2003 is here. Let's hope it's as exciting and eventful as the last, though it's hard to see how it could be. We went to a small party at a friend of our friend's here, and considering how much red wine I drank, I'm lucky to only be feeling a little crapulent. I've been up for three hours and Marjorie's still asleep; I don't think she's faring as well...

I forgot to mention the cool thing I bought in Vietnam. I've decided to collect musical instruments from wherever we visit, and in Vietnam I decided on an instrument I saw played at the water puppetry: the dan bau. It's a single string, and you pluck only harmonics on it. The bar sticking up on the right is very like a whammy bar on an electric guitar. It's really cool. And it actually plugs in to an amplifier.

Tomorrow, once everything is open again, we start house-hunting in earnest. We have a number of criteria, which we hope won't hinder our ability to find a place:

Must be near MRT (subway). We're not going to have a car, so this is a must.

Near a grocery store. ("Cold Storage" is the only chain out here.)

Washer/dryer in building, or at least hookups for them. We're not into trudging bags of clothes onto the MRT.

A nearby pub. You might view this as a somewhat alcoholic- (or at least British-) sounding requirement, but we liked having one nearby where Marjorie used to live, just to nip off for a quick bite and a pint.

Wired for fast internet. A must, here.

Speaking of pubs, there's a hairdresser up the street that has a sign that reads "Unisex saloon". And another one two doors down apparently copied the misspelling. Lots of funny manglings of the English language all over southeast Asia. Reminds me of this site.

Year In Review This year has been amazing. Maybe the most intense year of my life. Here's a quick summary of the highlights and for some reason I've decided to include a song that reminds me of each moment:
1. Engagement in Paris, Christmas Eve, 2001. For those that don't know the story...Mark asked me to marry him after dinner in Paris on Christmas Eve. We were crossing a bridge over the river Seine with Notre Dome in the background when he got down on his knee and popped the question. Very romantic.
Song: Tower of Learning by Rufus Wainwright.
2. The Birth of My Niece Katie, first offspring from my side of the family. Song: Danny's Song by Kenny Loggins. "Pisces Virgo rising is a very good sign"
3. My Marriage to Mark. We got married in Key West in a very small ceremony on the beach with just our closest family and friends. It was really beautiful and intimate.
Song: Rainy Night in Soho by the Pogues because my darling Mark "you're the measure of my dreams, the measure of my dreams".
4. Hanging out with my best girl friends the day after our wedding. I so rarely get to see them and to have everybody together in one place was really great.
Song: Reunited by Peaches and Herb, because it felt so good.
5. Seeing David Bowie in an intimate show (about 1000 peeps) at St. Anne's Warehouse in Brooklyn, NY (Thanks again Mike!!!!).
Song: Moonage Daydream by David Bowie "keep your electric eye on me babe"
6. Meeting my friend Jenn in Atlanta. Friendships are sometimes like romances, you have immediate chemistry and immediately like each other and know you're going to be friends. It was like that with Jenn this year, and I'm so sorry I had to move before we got to know each other better. Thank goodness for e-mail and I look forward to reading your blog Jenn and will keep harassing you until you create one.
Song: Waiting on a friend by The Rolling Stones
7. Leaving Atlanta after 10 years of residency. Atlanta was very good to me in the time I was there. I was really ready to leave, but I'm sure I'll miss it.
Song: Sugar Mountain by Neil Young.
8. Moving to Singapore. After months and months of talking about it, then more months planning for it, we finally did it.
Song: Island in the sun by Weezer. "We'll run away together, we'll spend some time forever, we'll never feel bad anymore. Hip Hip"
9. Visiting Vietnam. The longest and most intense vacation of my life. Very educational, but not an experience I'm likely to do again.
Song: In my place by ColdPlay. "I was scared, I was scared, tired and underprepared."
10. Culture shock, This is sort of the combination of Vietnam and Singapore and a prediction of difficulty to come. I'll do my best to maintain my sense of humour. It's funny, I remember reading the book "Culture Shock, Singapore" and thinking that culture shock was something we'd be immune to. If only.
Song: What's the frequency Kenneth by R.E.M. "Richard said to retreat in disgust is not the same as apathy".

We gotcher movies! Here's some footage we took with our digible camera during the trip.

The boats you see in this movie all have families who live on them. And almost all of them have a dog, which is really wild.

This is the house where we stayed on our "home stay" with the ethnic minority villager. You can see Marjorie sitting in the doorway with our guide. The small little bamboo shack in the very middle of the last frame was the outhouse, built over the river, with a hole in the floor.

More movies (and pictures) to come...

Note: If you're having trouble viewing these movies under Windows (they're QuickTime movies, which is an Apple format), try right-clicking the link and selecting "Save Target As..." to save it somewhere on your computer first. Then, double-click it in whatever folder you saved it, and follow the instructions... While we're on it, does anyone know a good .mov - to - .wmp conversion program?

Back "home", inasmuch as Singapore is home, which it doesn't quite feel like yet. Our seats on the flight back from Ho Chi Minh City were double-booked, so we got bumped up to bidness class. Very nice. Except that my salad fork wasn't chilled. It's so hard to get good help these days.

