Pho Heaven

We're walking through one of the countless markets one finds throughout SE Asia. To Western eyes (and noses), these are not places that appear sanitary or familiar. A thousand contrasting sights and smells confront your senses; sometimes drawing you in, sometimes repulsing you. There tends to be lots of produce and food stalls at places likes these, but it's always unclear what one would actually be served to you and if it would indeed be a wise decision to eat it. In fact, most health literature you find dissuades you from eating “street food.” But seriously folks, half the fun of travelling to places is getting to sample the local cuise and I'm willing to risk a bit in search of a culinary gem. Plus we were hungry.

I usually employ two stategies when trying to find a delicious food stall that won't make me sick:

1. Look for the places that are busy. If stuff has been sitting around it's more likely to be bad. Plus, if the locals aren't eating there, chances are I shouldn't either.

2. Order something that comes out hot and steaming. All the better to to kill the little nasty invisible things.

So, Peter and I employed these two strategies and sat ourselves down at a little soup stall in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. The smiling lady there didn't speak any English, we didn't spead any Vietnamese, so we pointed.

We were rewareded with a big steaming bowl of soup. Next to our soup bowl she placed another big bowl with a variety of green, leafy vegetables. Some looked kind of like lettuce, one I'm pretty sure was mint. We stared to throw them in whole, but the nice lady chucked at us and showed us how to pull off the leaves and break the big stems into smaller portions. Also, (and this was key for me) there was an abundance of small, yellow, red and orange peppers I could put in my soup.

Fragrant steam pourning onto our foreheads, we dug in wholeheartedly. And oh man, it was SO good! The nice Vietnamese lady poured more hot broth onto our cornicopia of Goodess. I kept adding peppers. My nose was running and I was sweating like a madman and enjoying every minute of it. At one point, I was slurping a noodle with such abandon that it flung around and hit me right in the eyeball. Mind you, this was a hot and VERY spicy noodle that just wrapped itself around my eye. The Vietnamese lady saw all this, including me blinded groping for a napkin to wipe my sweaty, tearing up face. With some amusement, she kidly offered me a box of napkins.

P.S. We didn't get sick.

Motorbike Madness

The first morning in Saigon, Vietnam I step out from our hostel onto a small, quiet back alley. I walk 30 yards down to the main road and am bowled over by the (seemingly) utter chaos of the place. The street scene is a vibrant, pulsing, chaotic mixture of people, animals, carts, cars, busses and motorbikes. But most of all motorbikes.

It's hard to put into words the just how chaotic the scene is when it comes to motorbikes in Saigon. I'm trying to come up with something to compare it to, but it's hard to do.

Here's some craziness involving motorbikes:

- Live and squeeling pig, covered by cloth, strapped to back of motor bike.

- Hundreds of Vietnamese couples, sitting on back of motorbikes, hanging out/making out

-Whole families on motorbikes: mom dad and two kids

-Huge backups of motorbikes build as the traffic lights are red. And then, at the green light, they all pulse forward in something akin to a bike race but behaving more like a school of fish as they dodge pedestrians and wind around cars.

Motorbikes and a Night on the Boat

Our subsequent day on Cat Ba Ryan and I decided to rent some scooters and tour the island. It's not that big and for $5 we got ourselves some hogs to see the parts of the island we could. After a quick tutorial on the bikes by the renters we took off and headed for the route our hotel manager recommended for us. I would never ride these bikes in a city but on the island the only vehicles are other scooters and a couple minibus taxis.

The scooters were a great way to see the island and appreciate the parts of it less touched by the constant traffic of tourists. We went out to the north west corner of the island and along the way we rode the contours of the landscape. There were many beautiful valleys, beaches, and rocks waiting to be climbed by Dan Urban. Ryan and I kept a look out for potential rock climbs that Dan could have done where the rocks overhang the water. This was pretty much everywhere we looked, but Dan decided to stay home so we're going to torture him with stories and visions of what could have been.

Anyways, the scenery truly is undescribable so we'll post the pictures. I must say it was an amazing way to see the country side, but for my Mom's sake know that I was driving extremely carefully.

Later we did end up getting picked up for our night on the boat. So luckily and unfortunately at the same time we left Cat Ba island and headed for the boat. We enjoyed a tiny dinner on the boat and some great company with people from Norway, Sweden, France, Australia, Belgium, Canada, and Vietnam once again. We ended up sitting on the top of the boat telling the worst jokes we'd ever heard and just plain hanging out with new acquaintences. It was a nice night.

