10 guides x 1 question = 10 different answers

Hanoi came like a breath of fresh air. By the time we had arrived in Hanoi, we had taken an overnight bus two nights prior, walked around in 100 degree heat (in Yangon) for a full day, then slept overnight in the Bangkok airport. For the roughly 9-10 days we were in Northern Vietnam, it never rained, but it also never ceased to mist. Such weather doesn’t exist in Saigon. Anyways, when we first arrived, we were loving it. It’s amazing how after a certain amount of time with similar weather, you’ll always want the complete opposite. We had just come from 5 straight weeks of sun with temperatures ranging from hot to blazing and thought this cool misting weather was just the greatest thing on earth. It took us around 4 days to finally concede that cool misting weather isn’t the greatest thing on earth. Anyways, while we were waiting for my parents to arrive we went and had our only true Bia Hoi experience of Vietnam (beer brewed fresh daily @ 25 cents a glass). I had had a Bia Hoi here and there in Danang and Hoi An, but I really wanted to leave a lasting impression on my palette. I think we must’ve met the four nicest Vietnamese people in Hanoi that night because they all seemed to disappear after that. I think the only lasting impression the Bia Hoi left was on my slightly degraded previous blog post due to the slightly degraded state of my mind following the Bia Hoi “incident.” You know that 70/30 sightseeing/interacting ratio I posited last blog post, well with enough booze I think you can temporarily flip that ratio. Because, looking back, did we really talk about anything? I think the short answer, is no. But during my double digit bout with Bia Hoi I kept telling Libby that this was what it was all about. What was what all about? Not really sure. Only real takeaway was that I kept smoking these opium style water pipes filled with tobacco and needless to say I ended my night with a late-night date with the toilet since I don’t smoke tobacco.

The next day, besides being filled with struggles, was spent writing the blog at Café Nola. I’d recommend Café Nola to anyone visiting Hanoi. Nice location in the Old Quarter and excellent atmosphere (also there’s the name).  Libby spent her day hopping public buses to and from the Museum of Ethnology.  That night, the parents finally arrived. We started the day early the next morning with a walking (+ taxi) tour of the city. Having a guide was great for the sole reason that it’s quite nice to be taken around everywhere and not worry about directions/transportation. Other than that, it’s tough trying to be buddy buddy with people you’re A) hardly know B) paying C) will never see again. Everyone wants something different out of their guide, so of course it’s going to be impossible for them to perfectly meet your needs unless they have uncanny perception. So they generally seem to resort to the basest levels of humor. They generally know little to nothing but seem to be experts at pointing out natural features that are shaped like various animals. Speaking of expertise, their real specialty is the misdirection. This is of course greatly aided by the language barrier as most of us will simply think they misunderstood us, but no. They are just amazing at going off on a tangent and then trying to hook us with some other interesting fact (they will never in fact tell you they don’t know, which is a reasonable answer). I’m still mad he couldn’t tell me who sculpted the nice bronze statue of Uncle Ho smoking a cigarette and what type of wood his house was made out of (Uncle Ho=Ho Chi Minh). Anyways, super proud of Libby when we were at some Pagoda or other with a statue of the first King of Vietnam (circa 13^th century) and she asks our guide with the straightest face, “so is he still alive?” She really knocked it out of the park when we then proceeded to look at a purportedly thousand year old turtle and she asks him something like, “so do they put him back in the lake at night?” Mark Twain would’ve been proud. Hanoi as a whole was a great city for visiting. The old quarter has a tight neighbor hoody feel to it that is lacking in Saigon. The lake and its surroundings has an aesthetic beauty to it that Saigon also lacks. My first reaction was that Hanoi is a better city to visit and Saigon a better city to live, but after being back in Saigon for a few days I can’t be totally certain. You do only need two days to properly see the city, and you most certainly can skip the ethnology museum.

After those two days, we were off to Sapa on the overnight train. My first overnight train! Great ride, another boost in my appreciation for trains. Sapa ended up being my favorite spot in Vietnam, hands down. It had a mountain town vibe to it that you can’t get anywhere else in Vietnam (maybe Southeast Asia?). Yes, the food can’t compete with places like Danang or Hue, but everything else is spectacular. I’m saying this even with mostly horrific weather. I had no expectations whatsoever with regards to the ethnic minorities after our disappointing encounters in Burma, and Vietnam already being such an established tourist destination. But wow! Wearing their traditional clothes makes all the difference. That and they have a slightly different facial structure. Is that superficial (o well). There is the one (and sometimes major) downside of having Black Hmong and Red Zhao ladies following for, I kid you not, multiple kilometers in very (very) savvy attempts to sell you their woven wares. Part of the reason is my parents practically have a bull’s eye on their heads when it comes to these ladies. They know that Libby and I are too young and thus poor to really buy anything and the older people are too crotchety and experienced to give in to their mix of persistence and guilt-tripping so they really hone in on the middle zone like sharks on a bleeding seal. And it works, and at the end of the day my parents can write off that expense in their heads in less than a minute while it makes a world of difference to these ladies and could quite potentially keep fueling their way of life which is important. Because once these people stop wearing their traditional clothes than they stop being different and then unfortunately stop being interesting as sad as that sounds (Burma “jaded” me slightly with Ethnic Minority tribes/villages).  Anyways, we did the obligatory overnight trek/homestay. And phuc me! I’d actually recommend it! Shame on me. That being said, did we actually have any genuine or interesting interactions/conversations with the family, hardly. And really this homestay had the mother of all attractions for me. Herbal medicine baths in slightly oversized whiskey barrel things. I mean, they could have probably stuck me in the dirt and fed me dog, and I probably would still come back for those damn baths. Heaven on earth. They boil water with a combination of mountain herbs and then put the water in the bath and you jump in to like 110-115 degree water. I’m bringing it back to the states, mark my words. For some reason it made me feel like I was in 1850’s China. Speaking of which, I realize some of my imaginative connections make little to no sense. Why does that bath remind me of 1850’s China, I have no effing clue? It really hit home when I met some Vietnam vets on a Mekong tour and asked them if there were any vets that just stayed behind and lived in Vietnam forever, and I realized, why is that such a popular myth/allure in my mind? Can’t say for sure, must be my system 1 working too much.

Anyways, the baths in combination with an excellent home cooked meal over a wood burning hearth/stove type contraption is somehow enough to recommend the homestay. Both days of our trekking, visibility was limited to anywhere from around 2-20 meters which was obviously a huge bummer. And on the third and last day in Sapa the sun came out! It would have been tragic if we would have never actually seen Sapa which was a very very real possibility. On the third day after the nice trekking, we hired motorbikes for a motorbike tour. It was awesome, maybe my favorite day in Vietnam. We got to see all the extraordinary vistas and panoramas over the terraced rice paddies.  We were finally able to see all the pictures you would see on postcards and google. We took the road from Sapa to Ban Ho which was just amazing. There used to be hot springs in Ban Ho which was going to really just send this day into the stratosphere only to find out the GOVERNMENT BUILT A HYDROELECTRIC BUILDING OVER THE SPRINGS DESTROYING THE HOT SPRINGS. Really I think that someone should go to jail over that, maybe shot. An environmental catastrophe of the first order. What’s more important than a hot spring? Clean Energy? NO, nothing is more important than hot springs, NOTHINGGGGGGGGGGGGG. Anyways, take a look at the pictures below.

After that brilliant day in Sapa we were off to Halong Bay. I’ve now been to the two premier karst formation locations in northern Palawan and Halong Bay. Halong Bay is prettier. There are more karst Islands/Islets than in Palawan, and they are much smaller and thus add more depth, more lines to the landscape. Also you go through more straits and areas where you get the feeling that you are surrounded by the formations. The white sandy, palm lined beaches are missing in Halong bay and the water color also can’t compete with Palawan. That being said, Halong Bay is a must-see destination. Yeah the trash, and the multitude of other tourist boats certainly put a damper on the whole experience, but it’s something you have to do but are happy to have it checked off the list by the end. The boat is tolerable, quaint maybe? Staying on Cat Ba Island was the highlight of Halong Bay. The main reason being you have to go off the beaten path (defined tour boat routes) to get there. We didn’t have enough time to explore the island but it’s probably extremely nice as well.

