Good Morning, Vietnam!

We arrived in Hanoi not knowing exactly what to expect, what with the American history there, the current Communist government, and its reputation for incessant tourist hassling. However, we have been thrilled to discover Vietnam, and it's turning out to be one of our favorite spots on the trip so far. There is so much to love here - the people are extremely friendly and helpful, the food is absolutely amazing, and everything is dirt cheap! It has been one of the easiest places to visit, from the organized streets to the efficient transportation to the free Wi-Fi everywhere - we will definitely be returning someday soon.

Old Hanoi is a pleasure to stroll around, so that is what we have done with most of our time. The streets are completely clogged with motorbikes and scooters, as are the sidewalks, so walking is a little hazardous, but there is so much to see. Every shop is selling silk clothing, household shrines, or the cheapest beer in the world, and there are green spaces and lakes frequently dotting the landscape. We have visited markets specializing in frogs, fish, herbs, fabric, counterfeit money (for burning in Buddhist shrines, not to spend!), and custom-made suits, which we have both taken advantage of. Hanoi contains everything I love about Asian cities, with its overwhelmingly young, vibrant crowd and slightly dirty but always interesting sidewalk shops, with a few important additions: amazing bread, perfectly brewed coffee, and cheese! These leftovers from French colonialism set Hanoi apart from anywhere else I've ever been, and I love it.

If I didn't know Vietnam were Communist, I would never have guessed from spending time here. Ben and I have both been to Cuba, and with my trip to Beijing last year, I felt like I was beginning to recognize a pattern in Communist countries, but Vietnam defies every stereotype. Everything is available and for sale, there are no policemen or soldiers in the streets, and the Internet is everywhere and seemingly without restrictions. I'm motivated to do more reading about modern Vietnam, because everything I've learned so far just raises more questions for me.

The other surprise to me was the Vietnamese attitude toward Americans, or at least toward me. I have honestly answered every time I'm asked where I'm from, and have repeatedly received a smile and a welcome in return. It's remarkable how eager people are to look forward to the future and either forgive or forget all the troubles in the past.

But back to the food. In New York, I fell in love with banh mi (banh my on the signs here), baguette sandwiches loaded with pork, paté, cheese, and pickled vegetables, and I have not been disappointed in the real thing. We have also had Pho (noodle soup) for several meals, delicious pastries, lightly fried spring rolls, an amazingly thick creamy soup called chao quai (apologies, I can't spell anything in Vietnamese) topped with croutons, and strange fruity drinks with bits of jelly and tapioca. Everything is served on tiny plastic tables right on the sidewalk, where we sit on even smaller stools and slurp everything down. It's amazing. One of our best revalations has been Bia Hoi - the famously cheap beer. If you go out with $10 in your pocket, you can buy about 100 beers, so we have made a lot of friends among the Vietnamese. Even better, the beer is absolutely delicious, brewed every day without preservatives, so it's fresh and light. We are very pleased with this discovery. Unfortunately, there are some scary eating habits in Vietnam, but we have successfully avoided duck embryo and dog so far.

We have met so many friendly, smiling people here, beginning with our first night. It was gently raining, and we stopped at a sidewalk Pho cafe to eat noodles under the awning. A Vietnamese guy eating alone invited us to join him, and immediately produced a bottle of rice wine (aka homemade whisky) from his pocket and poured us repeated shots until we made him stop. Suddenly the sky opened up and the rain started dumping on the awning, so he directed us to the hotel where he worked next door so we could eat in the lobby. About 2 seconds after we made the move, the awning collapsed under the weight of the rain - perfect timing! Ben helped the cafe ladies replace it, and then we spent the evening chatting with our new friend about Vietnam, family, and rice wine. It was lovely.
Vietnam is so interesting culturally, and one of the aspects that fascinates me is its multitude of religions, which frequently blend Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, ancestor worship, and local folk beliefs into a hybrid called Tam Giao. Most Vietnamese ascribe to one or all of these faiths in their own personal blend, which strikes me as so open and unique. There are also millions of Christians and some Hindus and Muslims, illustrating the complete plurality and freedom of religion here, another surprise to me. We've been to a couple temples, including the very small and peaceful Ngoc Son in the middle of a lake, which is dedicated to a scholar, a general, and the patron saint of physicians; and the Temple of Literature, dedicated to Confucianism in order to honor scholars and men of literary accomplishment. Very different from the strictly Buddhist temples we've seen everywhere else in Asia!

