Still Alive in Asia!

To those of you wondering if I'm still in Asia, the answer is yes! Since my last postings I have put a few more notches in my travel belt. From Saigon we made our way through the Mekong Delta into Cambodia, from Cambodia into Thailand, and here I am in Bangkok. For now my time is limited but I've managed to upload some pictures. Stay tuned for some meaty blog postings. I'll be taking advantage of the internet access here!

Bangkok- Tourist Ghetto!

Deserted resort in Mui Ne- Zach reading!

Mekong Delta- Making rice paper
Mekong Delta- Floating Market
Gate to Angkor Thom--Amazing!

Children of the Dunes in Mui Ne

Oh, Canada 281

Thursday afternoon I found myself on a Pacific Airlines flight leaving from Danang International Airport for Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City as it is officially called these days. Zach and I squished into our seats overlooking the left wing of the aircraft, our sweaty knees pressed against the seats in front. 6 days in HoiAn flew by between beach bumming, shopping, and eating. We were now flying into a new city and descending into a new adventure as our plane made a shaky and hasty landing at the city airport.

It was daylight and stifling hot so we quickly grabbed a taxi to whisk us into the city centre to our hostel, Canada 281. This particular hotel advertises in-room internet access and computer ( at highly inflated costs) which was exactly what we needed. Zach had a phone-interview from Canada and needed a computer. The hotel seemed promising. Sure, the room rate was higher, but the hotel had an elevator, a/c, cable TV, and a big window in the room with the personal computer.

We booked in after seeing the room and doing a quick test of the computer and internet connection. A cheaper room on an upper floor was available for our first night, but the computer room would not be guaranteed to be held for us until the next day. After some discussion, we decided to play it safe and take the computer room for both nights. I had been upstairs waiting for Zach to return the key to the room we decided against taking when he came and told me to meet him in our room, 303, one floor down.

The door to room 303 was left open so Zach hurried ahead to the room, not wanting to leave our bags unattended. Not sure whether he took the stairs or elevator, as he was quickly out of sight, I opted for the elevator that we had taken only moments earlier to the 4th floor. This was certainly the lazier option, but I was unsure if the staircase I saw did indeed lead to our floor. I stepped into the elevator and pushed my finger against the three. The elevator brought me down to the ground level. Hmm... strange, so I pushed the three again. Up I went, and the elevator stopped on three. The door seemed slow to open, so I encouraged it by hitting the door open button. Nothing. Now the elevator is taking me to floor 2, and finally the ground level but keeping me in its shiny silver metal trap, I can't get out!! The door is not opening! OK, I decided not to panic and do the most logical thing I could think of. That is what the intercom button is for, right? Hmmm... no response...The emergency ring will surely alert somebody, anybody, that I'm trapped and can't get out! After 5 minutes, panic really began to set in and I started shouting out, "Hello!!!! I'm stuck in the elevator!" At this point the elevator was stopped on the ground level, and I knew front desk was a few feet away. Couldn't they hear me? Or the irritating emergency ring of the button I kept pushing??!!

I was really starting to lose it. How long would I be stuck here before somebody realized where I was?! Fearing the worst, I began to imagine hours of confinement in an elevator with thinning air and no company. How could the elevator have worked only minutes ago, and now, like a stubborn child that refuses to move, have its doors tightly closed? After what felt like an eternity, the elevator began to move up to the third floor with me still shouting out "HELLO!!?" A familiar voice emerged from the other side, Jennie? Where have you been? Open the door." It was Zach, THANK GOODNESS! "Zach! I can't open the door, I've been stuck in here for 5 minutes!" Always the sympathetic companion, he replied "Why the hell did you take the elevator to go down one floor?" With one last gust of desperation I tried prying open the elevator doors. Moments passed that felt like frozen time until a miracle happened. Without any explanation the doors opened and released me from its iron grip, I was free! Zach's perplexed face greeted me, "Where have you been??" My hands shaking, I walked towards room 303 and answered "Stuck in that piece of sh*** elevator is where I've been."