After Halong Bay, we split off from the parents. They headed to Siem Reap (Angkor Watt) and we headed down to Central Vietnam to check off our last major sight in Vietnam-Hue. In retrospect, we should have just gone and seen Angkor Watt for a second time, but we never would have known that until we went and saw Hue. We flew into Danang so we could do the motorbike ride from Danang to Hue which had gotten numerous recommendations. You hug the coast and go over a huge mountain pass. Admittedly, that part of the trip was epic, unfortunately no one ever told us that the beautiful mountain pass that skips the highway was only 35 km long and there’s still 65 km to Hue along the two-lane highway with many 18-wheelers and no shoulders due to construction. That part of the trip was stressful. I love motorbikes and motorbike trips, but I hate motorbike trips that involve trucks. For obvious reasons there’s nothing fun about being a yard or two away from something that can literally crush you. So, I would recommend that 35 km ride and then stopping at some resort with bungalows over the water that was advertised right after the mountain pass finished. But, we were heading on to Hue. Hue, apart from the imperial city is like any other midsized or any sized Vietnamese city (ie nothing special). The food was some of the best if not the best we had in Vietnam. But making a trip to the city solely for the food is iffy. Anyways, one of our fb friends summed it up quite nicely when he said the imperial city was like going to an amusement park without any rides. The vast majority of the city was obliterated by American bombs so it’s mostly a skeleton of its former self with lots of replicas being built (zzzzz). The tombs were a bit better, located at various points outside of the city. It gives you a chance to cruise around the rolling countryside of central Vietnam which is very very beautiful. The tombs themselves mostly hover around the average range minus one which was spectacular (Khai Dinh). Beautiful and also unique murals adorn the entire ceiling and is definitely worth visiting. But again, is delicious food and a single tomb worth a three hour motorbike from Danang? Probably, but travelling with my parents was actually a shocking amount of fun so it was nice to get back to them in Saigon. One last note on the motorbike, during the first 65 km gauntlet I kept it at a “below” catastrophic speed which increased my time in the actual gauntlet. The second time I opted for the minimal time in the gauntlet. The latter option was much preferable and an interesting life lesson.

We met my parents again in Saigon for the last 2.5 day leg in Saigon. 2.5 days in Saigon is the perfect amount of time if you want to see everything stacked on top of each other. We were able to do pretty much all of our very favorite things in those two days which made for a spectacular ending to the trip. We started out splitting our favorite kebobs and then splitting our favorite Pho. Then we went and had a coffee at Khanh Casa and watched the rush hour traffic (a favorite pastime of my father). Then we went to Chill Sky Bar for evening cocktails. After that, we stopped and had an appetizer of our favorite Sushi roll, the Mexicali, at Ichiban before heading to our favorite street food restaurant. After dinner, we headed to the Jazz Club to listen to Jazz/Vietnamese fusion at Sax n Art. That rounded off day 1. Day two took us to our favorite park in District 3, then a quick look at the Notre Dame Cathedral and the post office. Than we had lunch at our favorite lunch street food location with the director of Language Corps where we did our TEFL training. After that we took the obligatory trip to War Remnants Museum . Afterwards my mother and I got smoothies and coffees at La Rotunde (Passion Fruit Peach smoothie) and Libby took her obligatory nap. We headed across the river to district two and had cocktails on the river at the Deck (yes the deck is a deck on the Saigon River). Then we walked down the street for the pinnacle of eating in Saigon. 7 courses at Trois Gourmands. The sheer contrast of eating streetfood on little tikes plastic stools and then having a 5-star meal is one of my favorite things about Saigon. Trois Gourmands lasted a very impressive 3.5 hours and remains at the very top of my restaurant experiences. The only problem with a meal of that magnitude is that by the end of the meal you really just want to tip over out of your chair and crawl into the fetal position. There certainly are worse problems in life. We rounded out Saigon with shopping in the morning and a 3 hour spa experience at Cat Moc in the afternoon. Body scrub, massage, facial, foot treatment. Yup, that’s what it’s all about. Finished with coffee at La Fenetre Soleil, Hue style streetfood and one last smoothie to watch the traffic go by. Really, we really had Saigon dialed into max. Not sure if it’s really possible to go harder in the paint than that. Obviously, Libby was gushing about how much this made her miss Saigon, and I had to remind her that we could maybe do 1 of those 10 favorite things we just did per week. And I had to remind myself, I wasn’t teaching!!! It was sad to see the parentals go. Apart from the many steps up from our Backpacker travelling we were used to, it was just really nice to double the group size. It really helps increase the energy. Also, it was nice to make less decisions and just go with the flow for a while. Although the guides helped a lot with that, just having 4 people’s input instead of 2 means you’re going to have a lot less say in the decisions, which is simply a nice change in your travelling routine.

After the parentals left we knocked off the last item on Libby’s Vietnam list-The Mekong Delta. More like the dirty delta. I’d say NOT worth seeing. If like myself, the “delta” brings to mind narrow canals, passageways, thick jungle and rice paddy’s, keep it that way. Do yourself a favor and don’t let the actual Delta ruin that romanticized vision in your head. The picturesque scenes in the tour we went on were so small and compact that they could have been recreated in a Disneyland exhibit. Whether or not it gets better depends on how deep you want to get into the jungle, which risks greater reward or greater disappointment. Your choice. Libby appended pictures to the last two posts and I actually did the pictures this post, so you can go ahead and compare us. Also, will be better with pictures in future posts. As I write this, I’m back in my favorite coffee shop and the ease of simply living abroad versus travelling abroad sort of sucks you back in, so it’s good we’re off to Malaysia this evening and the next leg of our trip. Malaysia, the Grand Prix and the much vaunted Indonesia is next. 

Man who walks through door sideways get Bangkok

Right off the heels of Manila and that wasteland of a megacity, we arrived to our next Asian megacity-Bangkok. A little weary from the Urban PTSD (PUSD? (Post Urban Traumatic Stress Disorder)), we had four days to burn till we departed for Burma. Thankfully, Bangkok was the yin to Manila’s yang. Four days ended up being a great amount of time to spend in Bangkok, and I’m already looking forward to returning. Anyways, instead of being unleashed to the wolves that are the taxi drivers in Manila, there is a nice airport shuttle that takes you the short distance to the elevated rail transport which takes you straight into the city. Super nice, riding into the city you get a sense of niceness that is noticeably missing in every other place we’ve been to in Southeast Asia (and probably everywhere else in Southeast Asia save Singapore). Needless to say, it was extremely refreshing. The guesthouse we stayed in was excellent for the price. Waking up to a breakfast with a pot of black coffee, boiled eggs and bananas with BBC news playing in the background felt like a healthy dose of reality. Libby had to keep kicking me to get a move on our sightseeing. Which by the way I’ve come to realize that Libby is like sightseer extraordinaire. We balance each other out nicely though, because if we were on our own Libby would probably sightsee from dusk till dawn to the point the place turns into a list, and I would probably wander around in endless circles and miss some critical sight along the way. I’ve come to the initial conclusion that travelling is about 70 percent sightseeing and 30 percent local interaction.  You meet tons of intrepid travelers who love to talk about how staying with locals (the “homestay”) is their favorite part of travelling, but really it’s a catch-22. First off, authentic culture, the kind you see in National Geographic articles, is 1) really hard to reach, and I mean really 2) because of the aforementioned reason it is really expensive. I’m sure Libby and I will get to one of those places one day, but at that point you are truly expeditioning, and not just Le Expeditioning. Also, you need to dedicate some time to break the ice, interpreter, ect. Anyways, the homestays people are talking about are just poor, uneducated villagers in semi-remote parts of the country. If like this one hilarious Chilean woman was boasting about, they don’t speak English, then you presumably just watch them go about their day, going to the well/river to take a shower, going to the outhouse to take a bathroom break, ect, ect. If they know English, then they certainly don’t know much English and so you can have your 120948^th surface level conversation dealing with the number of siblings, relatives, age, and hometown. Without a proper education, there is no chance of them really thinking about how their environment shapes their view on reality, and so I’m convinced there is hardly a chance of having an interesting conversation.  Libby disagrees with this point.  Really what I think your left with is the uncomfortable situation of staring at an existential debate over why you have relatively everything in the world and they have relatively nothing in the world-a debate that has no answer obviously. Not sure how this tangent came about, will return to it when we get to the Burma, back to Bangkok.  

