Center on Wheels

Back in the USA...

justine — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 22:14:00 GMT

As TS Eliot put it, “And the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time.” Now that I'm back, I find myself in that place of culture shock where the world feels like it's upside down and I'm on the wrong side of it. These are just a few random thoughts from this place, where everything that is supposed to be normal to me feels odd and unfamiliar.

I am more alone now than I ever was when I was traveling alone. The American suburbs in wintertime are incredibly isolating. I wake up to silence every morning. No birds, no traffic, no roosters, no music, no conversations, no people. It’s cold out, so everyone stays inside. You can drive around and see no people anywhere. It makes me wonder if there has been a nerve gas attack and everyone is dead and only the squirrels are left alive.

The city is not much better. There are people on the street, but they’re rushing along. In cold climates, the street is a place to pass through quickly on your way from one place to another. In warm climates and developing countries, there is a whole ecosystem to the street. It’s a place to eat, sell things, look for business, hang out, get your hair cut, make religious offerings, and much more. I miss this. I miss the life, the chaos, the noise, the activity, the motorbikes, the energy.

I even miss the never-ending chorus of transport guys offering their services all over Southeast Asia. Even in places where there are no cars or motorbikes, like Gili Trawanagan, there are transport guys, constantly offering the local equivalent of the tuk-tuk: a horse and cart. Maybe the truth is that I miss the quotidian attention that being a foreigner garners. Here, I am anonymous, just one of the crowd in a place where sidewalk interactions are infrequent.

I feel thin here. This has absolutely nothing to do with my body, which is pretty much the same size and shape as always, more curvy than slender. Instead, I’m back in the land of fast food, enormous portion sizes, and all sorts of processed foods designed to cause instant diabetes and obesity. This is the country that created not only the Big Mac, but the Venti Frappuccino that has even more calories than the Big Mac (and nearly as much fat: 23 vs. 29 grams).

By contrast, in Asia I was huge. Enormous. Storekeepers all over Hanoi laughed their heads off at me when I asked for my size in pants. I finally found a pair that fit at a shop that sells adventure wear to tourists. When I went shopping for tops in Bali, I discovered that I was not a S, nor a M, and not even a L but an XL. Maybe even an XXL, if it existed. When asked my size, I tried to hold onto my pride by telling the shopkeeper that I was a S or M in my country, but apparently (said with bitter emphasis) I am an XL in their country.

Everything is the same. Among travelers, it’s common knowledge that when you finally go home, two things will hold true: 1) Everything will be the same, including most of the lives of your friends and family; and 2) No one really understands what you've been doing. We travelers freely use these truths to justify extending our trips, or to dispel any thoughts of returning home early.

But when you finally do go home, they strike you in the head like a load of bricks. You’ve been climbing mountains, taking chicken buses, haggling over prices, seeing extraordinary sights, doing extraordinary things, meeting all kinds of people, and all of a sudden, it’s over. Your life-in-motion in places where even going to the post office can be an adventure has ended, and you find yourself sitting in someone’s tastefully decorated living room listening to people talk about the real estate market, the merits of their new plasma TV, and pre-schools. It's not that there is anything wrong with this picture (a composite, of course, I'm not referring to any one tastefully decorated living room in particular), and it's not that you're not happy to re-connect with family and friends. It just feels like a major shock to the system, and you may feel like an alien who has just landed from another planet. Which is, of course, exactly what you are in these early days of re-entry.

The American economy is all about dressing things up into pretty packages and selling them to people. This observation is based upon my two major activities in my first week back: perusing job postings and hanging out at the local Panera (free wifi). It seems like the vast majority of job postings are for positions in sales and marketing, or else in technology and design. Everyone needs to hire people to convince or dupe other people to buying their products. And they need other people to create beautiful websites and appealing graphics to convince you that your life is incomplete without these things. At Panera, like any other up-market, mass-market café, there are these tantalizing posters convincing you to treat yourself with the latest latte of the season (pumpkin?) paired with a sweet baked good that the market researchers have determined will appeal to the moneyed masses and provide a healthy profit margin – which may be the only healthy thing about the deal.

[This post was edited & re-written after the original posting.]

End of Southeast Asian Days

justine — Sun, 9 Mar 2008 15:33:00 GMT

First it was mere weeks, then suddenly mere days, and now just mere hours until my Southeast Asian sojourn comes to an end. It is unreal that this life of traveling will end, unreal that in 26 hours I’ll enter the space and time shifting machine called an airplane and after jumping around the Pacific, I’ll be spit out in Boston in March. Bali in March and Boston in March feel many worlds and lifetimes apart. I will always be in awe of how this works. You go from one totalizing reality that is everything – what you breathe, see, how you feel, what you speak, what surrounds you – that is so very real and alive to you. And then, you get on a plane and eventually you are ejected into another completely different reality. All of a sudden, there you are, almost naked in this other dimension, where everything is completely different. It may even be familiar, but in those initial moments you feel like you’ve forgotten how to speak the language. It always feels like space travel to me, and the hardest part is that everyone expects you to be totally present in the second reality, especially when it involves going home. And you’re still thinking, “Where did it all go? How did I get here? Who are these little green people?”

The travel mode has become second nature to me. It feels like I am managing a little space capsule and I’m always thinking of what provisions (toothpaste, cash, bottled water, contact lenses) need re-supplying and when clothes need to be washed, and onward travel plans made. The space capsule must be maintained in full readiness at all times (I realize not everyone travels this way; I tend to be a bit anal, god forbid I be caught without sunscreen!). It’s been strange to realize that I can let this go. It doesn’t matter anymore.

The last week of this journey has been everything I did not envision. I had reserved this last week to be in Ubud, to practice yoga, drink up the blessings of Bali, and put energy into being focused, strong and calm before I return home. It was a sweet vision, but it’s been thwarted in every possible way. First, some nasty intestinal hijackers forced their way aboard during the ferry ride back from Lombok. Within hours of return to Ubud, I was reduced to a weak, feverish, achy, and unhappy lump of fatigue. I always thought the expression “the runs” referred to the way food “runs” through your system. Now I see the double meaning: it’s all about running for the toilet. I couldn’t believe it; after five months, my gastrointestinal tract chooses the VERY LAST WEEK to give up on me. From a near-comatose fetal position I whined pitieously: How could you betray me like this? I thought you were stronger than this! Haven’t I always been good to you? Why do you always give up right at the end?