We're very much looking forward to all the "comforts" of "home" -- I think we're going to go hit Borders books first, and maybe a Starbucks for Marjorie. And for some reason we're craving Subway. I know none of that sounds very Asian, but we need to recharge our batteries after three weeks in (decidedly non-Western) Vietnam. (The only Western business we saw the whole time was a single Kentucky Fried Chicken in HCMC.)

Another day in Saigon I still maintain the opinion that, overall, Ho Chi Minh city is much easier to negotiate than Hanoi, and the hassle factor is less. The kids here, however, are much pushier. That said, the kids here, and over all of Vietnam, have been the best parts of our journey. Here are two opposing, yet striking images of kids burned into my memory now: 1. Little kid on the road in front of Reunification Palace holding a very real looking silver gun and pointing it into traffic. This kid would have been dead in the states. The police would have shot him. Very menacing looking image; 2. A very little boy (must have been 3 or 4, looked about the age of the kids I work with) tried to sell Mark some gum last night while leaving the very good German Restaurant (Gardenstadt- no kidding, the best German food Mark and I have ever had outside of Germany, In Ho Chi Minh City!!!!). Mark manuevers to get around him, kid manuevers to stay ahead, they both break into a run in front of me, the kid continues to chase Mark down the block (a game at this point). This was one of the most adorable things I've ever seen in my life. Really, made me want to laugh and cry at the same time, wish I'd had the camera out.
As a result of little guy number two I bought some stickers today to give to the little ones when they attempt to sell us something. This is nice, but doesn't work well. You end up with a crowd of whining kids around you begging for one more. And they're pushy, going so far as to put their little hands in pockets and feel you up to get to the stickers. Poor little guys. Really, they shouldn't be hustling on the streets at so young an age. They're so tough, but they're just babies. Sadly, Mark saw a little fellow about 6 or 7 yesterday selling cigarettes of all things.

Still confused as to why people think Ho Chi Minh City is more hectic than Hanoi. HCMC is a piece of cake, and has so many more places to dine and shop and drink than Hanoi. We're getting bad, though; we just ran out of the rooftop bar at the Caravelle Hotel after only peeking at the menu, because they were charging 46,000 dong for the cheapest beer. That's outrageous! We paid half that at the previous place. Then, riding down the elevator, we realized that that's only $3.00. What's become of us?

We went to the Czech restaurant in town today for a real beer. Then we got caught in a downpour on our way to try the Mexican restaurant in town (the Tex Mex Cafe); it was, uh, not very good. Serves us right.

We've settled into Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), and it's not half as hectic as we were expecting. Everyone we talked to said it was worse than Hanoi, but it seems everyone we talked to was smoking something. There are wide sidewalks here, and traffic lights, and a lot less honking of horns. And, we found a supermarket! It was very exciting, after seeing nothing of the sort for weeks. We loaded up on goodies.

I was reading a book I bought in Hoi An called "In Siberia" by Colin Thubron, but I left it in the taxi when we got dropped at our hotel here. The blurb on the jacket reads that this guy was one of our greatest travel writers, which is a load of hooey. But I think I can do a pretty good imitation now of his style of writing, so I will describe our final day in Hoi An as he would:

We slept in on our final day, then camped out under beach umbrella to soak in a last lingering look at the majesty of the wind-swept ocean. The weather began to turn, and Marjorie internalized it; her illness an unhealthy portent for the trip ahead.

The car arrived to take us to the airport. He drove us down a street in the proximity of the hotel that had lurked nearby, invisible to our concious minds, perhaps visible only to those who sprung from the native soil. The road was an artery for the local village; each motorbike a corpuscle, carrying life-giving sustenance to those who dwelled there. Nearly half the houses were painted sky-blue, in defiance of the weather, as if to say to the Fates, do your worst. We will subsume you and rise above.

ESSCH! We're in Ho Chi Minh city. This is supposed to be the tough city, but so far Mark and I find it much more modern, clean, and manageable then Hanoi. Just goes to show......
Went to the War Remnants Museum today. Pretty disturbing stuff. Got stopped by a guy outside one of the halls, who was missing both arms and an eye. He was very pleasant and spoke English very well. He seemed to just want to make conversation and sell some books or postcards, but given the situation and my nationality (which he immediately inquired about) I felt very depressed and manipulated. Mark showed up shortly after I encountered the guy and gave me a graceful exit. The man did nothing wrong, but I still feel so horrible about the encounter. Guilty, is really how I felt. The museum really pushes the crimes the "Americans perputrated against the Vietnamese". Funny there's no mention of the re-education camps and the way south Vietnamese (ARVN) veterans are still being oppressed here today.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!!! Marjorie and I are sitting together at the Hoi An Beach Resort, and would like to send our warmest holiday greetings out to all, especially to our families who have been so wonderful for us this year.

Our Christmas wish came true for today; all we did was hang out at the beach, and the pool, and had wonderful weather the whole day. Other highlights of the day:

The next resort down has an elephant named "Darling" that we saw walking up and down the beach all day. We went down and had pina coladas at their bar.

Our hotel has an area of the beach that is free of people harassing you to buy things. It was fabulous.

Marjorie came out of the restroom after dinner tonight with a baby gecko on her shirt.

The weather looked threatening as recently as an hour ago, but now we see a multitude of stars.