There are about 3 full days’ worth of major sightseeing which is a nice amount. Some excellent Pagodas/Wats, Royal Palace, Museums, ect. My favorite was the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall complex near the Vimanmek Royal Mansion.  It was kind of funny that all of the “cultural artefacts” were created in the past decade or so with the express purpose of becoming a “cultural artefact.” Anyways, the Queen has started an arts institution to revive the ancient Thai arts of weaving, wood carving, and gold-work. What makes these not so historical pieces amazing and 100 percent worth going to and seeing is the what my rough estimates could possible work out to be 1,000,000 plus manhours (I think most of the artisans are women) of work put into some of these pieces. They take a couple of years to complete with hundred plus workers and the finished products are awe-inspiring to say the least. Pretty splendid idea on the Queen’s part I dare say.

The food. Simply amazing. A lot of pre-arrival thought and apprehension went into the Thai Cuisine. Was it going to live up to its superior expectation? Was it going to taste like the Thai food I love and adore back home? Will it be better? Worse? Will it be as spicy as I hope? First, Thai food back home does the Thai food in Thailand justice. Similar flavors, just better in Thailand, obviously. Some beautifully spicy dishes, nothing that was destructively hot which was slightly disappointing for me. There was one dish that could have been too spicy even for me, but it was accidentally cooked in a shrimp sauce so I could only watch Libby struggle with it for a few bites. I think the Thai food in Thailand will haunt me for the rest of my life. I fear I’ll just get spontaneous flashbacks and just start salivating uncontrollably. Thankfully, I get to go back to Thailand soon enough, and there are a plentitude of restaurants back in America. Come to think about it, the direct correlation of cuisine quality to amount of restaurants in America strengthens my case for the horridness of Filipino food (I’ve spotted zero Filipino restaurants in America).  

So. Extremely nice environment-check. Cuisine in a league of its own-check. Extraordinary sights-check. Easy public transit by river, rail or bus-check. So what’s the logical outcome=hordes of tourists. Sometimes some of the sights feel almost Disney-land esque there are so many tourists, but you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You just need to accept it. Bangkok is the perfect introduction to Southeast Asia I’d say, and also would be a great place to live. In fact, I met my first “above-average interesting person” on one of the famous street food streets in Bangkok. He started out, “this is the best mango sticky rice dessert in Bangkok, about .1 percent better than the place over there but still better” (on Sukhomvit 38).  Anyways, we got to talking and he’s an eye surgeon in a very small town outside of Mandalay. He was the only other person I’ve met who refers to Myanmar as Burma so I feel like we’re bros in that respect.  He’s worked with indigenous tribes in Indonesia and went ahead and validated our Indonesia plan to journey to Raja Ampat (“definitely worth going”). He validated my love for Bangkok (“sometimes I think I should get an apartment here”). And obviously he validated Burma (he lives there). We got to talking about his career path, we chatted about our mutual dislike for hospitals and the need for cognitive dissonance if you want to stay happy and work in a hospital for any amount of time (the ultimate reason I didn’t go into medicine). Basically, I used to read books about people like him when I was in my doctors without borders phase, thankfully I didn’t bring it up. He talked about his fear of turning into douchebag if he had gone into finance or law (something I should keep in mind), and finally he recommended me a book-Thinking fast, and slow. He told me it’s potentially paradigm shifting so I’m going to read it and email him my thoughts on it, and recommend him a book if I don’t like it.

So after four extremely pleasant, albeit hot, days in Bangkok, we were finally off to Burma. Burma, I was trying to explain it to another of my “above average interesting people” last night in Hanoi, and like all spectacularly unique things, struggled. First, Burma is shrouded in fog for the majority of the day. It gives it an almost mystical quality to the place. On a more practical level, you know that special lighting that makes for extraordinary photographs, that lasts for maybe the first 1-2 hours during sunrise/sunset? while for some reason the fog here lasts until what seemed to be around noon and so extended that special lighting for longer periods of time. It helped create stunning landscape panoramas whether it was Inle Lake, Bagan, or the train from Lashio to Mandalay, to name a few. Second, Buddhism permeates throughout the whole atmosphere in Burma. Thousands and thousands of Pagodas. Hundreds of thousands of Monks. You are literally and figuratively immersed in Buddhism in Burma. It makes for an especially unique experience. You see monks in ones and twos in Thailand and Vietnam, you see groups of monks in Burma. When monks walk together they walk in single-file lines. I feel like it was a distinctly Burmese experience watching a line of monks carrying their bowls through a market collecting their donations from the shop-owners that range from uncooked rice to money. Even better is watching the Baby monks (actually small children) go from restaurant to restaurant half singing/half chanting the cantation that you sing to solicit donations. I know it seems trivial but it is special seeing monks do all the normal life things that adds to the mystique of Burma (taking selfies, bathing in the hot springs, horseplaying, going to the ATM). Second most important thing, although Burma isn’t as old-fashioned as it was say ten years ago (so the intrepid travelers who’ve went then say), there are lots of things that remain stuck in time that is special for a “90’s baby” to see. People still either take their showers at the well or in the river. People still transport lots of materials via huge carts pulled by water buffalo. One particularly poignant memory in Burma was a line of oxen-drawn carts lined up to fill their 55 gallon drums at the well. Thirdly, Teak. Teak is a beautiful wood (as its price speaks for itself), so to see the average villager have a teak house makes a poor village still look beautiful, which I feel is very rare as far as rural villages in developing countries go.

Back to the day to day goings. We spent two days in Yangon. A nice city, tons of British colonial architecture still remains which creates a nice urban atmosphere to walk around in. A nice museum, and a brilliant Pagoda (Shwedagon). The biggest/nicest one I’ve ever seen. It gave you the chills hearing a group of individuals worship in one of the halls in the Pagoda. Again, it’s a weird sort of chanting/singing mixture. A sublime experience.

After two pleasant days in Yangon, it was off to Inle Lake. We took an overnight bus from Yangon and so arrived at Inle at around 5:30 am. We got to our guesthouse and decided to just go for it and hopped on a boat for an all day tour of the lake. That first hour on the boat was one of those tingling, make your heart race experiences that is really the pinnacle of travelling. The lake is extremely shallow and so indigenous fishing methods that take advantage of the depth has resulted. The fisherman try and trap the fish in a conical or boxed net with an open ending and then close the opening with a pole and bring the box or cone up to the surface. The fisherman fishing with the sun rising over the surrounding hills still shrouded in mist might have been my favorite scene in Burma. It was such a memorable scene that we took a boat out again the next morning just for that scene. Yeah one of the fisherman came over and posed for us and then asked us for money, but¸ there were  still many other fisherman just fishing around us and it was one of those rare authentic experiences that were decidedly different. Inle Lake was really a water-world type environment. Whole communities live their entire lives on the water. They live on the water, they go to the bathroom in the water, they bath in the water, they eat fish from the water and farm on top of the water. It was a beautiful ecosystem. The floating garden was another spectacular sight. Whole acres of crops being farmed was a sight to see. Seeing the farmers harvest the crops from their dugout canoes was amazing. Seeing cottage industries in action was surprisingly cool. We got to see cigar makers, weavers, silversmiths. On day two, after the sunrise boat ride, we took a short hour long bike ride to a hot spring. Basic manmade tubs without much of a view made it so-so as far as hot-springs go. But, the fact it was a hot-spring was enough for me to be there.

