What The West Is Good At Exporting

I have been lucky enough to travel to a decent number of places in my life, especially in recent years. I love to travel. There is nothing else I love as much as traveling and travel planning, save for maybe going to concerts. Like a lot of Americans I love to travel to Europe because, let's face it, Europe is by and large so much cooler than America. But I also love to travel to countries outside the "Western" world.

My wife and I have traveled to SE Asia twice now, most recently this last autumn when we took our 5-year-old daughter with us. It is an amazing part of the world to see, beautiful with a rich history and very lovely people. It is not like we are the only travelers who know this secret. This part of the world sees an amazing amount of tourism now. You walk down the streets of Hanoi, Luang Prabang, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, among other cities, and you will be surrounded by a lot of other white people. Generally this is really god for the local economies as we bring a lot of money with us to spend in restaurants, on hotels, museums, and gift shops.

But a lot of Westerners bring something else with them besides their money: Asshole-ish behavior. Ass-hattery may be our biggest export from america and Europe.

Siem Reap, Cambodia is one of the most special places on Earth. It is the closest town to the wonders of Angkor Wat and a nice little city to hang out at night. It is also overrun with tourists. It really was amazing to see the difference in the six years between our trips there. The number of hotels they have there now was shocking. So was the number of tourists walking the streets and partying in the bars at night. Not just the numbers are what's shocking, but the number of hipsters. It appears Siem Reap has become an "it" location for the young hip people from The U.S. and Europe. This wouldn't really be a problem if they didn't bring their asshole behavior with them.

An example: We were in an ice cream and coffee shop in downtown Siem Reap around an area called Pub Street and "The Passage" where a ton of restaurants are located. These are all places that are generally cheap for us but your average Cambodian cannot afford to eat or drink at them. All of central Siem Reap caters to tourists. There were a couple of very Eurotrash-looking Italians who ordered espressos. When they got thir drinks they were not exactly what the guys wanted and they got very angry with the young girl serving them. They basically yelled at her that this was "not what I wanted" and to "take it away."

They acted like a real couple of dicks. Both parties are speaking a second language to their own, English. The fact that you can travel to a place like this and not have to try to converse in Khmer is really convenient and things will be misunderstood now and then. Is it really necessary to act like an ass about it? This is vacation after all.

I think travelers need to show a little more deference and patience when in a country where the main language is one you don't know. I'm a guest places like Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam yet somehow I am able to do all my business with hotels and restaurants in English, my language not theirs. I should appreciate the generosity of that. We had a mistake happen in a restaurant in Luang Prabang. My daughter wanted basil on her pizza and it took a while to get the waiter to understand it. When the pizza came it had black olives on it instead. We didn't send it back and my daughter ate it, though we picked off the olives. It just is not a big deal. I'm in a country where I don't speak their language which means the language barrier is my problem and not theirs. I'm really happy about my kid learning that lesson that day. She's already a more mature and respectful traveler than some of the people we came across.

Like this middle-aged English woman in Hoi An, Vietnam.She ordered a caffe macchiato at a nice restaurant we were having lunch. she got all pissy with the waiter when her drink came because it was a shot of espresso with just a dollop of foamed milk. You know, a caffe macchiato. She then lectures the waiter on what a macchiato is, telling him there should be a lot of milk in it, that it is a big drink. She makes him take it back to fix it. And the very stupidest thing about this is that she was wrong! She learned her coffee lingo from Starbucks back at home, she is the one who didn't know what she was ordering.

After the waiter left to "fix" the "mistake" the tone in her voice to her travel companions was one that said, "stupid foreigner," not realizing she was the stupid foreigner, not the waiter who brought her the right drink in his home country.

The rudeness you can see sometimes toward people whose country in which we are guests is stupefying. So is the inappropriate behavior.

In Siem Reap we would see a lot of girls and guys walking around in short-shorts and tank top shirts Now, if you've done even the most minimal bit of research on Cambodia - like 3 minutes worth - you know that they are culturally a very conservative people who dress modestly and that revealing clothing is a big no-no. But apparently hipsters can't be bothered with learning anything about where they are going. Even worse, they would go to Angkor Wat that way. Sacred holy ground. Signs that actually tell you that kind of dress is inappropriate.

I'm not one to hold a lot of respect for religion, certainly. But a traveler must have respect for the people whose country they are visiting. Their culture is still theirs no matter how much money we spend there. The problem with some of these Western travelers is they treat these countries as if they are in the SE Asia section of Epcot Center at Disney World and not in a country where people live, work, pray, raise families, and try to live a life. If your only goal is to party and get drunk in bars with a bunch of other white people then what the hell is the point? I can get drunk with fellow American at home.

They not only embarrass themselves, they also embarrass those of us that try to travel in a way that honors and respects the place we are visiting.

This is not to say I don't think people should go to places like this or that they are ruined for travel. Despite its crazy crowds, the asshole-ish behavior of some, and the inevitable scams that go along with crowds of richer people being in a poor country, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and the rest of the countries in SE Asia are truly wonderful places and I'm that much richer for having visited. I would encourage everyone to go there some time in your life.

But don't bring your asshole behavior with you.

Dodging Motos in SE Asia

I was recently in SE Asia with my wife and daughter for what has become our annual international vacation. We started taking these trips with our daughter a couple of months before she turned two and she would celebrate her fifth birthday on this last one. As we were anticipating this vacation and telling people about it we were often greeted with a look shock from many people and even a "wow" every now and then at the idea that we would take a five-year-old to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Some people were impressed by us, others thought we were crazy. I think the ones who thought we were crazy didn't think we had really thought it through really well. But we had quite a bit. Before this trip our girl had been on four foreign vacations and in a total of eight countries, all in Europe but having taken a step in to Asia by being in Istanbul.

In all the traveling we've done with her she has been fantastic and easy on the flights and pretty much all aspects of the trip. Sure she gets tired and cranky on occasion but that can happen at home, too. Having done the 12-hour flight to Istanbul and back with no problem we figured we were ready to up our game with our choice of vacation destinations. And my wife, who traveled much more than me when she was younger, really wanted to get out of the Europe trend we'd been in since our daughter was born..

