronouncements about various things, mostly things she learned in university, but some things she clearly had no idea about. the two girls, from san diego, were accompanied by two swedes: silent swede, who sat with nicole's sidekick, and the swedish tad hamilton, who spent most of the ride groping nicole. for the three of you who just got the tad hamilton crack, let me just say IT WAS ON IN OUR HOTEL ROOM, and besides, i love topher grace. i ain't gotta apologize for that!

anyway, the ride started off ok, apart from the sidekick's running commentary and nicole and tad practically mounting each other in the front seat. we were supposed to get the bus to can tho, home of the famous floating markets, and then have lunch. then we were supposed to get back on the bus for a while, and then get on a bus to chau doc, where we would spent the night before getting another bus/boat combo to phnom penh. still sounds ok, right? before getting to can tho, we had to stop and get a ferry across the river, where we spoke to the quiet boy, francis, from wexford. we got to can tho, expecting to see the floating markets (as not explicitly advertised to us, but as promised to others) and instead were told to eat as fast as we could before we got back on the bus. so tim and i sat with the canadians, who are on an 8 month tour of hawaii, SE asia, india and peru. in hawaii, they got some kind of weird disease that causes their lungs to freak out, so they were having a great old time. it may be said that while friendly enough, the canadians were intense (or at least the girl, who is a yoga teacher, and is the only person i have ever met to physically turn her back on a street vendor [and in the process, fall over and then yell at the vendor] was pretty serious. the boy was very laid back, apart from the lung disease).

after we our lunch sprint, we got back on the bus--WITH FRIENDS! we were joined by 7 more people for our trip to chau doc! hooray! there is nothing more fun than putting 21 people and their luggage on a bus with 14 real seats (the others sat on weird foldy things)!! yoga girl's head almost flew off, i tell you. so, it was a long 3 hours in the clown bus.

finally, we arrived at the boat dock. a lovely, two-story boat was awaiting us, with beautiful plastic seats on the top deck. we ran to it and sat watching the shore for the next 2 hours, talking to francis. francis was traveling alone, because his friend's girlfriend made him go home, only to dump him upon arrival. if francis runs into that girl at christmas, he'll have her eyes, so look out! he'd spent a year in australia and was traveling around asia for another few months before going home for christmas. we loved francis, though between the roar of the boat and my inner ear and his wexord accent, we had some communication problems. but, there were no communication problems with the people on the shores of the river. families were bathing, people were going about their daily chores, and they would all come running when they saw our boat. you would think they'd get bored of constantly waving to foreigners, but apparently it never gets old, which is good, because it was pretty damn charming.

at 6.00 (11 hours after departure), we arrived at chau doc. for some reason, we stood for ages in the street with our bags. why? the bus hadn't arrived yet, of course! after about half an hour in the rain with 40-pound bags, we got BACK on the bus and went to the hotel. ah, the hotel. what a moldy moldtrap it was! it looked nice from outside, but our room's A/C was broken and they only gave us a bottom sheet and a skanky blanket. it was a sleeping sheet night for us--thank you, LL bean!

we ate dinner in the restaurant, which was basically an outdoor atrium, but i got fed up when my food kept being infested with the mites flying around. the canadians came to sit with us, and informed us that they couldn't sleep in their room and would be camping out on the restaurant floor that night. dear god. i can't decide if it was better or worse than our room!

finally, we went to sleep (or tim did--i spent all night thrashing around) and woke up again at 6am for breakfast. at breakfast, while chomping on our bread with jam, we were informed that there is no fast boat because "the propeller is broken," which in vietnamese means "only two of you booked the fast boat and there is no way we're running it for you two losers so suck it up and take the slow boat". so, slow boat it was. at least we got a $10 refund!

and then it was off to the boats. we all climbed into rowboats (all propelled by tiny little women) and took off for our "tour" of the floating fishing village and the cham village. the tour consisted of the women rowing us through the village (nice enough) and then us being brought into a house and looking at a hole in the floor full of fish, and then being put back into the rowboats and dropped off at the cham village. at the cham village, we walked down the road and were mobbed by cham children, who all wanted pens. i gave them all the pencils i had stolen from the hotels and we went on our way. then, back on the rowboats to the slow boat!

o god, the slow boat. each time we got on a new boat, it got smaller by half (with the exception of the rowboats). the second boat was only one level, with wooden benches. it was a looooooong 4 hours. at the border, we were given some food, which was ok, and then sent through vietnamese immigration. then, we had to walk across the border and get on ANOTHER boat (half as small again) to go to cambodia. now, at this point, we had about 20 people and all their baggage. we then had to go through cambodian immigration, at which point the three irish girls had some trouble. you see, when catriona and elinor were in peru, their passports were stolen, forcing them to get temporary passports. under normal circumstances, this would probably be fine, but they are traveling for 8 months, and temp passports only have 5 pages. the girls had two spots left open for stamps, and they needed 4. this was quite a pickle for the cambodian authorities, who kept the two girls in there for about 45 minutes so that they could write a note saying it was their idea not to get stamped coming into the country. while they waited, tim and i befriended mags, the third irish girl. all 3 girls are from the same town in laoire, but they never met until university.

once all three girls cleared customs at about 2, it was back on the slow boat for us. now, keep in mind that VIETNAMESE people had to bend over to get onto this boat. mmm, spacious! they sure aren't kidding when they call it the slow boat. we were supposed to get to phnom penh at 4--we arrived at 6. the good thing was that the cambodian coastline along the mekong is truly beautiful--very quiet and green, with fields and trees everywhere, instead of houses cluttering it up. and, WE GOT FIREWORKS! we passed one house where an entire family was waiting, and calling, and waving, and they set off firecrackers for us! now THAT's a welcome.

FINALLY, we got to the shore and de-boated. then, back on a bus. on a road. with lots of bumps. and when i say lots, try to imagine bumps with small bits of road thrown in. for an hour and a half. and when you picture it, imagine me sitting in the back seat with the irish girls, with 3478597348927 bags above our heads, precariously leaning at best, about to decapitate us at worst. ROCKIN' GOOD TIME!

eventually we got to the hotel where they dumped us in phnom penh, and everyone but us stayed there (because we're so fancy, we stayed somewhere else). that meant we had to get a $4 taxi to our hotel. the $4 taxi was the first hotel's minibus, on which the back door did not open. so tim and i sat in the front with the driver, and another guy climbed in the back to talk to us. the two cambodian guys were hilarious, though. they asked where we were from, and when i asked where they were from, they said CAMBODIA! and rolled around laughing. they were pretty funny.

and then, we got to the hotel. praise jesus. we went up to our room, bathed, ate some dinner in the overly expensive restaurant and then passed the frig out, exhausted by our delta adventure.

saigon surprise

2005-11-10T03:38:00.000-08:00

the surprise about saigon (for me, anyway) was that it was actually a lovely city. i had been expecting lots of dirt, begging, pushiness and ridiculous crowds, and we got none but the begging. we arrived at the airport, and had another quintessential vietnam moment with our taxi driver. we walk up to the taxi, see it says 'meter' and get in. the taxi driver asks where we're going and pretends not to know where it is. he drives around the corner and stops the car and then tells us he's not going to use the meter and we will pay him $7. in my first assertive move since arriving in hanoi, i open the door of the taxi and startto walk out. he then turns on the meter, but tells us we have to pay him $5. i am pretty sure he drove around the city until he hit $5, but that's what it ended up costing. sneaky little bastard...

the hotel, on the other hand, was lovely, right on nguyen hue blvd, which looks a little like the champs elysees. so pretty! and the city--beautiful! they even have CROSSWALKS! despite the fact that hanoi is called the paris of asia, i think saigon was much more parisian. at least in our neighborhood. it has wide streets with trees and parks, and it's all very clean. o, clean, how i have missed you! the people seem very laid back, and the drivers aren't completely insane...

and, most importantly, they had western food. tim and i porked out in saigon, and ate only one vietnamese meal. we had some kind of western krap (sitting next to a guy wearing a team usa shirt--o gawd), a british pub meal where i got a goat cheese salad (o, glorious goat cheese, how i worship at your altar of love!), a vegetarian meal (i had a bean burrito! o, bean burrito, my not-at-all-clandestine lover!), an indian feast (which tim deemed the best food we had in all of vietnam), an italian meal, and finally, on our last night, a vietnamese meal at a beautiful little place around the corner from our hotel.

the problem with saigon is that you do see more poverty than in the other tourist hubs. we saw quite a few landmine victims (including one man in a wheelchair without any limbs at all. none.) and in the backpacker neighborhood, we saw some kids begging, but they didn't seem too aggressive about it. in all, there wasn't much begging at all in vietnam, which surprised both of us.

another problem is that there are lots of americans. saigon seemed to be the middle-aged tour bus capital of the world. i don't know if they were american soldiers returning, or what, but they were everywhere and they were LOUD. for example, i was trying to take a pic of the people's committee building, and there were some tourists standing in front of the statue of uncle ho. to be fair, they were standing there for ages and they kept swapping places to get different shots of themselves. i was patiently waiting until an american guy came up next to me and started complaining and then started YELLING at them to get out of the way. another guy came up and joined him, and when they got the two women to move, they then started in on another group of people standing in the periphery. ah, america. how proud i am to be your child! there are so many americans in saigon that the local kids speak english with american accents. "madame, ya wanna postcard?"

in other news, we went to the war remnants museum, which was an emotional experience. the museum starts out with a bunch of pictures by kids about war and peace. all i will say is this: either adults painted those pictures, or vietnam has the best elementary art program on earth. the rest of the main museum is a catalogue of atrocities committed by the americans in the war. american soldiers holding a dismembered vietnamese soldier's torso, a section on agent orange with photos of kids with down syndrome and various other physical and mental defects (including photos of a boy who looked like he was missing a spine), and the crowning glory: two jars with agent orange-infected fetuses. there were two babies in one jar (i didn't get close enough to see if they were conjoined or not) and another one that looked like it had down syndrome. in the napalm section, they had the photo of kim phuc running down the street after she had been bombed. no mention of how she was bombed by SOUTH VIETNAMESE soldiers, though. for some reason, i was really annoyed by that. yes, war is hideous. yes, american soldiers did some completely inhumane things, but don't pretend that they did things that you did, you jerks. the second half of the museum was a section called requiem, and was a collection of photos by photographers who died in the war. it was very touching, but the room was tiny and had about 2 fans, and there were about 40,000 people in there. the whole experience was pretty wrenching, and i lost it in the yard when a man with one leg asked tim to buy books.

if you are morbidly depressed by the war remnants museum, have no fear! entertainment is near! so, remember the squirty eyeball from halong bay? GET READY FOR SQUIRTY EYEBALL, PART 2! our first day in saigon, i was a little dizzy, so when we woke up in the morning, i ate breakfast and went back to sleep. that afternoon, i took another nap because i was feeling cloudy-headed. the next morning, it was even worse. what does perfect husband say? "eh, don't worry about it. you're probably fine. if you go to the doctor and say you're dizzy, he's just going to laugh at you." so i continue on, suffering in silence, and manically popping advil in the hope that i will just grow a new head. by the THIRD morning (when we were supposed to tour the cu chi tunnels), i managed to get to the bathroom, but it took me about 10 minutes to get one trouser leg on. suddenly, perfect husband sees the problem. i am walking like someone who spent 36 hours straight at the bar in gepetto's (only about 1/4 of you will understand that, but those who do will know exactly what i am talking about). so i go back to bed again, and when i wake up, tim agrees to go to the doctor (and you people STILL don't believe he's trying to kill me?). so, we get to the SOS clinic of love, and we get to see the nurse, who is this hilarious guy who's in love with nyc and whose brother lives in brooklyn. hooray! then, we get to see my one true love: the angelic dr. hieu. dr. hieu takes a look at me and diagnoses me with an inner ear infection brought on by an abusive and neglectful husband who made me swim in dirty water. (ok, only part of that is true, but you see what's happening here.) then, he gives me a prescription for DRUGS! man, i love drugs. sweet prednisone of love, how you cured my ear infection and made me walk straight again! so, we talk to the beautiful pharmacist who tells us about her childhood in hue, and gives me some pills (which were decidedly more expensive than the $1 codeine, but what the hell). and then, we go back to the hotel and watch HBO. so for now, i am alive, but stay tuned for the next violent attempt on my life!

