Vietnam, 17 Jan 2007 --

So we’ve just arrived in Saigon (as in 2 hours ago) so these are just first impressions…

First, Lonely Planet says that pick-pockets are very brazen here, sometimes taking sunglasses off your face as they fly by on a motorbike. Seeing as I just bought a new camera, this scares the heck out of me.

Second, this nice Vietnamese woman on the plane (we flew from Hue) said “be careful when shopping” many, many times, and she quizzed me on exchange rates, which makes me think there are some well established shopping scams going on.

Third, I think the only way to cross the street is to run for your life. Hanoi had a very interesting street-crossing methodology where you just walked very slowly and the motorbikes went around you. At first it was scary, but after realizing how well it worked we got pretty good at it. Siagon doesn’t work that way. So far, the only thing that seems to work is sprinting.

Last but not least, as we rode on our bus from the airport just now, the bus stopped at a red light where two men were involved in a traffic altercation. One man took off his belt and STRANGLED the other man with the belt while screaming at him. I’m pretty sure he was trying to kill him. This was… shocking? scarily bizarre? I don’t really know what to think of that. The fight was broken up so no one killed anyone, but that was just a few feet out our window. Welcome to Saigon, right?

On the other hand, dinner was delicious, Internet is cheap, and I haven’t seen any dead rats on the street. In Hue, Andris stepped IN a dead rat, meaning he accidentally crushed the decomposing body of a dead rat with his sandled foot. It was incredibly disgusting.

Vietnam, 11 Jan 2007 --

So my official position on the eating of dog is that dogs are about as smart as pigs, and people eat pigs all the time (though I try not to) so it should be just about as terrible as that. They are just animals, after all, right? Also, as proof of the dumbness of animals, the animals around here are not locked up and farms aren’t even fenced in, yet they don’t run away. They just sleep, mate, and look for food with no apparent concern for their future.

That said, I find the eating of dogs to be disturbing. This isn’t just an urban legend, either. Hanoi has a 1km strip of nothing but dog meat restaurants. One girl we met said she threw up when she saw a poodle being butchered. Another saw two dog heads on a market table, so Andris has promised me that if he sees any dog parts in the market to warn me so I can avert my eyes. These are the same dogs who used to bring me so much joy in previous locations, and now I am just worried about the sad fate that faces them. And they don’t even know! 

Other than that, I’m enjoying Hanoi. It’s like Bangkok but a little classier, or Vientiene, but a lot bigger. It’s got so much energy, a lot of great shopping, and lots of good food. Crossing the street is a bit hazardous, but people actually obey the traffic lights, which means that there are actually working traffic lights! A lot of the ladies here are very well dressed and drive suitably cute Vespas, which appear to be the BMW of motor bikes, and motor bikes outnumber cars about 50-to-1.

We’d heard a lot of bad things about Vietnam from other travellers. As a result, I’ve been pleasantly surprised that it isn’t nearly as bad as I’d expected. The cyclo and moto drivers and sales people can be really pushy, but we’re pretty used to that by now. Also, our border crossing from Laos was remarkably smooth and scam-free. In fact, it was a border guard who arranged our mini-bus to Hanoi for a price even lower than the Laos tourist people had told us to expect.

And for those who don’t know, this is my last country on this trip. I’m heading back to the States on January 24th to (finally) finish a graduate degree at Johns Hopkins. I briefly panicked this morning when I realized that I only have two weeks to cover an entire country. On the other hand, I am looking forward to hot water, clean clothes, and graduating before my credits are no longer valid. Andris is lucky in that he gets an additional two weeks in Vietnam, and then another four months in China and Nepal before I graduate in May.

So now I’m left trying to decide what I should do in Vietnam. These next two weeks are very precious. I realize that now.   

