Pinching Ourselves in Halong Bay

After our last night in Hanoi, we woke up early to catch the bus to Halong Bay. We hopped in a minibus with about 15 other people -- all cool and interesting from all over the world, between the ages of 23 and 45, and took the 4 hour ride to the bay. From there we got on a boat, were assigned our rooms (Seth and I somehow got the only really nice room with a big window on the second floor, instead of down below) and ate lunch while driving out to the bay. After lunch we all went above deck and took in the scene. It was breathtaking.



There are about 2,000 limestone cliffs sticking straight up out of the water, covered in their own ecosystems. I really don't know how trees grow straight out of rocks, but they do here. Halong bay was formed over the last 500 million years by the shifting of tectonic plates. But according to Vietnamese legend, when Vietnam was just starting to become a country, there were many people who wanted it. So the gods sent dragons to the shore and they shot gems and jade out of their mouths, which turned into little islands to form a massive wall against the invaders. The mother dragon and her children decided to live in Halong Bay to oversee the peacekeeping of the Earth.

We went to see a cave that the tour guide called the "Surprise cave!" And he didn't tell us why it was a surprise until the end. The surprise turned out to be ... more cave. It was really cool though, and well lit for uncoordinated tourists.





He said when a girl came to the cave one time to study it, she was surprised that when you walked through, you came to three chambers, each bigger than the next. The fact that the surprise was cave inside of a cave did not seem very creative to me. But in the first chamber, we saw some different formations that looked like animals. In the second chamber, there was a formation that looked like a Buddha! Before we walked into the third chamber, our guide Daniel said "OK, we're going into the third chamber and just so you know, you're going to see a formation and I want you to use your IMAJATION when you see it! IMAJATION. Remember, I'm not going to tell you."  So We were all like, "OK Daniel. We got it." We walked into the third, biggest chamber which was lit up in different beautiful colors and saw a, ehm, cannon? Sticking out of one of the columns. At the bottom of the cannon were two big ...cannon balls. As if the cannon had shot a cannon ball into the ceiling, there was a hole exactly where that sperm-I-mean-cannon-ball would have gone. We didn't need to use much imajation for that one.

"Cannon" on the right

After walking through the "surprise cave!", we did some kayaking around the cliffs for 40 minutes. It was surreal. The water was a warm, calm turquoise and the cliffs just towered above us. Seth and I went under one through a tiny hole in the bottom  and came out on the other side to total peace and quiet with no sound except our voices echoing off the cliffs and the water gently hitting our kayak.





I will admit that, about halfway under the cliff I thought to myself, "if this thing decides to fall, there is absolutely no way out" but it only took about 30 seconds to go under the cliff and we made it out the other side. But I really couldn't believe how much it felt like a dream. Then after that we went to one of the beaches and swam until the sun set on the horizon. There were monkeys playing on the cliff next to the beach, schools of fish swam near the people in the water in jumping waves and there was a bar at the beach where you could sit under a straw umbrella and watch it all go down. At one point Seth and I just went into a fit of maniacal laughter about how we were swimming on a beach at a UNESCO world heritage site and not teaching 50 classes per week in Korea.



That night back on the boat, we got tipsy with our new friends, went squid fishing, I ate a passion fruit (delicious!) and Seth and I carried the karaoke party until nobody could stand it anymore. 2 years in Korea made me forget how shy people can be at karaoke.

pano beach shot

The next morning after breakfast, we went to a pearl museum on the water. We learned about how they harvest pearls and get oysters to be more likely to produce them. First they grow the oysters for two years, then they kill one and take out the part of the oyster that's most likely to produce a pearl. They then inject that part deep into another oyster, and let that oyster grow a few more years. Seth got to pick out a potentially-ready oyster from a basket, and we watched a woman open it and.... it was dead. And rotten. It had probably died in the injection process. So he got to pick another one and... it had a perfect pearl! Daniel told us that usually 30% of the oysters have pearls and of those 1 in 3 have good enough quality pearls to make into jewelry.

Seth's pearl (did not eat)

So Seth did a pretty good job, but wasn't allowed to keep the pearl, which is fair. After the pearl museum, we took a cooking class and learned how to make Vietnamese spring rolls! If I remember correctly, Daniel mixed together strips of green papaya, spring onion, mushroom, ground pork, garlic and egg in a bowl. We then rolled them up into dampened rice paper. The cook fried them up until they were golden brown and we ate them for lunch. Next it was time to go back to Hanoi, where we had some final Hanoi-style pho bo before jumping on a bus to Hoi An. Most of the group stayed for 2 nights, which we wish we had done because (A) there were beach bungalows involved and (B) they were all really cool people and it would have been fun to hang out with them a little longer. But oh well. If anyone reading this blog is going to Halong Bay, stay for 2 nights! Or a week. It was just unbelievable.

Henna leftover from Kathmandu, too!

