Kunming

Aside from some gut pains, the ride up to Kunming was nice. China has some incredible infrastructure. A gorgeous, four-line highway with guardrails blasted across the mountains, over bridges and through tunnels all the way to Kunming. I love the feeling of making good time. The whole trip took about ten hours, passing a 'stone forest' before pulling into Kunming's Eastern Bus Terminal.

Once I got off, I was was hit with that old familiar problem. Where am I, where am I going and how do I get there? Again, the Lonely Planet would've come in handy. It took a while, but I managed to find a bus that took me close to the city center. As soon as I could, I hopped on a computer and loaded up my Lonely Planet PDFs that I had miraculously thrown on a thumb drive just before the trip started. Unfortunately I couldn't print anything off, but I did get my bearings slightly.

I walked into a place called Camille's only to discover that since being added to LP, the room rates had skyrocketed. No thanks. Guess I had to sniff out a place on my own. Bad news was, I was in the financial district of the city. Skyscrapers, fancy restaurants and, of course, fancy hotels. My prospects looked grim.

I was tired and hungry so I stopped off in this Western restaurant to eat and maybe ask a few locals for advice. Two Aussies were seated beside me having a one-sided conversation, so I asked them. One guy (the chatty one) sprung into action and pulled out his phone. He was a big, red-faced, Sports Illustrated-ish looking guy, about early 30s, and his zeal was a bit worrisome. I had mentioned that I wanted something cheap, so I figured that he would take that into consideration. After some brash, forceful talking, he said a room was reserved for me at a nearby four-star hotel for $20, a $10 discount. That is a great deal, but $20 a night is still a lot more than I'm used to spending. He kept driving home how great a deal it was and how he'd gone out of his way to get it for me, so I kind of got bullied into saying 'yes'. At that point however, I didn't care and just figured I'd find a really cheap place for the next night. But duder wasn't finished.

He seemed keen on walking me there directly and rushed out the door. I hadn't even paid my bill yet. In the minute he was gone, the other Australian whispered "Please, get him the hell away from me". The guy was a sociopath. He returned flustered. "What the hell man? Last time I do you a favor." I told him I wasn't ready to go yet. "If you don't want the room, then I just wasted my time with you. I got you a $10 discount, you could at least give me some respect." I had been giving him nothing but respect. Other patrons in the restaurant sat and watched this psychopath, in awe of his apparent imbalance. I paid my bill, thanked the dude for the 30th time, and took off.

It was frightening how the situation seemed to escalate from nothing and how disturbed the guy seemed to be. I was glad to be rid of him. I actually ended up going to the hotel too. I had no choice. Sure enough, when I arrived, I discovered that a reservation had been made for me. At least that loon made good on his promise.

The room, of course, was a palace compared to the places I'd been staying in. Lots of posh embellishments that seemed so utterly unnecessary. Glass bowl sink, Amazon shower head, hair dryer. I sighed and turned on the World Cup. I realized that I had a fair bit of laundry to do so I called up room service (first time having room service this whole trip by the way). A lady came to the door and presented me with a laundry menu. A dollar fr a T-shirt, two for pants, etc. Holy crap. I had my whole wardrobe to wash and I could not justify spending that kind of money. Another hard sigh. I sent the room service lady off.

So, at about 9:30 at night, I bundled all of my dirty clothes into a bag and set off to find SOMEWHERE to get them done. I had heard about a place called "Hump", not sure how, but I nonetheless set out in the general direction of where it was supposed to be.

On my way there, it started to rain. I must have looked like the saddest thing ever; walking in the rain, holding a garbage bag filled with clothes. Some ladies working at a restaurant took pity on me and let me hang out inside until it cleared up. Eventually I found the place. It was exactly what I was looking for. Cheap beds, laundry, Internet. They were perplexed as to why I was bringing in laundry when I didn't have a room, so I booked one for the following night.

On my way back, I passed the crazy jackass who got me the room. "Did you find the place?" he asked. "Yes" I replied without breaking my stride. North Korea had just started playing Brazil when I got to sleep.

Next morning I woke up and peaced the pricey place out. The walk to Hump wasn't as bad, since I was less 3 kilos of laundry. Hump itself was great. Got a bed, locked my stuff up and ate breakfast. My laundry was finished too, so finally, for the first time since Ha Long Bay, I had both a full set of clothes and a comfortable place to lay my head.

I did a lot that day. It was a perfect day to get a lot done really. Kunming lies at an elevation of around 2000 meters above sea level, so the climate was absolutely beautiful. 23 degrees, partly cloudy, no humidity, and the sky was the shade of blue that you rarely get to see down at sea level. I finally found a place that would print off PDFs, then assembled my own Lonely Planet in a newly-purchased notebook. Saw two huge pagodas. A lively, flower-adorned square sat just outside of the guesthouse, and, beyond that, a bustling promenade and shopping district. The city was buzzing like you'd expect for a place with a population of 5 million people. Saw a bird market with all kinds of caged creatures. A mosque. Stopped in an arcade to play some old 32-bit shoot 'em ups. It seemed like the day would never end. Eventually, however, the sun went down.

After dinner, I set out to try and find some entertainment and came across a roller-disco. I was completely alone, and it was totally one of those situations where it would have been AMAZING to strap on some skates with a buddy, but no matter, I still went inside. After all, I can't predict when I'll run into another roller-disco again. For $2, a got a pair of skates and set out around the track.

Red and blue lights flashed and Chinese pop music blared from the sound system. Hot shots with Manga hair and all but two buttons undone on their shirts hot-dogged for the ladies, occasionally crashing into the more conservative skaters. Girls in miniskirts cracked the whip. I had never roller skated in my life, so I busted out the old hockey skills and before long, I was able to Steve Yzerman my way around the stampede. No one was wearing helmets of course, and there were some pretty crazy collisions. No lost teeth thankfully. Some young dude was absolutely stunned that a foreigner was there and kept saying "hello!" to me in that "I know an English word!" way. After an hour, I was hot-dogging pretty good, and I didn't fall once, so I decided to quit while I was ahead. I arrived back in Hump drenched in sweat.

Much later in the evening, I met a guy named Patrick from Ireland and his girlfriend Jessica from Hong Kong. They told me the Yuanyang rice terraces were not worth the effort, which put my mind at ease. Later we were joined by a girl from San Francisco. She was cute, but my god, she had no clue about anything. She thought that Ireland was part of the UK, then thought that Canadians could travel, work and live in the UK and Australia without passports. Patrick and I took mild pleasure in correcting her and watching her face twist in confusion. Everyone went to bed soon after.

Next morning I packed up. My next destination was Dali. I had maybe a fleeting interest, but I strategically planned on meeting my buddy Sanjay in Lijiang on the 20th, which meant I had two days to kill. Maybe Dali would be fun, who knows. Before leaving, I grabbed a bunch of flyers for guesthouses in places I intended to visit. With these and my makeshift Lonely Planet, I was back on track. Caught a local bus to the station and rolled out in a timely manner. Kunming was excellent. Great weather, great guesthouse, great food, roller disco and arcades... China had redeemed itself.

West Pagoda, taken from the East Pagoda.

Statues in public places.

The busy financial district provides most of the skyline just a few kilometers east.

A busy crosswalk leads to the central promenade just outside my door.

Some pretty flowers. Finally, a metropolis that isn't a big, stinky city.

Domino Roller Disco. This was a one-second exposure, so it looks empty, but really, everyone is zipping by at high speed!

The view from the Hump balcony.