The only downside to Burma, and a lot of this was due to the fact that we are deep into the dry season, is that Burma is not very green. Orwell describes it as “Scrub jungle” and it is, very, scrubby. So the hills surrounding Inle are better seen from the lake, and even better, seen from the lake while shrouded in mist. So two days in Inle was entirely enough time, and even though it was sad to leave such a magical sight, it was time to move on to Hsipaw. Another overnight bus, another obnoxiously early arrival time-circa 4 am. Anyways, it was time to continue to carpe the diem and so instead of going on the “legendary” trekking into the hill tribes after an exhausting bus ride, we opted to rent a motorbike and a guide to take us all around. For some reason, this was a novel idea to the trekking guides and so unfortunately the guide didn’t have the best sense of giving a tour via motorbike (change is a difficult thing to cope with), the manager said “oh guides not so smart.” My favorite line I always ironically say to Libby when these types of things happen is, “it’s because he didn’t go to College.” Anyways, I don’t know why a motorbike tour was a novel idea to these guys because we got to see in one day what would take a week or more of trekking to see.  Anyways, he didn’t know enough English to answer our inquiries on whether we were missing any of the minority villages that the trekking took us to, but he made it seem like we saw all of them. And let me tell you, seeing all of these ethnic minority villages were strangely similar to all of the other villages we saw in Burma. Our “ethnic interactions” were limited to talking to a local about the violence that was happening a bit further north, and how she felt safe because the Chinese were funding a police station next to their petroleum station…anddddddd, how many siblings she had, how old she was, ect,ect,ect. Anyways, we saw all the villages, and saw plenty of the scenery, to the point where we felt like we didn’t need to go trekking. Still not sure why trekking in Hsipaw has a legendary reputation, probably because someone wrote it in a guidebook once upon a time. We ended our day at another hot spring that served as the village bath, and that was cool and unique. Bathing with the locals and the monks (speaking with him in the most broken English) and using their soap and puma stone was about as culturally authentic as we got up in Hsipaw. Unfortunately, what I expected to be the best part of Hsipaw was closed due to fighting. Namshan. Even the guide lit up when we talked about it. It’s supposedly a smaller version of Hsipaw located on top of a small mountain around a tea plantation. 6 hours north by motorbike, 1 guesthouse in town, it seemed like the perfect place, oh well. Next time.

One day by motorbike was enough to see Hsipaw, and we took the train from Hsipaw to  Pwin Oo Lyin the next morning. It was a beautiful ride through rolling hills, villages, fields of grain and rice, and over a large ravine. The windows were kept open and it was a perfect ride. Another testament to just how great train travel is. It was absurdly slow and swayed so much at times I thought the car was just going to flip on its side. I will say I was very ready to get off after 7 hours. The swaying did provide another funny bathroom story. The toilet is simply a hole which is quite funny, thank god we were warned about these toilets and so scheduled according. But, going number 1 was just like a fun game, it was like riding a mechanical bull and going to the bathroom at the same time. Anyways, Pyin Oo Lwin was a summer retreat from the heat of Mandalay for the British, similar to the French’s Vietnamese version in Dalat.  It was lovely. Peaceful, serene, the tree-filled neighborhoods with an interesting British colonial-architectural style was great for just riding around with the motorbike. There was a huge botanical gardens that was all around excellent. After a peaceful day and a half it was time for Mandalay.

We had a small amount of trepidation going into Mandalay as the general consensus seemed to be that Mandalay sucked. Of course, the eye doctor compared Mandalay to LA and said it really just depends on the person’s experience of it. As an anecdote, he said a national geographic photographer did a spread on Burma and took the majority of his photos in and around Mandalay, and you know what? It was the perfect anecdote to describe Mandalay. Mandalay is shockingly dusty. Mandalay is searingly hot after coming from the hills. But there is a certain majestic-ness that purveys itself through its hot, dusty and crumbling exterior. In a lot of ways, living in Saigon helped us appreciate the city. It’s not really a walkable city, and there is an abundance of 4 way intersections with no traffic aids so unless you’re used to those types of intersections, it’s probably not advisable to rent a motorbike in Mandalay. Anyways, one of my favorite memories of Mandalay was driving to the famous bridge (very long, very old, and teak) down the Buddha stone carving street that was just filled with people carving myriad sizes of Buddha, in various states of completeness and the whole street covered in a white cloud from the stone residue. My other favorite part of Mandalay was the jade market. It was fun, and I mean FUN, doing business in the Jade market. Honestly I’m kind of hooked like I’m hooked on the cockfighting. I can’t wait to come back with more than 20 dollars for both the jade market and the cockring. The jade market really becomes fun when you intend on buying something and then it turns into something of a rush similar to gambling.  

The next day we took a tour of all the ancient capitals around Mandalay and Sagaing was the highlight. It was so nice; it would be worth spending a night there. It’s a town full of monks. It’s set in really rolling hills and is studded with golden stupas with tons of monk monasteries set in the trees. No real destination per se, but was a great place to tour via motorbike and probably even better just to walk around for a day or an evening.  All around a great day.

After two days in Mandalay, it was another overnight bus to Bagan. We got in at the ghastly hour of 1:30 am and just spent the extra money for a room that night and slept in. The overnight buses were piling up and the frenetic pace of our travelling was honestly wearing on me. Thankfully we had 3 days to see Bagan which could be seen in 1.5 days.  Basically you go to Bagan to see the sunrise and sunset over a stupa filled landscape. You can do that either from the top of a stupa or from a balloon which was out of our price range ($320 for 45 minutes). 7 dollars a minute is steep by any standard. We did 2 sunsets and sunrise which was plenty. We were a little stupa/pagoda/wat’ed out by Bagan and in retrospect probably should have reversed our Burma loop to start with Bagan. It was our only encounter with a truly “touristy” part of Burma and still isn’t that touristy, certainly by Thai standards. But as Libby likes to remind me, things are touristy for a reason; the 10-12^th century architectural style is stunning, with a similar vibe to Angor Wat.  Unfortunately, a recent earthquake levelled something like half of the stupas which is disappointing, but what can you do? Anyways it’s an amazing sight and a must see in Burma no matter what. The architectural zone is big enough to get lost in and sure enough Libby and I got lost in it. Motorbikes are outlawed for some reason and so e-bikes are what you do. Come to find out, E-bikes are NOT as versatile off-road as a motorbike. I was feeling cool, getting really off the beaten track with the pitiful e-bike; Libby and I were ready to find a stupa all to ourselves to see the sunset, then all of a sudden, the beaten track became a little too sandy for the e-bike to move in. And somehow we were in the bottom of a riverbed quite far from…everything. Then the screen shut off on the bike, and things got a little more tense. I moved the bike up from the riverbed to a more “established” path. Thankfully after a closer inspection the battery had simply become unplugged after the bike was jumping up and down as it was half stuck, and half getting pushed by myself. We walked the bike back, and finally found our original path, when we saw a real dirt road with motorbikes. We hopped on, WE’RE HOME FREE then…flat tire. We walked the bike over to the one hut in view and the guy thankfully was able to call the number on our motorbike. Thankfully, he sorted the whole situation out because not sure how we would have a) called and b) directed someone to our location. Anyways, he showed us a few of the stupas which he painted himself (pretty cool) and then gave us some corn on the cob as we waited. A truck came and picked us up at which time it happened to be around sunset, and he took us to the one stupa everyone goes to to watch the sunset. It was the biggest stupa to climb, but the tour buses kind of wrecked the view. It was nice to be able to do the quintessential touristy thing on accident rather than on purpose (I feel slightly better about myself). Anyways, for the next sunrise and sunset we went to a slightly smaller stupa but without the tour buses (much preferable). On the last day, we did all the obligatory tours of the major stupas and then finished with a great look into the lacquerware process. One, it’s a fascinating process that requires an absurd amount of time and man-hours. I’m sure you can read about it on Wikipedia if you so desire (it’s layered many times over). Two, he had a 1971 National Geographic article about his grandfather and the lacquerware scene in Bagan so obviously we had to get something after that. It would really be a sick joke if the man in the Nat Geo picture was not actually his grandfather but at some point you really need to have an optimistic outlook on humanity. Otherwise, you’re just an overly cynical European.