The other cultural highlight was a water puppet show. Rural northern Vietnamese hill tribes have for over 1000 years had a tradition of staging puppet shows in ponds and flooded fields, with puppeteers behind screens operating the wooden people and animals from below the water with poles and strings. The effect really is quite impressive, and the ancient legends and agricultural stories were very simple to follow, even though all the narration was in Vietnamese. The people, dragons, foxes, and fish splashed around and "walked" on water and were generally very cute.

The most sobering sight so far was the Hoa Lo Prison, aka Maison Centrale, better known as the Hanoi Hilton. We toured the prison where John McCain and other American pilots were imprisoned after being shot down in Vietnam, which had actually been built centuries earlier by the French to imprison Vietnamese revolutionaries. As we learned before in Ireland, visiting a prison is always quite sad and shocking, with the bleak, tiny cells and instruments of torture. This prison was the same, but an interesting piece of propaganda as well - according to the displays, the French were horribly cruel to the Vietnamese Freedom Fighters, but the Vietnamese in turn treated the Americans with kindness and love. It's a bit laughable - photos of Americans playing volleyball, decorating the prison for Christmas, enjoying their "rooms," as the cells were renamed. Knowing what I've read about McCain's imprisonment, this is such a clearly dishonest representation, and evidence of the Vietnamese desire to either look forward or just completely gloss over the past. The most striking display to me was a piece of a B-52 that had been shot down in Vietnam, as that's the exact plane my dad flew in that exact war - I'm just glad he'd never ended up in the Hanoi Hilton.

Altogether, we are off to a great start here, with visits to Halong Bay and Sapa to come, so there's still a lot more Vietnam to enjoy!

Message from a bottle

This has the potential to be the shortest entry of our trip as despite staying on Hat Khua (a.k.a Bottle Beach on the north coast of Ko Pha-ngan), for longer than we have stayed at any other location on this trip we stuck to the plan and did very little for 7 straight days.

Even if we had been tempted to get out of our hammocks the beach could have been designed to dissuade us. A few hundred meters long, the beautiful sandy shore was surrounded by thick jungle (of which more later) which put paid to any ideas we may have had about running. Even the turqouise sea, while perfect for paddling or the occasional game of frisbee, was full of "sea lice" whose role seemed to be to attack anyone who strayed too close to actual swimming. Happily admitting defeat we slipped into a very comfortable routine of a reading, napping, eating and hanging out at the restaurant while enjoying plenty of the local rum.

While the weather spoilt us for much of the week our first couple of days were a different story as the long-tail boat which brought us to the beach just beat a huge storm which we watched blow in from the sea. It was strong enough to make our tiny bungalow feel very vulnerable and ripped parts of the roof clean off the main building!

The rain returned on our final day but the intervening days were stunning and exactly the kind of quiet, relaxing break we'd hoped for.

We planned to leave the beach 'tomorrow' for at least the last three days and unfortunately this meant that our ever growing rum and green curry tab kept outpacing our supply of cash and we needed to make two trips back to town to use an ATM. Rather than take the convenient, fast and reasonably priced long-tail boats, the first time this occurred we decided that we would hire a sea kayak and paddle the 5km into a headwind instead. While we eventually made it safe and sound, trying to paddle in tandem while keeping a plastic kayak straight on open water for an hour and a half was a 'bonding'experience.

That little adventure was just a warm-up for our second trip when we opted for a hike through the jungle instead. There was supposed to be a trail we could follow marked by plastic bottles but this was more of a suggestion as to where the undergrowth might be less dense and the occasional rock faces less deadly, than a trail in any recognizable sense. Sure enough after about 2 hours, just after the point when we decided we absolutely couldn't turn back, we got lost. With our shoes full of decaying leaf mulch and heavy rain soaking us to the bone we tried to laugh it off which worked well until we stumbled into one creek bed only to find that every surface was covered in biting red ants! 3 and a half traumatic hours later we stumbled into town and immediately ordered the biggest serving of chocolate pancakes we could find.

Aside from our ill-fated trips back to civilization the main sources of amusement were the beach's collection of animals. One evening we took a stroll to find the local stray dog digging frantically in the sand.

After about ten minutes he finally flushed out a decent sized crab which led to a hilarious stand-off - how many pinches on the nose is dinner worth?

