Life's a "Beach"

With every new place Seth and I go in Vietnam, I feel hit upside the head with happiness. So far (knock on wood), nobody has scammed us into giving them too much money, everybody has been really friendly and spoken reasonbly good English, the food has been amazing every single time, and the country itself is just gorgeous. It is turning into my new favorite country, and if they could just get rid of that damn humid rainy season with disagreeable levels of heat, I would be able to convince Seth that we need to come back someday and stay here indefinitely. So far there's not much progress in that area though.

I mean, it doesn't suck.

So Vietnam has done nothing but shock us with its wonder and goodness, and Hoi An was no exception. Everyone on the internet and whom we had met previously had already raved about its charm, and after a little exploring upon arrival we realized they were completely right. In Hanoi (and every other city in Asia we've visited, to be honest) we were way too intimidated to rent a bicycle to help ourselves around the city, although it was pretty easily navigable on foot. In Halong Bay, well, bicycles were not an option as we spent the whole time on a ferry or in a kayak or on a beach, but in Hoi An the hostel where we stayed (Nature Homestay -- very nice) offered free bike rental, so we figured why not. It wasn't too crowded and the beach was over 2 miles away. It turned out that since most of the population here gets around by scooter or motorcycle, there's pretty great road etiquette toward bicycles. When we were being passed, people would honk to let us know they were coming and then give us plenty of space. We also knew that, since we were the slowest things on the road, we could count on other vehicles to just zip on by while we went at a leisurely pace on the right-hand side.

We could even take pictures while riding!

The beach was one of the most beautiful I've ever seen. As long as we promised to buy some food from them, any restaurant along the beach would let us park our bikes right outside. The beach was lined with straw umbrellas and lounge chairs, although not too close together, and after enough stretch for people to play, tan and walk, you could see gorgeous crystal-clear blue and then turquoise waters. On the horizon were a few islands, but the sky still stretched forever beyond them. We parked right under some straw umbrellas ($3/day for two lounge chairs and an umbrella) and periodically ordered drinks from the restaurant where we parked our bikes. Every once in a while, people would come by trying to sell us necklaces, sunglasses, newspaper, or chips, but the one I really couldn't resist was the little old woman who sold fruit. It would start with a really high-pitched (almost ET-like) voice behind me going, "Hell-oooooo!" And I would turn around to see a tiny, hunched-over figure with a basket, many layers of clothing to protect herself from the sun, and a Vietnamese straw hat. She got closer and I saw her face resembled ET a little, too! So wrinkly, but still with a twinkle in her eyes and innocent little nose. Unable to tear myself from her adorable Vietnamese old lady spell, I would ask, "how much for rambutan?" (To be explained later) and, continuing her impression of Spielberg's alien, would say, "FOH-TEE." As in, 40,000 dong or $2 for half a kilo of rambutan. SOLD. And then I would pig out for the next half hour before deciding to have a drink and go eat fresh crab with local spices at the beach-front restaurant for $5.

Stoked eating my rambutan

But the craaaaab!!!!

OK. Rambutan (pronounced RAHM-boo-tahn) is a fruit that is round and red, about the size of a ping-pong ball, with soft spikes that taper into green and yellow. You peel away the top layer with your nails as you would a lychee -- it's very easily broken, and under it is a white pulp that surrounds a seed. You eat the sweet, juicy pulp with a satisfying little crunch, and let the tiny bit of juice run down your forearms. You spit out the seed, and repeat! Over and over. I am smitten with rambutan, and it is all over Vietnam. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've described it before but I am always happy to describe rambutan. I'll probably do it again in a future post. Anyway we spent two days mostly just lounging on the beach in Hoi An, eating sea food and rambutan, having a nice cold drink here and there (and lots of water Mom), and reading our books. The sky was completely cloudless and the water was crystal clear. I already miss it and I'm still at the beach :(.