Halong Bay and Cat Ba Island

We have now made it from ho Chi minh to Hue to halong Bay up in Hanoi. Hue was relatively uneventful as we ate at the same restaurant almost every meal and took an over night bus the day after we arrived in Hue for Hanoi. The one awesome thing we did was jump on the back of a motor bike and see the forbidden city and a couple tombs that dated back to around the American Civil War. I honestly thought things would be a bit more ancient than that but it was nonetheless amazing. We'll put up some photos in a bit.

But after our overnight trip to Hanoi we went striaght to a bus for Hanlong Bay. After another 3 and a half hour trip we arrived on our boat for what we planned on being a 3 day and two night adventure. We floated through the bay and the seemingly infinite rock island peaks rising straight out of the ocean to our first night's stay on Cat Ba Island. The island was awesome! We ate with our friends we met on the overnight bus ride and called it a day.

The next day started off here on Cat Ba Island in the Halong Bay of Vietnam with a “trek” up a mountain to get a view of the island itself and its seemingly endless expanse of steep peaks stretching far into the horizon. The hike took about 2 hours and we got some amazing video and panorama pictures from the two peaks we hiked to. This is one of those places that rival Yosemite for the sheer beauty of creation. It seems like this must have been one of God's special projects to amaze humanity with, and he pulled off a masterpiece. The funny thing is I never heard of Halong Bay until we researched the guide book on Vietnam, so I can't wait to see what the rest of SE Asia has on hold for us.

At the end of our hike a little puppy sat at our feet as we drank Fanta and talked about the hike with the other travelers. The dog was quite polite until I urged it to nibble on my finger, and after a couple minutes of playing with it like that, it wanted to chew on everything. It was fun for a little while, and then we couldn't stand it any more. I guess I should be a better influence on the maturing puppies on Vietnam, but it sure was fun watching it bite the Australian friend of ours. She shook a water bottle at it and tried to tell it “no” in English. Somehow I just don't think a Vietnamese dog speaks two languages: Vietnamese and English. The dog obvisouly kept chewing in disregard for the Australian's command; it was quite funny.

After we headed for a bite to eat at one of the local eateries and we enjoyed a “proper” breakfast as the English love to say. I spent a Vietnamese fortune for my 5 diffferent dishes, but in the US it was a steal at $5 or so. That's a serious plus about traveling to Vietnam- cheap.

Then we headed to Cat ba Beach 2, literally that was the name of the beach. I can't imagine Los Angeles naming their beaches that way, but on an island I guess there are few enough beaches just to number like this for a name. Once we got to the beach this trip instantly felt like a vacation for once instead of a busy city or constant travel. Not that I didn't like the previous week, but this beach was a place to really slow down and think about where we were. Holy crap! We're in the middle of Vietnam in a bay covered with rock spires everywhere you look. The beach was lined with palm tree palapas, hammocks, and a few bungalows for a night's stay for 16 USD without even beginning to bargain with the owners. It's a pretty good deal. We went there with our new travel group which now consisted of Ryan, myself, two Australian girls, and now two British guys. We swam around a bit and traded stories of our travels on the black rocks nestled in the sand on the beach. It was a pretty awesome way to spend the afternoon.

Around 2 pm we knew we had to get back into town to catch our bus for the boat that night, so we walked back into town to make sure we made the bus. Around 3:30, 30 minutes after our pick up time, we decided to have the hotel owner phone the travel company about our boat ride. Well, it turns out that they plain forgot to pick us up and that we were going to stay another night here. I can definitely think of worse places to be delivered that news. So we got a room for ten bucks and put our stuff down- that's only $5 a night for me by the way.

We sat down on our balcony overlooking the bay and noticed some local kids playing soccer in the concrete lot below us, so we decided to go join them. The kids were probably in high school so we joined in on their game, and they basically destroyed us. These guys were regular Pele's flying around the field. Now, Emilee and Jenna are good at soccer but I've never been so mesmerized and confused as I tried to figure out what these guys were going to do every time they got the ball. Their feet whirled around the ball as if they were going to go this way or that and there was no telling when they were actually going to go either way. So I basically tripped over myself trying to get the ball from them; othrewise they would have simply walked me backward into my own goal as I stared at their feet. Just so you know, even the Brits thought these guys were good. We sweated out a couple hours playing with them and then called it a night.

Ryan and I went back up to the balcony and enjoyed some music on the computer with a couple Vietnamese beers while talking about life and then we went down to meet eveyone for dinner. We met up with some more people from Australia and one from Sweden and we went for some seafood.