Laos, 30 Dec 2006 --

Just so I don’t forget, I have to record a few really funny Laos moments. Laos is great, and we’re having a wonderful time. This is such a relaxing place and the people are so nice! Also, being here is like living on a farm. On the small island of Don Det, pigs, cows, water buffalo, chickens, ducks, dogs and cats (not to mention piglets, calves, chicks, duckies, puppies and kittens… just like cuteoverload.com) were always wandering around our bungalow and we had a rooster chorus going off at 4 AM every morning. Even in the capital city, Vientiane, there were cows and chickens occasionally grazing on the side of the road

So, funny moments, or funny to me, anyway, all involving food or animals:

• On my way to Don Det, my share taxi (regular size pick up truck with benches installed in back with 28 adults, five children, and 3 chickens stuffed inside) stopped along side the road and the usually food vendors stuck their wares into the truck. I considered buying some chicken satay before I went “Wait, is that a paw?!?” I changed my mind, and didn’t buy roasted mystery animal on a stick.
• Once on Don Det, Andris and I ate at a great local place with a poorly translated menu. Out of curiosity, Andris ordered the “Bread with food inside.” The resultant sandwich was delicious. (Now we refer to all sandwiches as ‘bread with food inside’)
• While eating lunch at Ms. Tip’s guest house on Don Det, which overlooked the picturesque Mekong river, Tip informed us that she had fish on the menu that night and wondered if we would like to order it in advance. She then went on to explain that if we looked into the river at that moment we could see the fish. There it was, swimming in the Mekong on a leash of sorts. Earlier in the day some children had caught it, and Tip had purchased it for $.50. They punched a whole in the fin, tied it up, and let it swim around until someone bought it. It was delicious.
• Andris already mentioned the village we wandered into where we tried to question the locals on the future road conditions. What he failed to mention is that we were welcomed into the village by two pigs “making love” in the middle of the road. It was graphic, and it’s been burned into my memory, unfortunately.
• On the bus to Vang Vieng from Vientiane we were sitting a few rows back from a gentleman who was carrying a rooster. He carried it under his arm and it had a plastic bag around it’s rear end, presumably for the droppings, and a string was tied from the roosters ankle to his wrist. We didn’t notice this until we’d been on the bus for two hours.
• In Vientiane, like everywhere else in South East Asia, dogs are allowed to run free (except Malaysia, where they don’t like dogs). Some are stray, and some always go home at night. Anyway, it’s getting cold now in Vientiane, down to around 45 degrees at night, so someone is putting T-shirts on the dogs. I find this incredibly amusing. Here, for your enjoyment, are Dogs in T-Shirts:

And here are a few of my photos from Don Det:

Thailand, 12 Dec 2006 --

Just an update for those of you thinking we fell off the edge of the earth…

I’m in Bangkok (again) after a quickly trip to Krabi to hang out with my friends Sarah and Donald. It was quite an ambitious journey, and I manged to get from Sihanoukville, Cambodia to Railey beach in Thailand in two and a half days. The journey involved three motorcycle taxis, three boat trips, two share taxis, one regular taxi, one train, three buses, and a minibus, and cost around $29.

We’re all in Bangkok now. Sadly, Sarah and Donald must return to Washington, DC. Not so sadly, Andris and I finally be reunited very soon in the extremely-small town of Don Det in Laos. Andris is already there where the only Internet communication is through a cell phone. Tonight I’m taking a sleeper train to the border. Also, sleeper trains are awesome.

Anyway, I’m no longer an English teacher and I’m back to being an ordinary traveller. My experience in Cambodia was wonderful, but I’m part of me is grateful to be back in Thailand.

Cambodia, 2 Dec 2006 --

So at the end of week one, things have definitely gotten better here in Sihanouk Ville (that’s really how they spell it). I’ve done a few more field visits, but I only had two grueling 13 hour days before the program manager at CCBO gave me a reprieve, saying that I looked “very, very tired.”

