Bye, Thailand.

I'm walking down Sukhumvit, one of the newest and swankier areas of Thailand. I'm on the sidewalk, underneath the sparkling and ultra-modern BTS Skytrain.

A man passes me on my left. With his baby ELEPHANT.

THIS is Thailand.

Modern, but not overly western. I realized this when a group of teenaged boys, in their school uniforms at night, came to me on Khao San road, the backpacker haven. They must have had a homework assignment to talk to people on English. One came up to me, giggling, with a list of phrases in his hand. "May I interview you?" he says in his heavily Thai-inflected English. One friend whipe out a cell phone, another a camera. He asks me one mundane question after the next, about why I came and if I like Thailand. I answered positively, all smiles, so that even though I knew none of them understood a word (I'm sure they were going to go home to transcribe and translate) I wanted to get my point across.: how thankful and appreciative I was of the Thai's generosity, kindness, and open arms.

As true as this was, I found myself to be less-than-impressed with Bangkok. I think it was because I was traveling alone, at the end of a very long vacation. It's known for it's nightclubs, and partying, and sex tourism. At this point of my journey, I wanted none of it.

I wanted to come home.

There is so much blatent sex tourism here that every time I saw a Western man with an Asian woman, I wanted to gag. I felt so sorry for the "bar girls," not because they were prostitutes per se, but because Western men travel across continents just to find them.

I mean, the concept of just enlisting the services of a prostitute or going to see strippers isn't SO awful to me, but the idea that people come across the planet for just that.... I was repulsed. As much as I would've been game to see a "ping-pong show" (use your imagination, mom), I felt that a woman going alone in a scene like this was just a bad fucking idea. It's so over the top, from the descriptions I've heard, that it's not even porn. It's ridiculous. Like a freak show.

It just seemed wrong.

I didn't even want to go out dancing or drinking, or anything of the sort. Not that anyone would've taken me for a Thai hooker, but I just wasn't feeling it.

I imagine that's the best part of Bangkok, and I shied away.

Next time. Which I'm sure there will be.

Asia is so much easier than I thought it would be, at least in the not-so-off-beaten-paths. All of the signs (the important ones) are in English. Everyone knows the phrase "how much?" and they're savy enough to communicate the answer, whether it's with the little calculator they carry around or by simply pulling out the bills in their own pockets to show you the cost.

I was so afraid. Of malaria, of dengue fever, of the humid weather, of the language barrier, of larger-than-life flying cockroaches (this was a biggie). I managed to avoid all of that. I realized about a week and one giant can of deep-woods-Off that I wasn't even getting bitten by mosquitoes. So by the time I got to Hua Hin, when I realized that I left my malaria pills in Bangkok, I wasn't even worried. Most people don't take them anyway.

I felt so safe, with the possible exception of Cambodia, where we made sure to have a driver everywhere. No one so much even gazed in my direction, except the moto guys. A great place to be a solo female traveler. People were either nice and helpful, or at their worst, indifferent.

I'll be back some day. But right now I'm just happy to not have to squat when I pee.

An Olympic Moment

I wander into another restaurant in Hua Hin where there are no white people. These are, of course, my favorite kind.

Even more so, because everyone who works at the restauarant is crowded around a pretty decent sized TV in the front. They're watching the Olympics. More specifically, women's weightlifting, whatever the skinny division is called.

So of course, the top three contenders are Asian. American women, if they're this small, are probably gymnasts. Not weightlifters.

I sit in the very front, as to not obstruct the vision of the others. Everyone's watching. I order up some crab fried rice and green chicken curry soup.

Thailand wins.

Everyone applauds. This is Thailand's first goal, and I'm cheering along with 'em.

I think back to the rest of my trip, how I've been so fortuante to jsut show up somewhere with really good timing. I was in Bangkok on some special Buddhist day where all the entrance to the Wats were free. I was in Vietnam when the Miss World Pageant was going on. I was in Hue for the full moon, when all the stores turn off their lights, prey, and the streets are lit up with lanterns. I just happened to walk out of an internet cafe the other day, just to see GEORGE BUSH pass by me in his motorcade. I will be here Tuesday, the Queen's birthday, so I'm sure I'll see something interesting.

And I got to see Thailand get its first Olympic goal of 2008.

The soup is spectacular... green, coconutty, tender chicken. I hate the vegetables that are in there- some unrecognizable hard, bitter pea and eggplant. Forgivable. It's piquant and hot, just hot enough, hot enough to make my nose run but not make my eyes water. I wonder if that means I'm a badass or if they gave me the pussy version. The small chards of crab made the fried rice sweet and delightful.

I finish lunch, and stay longer to see as much of the olympics as I can. I take out my knitting.

One of the girls at the restaurant, Emily (her gold nameplate proclaims) speaks great English and asks me what I'm making. This is the way I interact with all Thai women here who aren't offering me (or giving me) a massage. I've been knitting on the beach, and all of the craft-hawkers stop by, motion to me to show them what I'm making. I show a picture, they give me the thumbs-up, show me what they've made. Some barely intelligible conversation later and I realize they're telling me that I have to come back to Hua Hin so that they can see the completed project. They don't even try to sell me anything. This is always a pleasant surprise.

I go to pay, as the eldest woman at the restaurant has got control of the remote and is changing it too much for my liking. I ask Emily the question I'd been dying to know- whether the soup was "thai spicy."

She laughed at me.

"Oh no!!" she says. When there's a farang at the table, we make sure to tell the chef to make it not too spicy! Was it OK?"

"It was perfect," I replied.

Question answered.

At the beach.

I've got less than a week left, and I was bored of Bangkok. I decided to go to Chiang Mai, an 11-hour overnight sleeper train away, in the north of Thailand. It's the home of lots of indigenous hill tribes, a very pleasant city from what I'm told, and you can ride elephants.

I'd ride an elephant.

Chiang Mai turns out to be an exceedingly popular place. So much so that I can't get a ticket. They try to get me to get the VIP bus, which I have to imagine is not so VIP at all.

I go south, instead, and opt for the beach, which I haven't seen since Nha Trang, Vietnam. I figure I should come home with something of a tan line.

Most tourists, I think, go to Phuket (poo-kett) or Ko Samui or Ko Phi Phi (which is entertainingly enough pronounced like "go pee pee"). They've very crowded and popular. And far.

Hua In is a beach town aboiut 4 hours away by bus. Perfect. It's a popular weekend getaway for young Thais and their families. And Germans.

So. Many. Germans.

Seriously, if there's a quaint little beach town to be found, the Germans find it. And move in. And open restaurants.

I met Kim and Carla on the bus. They're sisters- Carla is taking a year off from work to volunteer and travel the world and Kim is a HS science and math teacher, visiting for a couple of weeks. The bus, which is a lot more ghetto than I expected, no suspension whatsoever, making me a hell of a lot more queasy than I normally get on a perfectly flat and straight highway, pulls over. They're talking to a Thai guy who speaks enough English to tell them that they'd better get off the bus and check underneath. The drivers forgot to lock the storage area, and some of the luggage flew out. They were safe, as was I. I had my two HUGE bags in Bangkok at the hotel I'm returning to, and my two smaller bags under my feet. Paranoia pays off in this instant. Some English woman not as lucky... her bag flew out of the bus. She doesn't seem to bothered. Weird.

We walk for about 8 minutes to the edge of the little town. It's dense with tourist shops, of the tailoring and Buddha-head variety. More 7-11's, a starbucks, a McDonald's with Ronald McDonald wai-ing at the entrance. Yet, it feels less Westernized than you'd think.