Merry Christmas! Our xmas will be rather anticlimatic if the weather here doesn't clear up. We've no presents for each other and no special plans, but we have moved to the Hoi An Beach Resort. Unfortunately it rained all day today, hopefully we'll have better luck tomorrow.
Hope you are all having a wonderful holiday! I miss being a part of it all, but I'm sure this will be a memorable xmas in it's own right.
Very sorry to hear about Joe Strummer's passing. Sucks for us all, but especially for his family this time of year. Mark, I'm sure, is even more depressed than I, as he was a fan of Strummer's recent solo work as well as the Clash.
We are very out of touch with any global news or news of celebrities so we appreciate the updates (thanks Jenn!) about anything that might be important. The English newspaper here is rather bizarre, with an interesting twist on reality, tries to neatly summerize whole societies and such... you know, I'm sure our own papers do that but I don't pick up on it because the generalizations probably fit into my schema. Who knows.
We're here (in Hoi An) until the 26th, then we are off to Ho Chi Minh city/Saigon.

I'm so bummed! One of my musical heroes has died. Joe Strummer -- whose two recent solo albums are two of my favorite albums of the last few years -- has, like phony Beatlemania, bitten the dust. What a Christmas eve downer. Before even hearing the news, I was planning on coming in here and quoting this bit from "Straight To Hell", just because it's relevant to our current time and place. I guess it's now a tribute.

When it's Christmas out in Ho Chi Minh City
Kiddie say "Papapapapapasan, take me home.
See me got photo- photo- photograph of you and mamamamamamasan,
of you and mamamamamamasan."
"Let me tell you 'bout your blood, bamboo kid:
It ain't Coca Cola, it's rice."

Three Shirts, Two Pairs of Shoes, One Skirt, One pair of Cari Pants, and a Nightgown later.... I'm finished shopping. It's nice to have new things, but the custom-made experience is not without risk. The skirt I had made yesterday is already sort of falling apart as a result of wearing it out into torrential rain last night with another new shirt which leaked black dye all over the skirt. I frantically washed away at the dye on the skirt when we got back to the hotel and now the material is fraying(and the dye's still on it). Oh well. Also the shoes I had made look pretty cheap, but what do you expect for $20.00. I had Manola Blahnik dreams only to settle for something that looks like it's from Payless.
The weather has been very rainy for the last 24hours. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that tomorrow will be nicer as we'll be moving to the beach resort then. It doesn't feel at all like Xmas here. Part of me really misses all the shopping and stress and Holiday specials on TV. I'm a bit homesick still, but things have definitely been easier for us here in Hoi An the last couple of days.
We've made our reservations to leave for Ho Chi Minh City/Siagon on the evening of the 26th from Danang. Hopefully we'll have time for a boat tour of the Mekong Delta.

We happened into the same restaurant last night as Helen, our fellow traveler from Australia who we saw several times in Hanoi. So we dined and chatted into the night; she's a hoot. Hi Helen!

The long walk back at night, in the rain, was creepy; there was not a cyclo driver to be found, so we had to hoof it. Besides the "suburban" location, we realized our current hotel has these disadvantages:

1. The air conditioning doesn't work (despite our insistence on a room with AC).

2. Roosters. I've come to hate the filthy buggers. The myth that they crow at dawn is purely anecdotal; they crow all night. The fact that I had pho ga (chicken soup) for lunch today is just a coincidence, I assure you.

We've switched to a cheaper hotel to save some dong; the Phu Thinh II is almost as nice (pool, AC, cable TV, nice bed, but no bathtub) and is about a third the cost of the Hoi An Hotel. It's a bit of a walk out of town though.

I've left Marjorie to her shopping; custom-made clothing is addictive. She already has a blouse, a skirt, and two pairs of shoes, with eyes on at least two more blouses and a purse. We both kind of wish that we had come here first, with empty suitcases.

Another very Communist-seeming thing here -- there's a green army truck that rides around making stern-sounding announcements out of a large loudspeaker mounted to the cab. I have no idea what they're saying, but it sounds very Big Brother-y.

We're going to go lounge by the pool later; the weather here is fabulous, and our pool looks out over acres and acres of rice paddies.

Things are looking up After spending the night in a blissfully clean and comfortable hotel, I had a much better attitude towards our host country today. We rented a motorbike, much fun but an experience I'll let Mark explain, and then took off to discover if the beach was icky as I'd feared. My fears were luckily unfounded. The beach is beautiful, and minus the once a minute hassle of someone offering you snacks, a pedicure, or some kind of souvenir, it's blissful. You can see mountinous islands in the distance across a turquois expanse of sea off a sandy beach. I was in Heaven. We've already booked a room at the beach resort for xmas eve and day, that will be our xmas present as it's $60 a night (outrageously expensive for Vietnam, and that's a deal because we took a room near the construction site, but they're only supposed to work from 8am-5pm on xmas so hopefully not too noisy). We're spending one more night in the Hoi An Hotel, then we're off to another hotel in Hoi An that's only $15 a night, but still has a pool, then we'll be at the Hoi An Beach Resort for the 24-26th. Not sure what's after that, we'll probably head down to Ho Chi Minh for the last few days of our trip.
Swimming in the pool has been one of my great pleasures of the last two days, especially fun is singing "E. coli" to the tune of the "Ricola" commercial, while swimming up to Mark (I've noticed no clorine in the pool).
We had some clothes made for us today. Pretty fun to pick out the fabric and design of an outfit made especially for you. My outfit (skirt and blouse) was $21, which seems expensive here, but is really a steal. We'll go pick up our clothes soon, I'm expecting some modifications needed, but hopefully they'll still be nice. I'm scared they'll be made with white thread and single stitched since we didn't specifically request matching thread and double stitch, we'll see. Hard to complain either way. I think the ladies at the shop felt like we were dream customers because we didn't try to bargain down on the price.

