I'll finally be able to wear cotton again!

Well I leave Bangkok and Southeast Asia for good tomorrow and I thought I would have more to say on the subject for some reason I'm just drawing a blank. I've left plenty of locales probably never to return again and to my surprise leaving an entire region feels no different. I'm heading to a place every bit as strange as anywhere I've been so far and I'm actually quite excited for this one. You see, I'm flying to Japan tomorrow. It's the land of robots, talking toilets, video games and wacky game shows... all things that I would say I'm pretty interested in. Leaving a region where you cant drink the water or flush the toilet paper too go to a country where not only do the toilets lift their lids for you but they greet you as well will definitely leave an impression. So, expect some random musings in the future but for now in lieu of some sort of SE Asia recap or wrap up, here's Darren's short list of Vietnamese road hazards:

1. School children walking to school on the highway
2. Giant trucks that use the whole road on blind corners
3. Motorbikes carrying 50+ Jackfruits (they are spikey and are about the same weight and size as a bowling ball)
4. Motorbikes carrying an entire family of 5 (and their groceries)
5. Motorbikes carrying livestock
6. Motorbikes carrying other motorbikes
7. Traffic lights (because obeying them can get you killed)
8. Wheel swallowing pot holes
9. Daily thunder storms
10. etc...

So far as I can tell, none of those were out of the ordinary either... Just another day on the roads of Vietnam.

I've got all of my pictures from Vietnam uploaded to the flickr account and organized by city. You can click the collection entitled "Vietnam" to see all the sets I've made and then just go from there. Well I'll end up writing more once I get to Japan but for now, it's so long Southeast Asia, hello temperate climate (thank god!).

"We keep on"

It wasn't my first choice of activities for the next four days but after plenty of goading, I was finally convinced. I'd been traveling with two Irishmen named Pat and Paul for the last couple weeks and their visas were running out soon. Paul, in particular, needed to be out of the country within a week and we were still a ways from Saigon. The opportunity came up to spend the next four days riding motorbikes from Dalat to Saigon and this kind of adventure seemed to be the perfect way to spend their last days in Vietnam.

Huddled around a table in Dalat, Pat, Paul and I discussed the terms of the trip with Mr. Phuc. Mr. Phuc was part of a group named the Easy Riders... a rag tag group of motorbike guides who organized around 15 years ago under a common banner. They came highly recommended from pretty much everyone and though their prices were steep, their standard of service reflected this, allegedly. Sitting around that table discussing things, we had no idea that we were going to see first hand what differentiates the Easy Riders from everyone else.

Terms agreed on, contracts signed and bikes delivered, we left Dalat at 8:30AM on day 1. Mr Phuc in front then Pat, Paul and myself heading up the rear, we tore our way through the hills outside of that scenic mountain town taking in some incredible views and sights along the way. The trip started out great and before lunch it was clear that the next few days had a lot in store.

Lunch was spent eating “Vietnam food at Vietnam prices” as Mr. Phuc liked to say and he continued to tell us that the next section of road would test our riding skills. It seemed like hyperbole and just another way of saying that it was steep and curvy (more so than before anyways) but we kept that in mind. We left the roadside eatery in the same order as earlier and after heading down the road a bit, I saw Pat and his bike cut clear across his lane to the outside of the curve we were on.

I had a perfect view of the whole thing from the back. Cornering through a tight left turn, Pat suddenly shot to the outside and straight into a concrete pillar. There weren't guardrails out there but there were evenly spaced waist high pillars made of concrete on the tighter corners. After colliding with one of these, both bike and rider did a front flip (they separated in mid-air) and landed down the steep embankment. Paul and I stopped suddenly and I motioned for him to head down the road and catch up wth Mr. Phuc (I never really learned his first name). I pulled up and assessed the damage.

There were pieces of the bike's fairing strewn about the road and Pat was lying face up in a bush with his bike about 10 feet away. Rushing over to pull him out, I asked if he was ok and to my surprise he said that he was. Still skeptical, I reached out to give him a hand but he stood up just fine and walked up the hill to the road. Shaking the dirt off, he assessed the damage and concluded that, much to our collective amazement, there was none. The bike on the other hand did not make out so well.

It took all 4 of us to pull that bike out and when we finally got it upright, it was clear that it took the brunt of the damage. The fairing was in pieces, the handlebars bent, break pedal bent and front break lines hung free. It wouldn't start and it obviously needed some work. Mr. Phuc coasted the bike to a mechanic followed by me to bring him back on my bike. The mechanic couldn't get the bike running and the two of us road back to the rest of the group to assess our options.