My wife and I had gone to this part of the world as our last trip before trying to have a kid, six years earlier, so we knew what we were getting in to. Sure SE Asia is a hectic place, but it is also so beautiful and full of wonderful people.

But there was one part of the trip that maybe confirmed our craziness for taking a five-year-old to this part of the world. They drive like lunatics over there.

It is really hard to explain to people who have never been to this part of the world just what the driving is like. If you go to cities like New York, Chicago, or Boston and think that the driving is insane there you have no idea how much worse it can be. The best description I've ever been able to come up with is imagining you are on a crowded New York City sidewalk with all the people weaving back and forth and going around each other, coming within millimeters of one another, getting out of an oncoming person's way just before you would bump in to each other. Now imagine that with everyone on cars, motorbikes, and bicycles instead of walking.

Nowhere that I've been is it any worse than Hanoi. And it got worse since we were there six years ago. Sure traffic was bad with all the motorbikes but when you got off the main thoroughfares you could usually find some breathing room on small streets like in the charming Old Quarter. Not any more. Traffic seems to be a constant flow on those small streets just like in the more urban looking parts of the city. And a lot more of the vehicles are cars (as opposed to motorbikes) now that more and more Vietnamese can afford them.

This makes crossing the street very tiring, especially when you are trying to do it with a five-year-old. We spend so much time as parents trying to train our kid the rules of crossing the street only to have to throw them out the window. I explained to her that we she had to hold our hands and when we said "go" to just start walking and don't stop for any reason. Telling her that when there are motorbikes and cars coming at us they will swerve around us. Rightly, she looked at me like I was crazy.

I had such a great memory of how charming Hanoi was when I visited before but that's been replaced by sheer hatred of the place. It is just exhausting to be there. Luckily we were only there for one day as a stopover on our way to Hoi An. We were staying away from the bigger cities on this trip and after the stay in Hanoi I knew we made the right decision. And a big reason that Hoi An was one of my favorite places - on top of the fact it is a charming town with lots to do and see - is that for several parts of the day the Old Town section is closed to motorized vehicles. The calm it creates in contrast to the chaos of the traffic is as wonderful as being in a typical European pedestrian plaza.

It is as crazy as Hanoi all over this part of the world. There is no sense that there are any rules to follow. Major roads are clearly marked with solid or broken lines to indicate a passing or no-passing zone but they are completely ignored. Drivers will pass going in to blind curves without giving it a second thought.  They will also begin an overtake even if there is oncoming traffic only 100 yards away. The right-of-way rule seems to be whoever is bigger gets their way. It is like the bully on the playground method of traffic control. For instance, there was an oncoming truck that started flashing his lights at the car we were in on a trip between Hoi An and My Son, telling our driver to make way from about 200 yards away. Except that the truck was the one that was passing and was in our lane. But if we hit him, we would lose.

This applies to pedestrians as well. No way should you assume that if crossing the street at an intersection with a stoplight that the cross traffic will stop when they have the red. You should assume they won't.

This of course was not new to us since we had been there before. We knew the traffic and driving there would be crazy, that people in these countries were nutty and aggressive drivers. But one thing did change in the time we had last been there:

They all have freaking smart phones now!

Holy shit, if you thought driving under the influence of smart phones was bad in the States...well...you ain't seen nothin'. I was biking between the beach and town in Hoi An and a guy came by me on a motorbike while casually texting, face buried in the phone, while within centimeters of me. This was a common sight, drivers texting while swerving around pedestrians and other vehicles, sometimes while driving a motorbike with their toddler child between their legs.

Probably the most bizarre/hilarious/frightening example was during our ride between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap in Cambodia, for which we had hired a driver to take us on the four-to-five hour trip. While our driver was in the middle of passing another car at about 60 km/h on the patchy narrow highway (I use that term lightly) with oncoming traffic in sight he decided that would be a perfect time to take a picture of the sunset happening to our left. I suppose it is nice to see someone still appreciates the beauty of his country enough to snap a photo of a nice sunset. It was a really nice sunset.

There is something about traveling that makes you throw your usual rules out the window. "Why yes, we can have gelato for dinner." You know, things like that. This time we threw out pretty much any standard we have at home for transportation safety for our kid (except that we did do several of our trips by boat to avoid buses on the highways in Vietnam). At home we always make sure to have her booster seat if we are going to be in a car, we make her wait for the light at intersections, always cross in a crosswalk, etc. You know, responsible middle-class American parents.

In Cambodia we rode tuk-tuks so many times every day. If you've never seen a tuk-tuk, this is it:

The family on a tuk-tuk in Siem Reap

It is basically a trailer hooked on to the back of a motorbike and then a guy drives you somewhere in the previously described traffic. My daughter loved this more than just about anything else we did on the trip. She begged to take a tuk-tuk every time we left the hotel. And so we did.

At one point during out trip I was telling our daughter about how when I was a kid that we would just pile in the back of a pickup truck but how that wasn't allowed anymore because it wasn't safe. And then in Luang Prabang we went on a hiking and kayaking trip with a guide. And how did we travel the 40 minutes to where we were trekking? In the back of a pickup truck, of course.

When in Rome, I suppose. Even if it is the most dangerous thing you can do.

One tries not to judge the culture of another country while traveling. But on both trips to this part of the world I could not help but think that there must be a decent amount of people who don't like the status quo. There must be a high number of people that have lost children to accidents because of the insane lack of traffic rules that would like to see a change. I just wonder what it will take to change the madness. Looking at the situation it seems impossible to change. But it wasn't that long ago that there weren't any drunk driving laws in the U.S. Or seat belt laws, car seats for kids, and helmet laws.

There is, I discovered, a helmet law in Vietnam that came in to effect just a few years ago. So there seems to be the beginning of an effort to change things there. And I noticed a lot more traffic lights than when we visited before.

Some drivers even stop for them.