We rented a motorbike today, which was a trip. Not the riding -- we've gotten used to how traffic works around here -- but the renting itself. The process literally took about 30 seconds. A guy right across the street from our hotel was renting for $5 a day; we said okay, and he gave us a key, asked our room number at the hotel, and that was it. No forms, no instruction, no anything; we didn't even give him our names.

This is truly the freest free market I've ever seen. You have a bike? Rent it out. You have a kitchen? Sell food. A washer? Do laundry. Set up anywhere, even on the sidewalks, and charge anything you want. Copy anybody's business name you like. Pirate CDs and books and sell them if you want. Walk into anyone else's business and sell your wares. It's crazy.

Speaking of pirated books, I've finished reading (and almost completely re-reading) "The Quiet American" (which was great), and have moved on to Irving Welsh (sp?)'s "Trainspotting", which I bought at a book trading place up the street. It's pretty obviously a pirated book; the print is fuzzy like it's been photocopied. It's raining, and we're stuck here, so you're going to get a lot of trivial information like that in this post.

I'm getting a shirt made today, for $8. I didn't even try to talk them down. Clothes-making is a big thing in Hoi An. If I had to live here, before long my whole wardrobe would be custom-made, I'm sure. Marjorie's getting a blouse and skirt for $12 and $9, I think.

An interesting experience in Hue the other day; we took a walk along the river through the non-touristed part of town. Actually, it was almost a shanty town -- certainly the low-rent district. Aside from the general disarray -- and the people we saw washing their dishes in the filthy filthy river -- it was a lot of fun, because every little kid we passed shouted "Hello!". I guess they don't see whiteys like us a lot in that area. It was kinda cool.

We went on our first cyclo rides today. Cyclos are those bikes with the passenger seat in the front popular everywhere in S.E.Asia. The drivers originally wanted 50,000 dong a piece to take us to where we wanted to go, but I talked them down to 40,000 for both of us. I'm getting better at bargaining. Of course it helps if you have some idea what you should pay for something. It also helps if you're willing to walk away if you don't get the deal you wanted, that's how we got the two for 40 deal.
Hue is hot! But, seeing as we now live in S'pore, it's not too bad. I'd love to get to the beach soon. It's becoming my obsession.
We tried to go to Phu Quoc (an island near Cambodia) for xmas, but seemingly everyone else here wants to do that too, and we can't find a room. Unfortunately, other popular beach destinations in Vietnam are not so nice....Nha Trang is reported to have syringes on the beach, and Phan Thiet supposedly smells of fish sauce (sigh).

Back from the Imperial City. Pretty cool. The grounds are humongous, and much of it is in disrepair. This was the North Vietnamese Army's furthest incursion into the south, and they held it for thirty-some days, before we bombed the crap out of them following the Tet offensive. So, a lot of the damage was done by our bombs, but mostly I think it's just disrepair. I promised Marjorie a place like it, someday.

Forgot to mention -- one of the money changers (I think the one at the airport on the way in) gave me a counterfeit 50,000 dong note (worth about $3.33), which was not noticed until I tried to spend it. The paper is splitting, like the front and back were printed separately and glued together, and the watermark picture of Ho Chi Minh looks different. It'll be a nice thing for the scrapbook.

Greetings from Hue'. We flew in relatively uneventfully today. Our head colds didn't give us the head-in-a-clamp effect they sometimes do when flying.

Only walked around a little bit. Nice weather here, and a less hectic pace, which is nice. We'll hit the Imperial City tomorrow. The thing we're most looking forward to, though, is clean laundry in the morning. Hooray! I'll spare you the gruesome details of the laundry situation. You have no idea.

In the gift section of the Hanoi airport today, amidst all the hooray-for-the-worker's-revolution books and others about Vietnam culture, I noticed a John Steinbeck book translated into Vietnamese. I had to ask the clerk for a translation of the title. He said, "The East of the Garden. No, The East of Heaven's Garden." Interesting.

WAH! We are both sick today with a head cold we probably caught in Sapa. And we have to fly (to Hue). And we can't get a hotel reservation on the island we want to go to for xmas (Phu Quoc). And Mark accidentily used the tap water to brush his teeth today, getting a whole new influx of bacteria in his mouth (yum!) Life sucks right now. I want to go back to S'pore.
On a brighter note, Hue is supposed to be rather nice, as is Hoi An nearby.

Another strange sighting on the streets here in Hanoi: the karaoke bar across the street from our hotel has what appears to be a small black bear in formaldehyde as its street display. Inside they seem to have other animals pickling in large jars. Really distasteful. Last night on the way back from Sapa we ate at a place that had a bottle of snake wine on display, which had a splayed-out cobra inside the bottle.

