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.

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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