Wanderlust

I love to travel. There is really no way to say that without it sounding like an understatement. Just no way. I love almost every aspect of travel. I say almost because there are two main parts I don't like - airport security and coach seating on airplanes. Those are probably the only negatives for me and ones that are an easy trade-off for the reward of going someplace awesome. Everything else I love. I love the planning. Sometimes I think I love the planning more than the actual trip. I will spend hours upon hours researching my next trip and be happy as a lark doing it. Pouring over maps, guidebooks, websites like Tripadvisor and travel blogs. Searching for the perfect hotels. Figuring costs by going through the exchange rates. But my favorite part of planning is figuring out the logistics of transportation. I spend so much time on sites like The Man in Seat 61 figuring out train routes in various countries that I can tell you how to get around in places I've never even been.

Trains are, of course, the preferred method of travel in any trip I take. Some of my travel ideas come from particular trains I want to take and not necessarily the destination itself. I absolutely want to take the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Vladivostok someday, and I have no idea what the hell is in Vladivostok. I just know it would be seven days and six nights aboard one of the most legendary trains in the world. (I seriously just got lost for about an hour on the Seat 61 site after looking up the Trans-Siberian travel times, surfing around that section and the China pages, daydreaming)

No matter how big a country is or how much ground I plan to cover in a given trip, using a plane to get from one place to another is the very last choice. It's bad enough I had to spend 7-18 hours on a planes to get to the place I'm going, last thing I want to do is get on more while I'm there. Not always possible, but if there is a train, boat, van, or bus to get me someplace I'll choose those over a shorter plane ride. A bus ride lasting longer than about seven or eight hours will likely lose to a plane but that is a rare exception. Even an arduous journey on another mode of transportation is more favorable than a plane if for no other reason than it will always be more interesting. Nothing interesting ever happens on a plane. It is just a means to an end.

My obsession for planning trips means I am constantly ahead of myself. My wife, daughter, and I are going to SE Asia (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos) in less than three weeks but I have already done some preliminary research for Russia, which may be our next trip and China, which is on our list but we still have no real idea when we may try that one. I've even started looking at returning to Germany for the traditional Christmas markets - for maybe going in 2014.

It has gotten to the point where I will help plan trips for my friends, and I love to do it for them. If I had gotten in to this at a younger age I would have gotten some job in the travel industry. Not that anyone can really make money in the travel agent business anymore. Or I would have taken better care to learning how to be a decent writer while I was in college so I could have been a travel writer. Matt Gross had my dream job as the Frugal Traveler at the New York Times and for some reason he gave it up! Are you kidding me?

And I love to travel with just about anyone. Friends, limited family (pretty much my sister), alone, with my wife, and now with both my wife and daughter. Traveling with a young child poses many challenges but you would be surprised in how many ways it can be even cooler than the childless carefree ways of youth. For one thing she points out things we may have just walked by and not noticed. And she makes us slow down and go at a more relaxed pace (my wife and I both have a tendency to rush to see as much as we can in as many places and can get to) because it is hard to rush when you are dragging along a 2, 3, or 4-year-old on a trip.

There are people who tell me that one of the things they love about traveling is coming home, and how much they appreciate home after taking a trip. I don't know what the hell these people are talking about. I always get depressed going up to the U.S. passport control and then they tell me, "Welcome home." Blech, I want to be back on my trip. There have only been two exceptions to this. First was when I went to Taiwan for work and stayed a few extra days to hike around. My wife was at home because she was over seven months pregnant and couldn't go with me so I missed her a lot. The second was earlier this year when I went on a two-week trip to Europe with friends. Turned out to be too long to be away from my wife and daughter and the last three or four days I just ached to see them. But in both those cases what I really wanted was them to be with me, not for me to be at home.

Thing is, as much as I've loved several places I've lived in the States, like Seattle, New York, and Chicago; none of them even come close to comparing to such cities as Munich, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Edinburgh, London, etc. I guess I just love European Socialism and the European pace.

But more than the love of a specific place is the desire to see it all. I want to go everywhere. I don't know where this wanderlust comes from but I know I'm not unique. Isn't this what humans have always done, tried to find out what more is out there?

But I come from a family that has anything but wanderlust. I've got Midwestern aunts and uncles that wouldn't even dare to go to New York or San Francisco, much less somewhere outside the country, save maybe fishing in Canada. And others look at us like we're crazy when my wife and I mention all the places we've taken our daughter. There is some bizarre school of thought among some parents that you can't travel with kids outside of national parks and Disney World. I sure as hell am happy that my kid has seen Istanbul instead of Orlando.

My only regret is not traveling more when I was younger. I should have backpacked through Europe in my twenties when sleeping in tents or cheap hostels would have been fun instead of uncomfortable. I thought I needed more money to do it and I was always very poor at the time. I could have saved up for plane tickets instead of buying weed. I also should have done a year abroad in college. I had some idea that interrupting my theatre education would be bad for my career opportunities. I ended up without a theatre career anyway, so that decision will always haunt me.

I don't understand people that don't have wanderlust. I can't fathom not wanting to travel the world.

I guess it is this: You have only one life and there is only one world. See it.

(This picture of my daughter being wowed by converging trams in Prague pretty much captures everything I love about traveling with her)

Gone To San Antone

Sorry for the long break in posts, and missing my Monday hate list last week. I was in San Antonio for a conference. I was really looking forward to the conference itself but not necessarily spending about five days in the Texas summer heat. But I had a pretty good time in general.

I spent most of my time in conference stuff, of course. But here are the few things I learned while hanging out in San Antonio:

I had low expectations about it, but the River Walk is absolutely fantastic! Every city in the country should have something like this. Sure, there are sections that have the stupid chain restaurants like the Hard Rock Cafe and the utterly annoying Dick's Last Resort, but for the most part there are some great local bars and restaurants to be found. And best of all, you can walk around all day long and not have to even see a car or cross a street.

Alamo Amber Ale is a much better Texas brew than Lone Star Beer.

Texas Lemonade, though it looks like anti-freeze, is a very tasty cocktail.

Margaritas taste better in Texas.