Went to the infamous Hoa Lo prison today, popularly known as the "Hanoi Hilton", of Vietnam war POW prison fame. It is now a museum. Its focus is on the tortures inflicted by the French occupying forces (who built it) on the Vietnamese people. There's a small section on its use during the "American war" to hold American POWs, and no mention is made -- at all -- of the tortures inflicted. In fact there's a room showing pictures of prisoners being treated well and an inscription that claims that all the Americans were treated according to the Geneva convention, despite the "untold crimes" we commited on their people. They even had a volleyball net that was supposedly used by the Americans during their internment. Chyeah right! Senator John McCain, what an exaggerator. He was playing volleyball the whole time.

It occurs to us that we've seen no evidence at all that we're in a Communist country right now. If we were dropped here without any prior knowledge, we would think it was all just capitalist. The green military uniforms and the red flag make it look Communist, but there's nothing else that we've noticed.

We keep re-meeting fellow travelers and tour guides. It's like God is running out of extras in the movie of our lives.

Took the noisy, bumpy night train back from Lao Cai/Sapa last night, and arrived back here in Hanoi at around 5 am. Strange walking around the streets so early. Almost tranquil (but still stinky). Flying off to Hue tomorrow...

No pictures for you. Just found out this tidbit:

In Hanoi, the government puts a tone on the line every 15 minutes, making high-resolution transmissions impossible.

So it really doesn't look like we'll be able to upload any pictures. Alas. Maybe they're not like that in the south.

CELEBRITY GOSSIP You heard it hear first! Even in Vietnam we're in touch with celebrity dirt. Apparently Tim Roth ( Pulp Fiction, Reservior Dogs, Four Rooms..) is in Nha Trang filming a movie called "a beautiful place" or "a beautiful day" something like that. Anyway, he's apparently been hooking up with a different girl every night (he's married). A couple of the travellers we met in Halong Bay shared this tidbit with us and said some guy was going to try to sell the story to one of the British news-rags.

Still among the H'mong. I was embellishing the last blog last night when all the power in the city went out. Such is the way of life out in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, here are some random bits to fill in some of the gaps:

At one point some little H'mong boys yelled "Peh bah bah!" to us. We asked the guide what this meant, and it turns out they were saying "Pen! Bon Bon!". Lots of people give out pens or candies to the village children.

Our dinner last night at a restaurant in Sapa: two large bowls of noodle soup, stir fried chicken with peppers, fried noodles with mushrooms, garlic, and vegetables, a glass of Sapa wine (nasty, tasted like cooking sherry), and a Schweppes soda water. The total: 74000 dong, or a little less than $5.00.

After finishing up Clavell's "Tai Pan" and Hornsby's "High Fidelity", I traded in a few books a traveler's cafe for Graham Greene's The Quiet American. Marjorie laughed at me -- it seems to be such a cliche in the backpacker culture here to read it.

This is the hotel we stayed in last night. Not exactly rustic but then we've been OD'ing on rustic lately.

Apparently people selling goods in the market think we can't see their products unless they point to them. It's kind of surreal, all the attention you get. Makes you feel almost like a celebrity.

Advice for visitors: we were overcharged last night for internet service at Green Sapa. The cafe at the Auberge Hotel in Sapa is a much better place.

At our homestay, we didn't interact with the family much. Our guide told us we were going to do dinner with them, as we were the only guest staying there -- we were a little apprehensive, as we struggled to recall all the various courtesies we had read about (don't point the bottom of your feet at anyone; take food from the shared bowls with the back end of your chopsticks; always pass and accept items with both hands, etc.). But then another couple from Germany showed up, so we had to go eat at the "tourist's table". This was both relieving and disappointing. We did press our guide before we arrived on how to say "Thank you" ("chaw bye", sp?), and they did seem surprised and happy when we said it to them at the end of our stay.

Yes, we have been drinking from the firehose of experience here. Allow me to fill in a few gaps.

As we hadn't really planned on trekking, our shoes and clothes were, shall we say, atypical of most trekkers. Marjorie bought a beautiful velvety jacket in Hanoi before we came out here; as it was her only warm thing she wore it, and was the envy of most villagers. One Black H'mong woman even followed her around a bit to touch it and ask about it. I think she wanted to buy it and sell it to someone else. "H'mong" must be an ancient word meaning "persistent".

My shoes were far too slippery for the task. We had numerous sketchy moments; I ended up sinking my foot in mud the first day, and Marjorie the second. When they terrace the hillside to grow rice, they make a dirt wall between levels to hold the water; we had to walk along these dirt walls numerous times, and they were often six or eight inches wide and slippery with Georgia-like mud, with a pool of water on either side of you. I had only one real fall, and did a butt-slide for a short bit. Some of the paths required such intense concentration that I have no doubt I'll be trekking paths in my sleep tonight.

Uses for bamboo we noticed:

Water pipes

Walls and floors

Firewood

Smoking pipes

Bridges over muddy areas

Ladders

Clotheslines

Fertilizer (after burning)

Mudslide prevention (planting it on hillsides; it grows very quick)

Our guide Tung, on top of everything else, was an excellent chef, and cooked us almost embarassing amounts of food on several occasions. We're still being careful about what we eat though.