Lao Cai / Hekou, into China

This was a particularly bad leg. Full of calamities, some of which I was able to predict, while others flew out of nowhere to bite me in the ass and send my stress levels through the roof. Sort of like a microcosm of the whole trip really. Except minus all of the awesome stuff.

I boarded an overnight bus. Everyone else on board was headed for Sapa, the well-touristed northern destination in Vietnam. I would get off before then at the ratty border town of Lao Cai and cross into China by foot. From that point on, the well-oiled tourism machine of Southeast Asia would end and I'd have to fend for myself in the English vacuum of China. It was a sleeper, the bobsled type, and wasn't terribly comfortable. Before getting on, a Vietnamese employee of a guesthouse was caught red-handed with a girl's stolen ipod and a bit of commotion was kicked up. not sure how it was resolved, but, being a recent victim of theft myself, part of me hoped that they nailed the bastard to the cross.

I had to sleep next to a father and his very young daughter who were sharing a seat. Kind of annoying because that was four extra appendages I had to worry about drifting over into my seat during the night. And they did drift. Every once and a while, a little hand would plunk over onto me which I had to gently remove so as to not wake up the sleeping child and incur the wrath of her father. I didn't sleep much the whole trip, so when we rolled into Lao Cai at 5am and I was ejected from the bus, I was tired and cranky.

It was pouring and the town was barren. I threw on my rain jacket and tried to find some food and a dry place to wait until the border opened up at 8. I found a place that sold pho, but for some reason, the lady couldn't understand that I wanted pho. Like, this actually happened a lot. I'd go to a restaurant that would have no menu and nothing but assorted ingredients on display. I knew that there was know way to communicate what I wanted, and no way for them to communicate what they can make, so I would just ask for anything. "All OK". I didn't care what they made, as long as it was edible. Sounds simple, but they usually got this impression that I had this complicated order I was trying to convey and ask me a million questions, all of which I, of course, couldn't understand. What usually resulted was a plate of random ingredients thrown together without any kind of sauce or seasoning whatsoever; something no one in their right mind would order. That's what happened there that morning, as I got just noodles, chicken and water instead of pho. Terrible.

While eating, someone from this group of drunken old screwups at the next table would occasionally wander over and ask me something in Vietnamese and have the whole table laughing. All I could do was shrug and conceal my rage. Got the hell out of that place fast.

It was 6:30. UGH. Stores began opening their shutters and I found and Internet cafe to thankfully occupy me until 8. Caught a motorbike taxi to the border and was greeted by an army of touts that gunned specifically for me. They wanted to exchange my Vietnamese dong into Chinese yuan. Of course, it was all a scam, and they would have ended up taking 50% with the rates they were quoting me. When I realized this, I became incredibly abrupt and curt with them. They kept spewing crap, saying things like there were no places to exchange money across the border and that there were no ATMs. BS of course. And what really bothered me was how the border guards would just allow these freelance jackasses to run around checkpoints harassing tourists. It didn't stop until I crossed the bridge over to the Chinese side, into the town of Hekou, where a whole other pile of problems was waiting for me.

The guards were friendly, which was refreshing after being treated like a whoopee cushion for the last four hours. However, when I went through customs, they confiscated my newly-purchased Lonely Planet China because it failed to recognize Taiwan as a part of China (which it isn't by the way). Like, is the country run by a bitter, resentful child? Is this petty shit worth inconveniencing, nay, crippling, my ability to navigate the country? This was the straw that broke the camel's back, as I soon realized that no one in China spoke anything resembling English, and there was nary a Roman character to be found anywhere. I was utterly marooned. "Bus station", "hotel", even "toilet". No one could understand what I was asking and they were all TERRIBLE at both charades AND Pictionary.

I wandered the streets with my heavy, heavy backpack in the hot, humid weather in my damp, filthy clothes for over an hour trying to find a place to stay. And the town was a backwater hellhole. Fat, brown-toothed men walked down the road in their underwear gawking at me with hollow expressions. Everyone seemed to be screaming at each other. Phlegm was being churned up and spat on the floor in every direction I looked. The surrounding buildings were all dull concrete and rusty shutters. Not a modicum of tact or decorum to be found ANYWHERE.

I found an English sign saying "HOTEL", and it was the fancy kind, with a staffed reception area, elevators and clocks lining the wall displaying the time in New York, London, etc... Out of my budget, but I was desperate. $50 a night. Euagh! In my dying breath, I asked if they knew of a cheaper place, and surprisingly, I was led to an inconspicuous building a few doors down. It was a guesthouse for $4 a night. Finish line.

The owner laid about in his underwear and it took a shockingly long time to convey to him that I was coming to his guesthouse because I wanted a room. Finally I got one with a bathroom and a TV. Perks, but after a day like this, perks were like a maraschino cherry on a cow turd.

The water shut off halfway through my shower, so I had to bust open a bottle of water to rinse the shampoo off of my head. After that, I thought good and hard about what I wanted to do next. Lonely Planet recommended the Yuanyan rice terraces, but without the aforementioned Lonely Planet, getting to, and navigating, the area would have been a lot more problematic. That, and I wanted to get out of rural China as quickly as possible. So I eventually decided that my next stop would be Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province and about ten hours away. You couldn't have dragged me on another bus at that time, so I fell asleep and hoped that I wouldn't wake up for another 16 hours.

I woke up at 7pm. UGH. What the hell am I going to do? I got up and set out to find food before everything closed. The place I found had no menu and a pile of ingredients on display. UGH. Thankfully, I was able to point to a delicious looking meal being shared by some people and say "That". And it was delicious. Chinese cuisine is a little more familiar than the other cuisines of Southeast Asia, and the meal was just what I needed.

I wandered around town to find the same depressing sights I had passed during the day. Night time had not altered Hekou's character in the least. Back to the guesthouse I suppose. Let's see if the TV works. It did, just barely, and I was able to get the World Cup, which was good enough for me. So I watched that, and didn't sleep a wink, until early the next morning when the bus station opened.

Thankfully, the ticket lady understood her own language when I walked up and said "Kunming". I had about 2 hours to kill, and that's about how long it took to track down which bus I would be riding on and where the bathroom was.

Oh yes, the bathrooms. Not only was the bathroom filthy as can be, but there were absolutely no enclosures whatsoever. Everything went into a trough, and I mean EVERYTHING. And did I mention there were no enclosures? Several men were giving demonstrations and I almost considered dousing my eyes with bleach after catching a glimpse. It reminded me of the barn at my grandparents' farm. Funny thing was, I had to pay almost a dollar to use it, making it the most expensive bathroom I'd used, as well as the most disgusting; two distinctions that are very unlikely to coincide. Bravo China.

Soon it was time to go and I could not have been more thrilled to leave. Not a very good way to start a new country. China needed to step it up big time in the next few days.

The dull central boulevard of Hekou, early morning in the rain.

This was the sky the entire time. Not pictured: incredible mugginess.

The tallest building in town. It actually looked like no one had been working on it for months.

I at one point tried this door thinking there was a toilet behind it. Silly me! The whole town's a toilet!

This sign probably says "Hekou: Be sad with us, forever".

Hanoi, part 2

I saw the remains of a traffic accident on the highway back to Hanoi. Given the sheer volume and intensity of the traffic, it was only a matter of time before I came across one. This one was exceptionally bad and involved a car and a motorcycle. The police and the ambulance had yet to arrive. You could feel a hush come across the mini bus as we passed by. I may have seen two dead bodies.

Back in Hanoi, I said goodbye to the girls and made my way back to the old hotel to see if my attic room was available again. It was, and my Chinese visa had arrived as well. I ogled it like it was a merit badge. Awarded for excellence in the field of tolerating bureaucracy. I lugged my bag up the four flights of stairs and settled again. Didn't feel like leaving on any walks that night.