The sun does cook you in the summertime down there. Finding shade is a constant objective.

As much as you may love it, and I do, Tex-Mex food can get really old when you have it for three meals a day, several days in a row.

There is one vegetarian restaurant in the whole city.

Seeing all the interesting things there are to see in San Antonio takes about a day. Maybe half a day.

*

43 Hours In Waterloo Iowa

A couple of weeks ago I had to go to Waterloo, in Northeast Iowa, home base of most of my family, for my grandmother's 90th birthday. I hadn't been there since my grandmother's 85th birthday because I absolutely loathe the place. A shitty industrial town that offers no real positive asset to society, it's also full of members of my uneducated, white-trash, close-minded, gun-loving, backward-ass family. That would all be forgivable if they hadn't also treated me like shit growing up; making fun of anything I believed in, any music I listened to and generally acting as if they were superior to me and "city folk" in general. Yes, people with (at most) high school educations and 8-dollar-an-hour jobs at places like the local cabinet factory, who have never really been anywhere else in the world except maybe fishing in Canada, think they are better than everyone else, and many believe they know the answers to fix the world's ills. Because if you want to know how to fix the economy or bring peace to the Middle East, you should skip the economists and international relations experts and ask my uncle who worked his whole life on the John Deere assembly line or my cousin who stains wood at Bertch cabinet factory.

So I try to avoid going as much as I can.

But that is not always possible, at least while Grandma is still alive. I will certainly be done with the place after she's gone.

I decided for this trip to try to find the other side of Waterloo, if one existed. I would try to check out the local museum and even try to hit a live music club to see a local band maybe. And then I figured I might have material to write a "travel" post in the style of The New York Times' 36 Hours feature in the Sunday travel section. Maybe I could discover a cultural side to Waterloo that I never got to see as a kid.

It didn't really happen the way I hoped, and my weekend there basically went like this:

Friday
2:00pm - Cross the Mississippi River from Illinois into Iowa at the drawbridge in Fort Madison in the pickup truck borrowed from my friend Ray in Macomb, where I went to college. A large knot develops in my throat.

4:48pm - Reach the city limits of Waterloo. Begin hyperventilating.

5:03pm - Check-in to Comfort Inn. Begin paranoia about the locals staring at the "long-haired hippy freak" (me).

5:27pm - Call my sister's cell phone to find out where they are at. She and her family, along with my brother's family and my mother were just leaving the nursing home, where my grandmother lives, after her birthday party there (the family party was the following day).

6:00pm - Walk over to meet my family at a restaurant called Carlos O'Kelly's. Seriously, that's the name of a mini-chain of Mexican restaurants. It is to Mexican food what the Cheesecake Factory is to, well, all types of food. That's to say watered down, homogenized and generally un-ethnicized to be more palpable to your average middle-American. But it is also the kind of restaurant that is good at dealing with a table of 14 people, which includes six kids under the age of nine and about three unreasonably demanding adults in my mother, aunt and brother. The waitresses were complete troopers and dealt very well with the whole situation and kept their smiles. Everyone was happy with their mediocre Mexican food.

Sad fact is that this probably is the best Mexican restaurant in Waterloo.

Before eating, my brother, his wife, their kids, my grandmother, aunt and mother prayed. I continued talking to my brother-in-law and was shushed by my mother. I explained to her that just because she wants to pray, that doesn't mean I have to stop what I'm doing.

7:34pm - Walk back to hotel to pick up the truck.

7:43pm - Change in to my red "Godless Liberal" t-shirt. The decision to wear this was cemented by the prayer shushing.

7:59pm - Make an attempt to go to the Target to buy a straightening iron for my hair, since I couldn't take the one from home as my wife needed it. I have a panic attack when I see all the rednecks going inside and knowing what shirt I'm wearing. I skip it.

8:08pm - Stop at corner gas station and pick up a six pack of Budweiser, the best offering in the cooler.

8:16pm - Go to the hotel where my brother and sister are staying. My nieces and nephews are bouncing off the wall. My shirt is looked at but never mentioned by my Jesus-freak brother, sister-in-law and mother. It seems to make my brother-in-law smirk a little bit as we drink the beer. I hang out with him the rest of the night while all the craziness goes on around us.

Saturday
9:30am - Roll out of bed.

9:35am - Start freaking out about having to go out into Waterloo again.

10:00am - Walk across the street to the IHOP for breakfast. Sit at a corner table looking at all the fat people eating their "three meat combo" breakfasts. You always know what you're getting at IHOP, so it is a safe choice for breakfast. This may very well be the best restaurant in Waterloo.

10:33am - Go to Target and buy the straightening iron. I am surrounded by trailer trash.

10:51am - Back to hotel to shower.

11:30am - Sit and watch TV, still considering whether to actually go and see something interesting in Waterloo or just hide in my room until my grandmother's party.

12:15pm - Finally get up the nerve to drive to "downtown" and look for the art museum.

12:33pm - At the Waterloo Art Museum. They claim to have the largest collection of Haitian art in the U.S. so I was interested. The parking lot was not very full on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I waited as a couple of mothers with their kids were at the counter.

When it was my turn I just said "one please" and she told me $5 and handed me a wristband. She then said that when I get inside I should make my presence known to an employee since I didn't have a kid and would need to be monitored.

What the fuck was she talking about?

I told her I just wanted to look at the art and asked where the Haitian collection was. After a little bit of trying to understand each other, she asked if I wanted to go in the Kids' Pavilion and I said I just wanted to see the museum. She gave me my five bucks back, because only the kids' thing cost money, and pointed me to the museum. I couldn't figure out why she was so confused over someone going to a museum to look at the art.

I walked around looking at really shitty art for a while, feeling like I was being watched. Not by an actual museum security person mind you. There weren't any guards there to protect the art. I'm guessing no one wants to steal the crap that's on the walls there and no one actually ever goes there anyway. I was the only person in the galleries the whole ten minutes or so I was there. At one point an employee even asked me if I needed any help, you know, in the way that people ask that when they really mean is "who the fuck are you and why are you here?"