I am very grateful that I had this opportunity, even though it has been pretty difficult so far and has put me outside of my comfort zone. Andris and I are always trying to “get off the beaten path” and to get to know the locals better, and I have definitely managed to be successful here on both counts. On Tuesday we took a very small boat to an island that is surrounded by a mangrove forest with only one small channel in and out. Only thirty families live there, and I got to meet their village chief and sit in on the class at the informal school CCBO and UNESCO pay for. I also have gotten to know the CCBO staffers (I even got asked out by one, which was awkward) and learned a tremendous amount about Cambodia and it’s many problems. CCBO does great work and I’m glad I’m able to contribute something to their organization.

Thanks to everyone for your great teaching suggestions! The most common suggestion was to teach them a song, which was brilliant, and on Friday I taught songs to the beginner, intermediate, and advanced classes I’ve been teaching. For the beginner class, I taught “10 little monkeys,” which I had ten of the smaller students reenact, “B-I-N-G-O”, and “Old MacDonald.” As it turns out, there is a Cambodian version of Old MacDonald but instead of Old MacDonald it is just “grandfather.” For the intermediate class, I brought in my MP3 player and some speakers I borrowed from a friend and we learned “All together now” by the Beatles. They loved this song, and by the end of class everyone (including me) was singing “One, Two, Three, Four, Can I have a little more…” There is one questionable line in this song (”Black, White, Green, Red, Can I take my friend to bed?”) that I just pretended was completely innocent and everyone seemed to believe that. For the last class I taught two songs: “Yellow Submarine” and “Don’t be Stupid (you know I love you)” by Shania Twain. Unfortunately, “Yellow Submarine” was too easy, and the Shania Twain song was too hard, which is evidence that I don’t quite know what I’m doing. Either way I had fun, despite the fact that I actually sang in front of people. The kids seemed to enjoy themselves as well, even though they didn’t so much sing as scream. “B!!! I!!!! N!!! G!!! O!!!!” Ha ha.

Cambodia, 29 Nov 2006 --

The first time Andris and I came to Sihanoukville I saw a notice by the Catholic Children’s Bureau (CCBO - BICE in French) looking for native English speakers to work with their staff. Knowing only what was in the notice, which is that the organization helps children involved in child labor and sexual trafficking, I contacted the coordinator Pav Vannak and offered my services. Making arrangements was difficult and through one confused e-mail and another confused phone call we agreed that I would arrive back in Sihanoukville on the 26th. I arrived as planned, and in addition to teaching English Mr. Vannak wants me to better understand the problems facing Cambodia by following his staff into the field.

As briefly as possible, let me describe my first day, for which I was wholly unprepared:

At 7:30 AM I was picked up at my guesthouse by three CCBO staffers, two of whom spoke some English, on two motorbikes. I hopped on the back of one of the bikes and we rode for an hour on bumpy dirt roads into the countryside and to a small village where several village chiefs were meeting.

A plastic chair was placed in front of the classroom where the meeting was being held and I was asked to sit down. (Just a note on atmosphere: the classroom is in a small thatch building in a very poor, dusty village. Children wearing only over sized dirty t-shirts and scruffy dogs and chickens continually walked through the meeting) Next, all of the chiefs introduced themselves to me in Khmer and som pas (bow slightly with hands in a prayer). I had no idea what to do but clearly I should have som pas(ed) back, but I didn’t quite realize this at the time. Next, like a bad dream, I was asked to say something to the group. I had no idea what to say and what I did say I’m sure was inappropriate and disappointing (I said something about Cambodia being wonderful and how nice the people are and I want to learn about their problems). Once this awkwardness was over the chiefs explained their problems to the staffers, one of whom roughly translated them for me.

After the meeting the staffers took me to lunch, which was lovely except for the red bean dessert I had trouble finishing. During the afternoon we went to investigate the problems brought up by the village chiefs, and the staffers tried to refer them to the appropriate NGO. These problems included a fisherman with an untreated infection who is unable to support his family, a mother of 15 (with only 5 still living) whose left side of her body has mysteriously become paralyzed, a 15 year old girl who has been having seizures three times a day for three years and has never had medical treatment, several children who have to walk 2 hours to school everyday for whom the CCBO is trying to purchase bicycles, and a four year old girl who had been raped by a neighbor. The CCBO was trying to arrange a lawyer for the girl’s father so he could prosecute the rapist. Also, there are very few NGOs that help people with medical problems, so the untreated people will most likely remain untreated.