I think when we got the details from the woman booking our bus to Hoi An for us, I heard the words "nine to ten hours." That sounds bad, but it was an overnight bus and the seats are beds! We had heard bad things about these buses because they had erratic drivers, but after two 5-hour cramped, hot, bumpy bus rides in Nepal last week, the Vietnamese bus was a walk in the park -- it had a bathroom, air conditioning, a TV and wifi. So we slept on the bus overnight and if you don't count the guy snoring next to Seth, or the man who decided to sleep right next to my bed on the floor (making my midnight bathroom run a bit complicated), it was a pretty successful night overall. The bus left at 6 so I figured we'd get to Hoi An in the wee hours of the morning. Ah. But it turned out not to be "nine to ten hours" but rather "NINETEEN HOURS." You can imagine my disappointment when the sun shone on southern Vietnam at 11AM and I desperately wanted to go outside, but had to stay exactly where I was: reclined on the same stupid bus, with the battery dead on my tab and phone and thus no books to read.

My feet go under Seth's head when we recline, super innovative

But we made it eventually and now we're in Hoi An, which is another paradise in Vietnam. More on that next time!

see you again someday, Halong Bay!

Falling in love with Hanoi

We love Hanoi.

This place rocks. It has all the modern conveniences we're used to (multiple constantly functioning outlets in the hotel, no power outages, I haven't squatted once to use a public bathroom yet!) and the weather has been completely clear since we arrived. So, we begin when Seth and I got off a red-eye flight into Hanoi with a stopover in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. When you look at the map, it seems we took a bit of a roundabout way of getting there, but whatever. Also, sidenote: Air Asia, I hate you. Since we were flying through and into Southeat Asia, and we hadn't needed a jacket since we were near the Himalayas, we didn't think to bring a jacket on the flight. We got on and some people were wearing their heaviest down coat. Seth was in a tank top, and I a very thin cotton shirt. Neither of us was wearing long pants. And unlike most airlines which come with a complimentary pillow and blanket, with Air Asia, you buy a blanket. On the flight out of Kuala Lumpur, we broke down and bought the stinking $12 blanket, complete with a blow-up travel pillow and a sleeping mask. The flight attendant wouldn't take our $20 bill that wasn't crisp and new (i.e.- 2004 issue or newer), which happened to us also once in Hanoi (that one was ripped a little in the corner) with the local currency, I mean jeez people, and then she gave us our change in Malaysian ringgot (their currency which kinda sounds like an unfortunate parasite you would call in sick to work with, right?) And we still haven't been able to exchange it.

But I digress. Immediately upon checking into our hotel in the Old Quarter of the city, with about 2.5 hours of sleep under our belts, we set out to explore. The sun was shining and we were not about to waste it! We had a tourist map which told us that the nearest attraction was Hoan Kiem Lake, so we walked that way. About five minutes in, a woman selling bananas and pineapple off an enormous old scale which she balanced on her shoulder came up to us and put her hat on me. Then she put the scale on my shoulder. I posed for a picture, then she did the same with Seth and put his hat on her head, posed for a picture and told him he needed bananas so she gave him a plastic bag of them. Then she wanted $10. This time though, I was prepared! I gave her $5. Which still was too much, but at least it wasn't the $60 the Indian guy in Kathmandu got out of us, which still makes me kinda sick. The bananas, on the other hand, were decent but not the tiny explosions of flavor we have experienced elsewhere. Also this is a scam to watch out for, and we've seen it happening about 3 times since. All the women selling *specifically* bananas and pineapple do it, and they're not the only ones with the big scales (I'm sorry but that's the fastest way I can describe it. I'll include a picture). Anyway we kept going, pretty unphased since we at least got some bananas out of the deal. We found the lake and hung out at the temple in the middle, which had a $1 entrance fee. This is something else really great about Hanoi: no exorbitant white person tax so far, with the exception of the $45 visa on arrival. Ngok San Temple is otherwise known as the Temple of Jade Mountain, and it's dedicated to Confucian and Taoist philosophers, as well as war hero Tran Hung Dao, who " commanded the Đại Việt armies that repelled three major Mongol invasions in the 13th century" (Wikipedia). According to the legend, he was granted a sword by the gods, and after his victories he was hanging out by the lake when a turtle God appeared to take the sword back. Naturally there's also an enormous 450lb. stuffed turtle encased at the temple. 

OK so next we ate our first authentic pho bo. Everybody said: don't eat at the nice restaurants, go to the little holes in the wall. So, we found one that was crowded and went for it. The foodies will like this part. When  you eat pho bo, you get a big plate of sticky white rice noodles and a separate bowl of soup. The broth is a yellow, kinda sweet tamarind broth, usually made with honey and fish sauce. Inside the broth you will find pieces of barbequed pork, but not Southern US style -- we're talkin generous brown fatty slabs of meat, which progressively melt more and more into the broth as your meal goes by. The pork lady, whose job appears to be solely cooking the meat, also grinds up the pork and makes it into little succulent patties, which the cook adds to the broth. There are a few more leafy vegetables in the broth as well as pieces of green papaya (adding a crisp freshness to every bite), and at every table there is some sliced mildly-pickled ginger in clear vinegar for you to spoon out and add to the flavor, along with the red chili sauce. You just put the rice noodles into the soup and grab them (and some meat) with your chopsticks, put it all on the spoon, add some fresh mint and other leafy herbs from the 3rd plate provided, and stick it in your mouth. We got two orders of pho bo and two delightful Vietnamese spring rolls, all for a whopping price of $5. It was unreal.

