Note: I was feeling a bit under the weather and apologize for the shoddiness of the video and my mispronunciation of every single language.
India, Japan, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia. Four months. That's all I was able to take to hit Asia. And it was nowhere near enough time to do even one of those countries properly. But I am very thankful to have had the opportunity to sample sometimes just a couple of days of each land and culture. There were some very beautiful and perfect days during the Asia trip as well as many rough and completely miserable moments.
The amazing: Gazing at the Taj Mahal, zooming through the night amongst the karsts of Guilin, walking through the neon blazed streets of Shanghai, reaching the summit of Mt. Fuji, sliding through the rice terraces of Sapa, gliding along with a whale shark in Ko Tao, waking up to the sight of Angkor Wat at sunrise, racing around the backroads of Pai...
The not so good: Broken nose and teeth in the Muay Thai ring, misery on the beach in Ko Phangan, food poisoning at Cat Ba, saying goodbye...
The trip wouldn't have been as fruitful and pleasant as it was without the support from friends and family around the world. You helped me through those rough days and made the great ones even greater. Special thanks to all of you who've contributed through FeedTony.com or have helped me out while I've been in your towns and homes:
Mom, Charley, Walt, Binh, Caroline, Ankush, Natasha, Eric, Harai, Madeli, the Raikers, Phil, Rich, Pin, Azad, Ana & Bao, Scott, Shilpa, Seema, Greg, Laura, Ben, Erica & Anton, Kvit, My L., Myleen, Holly, My N., Amy & Dan, Valentina, Melissa, Tristan, Linh, Sonia & Martin, Carlien, Steph, Mai, Giao, Be and the family in Vietnam.
I know I've fallen behind on personal thank you's, please forgive me but this traveling thing keeps you pretty busy sometimes :) I've received a few more generous contributions from Kat, Ker, and Yajara. I'll be using these very quickly in Australia and New Zealand. Can you believe it? I'm heading to Australia and New Zealand now! Talk to you in a couple of days.
-Tony
P.S.- How you goin'? I'm posting this from Sydney, Australia!
Charley and I went to see the house where my mom lived when she grew up here in Saigon. Pretty cool. We popped into Ben Thanh market to pick up some items for our grandparents ancestral shrine. We found some new threads to reek havoc on the streets, too [that's us above, guarding our grandfather's house]. Check out more photos from Nha Trang and the last couple of days in Ho Chi Minh City in the gallery. Sorry I don't have time to caption anything right now. Gotta run and have dinner with the family as it's my bro's last night here.
Tomorrow night I'm catching sunset at Ankor Wat and sunrise the next morning. Can't wait!
Labels: Vietnam
My brother and I strolled around Nha Trang yesterday, checking out the beach and nearby temples. We heard there was a storm coming so we've decided to hop on the next plane out of town. With that sorted out, we had a feast at Crazy Kim's, a restaurant that donates a portion of its profits to prevent pedophilia.
We'll be back in Saigon tonight, head out to the Cu Chi Tunnels tomorrow morning and on Tuesday, Charley will be on his way back to the States for Thanksgiving and I'll jump on a flight to Siem Reap to see Ankor Wat in Cambodia.javascript:void(0)
Labels: Vietnam
Charley and I flew into Nha Trang yesterday afternoon. We watched a bootleg film and fell asleep for hours. I think we may actually leave the room today and hopefully find something to eat. Starbursts do not make a fulfilling dinner.
I reunited with Carlien and Steph the other night in Saigon. Had a nice time running around town and trying to work out travel plans. The four of us had a great meal at Quan An Ngon. I'm actually craving it right now. There's a thank you vid coming to you, Val. The girls are off to Cambodia and I'm off to the beach.
I reunited with Carlien and Steph the other night in Saigon. Had a nice time running around town and trying to work out travel plans. The four of us had a great meal at Quan An Ngon. I'm actually craving it right now. There's a thank you vid coming to you, Val. The girls are off to Cambodia and I'm off to the beach.
Labels: Vietnam
My brother Charley has joined me here in Ho Chi Minh City. He pretty much spent the first day in bed. We chatted while I sorted through the supply drop my mom sent along and put together the 12 pounds of extra baggage I was happily shipping back with him to the States.
The next day, we hung around our cousins' camera shop, visited a friend from the States, and checked out the War Remnants museum. There, I went through a pretty cool collection of photos from the Vietnam/American War. We were spooked by recreations of war prisons and impressed by displays of large weaponry. Outside, we joked around with people trying to sell books and motorbike rides. My brother's been handing candy to everyone on the streets. When someone tries to sell us something, we give them candy and try to charge them for it. Hilarity ensues.
We had haircuts in the evening, dinner with the family, and later in the evening, our friends Sonia and Martin picked us up for a drink at Allez Boo in the Pham Ngu Lao area. Big thanks to Sonia and Martin for buying me a Bulgogi burger at Lotteria. It hit the spot.
Next stop for the Brothers Bui: Bangkok.