It's perfect. A beach, a little town to walk around, a night market, open-air restaurants that have no menus in English.

We find a guesthouse that's recommended to us by some people we met, and I negotiate an AC room, with fridge and shower, the most comfortable bed I've had in Thailand yet (not saying much- they're hard as fuck) for $18 a night. It's right on the water. There's a deck overlooking the water, and it has that laid-back, "I've been here for 60 years and it looks exactly the same" kind of way, and the people who work there are delightful. Glamourous it's not, (the floor is laid with contact paper that look like pergo tiles....) but really, it's brilliant. I hear the ocean crashing against the shore as I go to sleep. No joke.

I've been here a day and a half, but I've yet to see the sun.

However, it's so relaxed here, and the weather is cool and comfortable, and I've had lots of time to sit, read, watch TV, and relearn intergration by parts and partial fractions.

There's a ton of bars, and they're full of "bar girls," the gentle way to describe the prostitutes. Not much offends me, but I'm really grossed out by all these Western men who are walking around with their Thai "girlfriends." There's no shame, and you know that they're coming to Thailand strictly for the sex tourism.

The girls and I walked across the beach for a couple of hours, played with mini sand crabs (1/4 of the size of a fingernail) and lamented the death of an enormous jellyfish that washed up on shore. Huge and gross.

A couple of more days here, a few more chapters of calculus, and I'll be more than ready to head back to Bangkok to come home.

I can't wait.

Durian

My friend Michelle is Singaporean. She LOVES durian.

Durian is a green, spiky-exterior large (slightly bigger than your head) fruit. The spiky outside is nature's way of screaming at you "DON'T EAT ME.'

And many people don't... when you cut away the thick outer shell, a sweet, yet musty, moldy odor fills the air. There are signs in airports in hotels that forbid the fruit, it smells so bad. My friend Amanda had a "stinky food" party once, and, as she tells it, someone brought durian and the house smelled for days. Many Asian people can't get enough of the stuff, describing it as "fragrant," while many others describe it as "pungent."

Michelle and I are in Chinatown a couple of years ago, and she convinces me to taste the stuff in the form of a shake at some Vietnamese restaurant we were passing by. In her very excited way, she giggles and shreiks "durian!! get the durian!!"

The shake reeks. It smells like old socks. I have no idea how anything that smells this bad could taste good. I don't breathe in. I take a sip.

It tastes exactly as it smells. It's vile. I pass it off to Michelle, and although she admits it isn't very good (how can there be a season for something that smells like a gym locker at its best?!?) but she drinks it anyway.

Fast forward to yesterday. I'm in Asia. It's durian season. It's time to revisit the beast.

I had hoped to try it with Mattias, Nao, and Tonia, as Tonia is a durian lover herself, but the time never came. I'm on Khao San, a seeminly unlikely place for a durian vendor to be, as the ratio of White people to Asians is roughly 100:1, but he's there.

Inside the duiran lies bone-colored pods, resembling a sickly pale foie-gras. Not a lot of actual meat for a fruit that large. The vendor has already shelled the fruit, and has a bunch of styrofoam plastic-wrap coated durian pods.

I look at him with contemplation mixed with fear.

"Durian," I say.
"Yes. Durian."

I pick up the package and smell it. It's not THAT bad. Nor is it GOOD. But I expected to recoil from the odor. Now I'm thinking that Thailand manufactures the strongest, least-porous saran wrap in the planet. That, or Thailand has some kind of "Durian light" and it's the newest tourist scam. Make 'em think they like durian.

I buy it.

It's nighttime, and I want to take a video of this, so I bring it to the hotel, wrap it tightly in the plastic bag, and hope that the aircon is enough to not make it rot and stink up the joint further.

First thing in the morning, I march down to the open cafe of my hotel and sit nearest the street. I fear the smell, that I will disturb everyone and the smell won't leave the hotel all day. I place the package neatly before me, and one of the staffers bring me my coffee.

"DURIAN!," she proclaims, laughing and smiling. She's pleased with me. I tell her that I must try it, but I don't think I'll like it. She sits with the other workers, and I can feel their gaze burning into my back.

I open the package. Smell is no worse, no better. The pods are off white, and have a thin edible ever-so-slightly wrinkled membrane that to me, makes them look like testicles. Oblong testicles. The waitress brings me a knife and fork. Now I can classily eat my durian and puke.

I carve into it and accidentally split the brittle pit in half. I peel back the membrane to reveal a creamy, cheesecake-like consistency.

Good idea, I think to myself. Think of it as cheesecake. Camembert cheesecake. Mikxed with bad-quality brie. That'll help.

I take a bite.

The first was the hardest. It tasted like it smelled. I didn't want to immediately spit it out, but I didn't like it.

On the second bite, I remembered not to inhale. It was better.

I'm now thinking that this, mixed with sweetened condensed or coconut milk, might actually make a good shake, if the durian were fresh. (Michelle agreed.)

Three bites, and I let myself off the hook. I gave a full report to the waitresses at the bar, still laughing, and gave one of them my untouched pod as a gift. She put her arm around me and gave me a tight squeeze.

As much as I did not like it, nor feel the need to ever prove myself by eating it again, in any form, I do feel the need to say that it was 1000 times better than the chopped liver I at at my sister's engagement party.

That shit was foul.

A Day of Wats

Not shiny enough, I said.

You know, the one thing Angkor was missing, in my half-kidding opinion.

And then I arrived in Thailand.

One of the benefits of being in the backpacker ghetto known as Khao San, aside from the very cheap spa services, and non-stop shopping and eating, is that it is very close to the historical sights.

It ususally takes a twisting of my arm to stop wandering, shopping, and tasting long enough to get me to absorb some history, but guilty having not seen even a fraction of what Angkor had to offer, I felt compelled to devote a day to Wats (Buddhist temples.)

I get started later than I should have. I start walking towards what I think is Wat Po, the closest to me and the home of Thai Massage. I make the wrong left, and although I haven't figured this out yet, not one but two tuk-tuk drivers yell out to me "Wat Po!!" and point in the correct direction.

I ignore them, although I'm sure they are right, I've learned to ignore tuk-tuk drivers. They are obnoxious in Vietnam, persistent in Cambodia, and although until today I had no basis for comparison, I decided they were best avoided.

I turn around, and stop in front of this beautiful statue: I don't remember it's name, but she's twisting her hair, the hair serving as a fountain. There's a man there, and isntead of getting me to give money for an offering, he starts to tell me that the water coming from her head is holy, and that I should pour some on my head for luck. I can't say no to him even if I tried... he's already poured some of the water into my hand to put on my head. His smile invites me to listen, knowing that soon I'll probably have to tell him I'm not interested in his fucking tuk-tuk.

He asks the typical questions: where I'm from, what I'm doing in Thailand, how I like it, etc. He asks me to take out my map, and starts furiously circling all of the places he thinks I should go. The Golden Buddha, the reclining Buddha, the Golden Mountain. All these things are free today, as today is some special Buddha day. Also, he tells me, the government recently put out some kind of charge: people have been coming to Thailand in droves because of recent cataclysmic weather patterns elsewhere in Asia... they've been compelled to "take care of toursits." He tells me a special tailor to go to for Thai silk, a government travel agency that doesn't charge a commission for when I go to Chaing Mai. He tells me to take a tuk-tuk, as it is way too far to walk. 30 baht (less than a dollar) for the whole adventure, no more, he says, and he takes me to the tuk-tuk drive he claims not to know. He'll talk for me, he says. I am taking everyting with a grain of salt.