Walking around the city, trying to find the Hanoi Cathedral for about an hour, we did our usual quiet absorbing of a city. One thing we noticed immediately about Hanoi is that it has sidewalks! But the sidewalks are mostly used for motorcycles and mopeds. The mopeds are a force to be reckoned with here, and must make up about 70% of all the traffic in the city. So, you can technically walk on the sidewalk, but you just have to dodge the occasional moving moped, walk around the parked ones (many of which are for rent so there are also men asking if you want one), and walk around the people eating outside cafes, the people chilling outside their stores, the stores outside of the stores, etc. There is car exhaust in the air which makes you stop breathing one second, but then you smell the delicious pho bo, or other grilled meat, or exotic fruit, spices and incense so keep sniffing like a baset hound ignoring the car exhaust! But then a moped revs its engine next to you and you have to hold your breath again. On one street, you might find a lot of hole-in-the-wall restaurants (of which we have officially frequented many at this point) which all have tiny plastic stools about a foot off the ground onto which people sit while eating something with chopsticks from a stool about two feet off the ground. All on the sidewalk mind you. On another street, maybe there are a lot of cafes, or bars, or fruit stands, or on another, people will be people selling shoes and working on them right outside the store -- I saw a guy sawing down a woman's stiletto, right on the edge of the sidewalk with a loud, round saw thingy. There are different streets dedicated to selling different things. Besides the whirring of power tools, buzzing of mopeds, and car engines, there are people constantly honking and announcers trying to sell things, random bells from all directions, and people speaking in every language all around you. This city is so alive, but also very pleasant: people ask us if we want to buy their service, but usually after we say no, they leave us alone. It's so laid back. We really like Hanoi.

We stopped by a cafe and I got some "hazelnut jelly freeze coffee" which is basically a hazelnut frapuccino with sweet hazelnut-flavored jello blocks. I bought it out of intrigue, and was a little disappointed to find out it was exactly what it sounded like and not so delicious so I don't really recommend it to anyone unless they're REALLY big fans of both of those things, and even then proceed with caution. We went to an army museum where we learned about the Vietnamese resistance to the French and American forces in Vietnam for the majority of the 20th century. It made me feel happy for the Vietnamese people that they finally gained independence after about 60 nonstop years of fighting, but also a little uncomfortable as an American. There was a courtyard with some of their military conquests on display, i.e. American army cars and planes. There was a MIG fighter jet, a Huey helicopter, and surface-to-air balistic missile used for shooting down B52 bomber planes, and American bombshells that had been harvested for their explosive material to make bombs for the Northern Vietnamese troops. There were also several artilery and anti-aircraft pieces, because a lot of the war was Vietnam trying to shoot down American planes. We watched (OK Seth watched; I slept through) a 10-minute video about the war in Dien Bien Phu, which is a city in a valley and the Vietnamese won and it was hard. I WAS TIRED. But Seth says I have to tell you: Dien Bien Phu was the decisive battle that meant the permanent end to French occupation and colonialization of Vietnam. Impressive factoid (says Seth): the Vietnamese troops hauled artilery pieces by hand, with lots of elbow grease, to the tops of the mountains surrounding Dien Bien Phu, AND created a massive tunnel system that encircled the entire city. So between shooting really big guns from the tops of mountains onto the French troops and having so many fortifications around the city that nothing could make the Vietnamese troops retreat, it was a pretty decisive battle.

We took a stoll over to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and had to walk through the enormous Hanoi Botanical Gardens to get there (a whopping cost of 5 cents per person, and a really delightful experience with people playing and exercising outside, peacocks, doves, friendly children saying hello, and a big beautiful pond with a fountain). At the mausoleum, President Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969) is usually on display there, but wait! He wasn't this week. He won't be until December. But wait, you might say. There's a bigger "but wait." "Patrice, don't those years in the parentheses mean he died 55 years ago?? Patrice, you're a fool." No, I'm not a fool. Ho Chi Minh's embalmed body is always on display glass coffin in his mausoleum. I'm completely serious. And when you go visit the 55-year-old corpse, according to Wikipedia: "Rules regarding dress and behaviour are strictly enforced by staff and guards. Legs must be covered (no shorts or miniskirts). Visitors must be silent, and walk in two lines. Hands must not be in pockets, nor arms crossed. Smoking, drinking, eating, photography and video taping are also not permitted anywhere inside the mausoleum." But alas, Minh was not in his box when we tried to go. In fact, there were armed guards around the perimiter who (very kindly) informed us that the Mausoleum is closed until December, because, and I'm not making this up, he occasionally goes to RUSSIA to go through a renewed embalming process in order to slow down the decaying of his body. Luckily the museum was open for another ten minutes that day so we ran through with a guard behind us, making up facts about the items we saw on the spot since we didn't have time to read the placards. They didn't make us pay the $1 entrance fee to run through the museum so I guess they could rush us out all they wanted.