I collected my composure before heading down to front desk to let them know something was wrong with their elevator. I turned to Zach as we walked down the stairs and said "I will lose it if they say, 'Oh, that happens' " Politely, I informed the girl behind the counter what had happened and mentioned I had been pressing the emergency and intercom buttons during my confinement in the lift that they advertise on their website ( www.canadianhotel281.com). Barely a muscle moved on her cool face. I expected an apologetic reaction, or at least some sense of concern that hotel customers were being caught in elevator purgatory, right within the very walls of their establishment! Her response was curt and calm, "Sometimes that happens when the elevator doesn't have enough electricity and stalls".

I was so perplexed by this response that I walked away without any sort of angry rebuttle. How can a hotel have an elevator if it regularly stops working WITH PEOPLE INSIDE? Had they heard my desperate cries and carried on with their text-chats on their mobile phones?? How does the elevator not get enough electricity, and why weren't we told upon check-in, "By the way, avoid the lift because you might get stuck." Hmmm.

Zach and I spent our two nights in room 303 with his interview passing without issue ( thankfully!). In the span of two days, the computer could not stay open more than 15 minutes before crashing, that is, if we were able to get it to work at all. The bathroom smelt like something died in it and had been burried below the rug with a bucket of mothballs to try and cover the smell. The large window looked out onto a brick wall less than a foot away, and the TV cable was left unplugged leaving us wondering about the advertised TV fare. The receptionist accused Zach of holding onto the room key of the first room we checked out, although he had returned it hours before. The hotel was cold and unwelcoming- by far the worst place we've seen yet in Vietnam.

Today we checked into another hotel a street over that is brimming with character. At half the price, we may not have a computer in the room, but breakfast and dinner is included and tea/coffee/juice is offered all day for free. We have to hike up a long flight of stairs to reach our room, but the hotel has a pully to lug our bags hilariously up the centre of the open staircase. At the end of the day, the most irritating part of the Canadian Hotel 281 experience is the fact that Canada is at all affiliated with this place. Supposedly a Canadian owns the hotel, but aside from a penguin-adorned shower curtain there was nothing Canadian about it.

Pictures

After a little more than a week in the north we made our way to central Vietnam. We spent three days in Hue, touring the former royal palace, royal tombs, the DMZ, and indulging in some fine cuisine. Interesting history, good food, sunshine, and the Buddha's Birthday ( May 14th), who could ask for anything more?

Zach after knockin his head in the Vinh Moc tunnels and blinded by the flash of my camera. Yes folks, that is a genuine face of discontent- no acting here.

A pineapple peacock missing its spring roll feathers. Where did they go?? The first of a 7 course imperial style meal.

Touring Hue and the Royal Tombs by motorbike.

Getting fitted for style in HoiAn. The first of Zach's masterpiece tailored suits in the making..

The Japanese Covered Bridge in HoiAn.

Vietnam Oddities

It has been nearly three weeks since we first arrived in Vietnam. With one week left, I've had ample time to reflect on some of the strange quirks and oddities that persist throughout the country.

1) Freaky Mannequins

There is not much to elaborate here. I will let the photos speak for themselves.

Perhaps a sparkling gown for that special occasion...

Or maybe something trendy for the kids.....

Matching his and her plaid shirts...

Or something pink to complement your hairdo...

I'm afraid this is quite a representative sample of the fashion displays on offer in Vietnam. It doesn't get much better, but it certainly gets much worse.

2) It is often in Vietnam that you will see men with long fingernails meticulously kept. At first I thought Vietnam either had a surplus of classical guitar players or a major drug problem. I was wrong. Men will keep their nails long ( if they can) to demonstrate their social status. Long nails indicate you do not do manual labour or work in the fields.

3) Many women in Vietnam wear large floppy hats, cotton face masks, long silk gloves and socks, long sleeve shirts and long pants. They cover from head to toe to avoid sun exposure which will darken their skin tone. "You are so beautiful, your skin is so white" my young female tour guide in Halong Bay informed me. Pasty seems a more apt description, but I'll take the compliments when they come.