Three days later, the magic of antibiotics returned me to health. Hallelujah! Time to dive into yoga for my remaining five days. Or so I thought. A small sign posted on the wall informed me that regular yoga classes would be cancelled f or one day because of the Balinese new year. OK, fair enough. But then, they’d be cancelled for OVER A WEEK for a special festival. I knew the festival was on, but I didn’t think it would affect the yoga schedule until after I left. I immediately hated the festival and was filled with bitterness, resentment and recriminations (emotions that are probably illegal in Bali). It was so unfair. How could this happen when I had only five precious days left in Bali? And how could I have gone to the Gilis, leaving all those luscious yoga classes going on without me?

The town started to fill up with all sorts of eclectic types in town for the festival of music/dance/yoga/all-sorts-of-New-Age-stuff. I resented them for filling up the yummy organic cafes. It was impossible to get a seat and food took forever to arrive and in the meantime I had to listen to them prattle on about their energy and auras and their journeys and self awareness and how it was all so amazing and transformative. Blah, blah, blah. They embraced and kiss-kissed, but they all seemed to talk at each other, no one actually listening to anyone. I sulked in the corner and refused to be friendly to anyone. I snarled at the small children who screamed and ran around the café. When a man asked me if I was in town for the festival, I literally snapped back: “NO. I’m leaving. I don’t like crowds.” Poor man. I could hardly recognize myself in this state. On top of it, I felt so heavy, like I had gained 50 pounds since I had arrived in Bali. I felt huge and thick and felt unable to get out of the fog that had descended upon me.

I was bewildered by this negativity. Did it mean that it was time to go home? What was wrong with me? How could I lose the lightness and joy of traveling so quickly? I really didn’t want to go home feeling like this. The soul-sucking vultures of self-doubt, depression, and despair could not be far behind. I had left them behind back in October; what if they had been waiting for me at home all this time, hungry? The thought made me shudder.

The week really wasn’t going very well.

Until, finally, today, my second-to-last day in Bali, something happened. I went to a Jivamukti yoga class. It turns out that for the price of two normal classes, I can attend one of these classes. And since I have three classes left and hate to waste them, I went.

The teacher, visiting from Hawaii, explained that this class would be devoted to Shiva shakti energy, the pure energy that is our true nature. Or something like that. She asked us to set our highest possible intention for today’s practice. As I sat there, her choice of words emboldened me. Feeling so low, so mortal, so heavy and so bound by this state, I desperately wanted to touch a bit of transcendence. I phrased my intention as a request, asking to feel my divine nature. Just the spark, please, anything so I know this beast is not who I really am.

The class started with a lot of chanting, to musical accompaniment. Then we got into the swing of a vinyasa-style class, and the sweat started to pour. Periodically our teacher would talk about encouraging the kundalini energy, the prana to move up our spine, to get the Shiva energy up to the third eye. Or something like that. Yoga is all about union, and most classes focus on the union between mind and body, using the breath. This is always a challenge, at least for me. But this class was about the union between the mind, the body, and the divine, in the form of Shiva energy. At one point we were sitting with our legs spread wide, eyes closed, chanting “Shiva Om.” Or maybe it was “Shiva Ham” (I am Shiva). I wasn’t sure, but it sounded beautiful, all of our voices together, vibrating and resonating. And then, in the middle of all this lovely chanting, Neeraja, who was our musical accompaniment, started speaking these words:

Willing to experience aloneness
I discover connection everywhere
Turning to face my fear,
I meet the warrior who lives within;
Opening to my loss,
I gain the embrace of the universe;
Surrendering into emptiness,
I find fullness without end

Each condition I flee from pursues me,
Each condition I welcome transforms me
And becomes itself transformed
Into its radiant jewel-like essence
I bow to the one who has made it so,
Who has crafted this Master Game;
To play it is pure delight –
To honor its form, true devotion*

As she spoke the first few lines, it felt like she was speaking the words written on my soul that I didn't know were there. It felt as if she had followed me on my journey. Tears of recognition sprung from my eyes and streamed down my face, as naturally as sweat. And somehow, through this moment of deep resonance, everything softened inside me. From that point on, it seemed like I was able to let go in a deeper way, and found myself calming down, being filled with deep compassion. And then it came to me: this compassion is the manifestation of my divine nature.

There was more to the class, but I don’t really remember. I floated out, riding my bike down Jl. Hanoman in the sunshine, calling greetings to all my transport-guy friends along the way. I felt alive, awake, and filled with deep gratitude. It was my second-to-last day in Bali, and there was much I wanted to do. Yet somehow I was able to tell my worrying mind not to worry, to go with it, that everything would come together without force, stress or anxiety. On the street, a friend passed by and said to me, "you're glowing!" As I ate a late breakfast at Kafe, a man came up to me and introduced himself, and unlike many of the past days, I welcomed his conversation and invited him to join me. We talked about many things, including the lucrative business of import-export from Bali (which he encouraged me to look into), but one thing he said stuck with me: “Bali is positioned to be the liver of the world. Sooner or later everything has to come here to be cleaned and de-toxed.”

Sooner or later, indeed.

Unrelated Post-script: The physical journey may soon be over, but the travel journal will not. I still am playing catch up, so watch for some of the following: “Up the Mekong Delta,” “Beauty and Horror in Phnom Penh,” something on Angkor Wat, and “Island of Dudes and Cats,” and “Nyepi.”

*The poem is entitled “Unconditional,” by Jennifer Paine Welwood

Back to Bali...in the Monsoon Season

justine — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:48:00 GMT

It felt so good to arrive in Bali. The warm, humid air enveloped me, and familiar smells greeted me – the unique smell of Balinese cooking, the smell of a particular laundry detergent, and other unidentifiable sweet fragrances that are uniquely Balinese. I relaxed into them, and it felt like I was coming home.

I arrived late in the evening, so I decided to spend the night in Kuta. I had consciously avoided Kuta the first time I was in Bali since it sounded like the sort of place I would hate. It’s filled with Western chains, package tourists, karaoke bars, surfers, discos, parties, and a million people trying to sell you something. It’s a strange blend of Bali and any other Western beach resort, and I found it just plain tacky. The beach is supposed to be the star attraction, so I thought I’d check it out before heading to Ubud. It was awful. The beach was littered with garbage – a million plastic bags – and desperate hawkers hounded me every 5 minutes.

So I quickly left and headed to Ubud, where I spent many happy days at the beginning of my journey in October/November. I expected it to feel like a kind of homecoming, but instead I was hit by a wall of sadness. I was exhausted after running through Cambodia – a week straight of near-constant bus and boat travel combined with the heat, dust, and heartbreak of Cambodia – and was nursing a very sore throat. But instead of relief, I felt sadness, and the peace and quiet of Ubud felt oppressive. All throughout Vietnam, I had dreamed of finding a quiet and green place to rest. Now I had it, and it felt so strange and almost too quiet. Accustomed to moving every 2 or 3 days, I felt disoriented and almost panicked to not have imminent onward travel plans. It is also the monsoon season in Bali, something I hadn’t quite planned on – and it was gray and very wet those first few days.