When we got there, I got a better explanation of what happened. Pat had looped the shoulder straps of his day pack over the handlebars. Turning sharply to the left, sent the pack to the outside and weighted down the handlebars causing him to careen to the right. Regardless, we were faced with one less bike and a decision to make. Pat decided not to scrap the trip and that he would ride on the back of Mr. Phuc's bike for the rest of it. We were going to make it to Saigon by two wheels as long as we were all still in one piece.

What a day so far it had been and it was just the beginning of this adventure. After redistributing all the gear, it appeared that we were ready to get moving again after sitting at that roadside for a couple hours.


Mr. Phuc turned to the 3 of us and, like he concluded every stop along the whole trip, said “we keep on.”
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I've uploaded plenty of pictures from the whole trip on my Flickr account and if anyone is interested, I'll make another post about the rest of it. I'm writing this from Mui Ne and I fly out of Vietnam in just 3 days. Oh and after all that, the total cost for the repair that Pat had to pay was $50.

What a Long Strange Trip It's Been

Well the 3 month anniversary of my leaving was just yesterday and I think this is an appropriate time for some sort of retrospective. Three months may seem like a long time but really, it seems like I stepped off that airplane in Bangkok yesterday. I've been through all sorts of crazy experiences, things that I could have never imagined before leaving, especially not from behind a desk in DC. Many of the roads have been long and the destinations not always worth it but I've been really surprised how far a healthy sense of adventure can bring a person. Three months... wow, has it really been that long?

I stepped off that plane in February with an ounce of excitement and a pound of trepidation. Landing in a foreign place at 2am without any idea of where to stay and just a vague idea of a part of town was a real trial by fire. But, fear quickly turned to anticipation and like I've said before, the uncertainty of it all is a real catalyst for excitement.

So what all have I really done in the last 3 months? Here're a few things:

• Rode a motorbike out 70km to some crazy cave north of Chiang Mai, only to return to the city in the middle of rush hour.


• Rock climbed out on cliffs above the Andaman Sea until I got tired and then just jumped in the ocean near Railey Beach, Thailand.


• Had an absolute blast bartending in Siem Reap, Cambdia. Things can be just as much fun on that side of the bar for sure.


• Made a split second decision to accept an invitation to spend the night with a Cambodian I met on a bus. I bathed in the Mekong, ate cow stomach and drank with her entire family.


• Rode in a minivan into northeastern Cambodia that was completely full. There wasn't even room for my day pack behind the back seat but a man we picked up on the side of the road was able to fit 4 live chickens back there. They made so much noise as we rode down that bumpy dusty road.


• Lounged in a hammock at my bungalow on Don Dhet in southern Laos where there is only electricity between the hours of 6-10PM. There was no doubt that all the chickens running around were the same that ended up in your dinner.


• Rode 50ft rope swings in Laos where the closest hospital was at least 3 days away.


• Played a game of beach soccer with a bunch of Vietnamese kids that needed an extra player in Nha Trang.

It's crazy to think about how much has really happened in the last 3 months but at the same time I feel like I just left. Some of the longest days of my life have been on miserably hot and long bus rides but at the same time one can wonder where the day went while drinking a beer in an inner tube on the Nam Song river. The days are usually long but the months are short it seems.

I may have been gone for awhile but it still takes some pretty unique situations to bring everything into perspective and remind me of how special all of this really is. I took an overnight bus yesterday which was supposed to have air con but like most times it did not (or the driver just didn't feel like turning it on). As I sat there at 11 at night drenched in sweat and listening to my ipod while trying to nod off to sleep, a song came on randomly that I used to hear a lot while working late nights in DC. Music can really bring you back to situations that you may associate with songs and this particular one just reminds me immensely of sitting at my desk at 8pm doing telecom research. Haha, sitting on that bus on the way to Nha Trang, it seemed really hard to imagine a situation that was farther removed from all that song represented. And nothing makes me happier than knowing that I just as easily could have been sitting at a desk but instead I was on my way to one of the best beaches in Vietnam.

Well this is getting long and if you cant already tell, I could talk about this for hours. My trip is officially one quarter over and so much has happened, I could go home happy tomorrow. But I'm not, and there is plenty of open road ahead of me. I'm spending a few days here in Nha Trang before hitting the rest of the sights on the way to Saigon where I'll catch a flight to Bangkok and then another one on to Tokyo.