I tried. I really tried to give "culture" in Waterloo a chance. And I was treated like a freak (and a pedophile) for wanting to actually go in the local museum on a Saturday.

2:00pm - Time for Grandma's party. I sat in the truck for about 15 minutes, breathing heavy and considering bolting. After working up the courage I make my way in, wearing my traditional Vietnamese shirt I bought when Lisa and I were there in November. The party was in the basement of my grandmother's church. Refreshments consisted of ham on store-bought dinner rolls, a pickle tray and soda. Sorry, I mean pop. We are in the Midwest after all.

Lots of uncomfortable conversations with the relatives that recognize my existence ensue. These conversations usually involve a good amount of disbelief about what I do with my life or where I'm living at that moment. Saying you live in New York City is about the same as saying you live on Mars to these people. I always feel like Kevin Bacon in Footloose when I go to family gatherings.

The ones who do not recognize my existence continued to ignore me as they always do at these gatherings. These are mostly my cousins who are my uncle Veryl's kids (yes that's his real name). I could be standing next to them on fire and they would not acknowledge me. In their heads they are better than me in every way, with their double-digit IQs and such jobs as assistant manager of of the Country Kitchen.

I do learn that maybe I am finally growing up a little, as I approach 38. My aunt's alcoholic dumbfuck husband tried to start a political discussion, stating with disbelief that anyone can be a Democrat. I just got up and walked away. I knew the conversation would just end with me saying, "Yes Jerry, the world would be such a better place if it were run by uneducated, white-trash, fat drunks like you."

I walked away instead. Anyone who knows me is shocked by this development.

4:26pm - I drive around looking at places I used to know in Waterloo. I'm checking to see what is still there and if I even remember where they are. It is not some sort of nostalgic trip down memory lane like a bad Meatloaf video. Just curiosity.

5:32pm - Head over to my family's hotel and see my brother-in-law coming through the parking lot. He had been at the Lone Star having a beer hoping I would show up. I parked and we headed back over. Yet another of those theme restaurants with no soul, Lone Star is pretty much what you think it might be, a Texas-styled steak house. But it is Texan about as much as George Bush is a Texan.

I sit with my bro-in-law drinking beer until my sister calls him to say we are going to dinner. They are really my saving grace at these family gatherings, my sister and her husband. They are the only other ones who aren't off-the-deep-end Jesus freaks.

6:30pm - Dinner at Pizza Hut. Is there really anything I can say about that? Pizza Hut is the same wherever you go. Shitty.

10:00pm - I had planned to go to check out a music club this night, but I would have had to go all the way over to Cedar Falls to get to one. And after my attempt at a museum trip, I'm not sure I wanted to be adventurous again. Instead I went with my mother, and my brother-in-law to the local casino that has opened in town since the last time I was there. Yet another attempt to prop up the hopeless economy in Waterloo, the last one being the ridiculous and cruel greyhound racetrack that went bust after the novelty wore off.

Sat with my bro-in-law at the bar playing video poker, enduring one of the most god-awful cover bands ever while doing so. After losing twenty bucks each we just sat at a table drinking beer until my mother was done losing her money.

Sunday
10:00am - Shocked to find a Starbucks in Waterloo, I stop and grab a cup of coffee with soy milk on my way to the family's hotel.

11:00am - Hanging out at my grandmother's nursing home. Not a bad place, but I'd still rather die suddenly in my own bed than waste away at a home.

11:45am - Leave Waterloo

1:00pm - I get to Iowa City and find a vegan organic restaurant that I read about on Happy Cow called Red Avocado. I sat at an outside table listening to a saxophonist preforming for the brunch crowd. I had a breakfast burrito with sides of sesame potatoes and vegan chorizo, washed down by an organic micro brew.

I felt normal again.

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Vietnam Afterword - Communism? What Communism?

Overall the trip to Southeast Asia is one I would suggest for anyone from the West. To see these cultures that are so vastly different in so many ways from ours is a valuable, and dare I say life-changing, experience.

To see the people in this part of the world make their way in some incredibly hard circumstances and keep so much of their kindness and grace is something I can't imagine from your average American. I've seen New Yorkers act like it is the end of the world when their subway train is rerouted for the weekend. They really need to go see the people in Cambodia who are missing limbs that were blown off by landmines (many of them from the U.S.) deal with their lot in life with a smile and without the anger that they would be completely justified in having towards Americans.

I hope we get to back someday, especially after our still gestating son or daughter is old enough to appreciate this kind of experience. Hopefully these places won't be completely overrun by McDonald's and Starbucks by then.

With Vietnam specifically, I was struck by one thing. This was my first time in a country that called itself "communist." I wasn't really sure what I expected but I certainly didn't expect to see what basically amounts to an unfettered free market everywhere we went. It seems like almost everyone has their own business in this country, from the fishermen to the rice noodle factory to the sidewalk bars and restaurants to the souvenir sellers and cyclo drivers. Everybody is free to make a buck however they can.





Yes there are high taxes, at least if the tour guide on our boat, Khoa, is to be believed. But according to him they don't really get anything for it, beyond a military. There is no unemployment insurance, no social security, no free health care and no free higher education.

So the working class pays an extremely high tax rate that goes straight to the country's war machine, none of it goes to a social safety net, capitalism runs amok with no regulation and the powerful elite reap all the benefits of this system.

Communism my ass. Looks a lot more like a Karl Rove and George Bush wet dream.

But through it all the people seem to persevere. And despite the crazy traffic, the crowds and the fact that all Vietnamese men in restaurants suck their teeth incessantly after a meal, we really loved being there.


For those of you that actually made it through all of these posts in my travelogue...um... congratulations? Thanks for indulging me and I hope you didn't get too bored. More than that, I hope I even encouraged someone to want to go to Southeast Asia. It was worth every minute and every cent of my wife's money.

The Long Way Home

So this will probably be my shortest post of the SE Asia series (everyone together now, "YAY!"), because there was not much to remember in the drudgery of the long trip home.

