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Hello everyone!!!
ok, so finally I’ve overcome extreme lazyness, and am sending out my
first travel email! Greetings to all of you from Hanoi. just got my
haircut here, and I’m glad to say having Vietnamese with sharp objects
pointed at American heads is much safer these days then 30 years ago!
I’ve been learning the delicate art of crossing the street
here….never look, never walk fast, never stop, and never let them see
you hesistate…..so many motorcycles, so little road. Quite a built
up city I must say….probably the most surprising thing is how glitzy
the city is…almost is a little paris right down to all the cafes
(well, almost).
I’m off to Halong Bay tomorrow for a few days to cruise around and
look at all the limestone, caves, islands. Oh, how did I get all the
way to Vietnam, you ask? oops, lets backtrack a bit….. I started off
in Northern Thailand. I instanly fell in love with the spicy Thai
food…yum yum! Thanks to Tim+Yana I found really good trekking in
the north. The hightlight for me (and probably everyone else in the
group) was when my trekking group almost got decapitated after I lost
my bamboo paddle rafting on the river and jammed between two vertical
poles holding a bridge (ok, I guess I’m no Tom Sawyer!)
Then off to Laos….my first country with no (yes, zero) ATM
machines. Northern Laos has so far been my favorite place. almost no
tourists, few cars, and such friendly people, so amazed to see
foriegners. Whenever the kids saw us they would stop anything they
were doing and wave to us yelling “Sabadee” (“hello”). Walking around
the villages was one of the most enjoyable things…so authentic…no
one trying to sell you anything, just genuine interest in seeing
something so different as white people in thier home. But I guess
everything has limits, as we found out when trying to crash a local
villiage wedding party 🙂
Of course there’s a reason for few tourists….its damn hard to get
here! coming from the Thai border, we had to take what basically was a
pickup truck (maybe 30 years old?) for 8 hours through the mountains.
Learned several valuable lessons…. 1) when coming to a tree blocking
the road, just pull out the stardard driver supplied mini-machette and
start hacking….the more cars that come, the more machettes to help.
Lessone #2, when one of the wheels starts to lose a majority of its
screws due to too many passengers piled in the back, not to worry, this
can be simply solved by borrowing some screws from the next pickup that
comes by, so that both of you have at least a majority of screws, then
just move all of the passengers to one side of the truck so there’s
less weight on that wheel….see, simple!
Then down to Lueng Prabang…. 32 temples….which means 32 pleaces
where Monks can practice thier english with you. lots more tourists
(there’s actually real buses on paved roads that drive here!) our
tuk-tuk driver here was a math teacher (yes college educated math
teacher only earns $30/month, so gotta do something with tourists to
feed the family…he drives a tuk-tuk, wife sells soft drinks).
Finally something that spoke at least some english (and even some
russian)….we actually became friends and I got to have dinner at his
house with his family. I guess average evening in a Leung Prabang
households consists of sitting on a hard floor watching Thai
television, while eating spicy food.
finally down to Vientien, the capitol of Laos. dirty, poluted, half
built/half broken roads/buildings….even the yummy french food doesn’t
make it worth sticking around. On to Hanoi….
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