Throughout Vietnam and Cambodia, I often bumped into people I had met before, since most travelers follow the same North-South route with different variations. It was always nice to unexpectedly see familiar faces and share stories, and coming to Bali felt like I had jumped off the circuit and was suddenly all alone for the first time. I have traveled alone for almost five months and never felt this way before.

Eventually I figured out why I was feeling such sadness, panic, and discomfort: coming back to Bali means the end of my journey. I have already been to Bali, so it means there are no more new places to discover, explore, and absorb. It felt like a big let down, and I wondered if maybe I should have stayed in Malaysia.

I spent the first few days in Ubud in a strange state. I felt so full, but yet so empty. I felt like I had just gorged myself on the elaborate and delicious feast that has been this journey, and now, nearly five months later, I felt so full that I could not move. I was so full, but yet I couldn’t do anything with it. It was like it was all stuck inside me. All I could do was wait for the slow process of digestion to commence.

Slowly I got myself to yoga classes – now in the gorgeous new venue of the Yoga Barn. As I sat in class, gazing out at the incredibly green rice fields and palm trees, listening to the rain, the blessing of being in Bali slowly settled in. Bali is so green and luscious and gorgeous and peaceful right now. The Yoga Barn is an extraordinarily beautiful place to do yoga, with incredibly talented teachers. My body is so soft, creaky and tight after months on the road that I feel like I’m a beginner all over again (especially next to the lithe and supple bodies that populate these classes). But it feels so good to stretch and sweat and push myself. I’m starting to see my mind slow down – so accustomed to constantly thinking, planning, evaluating:

“How do I get there? When do I go? How much does it cost? Where should I stay? Will the room be too noisy/hot/smelly/uncomfortable? How far away is it? How much should a taxi cost? Is this guy going to rip me off? Should I really be walking down this street alone at this time of night? Where is the ATM and what is the exchange rate and do I have enough money in my account to cover that withdrawal? Do I trust this guy? What time does the bus leave? How bad is the bathroom? Where should I eat breakfast/lunch/dinner?”

Only now does it occur to me that traveling alone is very exhausting because you have to answer all these questions and solve all these problems pretty much on your own.

I stumbled upon a wonderful place to stay called Sensasi Bungalows, on Jl. Hanoman. It’s new so that means new linens, pillows that are not moldy or lumpy or hard, a proper mattress, and even the bathroom tiles are truly clean. It’s a nice change from the usual budget guesthouse, which I have to confess I’m getting tired of.

And I bumped into a Swedish girl I sat next to on the 6 hour bus ride from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng back in Laos in January. In an incredibly small world moment, we discovered that my great-grandmother is from the same small town in Sweden as her mother, and she knows the area quite well. This was all the more amazing since I couldn't remember the name of the region and could only describe it as "a small town in Northern Sweden near a big lake where there is a bridge, but before there wasn't, and I know that because my great-great-grandfather operated the sailboat ferry about 150 years ago."

So Ubud is wonderful and I am feeling very happy to be here, at last. But I am not quite ready for the journey to be over, so tomorrow I leave for the Gili Islands, located off Lombok, the next island east in the Indonesian archipelago. I’ve been dreaming of them since last time I was here, and figured that if I don’t go now, I’ll never go, since it is so easy to get comfortable in Ubud. I started packing earlier, and am already feeling the excitement of leaving for a new place. I am imagining them as tropical island paradise, like the Corn Islands in Nicaragua. It’s also my last chance to get a tan. Contrary to popular belief, I’ve spent very little time in the sun, and even less time on the beach during this trip. I’m not sure how that happened, since I love being near the sea and on islands and beaches. So this is a small attempt to remedy this imbalance. Then, I’ll come back and spend my last week in Ubud.

Air Asia & Me, from Cambodia to KL to Bali

justine — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 11:08:00 GMT

Last Sunday I had breakfast in Cambodia, lunch in Malaysia and dinner in Bali. I left Siem Reap early in the morning, and arrived in Kuala Lumpur by mid-day. I had a 5 hour layover, and a friend from Vietnam was also in town, so I thought I’d pop into the city rather than sit around the airport. I flew Air Asia, the “everyone can fly” low cost carrier, so I landed at the Low Cost Carrier Terminal. It’s literally called something like that, and the whole place looks and feels low cost: it’s basically a warehouse with a McDonald’s, some plastic seats, and X-Ray machines. Oh, and a runway out back with a few airplanes hanging around.

It’s also much further from the city than the "normal" KL international airport, so it took me much longer than expected to get into the city, leaving me barely an hour and half to explore. I glimpsed the famous Petronas towers out the bus window as we wound through the city streets. Finally, I met my friend, and we walked around Chinatown, admired some colonial shophouses and a mosque, and then ended up in the middle of a bicycle race. It was an interesting juxtaposition: half-naked men decked out in spandex and women in hijabs. It was a turbo tour of KL, but in the short time I could glimpse the fascinating ethnic mix of Chinese, Muslim, and Indian.

Then I somehow missed my bus back and ended up having to take a taxi, which almost ran out of gas – we had to turn around to go to a gas station to buy a tiny bit of petrol when the taxi ran out of natural gas. The friendly driver explained to me the complexities of the duel fuel system in his incredibly proper British-accented English, but I was too busy worrying about missing my flight to listen closely.

We rolled into the airport on fumes; I dashed to left luggage to pick up my bags, and panted my way to the check-in desk, only to be told, “Bali? The Bali flight is closed.” This was a shock, since there were still 35 minutes to go, which seemed like plenty of time to me. I smiled my best “please pity me, I’m a clueless foreigner whose taxi ran out of gas” smile and the desk agent radioed someone.

He got off the radio and told me, “OK, they’ll take the passenger, but not the luggage.”

Me: “OK, that's great. So it’ll come on the next flight, right?”

Him: “Oh no, we don’t do that.”

(Hello, Low Cost Carrier!)

Me: "Hmm, so I can carry it on?”

Him (shaking his head): “Nope”

I looked at the backpack that I have lugged through 5 countries over 4 months and asked incredulously, “You mean I am supposed to abandon my luggage in Malaysia?”

Though there have been many times I've wished to abandon the backpack, this was not one of them.

He went back to his radio. I smiled nicely, and even extended my smile to include the luggage carrier guys who were loitering around just outside the door behind the gate. I smiled pleadingly, I smiled charmingly and I smiled as nicely as I possibly could, and before radio guy came back one of the luggage guys said to me, “No problem, we’ll take it.” I smiled an extra thank you smile, and then ran to the gate.