Lastly, you may have noticed that I added a small advertisement on the right side of this page. If the ad seems helpful, go ahead and click it... It may just help me travel for a little longer!

Vietnam: The Land of Smiles? Not Really.

First impressions being what they are, Vietnam has not made a good one. The people are very confrontational and Hanoi is littered in scams and copycat businesses. More on all this in a second...

Though they have some very fundamental differences, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos' similarities are much more striking. The countries are in varying states of disrepair but by and large the people operate on the same wavelength and share a similar amiable disposition. Though I had a hunch, I had no idea how different Vietnam was from its neighbors to the west.

This country's history is filled with war and conflict and its people show it. On my first day here I was ejected from a street side eatery for deciding not buy something after hearing the price and had a woman refuse to sell me an ice cream bar because even though I wanted chocolate (which was 3000D), apparently, I pointed at coffee which looked exactly the same but cost 1000D more. After the confusion was settled, she still wouldn't sell it to me and I had to leave ice cream-less. Some people seem to be exceptionally nice and helpful while others are just as rude so I'm still keeping an open mind and hoping that my first impressions are wrong.

The scams here are also really intense and one always has to be on top of things. I already saw one girl perish and this story is just too good not to tell. Knowing the cab from the airport to central Hanoi was going to be expensive, I decided to try to recruit some people to split it with me while I was on the plane. The first person in on this venture was the Canadian girl who got swallowed by Hanoi fresh off the flight.

After following some guy across the airport parking lot and over a highway to a cab that had just pulled up, we were safely on our way to Hanoi for less than it would have cost if the cab had picked us up from the terminal. I had read that for any business with a good reputation, there are countless establishments with identical names trying to capitalize off the success and that finding the one you want can be difficult. The Canadian girl told the cab driver that she wanted to go to a place called "The Hanoi Backpacker's Hostel" and he acted like he knew exactly what was going on. For the record, this place is one of the most popular hostels in town and every cab driver knows of it. In any event, he stopped a place called "Backpackers Hotel" which was clearly not the right place but he and the man that rushed out from the door tried to convince her otherwise. I made sure that she knew it wasn't the right spot but the Old Quarter is small and she should be able to walk to it without a problem. After asking her if she had a map and if she would be alright, we made plans to meet 2 hours later at the backpacker's hostel for a beer and the cab driver took me to my destination (although not really, he dropped me off about 2km away telling me it was just around the corner and trying to screw me out of an extra $2). I showed up right on time but she was no where to be found. The staff at the hostel hadn't seen her either and it was pretty clear that she never made it. Poor girl got owned by Hanoi on her first night.

My hotel wasn't exactly on the up and up either. Even though I made a reservation and paid a deposit through a hostel booking website for a dorm, they still didn't reserve it and had none available for me when I got there. After refusing to pay $15 (instead of 5) for a room to myself, they offered the room to me for the same price as the dorm which was so uncontrollably awesome that my head almost exploded. No really, after traveling in this region for almost 3 months, never in a million years would I have expected that offer. Things did turn sour though as soon as I moved into the dorm though. After begging them to turn the air conditioning on in accordance with their advertisement and description of the room, they finally relented with big smiles explaining that their number one priority is to make the customer happy (shoulda been my first tip off). Everything worked great till about 2:30am when I woke up in an oven because they decided to turn it off (presumably to save a buck on the power bill). After waking up completely soaked in sweat and pleading with the most uninterested night manager in history (who, by the way, elevates douchery to new heights), I was left with nothing else to do but just wait it out. That really sucked because I was beginning to get pretty sick and I had to leave early in the morning for an overnight boat trip in Halong Bay but hey, I was the one who babbled on and on about the hardship involved in travel right?

I'm not really bitter about it anymore but it is still nice to rant when someone finally succeeds in screwing you over after narrowly avoiding so much other chicanery (no idea where that word came from... just popped into my head the other day and after looking it up, it seemed to be a perfect fit). But anyways...

All of this considered, there is still a lot of really impressive scenery here and though the jury is still out on the people, I have barely left Hanoi so it is way to early to make any judgments. This is getting pretty long and I still have many thoughts about Vietnam but those will come later after I have been here awhile. I leave Hanoi tomorrow night for a town up in the mountains called Sapa with the sole purpose of summiting Mt. Fansipan in one day even though most people say I can't. If nothing else, it should make a good story.