We left our hotel at about 5:30pm local time in Hanoi. We had an 8:30pm flight from Hanoi to Bangkok that was about two hours or so and then a 3-ish hour layover in Bangkok before our 16-17 hour flight to JFK.

For some reason the flight from Bangkok to New York leaves at 1:05 in the morning and you get in at around 7:00am, and then you have to try to stay up the entire day to get back on your time schedule.

So it was getting to the airport, checking in, popping an Ativan, having a beer and flying to Bangkok to catch the non-stop to JFK.

The most annoying thing in the world about the new Bangkok airport is just so unbelievable that they even designed it this way. There are no services inside the security area. No gift shops, no bars, no restaurants. Not even any vending machines. A water fountain is the extent of amenities at Suvarnabhumi airport once you go through security. So we sat there for two hours with nothing to do and no alcohol to calm the nerves of this nervous flier.

A flight that long is really hard on the trip there, when your excitement has you going and is keeping your mood up, but is is excruciating for the trip back, when you are tired and road-weary.

This time it just seemed a lot longer, no matter how much Pong I played or Singha beers I drank.

After getting to JFK, where it was raining pretty bad, and catching a really long cab ride home (Lisa put her foot down and said no to the subway with all the bags we had) we walked into our apartment about 9:30am local time.

It was 28 hours after we had left the hotel in Hanoi. That was after having a whole day in Hanoi before we even left.

Needless to say I felt like warmed-over shit by the time we got home.

Next time we stop somewhere midway and spend the night.

One interesting thing about the flight, just like the trip there we flew east again. So we went over a completely different set of countries this time. Instead of Europe and the Middle East we went over China, Russia, Alaska and Canada before getting home. So we circled the globe on this trip.

That was kind of cool.

Day 17 - Goodbye Vietnam

OK, the home stretch. I'm going to finally finish this long-winded travelogue a little less than six months after returning from the trip. I realized what I got myself into shortly after starting, but since I had already begun I had to finish it. I'll be honest, the rest of these will be from memory only because after Halong Bay I didn't write anymore in the journal. I was pretty wiped.

So this epic story will finally end this week. In the end I'm glad I wrote it. I've had some nice notes from people who found the blog while searching for info about traveling to SE Asia and they mentioned they found a couple of things I wrote useful. I should have my final SE Asia post up by Wednesday, when I leave town for a family gathering in Iowa. Another trip which may become blog fodder if anything interesting happens. So probably not.

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November 25th - We woke up a little late today. This was our last day in Asia but our flight wasn't until later this night. We knew that the next day-and-a-half was going to be arduous and exhausting so we wanted to make sure to take it easy before we left.

We had bought a bunch more souvenirs the night before, about 10 conical hats to give to various people, including my four nieces, and a few of the red star flag t-shirts. But I also wanted to get some coffee to take home and Lisa wanted to buy some candy.

The nice ladies at the desk told us where we could find the coffee and candy districts and we went to get that taken care of so we could come back to pack up and check out. We found the coffee and I loaded up. I ended up buying, going back a second time after deciding I needed more, four full kilos of coffee. That is almost nine pounds for you Americans. I bought enough for me to keep two kilos and to give a half-kilo to my buddy Joe, who loves his coffee, and a quarter or half-kilo to various family members of both Lisa and me.



The beans we bought were the most popular variety in Vietnam, called chon, or weasel. It is called this because it is made from beans fed to a type of weasel and then collected from the animal's excrement. I think the roasting is done after the shitting process, but I'm not sure.

Oh yea, hey Joe, I meant to tell you that but it slipped my mind when I gave you the beans.

Then we bought something like two kilos of candy.



We took our loot back to the hotel and packed up our bags, as it was getting to be check-out time.

We went to the desk to check out and leave our bags to be stored. The first thing the manager said to us when we walked up was, "You are leaving us today" and took the time to tell us how much they enjoyed having us and lots of other nice compliments. I swear everyone at this hotel has a PhD in hospitality.

They took our bags and we went out to do a little more sightseeing before our car picked us up at 5:30 for the trip to the airport.

Over the last few days we had asked a couple people what the announcements coming form the loudspeakers twice a day were and we got somewhat vague answers. Both our tour guide in Halong Bay and the manager at the Hanoi Elegance 2 kind of brushed it off as "new regulations" being announced for each district. We didn't want to pry too much so we didn't really ask anymore after that. But we did take a picture of one of the speaker poles.



I mentioned in an earlier post that there were fruit sellers who would try to put their basket poles on tourists to take a picture and we had turned them away ever time up to this point. Well, today Lisa decided she wanted to go ahead and do it. She and her mom have a collection of cheesy tourists photos of that type (wearing sombreros on a mule in Mexico, putting a hand in the mouth of a fake alligator in Florida, etc) so she wanted one with the fruit baskets to give to her mom.

It wasn't long before we were offered. The woman tried to put it on me at first, but we told her we wanted one with Lisa and I asked her how much. The answer was, "no pay picture, just buy some fruit."

So we got the picture and she bagged up some bananas and a couple of other things for us. I figured it would be more expensive than when Lisa bought fruit on the street a few nights before, since this was a tourist trap kind of situation. But I allowed myself to get hosed. She said what I thought was 50,000d and I pulled out my money and gave her a 50,000 bill. But she took that and kept telling me it was more and I was going to give her another twenty or so but she saw the 100,000d bill in my hand and she grabbed it and then went on her way before I knew what happened.

We just paid about nine bucks for a few bananas and a couple rambutans.

You could tell that we were at the end of a long trip because Lisa and I started arguing over who's fault it was that we just got ripped off (it was obviously mine but I didn't want to admit it) and ragging at each other.

In the grand scheme of things it wasn't really that much money, and the picture turned out pretty good with just about the precise cheese factor you want out of these things.



It did take about a month before I wasn't pissed over being taken by the fruit lady.

We cooled down at the Ngoc Son Temple on Hoan Kiem Lake, and ate some of our expensive bananas.