One last overnight bus to Yangon, a day of toiling around in the market and the heat of Yangon, and a night in the Bangkok airport and now here in Hanoi with the parentals on the way.  Cheers.  

The good, the bad, and the particularly ugly.

Let’s start off with the good. The Pinoy (Filipino) people are probably the nicest culture I’ve encountered so far. Everyone says Pinoy’s are friendlier, and they are telling you the truth. A minor, and sometimes major caveat to that impressive quality depends on how often you use cabs. Unfortunately, Manila is NOT a walking city and therefore there are times where you are forced to use a cab, and the cabbies are shitheads. It’s developed to the point where cabbies won’t use the meter if there happens to be a lot of traffic, which happens to be about 99 percent of the time in Manila. We worked pretty hard to try and get normal cab prices haggling with cabbies, telling them to turn on the meter, getting out of cabs and finding others, and we still got screwed a handful of times. The only thing that will make you feel better about these exasperating experiences are that cab fares are exceedingly cheap here in Manila, so if you do manage to get a cabbie to run the meter, you can pay 2-4 dollars for up to an hour cab ride (which would take you 10 km tops in about an hour. On the way to the airport, the cabbie dropped us off at the terminal for an absolute steal of 3 dollars (we got blasted for a 25 dollar ride on the way from the airport. I was so happy I gave him my only cab ride tip in Manila (I thought the Buddhist karma wouldn’t be so strong in this HEAVILY catholic country, but now I’m not sure). Anyways, after 3 minutes the police officer said we were 3 km from the correct terminal; and I started cursing out Juan Rodrigo in my head, that’s right, I won’t forget you Juan Rodrigo, you cheeky bastard. And so we were at the wrong terminal stranded like sitting ducks ready to fly straight overhead the cabbies with their loaded shotguns. Thankfully getting screwed cost us around five dollars so you just sort of need to brush that thing under the rug and try and close your ears as Libby starts erupting. I know you should walk up to the departures gate to grab a taxi on the way back to town or ideally grab public transportation (hardly exists here in Manila), but our first leg of the expedition we showed up starry eyed and in an excited daze and were subsequently taken to town by those damn duckhunters…You live and learn.  

Back to the other goods of Manila. Music, I know there is supposed to be amazing live music here in Manila, we saw a few good bands in Saigon, but again, there is no Frenchman street, no Beale street, no whatever that street in Nashville is called, no cluster of really anything in Manila so it’s just about finding the diamonds in the rough. In a lot of ways, Manila reminded me of Memphis, with the additional 11 million people. More parts of Manila are run down than nice and it’s not a great walking city. Anyways, you can tell the music scene is superior here to the rest of SE Asia because music is being played everywhere and more times than not it’s exceptionally good. The one live band we saw was playing fine Beatles covers which suited us just fine. Also, besides the elevated rail system which the majority of people don’t seem to know where it goes, the primary form of public transportation is FANTASTIC-Jeepney’s (20 cents for a whole route). I don’t think a map of the jeepney routes even exists but since most people speak excellent English here if you ask enough times you will slowly get an idea of the jeepney network. Honestly, I think an awesome thing to do (UPDATE: and beginning to think only awesome thing to do) in Manila would be to find a jeepney playing music, bring on a cooler of San Miguel light to share and just cruise through town.

The bad. There simply isn’t a whole lot to see in Manila, with the exception of the cathedrals. There are a handful of cathedrals worth seeing in Manila, and the possibility one or two museums, but we missed out on the museums. The waterfront hasn’t been developed fully in Manila and like the rest of city relies upon an excess of corporatized chains. It seems to me that Manila is somewhat stuck in the 80’s/90’s mall culture of America. Malls are considered the highlights of Manila and while they are very nice malls, they are still malls, with foodcourts, and chains. That idea seems to resonate throughout the whole city. We did eat at some EXCELLENT chains ironically enough-ChiChop and BonChon. The restaurants and bars view on the waterfront are blocked by the seawall and none of the restaurants have wizened up by installing decks on which customers could drink/eat AND see the water.  Maybe there is such a preponderance of beautiful sea views on the 7000 islands of the Philippines that they don’t even bother here in Manila.

Everyone and their mother has a gun here in Manila (also similar to Memphis, but even more extreme). Your average bank will have something like 2 guards posted with pistol grip shotguns, cops abound everywhere with their .45 colt revolvers, and drug/bomb/attack? Dogs, metal detectors and car-bomb mirrors are the norm at the upscale malls. Even the McDonalds has its own armed guard. It definitely gives Manila a “hard” vibe to it.  I joked with Libby that she booked us a room in the barrio (only kind of joking), but for the most part we tailored our explorations to the daylight hours when the barrios simply seem colorful and authentic and not scary.

That was written on our first three days in Manila. We are back in Manila for another 3 days after our journey through Palawan. It turns out the Pinoy people are EXCEPTIONALLY nice in the provinces which makes the Manila Pinoy people pale in comparison. And I know why. Living in Manila would depress the hell out of anyone and make anyone a bitter, hard person. I’ve been to quite a few humid locations and Manila seems to take the cake. The result? Every building, and I mean every building outside of a few square blocks called “Makati Greenbelt” has that mildewed look that must set in moments after a fresh coat of paint has been applied giving it a really, and I mean REALLY worn down, crumbling look to the city. Anyways, Libby and I are still quite young and quite susceptible to learning moments. But really these are important for travelling of any sort of length. One, try not to fly out of the same place you flew into. Two, we saved 20 dollars each on a flight coming back a day or two early, sometimes it’s worth it to shell out the extra 20,30,40,50,60, hell I would have paid 100 dollars to shorten my stay in Manila for a second time and line up our connecting flights. We tried changing our flights to no avail as all of our flights on this trip are promotional super deals and therefore mostly non-refundable ect, ect, ect, as the Philippines Air guy told us. If we would have lined up the perfect Palawan Philippines trip we would have come into Manila (let’s face it, it never hurts to see any new place for the first time), flew to Puerto Princesa, travelled up Palawan with a stop in Port Barton, El Nido and the northern tip of Palawan mainland, then caught the 7 hour ferry from the northern tip of Palawan to Coron, proceeding to fly out of Coron to Cebu and from Cebu out of the Philippines. We learned these routes from the numerous people we met along the way who did more prior research than we did.  Honestly though, those flights from Coron and Cebu, while not pricey (so I’ve heard), would have probably blown our shoestring budget so I can make myself feel a bit better by thinking that wasn’t an option. Anyways, if any of my 15 or so readers ever has the desire to see Palawan, that’s what you should do, although you could also do it vice versa and try and never have to leave the Manila airport with a nicely lined up connection.

But let’s get back to reality. We arrived in Puerto Princesa only to come to the sad realization that the idea of a quaint city seemed to never make its way over to this wayward island chain. Anyways, it wasn’t big enough to completely engulf us in it’s “barrio-ness” and so was much less depressing. We stayed in the number #1 rated TripAdvisor B&B-Tres Pensiones- and it really didn’t disappoint… So, many kudos to TripAdvisor. Anyways, the next day we went on the Underground River tour. The Underground River is billed as the second longest underground river in the world and a newly designated Natural Wonder of the world. After seeing Angkor Wat and hearing it billed as a wonder of the world, the 8^th wonder of the world, blah blah blah, I did some google research on these “wonders of the world.” Unfortunately there is no definitive list, as they are all reinterpretations of the first, the seven wonders of antiquity, of which only the Pyramid of Giza still survives. Today, there are only feeble attempts to update these lists. Unfortunately, I think the only solution is to come up with your own list. For instance, in the list in which the Puerto Princesa Underground River was a part of included Jeju Island in South Korea which was clearly the result of over-connected Koreans voting way way way too much. Needless to say I’ve learned to take these lists with a grain, OK, a lot of grains of salt. That being said, Puerto Princesa is the (second as Libby corrects me; the first being in Mexico? I don’t believe her but there is no wifi to check) longest underground river in the world and anything with the designation of longest, tallest, highest, largest, should be worth seeing, right? Unfortunately our 1 or 2 km tour of the river didn’t gave us any sort of sense of the scale of this so-called longest underground river. I feel so apathetic in regards to this tour. Were the stalactites and stalagmites amazing? Yes. Were some of the caverns enormous? Definitely. Numerous bats? For sure.  Was it awe-inspiring? Probably not. Maybe I’m just jaded or something. It didn’t help that Ferguson was endlessly spouting out how this stalagmite looked like a bear, and this one like the virgin-Mary. You know what Ferguson? I could care less about what the formations looked like, I just wanted to look at them. Libby and I of course got the front seat that controlled the spot light so it was a delicate task trying to ignore everything Ferguson was saying save for the, “now point it blah blah blah.” We made a nice point(with light) and shoot (with our camera) of most everything, for some reason the rest of the tour group didn’t thank us for what I thought to be a splendid spotlighting job… Also I may hit the next person that tries to tell me the difference between stalagtites and stalagmites. I DON’T CARE. One grows up and the other grows down, and if the time comes where I’m struck with an instance of curiosity, I’ll google it. Was the tour worth it, 8 hours or so for 45 minutes in the actual underground river? Probably, I don’t regret it but for some reason I’d rather not think about it… One last thing, there is a 3 hour ***special*** tour you can take that would of course been out of our budget so if you’re a cave enthusiast there’s that option. Here are some pictures, I’ll let you decide.