Along the way on the street we ended up walking into a group of people skipping rope and they invited us to try. So we all took our turns looking like fools trying to jump around. It was hilarious. I thought for some reason that it was going to be simple. At least that's how I remember it from PE in 4th grade, but I think I've grown a bit since then. Now I get in the way of the rope much more easily.

It took me three tries to get in there and jump more than 3 times, and being a professional athlete I was a bit bummed. But I got back in there the next time and totally dominated! I must have jumped ten times before screwing up but it was a huge victory for me over here in Vietnam. We all got in there and at one point 4 of us were jumping around with the Vietnamese people cheering for us. It was awesome. One of our realizations so far has been that ahletic activity is truly one of the only international languages left. You can go anywhere in the world and jump rope or play soccer and you do not need to verbally communicate at all to do so.

I guess there are a lot of similarities between sport and language if you think about it. Ryan pointed out that sports have no meaning except the ones we give them. Think about it; we create these sports out of nothing at some point or another and then they grown into world wide crazes, like the Soccer World Cup, but appart from people creating it and making all these rules, we'd just be kicking around a ball. But now with all the history and tradition it means so much more. In the same way the noises we make with our mouths mean nothing apart from the cultures than know which sounds correspond to actual objects or ideas. Both are created out of nothing by humanity and both have rich histories and traditions that give meaning to silly games or sounds from the mouth. And sports are universal. Everyone knows soccer but not everyone verbally speaks the same language. How amazing on sports! They're basically a hold over from before Babel we decided.

After our sweaty soccer match and a couple beers we went to eat and had some seafood hot pot stuff. It was really good as this island is known for its seafood, and it only cost me $4. What a deal! Then we grabbed a couple beers with our new found friends plus a couple. I talked to a people from Sweden, Norway, France, Belgium, Australia, England, Chile, and Canda all night. It was pretty cool. Ryan and I really enjoyed ourselves as we sat on the empty Vietnamese street side with our international friends talking about whatever popped up. We were enjoying each other's company and enjoying the drinks. It was decidedly different than a lot of the drinking that goes on in the USA where people drink to loose control of themselves so they can be someone else with no inhibitions for a night. Here we merely enjoyed some time together with other people from all over the world telling stories in Vietnam. Maybe people in the States could use a dose of this way of “going out” for a night.

Now we're going to sleep getting ready for a day at the beaches again and maybe a tour of the island before we hopefully get picked up for our next night on the boat.

Peace,
Peter

Earlt Morning Commute on The Star Ferry, Hong Kong

These ferries cost about 30 cents for a gorgeous 10 min ride between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island. What a way to go to work!

Day 4 cont'd

Day 4 cont'd

lost Ryan's photos
broke my UV filter on camera lens
booked a flight for the wrong day, cut short planned mekong river trip
Finally got into city for great food
Ryan passed out
I ate food next to hotel

The rest of day four went something like this...

I tried to upload some of Ryan's photos for the blog and proceeded to delete them all from his memory card... whoops. I sure felt like an idiot, but after you delete photos they don't miraculously come back so I tried to forget that I just deleted many, many good memories and a whole bunch of Ryan's creative masterpeices. Water under the bridge I guess.

But karma caught up and evened things out when Ryan dropped my digital camera in the airport and when we later opened the camera case all we heard was broken glass. We were pretty dang sure that the SLR's lense was shattered. Luckily it turned out that only the UV filter and the lense was merely scratched. That's much better news than knowing you just busted a couple hundred dollar camera lens. So at this point, Ryan and I are even.

Not only all this, but later we went to schedule a tour up the Mekong River Delta and we planned on a two nighter. No problems there; it sounded like another Discovery Channel type of experience especially when the stewardess in our flight over to Hong Kong told us the Mekong was a “must see.” We were excited and decided to continue our trip planning by booking a flight from Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City to Hue, Vietnam. So we went to the Vietnam Airlines counter and booked our flight for what we thought was the appropriate day. We paid for it and left the office to go eat. On our way to the restaurant we realized we had booked it for the wrong day, a day too early. It was going to be quite hard to fly out of Ho Chi Minh City when we were literally “up the creek,” but in this case the creek was the Mekong River Delta in Vietnam. So we cancelled one day on our river delta trip and washed our hands of this whole day of planning. We needed to eat.

Ryan had read about a highly recommended restaurant set up in the city where there were many different kitchens with independent local cooks who all served the same tables. You could basically pick from some of the best dishes in Saigon. After a disaster of a day like this one, the possibility of a great meal sounded amazing.