We also hadn't taken a cyclo ride in Vietnam so we decided since it was our last day we should. We went to where there were a few of them hanging out and started to ask one or two of them how much to go to the Women's Museum. First they wanted to take us in two different cyclos but we wanted to ride in just one. Guy first said $5 each and I said 50,000d (about $3) for both. He wanted to negotiate from there but this poor guy had the misfortune of dealing with me right after I had been taken like a common tourist, so I was sticking to my guns.

He was super nice and we ended up giving him double what we agreed to anyway, which was pretty close to his opening price.



After a quick look around the Women's Museum, which turned out to be under major renovations and most of the exhibits were closed, we walked towards the history museum. We ended up not going in and just sitting in the cafe in the courtyard.



We made our way back to the Old Quarter to have dinner. We finally went to eat at the vegetarian restaurant across from our hotel, a place for Western tourist which is why we had not gone there yet. Lisa got Pho and I got Pineapple fried rice. While we were waiting for our food a huge motorcade drove up and stopped right outside. A bunch of dignitaries and press people got out and went into a building right next to our hotel, something called Memorial House that we had completely missed checking out. The motorcade was from the U.N.





Everyone was outside looking at the motorcade, the staff from our hotel noticed us across the street and started waving.

The motorcade took off after about 20 minutes and we got our food. A van pulled up and we saw Pete and Shelagh, the Aussies we met in Halong, get off. We got to talk to them for a few more minutes before they had to go find a hotel room for the night.

We finished our last meal in Vietnam and then headed across the street to grab our bags and jump in our car to the airport.





Next - The long journey home and then some thoughts on Vietnam

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Day 16 (Part 2) - Back In Hanoi For Water Puppets & Bia Hoi

Before we left for our tour of Halong Bay, on the morning we were waiting for our ride to show up, we asked one of the ladies at the desk of the Hanoi Elegance 2 if she could get us tickets to a performance at the Water Puppet Theatre for the day we returned. She said she would look into it and asked what performance times we wanted (she said we needed to have more than one choice in case it was sold out, there are several shows a night) then we were on our way to Halong Bay.

I had pretty much forgotten about that by the time we got back. When we walked in the front door to the hotel we were welcomed back warmly by the staff, asked how we like Halong and the same desk person we asked about the tickets told us she got them for the 6:30 show.

I'm telling you, if you ever get a chance to go to Hanoi I can't stress enough that you should stay at Hanoi Elegance 2. I really don't think I've ever had a better hotel experience.

So off to the Municipal Water Puppet Theatre we went.

It is really hard to explain the water puppet show except to state the obvious that it is puppets in water. Instead of above or below running the puppets, the puppeteers control them from behind a screen with the puppets on the end of long poles. It really is quite fascinating to see.

The show had no translation so it was only in Vietnamese. But with a program that described what each scene was about, mostly Vietnamese folklore and mythology, it was pretty riveting without knowing what anyone was saying. I didn't even come close to loving it as much as my wife did. We bought a DVD and a soundtrack CD.

We didn't get any pictures during the performance because, well, we hate people that do that. But we got a shot of the stage before the show started.



They also sell replicas of the water puppets at shops around the theatre so you can see what they look like.




No, the cat was not part of the show. Just a shop kitty posing perfectly for a picture.

After the show we had dinner once again at the Indian restaurant Tandoor which, if you are a vegetarian looking for a safe choice in Hanoi or just having a hankering for Indian food while traveling in Vietnam, for my money was a great place for some good grub.

After dinner I had one more thing I wanted to check out in Hanoi, this being our last night in town. I had read about a local brew called known as bia hoi that I wanted to try. Bia hoi supposedly translates as fresh beer and is a Pilsener brewed without preservatives and meant to be drank the same day it is made. I had to try some.

There are several places in the Old Quarter where they serve it. We went and found one intersection that had bia hoi bars on three of the corners. And by bar I mean a collection of little plastic tables and chairs on a sidewalk with a couple of kegs.

So we grabbed seats and I got a glass of bia hoi. As we sat there watching the street scene and the woman and her sons work the bar (they seemed to serve mixed drinks as well) we couldn't help but notice how this little operation wouldn't be legal at home in just about any way. Pretty much everything about it would be some sort of code violation; the woman dunked the glasses in a bucket next to her stool to clean them, her teenage sons were the servers and we were sitting on a public sidewalk.



I had a couple of them at a cost of 2000d, or about 13 cents a glass! The beer was pretty good and I could probably even drink Coors Light at 13 cents a glass. Well, that's not true. I doubt I could choke down Coors Light even if it was free.

There's a good chance I would have spent the whole night there in my younger, unmarried days.




Next - Last day in Vietnam and the long trek home

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Day 16 (Part 1) - Morning On Halong Bay

Got up early on November 24th for breakfast on the Halong Phoenix, the Chinese junk that was our base for the tour of Halong Bay. Once again our dining companions were Pete & Shelagh from Australia and Niko from Germany. After having our omelettes we packed up our things in the cabin we stayed in for the night, settled up the bar tab and threw some money in the tip box for the staff. We then went back up to the top deck for our relaxing cruise back toward Halong City. This morning was clearer than it was the day before so the views were even more stunning.

(as usual, click on any of the pictures for the larger image)



Our boat made a pass through a floating fishing village on the way. Like when we saw them in Cambodia, I just couldn't wrap my brain around what that life must be like.





Finally it was time to say goodbye to our newest friends. Pete & Shelagh and Niko were all on the three day-two night tour that included Cat Ba Island. So they disembarked onto a transport boat to go south to Cat Ba as we continued west to Halong City. We did the usual trading of emails with them, which we have yet to use but I plan to rectify that soon.

We waved at them as they pulled away then relaxed and took in the scenery as we meandered through Halong Bay. I was still very much in awe of the beauty of the place and was disappointed we didn't go with a longer tour. Oh well, next time we'll do Cat Ba Island.