Anyways, we were off the next day to El Nido, the true promise land of Palawan. It’s a 7 hour bus ride through beautiful green filled hills, so it wasn’t so bad. El Nido is certainly, different, from what people say it was like just a couple of years ago. The accommodation prices are kept at inflated prices due to insane demand from what mostly felt like German tourists (and everywhere else honestly). We were kind of disappointed in El Nido at first because we were expecting (at least I was), a small town of palm thatched roofs on a beautiful beach. After I while, for we were in or around El Nido for 10 days I learned to enjoy it, but El Nido is a proper tourist town now. That being said, I came to the conclusion that life is too short to eat bad Filipino food when there are Italian and French expats and town. Filipino food consists of rice and pork, rice and chicken, and rice and fish. I prefer rice and chicken because they have the unfortunate habit of cooking their delicious and freshly caught fish whole (head, skin, guts everything) with no sorts of seasoning or anything. Let me just say, have you ever seen a Filipino restaurant anywhere outside of the Philippines. Enough said.  Back to El Nido, after getting in around sunset, we somehow manage to find Mezzanine, a French guy’s restaurant who makes incredible Italian food, freshly made pasta, nice cheeses the whole 9 yards, backed by well-balanced cocktails right over the water…I mean they literally ate up the beach in El Nido so that establishments could be literally on the water, and hey, when you’re in the establishment, it is pretty dang sweet. The first thing we did the next morning was rent a motorbike and get out of El Nido to explore the island. I somehow met a Filipino guy who had lived in Detroit for 15 years and with a “support the D, man!” I was back renting a Vespa from him for the extra four dollars it cost as opposed to a Honda motorbike which were ****made*** for the roads we were about to go on. Anyways, within minutes we were on the road in Northern Palawan, jamming to the only music fitting for an Island paradise, Bob Marley.  We were in paradise, Palawan is the number one voted island in the world and will probably stay that way because there are simply miles and miles and miles of untouched coast that resorts can and are spilling over into now that El Nido is totally consumed. It’s beautiful, rolling elevation changes, scenic overlooks, jagged limestone Islands and Islets hanging out in the distance every which way you look. I think northern Palawan is the par excellence of Karst geography, but we’ll see come Halong Bay. Anyways, the roads are just being paved in northern Palawan so it still had a rustic getaway feel to it that El Nido has lost (even though El Nido still doesn’t have an ATM).

Interlude

I was writing this post in the sanctuary of our hotel room (yes we got a proper hotel room to hide away in) while Libby was at church.  She turned up early as she accidentally mistook the church across the street for a Catholic church.  After being ushered out of sitting on the men’s side, she listened to a man in a suit go on about how great their church was.  Their church being The Church of Christ.  She left and forced us to move to one of the coffee shops in the Makati Greenbelt district, and my oh my it’s like we are transported to a different world. The Philippines is like that, we are in a coffee shop that positively belongs in the likes of New York, San Francisco, Seattle or Chicago. I even think their espresso machine outdoes anything I’ve seen in the States. The walk here of course was quite depressing during which I was thinking the future of these semi-democratic corruption riddled states (Central and South America come to mind as siblings), with a hyper concentration of wealth that makes the “1 percent” in the States seem like child’s play. Anyways, the future seems bleak, it seems utterly naïve to think any of the poverty or corruption will be fixed in anywhere close to our lifetime and makes you want to crawl back to the nicest city you can think of back in the United States and be thankful. It’s totally at odds with the instantaneous and globalized outlook we were raised on and is frankly quite confusing in an introspective sense.

Back to Moto Ride in El Nido.

Anyways, I’m convinced motorbike travel is simply the best way to travel in these parts of the world. In most of these places, talk of “touristy” and “overcrowded” disappear mere minutes down the road and such is the case in El Nido. Yeah the roads were gnarly, and yeah, I did feel like a badass handling those roads like a champ on a Vespa… Really I’ll just insert photos which will do a thousand times more justice than me rambling about just how beautiful this place is. It was a great day, the suspension on a vespa simply wasn’t high enough for some portions of the dirt/rock, I can’t explain it, but let’s just say even the Filipino’s were impressed when we told them the route we took. I was thankful they couldn’t examine the underbody of that poor Vespa that was getting absolutely scourged in some parts and grabbed my passport(deposit) as quickly as possible. In some parts, I cheesily enough was thinking I’m getting to ride my Alaskan spines albeit with a motorbike on dirt instead of skis on snow. Anyways, we scouted out some amazing places to stay on the beach for like 17 dollars a night, which is what we were paying for a box room back in El Nido.  The next day we went on our first Island Hopping tour for which El Nido practically built its reputation on.  Literally every single place (from convenient stores to restaurants and the smallest guesthouses) offer island tours.  We saw the infamous Small and Big Lagoons and spent most of the time situating the cameras so that the dozens of other tourists were out of the frame giving the sense of isolated beauty. Yeah the places were crawling with tourists and yeah it was worth seeing in spite of the LOADS of other island hopping boats. The only way around it is to stay at the luxury resort on the Island on which the Big and Small Lagoon is located and take a kayak and go at sunrise before the boats make it there. It’s around 600-800 dollars a night to make that happen but to really kick my poor ass in the balls there’s a 4 night minimum stay so to make your dream a reality will put you out 2,000 plus dollars. Better to look elsewhere, say in Indonesia, which is the next plan. We did Tour A and figured it was enough to do only that Island Hopping tour of the 4 available in El Nido. That night the guy who sold me on the Vespas and the Island hopping tour took us to the Reggae bar called Pukka Bar in which a Filipino band sang pitch-perfect Bob Marley covers which was a good time and worth returning to. The local rum, less than 2 dollars for a 5^th, is quite good, and we finally met some nice German girls under 40 to drink with and so had a merry night of drinking which was a first for our old souls. Seriously though, Libby is concerned and I am beginning to become a little concerned as well that the average age of people I have nice conversations with has to be hovering in the mid to late 40’s, with the occasional 30 year old and the more occasional 60 year old……But in my defense my favorite guy was giving me India tips.  He was this super Brit who did a 5 ½ month motorbike trip through India, talk about badass. I probably liked him though because he was in the end asking me for Vietnam tips and casually mentioned that I looked like I knew what I was doing as an experienced traveler as he was preparing me for the India shock we’re surely going be experiencing (lol). I wish I could have somehow recorded that and played it over and over again in my brother’s face.  Back to the Reggae bar, we woke up feeling less than perfect and delayed our activities till the afternoon which was kayaking. I’m convinced Kayaking is now the best way to explore around El Nido now that the Island hopping tours are becoming oversaturated. It was a good idea to only do a half day of kayaking because until you’re actually kayaking in open water for more than an hour at a time, the idea of kayaking sounds much more fun. Anyways, you can kayak much of the same route as Island Hopping Tour D and we got more views of the desolate white sand beaches with palm trees surrounded by the limestone cliffs, the epitome of Palawan. We ended our kayaking expedition at the same place Tour A ends- 7 Commando Beach, home of maybe my favorite bar in the world, the bar at the Vellago Resort. The View-BILLION DOLLARS. The seats-VERY COMFORTABLE LOUNGERS. The Music-EXCELLENT BORDERING ON SUPERB. Cocktails-EXCELLENTLY MIXED. Needless to say we met some jolly old 50 year olds from Ann Arbor who also knew what the hell was up.