The tuk-tuk driver says 50 baht, and my new friend negotaites to his promised 30. I agree. My friend tells me to enjoy Thailand, and to come back. He asks for nothing in return.

Everything in Bangkok seems so close on the map. I'm wrong. This driver takes me to wat after wat. The golden Buddha is covered with 24K gold mosaics and is as tall as a lighthouse.

Shiny I wanted, shiny I got.

I love Mr. Tuk-Tuk guy... he speaks plenty of English and is very warm... even up until the point where the scam starts in. Tuk-tuk drivers are notorious for talking you into shopping trips- for no extra fee they'll take you to this special shopping place and that one. I told him that I got a lot of stuff in Vietnam, and I didn't really want to do any more shopping (although this itself is a little white lie) and the guy tells me how it is- for every customer he brings to this particular shop, he gets a coupon, and after a certain number of coupons they give him shirts, which he gives to his daughter. He promises me I don't have to buy anything, I jsut need to go in and look.

I was so delighted by this little bit of honesty that I obliged. It's an exhorbitant jewelry shop, I meander for a couple of minutes, say "thanks" and leave.

He drops me off at the Royal Palace, after I told him "no more shopping."

The Royal Palace has a strict dress code, stricter than Angkor. I saw a ton of people walking aruond Angkor in shoulder-bearing tops, and I was surprised, as I had read that that wasn't permitted. Here, shoulders had to be covered, women had to wear pants or skirts that went below the knee, men had to wear long pants.

Guards inspected your outfit before you bought your ticket. I was wearing the long skirt, but my tank top didn't pass code. So you pay a deposit of 100 bhat for each piece of clothing you have to BORROW. I take a particularly unflattering shirt and hope no one else had worn it that day.

I buy my ticket, walk around to the gate, and the new guard tells me my shoes are no good, and I have to go back to the front.

Now I'm pissed. It was tiring enough getting here... I forced myself to come here after too long of a morning (however pleasant) of wats, and I knew if I didn't do it today I wouldn't. I hardly slept the night before, my energy was fading.

Even more pissed I was when I get to the front, and they have no idea what I'm talking about, and can't explain the guard's behaviour.

I'm visually pissed. Not particularly Buddhist or Asian of me.

I sson lightened my mood: the Royal Palace, not Angkor Wat, is the Disneyland of Holiness.

I'm sad that my pictures cannot convey how shiny and opulent these buildings were. This might be one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen in my life.

One night in Bangkok

Well, 11 nights to be more specific.

I flew from Siem Riep into Bangkok today, starting to feel a little bit under the weather. I take the express bust to Khao San, where all the backpackers are, as it's central and packed with guest houses. I arrive weighed down with bags like scuba gear: a regular backpack on my front, a huge travel-across-europe backpack on by back, and a duffel bag on my shoulder.

In Vietnam, when you get off the bus, there are people everywhere trying to take you to their guest house.

Not so much in Bangkok.

I figure I'd walk into a couple, ask to see the room, check on the rates, and make a decision, if only for a day to dump my crap and head out.

The first place is an Indian Restaurant/Guesthouse. Most of the guesthouses are paired with a restaurant or cafe or something. It's 300 baht, or about $9.

$9 in Cambodia gets you a rpetty nice place. In Bangkok, it gets you a prison cell.

No. Not even for a night.

I wander donw the street a bit, at this point more exhausted than I should be, and I stop off at the very lovely coffeeshp/Guesthouse. The coffee shop is beautiful, right next to the airplane bus stop. It's also about $32 a night. The room is small, but beautiful and clean inside, and already airconditioned.

One night.

So I go to Khao San Road.

UGH.

Imagine St. Mark's place, twice as wide, three times as dense with vendors and shiny street signs. 10 times the number of hippie white people.

Oh, and a 7-Eleven every 30 feet. Which is only a slight exaggeration.

I'll be here for three days, and it's close to some of the historic sights, but I'm going to make it my business to get out of here as soon as possible.

First meal: of course, pad thai. Extra fish sauce. At least the food's still cheap.

Angkor Wat

One of the man-made wonders of the world, Angkor Wat is a CITY. It's a huge city of temples, which is what the name means.

It's awe-inspiring, which is what Mattias kept calling it, even on the first day when we hadn't even made it in the front door of the main temple.

It's a city made of enormous temples a gazillion years ago. Almost every piece of stone used to build it is intricately carved. It's beautiful. It took so long to build the thing that there are two completely different styles of architecture it's comprised of.

We arrived at 4:30 am, to see the sunrise. We spent 3 hours in just the main temple alone, as Tonia and Mattias are voracious documentarians, positioning all of us here and there, just right, so that we could have a photo of every angle. I''m making this sound like a negative here, I know, but I didn't feel that way at all. I got to appreciate every nook and cranny of the two temples of many that we had the strength to see, and besides, now I have a hundred pics of myself to prove I was actually there. One of the downfalls of traveling alone is that you're barely in any photo.

It's getting hotter and hotter, we're walking and walking, and by 10:30 I've had it. The heat at that point was pretty intense, and the sun was starting to break through. I noticed later on how much different I looked from 5 am to 10... my hair was much puffier, and so was my face- the humidity which I don't fare well in was taking its toll.

By 11 am, I couldn't see any more. I now understood why people get a three-day pass. You just can't see that much for a long period of time. It's overwhelming and hot.

We barely scratched the surface.

I shouldn've come back the next morning, as yesterday I thought I was going to die if I saw any more, and now I'm regretting that I didn't see enough.

I wasn't as impressed by Angkor Wat as everyone else was. Maybe this is because I am easily pleased, but not easily impressed. Don't get me wrong. It was enjoyable. And spectacular. And I'm really glad I saw it. Cambodian architecture is very unique and beautiful. Maybe it's because I've seen Teotihuacan in Mexico, the Coliseum in Rome... I'm not enough of a history buff to really appreciate all the minor details. Maybe it's because the one time we needed a guide, we couldn't find one.

Or perhaps, more simply, because it wasn't shiny. I REALLY like shiny.

The Opposite of Hitler

The theme of the day is genocide, gentle reader.

I'm in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I was really afraid of coming to Cambodia. People kept telling me how unsafe it is, how smelly, how dirty.

I am finding that it is all three.

I am lucky that I joined a group of really cool people I met coming here from a really awesome 2-day trip down the Mekong River Delta. We took boat after boat after boat, saw villagers (the tour guide started every sentence with "the local people" in his staccato English, which delighted us much more than it should have) who lived on floating houses doing their daily work. The boat tour brought us into Cambodia.

The best part, by far, was that in each passing of one rural village after another, the children, and even the adults, would run to the edge of the water, jump up and down, smiling, waving. We took great pleasure in waving back. Every single time.

The tour, run by Sinh Cafe, a very reputable company that conducts tours all around Vietnam, was great, but we never really seemed to understand the itinerary. They would pass us of from one boat to the next, one guide to the next, and everything that we did took a good 1/2 hour to 1 hour longer than we were told.

"Trust the system," I told everyone. "It seems to work."

We said this many times to each other, laughing the whole way.

When we finally got to Cambodia, the boat driver tells not to let anyone touch our luggage, as they will either steal it, or take it and sell it back to you. My luggage is huge at this point, and Sebastian and Nao (traveling with me) take pity on me and carry it for me. The tour brings us straight to the guest house that we will all be staying at, so we don't pull into the center of town and have to deal with all of the thieves and street children. Who are also thieves.