The good thing about being the last person to check into a flight is that there are no lines at passport control or security. The friendly Air Asia guys tried to weigh my carry on, but knowing that I’d probably fail that test too (having already stuffed heavy items into my carry-on to get my checked bag down to the 15 kilo limit), I used the smile trick again, this time combined with running action and an apologetic, “sorry I don’t quite understand what that scale is for” look. It seemed to work – they smiled and let me go.

Hoi An

justine — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 10:20:00 GMT

My next stop on the journey south was Hoi An, a small town along a river that is a UNESCO World Heritage site for its architecture, and one of the few towns that was spared bombing. It was a major port in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, and the wealth of the traders is reflected in the elaborate architecture of the Old Town. It’s lovely and I imagine it has the potential to be relatively peaceful, but I was there during the frenzied lead-up to the Tet holidays when it seemed like everyone was running around on motorbikes, out shopping to prepare for the holidays.

The major tourist activity in Hoi An is having clothes made, and you cannot walk a meter without bumping into a tailor’s shop. I’m guessing that the town elders realized that the charms of the Old Town could be seen in a morning, so they needed to come up with another way to keep the tourists and their wallets in town for a few more days. They couldn’t have come up with a better plan. As I learned, it is possible to be very busy going to multiple fittings and not doing much else except going to the ATM and worrying about how much money you’re spending and how will you ever get all this stuff home. (It turns out that the Hoi An post office is well equipped to help travelers solve this problem – there’s even an ATM inside the post office).

There were lots of cute summer dresses on the mannequins, but I had promised my mother I would have a suit made. I haven’t worn a suit since 1998. Suits really don’t work on me, nor do pantyhose, high heels, or make-up. I only started blow-drying my hair at age 30. When I put on a suit I feel like I’m impersonating a grown up, and get the feeling that I am slowly suffocating to death. I do not feel like myself in a suit. But I do have to find a job as soon as I return home, so I figured a suit might be necessary for this endeavor, even though I have no intention of ever having a job that requires regular suit-wearing. And to think I thought I wanted to be President when I was a kid!

I ended up at Mr. Xe’s shop completely by chance. Later I learned that he is actually quite famous and a Swedish magazine considers him the best tailor in Hoi An, at least according to the people I met at the shop. It was amusing to watch grizzled Aussie backpacker boys in board shorts and flip flops picking out fabric for suits and shirts, and very difficult to imagine them actually wearing them. I was assisted by a young woman named Ngo who kept calling me “baby,” and telling me “baby, don’t you worry,” in her sweet voice and swatting my bottom. I guess she thought I was nervous.

Mr. Xe himself handled the fittings, rushing in wearing a striped seersucker suit and a motorcycle helmet. He came up to my chest and expertly measured all parts of my body, calling off numbers to Ngo. She swatted my bottom again, kissed my cheek and sent me on my way, saying “baby, don’t you worry; everything’s going to be fine.”

As it turned out, it was more than fine. When Mr. Xe wasn’t happy with the suit jacket they made for me, he had his tailors make a second one and gave me both for the price of one. Yes, I got something for free in Vietnam! It actually does happen. (I haven’t gotten around to writing about the many scams and rip-offs and rigged taxi meters that I encountered in Vietnam – that’s a whole other story – for now I’m focusing on the positive). And I even looked somewhat like myself in my Mr. Xe Hoi An suit.

I fell in love with a winter coat at another shop, and figured this was another item I could use, considering that I haven’t experienced a winter since 1999 and will be returning to Boston in March. This shop was not quite as experienced in the customer hand-holding department. When I came back for the fitting and said “The sleeves are too tight,” or “I can’t breathe in these pants,” the shop assistant would tell me “I don’t think so,” even though I was the one wearing said item in question.

The collar wasn’t as high as I wanted, and the buttons showed up in a different color than I had asked, and the fabric was not of the highest quality, but it is a great red, a style that I really like, and for a made-to-fit $37 coat, the results weren't bad. We’ll see how it stands the test of cold weather. Or rather, I should say, we’ll see how Justine stands the tests of cold weather and suit-wearing.

Hue and Ghosts of the DMZ

justine — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 09:30:00 GMT

From Hanoi, I boarded the Reunification Express, the train that runs between Hanoi in the North and Saigon in the South. I was only going as far as Hue – a 13 hour overnight journey. Over these months I have discovered that no matter how comfortable they are, I simply cannot sleep in moving trains, buses or boats. While it was nice to stretch vertical, I arrived in Hue sleepless, and the cold I had caught in Hanoi had somehow stolen my voice over the course of the night. But I did see the sun for a few hours that afternoon – the first time I’d seen it in 10 days in Vietnam – so that cheered me up.

Hue is the old imperial city, and you can visit the historical site of the semi-restored Citadel (which was destroyed by both French and American forces during their respective wars with Vietnam). I enjoyed walking around the Citadel, an oasis of peace and green, looking at the gorgeous tile work of dragons, flowers, fish, and elaborate designs made from tiles, broken china, and sea shells. But once outside the walls of the historic site, it was back to trying to dodge the highly persistent cyclo drivers and motorcycle taxis. It seems that a foreigner walking is a major affront to them and they do their best to remedy the situation and convince you to hop aboard. For a small fee, of course.

Hue is just south of the demilitarized zone (DMZ), the line that divided North and South Vietnam and where some of the worst fighting and bombings of the Vietnam/American War took place. Hue itself suffered huge numbers of civilian fatalities in 1968 after the North Vietnamese troops captured the city in the Tet Offensive, and then again when the Americans and South Vietnamese fought to re-take the city. Roughly 13,000 civilians were killed in those months.

It’s hard to conceive of the loss of life that Vietnam has suffered in the past century.

Two million people starved to death in a famine after World War II ended. Two million people!

In fighting between 1946 and 1954, 35,000 French soldiers were killed, and Vietnamese casualties were much, much higher (though I don’t have the figures), not to mention civilian deaths and injuries.

In the 1968 Tet Offensive alone, the death toll was: 32,000 North Vietnamese; 1,000 Americans; and 2,000 South Vietnamese. And I'm not ever sure if these figures include civilians.

And these figures are just the tip of the iceberg.

When you think that each of these numbers represents a person who has a family, friends, and neighbors, the impact of these deaths is just massive, and reaches around the world. This country has suffered immensely, and one has to have enormous respect for the people of this tiny country who have managed to kick out the Chinese, French, and the Americans, and completely re-build their country and economy. They are tough and determined.

While I was in Hue, I decided to take a day-long tour of the DMZ. I was ambivalent about it – it felt a bit voyeuristic and morbid, like war tourism. But I also felt that as an American, it was my responsibility to understand what the war did to this country. I didn’t want to be an American obsessed with an American-centric past, but nor did I want to ignore the role my country played in Vietnam.