The other thing we did in Hoi An was have some articles of clothing made. Downtown Hoi An was commercial seaport for over 300 years, but about a century ago the harbor was switched to Da Nang, thus preserving the historical part of the city. Since it's pretty close to silk central in Vietnam (the Nam Quang province), tons of silk merchants sold their goods there and what do you do with silk? Why, make clothes! That tradition has been preserved and the historical streets next to the riverbank are lined with tailor shops, where you can go in, choose a design (or submit your own), choose a fabric and have your clothes made! I brought in my favorite dress I got in Seoul that was already a little small when I bought it and is tearing at the seams. The tailor we went to said she could remake it (or "clone"it) for $40 -- and also resize it to fit my body, so I had two made. In retrospect I should have been a little pickier about the material because I walked by other shops with prettier designs, but lesson learned. I have to remember to be picky when I'm in a candy store. I guess being in Hoi An was like being in a completely foreign candy store: you're so excited to try it and you forget to really examine the package, then you realize you bought caramel which you don't even really like that much but what are you going to do, return the caramel after you've eaten half of it? No. You'll just have to eat the caramel and be able to say later that you got some pretty cool caramel from a foreign candy store and shut your mouth about how you should have gotten the dark chocolate. I got another pretty maroon dress made later when Seth had two nice dress shirts made, and that made me feel better but I.... I still wanted more dresses. Seth wouldn't let me. Oh well. I'll have to go shopping at Kohl's with Mom when I get home (right Mom!?! >:).

Gorgeous little street in downtown Hoi An, filled with tailor shops

Oh yeah: a miscellaneous addition to our time in Hoi An: Seth got his beard trimmed for $6. But what he didn't expect was after the beard cleaning, the barber produced a head light and some long instruments. Before we could protest or even realize what was going on, he cleaned out Seth's ears. He used the longest tweezers I've ever seen and pulled out big, healthy chunks of earwax. It was... disconcerting. And what did he do with them? Why, he placed them exactly where they belonged, right on top of Seth's hairy forearm for him to stare at during the rest of the procedure. It was weird.

Not pictured: enormous chunk of ear wax

We ate cao lau, the traditional Hoi An food which includes rice noodles boiled in special water from a certain Hoi An well, topped with pork and soy sauce, bean sprouts and croutons. We found some pretty great happy hour specials next to the riverbank, and paid $2.50 for a half hour canoe ride (pushed by another ET-inspired woman with arms of steel) down the softly lantern-lit river at nighttime. There are no cars or mopeds allowed near the riverbank at certain areas, and very few neon lights, preserving the old-timey feel and making it all the more peaceful, accompanied by dinner boats with live acoustic music and low stone bridges. What a dream. We have to go back to Hoi An. I'll make sure to give fair warning so anyone who wants to join me can!! :)

Another cool Hoi An restaurant

Ok so after two nights and two days in Hoi An, we took the night bus twelve hours south to Nha Trang, where we got to the Rainbow Divers bar and took a shuttle two hours back north from there. A boat picked us up and took us to Whale Island, where we spent the first afternoon on a 2-hour hike around the island. We saw dragon fruit trees, tons of butterflies floated in the air around us right out of Snow White, we walked through mangroves and fought through the spiderwebs that came with them, and took success pictures on top of a cliff overlooking the bay.

He doesn't seem to hate it.

I was disappointed not to be able to find the mango trees we had been promised at reception, but they're probably not in season and what does a mango tree look like anyway? I'm thinking nobody knows. But anyway, the whole reason we were to spend three (expensive) nights at Whale Island was to learn how to scuba dive! We had already taken the online theory (a 10-hour endeavor) before we left Korea, so the first night we reviewed it a little after having met our scuba instructor, a 22-year-old Frenchman from ... not France. Where then, you ask? Tahiti. He is from Tahiti. He's 22, has been scuba-diving for 8 years, and lives on a secluded island off the coast of Vietnam with gorgeous landscapes and crystal blue waters and he grew up in FRENCH POLYNESIA. What a cool life.

Haha! This is not the real world.