By the way, we are now back in the city of Sapa, which we didn't expect to have internet access, but here we are. We stay in a hotel tonight, which has hot water (variably hot, it seems, but still hot) but no room heat -- brrrr. It has a view out over the valley but we're high up enough here (3000+ meters, or over 9000 feet) that we've been in a cloud most of the time, so no real view. We start our trip back tomorrow at around 3:30 pm, when a bus will pick us up and take us to the train station which is about a mile from the China border. We then take the late train back into Hanoi.

We have so many pictures we're dying to show you all. These past two days have been incredible...

IT'S A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN SAPA Yesterday we arrived here by night train and then spent four hours hiking through the mountains with a guide. We spent last night in a "home-stay" at one of the villager's homes. Today we hiked three more hours out of the valley then had a jeep bring us back to Sapa. The whole experience was incredible. Hiking throught the muddy mountains was a very Zen experience, no time to think or worry about anything other than what is happening NOW or otherwise end up in the mud.
We saw many of the ethnic minorities of the area including the Black Hmong, who dress beautifully in indigo clothing and persistently try to sell you their wares as you hike up muddy embankments (slipping the whole way, they'll laugh at you for that). We also saw the Red Dzao people, who dress beautifully in red, and also try to sell you their products, but not quite as aggressively. We spent the night with the Dzay people. Barn yard animals aplenty: ducks, chickens (including several very noisy roosters), dogs and puppies, a cat, and of course water buffalo.
Our guide, Tung (means "pine") was so knowledgeable. He showed us the dried up Hemp plant which is a boom crop for the summer, but not for the reasons you think; they use the hemp to make thread (and we saw a woman working the hemp so it's true). He showed us some wild coriander and used it making soup for our dinner. He showed us the 101 uses for bamboo, but I'll let Mark talk about this. Also showed us the amazing ingenuity of these farmers. They really maximize their use of the water and land, including using water to run generators. They place their outhouses on top of the streams (smartly) to carry away waste. Our bathroom last night was a little bamboo hut over the stream with a hole in the middle to squat over. No running water other than the stream and no electricity except what is created by the small generator (which in our house was a bare light bulb, one in each room).
The whole experience was wonderful. The reason I wanted to come here was to see how the other half lived and now I have, to some extent. Having a nice hot shower today was a luxury I don't take for granted. So is good medical care...a lot of the kids had hacking coughs, runny noses, and possible eye infections. That said, they are definitely beautiful people, much more attractive than the folks we've seen in Hanoi. And they are extremely fit. They must be to hike through the mountains every day like they do.
The scenery should be mentioned as well. It's like the images on every guidebook for Southeast Asia and China, rice patties on hillsides with water buffalo munching away....Amazing.
At the end of our journey we were "adopted" by a kitten (like Katherine for Mom, Dad, and Susan). She begged food from us, she was just skin and bone...and after acquiring a full belly from "dropped" ramen, she took refuge on my lap and under my shirt. If we had found her in Atlanta there's no doubt we'd have a cat now.
I'd like to say more, but Mark is looking over my shoulder waiting for his turn to blog, so.......

One more quick check-in before we head out for the three day tour. Marjorie is (again) blogging at the same time so there might be repeat information.

We checked out the Temple of Literature today, which was mentioned, infamously, by Jane Fonda in her radio address to American troops as a place she visited here in the north. It was a beautiful, peaceful respite from the hectic pace of Hanoi. I'm used to "history" in America that dates back at most a few hundred years; this place was founded a thousand years ago. Hard to fathom.

Everything here is cheap, and the people are poor enough that you don't want to haggle. Still, I bought another warm sweater for our Sapa trip today; priced at 120000 dong, I offered 100000, and she accepted. That's about $6.50. We also bought groceries at the first grocery store we've seen (it was still tiny). We got a number of things -- two cans of Pringles, 9 bags of cashew nuts, some chocolates, toothpaste, a toothbrush, two bottled waters, some Chips Ahoy, and one or two other things. The total: 84000 dong, or a little more than $5. One could live here very cheap, if one could take it.

There is no McDonald's in Hanoi! First city of any size I've even been where that was the case. Plenty of Western products though.

Better Day We went to the Temple Of Literature today, which was very nice and got us away from the old quarter in Hanoi and into some nicer/cleaner areas of town.
As Mark said we'll be in Sapa for the next few days. Night train tonight, then trek for four hours tomorrow, spend tomorrow night in a "house stay", then trek two hours Sunday, then a free afternoon and spend the night in a hotel. Monday morning will be free then we'll take a night train back to Hanoi for one more day in Hanoi before flying off to Hue. Sapa's supposed to be fantastic so hopefully we'll enjoy ourselves. We're slowly starting to get over our initial culture shock, and therefore more likely to have a good time. We've discovered ways to take little breaks from the insanity and intensity of the streets so, unlike yesterday, I think we'll be able to manage three more weeks here. Yesterday I wasn't so sure.

Cripes, is internet access here slow. Good thing it's only something like $0.33 per hour. Don't think we'd even be able to upload pictures anyway at the bandwidth we get here.