just say no (to everyone)

2005-11-10T02:43:00.000-08:00

our journey to hoi an began at the hue train station, where a local boy came over to take our picture (quite a change from the norm, for once!). i'm not sure if he was taking a photo of tim's hair or my nose, but either way it was pretty cute. the train trip to hoi an, said to be the most beautiful in vietnam, was obscured by all the locals on the train who clearly didn't care at all about the view and proceeded to SLEEP WITH THEIR CURTAINS SHUT right through it! of course tim and i were on the wrong side of the train, so i had to lean waaaaaaaaaay over and crane my neck around to see anything. from what i saw though, nice! it looked like the french riviera!

we got to the town, and checked into our hotel (which seemed nice at first but soon revealed itself to be not only damp, but musty and roach- infested, so we switched to a more expensive room for $12! so spendy!) about 150 feet down the road, it happened. a beautiful woman on a bike road up. "hello, where you from?" allie the sucker proceeds to talk to her (she was so pretty! i was mesmerized!). "i have a shop in the market, you will come see?" by the end of the conversation, she was holding my hand and telling me how glad she was that i was her friend. damn, these people are GOOD. anyway, thinking i am really slick for getting rid of her (we said we would check out her store later), we contiunued on our way. we went into the ancient town (beautiful, lots of old chinese trading buildings on very narrow streets which for the first few days were flooded) and ate at a cafe that served the BEST croque monsieurs i have ever had. hands down, bar none.

we almost got in a fistfight with the table full of OBNOXIOUS spanish tourists (i hereby declare spanish tourists the nastiest, most humorless tourists of all) who took over a table and then made ridiculous demands of the waitress. "we all want ham and cheese sandwiches. no, wait! we all want ham and cheese sandwiches, but we all want them a different way!" IT'S A HAM AND CHEESE SANDWICH! stick it in your mouth and shut up! the lunch encounter ended with one of them screaming at us because tim laughed at their request for cappuccinos ("two VERY hot cappuccinos. no, wait. one VERY hot cappuccino and one the way you usually make it.") let me say this: my desire to go to spain is rapidly dwindling.

anyway, again, thinking we're really smart, tim and i are walking through the food market when BAM! beautiful girl grabs me. and this time, there was no escape. she took us to her stall in the market (apparently their MO is to grab people off the streets on their first day) and made me look through books and books of tailored clothes. i chose a few that i liked, and they measured me (i have never felt as amazonian in my life, with tiny vietnamese women breaking the industrial size tape measure) and then informed me it would be $60. oh, why, god?

basically, hoi an is a beautiful town full of tailors. everywhere you go, women come up to you, saying either "come look at my store" or "hello, where you from?" eventually, tim and i figured out that if we told them we had been in town for a while, they buggered off. it was exhausting. we have never said no thank you so much in our lives!

apart from getting suckered (again), we did have some good times in hoi an. we went to my son, a cham holy site that had the krap bombed out of it during the war (it was a VC hideout). a lot of it was completely destroyed, but some of it is still standing and you can imagine what it would be like in all its glory. we saw a lovely cham dance, and we got to ride up the hill in an old american army jeep. we also got a tour guide from tiger tours, who spent the majority of the trip yelling "TIIIIIIGERRRRRR!" to get our attention. the best part of the trip, however, was when we got ready to leave and we were all on the bus, which promptly got stuck in the mud. all the men had to get off to push it, and then we all got off. after about 20 minutes, they managed to get it out and we all piled back on only to have them get it REALLY stuck again! ah, vietnam...

we also did a cooking class at a local cafe, which was both entertaining AND informative! our cook, whose name i forget, was totally hilarious. here are some of his comic gems:
-handle the fish with two hands, like you would treat your lover.

-(to tim, who was preparing the fish): wrap it like a present in the leaf. have you wrapped present?
(tim, confused): have i been to prison?
(cook, horrified):NO, MAN, PRESENT! not prison! you scare me, man!

-(in response to a woman who tried the fish and said 'yum'): you cannot say yum in vietnam! you know why? in vietnam, yum means you are horny! yum is okay, but yum yum is scary! when we are in the market and we hear 'yum yum,' we are very scared! but after 10 beers, it is ok!!

-(holding a shriveled chinese mushroom): you know why we call this chinese mushroom? because it is a little bit ugly!

o gawd, he was hilarious. we ended up spending way too much time in hoi an (5 nights) and finally, when we were about to escape, A TYPHOON CAME! we got up in the morning and were about 10 minutes down the road to danang when the hotel called. the airport was closed. back to the hotel we went, to watch the hilarity that is international travel. some one told these young english girls that hoi an was being evacuated, so they promptly freaked out and called the EMBASSY, who asked how old they were, and, upon hearing that they were 21, told them to get a grip and hung up, which of course sent the girls into a tailspin. in case you were wondering, they are going to write to tony blair. the two girls spent most of the day standing by the front door of the hotel (the cable was out, so everyone was in the lobby), chain smoking and generally hyperventilating. the storm blew through really quickly (it was all over by about 5pm) and one of the girls ended up getting the night bus to nha trang (after a conversation with her mother in which her mom was watching sky news and saw that the storm surge was in nha trang and THE MOTHER ended up in tears.) dear god. english people....they wouldn't know real weather if it smacked them in the face! ;)

finally, the cable and internet came back on and tim and i escaped hoi an. 6 days, 748935389729798234 "no thank you"s, and 2 croque monsieurs (yes, i went back and there were no spaniards the second time!) later, we were en route to saigon. praise jesus.

hustled in hue

2005-11-03T06:12:00.000-08:00

we're so sorry we haven't posted in so long, but since we got to hue, we have been lazy. make that lazy with a capital L and 6 As, so Laaaaaazy!

now, we will make up for it by giving you an example of a typical day in vietnam:

allie and tim wake up in hue, in their spotless (save for one giant roach in the throes of death in the bathroom) hotel room. the sun is finally out for the first time in days, so they think 'hey! let's take a boat trip down the perfume river to check out those temples we keep hearing about!' allie and tim then venture down to the harbor (or, as tim calls it, 'the lion's den') to wait to be propositioned by 5473957349 boat owners offering to take them down the river. sure enough, a bunch of them come flying out, offering varying deals. allie and tim ignore them and ask the woman at the tourist desk how much it will be, and she says for a full day trip down the river, 300,000 dong. tim and allie leave the desk to ponder the issue and are then accosted by tam, a boat owner. tam says he will take them for an hour trip for 80,000. allie and tim walk away. tam follows them, calling out different prices for different trips. allie and tim tell him they need time to consider the matter. tam says he will return in 10 minutes and leaves them time to ponder his whole day for 200,000 dong offer. he makes it clear that the offer does not include admission to the tombs, which they already knew.

10 minutes later, allie and tim are ensconced in two remarkably comfortable shrunken red plastic chairs on tam's boat, with his wife at the back, looking sullen. tam starts up the boat as though it's a lawn mower, and once it starts, it doesn't sound all that different. allie and tim sit, staring out at the river, for about 20 minutes until they reach the first pagoda, which is noteworthy for being the home pagoda to the first self-immolating monk. allie and tim go up to the pagoda, expecting to fork out 60,000 dong each, but are happily surprised when entry is free! they walk around, delirious with excitement at anything free in vietnam. they return to the boat, where tam tells them the two tombs are next.

tim and allie sit happily until tam's wife offers them a soda. AND THEN IT BEGINS. out of the corner of allie's eye, she sees the wife setting up a blanket: a sure sign that major selling is about to occur. sure enough, 2o seconds later, the wife is suddenly chirpy and is thrusting postcards in allie's face. "$1! $1! very cheap!" she cries. allie, the sucker, thinking that buying the postcards will end the onslaught, buys the postcards. allie is foolish. as soon as she has bought the postcards, wife unveils a very large collection of artwork. allie and tim buy some artwork. as soon as they have bought the artwork, wife whips out some scarves. allie and tim (surprisingly) say NO. wife then pulls out some jewelry. NO. wife then holds up some ao dai. NO. (what the hell is allie going to do with a vietnamese outfit in a size -17?) tim and allie, despite having been attacked by surprise two days in a row (the day prior, they were propositioned by a series of men selling paintings for disadvantaged children, and, just for themselves, and of course, the suckers fell for it), are feeling quite pleased with themselves for their restraint. after all, they haven't spent THAT much.

yeah, right, losers. tam lands the boat on the side of the river, with nothing but a muddy path in sight. he jumps out of the boat (he's pretty spry, being only about 5" tall) and helps allie and tim up the path. "now you go to tombs by motorbike," he tells them. a little confused, they continue up the path and try to ignore the woman inside the house they are passing, who is standing on her porch waving biscuits around and yelling "COOKIES? YOU WANT BUY COOKIES?" they get to the top of the hill and tam repeats the line about the motorbike and points to the two dudes standing there with bikes. tim and allie think "ok, we hadn't planned on riding motorbikes in this country where lunacy and complete recklessness rule the roads, but hey, what the hell?" the head motorbike dude then says "two tombs. $5 per person." excuse me, WHAT? $5 in vietnam will buy you a feast or about 100 paintings--maybe even a small child (although we haven't tried that one yet). $10 will probably buy you a house and a chauffeur! tim blandly tries to argue with the man, knowing he and allie are screwed and will have to fork over the money. tam hides in the background, looking uncomfortable and frightened that the giant american girl will kill him with her bare hands and eat him for dinner ( well, just as an appetizer, because he is only very tiny). finally, allie and tim acquiesce, and get on the stinking motorbikes, and tam runs for cover.

the good news is that motorbike riding is great and is the only way to travel (well, apart from the other ways, of course). the man driving tim doesn't speak english, but when he stops for gas, the gas attendant asks tim where he was from, and when tim says england, the man asks "do you speak vietnamese?" uh, no. english is actually the national language of england, mister. as tim's friend is refueling, allie's friend decides to take off without them. allie's driver speaks more english, and shouts out random phrases along the way, yelling mostly "TOMBS VERY BEAUTIFUL!" ya think? why do you think we are spending our life savings and risking life and limb to see them, man?

allie and tim finally arrive at the first tomb, which is indeed very beautiful. they fork over their 60,000 dong each (starting to feel very poor by this point) and wander around for the "TWENTY MINUTES!" they have been allotted. then, it's back on the bike for the journey to the second tomb. at the second tomb, they get 30 minutes, and they actually took a little too long.

something is funny when they get back on the bikes after the second tomb. allie tries to take a video of the road from the bike, and it comes out okay. however, her driver is acting weird. he keeps yelling 'GOOD DRIVER!!" and cracking up. allie assumes he is merely drunk, having spent half an hour in the cafe at the tomb, and she blithely agrees with him, praying that he doesn't run into a tree. at the same time, tim's driver is also yelling "good driver!" and laughing uproariously with allie's driver while talking about beer. tim and allie exchange glances, but hey, this is vietnam. weird stuff happens all the time.

they get back to their starting point, and the men immediately sit down at a table in the first cafe. a woman comes out with a tray full of food, and allie, too tired to argue, says she will buy the local snack, which is the cheapest thing on offer. suddenly, the woman starts saying "good drivers!" and pointing at the men. yeah, yeah, they're friggin' great, lady--give me my peanut stick and let me get on the road! then the men start patting the seats next to them, so allie and tim sit down. only THEN does it become apparent what the scheme is. they are supposed to buy the men BEER to reward them for not running into a tree! so, they do. the men smile widely and crack open their tiger beers, pleased as punch with their day's bounty.

thinking (don't even comment on how dumb allie and tim are) that they are done for the day, tim and allie walk down the path back to the boat when the owner of the second cafe comes flying out. "COCA-COLA?" no. "YOU SAID YOU WOULD BUY FROM ME WHEN YOU CAME BACK!" uh, no. "YOU BOUGHT FROM HER, YOU HAVE TO BUY FROM ME!" (please take note that "you buy from her, you buy from me" could well be and perhaps should be the national slogan of vietnam.) the woman starts to follow allie and tim down the road, thrusting various items in their faces. tim is visibly annoyed at this point, and says, no, no, no, no. with every no, the woman gets more upset until she looks as if her head is quite literally going to fly off of her head. thinking that the woman is either going to have a stroke or pull out an axe, allie makes tim buy a coke from her for the grand total of 75 cents. of course, the woman doesn't actually HAVE coke on her little tray, so they take a warm pineapple juice and hit the road.

when they get to the boat, they are so tired that they don't have the energy to kill tam and drive the boat back themselves, so they sit quietly, eating peanut stick and drinking warm pineapple juice and calculating the damage of what they have spent. the grand total? $40 and an unexpressable amount of energy.

don't swim in the water!