At 6 o’clock we returned to the classroom where the meeting had been held and it was decided that I would teach two English classes to the “poor” kids in that area on that day. Just like that I became an English teacher. I was handed a marker for the white board, briefly introduced by the English teacher (who is paid $30 a month, and speaks almost no English), and began my “lecture” to 45 Cambodian children. It actually went quite well, thanks in part to my ability to draw cats, pigs, dogs and stick figures. The kids were wonderful and extremely well behaved, but many just liked staring at me. After the class the kids offered me good wishes and asked if I could stay. I was told afterwards that I was the first Westerner to ever visit their classroom. Then I did that again for another class before we drove back.

I was finally returned to Sihanoukville around 8:30 PM, where I met up with some American friends for dinner and a beer. I went to bed at 10:00, and then woke up at 6:45 the next day to do it again. Needless to say, I’m wiped out and a bit depressed. Also, if anyone has tips for teaching English, please please please send them to me! In the mean time, I’ll do my best.

Cambodia, 18 Nov 2006 --

So we’ve written two downer posts about Cambodia, which is unfair to such a beautiful country, so I thought I’d make a list of stuff that I like about Cambodia:

• They have baguettes here! Thanks to the French, good, freshly baked baguettes and even Laughing Cow cheese can be found everywhere. They are delicious.
• They use US Dollars, which is good and bad. It is bad because it makes us go “It’s only $1…” all of the time, when in Thailand we might have gone “35 baht! That’s outrageous!” But it is cool because at the ATM you can get out US dollars and there is no exchange rate that devalues everything and the surcharge is only $2, which means it is just like taking money out at home. (There aren’t American coins, however. For that they use riel, of which there are 4,000 in one dollar)
• The Internet is really, really cheap. Right now I’m paying 1,500 riel an hour, which is less than $.50.
• The language isn’t tonal (as Andris mentioned). My Khmer vocabulary is already much larger than my Thai, and Cambodians understand me when I attempt my phrases. (I can now say in Khmer “Hello”, “How are you?”, “I am fine”, “Thank you”, Numbers 1-9, 100, 1000, “How much is it?”, “Yes”, “No”, “Where is the bathroom?”, “Please”, and “Excuse me”, and some food words)
• It is really beautiful. The rice patties and the hills and the fields are all gorgeous.
• Motorbikes are the primary mode of transportation, and they are fun and cheap. In small towns we can rent our own, or in big towns (like Phnom Penh) we can hire someone to drive us around for an absurdly small amount of money. Tuk-tuks are also cheaper than they have been anywhere else, and the guys who drive them don’t hound us as much as they do in some other places.
• We have cable in our room. It’s lame to admit, but when we have only had TVs in 1 out of 10 rooms, and they have previously only had a maximum of 4 channels, none of which spoke English, having a TV is briefly wonderful. However, that was 4 days ago and now I’m over it.
• They played a karaoke video on the bus our way from Kampot to Phnom Penh which contained the English language line “I love you, loving you, as the mouse does love the rice!” Now I can sing that to Andris when I feel like being annoying.

Cambodia, 13 Nov 2006 --

After our exciting trip to Borneo, we headed back to Bangkok to do some serious errand running and then spent an amazing four days in Koh Chang, my new favorite island paradise. In hindsight, it was a good thing that we had so much time to relax and regain some energy just in time for our next destination - Cambodia. Lonely Planet once used the analogy that if Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia was your first stop in SE Asia, it is the kiddie pool of travel. Extending that analogy, Thailand is a little deeper (and probably pleasant with a sandy bottom and colorful fish), and Cambodia is where your toes don’t quite touch the bottom anymore.