But unfortunately, I had to. I had forgotten my Jeju Island souvenir towel on Cat Ba, so I needed to buy a new one. Just after sunset, I came across a huge, sprawling market that had not been there before. It was a Saturday, so it was most likely a weekend deal. People walked elbow to elbow past the many makeshift shops that had sprung up. Everything was, for the most part, clothes, but I did find a place that sold towels. I picked a slightly torn one because I knew I could haggle it down to pennies. Soon after, it started to rain.

Vendors scrambled about setting up tarps and makeshift shelters. They had no idea what they were in for. I bolted back to the guesthouse just as things started to get really crazy. I was perhaps the fiercest rainstorm I had witnessed on the trip, if not, my whole life. Being on the top floor meant I could hear the rain pounding the roof; sounding almost like intense TV static. Very very loud. Outside I saw rain flying in all directions. Past 50 meters I saw nothing. Outside of my room, the doors leading to the balcony had been blown open and the floor was flooded. The shelf with the clean bedsheets was soaked as was some poor bastard's laundry that had been hung out to dry. The doors kept slamming against the wall, so I rushed over and closed them. The clasp wouldn't hold under the intense wind, so I used a chair to brace them in place. Chaos.

The next morning brought clear, sunny weather, so I woke up early and headed over to Ho Chi Minh's tomb. This was my last chance after two failed attempts after all. I arrived to find a terrifyingly long line. Long, but it was moving. It took a while to even find the end. Guards scrambled about trying to curb the rampant line-cutting. People were swelling forward constantly. Hands rested themselves on the small of my back, urging me onwards. I didn't see the point in this mob panic. It's not like we weren't going to get in.

The line was long, yes, but thanks to the ephemeral nature of the attraction, it moved very fast and before long, I was inside the mausoleum. Cameras were confiscated of course. A few steps further and I saw the man whose face was so ubiquitous throughout all of Vietnam. He didn't look real, but the degree to which the guards protected the body, suggested that he was. Four were standing motionless around the glass while a handful of others kept the crowd moving. Before long, I was spat out the other end.

Having some time to kill, I went to the Ho Chi Minh Museum. Expecting the usual pablum, I was surprised to see some pretty bizarre physical interpretations of the man's life. A cave shaped like the inside of Ho Chi Minh's head? Yes. Strewn weaponry forming a ring around a cabin? Yes. Huge sculptures of fruit? Not sure what that has to do with anything, but yes.

I was about done with Hanoi then. Saw the body, time to leave. I didn't think it would take two blog entries, but I had my visa and it was time to go. I booked an overnight bus to the border town of Lao Cai and whiddled away the remaining time to departure on the net. I found the cheapest, quietest, coolest and most well-equipped Internet cafe tucked away from the stinky street. Awesome. Thanks Hanoi. You tried my patience at times, but I will never forget your je ne sais quoi.

Train passing through the city. I think there was a guard rail, but I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't.

Here's a small taste of the congested streets of the Old Quarter taken from the back of a (slow moving) motorbike.

Ha Long Bay and Cat Ba Island

I awoke to the chirp of my new alarm clock. It was time to go. A minibus waited for me at the travel agency and they crammed me in with of bunch of other tourists like it was Tetris. I reckon I was the tall skinny piece. I sat in between two people who more closely resembled the square piece. No empty space on that minibus. And I hate minibuses. They're really just minivans except with no air-conditioning, uncomfortable seats, no legroom and lots of hot breath. Used exclusively for tourists.

I met a spunky guy on the drive up to Ha Long Bay who spent four years on Dubai. What an insane sounding city. Money in large quantities has shaped it into a creature like no other. Cosmopolitan, yet mitigated by the fundamentalism that comes with the territory.

A rest stop came and went, and before long, we rolled into the pier. Passports were collected. I didn't have mine because it was off in HCMC getting a Chinese visa, so I was given a Vietnamese pseudonym. Then we waited. Oh, waiting. I never truly knew you until Ha Long Bay. It was an hour of milling about, making small talk with people I'd never meet again and fighting off touts. Who knows what was happening with our passports at the ticket office. For all we knew, we were being auctioned off the different skippers.

I was tugged out of the group specifically and handed a ticket. Completely arbitrarily. I booked a 3-day, 2-night trip while some of the others booked shorter tours. Also, I believe there were different classes of accommodation. Perhaps I was the only one who booked the longest, cheapest tour. That didn't seem likely. Anyways, I was tossed onto the boat with a bunch of new people and we set off into the sunny sea.

The boat was a typical three story live aboard. Cabins, restaurant, sundeck. It had a very classic air about it, but was a far cry from the beautiful, red-sailed junks in the tourist brochures.

I shared lunch with a guy named Gavin who was a musician working in Shanghai, and a Korean Air employee named "Lee" (although I assume his Korean name is different), who was taking his mom on a vacation. The boat maneuvered around the congestion of the pier and out into open waters. In the distance we could see the famed limestone cliffs poking skyward from the horizon. Gavin and I finished lunch quickly and hopped onto the sundeck for a better view. The weather was clear and warm. Up above I met a few more travelers. I concluded early that it was a good group, and it wasn't long before everyone felt comfortable with one another.

We approached the first huge formation which also happened to be the first attraction of the tour; a magnificent limestone cave. Because, I guess, normal limestone caves are boring, they decided to augment this one with multi-coloured floodlights. Purdy, yes, but it felt artificial. And kind of like Christmas decorations. On the way out, perhaps to cheapen the environment further, they were playing honest to god selections from Sister Act 2 over the PA system.

The boat set out further from the shore, away from the chartered fleet and day trippers. Things got more peaceful, and the seascape started getting very interesting. Drifting between two dramatic spires, we entered a floating fishing village. Yes, like Waterworld, everything was on rafts. That included houses and shops.

A motorboat chugged up and brought a handful of us through a cave and out into a swimming area completely encircled by a wall of towering limestone. I forgot my bathing suit, but jumped in regardless. The water was beautiful, warm and clear. The cliffs shot up, almost 200 meters, on all sides. These perfectly tailors experiences are the upside to doing group tours. My peripheral vision was 100% limestone and water; impossible to capture that kind of majesty on film.

On the boat again, we sailed even further into the speckled sea. Anytime I thought that the scenery could not get any more dramatic, it did. The islands, numbering in the hundreds, were all uninhabited and draped in foliage. They shot straight up out of the water, sheer cliff on all sides, completely impractical, even if someone did want to settle on one. I did spot one with a shrine built on top, which brought up all kinds of questions. Soon, we dropped anchor at another floating village. This one even had a bank, no word of a lie. We paddled around in kayaks for a bit.

The boat sailed north a few kilometers before dropping anchor for the night. It was about 6:30 and everyone jumped into the water to work up an appetite before dinner. The sun was setting, casting a dramatic orange light over the surface of the water. It was still as warm as we could possibly hope for it to be. Some, myself included, dove off of the sundeck into the water. Best moment in Vietnam.

After dinner and after the sunset, a group of us conversed on the sundeck until past 11. I met two girls from Quebec, Arianne and Andreanne, who were also doing the three-day trip. All the others, I had learned, were heading back to the shore the next day. The lights from the distant fishing boats illuminated the faint outlines of our surroundings. It was the kind of night you could stay up forever enjoying.

I was sharing a two-bed cabin with Gavin. A bathroom was attached, and fans were thoughtfully provided as it got quite hot down close to the engine room. Unfortunately the power cut out in the middle of the night and the room heated up like a Easy Bake Oven. Gavin shot up at one point and said "I can't deal with this", then stole away out the door and into the night. I opened a window and fell back asleep. I was awoken again by a hard blast of water to the face and the sound of hard rain pummeling the boat. Gavin came tearing back in as I was closing the window. Somehow I fell back asleep again.