We looked for a 5-story pagoda on the nearby Thuy Khue Lake to watch the sunset, but we couldn't find it (it's a really big lake!) and instead just watched the sunset, which was really beautiful anyway. We hit the sack by 8:30, completely exhausted. The next day we woke up and got ready for a street food tour of Hanoi at 11. I could lie to you and say I was grossed out and it was all super unsanitary and not worth hanging out with a woman I didn't know and hardly understood, but why would I tell such a terrible lie? Maybe to talk down my experience. The truth is we were completely blown away by everything we consumed, and in the end each gained at least five pounds. Before we came, we were determined to treat Vietnam as a buffet. We ate lots of dishes I will never be able to pronounce the names of, much less remember, but a few that stood out:
- a dash of coffee, crushed ice, and on top a layer of whipped egg whites and honey. It's called "egg coffee."
- hoa qua dam: fruit (jack fruit, watermelon, avocado, melon, lichi, dragonfruit, banana) plus sweet coconut milk plus crushed ice. Wow.
- pig heart. Not my favorite.
- beer.
- mushrooms and ground pork in a thin rice "pancake" dipped in the tamarind/fish sauce/lime juice/honey broth, plus garnishing
- spring rolls with green papaya and sea crab
Our tour guide was one of the happiest, most delightful people I've ever met. She was 24 and always referred to herself in the 3rd person as "Ms. Moon" and called me "LADY." Everytime we needed to cross a street together, she would say, "Sticky RIIIIICE" as in, stay together and nobody will get hit by a moped. Obviously, Seth and I have absorbed that into our lives and will forever anounce "sticky RIIIIIICE" whenever we need to cross a street together.

We vowed not to eat after the street food tour, but had expanded our stomachs and inevitably went back for more hoa qua dam (FRUIT) and I found people selling rambutan on the side of the road so I bought half a kilo and ate it. THAT'S INCLUDING THE STICKS AND LEAVES AND SHELL AND PITS SO I'M SURE I DIDN'T EAT HALF A KILO OF ACTUAL RAMBUTAN FRUIT. Oh god I can't believe I'm coming home right as the holiday season starts. Afterward we walked across a 115-year-old concrete and iron Long Bien Bridge, a famous spot in Hanoi that was bombed some during the war in the '70s but is still in pretty good shape considering its age. It stretches 1.5 miles long and goes over what looked like a banana plantation as well as the Red River.

Oh yeah! Then we saw the Thang Long Water Puppet Show! This puppet technique was developed by farmers who worked in the rice paddies. From behind a curtain, puppeteers control puppets with long poles while the puppets dance around on the water. It's a traditional, unique form of puppets and was accompanied by beautiful live music.

On day three we had a museum day. A short summary because I need to go to bed but I also want to finish this post:
- At the History museum, we learned about how the Vietnamese were basically occupied from about 1890 to 1975 by the French, Japanese and then the US, and they fought constantly from about 1910 to 1975. This is a nation to be reckoned with. They fought hard for their independence and what a country they have become after all that work! Makes you wonder how all that fighting and influence effected their culture. But one thing I thank the French for: making the Vietnamese switch from Chinese characters to the Western alphabet (minus the tonal markings) so we can at least read things here. That's pretty great. But still, occupation bad.
- At Hoa Lo prison, we learned about how poorly Vietnamese prisoners were treated when the French occupied Hanoi, which was terrible and included famine and executions, overpopulation and disease. Interestingly, we also learned about how well American POWs were treated at Hoa Lo, which I'm not positive wasn't a bit of Vietnamese propaganda (sorry for the double negative: it was propaganda). There was a picture of John McCain getting treatment for illness, POWs playing all kinds of games and celebrating holidays, and getting souvenirs when they were released. I'm no huge fan of John McCain, but I thought it was because of torture in Vietnam that he can lift his arms about the same amount as a turtle can lift his front legs. But whatever, everybody does propaganda. Overall the museum was really interesting and well done!
- At the Ethnology Museum, we really tried to read everything but at this point we were completely museumed-out. Basically all I can tell you is that there are 54 different ethnic groups in Vietnam, 70-80% of which is the Viet. The remaining populace is a bunch of different groups with there own languages, lifestyles and religions. A lot has changed in the last 25 years and these people are becoming more modernized (like less elephant riding or breast-bearing and more English speaking) but they still retain their heritage. Ok, duh Patrice. You get it, they're still unique. Behind the museum are about 10 to-scale replicas of (or in some cases relocated) houses. Each house is associated with a different kind of ethnic group. They're made for visitors to be able to walk inside and see how the people live. A few of them are on stilts (accessible by steps carved into long logs), and many have cool bamboo flooring that's a little scary to walk on. First, I thought it would be cool to have in my own house, then I thought I'd probably trip over it and/or fall through a hole I accidentally created while tripping over it, so I'll let the Tay people keep their bamboo bark flooring.

OK! Well, if you made it this far, congratulations!! You must have had a lot of time to kill. I'm off to bed. Halong bay cruise tomorrow, then Hoi An\ on Sunday. Have a fantastic weekend everybody.

Trekking and touristing in Chitwan

The last two days we spent trekking were awesome, and exhausting. The foothills of the Himalayas don't exactly have flat paths, so about 97% of the time you have to keep your eyes really focused on the ground so you don't fall (in a new record, I only got two bruises!).

Dat view tho

I took all of these pictures with my Samsung Galaxy S3 -- that still amazes me.