In case any cat fans planned to take this as proof of canine stupidity we woke up (mid-afternoon) the next day to find our friend Kate screaming and clinging to the post of her bungalow:

The cause? One of the camp's cats was trying to swat a four foot long King Cobra which had crept in from the jungle. One of those times you don't want to consider exactly how long it would take to get to the nearest hospital.

When we finally dragged ourselves from the beach we were thrust quickly back into the realities of Asian travel and got to spend the evening in a mosquito ridden depot while our bus to Bangkok was coaxed back to life. We made it eventually around 5 the next morning and having learnt that Bangkok is a great city as long as you do not try to do anything or go anywhere we spent a very relaxing 24 hours before our flight to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

My Thai

We arrived safe and sound in Bangkok a few days ago and have been thoroughly enjoying Thai hospitality ever since. The people here are so friendly and open, it’s easy to see why so many foreigners decide to settle here and live out their years on the beach. We spent our first few days in Bangkok, which is a huge, sprawling city, and rather difficult to navigate owing to the impossible traffic and indistinct neighborhoods. We finally got the hang of it right as we were leaving, so perhaps the next time we pass through we’ll feel like experts.

Once we’d arrived at our hostel, we decided to get online and check email. Literally one second after I clicked on the free wi-fi network detected by our laptop, the screen shuttered, a red skull appeared as the desktop, and a message popped up requesting that we reload Windows from a CD. What the hell?!? A red skull. It was such a cliché, our computer instantly hacked and destroyed by a laughing red skull, just like in a cheesy movie scene.

We both had a momentary panic, and then Ben, who had had the foresight to actually bring along the backup CDs that no one ever thinks they’ll need, pulled them out and started reloading our computer’s entire brain. It took hours, but piece by piece we overwrote the hard drive and reinstalled everything we’d had on it. Luckily we hadn’t been storing photos on the computer, so we didn’t lose anything important except for an afternoon in Bangkok.

Once we’d recovered from the stress of nursing our precious laptop back to health, we set out to look for dinner and explore Khao San, well known as the backpacker ghetto. The one strip teems with tanned westerners, tattoo parlors, Pad Thai street carts, used book shops, and bars, one of which was showing the Tour de France live, so at Ben’s insistence we stopped there and had a drink. The street food in Bangkok is absolutely amazing in its variety and quality, and we’ve restricted most of our meals to what can be found cooking on the sidewalk for about $0.30. After dinner, we found a blues bar playing decent live music, had a couple glasses of wine, and headed to bed.

The next day we went to the train station to try to figure out how to get to the beaches down south. Trying to save money, we tried taking the bus, which of course we boarded in the wrong direction, depending on the non-English-speaking onboard fare collector to sort us out. The correct bus eventually got us there, and once we’d arrived at the train station, in typical Thai fashion, an extremely friendly woman helped us immediately, explaining the train schedule and prices and connecting us with a tourist office that did all the work for us, seemingly for no commission! Oh, if only we’d had such help in India! We got ourselves booked in for the next day, and then explored a bit of New Bangkok, full of traffic, shiny shopping malls, and the ubiquitous street food. One thing I’ve fallen in love with is Thai writing - I can’t decipher a word, of course, but the loops and curls of the alphabet are so beautiful, I just love looking at all the signs.

While in the area, we stopped by the Jim Thompson house, now a museum but formerly the home of an American CIA agent who became a champion of Thai silk and disappeared mysteriously in Malaysia in 1967. The house is known to be an example of Thai architecture, all dark teak wood and steeply pitched roofs, and it contains Thompson’s collection of Asian art, including dozens of Buddhas. I learned that Buddha can never be depicted showing any evidence of muscle or bone, presumably to portray him as more divine than human, which explained to me while he always looks a bit pudgy. Also on the compound is a spirit house, one of which appears outside almost every home in Thailand, a mini house where the spirits get stopped before they can enter the actual home and where Thais leave offerings of food, water, and flowers to keep the spirits happy. I find the style of Buddhism here so interesting, combining textbook, Chinese-style Buddhism with ancient Thai traditional beliefs involving spirits, amulets, and astrology. We explored the several rooms and lush gardens of the Thompson house, browsed the gorgeous silk accessories at the luxury gift shop, and took off.