We got back to Halong City for lunch at the big hotel there and sat with an older middle-aged couple from Malaysia that I had started talking to the day before on the Phoenix. They were there with a large number of family members, mostly their children and one grandmother, for just a weekend trip. A very sweet couple, but for the life of us we couldn't figure out the ethnic mix of their brood. The oldest daughter/step-daughter looked like she was part Hispanic and spoke with what sounded like an American accent. We didn't get to talk to them long enough to start asking those kinds of questions.

After lunch our ride back to Hanoi showed up. This time we were in a smaller van of the 13-seat variety. The Malaysian family and others rushed to the seats and Lisa and I were stuck with seats in different locations. Since she has the car sickness problem she volunteered to sit in the front next to the driver. I think she would have preferred to be sick over seeing the view from the front seat. It was the usual Vietnamese style of driving - zig-zagging through traffic, passing in the oncoming lane even at blind curves, last second lane switching as an oncoming car is bearing down - and I think her nerved were pretty shot afterwards. Add to that that the driver was actually drifting off as he drove like that. She kept talking to him as much as she could.

We were then delivered back to the splendid comfort of the Hanoi Elegance 2 Hotel where the congenial staff welcomed us back.

And they had tickets to a show waiting for us.

Next - Water puppets and bia hoi

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Day 15 (Part 2) - Caves & Kayaks In Halong Bay

We climbed aboard the Halong Phoenix Cruiser with all of the other passengers, set our bags on the deck and went into the dining room. We ended up sharing a table with the Aussie couple we had been talking to during the walk to the pier and the ride to the Phoenix. Their names were Pete and Shelagh, very nice people from the Melbourne area.

Our host made a bunch of announcements from the front of the dining room with a microphone. He started off by mentioning that it was a very special day today because "50 years ago today..." and Shelagh realized that he was announcing that it was her birthday, which he noticed after taking our passports. So after embarrassing her and getting people to sing happy birthday they started serving lunch. They asked if anyone didn't eat meat and Lisa and I were the only ones to raise our hands. After being asked about four times if we ate fish and answering no all four times they finally got that were were vegetarians.

The food was fantastic and plenty of it. There must have been nine courses. While Pete and Shelagh were eating calamari and cracking crab legs we were digging in to freshly roasted peanuts and french-fried potatoes. We got a feast every time we ate and the only thing not included in the tour price was the drinks. But those were only a buck each, both beer and sodas. That's the great thing about international travel in a lot of places, my beer doesn't cost any more than my wife's Diet Cokes.

After lunch they gave us the keys to our cabins and everyone went and threw their bags in the rooms. After settling in I grabbed another beer and we headed to the top deck. The Halong Phoenix got underway and we headed into the thick of Halong Bay. The ride was a jaw-dropping experience the whole way. The only way I've been able to describe it to people after I got back to the States was to say that it was like awe-inspiring nature of the Grand Canyon, multiplied by about a hundred.

Pictures don't even come close to doing justice to the size of the area and the incredible number of limestone islands rising out of the water, but we'll give it a shot.

(these look great if you click on them for the bigger image)






After cruising for a while we came to a small harbor where a bunch of other Chinese junks like ours and other types of tour boats were gathered. We climbed back aboard the transport boat and docked at one of the larger islands. We climbed what seemed to be about a thousand steps to get to the entrance of Hang Sung Sot, one of the largest known caves in Halong Bay. We were guided through three massive chambers of the cave, which was really difficult to capture in a wide photo due to the low light. So all we really have from the cave is one of me in probably my dorkiest picture (non-drunk category) ever.



And another of Lisa with one of the trash cans in the cave, which were so cute that she wanted to take one home.


When we came out the exit to the cave we were really high up on the island and we got a great panoramic view of the whole harbor below us with all the tour boats.




Then we made our way down another thousand or so stairs and ended up on the dock. We loaded on our transport boat and made a quick run over to another dock where those of us that wanted to go kayaking got off. The others went back to the Phoenix. Our guide stayed with us to lead our kayaking trip.

Just like everywhere else in Vietnam, there were people in Halong Bay trying to eke out a living off of selling stuff to tourists, like this snack boat.



If you look in the background of the picture above you'll see our table mates Pete and Shelagh, which turned out to be our only picture of them because just like all the other times we met cool people we never thought to get a picture with them.

We climbed on kayaks and followed our guide, getting a nice closer look at the limestone formations as well as making feeble attempts to get a picture of one of the low-flying hawks overhead.




We then came to a tunnel opening in one of the islands.





On the other side was this fantastic, quiet and peaceful cove. The only way in was through that tunnel so we were finally away from all of the large tour boats and their wakes.




The sun was setting on the way back and I was able to get a couple of shots.




When we got back to the Phoenix there were more passengers than there had been before. There was a group of tourists that were on a multi-day kayaking trip who had been staying on board already by the time we arrived and they were now done with their day of paddling around.

We hung out on the top deck again for a while before dinner and Lisa started talking to this German guy who was traveling by himself. His name was Niko and he was from Munich. Whenever we travel Lisa seems to get a chance to use her German. When dinnertime rolled around we invited Niko to our table.

We had another feast for dinner and our guide announced that there would be Karaoke in the dining room later. We made our way to the deck again.

We spent the rest of the night up on the deck talking to Niko, Pete, Shelagh and eventually the tour guide who was leading the kayaking group. Khoa was a really interesting cat, he had a fantastic grasp of English and he was really smart. When we talked about the U.S. he would just start throwing out a bunch of facts he knew about whichever place you were talking about. When I mentioned I lived in Seattle he knew what state that was in and the capital. Any time a U.S. city got mentioned he could name the state. During conversations about Australia he started naming the different kinds of plants and animals there were there, and I'm not talking about the simple ones like kangaroos and koalas.

We also got to pick his brain about Vietnam and life there. I won't go into too much of what we talked about right now, as I plan to do my thoughts about Vietnam when I finally wrap-up this travelogue epic.

We could hear some singing coming from off in the distance from one or more of the seemingly hundreds of tour boats anchored in the general vicinity of ours. Luckily, no one on our boat was interested so our karaoke machine never got used.

After a great night of conversation and drinks we hit the sack.





Next - Morning in Halong and then back to Hanoi

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