This is hard to do on a clear day because the views are so unbelievable, so maybe it was a blessing that we spent the first two inside clouds. The ground is usually made of a combination of stepping stones and dirt, but also donkey poop, yak poop, tree roots, and a never-ending incline or decline. Turns out, declines are really hard on your legs and feet. Here's a tip, especially if your shoes are a bit snug: make sure your toenails are clipped before going down a mountain for 2+ hours. Otherwise it feels like you're stubbing your toe, very softly, over and over again. Anyway, on day 4 of the Poon Hill trek we went to Jinadanda, where there were some marvelous hot springs. 

Very fabulous, and very much needed.

Oh my poor toes

Of course, after trekking for 5 hours we had to go down another half hour to get there, and then back up to the guesthouse afterward, but it was totally worth it and not so bad without a 15lb. backpack. Oh how our muscles needed those hot springs. We stayed until we couldn't get any more raisiny and the rain started rolling in anyway. The only other guests at the guesthouse were also at the hotsprings -- an Australian butcher and an Englishman studying to be a Civil Engineer, so we talked to them for a little while before leaving. On the way back up from the hot springs, we got our first leeches! When I first saw a leech on day one, I thought it was just a really quirky cross between an inchworm and a worm. I guess I'd never seen a leech before. Our guide got one on the first day and instructed us to dab salt on our boots and ankles just in case, which seemed to keep them away pretty well. We must be immune, we thought. But going coming back up from the hot springs in flip flops with no salt, they found me. I was lucky -- I only got three. One between two toes on my left foot, one between two toes on my right, and one on my ankle that didn't appear to break skin before I caught the little bugger. Interesting fact: they have gross little mouths on both ends, so if they get stuck between your toes, you can bet on the fact that they will biting both toes. Apparently they secrete an anticoagulant when they bite, so it's easy to bleed a lot when you take them off. The good news is, their heads don't appear to get stuck inside you like the common American ticks. The bad news is the whole two-mouth thing. So on my left foot, after I removed the leech from between my toes, I was bleeding more than I was comfortable with. I stepped in the shower when we got back from the hot springs and realized (1) the leech was STILL IN MY SHOE (luckily a flip flop), and (2) the reason I was bleeding so much was because he got me with both ends. Somehow it had stopped sucking -- maybe I injured it when I pulled it off or maybe it had just satisfied its appetite, but that was its last meal. I'm pretty sure it died a long, painful death, or at least I hope so. Anyway, the Australian butcher had it way worse -- either he wasn't paying attention or the leeches got aggressive, but either way at dinner, his feet looked like he'd gotten stuck in a landmine. While we were playing cards with him, a street dog tried to lick his wounds. He got spooked at the idea of infection on open leech bites and chased it out. It was a weird afternoon, but the relaxation was super welcome.

The last day of the trek, I was hurting. Seth was hurting too, but my backpack was really starting to piss off my back. Seth had had the same problem a few days before, and now it was my turn: a dull pinch inside my left shoulderblade kept screaming at me to stop moving. I tried stretching it out and bending over and Seth rubbed it for me, but I couldn't shake it. About 4.5 hours in, our guide said: "OK so now we can take the bus back if you want or we can--" I interrupted him with a resounding "YES. BUS." It was probably another 6 miles to go, and I was just miserable. Seth was a little disappointed but could see that if I had to walk for more than another 15 minutes I might just fall over, or go on a killing spree. He was nice enough to take my backpack for a little while, but then I was just in pain AND feeling guilty. We took a jeep back along the incredibly bumpy road, with the driver calling out to people on the side announcing our destination in case they wanted a ride, too, for a little cash. Everybody who joined in the jeep was afraid to sit next to the white people (us), so they crammed into the front and the trunk (which had installed benches) and we got the middle to ourselves. We didn't really shave much time off of what would have been our arrival time in Pokhara because the road was mostly potholes and big rocks, but it didn't matter to me -- I wasn't walking. We got to the hotel and collapsed. Then we went out and ate too much food. The next day was pretty much the same, except for a leisurely canoe ride around Fewa Lake and some shopping, but we definitely took it as a recovery day. We met some cool people at a restaurant that night and hope to meet up with them again in Kathmandu on Monday.

Fewa Lake!!

So Friday we hopped on a bus for five windy, bumpy hours along with all the Asians and backpackers to get to Chitwan National Park. This is an area with lots of animals (rhinos, crocs, elephants, birds), the point of which is to encourage the propagation of these endangered species, which has overall been pretty successful. Our guide at the hotel was 26, and he explained that up until he was 16 he lived in a house in a tree (maybe he meant on stilts) inside the park until the government forced the local population outside of the reserved area. He didn't seem too bothered by this, since apparently the park is doing pretty well. He took us out to see a "Tharu traditional village," i.e. a string of mud huts where the Tharu people were living, probably not dissimilar to the style he used to live in. A manager of the hotel explained to us that the Tharu are another Nepalese ethnic group and caste, who have their own language and religion and set of skills. All the castes in Nepal also speak the common tongue, i.e. Nepalese. But they can't understand the languages across castes. Turns out our guide on the trek, by the way, was not a Sherpa but rather a Brahman (guess I'll need to edit that other post), which is a higher, more educated caste. It's all Nepali to me! The cooler thing though, was the man on an elephant just walking down the street. It was a big elephant, too and it wasn't like an "elephant street," but rather a real (albeit not very crowded) paved road where cars and horse-drawn carriages and bicycles ride, just this one also had an elephant. Apparently this is a totally normal thing in Chitwan. Then we watched the sunset by a lake next to some loud Indian men with beer bellies who kept spitting. After dinner with the group of ten Koreans who were also staying at the hotel for the same package deal -- can't seem to get away -- we saw a Tharu traditional dance, which was pretty cool: a bunch of people dressed in white tribal costume were playing drums and singing and dancing with sticks, choreographed perfectly so that their sticks hit each other to go with the beat of the music. So I guess you could say it was like Stomp.