Of course things didn't go quite as smoothly as we planned. We followed Ryan's Lonely Planet guide book map to the finest detail, yet we still didn't find this Vietnamese food court. So we wandered around, double checked the map, and as chance would have it, wandered through a lawyer's office. You wouldn't know it was a lawyer's office, but apparently a hall way with desks to one side and a walk way on the other constitutes a law office in Vietnam. A friendly lawyer asked us if we needed help in some broken english and we weren't too proud to confess that we were completely lost. He pointed us somewhere that didn't make much sense to us, but we followed his hand gesture directions and walked out the office to our right. As we were leaving, he reassured us that he was a lawyer as if that automatically meant he always gave good directions and we walked out in faith that this man had translated our conversation into actual correct direction. And they were. Once we got in there the food was amazing. We had some of the best food I've ever eaten; either because the previous parts of the day were such a disaster or because the food was actually that good. I think it was the latter. We ate the fresh hand made and do it your self dishes until the plates were spotless and our bellies full to capacity. What an awesome way to redeem the day.

Then we went and played some basketball with the local kids, and I mean kids. Ryan and I, both 26 and 29, whooped up on some 12 or 13 year olds. We did lose one game, which probably means it was my fault, because Ryan played basketball in high school, but we won't talk about that. Ryan and I had a girl on our team and after we lost the first one decided we needed the girl to score against these boys who obviously didn't want the girl to score on them. So we rebounded the heck out of the game and kept passing the ball out to our teammate until she finally banked one in. We won on the next shot and the boys got scored on by a girl.

Then we went home and I started to log onto the computer when I found out that Ryan's pictures had not been lost. That was a relief. Now I suppose I'm up one point on Ryan since he didn't go on to discover that my UV lens had been miraculously unshattered. I'm still waiting for karma to kick in there.

Day 4

day 4

swim
workout
internet
vietnamese visa
plane ticket
ho chi minh city. We're here in a hostel and it's late

After my 13 hours of sleep I woke up and jumped in the pool- in the Speedo/TYR brief of course. It was about a 35 meter straight shot but it was narrow and the edges of the pool were curved. Plus, there were three other people swimming laps in the pool. I jumped in and swam at a liesurely pace, but seeing as how the others were very recreational swimmers I weaved my way around them at twice their speed. At one point one of them stopped me and said in broken English, “you're a good swimmer. I am mjust trying to stay behing you.” I just laughed and told him I did this sort of think a lot, and I mean a lot. Although a lot less as of late.

After the pool wake up, me and Ryan had to find a way to get to Vietnam since the Bangkok route had been shut down due to protests in the airport. The airport was completely shut down and so we bought tickets to Ho Chi Minh City and found a way to get a visa for the same day departure. We had to go to the Vietnamese Consul and pay $40 USD but it was worth it.

We hopped on our plane and are now in Ho Chi Minh city, also known as Saigon. We'll fill you in later on how the day goes.

It's been an epic trip so far.

Day 3

day 3

markets
Temple Fire
hostel to hotel
mmmm... grand hyatt for free
sleeping from 5pm to 6am

The next day we woke up and knew we had to get out of the hostel by noon. We showered quickly in the very economical bathroom/shower room. Basically there is one 4 foot by 6 foot room for taking a dump and for showering. You just close the toilet and turn on the faucet directly above the toilet to take advantage of the multi use facility as you get clean in the same place where some of the most dirty deeds are done. I guess that's some sort of ying and yang balance for you.

We headed out to a Taoist Temple that morning and checked out the architecture and the main prayer room as we tried our best to keep the smoke out our eyes. I guess the thing to do here is somewhat like the candles that people light in Catholic churches. Except that in the Taoist Temple they light packs of wooden sticks and walk around with the smoke filling the air. It was kind of cool to see until your eyes started watering and your nose was full of smoke. This particular temple was in honor of a sheperd that had been known to heal people a long time ago. He died and when he came back he had healing powers that everyone pursued him for. Sounds like another story I know. Ryan and I wondered whether the people actually thought this sheperd historically existed or whether is was a tradition and less of a historical thing like Christians believe the historical Jesus did. We never found out for sure.

We came back to the hostel and packed our crap up and I got a quick skype call in to my family back in Atlanta. Then we jumped over to the benefits of Ryan's reward points and plopped ourselves down in the Grand Hyatt- holy smokes, no multi-use toilet showers here! It was probably the nicest hotel I've ever been in. The hostess showed us to our room and opened our curtains for us if that's any indication.

I basically went to sleep at that point because I was dead. It was around 5pm. Ryan went out to see the Peak view that I'd done earlier and when he came back he also crashed. I logged some serious hours as Kicker would say and woke up at 6 am the next day. I needed it.