2005-10-25T22:22:00.000-07:00

ah, so we left for lovely halong bay in the early morning, and hopped on a minibus with 10 other people--all about 20 years older than we were (this is what happens when you book a fancy tour!). i sat next to a canadian woman who was very nice, but a little odd...she told me that australia is now on the list of banned countries for the canadian gvt. ok, lady. there was an aussie couple in front of us who was very talkative (soo-prise!): dennis and alison, from sydney. there were some more aussies behind us, and behind us even further. we also met tang, our tour guide. tang means VICTORY! and it appears to be the most popular vietnamese name for boys born in about 1975. hmm...every time we meet a tang, they say, "my name is tang. it means VICTORY!" and then explain they were born in 1975, as if we hadn't already guessed.

the ride went quickly, and we stopped along the way at some shop and studio for disabled vietnamese kids. we met a lovely guy there with a club foot, who was working in the ceramics studio. he was so sweet ("i'm not going to get married. i am very ugly.") that i insisted we buy stuff from him. i am such a sucker, but he was a really lovely man. the place was very nice, but it felt a little like a zoo, with all the tourists standing over the handicapped kids on sewing machines, etc.

from there, we went to halong bay and hopped on a little boat to take us to the JUNK. on the little boat, we were joined by even more raucous australians, but we lost the canadians. i was a little worried we would be stuck with these new aussies the whole time, but it turned out they got on another boat. good. our boat, the jewel of the bay, was way out in the water, and we happily climbed aboard. already on board was one couple, anya and stefan, who were our age and...well, german (i'll leave it at that), and an, our "customer service manager" who lives on the boat and gets days off only when there are no tourists, which is about once a month.

the other people on our boat were dennis and alison, the germans, patricia and fiona, and minot (sp?) and mouse, his wife. minot and mouse are dutch-australians who live in melbourne, patricia and fiona live somewhere near sydney, and the germans were from hamburg. anya, the head german, is a travel writer! she spoke maybe 15 words to other people the entire time, and i think all the words were about her. or her beliefs. or what she says is right. anya was a party all the time. stefan spoke about 15 words the whole time, mostly because he looked terrified of anya.

the boat was lovely (3 floors, with the rooms below, the dining room on the first floor and the top deck) and our rooms were very nice. the food, however, was unbelievable! the thighs were very happy--all seafood, and about 7 (small) courses for every meal. we sailed around for a while, between all the giant island cliffs, in the beautiful turquoise water (don't worry, it gets worse). after a few hours, we went to see some caves, which were mediocre, and minot almost killed himself walking through and dennis (who is 6'8") had an interesting time. it was in the cave, however, that tim discovered his newfound love for dennis, who is a former geography teacher-tour operator-wildlife photographer-tech consultant. basically, dennis is a hilarious walking encyclopedia and i think tim might have left me for him had alison not been on board. alison is a travel agent-student-french translator, so they were most interesting people. we spent most of our time with them the first night, after a rather hilarious kayaking expedition.

tim decided not to kayak, but i went with the 4 aussies and the germans. let it be said that only 3 of us knew how to kayak. i will allow you to guess which three. ok, it was me, alison and dennis. the other 4 completely ignored an when he told them about the RUDDER on their kayak, and the aussie women spent the entire time careening around in the wrong direction, screaming at each other. the germans spent the entire time CRASHING INTO ME, and then pushing me into an's kayak. i would get no apology, but would hear an earful of anya yelling at stefan. ah, love. (the next day, stefan did not kayak. gee, i wonder why.) the trip ended with the aussie women yelling at an, who finally told them to use the rudder. they told him they didn't know about the rudder (although patricia claimed to be an accomplished kayaker and fiona is a SKIPPER, for god's sake, though it can also be said she hates the water. ???)

dinner went well (though anya and the aussie women got tanked and started saying things to each other like " YOU GERMANS...") and we all went to bed. tim and i sat very close to dennis and alison and dennis taught me some cool tricks, like how to eat the legs off fried shrimp. DELISH!

in the morning, everyone left but me and tim, and dennis and alison. i don't want to say thank goodness, but thank goodness! it would have been nice if minot and mouse had stayed, because they were quite sweet and interesting (married for 50 years!), but they all left. and then we got to party it up!

now, let it be said that the beautiful turquoise waters, though lovely, were not so clean. as we kayaked around, juice boxes and other charming remnants from the fishing villages would float past. (note to self: when you are keenly aware the water is not very clean, DO NOT SWIM IN IT!) after the first day kayaking, we anchored in a little cove and we all went swimming. in yet ANOTHER homicide attempt by my darling husband, i was forced to jump off the boat. i survived (for the short term) and we all swam around until my hands were so pruny they could hardly move. after we swam, i noticed that tim's bath towel was covered in brown sludge, like he had used it to mop the floor. of course, i assumed it was because he is simply filthy, but it was from the WATER! (note to self: when you know the water is so dirty it turns a pristine white towel brown, DO NOT SWIM IN IT!)

on the second day, there was more kayaking and more swimming. in his final halong bay homicide attempt, tim made me DIVE off the boat. of course, later that night...HELLO SWIMMER'S EAR! my theory is that all the diesel from all the boats was stuck in there, but tim refutes my brilliant claim. i took some advil before bed and thought i was fine in the morning.

I WAS WRONG. initially, yes, the swimmer's ear went away and tim and i went on our last kayaking trip with dennis and alison (where we went through a cave full of bats, and all i could think of was dennis' "bats can nick you and give you rabies and you never even know because it's just a tiny cut but a year later you're DEAD" stories) and then, as usual, the 4 of us sat around in our kayaks and gabbed for ages, much to poor tang's dismay. after the kayaking, i started to feel a little funny. my head really hurt and i started to feel a little seasick. let me say this: i am from maine. i do not get seasick. ever. we had some lunch, and i think i freaked dennis out a little bit, because he suddenly switched from hilarious entertainer mode to dad mode. we made it off the boat, and onto the van, where i promptly passed out. by the time we dropped dennis and alison off in haiphong, i think i had really scared the hell out of them, and i was pretty convinced my right eyeball was going to squirt out of my head. we left them with plans to meet up in melbourne (his daughter lives there) or sydney (tim invited us to stay with them) and i hope we see them again, because they were great!

by the time i got back to hanoi, i had recovered, and i felt even better when we got me some $1 codeine and some kind of nose squirty guy. ah, codeine of love. we took some and then i passed the frig out on the train to hue, which is good because it's a 13 1/2 hour journey. to me, it passed so quickly on the upper bunk of love!

the moral of the story? if your new husband suggests diving into some lovely-looking but clearly foul water, DO NOT DO IT because you will end up with diesel running through your sinuses for days to come! ha, and you were all worried about avian flu!

hmong girls rock my world

2005-10-19T06:12:00.000-07:00

tim and i got to sapa via the hard sleeper train--6 people in a tiny cabin, each with a comfortable 1-inch mattress! we were in a cabin with an israeli, two swedes and an englishman named dan. dan HATES vietnam and had a lot to say on the subject. he thinks the vietnamese are all nasty thieves and are trying to screw the tourists every way but sideways. he hates the cyclo drivers and the motorbike drivers and he is sick of everyone harrassing him all the time. so of course, i started getting worried that i too would start to hate vietnam after a while (dan allowed that hanoi was the best place he'd seen yet in vietnam) and stayed up all night worrying about that and the fact that someone would break in and steal our bags from the tiny cabin, even though a nice train employee told us to tie them to the beds so that wouldn't happen (dan said the nice train man almost restored his faith in vietnamese).

we got to sapa and walked up the 173 stairs to our room, about 6 stories up on a hillside, checked out the view and then passed out. sweet sleeping action! then, of course, the first thing that happened was exactly what dan was talking about. THE HARD SELL. the place is full of roving bands of hmong and dao women, and it's a little intimidating at first. after recovering from our 574893578239 stairs and 2 minutes of sleep, we were wandering around town and a hmong woman came up to us with her baby strapped to her back. 'you buy from me?' we told her no and she kept following us--ALL OVER TOWN. at one point, her friend started to follow us as well and we were trying to outrun them and we couldn't stop laughing. the first woman caught up to us when we were cracking up and told us, laughing, 'you buy from me, no one will follow you!' finally, we cracked under the pressure and bought a bracelet from her, at which point her friend suddenly appeared and said to me, ' YOU BUY FROM HER, YOU BUY FROM ME!' it's like some kind of hmong mafia.

we spent the first day trying to avoid looking them in the eye, and then we sat at a bar on the main street with this awesome aussie, adrian, who knew them all. he had met a bunch of the young girls playing pool (!) in the bar downstairs the night before, and he met a bunch of the rest of them when they were hawking stuff. he was hilarious, telling them he had no money b/c he's already bought everything, and they kept teasing him and coming up to BITE him and everything. that was also when we learned their routine:
-'you buy bracelets from me!'
-'no, i have 2 bracelets already!'
-'you have 2, you need 4!'
that was when we decided to make friends with the hmong girls.

i made it my mission while i was there, and i am proud to say i achieved it. to be honest, it isn't too hard. buy something from them, or tease them about how you can't buy something from them, and they're yours forever. tim and i managed to befriend about 10-12 of the girls, who are the funniest, sassiest, smartest girls i've ever met (they're right up there w/aussie women in my estimation). they dress in the traditional black hmong clothes, but they speak perfect english and are surprisingly western. THEY EVEN RIDE MOTORBIKES! let me tell you, seeing hmong girls on motorbikes is a weird moment...they are all dressed up in their traditional clothes, whizzing past you. seeing the men is almost weirder, because the men wear their collars up (a la crusty), and for some reason, they look like something out of a weird sci-fi movie, like mad max. they're coming to take over the world, with collars up!

the first night, we went to the aforementioned pool bar and watched two girls (mimi and vu) play pool (they're all pool sharks) against this drunk aussie. it was hilarious. at one point, one of them looked at him and said, 'whatever.' and the other one later made a loser sign at him. we befriended 5 of them the first night, 4 more the second, and 2 the third. i bought something from about all of them (except for one, i think, loulou), but the stuff they sell is only about $1 so it's not that expensive. they are the sweetest little things, all huggy and kissy and wanting to hold hands and telling me that i'm beautiful and tim is a bad husband and looks older than me (though the second night in the bar, mimi was cracking up at the pictures i took of tim and telling him he looks 12 and then showing the camera to these israeli guys and telling them tim was my 12-year-old boyfriend). her friend lili caught on and kept running up to tim yelling 'YOU ARE ONLY 12 YEARS OLD!' and then falling all over him laughing. she would then bite him and run away. tim, of course, befriended the two real pool sharks, lili and vu, who quite literally looks like she could be a gang leader. they were so funny, but at first, they looked really tough and scary. once they started biting tim, though, it was all over. he is in love.