The guesthouse is packed full of people, watching a movie, and we are too tired to bother to find a good place to eat, so we trust in the food menu there. It was pleasantly delicious... US$3 (the de facto currency!!) bought me "Fish Amok,"which is the greatest name for a dish. I've never had anything like it. It was like a very thin chartreuse curry, but instead of tasting like curry, it was strongly scented and flavored by lemongrass. I pass out soon thereafter. A heavy dishlike this was a shock to the system after two weeks of light vietnamese food.

We meet at 9 am for the popular double-header of genocide: S21 and The Killing Fields.

I won't go too much into the history, Wiki it in greater detail if you like.

But here are the lowlights, if you will:

• S21 was school in Phnom Penh that was converted to torture chambers for prisoners.
• Then, entire families were taken to the "Killing Fields," an ex-chinese cemetary, for execution.
• The Khmer rouge figured out that bullets were too expensive, so they invented crude, slow ways of killing their victims that were cheaper.
• Every time it rains now, teeth and shattered boned from the mass graves rise to the surface. They are everywhere.
• Young children had a special form of execution, they were held by their feet and their heads were thrashed against a tree. It was called the "Magic Tree."
  
• Everything was done in secret and silence. Most of the world had no idea. Most of Cambodia had no idea. They played loud music in the killing fields to hide the sounds of screaming.
• This all happened about 15 years ago.
  
• Pol Pot died of old age, and his main men are alive, and have not yet been tried. The criminal court is very expensive, and Cambodia is trying to raise the funds.
  

They killed anyone who was educated, as Pol Pot wanted to create a working class society that would not challenge him. Interrogations were conducted so that prisoners would help the regime find their families. For, if one member of the family had some brains, then the rest of them might have some brains, too.

So, he was the opposite of Hitler.

Hitler wanted to create a perfect race with the most pure qualities. Pol Pot wanted a race of slaves that he could rule.

Our guide's father was a simple farmer. He was left alone.

We were all affected in some way. Corrinne nearly vomited. Tanya couldn't take the second half of the spectacle; she went shopping instead.

I was sad, no doubt- incredulous. I guess I had used up most of my sorrow is Vietnam, inundated with images of War. The most shocking part to me, today, if I had to pick one, was that this event was SO RECENT. The people passing by me in the street, people my age, witnessed this. They were victims. There are people everywhere who are missing limbs, or are otherwise physically deformed. There was a man that passed by that had a goiter as large as his head protruding from his neck. There were children eating food out of the garbage. Everyone alive either experienced this genocide or have parents who did.

And yet, Cambodian people are always smiling.

I wonder how that can possibly be.

I am so happy to have come.

For my father

I enter the War remnant museum in HCMC. I'm one of 3 Americans in this tour group,a dn I'm surrounded by a young vietnamese school group, running through the "tiger cages","the impossibly small cells used to contain prisoners in the war. They are laughing, delighted. The museum feels to me like a morbid theme park.

I, on the other hand, am somber. This is how I expected to feel my whole trip, racked with guilt that I even chose to come to a place that caused harm or trauma to my dad. I hadn't felt this way until today. I was surprised to see that Vietnam is a modern country, practically immaculate and full of all the comforts of home. It doesn't fell like a war-torn place, and the people seem to have less anti-american sentiment than I've encountered anywhere.

Three steps into the museum, and the first remnant I see is an actual American helicopter with a machine gun propped out the window, at what I imagine was the most effective and efficient angle for destruction.

In that instant, I am powerless. The world disappears, the giggles of the delighted children fade away. I't's just me and this gun. I just sit down, and begin to cry. I'm the only one.

I see my dad behind it, 19 years old, handsome, drunk. Wondering how he found himself here, the only place in the world he had seen besides the Lower East Side of New York, wondering how he managed to join the army to get out of the 'hood, only to find himself behind a giant machine gun.

One of the few things my dad told me about the war was how he wound up behind that gun.

"PHILLIPS. What do you want to do here?"

"What job is least likely to get me killed?"

"Gunner."

And so it was.

Dad, ever the clever, direct, no-bullshit negotiator, street smart and shrewd, even at that tender age.

I regain my composure and awalk around the museum. There's the obvious anti-american propaganda, and touts of self-congratulatory "American Killer War Heroes"

And all I can think is how happy I am that dad made it out of Vietnam, how shocked I am that he emerged from it as sanely as he did (which for many years, was not that sane at all) and how proud I am for what he, albeit regrettably and unintentionally dd for our country.

And for us, my little family.

My dad might have almost given his life for a war no one thought was a good idea. When he came home, he worked at the same job that made him miserable just to take care of us.

Thanks, dad, for being cool enough and selfless enough to let me come here. I spent a good portion of the first 20 years of my life fighting with you. I'm going to spend at least the next 20 telling you how much I love and appreciate all you've ever done for me.


Even though putting the EZ-pass from my car in the trunk when I leave it at your place drives me insane.


Happy Birthday, Dad. I love you to pieces.

A day in the life of a Saigon Tourist

I had the entire day to enjoy my last day in Saigon, tour-free. I'd spent the last couple of days doing the guided tour thing, which I never do, but I knew I would never do it otherwise (more on that in another post.)



I wake up in my perfectly cool aircon room in my little guesthouse, which I adore. I walk through the narrow, busy pathway, full of people, and cross the main street to the "Sinh To" cart. I order a soursop fruit shake, always forgetting what soursop is or tastes like or if I like it (I just looked it up... it's the same as guanabana, the tropical fruit my Costa Rican HS boyfriend Oldemar used to drink) and an iced coffee. Cafe sua da, to be more specific, iced coffee with sweetened condensed milk. That and "thank you" are the only words I know after almost three weeks in Vietnam, and even though I can spell them, I can't even come close to pronouncing either.

I walk through the streets for a while, ending up again at the Central Market to pick up some souvenirs before I go. I buy dozens of little cellphone dangles, in the shape of Vietnamese woman traditionally dressed for my students- the girls mostly and some of the boys who are a little more secure in their manhood. Or womanhood. Whatever.

And then I hear it pound against the tin roof of the market... torrential downpour. Again. 3 ouf of 4 days of this, to spite me as I just proclaimed that I can't believe how little it has rained here. And I, again, without an umbrella. I know by now that waiting it out is fruitless... it can rain like this here easily for an hour or so. And it does.

I head to my favorite restaurant here, Thanh Binh, across the street from the market. Today, Sunday, it is practically empty. I finally eat something I'm not mad for. Rice cakes with crushed dried shrimp, croutons and little onion rings. I eat some of it, starting to develop a new appreciation for croutons.

Still pouring outside, and the persistent cramp I have in my left side pounds harder. My scoliosis doesn't let me walk for too long or for too many days, especially wearing flip-flops. I step into a massage place, and this is the best massage I've had yet. This little girl has the strongest arms, and although she's getting a hell of a lot more personal than I like, it's amazing. I actually felt so much better. By the time she was done, the rain stopped.

I walk back to my room and pass out for an hour.

I wake up and decide to do some more calculus at the local version of Starbucks (rant on that later as well.) I've strangely enjoyed the time I've spent catching up on what I've forgotten. I really can't spend another year playing daily catch up... I'm doing problems, reminding myself of what it's all about, taking copious notes on what it is I still have to figure out. Theory. I have no recollection of theory. I have no idea how to draw 3-D revolutions of figures around axes. Every time I finish a chapter I've photocopied, I throw it out. It's productive, and I get to lighten my load.

