Fancy Pants

Greetings from the top of Indochina!

Last you heard from me, I was in Hanoi, waiting to board YET ANOTHER overnight bus to go to Sa Pa, Vietnam. 

[A small digression on overnight anythings in Vietnam... As a cheapass traveller, overnight transportation is about as good as it gets because a. you don't waste any precious days on your already too short visa and b. it acts as transportation and accommodation all in one and don't have to spend more money on a hotel. BUT, and that's a pretty big BUT, it sucks. A lot. The first overnight bus I took, I paid 25 extra cents for a toilet (who wouldn't?) which ended up as luggage overflow and was then locked for the entirety of the trip. When I climbed into my snug little bed, I learned that it was just that... snug. And little. About a foot too little.  As I drifted into a semi-sleep like state, I started to smell something horrible only to discover that something... and I still don't know what... was dripping all over my blanket and it smelled heinous. When I told the driver, he just shouted at me in Vietnamese, threw a pillow at me, and pointed at the aisle. Guess where I slept that night. 

The SECOND overnight, I thought... ah hell no, I'm not doing the bus again. So I opted for the slightly more expensive train. However, the lady behind the counter refused to sell me the sleeper bed on the train and I was forced to sit in a "reclining" chair. For a while, it was fine, apart from the two countryside men across from me that were drinking a questionable brown liquid from a Fanta bottle. Then around maybe 3 in the morning, we hit a bump or something, the train lurched and the air con vent snapped open, dumping me in air conditioner fluid. Not a drip or two, but a lovely waterfall came crashing onto my head. On the bright side, it happened to NO ONE else and everyone on the train who was awake had a good laugh at my expense. 

The THIRD overnight was inevitable, as I was racing to get to Laos so I didn't overstay my visa in Vietnam and everything about it was wonderful. The vents were on the side, the beds were long enough, and no one was snoring. I was finally relieved to be on a bus that wasn't going to suck when I noticed the empty bed next to me was crawling with cockroaches. 

And now. I'm in Laos. Trying to get to Huayxai. And I have just been informed the ONLY bus that goes there is overnight. Sigh...]

But anyway, SA PA! 

Sa Pa is in Northern Vietnam and it's home to a bunch of lovely hill tribes and gorgeous step rice fields that if you are interested in seeing, I suggest you google it. Because the entire time I was there, it rained. I couldn't see anything because the whole town was in a cloud. 

But I booked a trip up Fanzipan, the tallest point in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand, hoping it'd clear up. 

It didn't. 

The day with the best visibility. 

Oh, that dude is Alex. I met him in Sa Pa and he accompanied me on our hike up Fanzipan. Oh, and also, it sounds like Fancy Pants, hence, the title of this post.

Alex and I attempted to do things around Sa Pa, but the rain and subsequent mud foiled all our plans and we just played pool all day.

The climb up Sa Pa is a 2-3 day trek and even now as I write, I do not know what this mountain looks like. I was told you could see it from Sa Pa, but only on clear days. Even as we were climbing it, the peak was always in clouds and we didn't see it until we were ON it.

So, we hiked, ate lunch around 2200 m at camp, which included this delightful pup:

the camp

Then continued up to 2800 for some dinner and sleep. It was a pretty challenging climb. There were very few gradual inclines, instead we go up 200 meters, down 75, up another 200, and so on and so forth.

The porters had no problem at all though.

Stupid fat American hurry your ass up!

 About halfway up, the clouds broke for a glorious second!

A WORM TWICE THE SIZE OF MY FOOT

 And then, the summit!

Amazing view from the top

After all was said and done, we had to wait for the other members of our group to reach the summit before going back down. We waited. And waited. And waited. I had a bus to catch at 7 pm and I was guaranteed back at 4. As 3 o clock came and went, I decided to go back down with the porters. However hard the ascent was, descending with the porters was 1242353256309x harder. It took us 2 days to climb the damn thing and I raced down it in 3 hours. I arrived in Sa Pa a half hour before my bus and I was a sweaty smelly person. LUCKILY most bathrooms have a shower in them (even public ones!) and I managed to scrub 2 days of jungle off me. You are very welcome dude next to me on that bus.

Anyhow, like I said, I'm overnighting to Huayxai, Laos next and I hope to update y'all on my time here in Luang Prabang soon!

Till then, Yay White Sox!

"Sorry for being so Hanoi-ing last night"

- awesome punny drunk guy in my dorm 

Hanoi! It's where I'm at RIGHT NOW, which means for the first time since my trip started I'm not 2 weeks behind on posting. 

So Hanoi is pretty nice and chaotic... like a smaller Ho Chi Minh City. There are lots of lakes around, which I explored via bicycle. I even saw a water puppet show that was pretty entertaining (the art was created when the rice fields would flood. They made really elaborate puppets that float in the water and the scenes often depict daily life). There are also tons of war remnants - downed B52s, missiles, grenades, etc and this also happens to be the place of Ho Chi Minh's final resting. 