the third day we spent literally 4 hours in an internet cafe helping them email. they can all speak english, but only a few can write it and none can read it (tim says some actually can, but they are too lazy to do it). it was fun, but exhausting. two of the girls i helped had babies. ku, the younger one, has a baby named ga and another daughter, and i figure ku herself must be about 20 MAX. so, the other one, is 25 and has FOUR KIDS. she cracked me up when she looked at me and said, 'NO MORE!'

we've met some other cool people (3 aussies, 2 of whom i brokered a bracelet deal for with the girls and who coined the 12 year old expression) and the israeli guys, and one wretched nasty b@stard from spain who told mimi to f*ck off. let me tell you, i laid the smack down and tim even joined in!

we're pretty exhausted now, because in addition to kicking it with the hmong girls, we have been hiking/climbing stairs all over this frigger because sapa is a hill town and there are stairs EVERYWHERE. we hiked down and back to the nearest hmong village the first day and climbed the big hill in town the second. on our last day, we went on an unbelievably easy (yet stunning) hike to 2 more villages and then got a jeep ride back (praise jesus). our guide was another hmong girl named za, who was 17. she wore her hmong clothes, with sneakers, which is not an unusual sight because so many of these girls are also guides when they're not selling.

in her village, we ran into 4 little girls (8, 10 and 11) who we'd met our first day. they followed us from their village to the next one (an hour walk) and made me a crown of ferns and picked me flowers. one of them, la, also told me the following. 'i remember your husband, but not you. many people in my village are fat like you, but your husband, he not so fat.' man, she's lucky she is only 8 or i might have thrown her into the river! since she was the one giving me flowers, i let her live. at lunch in lao chai (the hmong village), there were some local boys who climbed up the wall of our deck-thing to watch us eat. we gave one of them an egg and another one some cheese, and we started a riot. two more boys came. we gave them two bananas and another egg. then the first ones came back and we gave them an orange. in the interim, they went over to the german tourists next to us and the lady tried to give one of them some cheese and she was almost crushed. they were pretty damn cute, though. according to the girls, little boys in the village do nothing but play and sometimes watch buffalo, but the girls start selling when they are only about 6 or 7 (and from what i've seen, sometimes younger than that). TYPICAL LAZY MALES!

yesterday, when we left, we went into town to say goodbye to them all and we had some major melodrama. we were surrounded by about 10 girls and we told them we had to get the bus, but as we were leaving, one of them started to cry. she wouldn't look at us or tell us why she was crying. it was either because she was mad at tim because he couldn't open her email the day before, or she thought we ignored her that morning (which we hadn't, we had said hello and gotten no response) or because we never bought anything from loulou (loulou's translation, mind you). she walked with us almost back to the hotel, and then we said goodbye. i still have no idea why she was crying. BUT, when we got back to the hotel, all those other girls had come to say goodbye! HOORAY! and when i asked them about zeng, they told me she cries all the time, so that made me feel a little better. we took some pictures, exchanged the few remaining email addresses and went on our way. man, am i going to miss hmong girls. for four days, i got to be a hmong goddess, and now i'm back to being just a fat tourist!

sapa itself was amazing. the views are glorious, as my mom would say, and it's kind of like being in the alps. but not (because you're in vietnam, duh). our hotel room had the most stunning view, and it's a cute little town. but, they are building EVERYWHERE and soon it will be completely overcome with tourists. tim is worried about what will happen to the girls, and it will be interesting to see. when we met the aussies in borneo, they had been to sapa about 5-10 years ago and i think even since then it's changed completely. when they were there, they hmong girls only knew how to say 'bonbon' when they asked for candy, and now, check them out!

we're staying in hanoi tonight...we got the soft sleeper back last night (only 4 bunks and a 3-inch mattress--yay!) and roomed with an irishman who lives in hanoi and teaches english, and two tiny vietnamese girls who both slept in one tiny bunk. tomorrow we head out to halong bay for some kayaking action, so we won't be back online until the 22nd. stay tuned and try not to miss us too much!

hanoi has...

2005-10-14T03:26:00.000-07:00

...thousands of people all riding around the city on bikes, from kids on bicycles coming home from school, to old men on motorbikes, to entire families (4 people) riding around together
...so many motorbikes that they are all parked on the sidewalk and you have to walk in the street to get by, because the sidewalk looks like a moped shop
...cyclo and motorbike drivers on every corner, calling out to give you a ride
...beautiful women in conical hats, carrying baskets held by wood over their shoulders, selling bananas and pineapples and donuts and all kinds of things, and looking as though they are bouncing on their toes to walk
... kids on bicycles with so many baskets attached to the bike, there's barely room for the kid
...people on motorbikes with 15 boxes stacked on the seat, unattached, so that they are held on only by the good balance of the driver
...people sitting on the streets on tiny red seats, eating noodles and pho and all kinds of other foods, or just drinking the anemic-looking beer at lunchtime
...westerners wandering around like goons all over the place, clutching the lonely planet vietnam like it's their bible
...a park with a giant lake in the middle, surrounded by drooping trees, with men and women and children all sitting on benches, or drinking coffee or playing chess
...kids in white shirts and little red ties who wave to you and cry out 'hello!' when you pass
...little boys in the temple of literature gardens who run past and shoot you a peace sign
...scrawny women with postcards across the street from the sofitel metropole, not begging exactly, but trying to sell something, and sprinting up to you to do it
...wide parisian style bouldevards, lined with colonial buildings with green shutters and leafy trees
...tourist shops where the salesman will play you spanish songs on his guitar for ages, telling you the whole time that he has played only for a year, and smiling despite the fact that you're driving him crazy with your 900 pictures to burn to cd
...salespeople in shops who run up to you when they hear you're english to talk about football
...night cafes that as though they could easily be paris, or rome, or different era entirely
...aggressive women in travel shops who tell you about their services and when you say you will come back, ask 'you won't buy anything from me today?' and when you do come back, they insist you pay them in dollars
...people on the street who want to sell you something, and even when you say no, when you smile, they light up and give you the world's biggest grin
...girls in the hoan kiem lake park, sitting with their boyfriend, who call out hello and wave like children when you walk past and smile
...evening that starts at about 5.30, when the light goes all wintry and the windows fill up with yellow light and it feels like christmas even though it's 80 degrees outside

good morning vietnam

2005-10-14T02:29:00.000-07:00

we finally got into hanoi after altogether too many hours in hong kong, where the people were TOO PUSHY. a woman actually tried to WALK INTO THE STALL in the bathroom when i was trying to exit. man, i hate people. lady, do you really think you're going to pee THROUGH me? jeez.

we got here, went through customs (no questions asked, again!) and got a taxi into hanoi which might have been one of the more memorable experiences of my life. driving in vietnam (or, at least driving here) requires a certain amount of skill, bravery and sheer insanity. our driver would switch lanes with no notice, dodging motorbikes and other cars, and using the preferred mode of passing, which is to creep right up behind the person in front of you and then flash your lights, and if he doesn't move in 2.3 seconds, start honking madly. hanoi driving makes boston driving look like a piece of cake, and it makes sibyl and dewey look like mere amateurs in the world of road intimidation. there are motorbikes everywhere here, and i mean EVERYWHERE. bikes with parents holding onto kids with one hand, bikes with young girls wearing face masks, bikes with parents with kids holding onto their siblings as their little legs hang off the side of the bike. and while it is impossible to describe (and perhaps even to contemplate, unless you've seen it), it is absolutely manic. at intersections, the bikes all line up as if they're in a race, and then BAM! they're off, honking and weaving around cars and other motorbikes, and cyclos and pedestrians. honking and honking and HONKING.

crossing the street is another unusual experience. the first day we were here, i told tim we would just walk on the same side of the road the whole time, but he made me cross the street (he is so mean!). crossing the street usually entails waiting for a break in the traffic (which usually means the flow slows to only 4-5 bikes) and then sprinting for your life. of course, now, we're master experts at the art of hanoi road crossing, and we casually stroll across, hoping they will dodge us (which they usually do, but we just saw a woman get hit by a motorbike). of course, the best is when tim starts to cross the road, and i follow him, looking for traffic on the other side, and then i get halfway across and realize he's back on the curb and i am staring down 4798398287549874353827 bikes. another attempt on my life? i think maybe so!

this city, though exhausting, is wonderful. the first day i told tim i didn't think i could ever live here, but now, after a few days, i'm not so sure. once you get used to the pace of life and the incessant honking, it all starts to look different. the first day here we were wildly ambitious and we did a walking tour of the city (guided by our lonely planet book, carried through hanoi by literally every tourist in town). the walking tour took us through a maze of streets in the old quarter and was a little overwhelming. we had lunch at cha ca la vang ( i think that's right), a little restaurant that specializes in a fish dish. sure enough, when we walked upstairs in the restaurant, the waitress gave us a note that said "this restaurant only serves one dish: fish cakes for 70,000 dong". we think the tourists pay more ($4.50) for the cakes, but whatever. she brought over a bowl of noodles, a bowl of herbs, a bowl of greens, a bowl of chilies in oil and a bowl of peanuts. we sat and stared at it all for a minute, wondering what to do, until she brought over a clay oven with a pan on top with sizzling fish cakes. she dumped some of the greens in, stirred it around, and left us. it was delicious. of course, while we were eating, we noticed the restaurant's cat jumping up on the counter and eying the greens suspicipiously, but at this point, as long as a roach didn't jump out of the greens, i was happy.

the second day, we spent a bunch of the day jerking around (i noticed that my idiot pharmacy only gave me 30 days of malaria pills instead of 110--THANKS, HIP!!) and running around the hotel, and then we took a cyclo to the temple of literature. the cyclo drivers are all over the city, along with the motorbike drivers, calling out 'sir, madame?' and pointing to their bikes. they are usually just lounging around languidly, and they take the news that you're not interested pretty well. $1 each got us across town to the temple, in one of the more bizarre travel experiences of my life. the cyclo driver sits behind you and cycles you around town, and you, like the motorbikes, weave in and out of traffic, around buses and cars, and you wait at the stop lights along with the rest of the crowds. it's a little intimidating at first, but soon you get over your fear of dying in an accident and start to worry about death by asphyxiation. since you're right in the thick of the traffic, you are right in the thick of the fumes from 74897897598237589375 other vehicles. i spent about a quarter of the ride covering my mouth and trying not to breathe. the rest of the time i spent feeling my white girl guilt about making this nice man cart my giant thighs across town for $1. the driver was sweet and when i told him i was american, pointed proudly to the hanoi hilton (the prison, not the hotel), and pointed out several other landmarks along the way..."train station!" "school!" "pagoda!" "lottery!" all the while trying to get me to book him for the whole day. i told him to ask the boss, and he thought that was hilarious. the boss, of course, said no, which was great because it meant i didn't have to!

at the temple, while tim was paying the drivers, a postcard seller popped out of nowhere and greeted me with 'you're beautiful. want to buy postcards?' man, how can you argue with that? of course i made tim buy them, although he made a point to add that the kid was probably not going to school, as he said, but just selling postcards. killjoy. the temple of literature is beautiful and is a very tranquil place in this crazy city, and we encountered another kid who gave me the same greeting: "you're beautiful. you fill out my survey?" of course i did, and then it turned out he was also raising money for the blind (we gave him $3). damn, my immense beauty is sure costing tim a lot of money!!