I haven’t seen any of the famous Hollywood war movies, mostly because I have a very low tolerance for watching violence. But whether I liked it or not, I realized that before I came to Vietnam most of my associations were war-related. I heard “Tet” and thought “Tet Offensive,” even though my memory of the historical details was foggy. I heard “Hanoi” and “Hanoi Jane” popped into my head, the pejorative name for Jane Fonda. “Saigon” brought up “Miss Saigon.” It shows how little I (and probably most Americans) know about Vietnam as a country with an identity outside of the Vietnam War. It also shows how powerful the associations of the Vietnam War are in the context of American culture.

The tour took us along Route 1 and Route 9, through Dong Ha town, past the Rockpile, by the Ho Chi Minh Trail at Dakrong Bridge, past the site of Camp Carroll, and to Khe Sanh Combat base, then over the Ben Hai River, past cemeteries filled with row after row of North Vietnamese war dead, past Doc Mieu Base and to the Vinh Moc tunnels. Truly there's not much left to see, except massive bomb craters that pockmark the countryside. The ever-inventive Vietnamese farmers have turned some of them into fish ponds.

But at the time, the DMZ was one of the most heavily militarized zones in human history. The natural and human geography of the region has been utterly transformed by war. Our guide told us that before the war, the Central Highlands were all jungle and only ethnic minorities lived there. Between Agent Orange and heavy bombing, the region was largely deforested, and what stands today is all new growth. Now, most of the population is made up of Vietnamese re-settled from other regions, although some ethnic minorities still live there.

The former site of the US Khe Sanh combat base is now a coffee plantation. Khe Sanh is high in the hills and a cold mist swirled around us as we walked around the site which features some old US helicopters, tanks, bomb casings, and a small museum. It felt like a place that belongs to ghosts, and it was hard to imagine that exactly 40 years ago to the day there had been a massive siege underway. It was impossible to reconcile this quiet, peaceful and remote patch of land with one of the bloodiest battles of the war that claimed the lives of 500 Americans, 10,000 North Vietnamese, and countless civilians.

The siege began on January 21, 1968, and lasted 75 days. I was there on January 29, 2008. It was hard to imagine that this patch of land – like so many other patches of land all over the world – was a place that was so fiercely contested, a place where thousands of men suffered and died and killed, a place of great strategic and geopolitical importance to politicians thousands of miles away. At the end of the day, all these places are just patches of land.

The last stop of the day was at the Vinh Moc tunnels, on the North side of the DMZ, right on the coast. This was where an entire village – with the encouragement of the Viet Cong – dug themselves underground for protection against heavy bombing. They built three levels of elaborate tunnels, and sixty odd families lived underground. A school was set up and seventeen babies were born in the underground delivery room – and no one from the village was killed. Since these tunnels were used for living, it’s possible to actually stand up in them, unlike the famous Cu Chi Tunnels in South Vietnam, which were built for combat and are very small. We traipsed through the tunnels, and emerged on a deserted white sand beach, the waves of the South China Sea roaring in our ears, trying to imagine US naval warships on the horizon and the booming of guns and bombs.

Ha Long Bay Romance

justine — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 10:45:00 GMT

Ever since I saw the movie "Indochine," I've wanted to visit Ha Long Bay. I loved the haunting scenes where Camille and Jean Baptiste, her beloved French soldier (originally her adoptive mother's lover - it's a French film after all) float through the islands in a small junk. Camille's just killed a French soldier, they're fleeing the French army, and they're without food or water and are barely conscious, but it's all terribly romantic, like they are the last two people on earth, together at last.

My Ha Long Bay journey was not exactly cut from the same cloth. I was about 60 years too late for the sexy French soldiers. I took a package tour on a junk like everyone else, since it's the easiest and cheapest way to see Ha Long Bay from Hanoi. After researching a few companies and reading lots of stories on-line about nightmare trips, I booked a 3 day/2 night trip with Vega Travel.

The first leg of the journey was a 3 hour bus ride through the North Vietnamese countryside where highly industrial meets pre-industrial. After we left the urban sprawl of Hanoi, the road was lined with giant factory complexes. Our guide proudly pointed them out as examples of recent foreign investment. In between the factories, in between the houses, and seemingly in every available scrap of land are the green, green rice fields. Huge power lines tower over them, factories abut them, towns surround them, but the rice fields do not yield. Vietnam is the second biggest exporter of rice (next to Thailand), and that’s after the immense amounts of rice consumed by a domestic market of 85 million people. It’s a lot of rice.

And on this freezing cold, drizzling day the fields were filled with farmers bent over, tending to the plants, thigh-high in cold water and mud, both men and women, wearing conical hats and flimsy plastic ponchos as protection against the rain. All throughout my travels in Vietnam, rice fields were everywhere, filled with farmers doing the back-breaking work of tending to the crops manually. On the way back, we saw a bus that had catapulted off the road into a rice field (at this point, our guide explained that buses in Vietnam are called “flying coffins”).

We reached Ha Long City, a pretty unattractive place filled with many hotels. Our guide explained the difference between European and Asian tourists: the European tourists like to sleep on the boats in the bay, while the Asian tourists like to take day trips and come back to town to do karaoke, gamble, shop and party. The port is jam-packed with tourist junks – there are literally hundreds of them jostling for space at the landing, stacked 5 or 6 deep, and even more anchored off shore. Tour guides herded groups of tourists bundled up in scarves and raincoats from mini-buses to boats.

We boarded our boat, and as we were pulling out of the harbor, I received my first surprise of the trip. I went to ask the guide about the train ticket the travel agency was supposed to book for me, and instead he told me, “Um, you signed up for the 3 day trip, but actually, you can only do a 2 day trip…”

Supposedly some people had cancelled, and since I was only one person, it was impossible to do the 3 day trip, but they would refund my money and here was the itinerary for the 2 day trip. I expressed disappointment, regret, outrage, but ultimately, considering that they had waited to tell me until I was on the boat that was chugging out of the harbor, there was nothing I could do but accept the refund and resign myself to the change in schedule. In the end, considering the weather was so miserable, it wasn’t such a tragedy.

We were seven in the group. There was a French Swiss couple who spoke little English and kept explaining how they’d spent 10 days in the far North where it had been very cold and there was no heat anywhere. They were clearly tired of being cold. Then there were the Aussies: a mother and daughter pair from Alice Springs, and two thirty-something women from Sydney, who were a lot of fun.