Once more I awoke, this time to a deafening howl. Like, deafening. Gavin and I both flew out of bed and covered our ears in a panic. The sound kept on. "What the hell is that and why isn't it stopping?!" I exclaimed. It eventually did, and we deduced it was the horn. Some jackass member of the crew might have pushed it on a dare. Our cabin was right beside it. I went back to sleep knowing full well that there was a good chance I would be woken back up again. But I wasn't.

The next morning, the chatter around the breakfast table centered mainly on the horn blast. Every time someone new would come in and sit down, they would inevitably ask "Hey did you guys hear that horn last night?" "Of course we did!"

After breakfast, another boat arrived to pluck the three-day trippers while the rest sailed back to shore. Myself, Arianne, Andreanne and a large German guy whose name I forgot, switched boats and bid the others farewell. This new boat was called the "Ha Long Party Cruiser", almost identical to the last boat, save for the addition of a flatscreen TV, some speakers, a PA system and some mildly depressing decals that would suggest "party" (a rock guitar, some music notes, a martini glass, you get the idea). I went up on the sundeck. It would be a few more hours of sailing until we reached our destination, Cat Ba Island, the largest and only inhabited island in the bay, so I fell asleep.

I awoke to chatter. Chatter about me. People were wondering who the sleeping man was and how the hell he got on the boat. They must have been sleeping during the exchange. The sundeck was now full of people, some of who I recognized from the ride up, such as my Dubai friend. Pretty soon we arrived at Cat Ba Island.

A flat, man-made strip of road greeted the boat. We were transferred onto a bus after 45 minutes of hard, unadulterated waiting. The bus carved around the limestone peaks on the island, sometimes ascending, sometimes descending. Flatlands occasionally appeared in between cliffs. There was overcast that day, and it was a little damp. Somehow it made the island seem a little more mysterious. Muted greens were everywhere. One could find themselves shipwrecked here; collecting dew to drink. Out towards the sea, there was nothing to see, only fog and jagged limestone. Like if you sailed away from Cat Ba Island, you would be mysteriously led right back to it again. For all I knew, while we were sleeping, we crossed into a void. Cat Ba floated in it's midst. Everything else ceased to exist.

The bus stopped at an entrance to a national park. The was a hike that led up to the highest peak on Cat Ba. I threw on my boots and joined Arianne, Andreanne and the German (who will be henceforth referred to as 'Fritz') on a hike to the top. Our new guide was named Tony, and he was a bit of a Hitler. He had given us 45 minutes to go up and then come back down again, and he seemed genuine in his threat of the bus leaving people behind.

We sauntered up the mountain, through mud and over sharp, jutting rocks. Fritz, perhaps keen on impressing the girls, blasted up the mountain in an awkward display of strength and virility. Soon after, we would come across his hulking frame, keeled over in a state of extreme exhaustion on the side of the trail, and eventually pass him. Things got tighter and steeper as we approached the summit, until finally we had arrived. A lookout tower was the last thing to climb and it provided a breathtaking 360 degree view of the impossible landscape. Before long, we had to head back. The descent was arguably worse, with bumps, scrapes and falls happening with frequency. We got back just in time.

I was disgusting. Glazed with sweat and caked with mud. Tony's threat was completely empty, as we had to wait no less than an hour for the bus to arrive and take us to Cat Ba Town. It wasn't even that big an island so I had no idea what took so long. The town, aside from being in glorious isolation, for the most part resembled any other town in Vietnam. A main street went along the shoreline while a few others tangled around some cliffs. All were lined with houses and shops. Apartment buildings seemed to lean back onto cliffsides, facing the ocean with a casual cool. The fog and the gloom swallowed boats out to sea.

They hauled everyone out at a hotel and another guy showed up with a sack full of keys. Doubles and group rooms were given out first until it was just the singles left. Fritz nabbed his own room while Tony tried to pawn one room off on the three of us remaining. It was me, a Chilean girl and a large, hairy Frenchman. I would have had to share a bed with the Frenchman. No way that was happening, so I mustered up all the indignant rage I could and butted heads with Tony until he conceded to giving me my own room. The squeaky wheel got the grease.

And man, was it ever some nice grease! My room must have been the bridal suite or something! Huge bed, air con, TV, phone, towels and linens, fridge, hot water. I felt like I didn't deserve it, but the thought of awkwardly taking turns showering and changing in a small room then sharing a bed with a burly stranger quickly convinced my conscience otherwise.

Tony had allotted three hours for free time before we had to meet again, so I cleaned up and watched a bit of the Dark Knight on TV. Then I walked about town. It certainly was busy, or at least it seemed that way with the amount of car horns honking. In about 40 minutes, I had circled and seen the whole town. Not much to report.

Dinner was typical bland tour food. The World Cup had just started, so after the last plate was cleared, the TV was switched on and people started buying drinks. South Africa vs Mexico. I sat with the Quebec girls and watched. There was something comforting about the World Cup. Like a tiny sliver of the outside world being piped into this strange dreamland. After the game, the girls left and I joined another group for some cards. Before long, it was time to sleep, and boy did I ever need it.

Early the next morning, few people talked. It was hazy again. Perhaps it was the same day repeated. That's how it works in the void maybe. Nonetheless, we were leaving and the real world would greet us soon enough.

On the bus I started a new book. Dance Dance Dance, another Murakami. In the time it took to do the previous days' travels in reverse, I had a quarter of it finished. Themes of isolation and sober modern life.

I did finally get to see a red-sailed junk. However, this one more closely resembled a typical "party cruiser" with some tiny sails strapped to a bulky frame. "Oriental Sails" they read. "Ornamental Sails" would have been more appropriate.

Back at the harbour we waited. Oh god, the waiting. It was endless, all for a bus that took us a few kilometers up the road for lunch in Ha Long City. Before long, we were off again, this time back to Hanoi. I enjoyed myself thoroughly, but couldn't wait for this choking regiment to end. Soon I would be back in the hurried clatter of what had become the real world to me. Hanoi, and my path up to China. Halfway through the ride the sun finally made an appearance.

The only natural light I could find in the cave.

Through the tiny cave that led to the swimming area. We had to duck our heads.

The magnificent swimming area.

The view from the sundeck was beautiful on day 1.

Kayaking.

Sunset. If I ever wanted to open an eharmony account, I now have a profile pic.

Swimming in the sunset.

View from the highest point on Cat Ba Island.

Hanoi, part 1

There are two different types of sleeper buses. One type has double beds along the sides of the aisle, or the "cuddle bus" as I like to call it. The one I took to Hanoi was the other type; similar to the one I took to Nha Trang. I call it the bobsled bus cause each person sleeps in these isolated compartments that are never terribly wide. More personal space, but less space.

My sled was pretty uncomfortable, but I managed to doze off for the bulk of the trip. When I awoke, it was daybreak and the bus was cruising through some real run-down territory. All the buildings were made of dusty concrete and trash was piled up in every conceivable nook. It looked like Fallujah. 'Dear god, I'm in a different country' I thought. I hoped that the bus wasn't stopping. Honestly, Myanmar looked better than whatever godforsaken hellhole I was driving through at that time.

Soon the traffic started to swell and the streets widened. The bus stopped on the side of an expressway that dug through Hanoi and let us all off. It looked marginally beter, albeit quite chaotic. Capital city so what do you expect? I played the usual game of "who can find Jon the cheapest room?" with the motorbike drivers and one guy said he knew one for $6. Done. Off we went into the cramped, messy neighborhood.