[sidenote: all my links generally take you to wikipedia because a. it's the first thing that pops up when I google things b. I like wikipedia and c. I'm too lazy and technologically out of date to doing some real good internet surfing so deal with it]

Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum. Uncle Ho wished to be cremated, but those less concerned with such matters erected this elaborate mausoleum to use him for propaganda purposes. Oh, also he isn't there right now. He's vacationing up in Russia, as he does every year at this time, for reasons that could not be articulated to me.  

Ho Chi Minh Museum

 Next to the mausoleum is the Ho Chi Minh Museum, which is the weirdest museum I've ever been to. The bottom floor has pictures and whatnot of Uncle Ho and an exhibit on Lao-Vietnam relations and looks the way you'd expect a historical museum to look. The top floor, where a giant statue of Ho Chi Minh greets you, is something else entirely. It would appear (few labels were in English, so I must guess here) that whoever designed the exhibit was had in interest more in modern art than in Ho Chi Minh. Included were informational tidbits presented like this:

Or this:

An explanation (if you can call it that) was next to this:

Weird, right? Overall, I learned virtually nothing of Ho Chi Minh's life or importance, but left rather stunned and confused. It was interesting, to say the least. There were also a few other fun surprises I found in the museum, too:

ahaha shat down. Yay maturity. 

I know this man well! This is Sukhbaatar, the famous Mongolian Hero who my province was named after.  This pin was a gift to Ho Chi Minh from the country of Mongolia. 

Anyway, to continue on my walking tour, I went over to a small lake in the middle of seemingly nowhere, where a B52 was shot down and nearby to a museum that was not quite constructed yet that will house EVEN MORE war remnants. What a mess we made.

B52 (or part of it at least)

Wreckage soon to be on display at the new museum

Hanoi

 After all that, I dipped off for a little cruise to take a vacation from travelling. I tell you, travelling is exhausting. I haven't stayed in any one place for longer than 4 days and I felt like I deserved a little relaxin. The 3 hour tour (just kidding, it was three days), took me to Ha Long Bay, a geological wonder in northeast Vietnam. The bay is made up of thousands of  "islands" of limestone, which most actually are less like islands and more like the peaks of mountains. Besides the stunning mountain range in the middle of the ocean, there are caves, national parks, and sandy beaches, to boot.

Day 1 included amazing food, a trip to the largest cave, some kayaking, and some socializing on the boat.

View from my room on the boat. Not too shabby. 

The boat, herself! There were 10 others on the boat from a variety of places: Holland, Spain, England, and Vietnam

The cave was a little goofy in that they had decorative lights everywhere, but it made for some pretty cool pictures. 

On our second day, we went to Cat Ba National Park, where there were some trekking options available. Most people said no, because it looked like rain, but me and a few other youngins, who haven't accepted our own mortality yet, thought they were wusses and went up anyhow. 

Oh dear god. 

The trail quickly disintegrated and became, more or less, straight rock climbing. No one could go in without a guide and our guide truly believed he was a monkey. As we teetered perilously on what he assured us was the trail, he grabbed vines and swung in front of us or, worse, jumped from rock to unstable rock in order to help us climb through the jungle. 

Very soon, it started to rain. Very soon after that, it started to pour. Very soon after that, we were drenched to bone and lost virtually all visibility. But did we turn around and go back? Oh heck no. Monkey Man wouldn't allow it. After 30 minutes of scaling slick wet boulders, we arrived at the top - which was glorious, as you can imagine. 

That weird hump on my side is my camera, which I was protecting with my life. 

 Remarkably, we survived the descent and upon waving goodbye and thanking our guide, he turned and disappeared into the Jungle.

Back on the boat, we cruised in and out of bays before docking at an AWESOME private island, complete with bungalows, buffets, kayaks, sunsets, and vicious monkeys.

Forgive me, but almost all the islands in the distance reminded me of the Ocean Temple in Majora's Mask. 

Ha! Look at that!

Pure Evil. 

Top of the Boat

In case you were interested in taking such lovely trip (which it was lovely), 3 days and 2 nights, with everything included but the beer, cost me $105. 

Good Morning Vietnam!*

*that should exhaust my pop culture references to Vietnam.... 

After spending a few days in the cool misty mountains, I came down Nha Trang, Hoi An, and Da Nang, where all intentions of sight-seeing were immediately foiled by this:  

In each of these cities, I walked around a bit at night and got to know the town, but the overwhelming majority of my time was spent being a beach bum. A very happy beach bum. 

 In Da Nang, I got the tip off that there was a resort in town that was looking for Westerners to swim in their pool.

Seriously.