So, after a lovely evening of traditional dancing, and more Chinese tourists with super-flash cameras, we decided to hit the sack. We were supposed to go on an elephant ride at 6 the next morning. The next morning, of course, was raining cats and dogs, so, like fat, American, pig-dogs, we slept in. The staff looked: a) perplexed, b) distraught, and c) unbelieving that we didn't want to go in the rain. We assured them that everything was fine and we simply didn't want to go out in the rain. We'd had plenty on Poon Hill. We spent the better half of the day reading, and trying to find a signal to the outside world. In hindsight, smoke signals would've been easier. But, time passed and we were geared up to go bathe some elephants instead of ride them. 

Now that was cool. We both climbed onto the back of this mighty beast while a whily Nepali man danced on the elephant's butt to give it commands. At one point, I swear to God, he yelled out, "Pizza Hut!! Pizza Hut!!" If I'm ever a mahout (fancy Nepalese for "elephant trainer"), I'll try out that one. The elephant was accommodating, to say the least. It's not often we have to take a bath while smaller animals sit on ours backs, and they are deceptively hard to sit on. Multiple times we would fall off into the water because the elephant would tilt its shoulders. We were pretty sure that was how we were going to die. We could already see the headlines: "YOUNG AMERICAN COUPLE SQUISHED BY NEPALESE ELEPHANT." Afterward, we posted up in some lounge chairs and watched more tourists take a crack at the elephants while we dried off in the sun. We sipped some more masala tea and thought, while watching the other people, "damn, we forgot to scrub the elephants!" because the whole idea was an elephant bathing. But oh, well...

So, we headed back for lunch, which wasn't quite ready, so we went to the Mom n' Pop store about 20 feet outside the gate to see if they had a little something to hold us over. We found some cookies and chex mex-looking stuff, and got that. Later, we ate lunch and headed back to the room. After some resting, we took a jeep to the breeding center and it was. So. Cool. Our guide explained that the elephants usually do work in the morning (like elephant rides), then go out into the jungle with the staff to play and eat, and then hang out at their posts under roofs for the rest of the day and nighttime. They are chained to posts, but he also explained that the breeding center will soon start to integrate an electric fence system so they're not so bored. We learned a lot, like how an elephant's trunk has 40,000 muscles. Also in Chitwan, a lot of the elephants are wild and come impregnate the females they raise. So usually there's a baby at the center, and the one we got to see was just a week old. He was hanging out with his mom next to her post (he wasn't tied up) and just kept slipping and sliding in her poop. We could have watched the baby all day. Sometimes he would fall down and his feet would be splayed out like a ragdoll. Well, you know, an elephant ragdoll. Then he would get back up and nuzzle his mother before going down the poop slide again. Once the babies become more independent, the guide explained, they have to be tied up too, because they get "naughty" and go around bothering all the other elephants or get too close to the tourists. I was sad to see some of the younger ones getting annoyed and trying to pull themselves out of their ankle chains, but relieved to know they were doing other things in the day and also the breeding center seemed to be doing their best to keep the elephants happy and healthy. We went out on the town for a dinner at a place called K.C.'s and then got a great look at the Milky Way on one of the rare clear nights we had in Nepal.

The next day, Damo our guide took us on a nature walk (apparently still distraught about us having turned down the rainy day activities) and showed us another side of the breeding center, but also taught us a lot about the distinct flora and fauna of Chitwan. He showed us a "sighing plant," which is a little round pink flower which looks like a spiky ball, with leaves that look like ferns. You touch the ferns, and they immediately ... well, sigh. They fold up. It was amazing. I kept doing it. Seth had to tell me to stop because Damo was waiting for us and I was going to leave the whole patch of sighing plants without an open fern. I'm sure they open back up soon afterward.

We took another long, bumpy, windy busride back to Kathmandu on Sunday, went to a restaurant called "Rumdoodle"where we decorated a small cardboard Yeti foot (apparently a very popular activity), and then spent the last 24 hours we had in Kathmandu repacking our bags, sending stuff home, getting pedicures and henna, and eating all the authentic Nepali food we could before taking off for Vietnam. Next stop Hanoi! ... Hello, Hanoi! (Don't know any Vietnamese, shoot...)

cool Chitwan mosquito net!

Apparently we didn't take so many pictures in Chitwan. I think we were too exhausted.

Stairs, stairs, and more stairs. Oh yeah, and the Himalayas.