Vendors sprawled their territory out in front of buildings leaving only enough room for a few motorbikes to squeeze in between. Raw meat was being washed in basins and hacked apart on makeshift tables. There were puddles of water and dripping awnings all along the patholed road, even though it hadn't rained. Nowhere was there space for a pedestrian to walk that wasn't in the way of the throngs of motorbikes trying to pass, each honking their horn viciously. And garbage. Lots of garbage. Way too full-on for my morning state.

My guesthouse was right at the heart of the mess. The owner took me to my cheap room up 5 flights of stairs. The door was almost half the size of the others and the ceiling was probably just 6 feet high. Another quirky room in a big Vietnamese city. There were two beds again.

I actually got a good sleep on the bus, so rather than passing out, I showered, shaved and immediately set out to obtain my Chinese visa. See, I had originally planned to fly into Hong Kong and get it there, but the funds were getting tight, and I planned on making it to Tibet, so I opted to get the visa in Hanoi and book it up Vietnam and into Yunnan directly. A little detour, but plans were always loose this far into the trip.

Back out into the mess, it wasn't hard finding a motorbike. It was hard trying to communicate where I wanted to go however. I got the price down from 50,000 to 15,000 dong. I arrived and the gates were closed. It was noon. The sign in front read 2-6, 8:30 - 12:00, which seemed odd, but I nonetheless interpreted as 8:30 - 6 with a two hour lunch break in the middle, just like the Vietnamese embassy in Sihanoukville. So I had two hours to kill. It turns out Ho Chi Minh's embalmed body was lying in state a few blocks away, so I set off to check that out. It was unusually quiet. 'Open 8 - 11' I read. Dammit, what terrible hours.

So I kicked stones around and visited a 'Literature Temple' that was all kinds of boring until 2. When I returned to the embassy, it was still closed. It turns out 2 - 6 is their way of saying Monday to Friday and the gates were only open from 8:30 to 12, almost the same piss poor hours to Ho Chi Minh mausoleum had. How frustrating!

So I spent the rest of the day with a map walking around the city. It was a whole lot nicer outside of the district I was staying in, which happened to be both the Old Quarter and the backpacker ghetto. The streets were wider and cleaner and there was much more vegetation. I crossed some dodgy intersections then got hungry. I found a wealth of Western restaurants but they were all very expensive. I concluded that I had walked into the 'affluent tourist district'. Finally I found somewhere reasonable and sat for a sandwich.

While sitting, a book seller came up to me and I made the mistake of briefly checking out his wares. He had the Lonely Planet China, which I needed, so I had a look. Upon opening and examining the book, it became clear that it was photocopied quite poorly and the maps were illegible. I had already haggled him down a good deal before making this discovery, so when I said I that I didn't want it, he threw a fit. "I am very angry!" he kept screaming while banging on the table. I told him to calm down and that there was no reason to be angry while he kept trying to force the book upon me through his wrath. I told him that I wasn't going to be intimidated into buying his book, very calmly, which was surprising cause I was in a pretty foul mood prior to even talking to this guy. He said a bunch of stuff about "stupid tourists" and how we should "never come to Vietnam" before switching gears and talking about his four children and how his family died in the Vietnam War. I had no idea what to make of it, I just didn't want to book so I gave him my sympathies, told him not to be angry, paid my bill and left. Looking back, I think I handled it well. I didn't get angry, and if I gave in, I would have had a useless book and possibly justified his demented sales tactics.

I continued my walk around a lake in the center of town. I passed a few vintage camera stores and looked to see if they had any Rolleis. The only one I found was very very old and $600 so I had no choice but to pass it up. Sigh.

I checked out the famed 'Hanoi Hilton' briefly and was treated to a schlocky display of how brutal and ruthless the French were and how kindly and humane the Vietcong were. There was plenty of spooky music you can bet. Next I stopped for ice cream in this packed hellhole of a shop before realizing why it was so packed: the ice cream was fantastic!

Next I happened upon the National Water Puppet Theater, so out of natural curiosity, I stopped in. Water puppetry, I learned, was an art conceived by rice farmers as a way to entertain friends and family on the rice fields. Kind of like marionettes, except they are controlled from below by a mechanism which skirts them through a pool of shallow water. I was interested to see how this could possibly be entertaining.

The orchestra came out and played a few Vietnamese warm-up numbers. They were quite talented. Soon, the puppets came puddling out and danced around like, well, puppets. The water provided some neat advantages to traditional puppetry, but otherwise it was a little hokey. Maybe I should have bought a program. Ultimately, the orchestra was the best part.

I returned to the Old District, satisfied with the fact that I managed to salvage the day with water puppets, arguments and ice cream. I ended up picking up a legit copy of Lonely Planet China from a used book store and FINALLY getting rid of the Boy in the Striped Pajamas. I ate dinner on a plastic stool by the side of the road for cheap before heading back to the guesthouse,

Next morning I woke up early and went to the embassy. the gates were open. Yes. Inside I was told that foreigners could not get Chinese visas in Hanoi and that I had to go to Ho Chi Minh City. NO. Since when can you get a visa from a consulate in a city that's nowhere near the border, but not from the actual embassy in the capital city itself? Failed again! "Oh well" I thought, "Ho Chi Minh's pickled corpse should cheer me up". Nope! I read the fine print: 'April - October, open 8:00 - 10:30. It was 10:30. Deja vu from yesterday.

Discouraged, I went back to the Old Quarter. No more walkarounds. It was too hot anyways. I booked a tour of Ha Long Bay for the next day and then spent time in my surprisingly air-conditioned room drawing up my plan of attack for China. The only time I left was to go get dinner and an alarm clock, which I sorely needed at that point. I had enough of the swirling tangled mess of Hanoi that was literally right on my doorstep and clearly audible from my room. The air-conditioning was the first I'd had the whole trip so I reveled in it. I set my new alarm clock for 7am and went to bed.

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum Complex. Closed.

Train tracks through the city.

The water puppets.

Hue

A knock came at 7:30-ish. The voice on the other side of the door sounded upset and, in my semi-conscious state, I deduced it was the bus driver and that I had a whole bus full of people waiting for my lazy ass to get out of bed. I scrambled like I've never scrambled before, pancaking all of my possessions into a disorderly mess in my backpack. It was just my wakeup call. The bus hadn't arrived yet. I had a little time to grab a coffee and check my email before it finally did.

It was nice to drive the Vietnamese countryside in daylight. The highway took a few bends around some mountains and passed through an incredibly long tunnel. Now there's something I hadn't seen in awhile. A tunnel. I had just finished the last page of On The Road when we made our rest stop at yet another overpriced roadside restaurant. Before long, we drifted into Hue; a mid-sized town like the last two. Not long after that, I was in a budget guesthouse unpacking and taking the shower I never got to take.

I planned on staying only one night and two days which wasn't a lot of time, but since I slacked so much in Nha Trang and Hoi An, I resolved to make those 36 hours count. Rather than napping, I set out on my new town walkaround.

The streets confused me at first, but I figured them out eventually. I was baking hot and sweating my shirt see-through, but I covered alot of ground. I stepped into the "Olympic Park", partly to check it out, partly for a chance to sneak past a sleeping security guard. A river ran along a good portion of the town and separated the old district from the new. And when I say old, I mean really really old.

See, the star attraction in Hue is it's massive walled citadel just across the river. It's so big in fact, that they have cultivated fields inside to grow crops. In the center lies another citadel, massive in it's own right. Inside, the remnants of an old ruler of an old kingdom, and that's all I knew. I crossed the bridge to find out more.