Anyway he spoke very good English and was very kind when I scored an 84% on my scuba theory review test (not my proudest academic achievement). We feasted that night on tomato and sausage soup, marinated strips of beef covered with peanuts, grilled shrimp, a green papaya salad, rice and pineapple cake for dessert. We had an option to pay $28/person per day for lunch and dinner, or go hungry because there were literally no other companies or restaurants on the island or a 15-minute boat ride to shore for that matter. So we coughed up the cash and that my friends, plus the cost of the scuba course and hotel, will be three of the most expensive days I have ever spent (with my own money at least) but also some of the best.

Some views from the bungalow

Sunset from the bungalow 🔻

General Whale Island view

The scuba course was so cool. I don't know what has always drawn me to the idea of breathing condensed air under water for an extended period of time, but it was exactly as great as I thought it would be and a million times better than any aquarium I've ever been to. We saw puffer fish, a tiny white sea slug, an eel, LOTS of sea urchins (Seth got stung -- TWICE), stunning coral and grouper, and lots of other stuff I don't know the names of. Our Tahitian guide showed us a "star feather" which looks like a plant but when you touch its little branches, it grabs on to your finger. We found a little family of clownfish living in an isolated anemone at around 8 meters (24 feet) below sea level and the anemone did the same things to our fingers. The clownfish were funny -- they seemed really curious about us and swam around our fingers and right up to our noses if we stayed still (which was hard). I was actually kinda sad to swim away from them.

Real scuba divers!

Not only did Seth get stung by two sea urchins (he's OK now), but after the first dive an oxygen tank landed on his toe. Little known fact: although oxygen tanks are made of aluminum and filled with nitrogen and oxygen, they're 17kg, or about 40lbs. Seth's toe was not the prettiest it's ever been, but it wasn't broken. He might be losing a nail soon, but so far it's hanging on and his toe isn't quite as purple as it was yesterday. Anyway. Watch out for scuba cylinders. 

Scuba, in case you didn't know, is one of my favorite acronyms: Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. It turns out, this requires a lot of patience. It's not like holding your breath and going down under the water and just using your limbs to get everywhere you want. You have to use your breath to "hover": breathe in to go up and out to go down, but the effect is pretty delayed and it's hard to know if your breath has done anything until about three seconds after you've started the inhalation or exhalation. There's a chance it hasn't done anything, if you don't have enough air in your BCD or "buoyancy control device" which is a vest into which you inflate air from your oxygen tank. If there's not enough, you'll just sit at the bottom. If there's too much, you can go up too fast and risk lung overexpansion, which is bad and potentially fatal. So you have to be really careful and not press the wrong button, which I did once but I'm OK! Anyway I love the BCD because once you get to the surface, you can just inflate it and hang out. There's no energy whatsoever involved in keeping yourself afloat, and I'm all for not using energy. You need to deflate it to go down, but in order not to fall directly onto coral or a sea urchin after a few meters, you need to pump a little bit of air back into it. Seth and I both needed at least another ten pounds of lead weight on our weight belt to be able to control our buoyancy underwater and not fly back up once we added a tiny bit of air to the BCD, which was a bit of a pain at first but eventually we got the hang of it. We learned how to handle emergency situations, like if one of us runs out of air or the equipment malfunctions. I learned that as long as I'm diving with Seth, I will never run out of air because he will first. He's a big guy and uses air almost twice as fast as I do, so if he ever gets really low it will be easy to share and ascend. At one point, our instructor wanted to show us what it would feel like to run out of air so he closed our oxygen tanks for one second. When he was doing the demonstration on himself beforeand, however, he had trouble opening it again! That was a little scary. I gave him my alternate air source until he finally got it. 

Look at me! Sounding all technical. I'm not sure how many opportunities I'll have to dive again after this trip, but I hope I can do it a few times per year. It will be hard to top the first few trips we've ever done though, off the coast of Vietnam.