The night before our first trek out of Pokhara, we went out for dinner and ate wild boar curry at a happy hour at a bar we found which was playing live music and offered lounge chairs on the terrace overlooking the lake. It was dark, but we could still see little lights on the other side of the water of families who live in these incredibly remote areas on mountains. We also accidentally ordered two drinks each, but c'est la vie. Then we ordered one more because it was still happy hour and a "dirty banana" sounded like a really good investment (it was). Pokhara is a charming little area, and much, much cleaner than Kathmandu. They apparently also have power outages, but the hotel we got uses a back-up generator for those several hours per day. Despite the fact that it sounded like there was a truck waiting outside our window to take Dumbo back to the jungle, it was still nice. It's almost like a beach town, with a lot of tourists and a strip of hotels, restaurants and shopping, all next to the enormous Fewa lake. A little more laid-back than Kathmandu, much less crowded and much less polluted. We liked Kathmandu a lot, but I could feel my throat starting to react to the extreme amounts of exhaust you constantly breathe in there, along with the incense and ... occasional monkey poop. The weather was beautiful that day, so of course we went out without our umbrellas and decided to go for a post-dinner stroll. And of course it started raining exactly when we were about to turn around, about 15 minutes away from the hotel. It came down, though. The Hindu gods were just urinating all over us. It didn't let up, so Seth and I walked back to the hotel in the rain, just accepting the fact that we'd have to let the sun dry our clothes the next day on our trek. Because of course it would be sunny. Right? 

Wrong. The first day, we walked for 3.5 hours, and it came down in buckets for approximately 3. Eventually Seth and I accepted the fact that we'd have to pay too much money for a big plastic cover for our backpacks, and also that we'd have to use our Japan-level tiny umbrellas. These things were made for chiwawas, I swear. We figured out how to jerry-rig them to our backpack straps and attach a giant piece of plastic to each of our 20-pound bags, and set off.

A rare moment of less rain

The path that day was mostly dirt road for jeeps with some gravel, with pretty easy inclines and eventually amounting to 500 meters that we climbed over the course of three hours. It was a breeze (except for the whole swimming through the rain part) and we thought:"This is going to be too easy. We should have gone to Annapurna base camp, or Everest base camp! We are such good hikers." We ate lunch and dinner at our first tea house (tiny hotel area), witnessed a Buddhist ceremony performed by Tibetan sherpa monks for a reason I still don't really know but has something to do with a rite of passage maybe, then spent the night at the lodge where we ate and read books.

Rite of passage or naptime? Either one sounds pretty cool.

A few people we talked to said they were nervous about the next day. Something about stairs. We shrugged. We'd just climbed to the top of Hideyoshi Toyotomi's tower a week before, and that was eight tall floors! We can do stairs. Wrong. The next day, Reywati our guide took us to a place they call the THREE THOUSAND STAIRS. I have no idea if that number is accurate, but god did it feel like it. Try to imagine big slabs of rock. Now, imagine them in stair form. Now, imagine you are going up these stairs, and every time you think you see the end, it's not the end. Imagine doing this for FIVE HOURS. I'm being conservative here, because we hiked for about seven hours (starting around 7:30AM) and we didn't climb exactly that the entire time, but it took up a good chunk of the time. Also, because of global warming, monsoon season has not been as predictable as normal. Usually in September, the skies would be at least mostly clear and we would be able to get some kind of visual reward for hanging out on the never-ending stairclimber. But instead, we were inside a cloud. The whole time. It didn't rain as hard as the day before, but it drizzled, and we couldn't see more than about a 25ft radius from ourselves. Reywati is very kind. He's about 5'3'' and has a body built like a soccer player (although his sport of choice is Nepal's national sport kobardi, which involves running into another team and holding your breath until you reach the finish without getting tackled to the ground, but I digress). The point I'm trying to make is that this is extremely easy for him. He's not even wearing hiking shoes, but rather shoes that resemble crocks which he uses to walk through water and kick heavy rocks into a safer place for us to step on while holding an umbrella (and while we wobble on rocks across streams). After the first two hours or so, Seth and I wanted to fall over and attack the next donkey we saw and eat the whole thing. He hardly broke a sweat. He looked so bored going at what I've named his "tourist pace," but didn't seem to mind and has been carrying a bunch of apples and pomegranates for the two fat Americans to munch on for when we start to whine that our feet hurt.

Even though the path is mostly stairs, we were really surprised at how well-maintained it is. Reywati explained that it's the "main highway" from the bottom town of Noyopool to the Annapurna base camp. Then how, I asked myself at first, do they actually make BUILDINGS of concrete with restaurants and beds and tin roofs and toilets (sometimes)?? Well, my question was quickly answered after we passed the third group of five to ten load-bearing donkeys being herded up the mountain. Basically what happens is they each get about 60kg (130-ish lbs.) of stuff, and then a guy in flip flops walks behind them, whipping them with a stick or a whip if they take a break when they're not supposed to.