after the temple, we went over to the hanoi hilton (i keep forgetting the real name. hua lua prison?), which was a profoundly troubling experience for me. i have been to old prisons before (dublin and alcatraz), and i am not usually disturbed by it. then again, most prisons have not have extensive displays about the torture the prisoners endured. as tim said, the prison is a heroes' prison, where vietnam's revolutionaries suffered at the hands of the evil, wicked french. i won't go into it, but there was a room for the prisoners sentenced to death, and walking through, i got the creepiest feeling i've ever had, and quite literally felt sick. again, as an american, you don't think much about what the vietnamese endured to become communist (apart from all the fighting they did against the americans and the french and so on). there was a section for the enemy prisoners, in which there was much propoganda about how well american prisoners were treated (they got to exercise! they got delicious meals! they got to write to their families!) and then all kinds of info about john mccain and "pete" peterson, who are the prison's most famous american inmates. the whole place was very depressing (duh, allie, it's a prison) and the worst part is that they tore down 2/3 of the prison to build AN APARTMENT BUILDING. now, i don't know about you, but would you want to live on the site where hundreds of people were tortured or killed? not so much.

that night, we walked through the shopping district (silks! bags! jewels! hooray!) and then found a cafe called little hanoi where we stopped for a drink. then we went to the water puppet theater to buy tickets, and then we went back to little hanoi for dinner--nice french baguette sandwiches. the water puppet show was great--totally touristy, but worth it, i think. the music was wonderful (live musicians play and sing and talk during the show) and the puppetry was amazing.

yesterday, we went to the perfume pagoda. somewhere between the hotel and the pagoda, tim lost his red sox hat! sadness. this of course meant he had to buy a rad straw vietnamese-style hat at the jetty. also at the jetty, there were two tiny children, a little girl (about a year old) and a little boy (about 3). their mother had a little stand where she sold some kind of concoction that involved greens and noodles (it could be anything--lots of food uses those ingredients). so there i was, checking out the kids (sorry, chad) and laughing at the little girl playing with the greens. then she eats the greens. then she drops the greens on the floor and runs off with her brother. then her father picks the greens up off the floor and puts them back in the basket. YUM! (and tim wonders why i made him buy so much hand sanitizer--as if that will save us!)

on the way to the boat, a local woman came up and put a conical hat on my head and then jumped back. 'you buy! you buy! very cheap!' i gave it back to her and kept walking. bam! back on the head. this happened about 4 or 5 times before she got the hint and stopped. persistence will get you everywhere in life, but it will not get me a straw hat. then we got to the jetty and a little boy with the most amazing eyelashes comes up to us with some hats. we said no, he walked away. but then tim started to think about it. it's hot in vietnam, and we would be outside for 6 hours. did he really want to fry like a chicken? so he calls the little boy over, and eyelash kid sells him a hat for $1. it is a fine looking hat, but i miss the sox hat, i'll tell you what.

the ride up the river took forever. ok, only an hour, but sitting on a piece of wood for an hour ain't too comfortable. but oh, how i longed to be sitting on the wood when we got off the boat. we had a 3K (2 mile) walk UPHILL, as in UP A MOUNTAIN to get to the pagoda. let me tell you it was not fun. it took 45 mins to get up and about the same to come down. our guide was on fire to get us to the top, and it was hotter than hell. not only was it hot, but it was sunny AND humid. i will tell you: i barely survived. the pagoda was blissfully cool and interesting when we finally got there (though worth the hike? i am not sure). every year, thousands of vietnamese go to the pagoda to pray. it had all different natural altars, like if you want a son, or a daughter, or lots of money. on the way down, we ran into the woman from the jetty who had told me to buy stuff from her. her approach was to come up next to me and say 'where are you from? what's your name? AT THE TOP, YOU BUY FROM ME??' i said yes, not quite knowing what i was getting into, and so, after i had already gone through 3 bottles of water en route to the pagoda, we bought another from her on the way down. the little trickster tried to sell it to us for 3x the going rate for water, and then when we said no, she told us she had to carry it up and it was very hard (all true). so we only paid twice as much. i'm a sucker, i know. the best part about the pagoda was the dogs. it was the first time in asia we've seen healthy, western-style dogs (in hanoi, it's all yappy chihuahas and in indonesia, they were the furless creatures, and in malaysia, they were bizarrely small). at the pagoda, they had big, beautiful german shepherds, and a bunch of tiny puppies. but tim wouldn't let me touch them. rabies, you know. KILLJOY!

last night we went to a restaurant across the street (after 4 hours on the bus, 2 on the river and 2 hiking, we were too tired to walk any further). it was called diva and it was beautiful. i had bun cha (pronounced boon chow, if you're interested--it is officially the only vietnamese word i can correctly pronounce, and i spent a lot of time practicing. bun cha!) and tim had some kind of claypot eggplant/pork dish. it was so good, and the restaurant was lovely. we sat outside, next to the pianist/violinist duo who played all kinds of music, and soaked it all up. after a while, you can start to understand why they call it the paris of asia. there were all kinds of tables of people, and the lights were dim, and the music was great and it was just FABULOUS. also, i had the best milkshake i have ever had in my life. hands down. no question. and it wasn't even chocolate.

today we've just been wandering around aimlessly, since we're officially homeless, having checked out of our hotel. the other day, we stopped at a travel agency to burn a cd, and the guy there played us guitar music for about an hour while he burned the cd. i think tim is officially in love with him, so we went back today to get a return ticket from sapa and a ticket to hue. while we were there, he was entertaining an israeli father and son, and we all sat in the office while he played the guitar and talked to us--in english and hebrew. this morning, we walked south of the old quarter (which is where i think i want to live) and had camembert sandwiches and orangina at a little cafe called hanoi gourmet. again, perfect. the street cafes look interesting, but they don't speak english and there are chickens running amok in lots of them. I HATE CHICKENS. they gross me out to no end, and with the avian flu, i ain't taking any chances. ew, chickens.

so tonight we are taking an overnight train to sapa, and then we will be there until the 18th when we get an overnight train back, and then we spend another night here and then we kick it in halong bay. more from sapa!

so-so singapore

2005-10-10T07:51:00.000-07:00

so we got to singapore on friday afternoon, after a blissful journey on the NICE bus (they aren't kidding about the name!). the bus took exactly 5 hours (almost to the minute) and we were seated in sprawling leather seats, with delicious green/peach tea and chicken satay sandwiches, watching GI Jane. it was great. at the singapore customs, our customs agent appeared to be a tranny, as he was wearing mascara, blush and had very long nails. YAY! he was the nicest one yet, and let me into singapore for 90 days, but tim could only stay for 14. HA HA. transvestites LOVE me!

however, i don't think we would have even wanted to stay for 14, because singapore is no KL. first of all, there was no one to buy us dinner every night and take us to the cool local places. boo. second of all, our hotel was no ritz. we were upgraded to a suite, but it was still only ok. (man, am i a brat or what?) third of all, the FRIGGING RED SOX BLEW IT in singapore. fourth of all, THE YANKEES FORCED A FIFTH GAME in singapore. fifth of all, i kept smacking my head and hands on things and it was not very fun.

the city itself is terrifically beautiful, and perfectly manicured. there are lovely flowers everywhere and no trash anywhere. the girls in KL told us, cracking up as they said it, that singapore is a 'fine' city, because people are fined for everything. i can believe it. no city is that clean under normal circumstances.

we stayed on orchard road, which is perhaps the biggest shopping street i have ever seen with massive huge malls up and down the road. i have never seen that many people do that much shopping in my life. no joke, throngs of people everywhere. all the time. it was scary. and, no one bought me anything, so it was just bad.

we mostly used our time there to recover from our terrible victimization in borneo and to seek psychological attention for our trust issues. ok, no. we slept a lot. on friday night, when i was v grumpy about our hotel not being the ritz, we walked down orchard rd to get some sushi. the place we chose had a giant cartoon of a grumpy face--how perfect!! (i also bought a mug, for posterity's sake, of grumpy sushi house). the sushi came on a conveyor belt, and while not quite as good as the place james and jeff took us to in SF, it did have some weird-looking sushi, for which i created new names. two of the new names were "things your dog would cough up if he had worms" and: "cup o' vomit". TASTEEEE! on saturday, we walked to raffles and then went to the asian civilisations museum (a tremendous museum, which i highly recommend) and then got the v efficient and immaculate MRT home. for dinner, we went to little india to a restaurant called the banana leaf apolo. it was maybe the best meal yet. joy, thank you for introducing us to banana leaf love! we had all kinds of veggie curry and rice and poppadoms, and at the end of the meal, tim was ready to jump into his plate of spinach potatoes and i had virtually drunk the raita. mmm, delish.

on sunday, we slept. and we went to dubliner's, a pub around the corner for lunch. it was good, but spendy. then i made tim walk around for 100 years looking for t-shirts. i found only one. then we posted the blog, and went home, meaning to motivate and go to the night safari at the zoo, but guess what? we're lazy. but you already knew that. so instead we went down to the food court and then went to bed. again. the hotel was only ok, but the bed was wicked comfy. hooray!

we got up this morning at 5 to fly to hanoi, where i write to you now. more on that tomorrow.

longhouse of love

2005-10-09T02:09:00.000-07:00

after a few days in kuching, we booked a trip to spend the night in an iban longhouse, in the middle of the rain forest. we were a little nervous about it, but figured it would be one of those memorable experiences that make a trip worthwhile. so we went.

rosli, our guide, showed up at 9am with a van with very bad suspension. he was nice enough, but was not very talkative, and i couldn't understand a word he said, partly because i was sitting right behind him, and partly because he had a marblemouth. we stopped twice on the 5 hour trip--once in serian, to pick up some food for dinner (tim and i just wandered around) and once at some rest stop to get lunch, which was unremarkable except for the wild ferns we ate, which were delish! we bought some cookies in serian, b/c the tour office had told us to bring them for the kids, but rosli said no, so we bought some notebooks and pencils at the rest stop.

i fell asleep soon after lunch, but woke up pretty close to the river, when we stopped to pick up some locals. we drove them down the road to what looked like a bus stop, and then dropped them off. they were very nice, but i had no idea what was going on at the time. it appears this is how the iban people get around--not quite hitchhiking, but not traveling under their own steam either.

we drove down to the river and when we got outside, it was about a billion degrees, and since it was rain forest, i shall let you imagine the humidity on your own. tim and i hauled our billion-pound bags down to the river, where a loooooong blue wooden boat awaited us. our 'driver' was a 15-year old boy who weighed about 100 pounds--of sheer muscle--and was covered with tattoos. his mother sat at the front of the boat, where she pushed us occasionally with a long stick, and mocked her son. we only hit the bank once during the whole trip, which i thought was pretty impressive. the kid maneuvered us through little rapids, giant sticks, rotting trunks, through a long brown river. it was only when i checked my watch to see what time it was that it occurred to me. watch. attached to an arm. found inside a crocodile. at the kuching museum. CROCODILES! ACK! i kept my hands inside the boat for the rest of the trip, as if that would help.

we got to the longhouse after about 45 minutes of feeling like some kind of crocodile dundee in malaysia. there were about 15 little boys playing in the water outside the house, and our guesthouse was at the top of a hill overlooking the river. we had a kitchen attached to the house, and toilets, and a nice little porch overlooking the whole scene. we stood, watching the kids swim and waiting for rosli to find us a room, when the australians arrived. three of them, named bly, vicki and sarah gregory, from adelaide. now, i don't know about you, but when i am on vacation and new people arrive, i immediately feel better if they are aussie. and so it was here. they were all very friendly--vicki is a schoolteacher, and sarah is their daughter, studying to be a teacher as well.

we all watched tim playing soccer with the kids (in his jeans, no less!) when one of the local elders appeared, wearing what i can only describe as a diaper (joy, i know it isn't REALLY a diaper, but i don't know the real word). he came over and shook hands with me, sarah and vicki (who had just gone swimming) and when he said hello to me, he slapped me on the bum and cracked up. he then did the same to the other two girls. vicki said he must have thought we were grade A meat, and sarah said if anyone ever did that to her in a pub, she would punch them.