After crossing the bay, we glided into the limestone karst forest that is Ha Long Bay – a green sea crowned by thousands of oddly shaped limestone islands, like the tops of mountains sticking out of the sea. They’re uninhabitable, all sloping sides and stone, so people live on boats and in floating houses. They were cloaked in mist on this cold, grey day and there were islands as far as the eye could see. In some of the narrower passages it was as though we were in a canyon of green and stone. It was quite beautiful. I went up on the “sundeck” (I wasn't to see sun for another 2 weeks) to take photos, but the rain soon chased me inside.

It was gorgeous, but the weather was lousy. We tried to make the best of it, and six of us bravely set off in the cold drizzle to go kayaking. Our bottoms were soon soaked and frozen, and the legs and arms were next. Still, it was quite something to be so close to the water, the karst islands towering above us. Our guide led us through a small archway into a lagoon that lies in the center of an island. For a moment, it was as though we were the only people in Ha Long Bay, drifting through the mist.

But this feeling was not to last. We headed toward TiTop Island (named in honor of a Soviet astronaut who visited with Ho Chi Minh), where you can climb up to the top and get a panoramic view of the bay. According to the postcards on sale, it’s quite a view on a clear day. We pulled our kayaks up on the beach. Looking around, we realized that we were the only people who looked like drowned rats. All the other visitors had arrived on very solid looking wooden launches, looked quite neat, tidy and dry. Some of the tour groups even wore matching hats and jackets.

Between the six of us, we sported bare feet, plastic ponchos, the white plastic shower sandals that are standard issue in every Vietnamese hotel, dripping wet shorts, and men’s thermal underwear bottoms (that was me). We were also very wet. And lest I forget, we wore lovely bright orange life jackets (for extra warmth). Not bothering to take off the lifejackets, we made our way up the stairs as the impeccably groomed groups moved to the side and pointed and stared at us. We were clearly the comic relief for the afternoon, and as we ascended, one of us overheard someone say “Aussies for sure.” As the only non-Aussie in the group, I took it as a compliment.

After we returned to the boat and had very short, semi-hot showers, we discovered the main event of the evening: Vietnamese soap operas. Our guide had told us that dinner would be at 6.30. We all arrived early and sat expectantly at our tables. 6.30 came and went, and nothing happened. Instead, the entire crew – all male, mostly quite young – sat transfixed in front of the TV that sat over the bar. No one was going anywhere, and nothing was happening in the kitchen. I sat there, hungry and cold, trying to write in my journal, with my back to the TV, until I finally gave up, turned around and started asking questions.

It turned out that it was the equivalent of the season finale, a sacred event not to be interrupted by banal activities like feeding the tourists. The heroine was running away from her arranged wedding to the grave of her dead lover, while flashbacks to happier days played. Just as the man she was supposed to marry showed up to reclaim her, the ghost of her lover flew up from the grave and swooped her into the underworld, leaving only flowers and smoke. It was far more dramatic than I describe here, but the best part was watching these young Vietnamese men completely absorbed in this romantic doomed love drama, which oddly mirrored (in a same, same but different kind of way) the romance story that brought me to Ha Long Bay in the first place. I just hadn’t expected to find it on TV.

Hectic, Hectic Hanoi

justine — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 10:42:00 GMT

Part I

I spent my first day in Hanoi wandering around the Old Quarter in a state of astonishment, gripping my Lonely Planet and trying not to get run over or fall into a gutter or trip over someone or be knocked over by a motorbike. It was total sensory overload, especially after the slow pace of Laos. It was also very cold. In the Old Quarter there is so much activity per square inch that I had to walk down the same street several times before I could finally see it. I’d walk down the same street many times and each time, I’d see something completely new. Of course part of this is because I was just trying to walk without being killed. The streets are very narrow, and each block is crammed with shops, their wares and shoppers spilling out onto the sidewalks.

People are selling and buying and negotiating at a frenetic pace. You can literally see, feel, and smell the Vietnamese economy growing at 8% a year in these transactions, and it’s impossible to imagine how these people tolerated a centralized economy for so many years. Originally, each street in the Old Quarter was dedicated to selling a particular ware or service, and this has survived to some degree, with entire streets dedicated to selling things like silver, herbal medicines, funerary plaques, altar decorations, cell phones, clothing, shoes, motorcycle repairs, school supplies, toys, and all sorts of other things.

The sidewalks are an ecosystem in their own right. Small restaurants and food stands occupy a good portion of the sidewalks, entire kitchens and giant pots boiling out in the open, with small stools and kindergarten-sized tables and chairs set up for clients. Then there are the ambulatory vendors who march up and down the streets. Women in conical hats tied with a scarf under their chin carry baskets laden with wares balanced on a bamboo stick held over their shoulders. Their baskets, shaped like the inversion of their hats, create a lovely symmetry. They sell everything imaginable, and one even carried a portable restaurant in her baskets, complete with pots, bowls, chopsticks, a stove, and stools. Other vendors transport their wares on bicycles – entire department stores literally crammed onto a bicycle. It’s all about buying and selling, and it’s hard to imagine that there ever was a centralized economy here.

Then there are the motorbikes. Vietnam is a nation of motorbikes. They are everywhere, and I am convinced that there is nowhere (except maybe Ha Long Bay) where one can escape the sound of motorbikes. (Earplugs and iPods are highly recommended). There are 4 million people in Hanoi, and nearly 2 million motorbikes. In Saigon, it’s something like 8 million people and 5 million motorbikes. I was told that cars are taxed at something like 100% in order to discourage people from buying them. If everyone who drives a motorbike drove a car, Vietnam would grind to a halt with the whole nation stuck in gridlock.

The streets of Hanoi are rivers of motorbikes, a sea of shiny metallic and pastel colored helmets. The helmet law was only a month old when I was there, but everyone was compliant. The helmets were not always buckled and it seemed that children and babies seemed oddly exempt from the law, but pretty much everyone wore one. Someone told me that there are an average of 50 traffic fatalities a day in Vietnam – most of which involve motorbikes – so hopefully the helmets will improve this statistic. Many people – especially women -- wear cloth masks that stretch across their mouths and noses and hook behind their ears as protection against the pollution, sun, and cold.

In Vietnam, the motorbike is king, both on the street and on the sidewalk. This is the irony of the cities in Vietnam: it’s often impossible to walk on the sidewalk because they’re packed tight with parked motorbikes. In the Old Quarter of Hanoi, the pedestrian has to skirt the narrow space between sidewalk, the gutter, and the traffic. Even when you find an unobstructed sidewalk, you’re not really safe since at any minute a motorbike will come speeding at you, roaring up onto the sidewalk, looking for a parking space or lurching into an alleyway.