From Koh Chang we took a ferry to a town in Thailand called Trat, where most guesthouses sell two day packages to get all the way to Sihanoukville, Cambodia. Our guidebook said that it was possible to do the trip in one day, so at 5:45 AM we woke up in Trat and began a long, confusing day.

First, we tried to get a taxi to the bus station to catch the 6:30 bus to the border in Hat Lek. The taxi driver didn’t understand “bus station” but he knew “Hat Lek”so he agreed to take us there. Soon we were on the road in the back of a share taxi (pick up truck with benches in the back) with 8 other people, one of whom was a small boy with no pants. My guess he was Cambodian, because it seems small boys in Cambodia are not required to wear pants.

Once we got to Hat Lek, a bunch of young men offered to taxi us to the mini-bus to Sihanoukville. We vaguely agreed to go with them after we crossed the border.  Of course, the minibus leaves at 9:00 and it is 8:30, so we are in a bit of a rush and the boys with the taxi even filled out some of the forms for us. Our guide book said you could pay for the visa in American  dollars, but the guards demanded 1,200 Thai baht each, which we didn’t have. One of the taxi guys offered to “loan” us the money, which seemed extremely shady. Finally, after we looked despondent long enough, the guard went “Okay, $30 each,” which was actually quite a deal since one guide book said we should expect to have to pay “extra fines,” and that is less than they wanted us to pay in baht. With visas in hand, we got into the “taxi,” which is an unmarked Camry, which we were told by our tourist guide we should also expect to overpay for. On the way, we went over a bridge with a toll and one of the taxi boys said we needed to pay 4,800 Cambodian reil for. We didn’t have any, we said. It’s OK, I’ll loan it to you and we can stop by the money exchanger in town, he said. Right. Smells scammy. In no time we at the money exchanger, which is really a small stand that also sells juice. Andris tries to exchange just a few leftover baht, but the lady doesn’t seem interested. We’re running late, so we get back in the car. Once we get to the mini-bus we pay the cab driver, and try to repay the guy who paid the toll with more baht than the toll actually cost. The mini-bus people charged us 700 baht per ticket to Sihanoukville instead of the 550 it is supposed to be, despite our protests, but there wasn’t much we could do at this point. Our bags disappeared and were supposedly on top of the minibus under a tarp (which they were). Meanwhile, the guy who loaned us the money was dogging Andris for more money for “helping” us at the border, but  Andris stayed firm in that he already over-repaid him double.

We were ushered into a mini-bus full of grumpy looking tourists before I realized our tickets say “Phnom Phen.” We bolt out of the mini-bus to change tickets, but the guy at the ticket window just crossed it out and wrotes”Sihanoukville.” The other tourists confirmed that many of them were, in fact, going to Sihanoukville. A few moments later we were on an incredibly bumpy, dirt road. The trip was about 6 hours, and included four ferry trips across rivers. Also, by ferry I mean four rowboats with blanks across them that the minibus drives on to (we got out of the minibus for this, of course).

During the trip we compared notes with the other travelers, who confirmed that our experience was about as good as can be expected. We underpayed at the border, overpaid for the tickets, and no one knew what the deal with the money exchanging scam was. One French Canadian, who had been to Cambodia several times, said that one problem with Cambodia is that “they always want just a little bit more money, which makes it hard to trust people.”  So far, that has seemed to be true. Add on to that the run-down nature of everything, and Cambodia, so far, has been exhausting. I think we’ve been here four days, and in that time we’ve rented three broken motorbikes (they ran, just no odometer, speedometer, or gas gauge), had one dramatic argument with a cabdriver over inflated, mis-quoted fares, taken a tourist truck that broke down twice in Bokor National Park (where land-mines and tigers are “rare”so don’t go off trail), got invited to dinner that we were then asked to pay for, and ran out of gas once with the motor bike because the guy renting it swore that we would have enough for our destination. Luckily, children sell soda bottles full of gas on their front lawns, so this wasn’t much of a problem.  Whew, I’m exhausted just writing about it.