Except my load is increasing seemingly exponentiallly with all the stuff I'm buying. I've already bought a new, expandable bag. It's heavy as hell. But it's got wheels. I go to the tailor who's made me some more stuff. A blouse, a couple of dresses, a modern Ao Dai. It's gorgeous. She's this adorable older lady who did a better job than almost all of the tailors in Hoi An put together. She's lovely, and seems so proud of her work. I am thrilled to give her my money, and promise to post her information (which I've left back in the room.)

Off to the circus. Saigon circus, a 2 minute walk from my room. It costs $3, and the opening act is TERRIBLE. 20 people, dressed as soldiers, dancing. Badly. They're doing the whole unicycle thing, and they keep falling off. They're falling off more than they're staying on. I am excited by how bad this is going to be.

Except it's NOT bad. It's pretty damn good, actually. The production values are lacking a bit, and many of the acts aren't as elegant and a lot more corny than I'm used to, but otherwise fantastic. I'm surrounded by tons of children, and they are all laughing, not screaming, and well behaved. I wonder what's in the water that makes them so great. And cute. There's a little girl, no older than 3, who keeps trying to talk to me. He brother, every time the lights go on, asks me "how are you?" although he clearly has no idea how to proceed when confronted with a response. The clowns delight the children to no end, and the little girl finds this so funny, she slaps me on the arm, and smiles at me, as if to say "did you see that?"

I'm going to miss Saigon. I feel at home here. People are friendly. They keep helping me eat and cross the street. I miss the women, covered head-to-toes, literally, as most of them are riding around with full gloves, a conical hat, a mask, long sleeves and pants, so shield themselves from the sun. I am reminded that only white people wish to make themselves darker... the shelves of beauty aisles here are replete with whitening creams.) The motorbike guys are starting to recognize me, as well as the food stall people. One guy yells out "Hey, New York!" as he was the one guy I told where I'm from. Everyone calls me "madame."

It's not perfect... there's no way you can ride a bike for enjoyment. It's mayhem. There are no gyms. My only activity is walking and getting lost. And, there's this impossible tonal language I can't conquer.

I'm sad to leave tomorrow.

Miss Saigon

I arrived in Saigon (NO ONE calls it Ho Chi Minh City, by the way) at 6:30 am after another 8+ hour sleeperbus ride.

I personally love those things. They are engineering marvels; at least for short people like me and all the Vietnamese.

Did I mention that I'm a size Medium to Large here? These people are TINY.

Anyway, they awoke us again, at 6 am with BLARING music, as they have done every time. Techno. I really do NOT enjoy waking up this way, but it's so fucked up that I have to laugh. A lot more than the guy next to me.

I have no hotel reservation, thinking I'm being smart this time, as every time I've made a reservation in Vietnam I pay some deposit and when I arrive, there's no room for me. I let some guy take me to his guesthouse.

I'm walking around like Altas, a couple of large, cumbersome packs strapped to my back. I have no idea where I'm going. He takes me to some labyrinth behind a main street. Every house has a ground floor that faces the street, and there are people at every house cooking, eating, hanging out with the whole family. The streets in the maze are unnamed. They're related somehow, in some unintelligible Queens-like fashion, that refers to the main streets that are closest.

I am totally aware that I am already lost.

He takes me to a place, and it's closed up. It's 6 in the morning, and everyone is asleep. I get a bad feelind and have him take me to the one place that I saw online. He does. That place is booked. I ask for a recommendation. He walks me to one of his friends. It's a guesthouse, sweet people living/working there. $14 a night, A/C and private bathroom.

This is the way it goes here.

I head out first thing in the morning, paying careful attention to WHERE THE FUCK I AM. The map on the back of the guesthouse's card is of little help. I decide to go around the block, just to get my bearings.

I am greeted by Mr. Tho, the PUSHIEST CLYCLO DRIVER YET. He's missing quite a few teeth, and yet, has a beautiful smile. He speaks very good English. He wants to take me around. I tell him I like to walk, thank you. He starts telling me about how he was in the war, and America's #1, and he has met lots of American people, and can he take me for a ride?

No thanks, I'd like to walk, Mr. Tho.

Mr. Tho busts out a composition book, filled with travelers singing his praises on how he showed them around the city, did not rip them off, etc. etc.

That's very nice, Mr. Tho. No thank you, I'd like to walk.

Mr. Tho follows me for 3 blocks like this. It feels like the scene from Better Off Dead, where the kid on the bicycle hunts down John Cusack, demanding 2 dollars. I swear I hear the theme to Jaws in the background.

PLEASE, MR. THO, I put my hands together in some kind of Thai wai-like prayer motion, I NEED SOME PEACE.

Now I've lost track of where I am. Shit. But at least I lost Mr. Tho.

I had a busy morning. Made a reservation for a full day Saigon City tour. I know there's no other way I'm going to do it. Saigon is big, and busy, and distracting.

I find a cute clothing shop, and get some more stuff made.

Three hours, and I barely made it around the block.

I do as Anthony Bourdain says, and I head to central market. He says, if you ever want to get a feel for a city and its people, go to the Market.

It's a market like others I've seen. Full of bootleg, clothing designers, food shops. Except this one is huge, dense, and clean. There's an awesome place across the street, where I get some grilled pork over noodles. The young woman next to me tells me I'm supposed to dump the sauce into the bowl. I was pleased that I had already done it.

The Vietnamese are always telling me what to do. It's fantastic.

I walk around, window shopping, constantly dodging motorcycles.

I get this idea to go back to Central Market for dinner, and I am delighted by what I didn't even know existed:

NIGHT MARKET.

Holy shit.

One outdoor food stall after another, serving mostly fresh seafood. It's LOUD. Across from all the seafood are bootleg vendors. It's busy, crowded, full of Vietnamese, very food tourists. I'm sitting right next to the cook, smoky, seafoody steam periodically wafting against my back. It's hot. I don't care. It's GLORIOUS.

I'm not even bothered my the torrential rain that struck me on the way back to the hotel, a good 15 minute walk. I'm drenched. The vietnamese are telling me to take shelter with them, or offering me rides on their motorbike. I laugh, and walk on. My map is soaked, and I can't read it anymore.

I miraculously find my way back.

What does this say about me? I plan a month + getaway from New York, only to be most happy, most comfortable, and most entertained by another city- one impossibly more hectic, loud, and crazy than my own??

Swimming with the fishes

Why have I never snorkeled before??

Because I'm a pussy.

I don't know where my balls disappeared to.

When I was younger, we used to go to Action Park, a water park somewhere in Jersey that was eventually shut down because it was too dangerous. At least that's what we thought.

I remember, being about 11 years old, standing at the top of the "cliff dive." There were two, a shorter one with a really long line, and a longer one with no line at all. I was standing over the taller one, looking down, with some other girl. Even then, I think I was horribly impatient. The taller one wasn't more intriguing for adventure's sake, it was just more practical. Fewer people.

Some boys came over, teased us for being scared, and I said, "scared??" and dove right off the cliff. DOVE. Perfectly. (Which I only remember because the next time I jumped I JUMPED, and the upward force for the water tore that little bit of flesh that connects the upper lip to the gum. I should've dove.)

I don't know what happened.

I guess I started turning into my mom.

Snorkeling has never been a FEAR of mine, it's just that I'm not a big lover of nature. I hate slimy, icky, buggy things touching me. But for some reason, I decided to go snorkeling today.

I eat too big of a breakfast, and I get picked up along with the same guy, Martin, who wound up on my boat tour in Hue, and a couple of Quebecois and Dutch people. I'm the only one snorkeling as everyone else is an experienced diver.