We spent the first day of our Halong Bay tour on the Halong Phoenix Cruiser, a beautiful junk with three floors and amazing rooms. The girls and I commented that the rooms on the boat were better than a lot of the places we'd stayed in Thailand. The food and service was great, too. In the afternoon we took a shuttle boat to explore a cave inside one of the big karsts before hopping in kayaks for a paddle around the bay. After a nice dinner (which I probably should have had less of), we hung around the top deck for a bit listening to music. The group was made up of mostly backpackers with a few older couples trying to enjoy a romantic cruise. Still exhausted from traveling, we went to bed as the rest of the lot started boozing. My roommate, a young Irish plumber obnoxiously woke me up in the middle of the night to drunkenly explain his thoughts on women and to quiz me on my musical tastes as he fumbled with his iPod. I shooshed him to sleep and curled up for a few more hours of Z's.
At 7:30 in the morning, we had a quick breakfast and hopped a boat to Cat Ba island. It was there that I had the seafood lunch that I'd soon 'see' again. We spent the afternoon on a beautiful empty beach where everything was lovely and smiles. But as soon as I returned to the hotel, my stomach was rumbling again. I skipped dinner, choosing to remain in the fetal position in the girls' room instead. When they returned, I politely excused myself, returned to my room, and experienced the worst food poisoning reaction I'd ever had in my life. 'Every orifice' some people call it.
We'd wished we had more time on the Cat Ba beaches but it was a nice couple of days in Halong, despite the tummy troubles. In Hanoi, we had at 69 (my dinner was a piece of bread) and drinks at Half Man Half Noodle (my drink was juice) before hopping a night train to Hue. We lucked out and got a four-person sleeper cabin to ourselves. In the morning, Carlien and I surprised Steph with a candy bar 'cake' for her birthday and a treasure hunt that ended in us watching the Sound of Music (which I'd never seen before).
Hue was a nice city, quieter than Hanoi and Saigon with all the charm of Vietnam. I treated the girls to lunch at La Carambole (feeling that my stomach was stronger, I jumped back into the eating game with a plate of noodles) before saying goodbye for perhaps the last time.
Labels: Vietnam
Last week I shot up to Hanoi to see a bit of Northern Vietnam and to spend one last jaunt with the Britons. My stomach seemed to be fine on the train but as soon as I hopped into my shuttle to the hotel, things were feeling 'funny'. Thankfully, my driver had to stop for gas. When you gotta go, you gotta go... even if it's one of the worst squat toilets you've ever encountered (though the door locked which was nice). It's times like these that I am pleased that I carry a spare roll of toilet paper and a pack of anti-bac wipes.
The architecture coming into Hanoi was interesting. Narrow buildings, three to four floors high with French colonial (?) facades. Basically tall buildings with fancy columned and balconied fronts and plain sides. Even the newer buildings used this style. Unfortunately, I wasn't in the snapping from a car window mood so I don't have any photos of this.
I checked into the Pacific Hotel off of Cua Nam, a street where one of the oldest Hanoi markets used to exist (I recently read that many of the markets in Vietnam are being demolished and replaced with modern supermarkets as land prices start to rise... culture destroyed in the name of profits). I chose this place mostly for the free internet access. The girls showed up in the afternoon and we started researching tours. Carlien and I booked all of our arrangements at the Pacific's travel services desk, saving us a trip to Sinh Cafe. We took in a Vietnamese water puppetry show in the evening. Imagine a pool of water in a small theater and two foot tall wooden puppets dancing, spitting, swimming, and splashing around in front of you. A traditional Vietnamese band performs and sings off to the side. The puppeteers operate all of the characters from behind a bamboo screen, waist deep in water. It's pretty fun but entirely too loud for my throbbing head. Our last minute seats placed us next to the speakers.
Hanoi is a busy little city, zooming with motorbikes, and crowded with market stalls and merchants. Walks around the lake are nice with young and old Vietnamese couples canoodling and contemplating on benches along the water. You can still get a feel for what it may have been like under France's influence if you squint your eyes and walk around the historical buildings in the Old Quarter.
For lunch the next day, we ate at Koto which runs a program to help less fortunate Vietnamese youth by training them how to work in fine dining. The training helps them earn jobs at some of the leading restaurants in the country. The food was pretty decent and the bathroom immaculate :)
Afterwards, we got blatantly ripped off taking the taxi to the Museum of Ethnology. Either the driver drove us twice as far or his meter was crooked. My mom had warned me that Hanoi was 'difficult' like this. But we found the museum and wandered around for a few hours learning about the different minority groups that live in the country (it was a nice primer on the people we would meet the next day in Sapa). Outside we climbed into traditional houses of minority peoples. To offset our losses in the taxi, we hopped the cheap bus back to town. It must be pretty uncommon for three 'white' looking people to be taking the bus in that part of town because everyone stared as us as they rode past the bus stop on their motorbikes. Granted, we were staring right back.
In the evening we caught a train to Lao Cai, arriving at 5:30am to catch a bus that shuttled us up to Sapa town. There we showered up and took a nap on a bed with no mattress before meeting Duc, our mountain guide. We trekked for five hours through rain and mud. Hmong girls walked along with us, helping us negotiate slippery rice terrace walls (see the video), and steep mountain paths. At the end of our trek, the girls turn around and ask you to by embroidered wallets, bracelets, and other handicrafts. "You buy from me, please. You buy something. I walk with you, you buy from me." No guilt trip there. The problem was, I'd only brought one pair of pants and one pair of Geox walking shoes. Both were now soaked and covered in mud. All I needed from these girls were boots or trousers.