Change of plans -- we're taking a tour of Sapa for the next two (maybe three) nights, starting with a night train out tonight. The tour is through HandSpan travel. We're going to sleep in a villagers house! At least, that's what they tell us. It will likely get changed around. We'll also be trekking for four hours the first day, two the second. Most mountain villagers don't have internet access, I think, so we won't be checking back in for a few days. Wish us luck!

Things are brighter by the light of day Even with a hangover (due to a bottle of french bordeaux last night), things seem better today. We're getting better at ignoring the constant street attention (people constantly coming up to you trying to sell postcards, fruit, travel guides, anything) and have mastered crossing the road without flinching. We found a lovely place to eat brunch today (banana pancakes for me, french toast for Mark) and plan on booking a tour out to town today (maybe to one of the nearby national parks). We realized, after I put down the crackpipe, that we are not flying out on Monday, but are leaving Wednesday (the 18), so we have more time here than we realized.
For anyone interested the practice of serving up dogs as dinner is still ongoing in Hanoi and the surrounding area. Apparently they breed the dogs, keep them as pets for awhile, and then eat them. Look out Beau and Sadie! Dog meat is Thit cho or Thit cay. Also on the menu in many places are snakes, bat, muntjac, and frog. Unfortunately I don't know the Vietnamese words for these items. Comfortingly we've found a nice vegetarian restaurant in Hanoi.
Our hotel last night was rather nice and only $12. However the owner is a bit pushy and keeps trying to get us to book tours with him, but after our Halong bay experience, we'll be sticking to the tour bookers highly recommended by Lonely planet.

For visitors to Hanoi, I offer the following words of advice:

Advice #1: When at a restaurant, ask to use the restroom (WC) first, because it will usually involve you going through the kitchen, which you can then scope out.
Advice #2: Ignore Advice #1, or you'll go hungry.

Actually, we found what seems to be a rather nice travel cafe, that seems to go all the others one better -- HandSpan travel. Clean, spacious, and friendly. And with full-sized seats -- nearly everywhere in town uses kindergarten-sized chairs, for some reason. Must have something to do with the fact that squatting seems to be the official Vietnamese stance (and I'm not just talking about the toilets). For some reason, you see people squatting around everywhere.

We've decreed today to be Casual Day. We're off to do some more casual things.

Ha Long... Ha Long must we sing this song... Back in Hanoi now after spending last night in the Ha Long Bay vicinity. We had signed up to sleep on a boat on the bay, but we were informed -- after we were on the bus on the way there -- that for some police reason or other, that would not be possible. Uh huh. This sort of thing is apparently par for the course with tour companies in Vietnam. They would have to put us up in a hotel instead.

The bay itself is just magnificent. We took lots of pictures, and even some short movies, but unfortunately, the internet cafes here have ancient computers without USB connections, so I won't be able to upload any until we get home. Disappointing.

They took us onto one of the islands in the bay that had a gigantic cave inside, with countless formations of dripped limestone. Very cool. And (for a small extra fee) some young boys from the local floating village (!!!) took us on their boat through a tunnel into a small basin where we were surrounded on all sides by 500 ft cliffs.

They put us up for the night in on Cat Ba Island, a seedy island town that's about how you'd expect a tourist resort run by communists to be. Our hotel room had the following nice features:

A sopping wet roll of toilet paper.

A used and very dirty comb.

Leftover food wrappers from the last tenants.

A door of lightly frosted glass, which I guess eliminates the need for Soviet-era spy cameras.

We had a number of drinks with some fellow travelers at the Flightless Bird a few doors down from our hotel, then passed out. Today we breakfasted (baguettes with cheese, a banana, and tea), boated back (even more magnificent in the sunlight after the trip out with overcast skies), lunched (some fish dish; some chicken dish; steamed bok choi, tomatoes and cucumbers [avoided], french fries, spring rolls, rice), then took the van back into Hanoi. Tomorrow we have a relaxing day, then will probably do the Perfume Pagoda on Saturday.

I cannot stress enough what a chaotic place Hanoi is. The dust, the dirt, the waves of people clogging the streets, the smells (good and bad), the sounds. The other day we hung out our hotel room and listened to see if we could hear a full second without a horn beeping. We gave up after a few minutes. We have adjusted, however, and can now cross the street like old pros.

The reality fails to meet with the fantasy as things often do in real life. Ha Long bay was rather nice but Vietnam, so far, is largely disappointing (and frankly the dirtiest place I've ever seen). I imagined that by going here, Mark and I would automatically graduate into a "higher level" of traveler. That's partly true and largely not... we've experienced a third world country now, and somewhat uncomfortable travel, but I don't see myself going out of the way to be this uncomfortable again.
The discomfort is hard to pinpoint as well: You constantly feel as though someone is trying to shake you down, and often you are correct. You worry about your bags when you leave your room, and rightly so. You are constantly inundated with startling sights, sounds, and smells, it's sensory overload to the full extent possible (minus the sniper though Dad). This said it's not all bad either: It's amazingly easy to meet really interesting, very friendly people, often other travelers (we kinda stand out in the crowd), and you have an immediate bond with these people because it's so crazy all around you. Also, you attain maximum alertness most of the day simply because you need to be in order to cross the road without dying. You feel ALIVE, because you are so alert, but it's exhausting after awhile and honestly if we don't find some respite here, it will be a very draining experience.
We've heard from a couple of different people that Hoi An is really nice, so the plan at the moment is to fly to Hue on Monday, then slowly make our way down to Hoi An, stay there until the 27 or 28 and then fly to Ho Chi Minh city for the last few days of our trip. There's supposed to be a pretty nice beach in Hoi An, and it seems to be better (by reputation) then Nha Trang of Phan Tiet.
Keep the comments coming. We love hearing from you all

Back in the same place this evening for another entry... We just walked around much of the day; just soaking it all in is tourism enough. We did go see water puppetry tonight, which was pretty cool. I thought the accompanying band was amazing. It's not every day you see Vietnamese water puppetry.