after the soccer ended, we had a cockfight demonstration with our boat driver and another young guy, which consisted mostly of the cocks trying to fight and the kids cracking up. then, we got to the blowpipe demonstration, which was my favorite part. the blowpipe is exactly what it sounds like--a long pipe with an arrow inside, which you blow on to shoot the arrow. let me tell you this, people. i am a blowpipe MASTER. if they ever make blowpiping an olympic sport (which i am going to recommend immediately), you are looking at the gold right here.

after the blowpiping, tim and i went for a swim (rather, tim went for a swim and when he came out, i was about to pass out, so i made him swim again with me to save me from crocs). while we were swimming, kids were sitting under the gutter pipe, showering in the rain, and there was just a whole lot of commotion.

we then dried off and had a most delicious dinner (of more food than the 5 of us could ever eat, even though we all tried and had seconds), with delicious eggplant, and some WILD FERN OF LOVE, and some chicken with chili. yummmmm.

after dinner, rosli came to tell us it was time to go to the longhouse. 'bring your cash with you,' he said. we thought it was weird of him to tell us then, but since we were leaving our stuff behind, we grabbed our wallets and went, thinking, AS IF anyone would steal from us out in the wilds of borneo!

the longhouse is exactly what it sounds like: a long house. the main room stretched along the entire length of the house, and the rest is divided into small rooms for each family, which is then subdivided into smaller cubes for each person. the main room, the living room, is basically empty but for straw mats for entertaining, and HUMAN SKULLS that hang from various points in the ceiling. the iban were headhunters until pretty recently, you see, and the skulls, a status symbol, are meant to protect them. apparently, the iban banded together with the malays or chinese, and the malays and chinese would take the gold, and the iban pirates would take the heads. rad!

when we got to the house, we all sat on the floor with some of the elders (including pervy diaper-elder)and one of them brought out the rice wine. rice-wine elder came through to meet us, with a different greeting for each of us. tim and bly got 'hello, sir,' vicki got 'hello, lady' and sarah and i got 'hello, baby!' we each got about a shot's worth and were told to drink it all at once, and then throw the glass on the floor. sarah and i were a little apprehensive, but it wasn't too bad. then he brought out the rice whisky, which smelled like petrol and tasted about the same (i am speculating here, OBVIOUSLY i have never tasted petrol). of course, the whiskey (65%, according to a guide) had a lot more in the glass. sarah couldn't drink hers (i gave mine to tim) so drunk elder took it and drank it, and then gave her a giant glass of rice wine. he then proceeded to proposition her repeatedly and make toasts to her, yelling 'kiss!' she would yell back, 'cheers!' vicki and i told her that she could be his sixth wife, and that bly would only demand two heads in exchange for her.

after the drinking, there was dancing. we had about 5 or 6 local dance demonstrations, with beautiful colorful clothes and almost xylophone music. it was all very beautiful, and at the time, i thought the whole experience was one of the best nights i had ever had. after the individual dancing ended, we were all invited up, and all of us danced around in a circle together, laughing and waving our arms around like freaks. and then...

we were robbed by headhunters

2005-10-09T01:48:00.000-07:00

so, after the beautiful dancing, we literally turned around and there were about 30 people sitting on the floor, with little stands full of homemade goods for us to buy. tim whispered to me that he only had $100 ringgit, and that we'd have to get something cheap with his remaining money. so he opened his money, and all that was there was 12 ringgit!

we went to sarah and told her, and she was very sweet and sympathetic. we figured there was nothing we could do and started down to the other end of the room to see what we could buy with $4, and turned around and sarah was in tears, with her parents. someone had taken $500 AUS from her wallet as well! tim then checked our envelope of US $ and sure enough, there were some $20s missing. WE WERE ROBBED BY HEAD HUNTERS!

the gregorys called their guide, who had conveniently disappeared right before the shopping center opened, and he was good and pissed. we all stood there like idiots, checking our bags and wallets for about 15 minutes, with all these poor people sitting there wondering why we weren't buying their bracelets. the guides repeatedly told us this had never happened before, which didn't make much sense, since rosli told us to TAKE OUR CASH to the longhouse, not our valuables. finally, we went back to the guesthouse, where we debated for hours about who could have done it.

the theories were:
1. the little girls who were playing outside our rooms
2. the cockfighting kids, one of whom disappeared after the cockfight
3. someone from outside the longhouse community
4. the gregorys' driver, who didn't speak a word to them the entire time, had been hanging out in his room all night, who had left his bag in their room to begin with, and who was WEARING SHORTS WITH A YANKEES INSIGNIA ON THEM

now, i think we all know who did it. it was CLEARLY the yankees fan. more proof came when he suggested that all the guides do a 'spot check' and empty out their bags to prove they didn't have the money. clever, but we're onto you, pal! he clearly had stuffed our money into his yankees underwear, and then emptied his bag just to make himself look innocent. tim thinks i'm being paranoid...DO YOU? (i know crust will agree with me, having been viciously thieved from by a yankee fan--how's that for syntax?)

of course, it dawned on me about midnight, as we were lying in our room, on our mat, with our mossie net over us that we were staying with HEADHUNTERS. this thought was precipitated by bly, who kept talking about the repurcussions in the morning. so, i of course spent most of the night lying in bed, expecting a blowpipe dart to the head at any moment, followed by a saw to the neck. as you can see, it didn't happen! (feel free to praise god at any time for my untouched neck, marred only by prickly heat rash.) of course, it was nearly impossible to sleep anyway, with 3 guides snoring it up in the next room, roosters crowing like maniacs, dogs having some kind of bark convention, and then feral cats having a rumble under the house.

the gregorys left v early in the morning, and we woke up at about 7. we had breakfast and then the owner of the guesthouse came down and told us some rubbish about how in 2000, one of the locals had been arrested for stealing from tourists but went to prison and was not allowed back. so much for 'it's never happened before!'

when it was time to go, our boat driver (one of the cockfight boys) appeared, but would not make eye contact (maybe bly's theory was right--maybe they did steal the money!). he drove us back to the van, and since it had rained all night, the river was very high, so it took only 30 mins.

the ride back was fairly uneventful, apart from the fact that rosli kept falling asleep. tim fell asleep as soon as we got in the van, but i stayed up to keep an eye on rosli, who kept shaking his head to keep awake, yet still roaming over to the center of the road and the other lane! finally we hit a bump big enough to wake tim, and tim talked to him for a long time about hydroelectricity to keep him awake.

we got to the airport 4 hours before our flight, so we got bumped up to an earlier one, and we ran into the gregorys in the airport. they gave us the new goss from their guide, which was that rosli's girlfriend had stolen from the iban themselves, and was forbidden from coming to the longhouse ever again! bly figured that the kids had climbed across the rafters to get out, and that it was the cockfight kids. also, they rold us that their guide was unlicensed, and that the 2000 robber actually only went to jail last year, so it could have been him. WE WILL NEVER KNOW and it will make me crazy forever!

kuching kids r kute

2005-10-04T04:33:00.000-07:00

so i have three stories to illustrate the extreme adorability (is that even a word? i think not) of malaysian children. kids in KL are also cute, i'm sure, but we have had some very sweet experiences with the kids here.

#1: at the KL airport, we were in the waiting room, sitting next to the glass wall next to the people mover. a little boy (about 6, i'd say) came over and just started smiling this big toothy grin at me through the window. then he gets on the people mover and starts walking forward, next to me, as the thing is moving backward. eventually his family came in to the room, and they all sat near us, grinning madly, until the father took the youngest son and pushed him toward us. the little boy fell back on dad, and they repeated it over and over. on the plane, toothy grin boy kept turning around and smiling at me, the whole time. cute!

#2. today, at the islamic museum, right before tim and i went in, a huge school group came busting through. the kids were all between about 8-12, and they were cra-zee. they came flying into the room and literally went crashing against the walls. about half of the girls had head scarves, which i would imagine would make them more reserved and quiet. um, no. (preconceptions about islam have been thrown out the window on this trip, but that's for the next blog.) the boys were completely insane, and just went crashing all over, bumping into things and laughing riotously. about half the kids seemed terrified of us, and the other half would say hello shyly, and then giggle like fiends. they were VERY cute, but miss bachrach would be horrified if her kids acted like that. tim found it quite refreshing to see that kids everywhere are the same, however. on our way out, we passed them sitting outside in the park, eating lunch. a bunch of girls called out to us, and then cracked up. i'm telling you, these kids are seriously adorable.

#3. GET READY FOR GREATNESS. yesterday, at the kuching airport, tim and i were waiting behind 3 women, a baby and a little boy (about 3 or 4 yrs old) to go through customs. the little boy was hanging like a monkey off the metal handrail, and we smiled at him. he stopped what he was doing and looked at us suspiciously. we kept smiling (like fools, i suspect) and suddenly, he roared like a lion. the women he was with all jumped, but we just smiled some more. i would guess that it was at this point he decided we were okay, and he went over to the baby carriage, pointing inside and repeating 'adam'. his mother smiled at us and told us he had a baby brother adam, and she turned the carriage so we could see him. once we saw the baby, the little boy came over, quite seriously, and put out his hand. i put out my hand, thinking he was going to shake hands, and instead, he KISSED IT! it was, without question, the cutest friggin thing i have ever seen in my entire life. he then went on to tim, and, just as seriously, shook his hand. at this point, the women he was with were cracking up, but i was about ready to knock them over and take him home. HOW CUTE?!

close encounter with tim's kind

2005-10-04T04:16:00.000-07:00

so today we got up and went into town to see the sarawak museum. it was approx. 789 degrees in the sun, so by the time we got into the museum, we were quite literally wanting to make out with the A/C. the museum was great, with all kinds of cool stuff like a watch and a giant hairball with human teeth that were removed from a croc that was blown out of the water by hand grenades, and a replica of an ibah longhouse with about 30 human skulls hanging from the ceiling. rad. (we're going to stay in a longhouse tomorrow, but tim thinks that they prob won't have human skulls there b/c they are not head hunters anymore, but i should be worried if they start fondling the mullet.)

from there, we went to the post office to catch the AWESOME 1960's green and cream school bus lacking any kind of A/C whatsoever to the orangutan sanctuary. before we got the bus, we picked up some water and some cheezy-weezies (twisties, or cheetos to those of you unfortunately unrelated to me).we got on the bus and ate about half of them on the 45 min journey.

at the sanctuary, we had a LONG walk in the HOT sun to get to the monkeys, but when we got there, we were happy to be in the shade. we walked down to cage 1, which had a depressed looking croc in a depressed-looking cage. depressed, we turned around to walk to cage 2, when who should lumber around the corner but MAMA MONKEY with her baby girl. let me tell you: orangutans ain't small. this one was about as tall as i am (she had bad posture, just like me) and she was scary, up close and personal. tim said for us to get off the walkway and pretend not to see her (as if that was possible), so we did, but she wasn't to be deterred. she grabbed tim's plastic bag of cheezy-weezies and tried to take it. he resisted briefly until i wailed, TIM, GIVE HER THE BAG (as i cowered under a bush), so he did. she opened the bag, took out the empty mentos box, threw it away, tossed the water bottles, and then took out the delicious cheezy-weezies. she grabbed the baby, and climbed the first tree she could.

of course, a ranger immediately came out and gave us the stinkeye. dude, how were we supposed to know orangutans were going to be running around out in the open?! the german couple from our bus started taking pictures, and then were told to get away from her because she could get aggressive at any moment (these friggers clearly hadn't been to the ubud forest of doom). all standing at a distance, we told the germans about our encounter, and the wife said, 'i thought it was funny she was eating chips!'

tim of course was very distressed that he had fed such bad junk food to what could be his twin sister--and his niece, but i think mama monkey was ok with it. soon after, her son came swinging over, and eventually, the rangers gave us bananas, sweet potatoes and papayas to feed them (but no cheezy-weezies). tim has a great old video of me trying to toss the food to the son, to no avail. note to self: papayas are hard to throw--and catch! there was a polish duo on our bus too, who was sitting around eating fruit, and it took no time at all for mama to come over and demand their watermelon. monkeys are FUNNY.