Crossing the street is an art in itself. If you were to wait for a break in traffic, you’d never get across. Instead, you have to slowly move yourself forward into the stream of traffic. If you move slowly and deliberately, the motorbikes will veer around you. That’s the idea, anyway, but it’s terrifying to put into practice for the first time. I looked for more seasoned pedestrians and using them as cover, mirrored their movements. There are also cars, trucks, cyclos, bicycles, and the occasional bus to contend with. The worst is when you’ve carefully looked both ways and are confidently moving across a gap in the traffic when out of nowhere, a motorbike turns the corner and comes right at you – on the wrong side of the road. There seems to be a rule that motorbikes making turns are allowed to drive on the wrong side of the road, at top speeds. I found this particularly unnerving.

Then there is the noise. If the motorbike is king, the horn is the loyal consort. It seems like everyone – even on a deserted street in the dead of night – is blaring their horn to announce their presence. Bus drivers are the worst, but everyone seems to do his or her part. It’s a symphony of the most discordant and grating instruments ever, a strange form of democratic expression, everyone clamoring to be heard, to announce their presence, to demand way, to force others to the side, to say “Outta my way!” “I’m coming through, get over, get over!” “Move it or lose it!” “Watch out!”

Part II

The most wonderful thing about Hanoi was meeting my friend Vickie’s cousins. Vickie was born in Hanoi, but left as a child, and returned a few years ago on a fellowship to do fieldwork on motherhood and modernity. She put me in touch with her cousins, Ha and Tuyet, who were absolutely lovely and took me all over the city and fed me delicious Vietnamese food. They were very hospitable and kind to me, and it was such a treat to have local tour guides.

Ha picked me up on Sunday morning and took me for a breakfast of steaming hot pho – rice noodle soup with beef, spring onions and herbs. It’s simple, but incredibly satisfying on a cold day. Then we had super strong Vietnamese coffee, with super sweet evaporated milk. The coffee is incredibly thick, smells and looks like chocolate, and is pure rocket fuel. I loved it. We talked about traveling, and all the places we’ve been and want to go. Then, he took me to see a very old pagoda, and then to the excellent Museum of Ethnology, where we caught a water puppet show and ate some more food. Later that night, he invited me to dinner with his wife, two daughters and a niece. It was a veritable feast. We started with many small dishes of appetizers: fried corn; juicy grilled pork; grilled duck; salad with liver and pineapple; rolls of sticky rice with a delicious sauce; spring rolls; and cucumber and pineapple salad. They kept placing more and more food in my bowl and I happily ate it all, even the meat. The main course was a lau, Vietnamese hot pot. The pot is served over a flame at the table and the broth and meat are boiling (a very good thing in cold weather) and you add noodles, greens and herbs to the soup as you wish. It was rich and wonderfully warming. The girls (12, 10, and 7) were very sweet and were excited to practice their (very good) English with a real foreigner. Later, we went to the night market, and munching popcorn, wandered through the streets taken over by a carnival atmosphere. It was a few weeks before Tet, the lunar New Year’s holidays, and it felt very similarly to the frenzied lead up to the Christmas holidays at home. The girls kept asking me if I liked things – a purse, a necklace, a figurine – and finally their mother told me that they wanted to buy me a gift. They presented me with two beautiful flowers cleverly crafted from tinfoil and glitter. I was very flattered.

The next day, I met Tuyet, another cousin of Vickie’s. She’s a teacher, and had the afternoon free, so she took me all over Hanoi on the back of her motorbike. I only had to close my eyes a few times, which had nothing to do with her driving, which was excellent, but more with some of the more harrowing intersections and merges. Did I mention that many major intersections have no traffic lights? There is traffic from four directions forcing their way through in seeming chaos, horns blaring and engines revving – and imagine if you have to make a left turn against the traffic. Somehow it all works, but it seems incredibly stressful.

She took me to the Temple of the Literature, where students go to pray and leave offerings for good luck at exam time. It is the site of the oldest university in Vietnam, founded in 1070, and dedicated to Confucius. There are stelae atop turtles, and the heads of the turtles are shiny from where students have rubbed them for good luck. She explained that teachers also come here to pay their respects to Vietnam’s oldest teachers and to ask for help to be better teachers. Then we went to the Quan Thanh Temple, dedicated to the God of the North. It turned out to be the 15^th day of the month, and the temple was busy with people making offerings of money, fruit, and incense. Tuyet told me that the tradition is to make an offering of money and rub the foot of the statue of the God of the North to ask for protection from evil spirits. Last was a visit to the lovely Tran Quoc Pagoda, where a Buddhist ceremony was in progress, the pagoda filled with cross-legged devotees being led in chanting by a monk. We also visited a gallery famous for silk embroidery, which is brought to level of a fine art in Vietnam. There was room after room of elaborate, intricate “paintings” made from silk embroidery. They were truly a trompe l’oeil.

We ended our day at Cha Ca La Vong, a restaurant famous for the one dish they serve, a cook-it-yourself grilled fish feast. They bring you a pan of fish cooking in oil over a hot flame and you add spring onions and cook it yourself with chopsticks, and then eat it over the freshest, most delicious vermicelli rice noodles with herbs, peanuts, and fish sauce. Just writing about it makes me hungry. It was delicious, and the place was packed with both locals and tourists, with a line out the door by the time we left.

Part III

In terms of accommodation in Hanoi, I was not so lucky. In the first five nights, I slept in four different hotels. The first hotel (Manh Dung on Pho Tam Thuong) failed to pick me up at the airport as promised over e-mail. When I finally arrived, the room price was higher than had been agreed upon over e-mail, and the room was not at all as described, and in a different building several blocks a way. It was down a long, dark, narrow and wet passageway, and a huge rat nearly ran over my foot when I went out to find dinner. Annoyed, I left early the next morning. It was rainy and cold and I couldn't find the place I was looking for, so went to another to check and the woman literally wouldn't let me go. She literally woke up the sleeping guests in order to show me the room that would be available at noon (it was about 8.30 am). It was cheap, and a good location and I didn’t really feel like trekking around in the cold and rain so I took it. But after two nights, the mattress was giving me a backache, the linens never really seemed very clean, and the windowless room was starting to make me feel like a prisoner. The problem was, the receptionist started whining and complaining when I said I was going to leave. I feared that she might refuse to give back my passport, so I had to tell her that I was meeting friends. This seemed to satisfy her, especially because all throughout Vietnam, when people realize that you are traveling alone, they inevitably ask “where are your friends??” So, it can be very helpful to invent some friends to get out of certain situations.