I squeeze myself into my neoprene suit, slap on a pair of fins, and remember that I really HATE not being able to breathe out of my nose. My allergies are feirce, and my asthma has been acting up a bit, and I get a bit anxious whenever I feel like my air supply is being cut off, even just a little.

A quick preventative puff of the inhaler and I'm off.

Totally alone, me, the coral reef, and the fish.

Of course, I had to swim past the baby jellyfish to get there. More panic.

I was over it quickly. It was GORGEOUS. The reefs we went to are protected. The fish aren't scared. They don't swim away.

They are all shades and patterns. Stripes, spots, shimmery. Fluorescent, phosphorescent, effervescent.

Total tranquility.

Why haven't I done this before??

Besides, I look pretty good in a wetsuit.

Nha Trang - I don't care if it's not "charming."

Nha Trang is a a beach town in the Southern Central part of Vietnam. It's a city, and in the guide book, it's said to be not "charming."

It's not.

It's loud, not much culture, but has a beach. Most people have recommended going another 4 hours away to a beach town called Mui Ne, which is relatively unspoiled and remote and all that other stuff that backpackers like so much.

And then I remembered.

I'm not a backpacker.

I am the quintessential city girl.

I am two blocks from a beach, which by the way, is fantastic. It might not have the bluest waters, nor the fewest number of people, but compared to a lot of beaches I've seen, ESPECIALLY those in NY, it's empty. There are so few people, and most of them are Vietnamese on holiday. The water is completely clean. And when I'm done with my little R&R beachside, I have only to walk a couple of minutes to my hotel, a restaurant, iced coffee, and, oh yeah, the INTERNET. Skype.

I hate being in remote places. I hate losing touch with the outside world. Maybe for a day, with someone I particularly like.

However, I'm not with anyone I particularly like. So I like to have distraction about me.

Breakfast, free at the hotel, was a banana pancake and some iced coffee. The pancakes in vietnam are called "crepes," but really, they're neither. Too thin to be a pancake, too thick to be a crepe. Tasty anyway. I spent some time on the phone, talking to people from home.

I went for a bike ride to the center of town and went to some random "com" restaurant that looked good and busy. Everywhere in vietnam, there are little set-ups, some are carts, some are the front room of someone's house, that sells one or two particular dishes. "pho" is noodle soup, "bun" is some protein over cold vermicelli, and "com" is some protein over rice. In this part of the country, it seems that rice wins. This is particularly good for the non-viet speaker, because you just have to look and point. Today, it was squid stuffed with beef and rice (Nha Trang is all about seafood.) Delicious. There was some disturbing soup served with it that I avoided. All for about $1.25.

I spent most of the afternoon crocheting at the beach and underestimating the power of the vietnamese sun. I had a very small conversation (in my very shitty Friench) with a man and his wife, who were on vacation from Paris. He was Vietnamese, but moved to Paris after the war. At least, that's what I think he said. His wife offered me apples. At least, that's what I think they were.

I think that another massage might round out the day quite nicely. When they're $7 an hour, it's really hard not to spend your whole time doing it. I found a place that puts you in a steamroom that smells delightfully of lemongrass before the whole thing.

Tomorrow, I'm off on a 1/2 day boat tour to the surrounding islands, where I'll be snorkeling.

This, to me, is about all the nature and tourism I can handle.

Asians and ballads

My friend Annie, who's Chinese-American, hates karaoke.

At some point, she laments, the Asians all start singing these long-ass sappy ballads, about 12 minutes long.

They sing crappy American ones, too.

I'm in the bus office on a Friday night, looking to book a ticket out of Hoi An forNha Trang. It's a popular journey, and in line ahead of me is a pissed off Aussie. He can't get tomorrow's bus out of Hoi An. I make sure I book the bus for the following night, which was the original plan. It's just me and the booking agent.

And three older Vietnamese guys, in the next room, drinking, smoking, eating. One is playing an old and outof tune guitar, both due to the bad acoustics and his bad playing. The three of them are destroying "unchained melody."

I start singing along, under my breath.

The booking agent, having just finished signing off on my ticket, grabs my hand andleads me into the next room. He invites me to sit and sing. I start singing Unchained Melody. My lyrics and verse were way off, but compared to this dude, I was one of the Righteous Brothers.

We're all smiling. One guy passes me a shot of what might have been vodka. Or bathtub gin. Or isopropyl alcohol. It did the trick, whatever it was. Another guy peels me a litchi.

Hooch and and a sing-a-long. That was enough entertainment for me tonight.

Hoi An - tailoring mecca

You need three days in Hoi An if you want clothes made.

Day 1. Arrive in Hoi An, probably on the overnight bus from Hue. Walk around, get a lay of the land. Almost all of these shops are the same, and there are HOARDS of them. Innumerable. Most of them are selling CRAP. Crap fabrics cut to your size. I'm happy I spend a good deal of my time playing around in the garment district. "Vietnamese silk" is not silk at all. Get ideas. Get the fever.

Day2. Start in the morning. Early. Every store you go into, you have to go through magazine after magazine, getting inspired, narrowing vision. I started at Yaly Couture, the nicest shop with the nicest fabrics, by far, I thought. I leafed through magazines for two hours. Hint: If you leton thatyou're hot as hell, thennicer stores will bring you iced bottled water andturn the fan on you, knowing that keeping you cool in Vietnam is motivation enough.

Then you pick fabrics. There are tons to choose from in a nice shop.

Then you negotiate price. After two hours of this, you might not even be able to negotiate to something affordable. The nicer stores are kind about this. The ones that are not so nice get embittered.

Then they measure you.

Lather, rinse, repeat. Which you have to do, in order to diversify your portfolio, or so to speak, in case the place you pick sucks.

Which is sometimes the case.

Do not pay a large deposit. Nicer stores won't even ask for one at all.

Day 3
Get fitted in the morning. Get alterations. Go back inthe afternoon. Repeatuntil finished or until you have to get the hell out of dodge.

For example, here was my day 3:
I go to Central Market (Ly Ly store) where I pick up my five dress shirts. This took only two fittings. I didn't specify what kind of stitching I wanted, so they gave me the cheapest kind. I don't really care. They cost $14 a pop, and they were copied from a shirt I adored that was so dead.

Off to Yaly Couture, (3 locations) where I go for my 3rd fitting of the dress I "splurged"on for $57. 40's pinup style (try explaining that to the vietnamese), square neck, tight cap sleeves, pencil skirt with a flounce in the back. Sleeves still not right... they keep working on it. Three women, pinning, discussing, strategizing. All smiles.

Off to Thuong Cloth Shop, 30 Le Loi, where I pick up my thick, melton-wool coat, extra thick with a delicious collar and toggles. I'm sure I'm not the only crazy girl traveling across Asia with a dead-of-winter coat.

Tailor #4. Forget the location. Light-green top. Sexy. I eat some random barbecued beef and noodles at a food stall. I make it as spicy as I can handle.

The Tailor at Bup Design is a bitch. She overcharges me and totally fucks it up. DO NOT ASK FOR A CORSET in Vietnam. They have no idea what it is. I told her "corset" and "very thick" and "boning" all the other detals that makes a corset a corset. She comes back with an unlined top in the shape of a corset, and instead of grommets in the back there are open buttonholes. The woman tries in vain to lace it up, it of course does not work. It gapes, it bunches, it doesn't fit, it is falling down.
We get into it. I keep arguing that this was not what I asked for. She is arguing that she doesn't understand why I don't like it, thatthefabric waas thick and I said thick, that she already paid the tailor. I am trying not to lose my cool, which is evidently a no-no dealbreaker in Asia. This same argument goes back and forth for about 5minutes. I finally say "WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO DO??" This ends the conversation. She has no suggestion. I pay for the other blouse, and I leave her, sullen and sulking. Bup Design, 68 Nguyenen Thai Hoc. Avoid like the plague.