4) Can you imagine the stretchy rough texture of party streamers sold in the party shops and dollar stores? It seems in Vietnam these decorations can also double as toilet paper. There have been many occasions where nature has called and been answered by what I swear is white party streamers. Not as soft as cottonel, but not altogether unpleasant. Better than sitting or squatting to discover there is no toilet paper.

5) In Hanoi barbers set up on the sidewalks where you have to walk onto the street to avoid someone in the middle of haircut as well as the big piles of black hair collected from 100s of customers before him.

The Wild East

(photo from web)

We are all familiar with the "Wild West" and the images of cowboys on horses in the wilderness of an untamed landscape it conjurs. After 1 week in northern Vietnam I have discovered the equivlent to the cowboy of the Wild West, the Wild East. There are no cowboys here, but millions of men, women and children on pedal bikes, motorcyles, and scooters riding carefree on the streets and sidewalks of Hanoi. There are very few pedestrians that walk the streets save the basket vendors ( all women) that walk fearlessly along with the weight of their loads balanced evenly on a pole carreed over their shoulder. The tourists, too, brave the streets as motorbikes whizz by, miraculously avoiding collision as they steer around us at the last moment. There are no lanes, no stoplights, no pedestrian walks, no braking, no indicator lights, and often no lights at all. Chaos reigns, but fear does not. I hold my breath every time I need to cross the street and hold Zach's hand a little too tight until I am on the other side. The traffic doesn't even phase the locals, as you see entire families ( the most I counted was 5 people on one bike) driving along. Bikes are used to transport nearly everything here: Slaughtered pigs stacked on top of each other bouncing along, flat screen tvs, construction material, plants, 30 plastic bags filled with water and gold fish swimming inside, sleeping babies and young children, women sitting side saddle in high heels and dresses, and the list goes on.... In Vietnam pedestrians yield to bicycles, bicycles yield to motorbikes, motorbikes yield to cars, cars yield to buses, buses yield to trucks- maybe.

For all its charm and intrigue, Vietnam has been a huge culture shock for me. Nothing has a fixed price tag or listed rate and as a tourist you always pay more than the locals, and, if you aren't careful, more than the tourist in the room next to you or on the same tour as you. Our experiences so far have taught us to always shop around and that sometimes you are just going to get screwed. Zach has more to say about this than me and you can check out his rant at http://zachmonkeytime.blogspot.com/. He has written about our first night in Vietnam and the interesting events that followed so I will spare the details here. After one week I know that I couldn't live in Hanoi, ever. The country bumpkin in me is shocked by the hoards of people, the traffic, and the lack of personal space.

Over the past week we have spent some days looking aroud Hanoi and made two excursions to surrounding areas. 2 days after arriving we booked a trip to Halong Bay, where 1000s of limestone islands jet out of the water like mountains rising from the sea. It is breathtaking. After a harrowing bus ride to the harbour at Halong City we boarded one of the 100s of Junk Boats sitting in harbour awaiting their cargo of tourists. We took plenty of photos, but are unable to load them on the computer here. The boats are more or less all the same and look something like this....

We spent three days in Halong Bay bike riding on one of the islands, kayaking and swimming off our boat. The weather was gorgeous and the other people on the tour group were great. In the evening the group sat on the upper deck level of the boat surrounded by the faint light of the other junk boats anchored in the bay sharing travel stories over Bia Ha Noi and Tiger Beer. For the first time since we left we could see the stars in the night sky and a light breeze kept us cool. A tourist trap? Perhaps. Women from the nearby floating villages and huts rowed their boats from junk boat to junk boat ( sometimes staying at the same junk boat for hours) selling warm beer and choco-pies, or trying to. The vendors in Halong Bay are persistent, continuing their sales pitch "You buy somesing?" long after you have smiled and said no, or already bought "somesing".