Oh, and Cambodia is beautiful and has a tragic history that is difficult and interesting. But more about that on another day.

Borneo, 1 Nov 2006 --

Please allow me a minute to describe the many ways in which leeches suck (ha ha ha… sorry).

During our trip to Malaysia, Andris and I encountered three different types of leeches: the little sock-penetrating leeches of Taman Negara, the big friendly leeches of Borneo, and the tiger leech, also of Borneo, which has a painful bite and enjoys doing it’s hitch-hiker dance from leaves above the ground.

For those never lucky enough to have had many interactions with these type of leeches, let me describe their appearance and behavior. The leeches we met were either solid black, brown, or dark red, with the exception of the tiger leeches which were black with white/green stripes. The smallest one we encountered was about half an inch long, and the longest was about 4-5 inches. They are very thin when you first meet them, though they can be quite fat when they finally abandon you. The leeches have a mean sucker mouth at one end, and what I will call the “wiggly” end at the other.

What a leech does when I am not around I do not know, but once they hear us coming ( I believe they can sense the vibrations in the ground) they affix their sucker end to a leaf that is either on the ground or, in the case of tiger leeches, anywhere.  They stick their wiggly end up in the air and either stick straight up, or madly, blindly, flail around looking for prey, which is what I call the “hitch-hiker dance.” (I think it looks like they are screaming “pick me up! pick me up! I want to come with you!”) The movement of the hitch-hiker dance is alien and disturbing, and after several hours of hiking through leech-infested jungle your eyes become keen to detect it. When you put your foot down in any proximity to a leech, it will “sense” the presence of a big sack of blood and quickly start heading towards you, moving like an inchworm. When it reaches you, it will grab on to your shoe or clothing with the wiggly end, and then inch along you until it finds flesh. If you happen to notice it, you can usually flick it off. The bigger leeches are very strong and flicking doesn’t work, so you can grab the wiggly end and yank. It will then affix itself to your finger, and then you can quickly scrape it off with a branch or something.

If a leech is lucky enough to find flesh, it will put a little bit of anaesthetic and some some anti-coagulant on your skin and then bite a hole in you. When it is full, it will let go and leave you with a freely bleeding wound. When I got a leech in my sock, someone lent me some liquid band aid which completely failed to stop the bleeding. When a leech got in Andris’ pants (through the hole where the zipper is for his zip-off pant legs) he didn’t  notice until the guide pointed out that there was a big blood stain on the back of his pants.

However, it is not as bad as it sounds. Leeches do not carry diseases, and eventually the wounds heal. I think that when you hike in the jungle you go through various stages of leech acceptance. At first they are disgusting and incredibly scary. Eventually you realize they are just animals doing their thing, albeit an evil thing. Then, if you are me, you start tempting them onto sticks and rocks and throwing them into the woods rather than running away screaming. If you are our guide (who must be at a very advanced stage of leech acceptance) you allow them to attach, but then kill them via bug spray, salt, or fire.

In conclusion, I don’t like leeches, but I prefer them to sea cucumbers.

Borneo, 26 Oct 2006 --

Hi everyone! We aren’t dead. Or arrested. We’re in Borneo.

Sounds cool, doesn’t it? Borneo. I guess before this trip I might not have been able to identify Borneo on a map easily, but now I am fully acquainted with this island and it’s odd history. For the uninitiated, Borneo is the third largest island in the world and is governed by three different countries: Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei. We’ve spent the majority of our time in the Malaysian part, having side stepped Brunei altogether (too expensive!), and only briefly visiting a small jungle village in Indonesia.

Borneo is a lot like the rest of Malaysia, which means it is a mixing bowl of Malay and Chinese, with a few Orang Asli (original people). We have been very lucky on this trip and were able to visit some villages where we got to meet many more of the Orang Asli in a non-tour-group way. Borneo has been exciting, and more off-the-beaten-path than we’ve been able to achieve until now. That means that the local people have been nicer, and so have the other travellers, which has been a great experience.