The walls were massive, maybe four or five meters tall, and in great condition, probably from reconstruction. Cars and motorbikes zipped in and out of the modified entrances and across the moat. Inside, things were incredibly well-groomed. Men were setting up bleachers and stages. Apparently a festival was going on, which explains why room prices were a little higher than normal. I took in the sights under the canopy of some very large trees that lined the boulevards.

Before long I reached the inner-citadel. The walls and moat were just as big. Here, the real tourist attraction began. People flooded the formerly forbidden city in droves taking in the residence of the Nguyen lords and their loyal mandarins. It was nice. I found the landscaping around the place especially spectacular. There were little secret gates that led to quiet groves and cobblestone paths that stretched around gardens. Temples were liberally dispersed throughout the grounds, occasionally completely empty until a tour group blasted through like a motorcycle gang tearing through a quiet midwestern town.

The day ended in a downpour, with me still inside the inner walls and a good four kilometers from my guesthouse. I waited it out inside of a lonely temple. I had arrived in Hue with this image in mind. Rain, haze and quiet temples devoid of huddles and mess. I had hoped for it. I missed my gloomy Canada. My gloomy Korea. Even sunny days and hot weather lose their novelty. It's like working at an amusement park. This was the switch I needed.

Someone had left abook next to the bed in my hotel room in Nha Trang. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. I read the back cover and one chapter and decided to trade it in. It was too intentional. And typical. I had no luck finding a bookstore that would take it in Nha Trang or Hoi An, so I wandered the streets of Hue for an hour trying to find one. All I found was dinner. I guess the book was coming to Hanoi with me.

I planned a boat trip for seven in the morning the next day and a bus ride out for later that night. No wasting any time. My wakeup call never came, but thankfully a horrible bout of dry-mouth woke me up at seven sharp. I packed up and shipped out.

The boat was a "dragon boat", or really just a regular boat with dragons carved in the front for tourists to find exotic. It would go down the Perfume River and visit a swath of attractions I had a minor interest in. I had picked up a map and on the back, in big letters, it read "BOAT TRIP" and I said "Yes". Once the late risers got on board, we left the harbour and I immediately set to work falling asleep.

I awoke about 20 minutes before we reached our first stop. An empty garden restaurant where some young kung-fu enthusiasts put on ashow that included fake duels, brick smashing and various acts of corporal mortification. Ok that was nice, now everyone GET BACK ON THE BOAT! Tours.

Next was Thien Mu Pagoda. Yes, Vietnam added anew structure to my diet of Southeast Asian religious sites: the pagoda. See, places like Thailand and Cambodia are more closely related to the cultures that descended from the Indian subcontinent, while Vietnam is much more Chinese. Less stupas, more pagodas. This was my first, and considering China is my final destination, it sure as hell won't be my last. I walked around it's haunting yards & structures and watched a table of monks say a Buddhist form of grace which seemed to go on forever. I had to get back to the boat before they could finish and dig in.

Next we hit a temple that the guide described as "not very interesting", so I spared myself the admission fee and stayed on the boat.

Minh Mang tomb was next and took everyone's breath away with it's sprawling grounds, it's grand lakes and it's symmetry. Sadly, being part of atour meant that every potentially beautiful shot had some dopey stranger milling about in the background. Oh well. Tours. Back on the boat.

Another thing about tours which hardly gets mentioned is how utterly bland the meals are. It was rice, greens and tofu. Such a perfect example of blandness. Sugar is sweet, lemons are sour and tour food is bland.

We got off of the boat and boarded a bus that took us to another tomb: Khai Dinh tomb. It lay on a mountainside, almost like it was carved out. The steps were too hard for some to handle, but the top was unparalleled in it's opulence. So opulent in fact, that it's probably a good thing swept through when it did because these royal burial grounds were getting out of hand.

Next we did another tomb I skipped in favour of a cup of coffee, an extra $4 in my pocket and some rest. Finally with topped off the trip with a visit to a roadside hut so we could all gawk at this lady making incense sticks. The trip back to town was brisk.

Things ended up working out perfectly because shortly after arriving, I boarded my overnight bus to Hanoi. This one would be abeast too, so I dressed comfortably, popped a Valium and prepared myself for 16 hours on the road.

Running wild at the Olympic Stadium.

The inner grounds of the citadel.

The inner inner grounds of the citadel.

One of many lonely temples in the citadel.

Displays of manishness.

BOAT TOUR!

The haunting grounds of the Thien Mu Pagoda.

The long grace at Thien Mu Pagoda.

The opulent Khai Dinh tomb.

Woman rolling incense sticks.

Hoi An - Vietnam's premier gift shop

The bus ride to Nha Trang was 10 hours. This one was 12 hours. And the bus was a little different too. The bunks were a little more, uhm, intimate. On each side of the aisle was a small, barely double bed, and you can bed they sold every spot available. Traveling alone of course meant I was going to be cozying up to some rando. It was this situation and it's terrifying prospects that kept me alert as the bus made it's rounds around Nha Trang at night picking up strangers. I ended up getting a Vietnamese teenage boy who was all arms and legs. Of course, he probably thought the exact same thing about me. It seemed like there was no way to position ourselves that wasn't uncomfortable to the other person. Somehow it worked out though.

At the 2am rest stop, I introduced myself to a girl from Quebec who was also traveling alone extensively. Her name was Marie and we each talked like we hadn't talked for days (which was, in all likelihood, true). I was certain I would bump into her again in Hoi An.

It was a gray morning when the bus arrived. I slept poorly and was fiercely cranky. I had absolutely no idea where I was in relation to anything else in town. I entered a hotel and told the lady I wanted a cheap single. She must've not understood single cause she led me to a room containing a very hairly bearded man in his underwear who I figured I had to bunk with. I politely declined and went back out on the street. The touts were trying to sell me an air-con room in a hotel with a pool for $10 saying it was the cheapest room in town. Didn't sound right, and it wasn't, cause I found a sparten den for $8. An extra $2 for a pool and air-con would've been nice though, but I gotta be frugal. Again I slept.

Hoi An is a guidebook darling. Lonely Planet extolls the virtues of this place any chance it can, and indeed the promise of Old World streets lined with hand-tailored silk shops was what drew me there in the first place. Tourists flock to Hoi An in abundence for a hopefully authentic taste of Indochina. Unfortunately, in the first half of that last sentance lies the problem. Keep reading.

I awoke in my windowless room with absolutely no concept of the time. I pulled out my camera to check. Yeah, since my ipod got stolen, I've been using my camera to check the time. It was three in the afternoon. "Shit on a biscuit" I thought, "I gotta get up and seize the rest of this day". And so I set out in a direction I thought was towards town. After a bit of walking, it looked like I was leaving town, so I headed back. I asked a lady where to go and she pointed in the direction I had just walked back from, so again, I turned around. I walked a good kilometer before realizing that the old lady was 100% wrong and that the town was the OTHER way. Fed up, I surrendered and took a motorbike. It was 4:30 at this point. My debacle took close to an hour to sort out. Great start!

Finally I was in the old town. The famed streets of silk and silver, cobblestones and craft. A river passed along the south end with picturesque boats offering tours. Women in comical hats balanced their wares on scales perched upon one shoulder as they walked about town. It was charming alright. the alleys were narrow and the houses were classic. A quick walk revealed the sheer volume of the tailor shops per block. there must have been hundreds, all poised to make any suit, jacket, dress or other article of clothing you wanted at a price that absolutely had to be cutthroat competitive. Some of the designs they had on display were really really nice, it's a shame I couldn't shop.