And really if I could sum up the charm of El Nido it was the good music, good cocktails and good food that happened to be located in extraordinary natural beauty. Anyways, the next day we rented our proper Honda motorbike for 5 days and headed off for a proper Palawan experience. On our way to, after our brief stop at the postcard beach of Palawan-Nacpan Beach.  Babe’s beachfront cottages (which we discovered on our scouting mission and had a coconut at), we stumbled across Santeria! We met one of the owners of Santeria on the bus from Puerto Princesa to El Nido, who had come down to pick up his friends who were visiting form the UK. Anyways, we had wanted to stay a night at Santeria, figuring if someone had decided to build a guesthouse away from electricity and really anything there had to be good reason. And on our way enough to Babe’s we found Santeria. Anyways, we walked up the hill and stumbled upon Paradise! This couple was living the dream. The 29 year old British couple had excellent food, excellent music, excellent views, the company was great as it was the 6 of us with absolutely nothing to do except, drink, eat, listen to music and converse. The place was three weeks old, they had excellent taste in most everything, and it was close to a perfect experience. It was really quite amazing as their location simply had endless possibilities for growth as it was located in a cashew forest (the honey roasted nuts were great), the vegetable/herb garden had been planted, the banana trees planted, the flock of chickens that literally just roamed around the grounds and an endless supply of cheap labor to make all their wildest construction dreams become a reality for close to little work done on their part. Two things were needed to make their dream a reality, one, I think the girl must’ve had dual Filipino/English citizenship as she could speak Tagalog and was obviously Filipino. 2^nd, the guy had such a slovenly demeanor/exterior and sense of not really having done much of anything in his 29 years of existence which in combination with his good tastes meant he must have been born into money. Our Landlord in Memphis was exactly like this guy. Cheers to him for living the dream.

Tapik Villages.

After our two days of bliss, we moved on to a beach front place just down the road. For 800 pesos a night we had our own bungalow just a couple of feet from the water’s edge. The Island Hopping tour was worth it as we were the only tourist boat/tourists around. More unbeatable beaches, more amazing coral. I’m quite inexperienced when it comes to snorkeling, and so it was amazing to see real reefs.  I had seen nice reefs before but never such vibrant biodiversity. I must have seen 20-30 different species of fish on these reefs and needless to say, I’m hooked. The thing about this whole snorkeling, diving thing is that it doesn’t seem to be like skiing where there are many different types of skiing that are just as enjoyable. You go to a reef, see a bunch of awesome things, then you go to a bigger reef and see even more awesome things. Now I’m at the point where I just want to go to the biggest baddest reefs, and thankfully we’re planning on it in Indonesia (Guinea). Yes there’s niche snorkeling/diving with wrecks, specific type of animals(thrasher sharks, whale sharks) but really I think bigger is better; I want to see sea turtles, manta rays, sharks damnit! Anyways, Tapik was just a continuation of paradise, candlelight dinner set on the beach (but not the kind in Cambodia where the whole beach is lined with restaurants), millions of stars, amazing sunrises, again, pictures do it more justice. By the time we got back to El Nido, it honestly did feel nice to have a fan or aircon in our rooms, if it’s not cool enough at night, I have a hard time going to sleep in the complete silence of a stuffy bungalow when the mosquito net seems more like a prison than a rustic retreat.  Those 5 days seemed to encapsulate everything amazing about Palawan. There was Libby, the amazing natural beauty, my book, and my 5^th of Maker’s Mark to keep me company. Yes, there is a random 70 year old Kentucky native who set up shop in El Nido and has quite a bourbon selection in his liquor store. Bourbon is literally the only thing I could possibly think of drinking warm and straight and as it was the first bourbon in over a year, so it was quite delicious (I drink scotch in Vietnam). Being out in wilderness and drinking seem to go hand in hand with me and with warm bourbon and some of the local lime juice I had tried my best Hemingway. I wrote exactly zero words, but I did succeed in drinking the whole thing straight as Libby refused to touch it for some lame reason. Some people would catch me taking pulls of it at very strange hours of the day and give me odd looks, but I just shrugged it off. Hey, not here for a long time, here for a good time as

they say. Don’t worry Mom and Dad the imbibing has stopped.

                Back to El Nido

Back in El Nido we did one last activity. We climbed one of the cliffs that essentially encase El Nido, Taraw Peak. My goodness, I’m only writing about this because we survived and I have no intention of ever doing it again. When they say “cliff climbing” they actually mean more climbing than hiking. Honestly, it’s only a matter of time before someone slips, falls and dies. The same jagged limestone that makes it possible to do this sort of ropeless climbing that is honestly a step of above scrambling (full of handholds and footholds) would also kill you if you fell the 6 or 10 feet of exposure you regularly have on this climb...Since I’m scared of heights and am naturally a worse-case scenario thinker (sometimes called a “worrier”) I was scared shitless and climbed up and down that thing as fast as possible. Boy if you like adventure, this is for you, but it honestly seemed quite irresponsible to take people on.  While I struggled in the back, Libby was happy to flaunt how the guide (you need a guide, there is no path or logical route) complimented her on her quick climbing skills.

Libby had been steadily finding us cheaper and cheaper accommodations in El Nido till she finally found us the cheapest one in El Nido-500 pesos a night for our two nights before heading back down to Puerto Princesa. For 500 pesos a night, you don’t get much, in fact, you don’t get a toilet that flushes, you get a public squatter toilet. I’m here to tell you ladies and gentlemen just how much I’m willing to pay for a toilet with a seat that you can sit on and flush-it’s 300 pesos. Roughly 7 dollars was what we saved in exchange for a downgraded toilet. You know what, I’m willing to pay to that 7 dollars. Any day of the week. Instead I just had to tell my bowels to SUCK IT UP, and just push through the discomfort until we made our way to some café or restaurant with enough decency to provide a real toilet.

You learn to make the best of it, we’re back in Manila, which isn’t ideal. But if we wouldn’t have had this uncomfortably long layover I wouldn’t have written this BEHEMOUTH of a blog post. Maybe you didn’t even want this long of a post, oh well. Overall, I would rate Vietnam a better country to visit than the Philippines though the Philippines is certainly worthy of a lengthy expedition (there’s a reason why we chose to live in Vietnam). I really like food, a lot, so having bad native food is a bit of disappointment, but the Island beauty I’m sure is par to none, and there is an endless amount of it in the 7,000 islands. I can say that confidently. There is quite a bit of abject poverty that is quite visible and you will have to rub elbows with it, but it’s better to acknowledge its existence before inevitably forgetting about it. As Jay-Z said, ON TO THE NEXT ONE. Time for some Burmese Days, baby!!

GV 1

It’s a new chapter for the blog. After a brief month of self-reflection and escapism the blog has returned as a travelogue newly baptized in the name of The Innocents Abroad. On a personal note I think the hiatus was mainly induced by the very basic need of R & R. Literally, “Goodmorning Vietnam” is expanding its borders to the greater Asiatic region (The final list: Philippines, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand/Laos, India) . After some contemplation, the blog elected to keep the misleading name in tribute to the early foundations on which the newly baptized blog rests upon. Albeit condensed to GV. Personal note, I’m excited at the virtually limitless amounts of experiences with which to feed the blog. GV’s life feels like a weather forecast: cockfights in Manila, underground river in Puerto Princesa, sea kayaking to hidden lagoons in El Nido. Speaking of cockfights, we had a basement in our college house that could have held dead bodies, and I wouldn’t have known.  I think I went down there once. Anyways, I & the housemates had unrealized dreams of holding a cockfight of our very own in the basement, ideally for my 21^st birthday.  Libby even tried buying a rooster on craigslist.  Thankfully, that idea stayed a dream because it would almost assuredly have turned into an awful idea. Two years later the dream is being realized in a more mature form. I doubt the sight is going to be any less shocking and hopefully I don’t come away from the arena with a mild case of PTSD.