Since I had the necessary qualifications, I sought out the resort with great eagerness and, alas, the rumor was true. As a new resort, they were having trouble appealing to the foreign crowd, so they happily invited foreigners in to show the rest of the world that this was, indeed, an international resort.

Infinity pool!

Hoi An by night

So, after completing an entire novel in 3 days, I decided I had spent too much time on the beach and headed North to Hue, which is just about smack dab in the middle of Vietnam. Hue offered quite a bit to see and do, including the old Imperial City and some pretty tranquil tombs. 

Incense drying in the sun

There was a museum in the Ciatdel that contained old war machines. If you can read it, the small white label in the upper right says "Rocket Launcher"

 And here's a preview of Hanoi:

Water Puppet Show!

Until next time!

That's all I have to say about that...

Hey all!

I'm 2 weeks into my Vietnam adventure and have made through about half the country! Which is good because my visa only last 30 days... 

I left Ben Tre for Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) where I spent one quick day doing what there is to do i.e. markets and museums. The market was like any other, but the museum... oh the museum. 

The War Remnants Museum was easily the most horrible thing I've seen on my trip. The Khmer Rouge killing sites were terribly depressing, of course, but there was that easy distance between that and me. Different time, different culture. 

In the War Remnants Museum someone asked me where I was from. I said Canada. 

The whole museum is dedicated to documenting everything horrible America ever did to Vietnam. The pictures are brutal, the stories far worse. Exhibit after exhibit left me feeling worse and worse. And the cherry on top was the Agent Orange section where they some affected fetuses on display coupled with hundreds of pictures of sufferers. 

The main problem with the museum is how they paint their innocence in the whole thing, which is barely true. No exhibit documented the start of the war or why America felt the need to act or any of the atrocities the Viet Cong were guilty of. But that aside, it didn't feel to me like that kind of brutality could ever be justified. No matter the flaws, no American with a heart could ever walk through that museum and not leave it feeling a little disappointed and angry at their country. 

My final little note on the museum is on the graciousness of the Vietnamese. It would seem to me that any Vietnamese visiting that museum would walk away fuming, just like I did. But, that is rarely the case. In fact, I have yet to have a negative encounter with any Vietnamese based on my nationality. Staying with Van's family, I had an opportunity to ask what the general feeling was towards Americans. She shrugged her shoulders and said, "what's done is done." I had another opportunity to ask the same question to a veteran, a Vietnamese man who fought in the American army. He shook his head and said that people are horrible, but mostly, people are good. 

To conclude my borderline political rant, after what that war did to Vietnam, regardless of blame, the strong-willedness and graciousness of the Vietnamese people have transformed this country into what I am lucky enough to be seeing today. 

Aaaaaand on that note: Da Lat!

After being thoroughly depressed in Ho Chi Minh City, I left one afternoon to Da Lat, the Central Highlands, the agriculture hub of Vietnam. 

Not to mention it was just an adorable town all around. Oh, and god bless this cool-climated oasis. I got off the bus and I got goosebumps! After sweating for 2 straight weeks, it was a welcome welcome chill. But anyway, Da Lat's economy is booming at the moment because of COFFEE. Everybody and their dogs are growing coffee and people are making bank from it. Some of the houses here are just so beautiful and big - which according to Huang, friend and guide, said were for the rich people. I asked how much the houses cost and he shook his head and said, "very very expensive. Maybe 60 or 80 thousand USD." What the what? 

On my travels one of my favorite things to do in each place is imagine myself living there. I may have found my place of retirement...

So my time was spent walkin around and such. I visited a very beautiful flower garden among other things:

I ended up staying with another womderfully kind Vietnamese family, who cooked me an amazing meal (this is why I choose to stay with families... home-cooked meals!)

Fish filets! My delight chef is incredibly pregnant at this point. When I asked how many months she was she said , "Nine," I said shoot she'd have the baby real soon! She goes, "Yes. Maybe tonight." That's one hard-workin prego lady!

The Fam

Then I dipped off to the countryside for a few days!

COFFEE! After Huang pointed out what coffee looked like, Da Lat appeared to me the way Magic Eye images suddenly appear in focus - every mountain was covered in beautiful coffee plants. 

Oh God, Weasel Coffee. This lucky weasel spends his life eating coffee beans and pooping them out. The beans ferment in his stomach creating a special taste that is apparently really really delicious and expensive. 

Behind the waterfall. What a powerful force. 

So many waterfalls!

Traditional Vietnamese Long House

Lovely

I ended the tour in Nha Trang, a wonderful beach town where I spent a few days before moving on. Maybe someday I'll show some pictures. Now, I'm getting on an overnight train to Hanoi, which will probably suck, but, hey! I'm travelling!

Later folks!

Oh, and it's been raining allllll day. I keep waiting for the day it starts raining and doesn't stop for 4 months.