The sun was setting, illuminating the streets a bright orange. I had my bearings and was able to walk back with ease. For dinner, I ate cao lau, a Hoi An specialty. Flat noodles, croutons, bean sprouts, greens and pork in a savory broth. I knew my ill-timed nap would keep me up late, so I passed the time watching BBC World News and making headway in my book until my eyes grew droopy. Sleep came, but very late.

Next I day, I decided to do Hoi An proper. That meant buying tickets to some of the many many attractions nestled within the corridors of the old town. On my way there, I passed Marie from the bus and we made plans to meet later. Now, the municipality (or some organization) has authority over all of the historical sights in Hoi An and sells packs of tickets for admission. One ticket for one attraction and they came in sheets of five. Unfortunately, they were quite expensive. Double unfortunately, all of the attractions sucked.

My first ticket got me into a craft workshop. I saw maybe one lady putting together a paper lantern while the rest was just a souvenir shop. Ok, flushed that ticket. Next was a culture museum. It was a room, one half containing a few old looking pots and photos and the other, a souvenir shop. OK twice burned. Next was a heritage home. The daughter of the family that lived there showed me afew architectural nuances of the otherwise unremarkable looking home before leading me to the, uhm, souvenir shop. Finally, a family chapel. This one was a little special because it had a trap door I guess? Oh, and a souvenir shop. So, getting this gyst of how this whole racket was run, I tossed my last ticket and ambled about looking in the shops that didn't require tickets. Funny thing was, all of the souvenir shops sold the same shit! I just then realized what the town was. It was one giant souvenir shop. They make them here, they sell them here. Heritage homes my ass! One woman ran up with a foot long gilded Buddha delicately perched on a jade lotus leaf hoping for me to buy it. Lady, how the HELL am I going to drag that thing around?

I was disillusioned. How could I have not seen it coming? Next, they'll advertise a town known for beautiful scenic tours of the countryside, you'll show up and it will just be a tuk-tuk feeding frenzy for an otherwise unremarkable tour. "Nooo! They got me again!" you'll think. My advise for anyone visiting Hoi An: walk around, enjoy the scenery, but don't buy any tickets!

That night I discovered that I had lost one of my memory cards full of photos. Kind of a really terrible thing to happen. Bangkok to Luang Prabang was all gone. I cursed at the sky. I had comfort in the fact that all my best shots were saved in high-res on the blog however. Still sucks tremendously though, and it did not help elevate my perpetually gloomy mood.

I met Marie for dinner in the midst of a downpour. She was a world traveler, having lived in Australia and South America and now bound for Europe. No one you meet on the road leads a boring life. Meeting dull people again is going to be ahard crash back to earth. Later we went to the old town at night and it seemed to have taken on a different character. All of the store shutters were closed and swarms of young folk kicked up a racket. We followed the clatter to ahip backpacker joint with fratty humour on the walls. Things stayed pretty much on the chain that night aside from a large girl falling off of her stool. She let out a loud "WHOOP!" that had a few necks craning, but that's about it.

The next morning I had abus booked to Hue. Since it was only a 4-hour trip, there was no overnighter. I tasked my lanky after-hours doorman with waking me up at 7, then slept my beer buzz into oblivion.

Riverside, old town.

Road to the Japanese covered bridge. Looks like a set from a movie.

Unmistakeably old town.

Nha Trang-quilized

Sleeper buses are a little different from sleeper trains. Space is a lot more limited so things can get pretty cozy. Also, none of the bunks allow for your Western male of average height to fuilly stretch out. This means that if you have another person of the same height beside you, you'd better believe you're spooning. I got a snug bunk in the back next to the window with miraculously more legroom, which was good because the guy beside me was a massive mess of a man. The bus bounced a lot, which occasionally sent my spine into fits. I got maybe around four hours of sleep.

It was orange dawn in Nha Trang when the bus arrived. It was a ten hour trip, and a mere dent out of the whole journey. My hotel room contained two beds and lay above a post office. Before any kind of excursion took place, I flopped down on one of the beds to pick up the remaining sleep I missed back on the bus.

At twelve noon I awoke. My fan had stopped curiously. I plugged in my camera battery and got nothing. There was no power. Fair enough. I was used to it. I would just go without a camera for a day. I finished up and set out for the beach.

See, Nha Trang is Vietnam's premier beach town. Lots of Vietnamese tourists milled about along with the inevitable backpacker contingent. The beach stretched along the entire coast of the town and everyone enjoyed the sand and surf. A strict 'no peddling' rule ensured that the experience would be extra pleasant. And it was. "This is nice" is all you really can think when you bob in the waves alone. I landed an especially isolated stretch. Soon the clouds rolled in and I sought out shelter before it started to rain.

A handful of Vietnamese would regard me with curiousity every so often. Must have been tourists from small untouristed towns. Haven't gotten stares since back in Indonesia. Past a few shophouses, a pair of angry dogs darted out of an alley towards me bearing teeth. I leapt back just as a voice in Vietnamese yelled something that halted them in their tracks. This happened while I was locked in the deepest realms of thought, so to be jarred back into reality by something like that was almost enough to kill me.

Much of my time was spent milling about. I was in a slump and my money was starting to dip worryingly low, so I did nothing of note. Thought a lot. How this has been the longest stretch of my life without anyone that's close to me, well, close to me. What am I like as a person when there's no one around me? Kind of boring, I figured. I bored myself. I have become that tree falling in the woods with no one around to hear it. I didn't make a sound.

The next day I gave myself a boot in the ass and went and visited a bunch of sites I particularly didn't want to visit. This included the Long Son Pagoda and it's giant seated Buddha. I walked there; a good kilometer and a half through real Nha Trang. Locals and their everyday jobs at fruit stands and motorcycle repair shops. A stimulating journey, but the destination failed to garner any interest from me. Buddha was indeed giant and seated. I took in a nice view oif the town from above however, and strolled around the grounds of a Vietnamese cemetary that encircled the Buddha.

Back at the beach, I hung a right and just kept walking. In the distance, I saw a cable car connecting the mainland with the very clearly labelled Vinpearl Island. Maybe that would be fun. I walked for about five kilometers along the shore passing waves of gawking children and still, the cable car seemed no closer than from where I started. It wasn't on the horizon, it was the horizon. Always visible, never reachable. Battered by exhaustion, I gave up and caught a motorbike back to the guesthouse. Who knows if Vinpearl Island was what I was looking for. Maybe it was, and my discouragement and inability to reach it was a giant metaphor for the whole trip. For life. If this was fiction maybe.

Power in the town resumed at 5pm everyday I discovered. not sure what the deal was, but it sure made everyone go outside and play. Take note moms. I was waiting for my open ticket bus to show up and whisk me off to Hoi An, my next destination. I rattled off a few emails and even a post card or two while I waited. The shuttle bus to the real bus arrived and within seconds I was on board with my gear, leaving.

So what was Nha Trang? Nha Trang was the holiday locale I did not deserve. Other people deserved it more than me and, as such, they were rewarded. Nha Trang was long walks and long hours of deep introspection. What am I going to do when I get home and my life restarts? Where will I be in ten years? Nha Trang was four hours alone in a double room watching the National Geographic channel. I'm shocked with the amount of double rooms I've ended up with as a solo traveler. I had been getting a lot lately. Another metaphor? Nha Trang was finished, that's what Nha Trang was, and it was off again into the thick black.

Nha Trang from on high.

Vietnamese cemetary.

I was shocked how deserted this huge square was so I had to get a shot.

The beach. Nha Trang's feature.

A lovely sky blue...