For our evening’s entertainment, I decided a trip to Bangkok’s Red Light District would be a must - it’s what Bangkok is famous for, after all. The Patpong area has the reputation of containing the most interesting debauchery, so we asked a cab to take us there. About an hour later, the taxi dropped us off on a very dark street and told us we had arrived. It didn’t look right, but we believed him, hopped out, and began to wander through a sleepy residential neighborhood. We walked around in circles and asked the few open shopkeepers for directions, which they tried to give us but we clearly failed to comprehend. We passed by armed guards protecting some kind of military installation, and when they unbelievably let us pass through we continued through the silent streets, cursing our cab driver and certain we were nowhere near the red lights and sex shows. Finally we reached civilization in the form of a strip mall and gas station, and found another cab who agreed to take us to our destination. We have no idea where we’d been exploring for the previous hour, but at the end of the second ride we were unmistakably in Hookerville.

Unfortunately, our Red Light adventures didn’t turn out to be as exciting as we’d hoped. Rather than flamboyant lady-boys wandering the streets, there were instead a bunch of Western families(!) and groups of bored-looking prostitutes lining the walkways. We browsed the counterfeit branded accessories and Bangkok T-shirts while hawkers tried to convince us to go to a “show“. Finally, we realized that despite Ben’s having lived in Amsterdam for 6 months and my having been to several Mexican border towns over the years, neither one of us had ever been to such a show and maybe it was time to remedy that. We relented to one of the hawkers and lasted about 5 minutes inside the nightclub before deciding it was definitely not our scene, although we were impressed by the balloon popping abilities of the girl onstage. Rather than calling the night a total loss we watched a truly terrible band sing out of tune dance hits before heading home.

In an effort to sneak in some culture that didn’t involve the sex trade, the next morning we got up and walked straight to Wat Pho, a Buddhist Temple famous for its huge reclining Buddha. The temple buildings were gorgeous, topped with steeply tapered spires covered with painted tiles and gold plating. There are several small buildings that comprise the temple, the main central one containing an enormous gilt shrine covered in Buddhas large and small and ringed with flower garlands. We took in the sight and scents and wandered around the gardens for a little while, donating a few Baht and signing a tile that will be used in renovations, forever leaving our stamp on Wat Pho. Then we finished up our tour at the reclining Buddha, a massive gold figure lying serenely on his side, with mother of pearl swirling designs on the bottoms of his feet. The sculpture is 43 meters from head to toe, dwarfing all who come to see him, and yet his reclined position makes the figure familiar and comforting, rather than imposing. It’s a beautiful, peaceful religious sight.

That evening, it was time to leave Bangkok, so we began the journey to our beach paradise, which involved:

1) A cab to the train station
2) An overnight train to Surat Thani
3) A bus to Don Sak
4) A ferry to Thong Sala pier on Ko Pha-Ngan
5) A sawngthaew (a kind of pick-up truck taxi) to Ao Chalok Lam
6) A long tail boat to Hat Khuat, a.k.a Bottle Beach…

where we are now. 19 hours total, but well worth the trip! Traffic and bars have been replaced with sand and palm trees, and as Ben will post about next, we have finally learned how to relax. Ahhhhh.

Tie one on, in the Fong, Hong Kong

Rarely will our strategy of interspersing the more difficult countries with more familiar surroundings pay off better than it did when we arrived in Hong Kong last Wednesday. After the dust and dirt of India, Hong Kong’s gleaming new airport and futuristic shuttle train were as refreshing as a cold shower and the difference between the two countries belied our short flight. Yet again we were to be spoilt by the weather during our time in Hong Kong and while residents would tell us the city is often shrouded in a dense fog we enjoyed blue skies from the moment we touched down. As we sped into town we marveled at the busy waterways and high rise buildings clustered into the foothills of the mountains which rose up on all sides.

We were lucky enough to be hosted in Hong Kong by our very good friend Kate who many of you will remember from our wedding. Her apartment building was right on the waterfront with views of Victoria harbor but a short distance to the west of the ‘Central district’ where many expats live and work. We both noticed on the drive across town that the buildings in the surrounding area (while still exclusively high-rise), were much more varied than in other parts of the city and, although it shouldn’t have surprised us, at street level reflected the island’s overwhelmingly Chinese population. The pungent smell of dried seafood was strong even in the taxi and we saw groups of men playing cards on every corner.