I really don't know how this shit fits in my bag.

Hoi An - UNESCO Hertiage Site and Bargaining Hell

Coming to Hoi An should have been easy and pleasant.

Easy, yes. Pleasant, not so much. The 4 hour bus ride from Hue should have been quick and painless, but the cramped seating and NO A/C made theride torture. I thnk I lost 5 pounds in water weight just in those 4 hours.

I arrive at the hotel I booked through Hostelling International. Confirmation number and everything. Single room, $12. Pool in the lobby. Nice.

The lady behind the counter tells me she has only one room, and it's $15. But I already have a room, and it's $12. She repeats that she only has one room. And it's a 4th floor walkup. I tell her I want it for 4 nights. She offers $14 a night. I tell her I already booked at $12. I can show her the receipt. Fuck it. I accept. I tell her my friend has decided to share the room with me (there are two large beds.) She now tells me it's $15 for two. The manager comes over. He tells me the room is $17. I laugh. We agree on $15 for the both of us.

And so it goes in Vietnam.

You negotiate EVERYTHING. Everything you do, everything you ask for, with the exception of the few restaurants where the signs are clearly posted. You negotiate beforehand. It is annoying as hell.

You basically only talk price when you actually really want something. Or they get pissed.

I came to Vietnam with only three tank tops. I read everywhere that dress is more on the conservative side. FOR THEM, it turns out, as they can pretty much spot a foreigner in an instant anyway. They don't care. And I don't plan on going into the rain forest where Ihave to becovered head to toe.

So I go to buy some tank tops. Every place in town has the same crappy tank tops. I look at one stall. The woman says "you want shirts?" and pulls me deeper in her store. She is smiling profusely.

I tell her I need a tank top. She tells me to buy three. She'll give me a discount. I needed two anyway, so I tell her I'm interested in two.

She whips out a rudimentary calculator and types in "170." She says "170 for2, 10 discount." She does the math on the calculator: 170 - 10 = 160 and says "160 for two."

Before I am able to say "no" or even counter, she gives me the calculator and tells me that I'm supposed to offer her something.

This woman is not only trying to teach me something, but she is teaching me to bargain.

This exact thing happened to Daniel a couple of days back. He was looking for sandals. The woman at the market gave him a price that was way too high, and she told him that he had to counter. Being also of a non-bargaining culture, he said no and walked away. The two giddy young salesgirls pulled him back, laughing, peting him, telling him he was supposed to make a counteroffer.

I think this was exactly a Monty Python bit. "No, no, you're supposed to 'aggle!"

I got her down to 120,000 dong, roughly $7.50 for them both. I look in my wallet and realize I needed anATM, but better, everyone was waiting for me at the restaurant next door. I tell her I'm coming rightback. She doesn't believe me, so she accompanies me to the restaurant and waits for my return.

I hate bargaining.

Hoi An is a sleepy little town. By sleepy I mean that I don't feel like I'm going to get run over by a motorbike.

This is a big deal.

The town is quite small and very easily navigable. There's sand on all the roads, even though it is not a beach town.

There's tailors as far as the eyes can see.

And TOURISTS.

Hoi An is notable for their tailoring business, and hoards of people come into town for a couple of days to have clothes made.

You go to a tailor and spend a good couple of hours looking through magazines. You mark off what you like. Maybe you like the top of one dress and the bottom of another. No problem. You peruse the store for fabrics. Then you negotiate the price. They take your measurements. In a day, you come back, and they alter if needed.

Sounds easy.

This process has already taken two days.

There are stores of all quality and price, and it takes a long time to find a store you like and quality of a level you can afford. You find something you like, and maybe not the material. Or, maybe everything is great, but the price negotiations come to an abrupt end.

It's full-time work.

Being that Hoi An is impossibly hot and humid, shopping for clothes is about all I have the strength for anyway.

Lauging at Whitey

bun bo Hue


My last boyfriend was Filipino-American.

His family is about as Filipino as Filipino can get, from what I understand.

One Christmas, I went to his family's house, and there was all this traditional Filipino food for dinner. I love all of it, with the exception of Dinuguan, a pork-blood and liver stew, which many Filipinos can't even bear to eat.

One of his elderly relations followed me around, would point to a dish and say "did you eat that?" and I would proudly proclaim, "yes!" Then he said "you know what that is?" and I would say something like "pancit canton!" And he laughed his ass off. Over and over again, once for each dish he pointed to.

Rik assured me that it was because Filipinos have some kind of national insecurity about thier food; that they can't really imagine that other people would like it.

Really, it's just Lauging at Whitey.

And I have no issue with this. It's good for me.

White people have been making people who aren't feel like shit about their shin, their looks, their food, pretty much EVERYTHING for, well, EVER.

So if my payback is that I get snickered at, charged an extra (and still affordable) 20,000 Dong to get into a national park, then as far as I'm concerned, I'm getting off easy.

Serves me right.

I can't tell you how much Laughing at Whitey is going on in Vietnam.

I walked into a Bun Bo locals-only joint today and ordered a bowl. It's a fantastically delicious version of the noodle soup pho that vietnam is famous for. I'm the only white person in that place, and the pre-teen girl keeps turning around and giggling at me. The young boys are running towards me and away.

Everywhere I go to eat I'm looked at with puzzlement. And giggles.

Laura has an awful sunburn. The women at the market are LITERALLY pointing and laughing.

I'm trying my best to represent, by eating my way through vietnam, picking places that have the largest Vietnamese:American ratio I can find. And by that, I mean, if there ain't no Whitey I'm eating there. When I'm done, I'm as gracious with my poorly prounounced Kam on I can muster.

And I'm more than happy to take my razzing.

Fuck tuk-tuks.

Fucking tuk-tuks.

They're wheeled bicycle carts in Vietnam.

You're supposed to negotiate a price with them before they take off.

I tried.

The girls told me that two nights ago, they paid 20,000 Dong and last night they paid 10,000. So I figure I'll start at 10,000 and, worst comes to worse, 20,000. (20,000 is about $1.20) So I say to the guy, "10."

He says "you decide."

I try to settle on 10,000.

He re-affirms, "you decide."

I get in.

He drives me a little, and he tries to communicate with me. In vain. I tell him I don't understand.

He stops the bike, gets out, and takes a piss.

Why he can't fucking wait until the end, I'm not sure.

He bikes me the rest of the way, trying again to talk to me, tapping me on the shoulder (please note that he has not washed his hands at this point, probably all day, I'm thinking.)

He stops about 500 yards from the entrance of the B&B.

Now I know I'm in for it.

I give him the overly generous 20,000.

He demands 50,000 and at the same time telling me that he told me that I could decide.

Now I'm pissed, because I knew full well he would do this (it's practically obligatory from what I hear) and he's posturing in the street, showing all kinds of emotions from angry, to pissed off, to near tears, trying to get me to pay him what he wants.

I'm not having it.

Now I'm just offering him the 20,000, and I start walking away.

"This, or nothing."

He's still pitching a fit.

I go to the entrance of the B&B, and now I'm waiting for him to come in. He motions for me to come back out.

I give him the 20,000 and he tells me to go fuck myself.

Fantastic. Next time I'll just risk the burn on my inner right calf.

Facing Fear and the Kindness of Strangers

Hue (hoo-ay) is OK.