We stayed at a Dzao family's house for our mountain home stay. The family was made up of two grandparents, a couple, and their three kids- including a cute little one year old. We spent about four hours straight, huddled around a bowl of charcoal. It was raining outside and getting chilly inside. As we sat, Hmong women would come to the door to try to sell us things. I jokingly mentioned wanting their rain boots and one seemed to be ready to sell. I told her no thank you and mentioned trousers. To our surprise, they had trousers! Hemp pants, hand made and died in indigo. I debated for a bit and decided to buy them. Very warm and comfy. At dinner, the family prepared a nice little feast and shared shots of "happy water". I explained to the guide that my stomach wasn't in good shape so the host spared us from a rough night of "Happy Water to you!" silliness. Exhausted from our trek, we slept early under really warm blankets in a sort of loft area upstairs.
The second day of trekking was shorter but twice as difficult. The rains had stopped but the paths were steeper and muddier. My feet slipped ankle deep into rice paddies and I slid around precariously through bamboo forests where leeches apparently lived (didn't spot any unfortunately). I couldn't believe the paths we were taking. My shoes were entirely ineffective in the mud. I wasn't walking anymore, just sliding. I refused the help of the mountain girls as they just made me more nervous. At one point, my flailing arm smacked one right on the forehead. I'd warned her not to stand so close!
The hardest and most ridiculous bit was a muddy path that ran along a water fall. There was zero traction between me and the ground. I cut my hands frantically grabbing the growth on the mountain side to keep me from sliding into rocks. Finally, with everything covered in mud anyway, I just crouched down and slid several feet at a time down the path while the locals laughed at me from the bottom. In the end, we all agreed that seeing the beautiful mountains, rice terraces, and minority people was worth the difficult trek and ruined clothes.
Back in town, I showered off and changed into my Hmong pants. Just about everyone stared at me. A woman at a coffee shop said, "Nice pants." I asked her if they were men or women's pants. She just said, "No one wears those pants." Heh. Eventually, we made it back to the train station and zoomed back to Hanoi where the Pacific Hotel fed us and sent us on to Halong Bay.
Labels: Vietnam
Great weather in Halong Bay. Excellent overnight boat stay on the junk. Good times. Staying on Cat Ba Island tonight then off to Hue for tomorrow. Gotta run!
Labels: Vietnam
Had a nice time in Sapa, very very very muddy. Videos and photos in a few days. We're just about to hop our next transport to Halong Bay. My tummy ache may be going away! Woo hoo!
See ya.
P.S.- That is the cutest baby buffalo I've ever seen in my life.
Labels: Vietnam
Water Puppets and More Motorbikes
0 Comments Published by Tony on Thursday, November 1, 2007 at 7:23 PM.
After a couple of hours in a hotel room going over tour options, Carlien, Steph, and I have decided to go North to Sapa tonight, stay in a village home, do some trekking, and come back Monday morning. From there, we immediately hop on a bus to Halong City where we'll jump on a junk (boat) for a night and spend another night on Cat Ba Island. Wednesday night I'll hop the 5-Star train to Hue to celebrate Steph's birthday and I'll catch a flight (Vietnam Airlines- VN 253) back to Ho Chi Minh City, getting me back there at 6:30pm to meet my special guest travel buddy.
Last night we took in the Thang Long water puppet show here in Hanoi. It was pretty entertaining but sitting next to the loudspeaker rattled my brain a bit. Today, the Museum of Ethnology!
I don't think I'll be online for the next seven days as I'll be in the mountains or on a boat. But you never know. I'm sorry I haven't properly thanked everyone yet but until I can get around to some fun videos or photos, thank you to Laura, Myleen, My N., and My L. for the feeding and fundage. (Yes, that's a lot of "My's" isn't it) I'm thinking of you here in Vietnam.
If you haven't seen the latest photos from Azad in Tehran, Iran hop over to Life Goes On In Tehran
Last night we took in the Thang Long water puppet show here in Hanoi. It was pretty entertaining but sitting next to the loudspeaker rattled my brain a bit. Today, the Museum of Ethnology!
I don't think I'll be online for the next seven days as I'll be in the mountains or on a boat. But you never know. I'm sorry I haven't properly thanked everyone yet but until I can get around to some fun videos or photos, thank you to Laura, Myleen, My N., and My L. for the feeding and fundage. (Yes, that's a lot of "My's" isn't it) I'm thinking of you here in Vietnam.
If you haven't seen the latest photos from Azad in Tehran, Iran hop over to Life Goes On In Tehran
Labels: Vietnam
Hello mom. I'm in Hanoi. Found my friends. Found a hotel with internet, yay! I'm currently trying to plan out the next seven days of my life. It will most likely involve mountains, islands, jeeps, buses, boats, and the sea.
Labels: Vietnam