Our other excursion brought us by train and bus to Sapa, a small town located at the top of a beautiful mountain valley shrouded in mist and landscaped in cascading rice paddies lining the hillside. I had mixed feelings about our excursion, as the region of Sapa is surrounded by local hilltribe peoples that are part of the attraction of the region. The scenery of the area is unreal. Mount Fansipan looms in the background and there are lush green rice paddies as far as the eye can see. I had lots of questions about the relationship of the local village peoples with the tour companies and tourist industry that I was taking part in with some unease. We had wanted a local guide from one of the villages that could tell us about the area ( many of the local guides speak several languages really well). Our guide did not speak the local dialect and could barely speak English ( as the tour advertised), giving us little information. We had chosen a tour with a homestay option which turned out to be more of a small guesthouse catering to tourists located in one of the villages. Some of the tours did in fact stay with local families, which I would have preferred. As it is, the most I learnt about the area I was visiting came from scouting articles on the internet before I left. Sapa is but a few kilometers from the Chinese/Vietnamese border and as such has been the site of much conflict over the years. The growth of the tourist industry in the early 1990s brought renewed propserity to the region, although there is little information on how this has affected the local populations. It has been difficult to determine whether the tourist footprint I left behind in Sapa was positive or negative. At certain points of the trek I felt very uncomfortable, as my tour guide ushered us into a home of a local family to take a look around. It was voyeuristic and I am sure the family recieved little from the tour company that trapses tourists through there home every day. I took few photos in my three days in Sapa, capturing the landscape but consciously abstaining from photographing the local people we encountered as I saw many other tourists doing. It didn't feel right to take photos of this family's home, their small children staring blankly at the strangers walking through their kitchen.

Alongside my discomfort with parts of the tour, there was also moments of annoyance with the persistence of vendors from the local villages pedalling (supposedly) handmade embroidered bags and silver jewelery. They have the system worked out and work the system to the max. The morning we arrived in Sapa we were greeted by a large group of friendly women dressed in traditional garb from the nearby villages that spoke good English: "Hi! Where are you from? Canada? Oh! Great! How old are you? Ah, 23, that is young. How many brothers do you have?" As we embarked on our hike the first day we were followed by a group of these women. It didn't take long to realize this was a fine-tuned sales pitch tried and tested on many tourists before us. Almost everywhere we went in Sapa we had an entourage of women pushing embroidered purses, t-shirts, belts, hats, and silver jewelery in our face ( literally). I understand that supporting these women is one of the few ways to know that your tourist dollars are getting directly to the villages that are the backbone of Sapa, and I bought several items from different vendors. But there is a point where you can buy no more, and where you know the price you pay from the vendor is inflated 30fold for what the item sells for in the local stores. You pay it anyway. Even when you have bought all you can or want, the salespitch continues. My favourite line was "you said you buy from me, you promise you buy from me, you didn't buy from me" and "I come back tomorrow, you buy from me then" only to be met the next day by the same woman coming back to make a sale. We hiked nearly 20 km in our three days, and for almost every km we had people following us. It is not enough to say no with a smile ( many times over) and by the end of the trip we were glad to be gone.

I am beginning to get used to Vietnam. The constant sales pitches, the incessant hordes of people, and my status as a foreigner that is synonymous with a huge dollar sign-- the size of which depends on how much you can overcharge me. As I accept this fact I begin to relax a little and focus on the good things about the people that live here and the places I go. Just now the hotel I'm staying in brought me over a tea the computer I am using in the lobby out of the blue. Many people are just interested in practing their english and talking to you. These are the moments I like- the cold cheap beer at the Bia Hoi restaurant sitting on tike-sized plastic furniture at the side of the road, the laughs I get when I attempt to pronounce something in Vietnamese.

Tomorrow Zach and I fly to central Vietnam to Hue, before making our way down to the south. We have 2.5 weeks left in Vietnam and I am curious to see how the rest of the country differs from the north, which is said to be less friendly to foreigners. At the very least I am looking forward to relaxing on the beaches near Hoi-An and taking in some down time in the slower pace of central. I will write again when I can, and hopefully get some photos up!