It's a city with a lot of history... it was nearly completely decimated by the French, and very little of its original architecture remains, with the exception of the Citadel, Imperial Palace, and some mausoleums and pagodas along the Perfume River.

I arrived on the fabulous overnight sleeper bus from Hanoi after spending 14 hours in an impossibly small (read: perfect for me) sleeper compartment. It was shockingly fast and comfortable. The greatest discomfort came from the excruciatingly loud Celine-Dion-Vietnamese-Style songstress blasting through the speakers as we set of, and at 5:00 the next morning.

That, and poor Laura, the Irish girl I met screamin,g in her brougue "Fuckinell!!" She was even more tortured than I was by the music.

Laura, Eva, Daniel and I trust this man at the bus depot to take us to his B&B. He explains that there is no committment, we can see the room, and if we don't like it, he'll bring us back. We trust him, as this is very common practice here. The place is great. The three girls are sharing a $15 room and Daniel gets his own $10 room, payable in USD. Everyone is nice, the place is clean, A/C and balcony, hot shower included.

We walk to the Imperial Palace, and Daniel is smart enough to realize that the Tuk-Tuk (wheeled cart) driver who's telling us that the Palace is closed until 1 pm is lying. Turns out a common scam is to tell tourists that attractions are closed until a certain time, so that you're more than willing to shell out some dough to take a tour of the city in his tuk-tuk for an hour or so.

There are scams abound, but they're (so far) very harmless, and not very expensive. In Vietnam, where everything is very cheap for us, even getting scammed a bit really only sets you back $3 or so.

It's really hot. Easily approaching 95 degrees. Yet, it's not humid at all, and I am thankful.

Laura and Eva are dying.

We spend the rest of the afternoon longing at the hotel pool near our B&B, the best $4 each of us had spent in a while. I even started on the math homework I brought for myself.

We go the the DMZ (demilitarized zone) bar, an expat bar in town, have a couple of drinks and call it a night. Laura and Eva take a tuk-tuk back, Daniel and I decide to enjoy the cool breeze we'd discovered for the first time that day. We of course get lost with the crappy map on the back fo the B&B's card, as lost as one can get in a tiny place like Hue, and it takes us an hour to get back.

We have an 8 am tour down the Perfume River. I'm awakened at 5 in the morning by a loudly groaning Laura. She pulled a muscle or something on the bus the night before, and now she is in such pain she decides to go to the hospital. I try to convince her that any pharmacy will gladly give her valium, but she's adamant. I can't get back to sleep, so I decide to go off to the cafe early, where there's free internet and the strongest iced Viet coffee I've had yet.

It takes me less than 10 minutes. Evidently, we needed to only go down one street the night before. Duh.

I ran out of the cafe after making a phone call so as not to miss the boat, literally. I sit down on this boat, about to take a day long trip down the Perfume river, and I say to Daniel, "When I travel, I fell like I'm always looking for my stuff."And then it hits me like lightening. I LEFT MY PHONE AT THE CAFE.

motherfucker.

I just bought a new one LAST WEEK.

AND, most importantly, it's my most convenient connection to home when the internet isn't working. I felt sick to my stomach.

Luckily, I met some really cool people on this boat. Rachel, from England, has been going around SE asia on her own since February. She had Dengue fever. There is no preventative nor cure for dengue, and, according to Daniel, if you get it more than twice it might kill you. This gives me some anxiety. She's my new hero.

Martin is some ridiculously well-traveled teacher from Vancouver. He's been everywhere.

Coolest was Anh, or Andy, a Vietnamese guy, traveling with his dad. He'd just gotten his green card after living in San Diego for 10 years, and this was his first time back. He heard me complaining about losing my phone, and he interrupts us, telling us that it's better to get this ticket on the boat that pays for all of the motorbike transfers to the mausoleums. He is cheerful, happy, friendly, and adorable. W ewind up hanging with him and his dad the whole afternoon, as he tries to work his Vietnamese magic with the locals so that we don't get ripped off at every corner.

The trip down the river was gorgeous. We passed by lots of other tourboats, but also regular workers doing their work down the river. Women and men are bent over the boat, gathering river mud for laying mortar on buldings, Andy explains. It's back-breaking work.

We stop off at various locations to see temples, pagodas, mausoleums, gardens. Each one more opulent than the next.

Oh, but that motorbike.

The ubiquitous motorbike.

Everywhere you go in vietnam, there are people hangin around on these simple motorbikes, beckoning you to hop on for a ride. If you're lucky, you get a helmet. If you're unlucky, as it seems is the case more often than I can believe, you get off on the right side of the motorbike instead of the left. On the right side of the bike is the exhaust pipe, which is hotter than hot. A number of the girls I saw at the hostel had 4 - 5" diameter gaping, oozing, 2nd - 3rd degree wounds from a millisecond brush up against the exhaust pipe. This is so common, it's called getting an "Asian tattoo."

I am PETRIFIED.

But I have no choice.

I'm holding on for dear life, the bottom of my feet sweating in a way I didn't know was possible, making sure my right leg is far from the exhaust, repeating to myself the mantra "getoffontheleft."

I escape unharmed.

I have a sick feeling that much of my trip in Asia is going to be dealing with my mild paranoia.

Later in the day, I meet Veronica and Anna, from Boston. Veronica has an office phone, and lets me text my phone. I basically beg for its return. Mr. Linh at the Mandarine Cafe has it safe and sound, ready for me to pick up. They absolutely refuse the tip I try to leave, in a place where everyone is trying to get an extra $3 out of me.

This is the yin and yang of life that never ceases to give me pause and appreciate the awesomeness of how it feels when someone you don't know can affect you in a beautiful and positive way. I need to remember to do this for others every opportunity I have.

It was a very overwhelming day, but it was amazing.

Last Day in Hanoi

I'm sick.

I get a sinus infection every time I travel, and at least once during the year. Luckily, I figure it out right away. Even more luckily, I've learned that if you walk into any pharmacy in any country, write down the word "amoxicillin" on a piece of paper, hand it to the pharmacist, they are more than happy to oblige. Vietnam is no different, and at a cost of 5o cents for a week's dosage, it makes me want to get about 10 for the next 5 years' worth of infections.
suddenly happy that I couldn't get last night's train out of Hanoi,

I decide the wise thing to do is rest, so I keep the hostel bed for another day, even though I am leaving tonight. At $7.50 a night decisions like these are easy.

Turns out I am a fast healer, so I don't use the dorm bed at all, but I decide to walk around Hanoi one more day.

I go to the highly recommended Cha Ca La Vong, #14 on the street of the same name, for a local specialty called Cha Ca. The woman at the restaurant brings you a sheet of paper that says "This restaurant only serves one dish: grilled fish. 90,000 Dong not including drink." This is a spurge at about $5. They bring you individual bowls of noodles, peanuts, fish sauce with chili, greens. Then they bring an individual hibachi with a pot of boiling seasoned oil on top, into which someone pours in a huge pile of greens, onions, dill.

He motions towards me what to do, but I missed it. I pour the noodles into the pot, and this young English boy yells out to him mom, "she's doing it wrong!" She's embarassed and he's now hiding his face and crying. I was thrilled, because I had a feeling I was totally doing it wrong, which I told him, but he wanted no more to do with me. So the woman continues to tell me that they put the fish on top and then I spoon it out onto the noodles. So I wait.

And wait.

They must have thought I was a total idiot.

The fish, already grilled and cut up, was already in the boiling oil. 1 point for the kid, 0 points for mom.

Anyway, it was delicious. Herby, oily, lemony, delicious.