I thought I had found the perfect place just down the street (Ocean Stars II – avoid!). It was $15, much nicer, and even included a hairdryer, a major luxury and a very nice thing for long hair in cold weather. Then I woke up the next morning, and brushed aside a dark object, which, once I put my glasses on, turned out to be a bedbug who had several friends hanging out in the duvet that had seemed so fluffy, clean and warm just the night before. I happily squashed them to death. After my experience in Thailand, I am an expert bedbug identifier, and I was not at all happy to see the nasty little buggers again. They bite you while you sleep, but you don’t feel a thing because they anesthetize you while they suck your blood. In fact, you might not notice the bites until later the next day. Bedbugs are literal vampires – they need blood to live. The thing is, they only need a blood meal every 3 or 5 days or so, so you could be sleeping in a bed with bedbugs and not even know it unless it’s feast night. I seem to have the bad luck to show up when they’re at their hungriest. Not once, but twice in this trip. They tend to bite in clusters of three, known as “breakfast, lunch, and dinner bites.” These turn into huge red welts that itch like crazy. I had been absolutely devoured in Thailand – a whole shoulder swollen with bites, all up and down my legs, ankles and feet, my back, both arms, so this time was not as bad, except they got me on the face and neck, which was just not at all attractive.

So I promptly checked out and brought everything that had touched the bed to the laundry and prayed that none of them were hitch-hiking with me. At this point, I just gave up and went to nicer place and after some negotiating, got a room for $20. It had heat, clean sheets, a thick duvet, and nice towels. It felt like pure luxury and the heat alone was worth the money.

Apologies and a Vietnamese Blur

justine — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 12:07:00 GMT

Hello!! Yes, I'm still alive and kicking, despite the utter lack of posts. It's been a whirlwind trip through Vietnam. Three weeks, 1800+ kilometers, overnight "sleeping" buses, overnight trains, boats, cyclos, motos, bicycles, from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay to Hue to Hoi An to Nha Trang to the Lunar New Year (Tet) in Mui Ne to Saigon to the Mekong Delta (and onward to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, but that's another story). It was incredible and intense - I went from being completely overwhelmed and awestruck by Hanoi, to disenchanted with the middle bits, and then fell completely in love with Vietnam in the last week.

I have so much to say and not enough time. Internet access has been difficult throughout Vietnam. The way it works is that you get free internet in the lobby of your guesthouse and internet cafes are few and far between. The problem with the "free" internet is that there are only 2 or 3 computers, there is usually a wait, and when you do have a computer, people are staring into the back of your head, willing you to finish. The keyboards are crappy, and there is usually someone shouting or some other commotion going on in the lobby. And in Hanoi, freezing blasts of air were coming through the door at regular intervals. In short, it has not been at all conducive for anything but a cursory check of e-mail. In Hue, I decided to dedicate a morning to writing some posts. An hour or so into writing, the power cut, and when the computers started up again, the file I had saved to the desktop had disappeared. And my USB drive has contracted a virus. I'm really missing my laptop at this point in the trip!

BUT, I have loads of notes and when I reach Bali next week I plan to dedicate some time to catch up since there is so much to say, so look for some out-of-chronological order posts. I'll also post photos as I am able.

From Vientiane to Vietnam

justine — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 06:56:00 GMT

I arrived in Vientiane, the capital of Laos on Monday afternoon and saw my first traffic light since arriving in Laos. It’s a shock to see so many cars after being in motorbike territory for so long. Vientiane is pretty sleepy as far as national capitals go, and everyone describes it as “like a big village.” The city sits on the northern bank of the Mekong river, with Thailand on the other side. On the Vientiane side, there is a huge sandbar in the riverbed, and it took me about 20 minutes to walk across it to the river, which is quite narrow. I don’t know if this is because Laos is well into the dry season, or if it is always this way. In the muddy part of the sandbar, there were millions of tiny toads hopping about and I stepped carefully, afraid I'd squash one by accident.

The architecture seems to have two dominant provenances: graceful, aging French colonial buildings and not so attractive cement blocks dating from the period of massive inflows of US aid in the 1950s. There are also many gorgeous, ornate, golden temples, some of them quite old. There seems to be a government ministry, foreign embassy or international organization every inch, as well as many restaurants catering to the tastes of expatriate employees. It reminds me of Managua in this respect, especially the many SUVs driven by the embassy/NGO/international aid expatriate set. In all fairness, I’ve no doubt the roads are pretty awful in most parts of the country.

It’s also more of a working, Lao city than Luang Prabang. There are street vendors catering to Lao customers, not just foreigners, and street kids make the rounds begging at cafes. Novice monks in bright orange robes, often carrying black umbrellas to shield their bald heads from the sun, and women carrying bundles balanced on each end of a bamboo stick contrast with men dressed in suits. In all parts of Laos, women wear the sihn, a long dark colored skirt with a design woven on the bottom, however in Vientiane, the more sophisticated ladies wear sihn made of elegant, shimmery fabric. They’re quite beautiful, and I even saw a Western woman wearing a shorter version of this kind of sihn. I was tempted to run to the tailors and order one like it, but my backpack is already too full.

I’ve had the strange experience of meeting two Lao men, on two separate occasions, who spoke to me in English with a strong Southern drawl. Both have lived in the US for many years and are visiting Laos on vacation, and both were accompanied by lovely Lao women who spoke no English. I had the surreal experience of helping one of them use the ATM. He had a debit card from an American bank, and wanted to withdraw dollars, but I had to tell him that the machine only gave currency in kip, and that he’d have to go into a bank to request a cash advance if he wanted dollars.

I was supposed to fly home from Bangkok on Monday. It will come as no surprise that as usual, I’ve changed the date of my ticket. I have probably paid enough money in ticket change penalties over my lifetime to fly around the world and back. I have promised myself that from now on I will try to buy open tickets if possible, since as usual, the change fee was much higher than I had been told originally. I am drafting a nasty letter to Expedia.com to complain about this. So, why have I changed my ticket this time? The simple answer is that I’m not ready to come home and Vietnam is so close. Originally, I had wanted to go to Hanoi and Halong Bay, but had decided not to overstretch myself. But in Laos, I kept meeting people who really enjoyed Vietnam, and it is so close. When I looked into flights and visas, it seemed so easy to just buy a guidebook, book a flight, apply for a visa and be on my way.

So, I’m waiting for my visa for Vietnam to be processed right now, and will fly to Hanoi on Friday January 18^th. I’ll spend a few days in Hanoi and from there I’ll go to Halong Bay, and then start to work my way south overland toward Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and the Mekong Delta, stopping in Ninh Binh, Hue, Hoi An, and maybe a beach like Quy Nhon or Nha Trang or Mui Ne, and maybe also Dalat. The grand plan is then to head to Cambodia, and from there fly back to Bali before heading home in early March. But the beauty of traveling alone is that everything is infinitely flexible, so this may change as I go, depending on how I feel. I’d love any tips or advice for Vietnam from anyone who has spent time there.