Vegas 2.0

( picture from http://compass.ups.com/goingglobal/article.aspx?=558 )

After several days in Hong Kong we made our way to Macau to spend a day before catching our flight to Hanoi. Like Hong Kong, Macau is a Special Administrative Region of China (SAR). It is a former Portugese colony that was signed over to the Chinese in 1999 following Hong Kong's reunification with China from British rule in 1997. We caught the hydrofoil jet ferry with 100s of Hong Kong tourists escaping the city for a gambling May holiday in one of Macua's many big casino hotels. Macau is the only region in China where gambling is legal and the area is under continous development as a high-end resort getaway doppelganger to Las Vegas. Needless to say Zach and avoided the costly casino hotels and sought out cheaper accomodation in the historic sector of the island. Beside the glitz of the casinos, Macau is also a UNESCO world heritage sight and is home to some beautiful churches dating to the colonial 19th century-era. By far the highlight of our day was sampling some of the local Macaunese food that is a blend of Portugese and Chinese dishes. For dinner, we ventured off the Macau island to the Kotai Peninsula where we found an outdoor waterfront cafe set up in the sqaure of a beautiful old yellow church. We followed the example of the locals that packed the cafe and ordered some local Macau beer and seafood. With full bellies we caught the bus back to our hotel, driving by the docked gondolas at the Venetian hotel, the bright lights of the Wynn, the Sands, and many construction projects. The next morning we made our way to the airport where we caught the first of two flights to get us to Hanoi and began the next leg of our adventure....

Lamma Island

Yesterday it was time to escape the city. Lamma Island sounded promising- the Hong Kong Tourist Bureau Guide boasted it was an island without cars and with idyllic beaches and fresh seafood. While some of these promises were delivered, Zach and I found the island to hold the same of the same inconsistencies as the island of Hong Kong. We left for our excursion in the morning to catch the ferry from central pier to the auto-less island. For around $2 Cdn, the boat chugged us across Victoria Harbour past everything from small fishing boats to huge container ships. In the distance we could see the flags of several large American naval vessels ( including an aircraft carrier), an odd sight by our account! Once on the island we sat down to a Dim Sum breakfast of fish balls, prawn dumplings, spring rolls, and delicious jasmine tea at one of several harbour front seafood restaurants serving fresh fish caught by local fishermen and fisherwomen. We set out to hike to another small village on the north side of Lamma Island, hoping to stop at the beach along the way to play some frisbee. As we hiked along ( taking some quick-dissolve immodium breaks for my benefit) the view from the elevated trail boasted an enormous coal-power plant that jets out like an industrial arm from the picturesque island. The Hong Kong Tourist guide encourages you to stop and take photos from vantage points offering full views of the plant, expressing an unapologetic pride in the island's industrial wart.

a beautiful beach....

Or a symbol of modern development?

In Hong Kong it seems like these two concepts- nature and industry- are not as opposed as we like to think of them in North America. An island advertised for its value in escaping the city sits comfortably with the fact that a huge development project dominates the island's landscape. A beach merely metres away from the polluting muscle of industrial energy is written and spoken of in normative terms. I noticed this harmony on the island of Hong Kong, too, during our excursion to Victoria Peak on the tram. The high-end shopping mecca that awaited us at the end of our tram journey, and the high-rise condos we discovered on our hike around the summit sat uncomfortably with me. The handful of new building projects we saw underway from these heights of the city suggest this is just the way it is in Hong Kong.

Tomorrow we make our way on a hydro-foil jet to nearby Macau for a day and night before flying to Hanoi on Friday. We booked our hostel just moments ago for a bank-breaking $7/night each for a private room and ensuite bathroom. I like Vietnam already! We've been getting by on around $50 Cdn/day in Hong Kong and paying $24/night for our hostel ( this is about as cheap as it gets in HK without living in a ratden). $7/night in Hanoi is music to my ears....

I'll write again when I can, but for now I have to make my way back to our hostel. Good night!