i got a malaysian mullet

2005-10-03T03:40:00.000-07:00

so i forgot to mention the most important news of the trip: i now have a malaysian mullet. yes, the other day tim and i were laughing about the mullet's popularity here, and talking about my imminent haircut. wouldn't it be funny if i got a mullet? ha ha ha. NO. it is NOT funny.

so you would think that if you got your hair cut at the FREAKING RITZ, you would be safe from trailer trash hair, yes? apparently, the answer is no. i met gilbert, my lovely hairdresser, and trusted him to keep my hair attractive, but to cut it shorter because it was just too long and heavy, and it's hot here. 20 minutes later, he's ankle-deep in my hair and I HAVE A MULLET! o gilbert, WHYYYY?

tim and joy claim it is attractive, but they are both very bad liars. at best, i look 30 years older than i am, and at worst, i am kid rock's twin sister. i am attaching a photo of me (at some point) with my old, pretty hair so you can remember me that way, instead of being mullethead.

and now it's time to vote: should we call the honeymoon the mulletmoon, or the honeymullet? you decide!

the KL 3

2005-10-03T03:25:00.000-07:00

tim and i arrived in kuala lumpur on friday afternoon. i, of course, was grumpy and nasty because we had to get up at 6 and then we had to fly coach AGAIN (imagine!). we got something to eat, and then my old roommate joy came to pick us up. we all waited at the airport for a while for her sister tricia (whom many of you met in new york) and then we all drove into KL together.

let me tell you something about my old roommates: they rule. they are without question the most generous and hospitable people i have ever met. joy, jee, tricia and pei fen (of spicy noodles fame) all bought us return tickets to go to kuching, in borneo. do you believe it? THEY LOVE ME SO MUCH! (i always said they were very smart girls.) joy, tricia and jee have also taken us out for every meal we ate outside of the hotel, and they were all delicious. on friday, we went to a place in petaling jaya, their suburb, and we had this amazing tofu and the house specialty: crabs. i have never seen tim have so much fun with food. whack, bam, smack with the hammer, with crab ALL OVER his face. ah, to be married to a 3 year old...they took us to lunch on saturday, to a chinese-malaysian restaurant outside the city with even more good food! let me tell you that the girls have done all the ordering at all the restaurants and it was DAMN FINE. at the saturday lunch place, we had some very interesting desserts, one which prominently featured shrimp paste. then they took us to batu caves, a hindu temple inside a cave at the end of about 47987395874398 stairs. it was very cool, except for the MONKEYS OF DOOM. these monkeys didn't try to kill us (which was fortunate, b/c the stairs almost did), but they were pretty stinky. i think i am liking monkeys less and less every day! after batu caves, we went to KLCC, the huge mall, to get me some sandals, and then we went to chinatown. in chinatown, we ate at yet another place we would never have found on our own (most of these places didn't even have menus, so we wouldn't have even been able to order), and despite what they say, i am pretty sure the girls ordered us earthworms for dinner. they were tasty, but i KNOW they were worms. (don't try to trick me, girls, i am too smart for you!) then, yesterday, joy came out alone and took us to have an indian meal, which i think was my favorite (tim's was obviously the seafood feast on friday). again, no menus, and we ate with our fingers off of banana leaves on the table. it was friggin' DELISH! i never want to use utensils again!! then, joy took us to see the national temple, and to buy us tickets for the NICE bus to singapore on friday.

can you believe these girls? tim and i think we might move here just so we can be fat and happy and never pay for anything!

and, our hotel. we're staying at the ritz. i love the ritz. i want to live in the ritz just like manny ramirez and have cake on my bedside table every night. we had a lovely butler named dorothy who did our laundry for free (sweet action!) and the people at the hotel were so nice. i am in love with our waiter from breakfast, savi, who managed to get the 20-minute eggs benedict for me in only 7 minutes this morning.
we're staying there again on thursday and finally, we will be taking the girls out for dinner--at the hard rock cafe, so we can eat some fine american food of their choosing.

people suck

2005-10-01T20:17:00.000-07:00

aw, crap. i rant and rage about how great bali is and how you should all go there and three days later, it gets bombed. i am so worried about my powers of evil now--add this to the list of bad things i've done!

unfortunately, i had all kinds of funny things to say, but it all seems kind of pointless now. i am very depressed about the bombings, and disgusted that this could happen twice to as special a place as bali, and even more disugsted that the wonderful people who live there have to go through all this again. our taxi driver had told us they were almost back on their feet, to where they were three years ago. not any more. i wish i had something funny to say, but it makes me sick to think about it. it makes me even sicker that my first thought at seeing the news last night was relief that we weren't even there, when it should have been sadness for those beautiful people.

we're in KL now, with my old roommates from melbourne, and we were having a great time until we saw the news last night. i'm sure today will be better. i'll try to post something funny either later today or tomorrow about all our malaysian exploits.

and the red sox lost. &^^&%%$^%# (*^%%$#$%!!

last night i ate swiss chad

2005-09-28T21:47:00.000-07:00

tim here, i finally get to blog too.

and yes it is true and no it is not some sex pistols refrain.

last night at our fancy french/balinese restaurant the menu had lamb with swiss chad, so of course i had to have it.

monkey forest of doom!

2005-09-28T21:33:00.000-07:00

so yesterday, we got up, emailed y'all, and then walked into town. two things i forgot to mention yesterday:
1. motorbikes. it's like that stupid bumper sticker in maine that says 'motorcycles are everywhere!' in bali, it's really true. everyone and their uncle is cruising around on some little bike or another, and most of the time, they have kids on them. no joke--the other day i saw a bike with a TWO YEAR OLD asleep on the front of the bike. yesterday i saw a whole family (2 parents, 2 kids) sandwiched in all together like a club sandwich of love. it is crazy. about half the people wear helmets, and NO one wears real shoes.
2. women with things on their heads. ok, i know i am probably being really provincial here, but you see these women (usually about 70 years old) walking down the street with laundry baskets, firewood, whatnot ON THEIR HEADS. i kid you not, yesterday we saw about an 80 year old woman trying to get a giant collection of wood and god knows what else onto her head, and it must have weighed about 40 pounds.

anyway, we went into town, and did a little shopping (i am working on the bartering skills) and i got some balinese shoes (like the ones jenn j just told me about!) and a scarf and we got some cool paintings, but the defining event of the day was definitely the MONKEY FOREST. TIM decided it was a great old idea to hit the monkey forest (i think it was an attempt to collect on my life insurance, but the joke's on him: i ain't got none!). so we each paid $1, went into the forest and BAM! monkeys everywhere, running around like little demons. we took a bunch of pictures, and at one point, when i was trying to get one of a little baby, its satanic mother came after me! i was at a COMPLETELY safe distance from the little bastard, and still she came at me, her pointy white teeth glinting in the sun (ok, there was no sun, but go with me here). i fled, in terror, and we continued along our road of fear. suddenly, as we're INNOCENTLY walking to the temple, a GIANT BOULDER COMES FLYING OUT OF THE TREES and barely misses us. we look up, and some other wretched monkey murderer is running away, LAUGHING! then, some crazy demon monkey feeder comes along with 90 pounds of green leaves, and suddenly, there are monkey devils EVERYWHERE, just like in the birds! they're coming out of the trees, out of the road, from under leaves...it was damn scary! we maneged to escape with our lives (barely), but i think i have lost my fondness for monkeys. the last time i experienced that kind of monkey-induced terror was when i was 6 and watching the wizard of oz with margaret ann sheridan, and let me tell you--now i know where the idea for those flying monkeys came from!

after the monkey drama, we went home and i took a nap (to try to recover my wits) and eventually we went to dinner. tim will provide more info on dinner, but i will tell you that i almost had a rumble with the wicked, nasty german hostess, who tried to bully us into getting drinks, then mocked me when i ordered one without alcohol, and then mocked me AGAIN when i started to take my drink to dinner. she told me a waiter could take it, and when i asked if she was sure (i can carry my own drink, for god's sake) she turned around and said to me, 'no one's going to drink it!' and laughed an evil laugh. OH NO SHE DIDN'T! she's lucky i was hungry and it was a fancy place or i would have kickboxed her head right off. and with these thighs, i could do it.

i. love. bali.

2005-09-27T21:06:00.000-07:00

ok, i will admit it...i am in love, and i am not talking about old tim. i am in love with bali! this place is completely amazing, and despite being 637485643782 degrees and humid as frig, i still want to marry it. yay.

so tim and i spent three days in nusa dua at the nusa dua beach hotel, which was perfect. no, i mean it. perfect. the room was lovely, the food was great (apart from some sushi we ate which tim thought was suspect, but i thought was fine), the weather was great, and oh god, the people. they are so nice! not only are they beautiful looking (single girls, get yourselves over here, because the men are mighty fine--the girls are ok too, but you'd have to ask tim about that), but especially in nusa dua (here they're a little more reserved), they are always charming, always smiling, always beautiful. they are nicer even than the irish or the kiwis--or even NEW YORKERS!

so now tim and i are in ubud, which is in the middle of the island in the rain forest. a taxi driver from our old hotel droves us here, and he was very entertaining and chatty. i didn't ask his name (shame!), but he had all kinds of opinions on everything, including, and this is the most important one, i feel, that the bombing here was just as much an attempt to hurt bali as to hurt 'the blonde haired' tourists who come here. of course, we never think about the fact that bali is indonesia's crown jewel and other indonesians might be jealous of that fact. consider this and get back to me.

and about the bombing and everyone who says it's unsafe here. DON'T BE STUPID. this place is gorgeous, and as the taxi driver said, terrorists generally only attack the same place once. except for london (as tim pointed out) which is clearly a much more dangerous and sinister tourist destination. ;)

ubud is, as i said, in the middle of the rain forest, which means it's much cooler than the coast, but today, wicked humid because it's been raining all night. our hotel is in the middle of a gorge, and to get to our bungalow, as have to walk down 106 stairs (yes, i counted), which means we have to walk up 106 stairs to get back up, which is a lot of damn stairs! on the other hand, the bungalow is overlooking the gorge, and has a very entertaining balinese sculpture with an extremely long...appendage, shall we say? dangling from our porch. his appendage is attached to his foot by a string, and i don't even want to venture to guess what his purpose is in life. last night, when we were getting ready for bed, there were a million crickets outside, and i SWEAR we have a monkey in our room, and while tim says no, he is AT LEAST kicking it on our roof. when we got back to the hotel last night, they had turned down our sheets and left us some reeeeeeally long incense burning. yay. i like incense, as long as it isn't gross patchouli stink. the incense helpd us sleep (or the crickets, or the monkeys), because i awoke this morning at 7.38 (yesterday i woke up at 7.37, the day before, 7.36--for REAL!), and then fell back asleep until 10.15! we've been getting up at about 8 for this whole trip, so there must be something in that incense to help you sleep here.

there are some interesting people here in ubud, and everyone has something to sell. walk down the street, and 500 men will yell 'taxi? transport?' and then mime a steering wheel. when you decline, they give you a big smile and go back to gossiping with their friends. we had the hotel take us to dinner last night (all of the sudden, a torrential downpour began) and our taxi driver drove LITERALLY 3 miles an hour to the restaurant, trying to get us to go on a trip with him today before he starts work. by the time we got to the restaurant, he had offered to take us to his house and give us a free painting (as long as we went to 5 million stores with him and bought everything in ubud, tim adds). it was KILLING me. i am the world's biggest sucker, and i am SO SCREWED when we get to vietnam with the child-beggars. anyway, on our way back to the hotel, we got a city taxi, who gave us his number before we got out, and sure enough, who greeted us at the hotel but a VERY SURLY hotel driver who was none too pleased to see us getting someone else's number. we were just trying to be polite, but hotel taxi man was unimpressed. i am convinced we will go to our room and find a horse head in the bed tonight.