So this morning after our last dive we took a boat and a shuttle back to Nha Trang, which is apparently Russia Central of Vietnam -- on every store and restaurant there are signs in English, Vietnamese AND Russian, which is a first as far as I've seen here. Also, there is fruit --including mangoes >:( -- on every street corner. So after writing about rambutan I went out and bought some more for dinner because well, YOLO. If anyone wants to put in a request at the Knoxville area and Charlotte area grocery stores for this succulent little piece of Southeast Asia, I will reward you with a ... piece of dark chocolate from a foreign candy store :).

Till next time!

Back to the real world

Seth and I came back from our fabulous vacation in mid-November. Of course it was inevitably, albeit creatively, altered by my unique digestive system, but for the most part it was a successful trip. We saw everything we wanted to see and then some, and then we learned about ten times as many places that we have yet to see and must go back for, and of course we spent too much money. We could have done it all for a much smaller amount but in the end it all came down to accepting and enjoying life. And not sweating money too much.

So in January we found ourselves here, in Charlotte. I started working as an ESL teacher again (funny how it came back around) and Seth started working in sales in March. We do not make a lot of money. I make roughly what I made in Korea, in fact a bit more, BUT that is minus taxes and soon I will be paying for rent on top of car insurance, and we have been reintroduced to the daily struggles of life. Seth isn’t really quite sure what his salary will look like, because it will all depend on commission. Overall we make about as much as we need right now, but if we ever want to do something exciting like go on a trip, well, we have to figure something else out.

Back in November I signed up for the ACE personal certification course, and have studied off-and-on since. I’ve taken a break since starting my job in February, and with the wedding last weekend I really just thought it wasn’t going to happen since my life had turned into a void of planning, grading, working, exercising, eating, sleeping, and repeat. But two weeks post-wedding, I find myself with a little extra free time, a little more settled into my job, and wondering how I plan to make more than $22,000 per year. I checked my ACE profile and it turned out not to have expired yet, so I signed up for the test. I’m giving myself 3.5 more months to study, which means I’ll have to really get cracking on it. But it doesn’t seem unrealistic. A little extra motivation: the median salary for a full-time certified personal trainer in my area is $55,000. This makes me think, what the hell am I doing teaching??! You don’t even need a bachelor’s degree to be a personal trainer. I am such an idiot. The test alone costs $400, and a my college education cost… well, many many more dollars.

But I was never really smart with money. I mean, come on, I studied psychology. One of my mom’s personal favorite stories about me was when she found me crying as a toddler and asked what was wrong, to which I responded, “I need a money.” I consider this story to be symbolic, as I didn’t even know how to use money in a sentence with proper grammatical structure, which is one of my fundamental strengths.

So maybe what I’ll try to do is write a little every day about something I know that’s good for my health. One of my more new-found fundamental strengths is health and fitness. So today I’m going to preach this: skipping breakfast.

I know everybody says NOT to skip breakfast, and I used to be the biggest breakfast advocate I knew. Like an Italian mother, I would shake my finger and my head at people who “woke up too late” for breakfast or said they weren’t hungry in the mornings. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!” I would parrot. But at some point I realized that whenever I ate breakfast, it seemed to stretch my stomach and make me hungrier all day, rather than what everyone says it’s supposed to do, which is fuel you. I tried everything though! Oatmeal, eggs, fruit, wraps, yogurt, bread-y cheesy meaty German breakfasts, even smoothies. It would just turn me into a more extreme form of the usual ravenous monster I inevitably become at the normal meal times. But the result would be that if I was trying to be calorie-conscious, my calorie budget would run out by dinnertime, which is the most fun part of the day for eating, let’s face it guys.

So here’s what’s worked for me, especially in times of getting ready for bikini season: skip breakfast, do a fast until an hour or so before lunch (like 10:30) and eat an apple. Then have a delicious salad for lunch with lots of fats like olive oil and avocado and a date or two for a snack, work out in the afternoon and then pig out for dinner. At least kind of pig out, you’ve definitely earned it by then. Oh yeah and water — lots.

Ah well I won’t divulge all my secrets right now. But there, Niya! I wrote. I’ll maybe do it again tomorrow.

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.