Ho Chi Minh City

I awoke in the midst of the swampy mess that was Phnom Penh. No! What had happened? I was back in the belly of the beast and the traffic had ramped up it's level of insanity to welcome me back. Cars and motorbikes going in both directions in both lanes. Intersections with perpendicular vehicles forming a thatch, no regard for rules. Like I said before, 'if you can fit, you can go' seemed to be the only rule. We rolled into the bus station and they began tossing the bags out of the bottom. No no no!

I disembarked ready to uncork some blind rage when I was directed to a second bus with 'Ho Chi Minh City' written across the top. Oh yes! I played Red Rover with the usual cluster of touts and hopped on. It was big and beautiful inside, the likes of which I hadn't seen since Malaysia. I hoped that this foreshadowed my time in Vietnam.

I slept some more. I think at one point the bus boarded a ferry, but I don't remember. Border crossing was great. Vietnamese nationals kept wedging in front of tourists only to get culled into their own separate line. This glimmer of fairness filled me with hope.

I rolled into tha HCMC just after sundown. A modern city spread out around me in all directions. Traffic seemed sane. It was clean. There were sidewalks. Touts greeted the bus just like anywhere in Southeast Asia, but I didn't feel any of the dishonesty and blatant harassment I received in Cambodia.

I told one driver I wanted a $4 room and he set out dilligently to find me one. And did he ever find me one. See, rooms in HCMC go for around $10 a night on average. What I got for $4 was actually more of an overhead storage compartment. hard to describe, but it was basically a 5-foot tall room nestled in a bulkhead that overlooked the main lobby. A squat little Alice in Wonderland style door marked the entrance. Below the door, but before the floor, was a window that overlooked the front desk area. It was kind of a crummy room, but so damn interesting and cheap, I couldn't refuse. It had a bed and fan anyways, so yeah.

Before I set out to explore the streets, I sat down for some birthday cake with the family who owned the guesthouse. It was the son's 27th birthday and I told him that it was a good age. Nice folk.

Big surprise, I was in the backpacker district once again. Lots of neon signs. Lots of peddlers. Book stores were everywhere selling photocopied books; a first in Southeast Asia so far. $8 for the fatty that is Lonely Planet's guide to China. Good savings. I tried to withdraw some of the local currency but was brisky declined by every ATM I went to requiring yet another email back to dad to help sort stuff out from the home front. A credit card advance prorogued the problem.

I slept in a lot. Goddamn I have been so lazy. What ended up waking me was the cleaning lady barging into my room to get some bedsheets. Only $4 I told myself. Really, at this point in the trip, I've had so many people barge in on me that unless I'm stark naked, I'll just disregard and head back to sleep.

All day I walked around a well-groomed Ho Chi Minh City. I visited the Reunification Palace, the last allied stronghold during the war, and got some good insight into the national psyche. The War Remanants Museum offered even more insight. A war like the Vietnam War, which is already pretty unpopular amongst Americans, is downright maligned by the Vietnamese. Halls upon halls spotlighted the numerous atrocities perpetrated by the Americans during the war followed by a display celebrating the triumph of reunification. As you can imagine, the war is seen as a successfully repelled invasion chock full of tragedy. Vietnamese pride has swelled since, but really, you'd have no idea who won in the end. Although technically a socialist republic, capitalism occasionally pulls strings behind the curtain. Foreign investment, local corporations, skyscrapers. Country seems to be doing rather well, which casts the war, and the utter pointlessness of it in a whole new light.

The next day I booked a tour starting early at 8. I grabbed a cheap baguette for breakfast, a welcome carry-over from the French colonial days. My first destination was the Cao Dai temple in the town of Tay Ninh, about three hours outside of the city. I would have skipped this tour of yet another temple had I not known of Caodaism and it's unique mashup of other religions to form something different from your usual stupa and spire boilerplate. The town of Tay Ninh is the Holy See of Caodaism, like it's very own Vatican, so as you can imagine, it was the prime location to experience it. I wanted to see this unusual creation in action, and I certainly got to as the bus rolled in, just in time for midday mass.

The tourists were ushered onto a balcony inside the massive temple. Bright colours assaulted the senses, and the imagery of an all-seeing eye featured prominently. Practitioners in white garb filed in amidst chants. I had no idea what was happening, but it was hypnotizing. Couldn't really get a hold of the whole religious mashup though. Seemed like your typical cultish behaviour that all religions seem to exhibit. But yeah, hypnotizing.

Back on the bus, the next stop was the Cu Chi Tunnels, a vast network of underground corridors built by guerrilla Vietcong. A stop for lunch gave me time to chat with an apprehensive British fellow. Nothing about the conversation comes to mind. The bus stustered past rubber trees and into the compound a short while later. The tourists filed out and bought their tickets. Our guide kept us tightly corralled. This is generally what I hate about tours. Yes, they're very efficient ways to see places, but being part of a daffy herd strips all of the romance out of visiting any attraction. Less adventure, more field trip. It didn't matter though. The Cu Chi Tunnels were all field trip.

Anamatronic Vietcong guerrilla fighters carved pikes and dismantled Allied bombs. A row of recreated pit traps made everyone wince; some just the men. The guide had a voice that was gargley and sincere yet keen and playful, and he narrated the trip excellently. I got down in a pothole and played Charlie for a bit. There was barely anywhere to move, even for my skeletal frame. Later the whole lot of us crawled through a tunnel that had thoughtfully been widened for us. It went a total of 100 meters, but had people bailing through the escape hatches every 20 meters until only a handful of us trickled out of the other side. I shined my camera tracer down a hidden corridor to reveal a large cluster of bats hanging from the ceiling. Everyone was squeezing through these horribly narrow tunnels, god only knows what kind of havok stirring up a nest of bats would have wreaked.

The tour passed a shooting range that offered guests a chance to try various firearms starting with a handgun and working up to the big bad M60 Rambo cannon. Bullets were expensive so many opted out. The racket was deafening.

After a short film, we all piled back onto the bus and headed back to Ho Chi Minh City. I enjoyed the tour. That night, I would eat a hamburger and drink a beer; reward for my full day of activity. At night I met two fairly innocuous gentlemenand joined their quest to find a happening bar. Nothing materialized unfortunately. We parted without knowing each others' names.

In the morning, I booked an open ticket across Vietnam. $37 covered my transpotation all the way up to Hanoi on overnight sleeper buses, so I rested easy knowing that I had that covered. My last day in HCMC was spent at the Natural History Museum. I ogled tiny dioramas before heading out on an unintentional walkaround of the downtown core. I saw sidewalks cluttered with vendors and parked motorbikes. The notion of a sidewalk has gone completely in the toilet in Southeast Asia. Buildings grew taller and more stately in what appeared to be a financial district. A very tall building under construction peeked out over the others; visible from all parts of the city. I passed a bustling market before ducking under the awning of a pharmacy to escape a sudden downpour. Motorbikes roamed the streets in swarms forming the most abundant and viscous fluid in the traffic formula. I learned how to cross the road on day one, so by then I was a pro. Walk slowly, make sure they see you and don't make any sudden moves, like dealing with animals. I got back to the guesthouse and collected my bag.

That night I loaded into my first sleeper bus and started my long journey up the curved spine of Vietnam

No idea who this is. Honestly. Reunification Palace.

War talks room, Reunification Palace.

Reunification Palace.

Idol shoot at the Notre Dame Cathedral.

The all-seeing eye at the Cao Dai temple.

Devout practitioners, Cao Dai temple.

Midday mass, Cao Dai temple.

Playing Charlie, Cu Chi Tunnels.

Risky business.

After the rainstorm.