Back to the then and now. It’s only fitting that I write my last blog post in Vietnam in a coffee shop across the street from Libby, who is teaching. I would talk about how bad teaching sounds right now but I can’t even get myself to think about it. I figured as the time teaching was drawing to a close, it would get easier and easier since I’d be so happy it was almost over. Turned out the complete opposite, but oh well. Teaching wasn’t a bad job at all, and overall it was a fantastic experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything; though it’s kinda sorta a grind.

Packing for a four month trip seems impossible. Especially since we’ll theoretically be in the searing heat of Burma/Myanmar in early summer and potentially? Cold weather of the Himalayan foothills in India. I say potentially because I don’t actually know how cold Darjeeling and northern Rajasthan/ Kashmir region but they seem like they’d get cold. That’s also slightly frustrating since I really like planning for things and there’s a lot that’s simply still left in the air. Christine, super traveler who we did our Tesol course with, managed to do like 6-8-10 weeks in a 30-35 liter backpack. That would have been awesome if I could have managed that but I’m filling up like a 60 liter backpack with an 18 liter daypack. I’m blaming it on the weather.  BTW, I have a weird interest in bags and the 18 liter Arc’Teryx is an amazing bag which I would highly recommend for roughly 1,000,000 different things. It’s probably the bag we’ve used/will use the most here and is “bombproof.” Anyways, we were packing a bag to store here in Saigon and Libby & I were faced with a vexing packing question (at least to me). Is it better to fold dry-cleaning clothes over themselves with the hangars on or off the clothes? I’d like to reach out to the audience for some thoughts? Libby of course made the final call and took the hangars off due to a weight decision. I thought the hangars would help make for a perfect fold and make a minimal weight difference. Anyways, it doesn’t matter.

WE SOLD HO PHUC IN LESS THAN TWO HOURS. In a complete shocker Ho Phuc was sold for $150 USD in less than two hours on Facebook. Who would have known that we underpriced our Chinese knockoff at $150. We were ready to just take it on a roadtrip to the Delta and simply leave it wherever we ended. I have to thank Libby for deftly taking the initiative in selling our dear Ho Phuc. Also I can pat myself on the back for a nice buy back in June. Overall it cost us around $130 to drive our moto for our whole time here. Even better than the tiny amount we had to pay for transportation in Vietnam, my favorite part about Ho Phuc was we never had to worry about getting pulled over by the police and extorted or having our moto stolen because our moto was so ghetto we got to pretty much ride around incognito. Because we didn’t realize our moto would be sold so quickly we’ve spent the past two days walking everywhere. We walked the whole city during our first weeks in the city so it wasn’t exactly a new thing getting to do it again. We managed to harbor our bitching temporarily with hopes of getting in walking shape before our trip.

                Well, stay tuned. Next step: Manila! 

Currently

Currently sitting in perhaps my favorite space in Saigon-La Fenetre Soleil. It would probably be the perfect hipster paradise back home. Everything is “distressed” enough to make the place feel fully authentic. The cracked marble tables, old barn plank style wood floor and the cobblestone floor curtained verandah with faded exposed brick walls and lightly stained crown molding that runs around the entire premise, allowing for a cool and naturally lit center room. All are perfect design touches, my favorite design touch of the French colonial period though is the roof with its sloped ceiling and exposed wood beams providing an uncertain amount of support but a great amount of aesthetic value. It’s already slated into my dream room.

We went to the only truly “American” BBQ joint in town with a bunch of friends. We had only been once a few months prior and afterwards we realized why we had only gone once before. BBQ is on the very short list of things that are more expensive here than in America: wine, ice cream, BBQ. I used to eat BBQ a minimum of twice a week for four years in college but I’ve done an amazing job of moving past my BBQ addiction since coming to Vietnam. I’m afraid once the shock of the spending what would probably be like 3-4x Memphis BBQ prices wears off, I might have awakened the metaphorical dragon that is my love for BBQ. In fact I’m kind of craving it right now.

Anyways on our walk back home from the restaurant we had a totally Vietnam moment that Libby suggested go in the blog. We walked past a group of guys sleeping in their hammocks or on a mat just on the side of a busy street, a man with a literal peg-leg that seemed more at home in a pirate movie and two street-cleaner/garbage workers finishing up their shift. It’s crazy to get glimpses at the large side of Saigon that sleeps on the street day after day and the fact that the only reason the city maintains a semblance of cleanliness is because an army of workers go out day after day and do quite a meticulous job of picking up boatloads of trash by broom and hand. Most everywhere in the city can be considered a trashcan.

I can tell that I’m getting burnt out of teaching because the weekends keep leaving me feeling emotionally and physically drained…the sad part being that my hours keep going down. I did 8 on Saturday and 8 on Sunday for a total of 16. When I was doing 22 hours in a 48 window, 16 would have felt like a breeze. But for some reason it doesn’t…don’t know what to make of it… Maybe it’s the cold-that-never-quite-leaves-you-once-you-catch-it syndrome (I’m pretty sure can be attributed to pollution and possibly the festering tropical heat that never leaves). But it’s only 2 weeks and 2 days until we’re boarding a flight for Manila and then on to Palawan. Pretty sure the cold will vanish the second my eyes touch the beaches of Palawan.  Which leads us to our trip update.

We kind of had an awkwardly long time between us ending the pay-period (Jan 28^th) and our flight to Bangkok (17^th) and on to Burma…which we had initially centered on Tet. It  definitely won’t take three weeks to fully explore the delta so we decided to switch things around a little and use this sizeable chunk for Palawan, with a stop in Manila along the way of course.  

Jan 30^th-February 16^th  : Philippines (Manila, Palawan)

February 17^th-21^st : Bangkok

February 21^st –March 7^th : Burma/Myanmar

March 7^th-21^st : Vietnam (Sapa, Halong Bay, Hanoi, Saigon)

March 21^st- March 27^th : Vietnam (Delta, Vung Tao, Mui Ne, ect)

March 27^th -29^th : Kuala Lumpur (Formula One Grand Prix)

March 30^th – April 20^th : Indonesia (Raja Ampat, not sure where else)

April 20^th – May 4^th : Northern Thailand (Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Pai)

***Up in the Air portion***      

May 5^th- May 12^th : Laos???

May 10^th – May 27^th : Nepal???

May 5^th – May 27^th : India???

Also, I celebrated my birthday yesterday.  I was feeling very self-pitying because I had to work that night, but my amazing girlfriend made the day meaningful.  She started with my favorite breakfast food: bagels which are hard to come by here and a blueberry muffin.  Breakfast in bed was completed by freshly squeezed orange juice mimosas.  Then, I was whisked away to my favorite spot: Cat Moc Spa where I enjoyed over 3 hours of treatment! The Rejuvenation package includes a 90 minute Thai massage, 60 minute essential facial, and 30 minutes of sauna/steam room; the perfect combination.  But because it was my birthday, they threw in a complementary 40 minute foot massage.  All this for under $40.  My body feeling great, Libby picked me up to go to my favorite pizza restaurant, 4P’s.  They have homemade burrata cheese (super fancy mozzarella that spills out onto the pizza).  Then, it was naptime before getting to VUS at 5.  I walked into my classroom to a bunch of wild kids bopping each other with balloons and big letters spelling out Happy Birthday in the background.  I was touched thinking the 11-year-olds with no TA did this themselves when I learned that Libby came to school to set up while I was getting my massage.  She then walked in with a cake and we sung happy birthday.  Although she provided me with Big Hero 6 to watch during my class, I felt that went a little too far in totally giving up so we just played games all class instead.  I got food delivered for dinner, and after class, met a bunch of friends at Bia College, a bar with cheap and large beer towers.  The day was completed with a homemade leather bound book and silk boxers!