Badass donkeys coming down asshole stairs after a trip up asshole mountain

Also, porters. Porters are guys who carry lots of weight (up to 45 or 90lbs depending on the area) for any purpose. You can hire a porter if you're hiking and you don't want to carry all your stuff and he'll take your backpack, or if you're building something like a guest house on the mountain and the donkeys can't be trusted to carry the enormous windows because they might break them. So how, you might ask, do porters carry these heavy loads up the mountain? Well, that's a great question. They strap the loads to their foreheads. At some point the cost-benefit ratio of putting a backpack around your waist with the straps doesn't cut it anymore, so they do it the traditional Nepali way: they have a basket, or a backpack, or in some cases a big glass window pane, bring a strap around it and fix the strap on their foreheads (sometimes with a folded towel under it to make it more comfortable), then just bend over a little and voila. Don't try this at home kids: foreigners trying to do it have broken their necks, since any movement in a particular direction can literally paralyze you. It's amazing to see and I know it's their job, but I'm really glad we didn't hire a porter because I would feel like a total asshole watching someone else carry all my stuff by their forehead. The tops of my hips are starting to bruise from my own 20 pounds of burden, but I definitely don't want to triple or quadruple that onto someone else for my own comfort. Usually though, it appears porters graduate to guides like Reywati, whose job now consists of babysitting foreigners on long hikes to see outstanding views and getting free room and board on said hikes, which beats some other jobs.

Badass porter and Seth with slightly less badass 20-lb. backpack (also notice asshole stairs)

Anyway, this morning we woke up in Ghorepani at 3:45 in preparation for a clear sky to watch the sunrise from Poon Hill. We had climbed 1,300 meters the previous day, then we hiked another 400 by the light of the moon for an hour to witness a view of a section of the Himalayas with about 50 to 75 other tourists. It was spectacular, and perfect timing for the only clear skies we've seen thus far, in all three days we've been hiking. We saw Annapurna 1, Fishtail, Dhaulagiri 1 (which is over 8,000 meters) and several other mountains I really couldn't remember if my life depended on it.

WE MADE IT TO MOTHER F-ING POON HILL

We must have asked poor Reywati the names of these mountains about 47 times, but eventually we just took a video of him telling us the names again so we wouldn't have to ask. We could have seen even more if there had been even fewer clouds, but we took what we could get. It was the reason Seth wanted to come to Nepal, and thank Buddha (or Vishnu, or the Shinto kamis or whomever) he got it. I did a timelapse photography of the sunrise and it turned out really well.

Then we walked down 400 meters back to Ghorepani and had breakfast. And then, guess what?? We went up another hill, for an hour, and got to the same elevation as Poon Hill. Rephrased: This morning, at 4:30, we walked up 400 meters, saw the sunrise, went back down, ate breakfast, AND THEN WE WENT BACK UP. Oh sorry, THEN WE WENT DOWN. Very far. For two and a half hours. Oh yeah. THEN WE WENT UP. For another half hour. My butt muscles are so pissed off. And so are my feet, from going downhill for so long.

So, so tired.

Map of Poon Hill Hike (which we are doing, in case I did not make that clear)

And that brings us to our guesthouse, which, as we've officially come to expect from Nepal, has very steep stairs. Up to the room, then back down a hill and up a hill again to the dining room for dinner. Then back down the second hill and up if the first you forgot anything (phone charger), like some kind of cruel joke. I can't believe I will be doing this again tomorrow. But! We shall be rewarded at the end of the day with hot springs.

Some observations on the point of view I have acquired:

- I get excited when I get to sit on a toilet, instead of squat over it. If it flushes (instead of having to scoop water out of a bucket and doing a manual flush), well, I feel like a queen. Especially when I remember to bring toilet paper. Last night we had our own private toilet and gas powered-shower, and it was glorious even without the sink. Oh, but we had to turn on the gas out of an enormous gas container, then one of us had to hold a button because it was broken while the other showered, and vice versa, and then we realized we didn't have towels and the room was freezing, so we had to use our sarongs then hang them up to dry. But still... private toilet.
- Even here, in the foothills of Nepal, in a village that can only be reached by foot, yak or donkey, THE BEDS ARE STILL MORE COMFORTABLE THAN IN KOREA. I would just like to say, that's pretty sad, Korea. Maybe some food for thought.
- New foods I love: yak cheese, Tibetan bread, roasties (big fancy hash browns), and curds with fried things.
- The caste system is very prominent here, and effects everything. This probably doesn't surprise a lot of worldly people, but Reywati explained that since he's a Brahman and the highest caste, he will sacrifice a billygoat (or several) during their holiday Gadhimai in October, whereas lower castes will sacrifice a yak which they can share with other families. (In Gadhimai, animals are sacrificed to appease the gods, then eaten. We're talking lots and lots of animals.) Also he didn't really understand what was going on in the Tibetan Sherpa ceremony because it wasn't his caste, and different castes practice different forms of the same religion. There are 104 castes in Nepal. It's all very fascinating.
- It's totally normal now for us to see a chicken or ten just kinda wandering around outside a restaurant or a store or guesthouse. Also, cows. Not in the mountains, but cows hang out everywhere in Pokhara. Goats, donkeys sometimes ducks and buffalo, roosters waking us up (whenever they want, not just at dawn): these are all completely normal parts of this surreal life we have now gotten pretty used to.

Next time we write it will be done from a hotel room in Pokhara, in two nights. I'll have another update then! :) Seth slept through the entire making of this one so maybe he'll have more to say then.

And now, a few more pictures...

There is a mountain there.

Holy cow, right??

Pano shot with a lost explanation of which one is Anapurna II etc. somewhere in my memory card

Seth in his hiking boots and Reywati in his crocs, on the way down from Poon Hill (dat sun tho)