back to child beggars...there aren't any here, but there are a bunch of mothers with babies strapped to them with the saddest eyes you've ever seen. AND, there are about a zillion stray dogs running around everywhere, scratching all their fur off. the good news is that some of the stores have kids in them after school (or maybe all day long, i don't know), and when you walk by, the kids light up and yell 'HALLO!' and then tim grabs me by the neck and drags me away. yesterday, we saw a bunch of kids playing 'badminton' in an empty room, using plastic chairs as a net. it was pretty cute. and, to top it all off, as we were walking down the main street yesterday, a little boy came running out of a shop and gave me THE MANNY! he gave me a one-handed manny, and i returned it, and then he turned to his friend and gave him a two-handed one. i am taking this as a sign from god that the red sox are going to come back, beat the frig out of the yankees this weekend, and FINISH THE DAMN YEAR IN FIRST PLACE FOR ONCE! even in bali, those friggers are taking years off my life.

the colors here are amazing--they are the colors in your crayola box that you think are made up and never actally exist in reality. i mean, come on. who the hell has ever seen fuschia in nature, and not just on ugly women's clothing (tim apologizes to you if i have offended fuschia wearers)? we saw it this morning, in the flower on our table, and then again, off in the distance in the forest. the plants are all bright peaches and pinks and whites and yellows and reds. it literally is like a crayon box!

and in ubud, anyway, all of the houses and shops have these little offerings in front of them, with flowers and incense. they are only about the size of my hand, and most of them end up stomped on by the end of the day, but they are quite lovely. not knowing much about hinduism, i am not sure what they're for, but they're everywhere. all the taxis have them in their cars, on the dashboard, and as i said, you have to be very careful not to step on them on the street.

but, so far, the best thing about bali is the banana crepes i had this morning at breakfast. (i can already hear my trainer crying about all the mentions of food in this thing, but hear me out.) DEAR GOD, DELISH! i couldn't eat enough of them (i had 4) and now it's all i want to have for breakfast ever again. the rest of the food is pretty good too... tim had duck and i had pumpkin/sweet potato ravioli in a curry soup last night, and yesterday we had lovely food overlooking the town temple. in nusa dua, we had one fancy meal in the indonesian restaurant, with some beautiful red snapper, and tuna and again with the bananas--poached bananas in coconut with honey ginger sauce. those of you who know me know if i eat and it ain't got chocolate, it gots to be good!

ok chitlins, tim and i have to go kick it hardcore in ubud. today's mission is to find tim some dirty duck. then tonight we are going to some wicked fancy restaurant where i already reconfirmed once, but they are still sending me a fax to be sure we show up! crazy.

i will leave you with the only indonesian i know: terima kasih for reading my blog. (that means thank you, silly!)

the end of HK and bali of love

2005-09-25T04:08:00.000-07:00

so, after the last post, we went back into the city so tim could try out the subway system. the HK subway appears a lot like the san francisco muni--all bright and colorful and vaguely reminiscent of the 1970's with its color scheme. it is also very fast, very quiet and very clean. i think i like the subway. now that i think about it, everything in hong kong is very clean. everywhere we went, it seemed like someone was out sweeping something. and, i think i could probably ride the subway there in sandals and not come home with pitch black feet like in new york. always a good thing.

anyway, we went into central and found a noodle shop where we sat next to a very nice lady who informed us that her prawn noodles were delicious (v. true), and then gave us the lowdown on all the noodle shops in the area. ours was the best apparently (thanks, time out!), with a bowl only costing $2, as opposed to the place across the street which charged THREE! tim liked the man next to him better, though, since he was openly drinking from a hip flask. we then went down by the ferry port and wandered around, and then took the ferry across the harbor to kowloon. the ride was surprisingly rocky, but since it was so short, no one seemed to mind. when we got to kowloon, we looked for a satellite phone, with no luck. most of the people we asked about it looked at us like we were growing second heads before their very eyes, and then said, 'uh, no. we don't have satellite phones' as if we were asking for 300 grams of coke or something.

after that, we went to the peninsula and looked around. we contemplated having tea there, but after seeing the lobby and knowing a) what we looked like and b) how much money we had on us, it wasn't going to happen. instead, we fled and took a picture from outside. we went back on the ferry to wan chai, and then took another nap. napping was central to the first few days of this trip, if you didn't notice already.

we got up for dinner and tried to go back to the ferry area for dim sum, at another time out-endorsed eatery, but when we got there, it was full of people and the hostess yelled at us in a chinatown bus voice, 'NO DINNER!' so instead, we ran away to times square and had sweet and sour pork in a very americanized restaurant.

yesterday, the city had hoisted the level 3 cyclone warning for tropical storm damrey, which sounds much scarier than it was. the good news was that damrey broke the ungodly heat and humidity, and even started a nice breeze. we didn't have much time in the morning, so we went to a local hotel for lunch, which was half-fried, half-boiled noodles in a gelatinous sauce ( i can already see collette cringing at the mere mention of gelatin), which we ate while being closely inspected by the staff, who all stood about five feet from the table and openly stared at us.

then, we got the bus to the airport, and got a nice surprise when we got there! i am officially starting a list for the beautiful men of cathay pacific. #1 was thomas, the TV-fixer. #2 is sam tse, the check-in agent who GAVE US AN UPGRADE TO BUSINESS CLASS when we told him we were on honemoon! sweet classy molassy! o, sam tse, if i hadn't already married tim, i would marry you! so, we bought some postcards, and then got in our plane and had a very relaxing, enjoyable and delicious flight to bali (which also saved us money on dinner! hooray!) we had an adorable flight attendant named sally who kept calling tim mr. haley, which was just hilarious, as well. don't you all think he should change his name?

oh, one interesting thing happened at the airport. while we were getting ready to go into security, this african man with lots of bags stopped tim and told him he couldn't go through security with all his bags, and would tim take one through for him? uh, yeah, dude. i told tim he should have said, 'only if it's full of METH!' but he didn't. too bad.

so we got to bali, and everyone here is beautiful and lovely and it smells pretty and the flowers are gorgeous and our room is stunning and it's really hot. it's not too sunny, and the beach isn't great, but i don't even care because i am planning on lying like roadkill on a chair for the next two days until we go to ubud. i already finished the book i made tim buy me at the airport (on beauty, by zadie smith, whom i hate on principle because she is a year older than i am and has already published three wildly successful books, which makes me hate her even more because the books were actually pretty good and i just can't stop myself from buying them, which makes me hate her even more, and which ultimately just makes me hate myself, which is just no good to me), and i have already read the two tim is working on now, so it's just me and the ipod for the next two days. and if tim can teach me any card games apart from go fish, we can play cards, i GUESS.

days 1, 2, 3 in HK

2005-09-22T20:21:00.000-07:00

so i think i fell asleep as soon as i got on the plane. tim woke me about an hour later for a drink, and i had drool cascading down my cheek (? how it got there, i am unsure), chin and neck. BET HE WAS HAPPY TO HAVE MARRIED ME! i drank my juice and promptly fell back asleep. before i did, however, i had a small fit about my TV not working, at which point i was rescued by thomas, the angelic chinese flight attendant. he brought me a drink and fixed the screen so that i would watch such cinematic gems such as the interpreter and sin city. thomas, i will name a child for you one day! apart from watching those fine films, i spent most of the flight asleep on tim's lap (fun fun fun for the husband!). a great time was had by all.

when we got to HK, we were informed that it was 90 degrees at 8pm. deee-liteful! we walked through the airport--a shiny, modern place (and the largest covered space on earth, for the engineering dorks reading this) and waited in the customs line. when we got to the window, we were greeted by a rather severe looking gentleman who appeared immune to our innocent traveler charm! w.l. kwok, customs agent to the stars, was having none of it. he didn't ask us a single question, which is a good thing because otherwise i would have had to confess to carrying 4 luna bars in my bag. mmm, delish.

our hotel is also sparkly and new, much like most of hong kong. coming in on the fancy digital train, it looked as though everything was enormous with neon lights. it looked exactly like something out of a sci-fi movie (something i could have watched on my thomas-enabled TV screen on a plane somewhere). in daylight, however, it's not quite the same. it's more like midtown nyc crossed with athens, or san jose, costa rica--a bunch of superflashy buildings next to decrepit, eastern bloc looking buildings with laundry dangling outside.

we awoke yesterday and went for breakfast in the hotel. when we discovered it was $15 each, we decided to CHOW DOWN (not that it takes that much for me to make that difficult decision). here is what i had for breakfast (the longer you read, the weirder it gets): rice krispies, a croissant, green salad with thousand island dressing, fried rice, and a variety of delicious dumplings. i also had some of tim's sausage. tim had all that with baked beans. yuk. fried rice for breakfast is surprisingly good, and sweet/savoury dumpling-thingies are even better--try them if you can! pork bun owen, you would have loved this meal!

after breakfast, we checked our email briefly and then walked into town so tim could see his first work of art at LERA, the bridge at chater park. i was expecting a little footbridge, but it was a pretty good-sized overpass with fancy beams! i have some pictures of tim stroking it and smiling foolishly, so i will try to attach those at a later date. since it was approx. 200 degrees and 600 percent humidity, we were guzzling water like fools, and we decided not to push ourselves too much. we walked through chater park (a charming little place with various pools and lovely greenery) and we hiked up (by hike, i mean walked uphill) to the peak tram. the peak tram is (duh) a tram to victoria peak. it sounds like a great idea, until you get on and realize your life is literally being held by a wire. eek. also, it's a steep climb. we walked around the top (smog like that i've never seen), took some pics of the city (which you can't really see, b/c of the smog) and had some mango sorbet at the haagen-dazs. listen man, it was 95 degrees!

we went down on the tram (perhaps scarier than coming up) and walked through hong kong park, which is bigger than chater park and has a cool aviary with some crazy-looking birds. at this point, we were tired and hot, so we went home to the hotel and took a nap. tim slept for about an hour. i slept for FIVE. (listen, man, i've had a rough month!) when i finally awoke (sans drool thankfully), tim was starving, so we walked over to times square (a sort of chinese miniature version of ner york) and had dinner at a lovely place called water margin. i'm sorry to focus on food, but in my opinion, it's the best part about the city so far. foolishly, i decided to try the delicious looking chicken appetizer they gave us. OOOOH! SO SPICY! I WAS CRYING! of course, despite the fact that i literally couldn't breathe through my mouth for 20 minutes, i decided to try it again. and again. and again. i am like pavlov's dog, if pavlov's dog was my parents' dog finn. the thing is, it was REALLY GOOD. it just burnt the hell out of my mouth.

for dinner, we had some (very bland, fortunately) clams in rose wine, and then deep fried prawns with chili sauce, and then (praise jesus) fried rice. o, fried rice, savior of my tongue! how i love thee at every meal! we then walked through the square and went home for bed. tim is loving this hotel because for some reason, they have premiership soccer on all day long. i am loving the hotel because they had desperate housewives on last night at 11pm. it's surprising how exciting the english language can become when you're surrounded by chinese, or how hilarious soccer can be when narrated in chinese!

so, today. i am about to be kicked off this computer, and then we are going to a noodle shop for lunch, and then will get the ferry to kowloon to look for a satellite phone. then, if we find one, we will spend all our time calling people and pretending to speak in chinese. it would help if we at least learned hello, please and thank you, however.

so that's it! we're going for dim sum for dinner, so charlie owen, we will have a pork bun (or 5) in your honor. sorry this is so long, but i am covering multiple days, and we only just arrived so everything's still exciting. give me a few days and you'll be getting 'woke up. ate. walked. slept.' thanks for reading, guys! see you in bali, or perhaps tomorrow (if you are verrrry lucky)!!

ps. die yankees, die!