Hong Kong allegedly has a fairly serious air pollution problem but after running through the downtown gridlock of Mumbai the humid air felt cool and fresh and so, after a short stroll around the area to get our bearings, I decided to try a run up through town towards Victoria Peak. It soon became apparent however, that after the first couple of blocks the thin strip of built up land that borders the harbor is dizzyingly vertical - often the sidewalks were abandoned in favor of concrete staircases and roads were built as tight hairpins to give cars any chance of making progress. For 25 minutes or so I shuffled up and down trying to find my way through to the park which always seemed to begin the other side of a last impenetrable line of tower blocks but eventually, with the help of a clearly amused security guard, I found a path and began climbing through the dense forest.

I have run, off and on, for 18 years now and as Megan will testify am prone to get stroppy if I’m unable to get out on the road for more than a couple of days at the most. In all the tens of thousands of miles that that time equates to there are only a handful of runs which I still remember distinctly. For the beauty of the scenery I’ll never forget the Tour des Dents de Midi in Switzerland or the Motatapu Icebreaker in New Zealand. For other reasons I’ll always have a soft spot for the Sodbury Slog, the Col d’Aubisque and perhaps a few more. To that short list I can now add that first run up Victoria Peak. From the moment I entered the park the sounds of the city, already little more than a murmur, died away completely and the only sounds were of my breathing and the occasional trickle of a nearby stream. Although there was no respite from the gradient, any suggestion of heading back was hushed by occasional but spectacular views of the island’s coast through breaks in the foliage.

These were just preludes however for the panorama from the peak itself which to my endorphin soaked brain was startlingly beautiful. From the plaza which marks the top of the famous cable car run, the whole of Hong Kong from the Center over Victoria Harbor to the most distant areas of Kowloon on the mainland was laid out like a scale model with the silent progress of ferries and container vessels the only visible sign of life. As if to put on a show for me the waning sun, which had disappeared behind a headland, cast the entire city in a vivid orange light with the last direct rays just catching the tops of the city’s many famous skyscrapers. Needless to say I didn’t have the camera with me but we hiked up together the next evening and caught the cable car back down to town:

Thanks to Kate we got to spend that second evening enjoying the quintessential Hong Kong experience - touring Victoria Harbor on a junk. Much as in Dubai we quickly forgot that we were supposed to be backpackers as the huge wooden boat and two staff arrived to ferry the three of us and a bottle of champagne around for the whole evening! Relaxing on the deck beds we took in the lights of the harbor and then spent an hour negotiating our way through the wakes of enormous container vessels to make it to a nearby island for a seafood dinner. While we are used to seeing ‘live’ crabs and lobsters sullenly blowing bubbles from the bottom of their tanks at restaurants in New York, the displays here were something else. Enormous shrimp fought to climb over the edge of their baskets, crabs snapped angrily at waiters as they tried to tie them up and even the cockles and mussels were trying to slime their way to freedom.

We did some more island hopping the next day and visited a Buddhist monastery overseen by the biggest (counting the lotus mount), seated, brass Buddha in Asia. Despite the somewhat specific distinction the complex and particularly the mountaintop setting was very serene and quite beautiful.

After getting our cultural fix we devoted most of the rest of our stay to the more traditional expat activities of eating and drinking in which we were assisted by the happy coincidence that Kate’s birthday and the annual Fong district beer festival both fell on our penultimate night. For the second time on this trip we ended up partying to the early hours to the sounds of a Filipino covers band though sadly didn’t quite make it through till the 5am putine stop.

Dim sum seemed the perfect antidote to the next day’s grogginess so we headed to the former City Hall for a huge buffet. On the way we were amazed to see thousands of the city’s Filipino housemaids enjoying their weekly day off by congregating under the downtown flyovers for communal picnics. While having a maid is common in Hong Kong as it was in Dubai it was startlingly to see just how many people are actually employed this way.

The infusion of dumplings and diet coke was so restorative that we decided to take the star ferry over to Kowloon for our final afternoon and explore some of the traditional Chinese markets. The atmosphere on this side of the water was very different from Hong Kong island with most of the less formal markets offering fake versions of the goods available for many times the price in the luxury stores only a short distance away. We also noticed that most of the hotels proudly advertised nightly and hourly rates lending the area a slightly seedy but more interesting feel. Eventually however the heat and the effects of the night before took their toll and not even tentacles on sticks could keep us from a well-earned DVD night before our morning flight to Bangkok.