We continued a tradition tonight, by having Indian food. We've now had Indian food in six countries!

Disturbing sight of the day: I knew they cut people's hair out on the streets, but I was not prepared for... STREET DENTISTRY! I kid you not.

Tomorrow we take a tour to Ha Long Bay, where we'll be spending the night on a boat.

WE ARE NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE. Holy jeez... In an internet cafe in Hanoi now. This place'll totally make your head spin. Marjorie's next to me blogging so some of this information may be repeated.

We got off to a bad start when checking in on the plane. I convinced Marjorie not to check her bag -- just to take it carry-on -- not realizing that she had a Swiss army knife and a pair of scissors. So they tried to confiscate them, until we convinced them to let us check the bag anyway.

We stopped over in Ho Chi Minh City on the way to Hanoi, where we went through customs and changed money. The airport is pretty chaotic. It's 15,300 dong to the dollar, so when I changed $100.00, I ended up with a huge fat wad of money. That might come in handy if we find ourselves somewhere without toilet paper...

The drive into town from the airport in a minivan took a year from my life. Well, it's not really that bad, once you realize there's a system to it, but the drivers here pretty much honk their horns constantly, and bikes and mopeds are ubiquitous and dart in and out constantly. Often you'll see them just going the wrong way, against traffic.

Our hotel room is Western and comfortable, except for the bed, which is hard enough to bruise you if you jump in too fast.

We walked around the block last night after we arrived, and realized that one block of culture shock was plenty enough for a first night. Just down the street a woman was selling some sort of birds stuffed in discarded beer cans, their little feet being the only thing sticking out. We bought a few beers from a vendor with black teeth, presumably from chewing betel nut.

This morning we passed a woman with one of those over-the-shoulder "scales of justice" sort of carriers, with a half-dead bloody duck on it. Vendors and minibike cab drivers accost us pretty much constantly. More to follow soon...

WE'RE IN VIETNAM!!!! It's crazy here. Every guidebook printed warns you about the roads, but you've just got to experience it yourself to believe it. Horns honking constantly, mad chaos all around. A walk across the street is a blind leap of faith everytime. The hotel's okay, except for an extremely hard bed, but nice hot water tap.
Hanoi is totally intimidating. We got in after dark last night and wanted to explore, but got about a block in each direction before wimping out, buying some tiger beer, and retreating to the room to watch MTV Asia (foo fighters in Hanoi).
Thanks so much for all your comments!!!
We miss you all. Sorry if I haven't replied to an e-mail (mom, jen...) you pay by the minute for internet access and we're going for the maximum audience. No time for spell check either, so I apologize.
We're at a travel cafe now, we'll probably book a tour for Halong bay. Maybe go to Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum and water puppets today.
We'll write more when we can.

Leaving for Vietnam tomorrow. I think we're mostly ready. I'm a little apprehensive, about the corruption, scams, and squat toilets that we'll encounter, mostly. We'll deal just fine though.

Despite a tentative offer to stay where we're at in Singapore for a while, we've decided to start looking for a place of our own when we get back. We'll be making less money, and housing is expensive, so we're probably going to have to settle for less. Working to our advantage, though, is the fact that most Singaporeans don't seem to like older apartments, whereas we have no problem with that. We'll see. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a high-rise apartment building around here, but we're not really interested in those. Something like 70 percent of the population lives in one though. That's crazy.

We're just running odd errands around the city. It's very easy to get around, once you get the lay of the land. It's rainy season, but that's a good thing here, because it's a good bit cooler. We miss the old posse. They had a party here the other day, and the next day, there was still beer left in the fridge. We thought, the posse'd never let that happen...

Also spotted around town: You know, I've been meaning to go vegetarian, but I didn't want to give up abalone. Looks like my prayers are answered.

What Marjorie didn't mention about the ice kachang was that you don't realize it has any of the weird stuff (except the corn) until you eat your way down past the part that looks like a sundae. I like surprises, but not when I'm eating...

So far, everything I've thought we would have to do without (cheerios, our favorite salad dressing, etc.) we've been able to find. So it seems adjusting to life here will be relatively easy. Another positive, I found a bookstore that "rents" books. You buy a book for a listed price, and they buy it back from you if you return it later for another listed price. I'm so in love with this idea! Why hasn't this been done in the U.S. yet?
While we are very happy to find some things from home, we have been partaking in some interesting local cuisine. Last night we had some Indonesian cuisine, some yummy dumplings and some ice kachang (a dessert with corn, red beans, gelatinous noodles, and some round gelatinous stone thing) Yummy! Also while shopping we've stumbled across some other interesting products such as this.

We went to the S'pore zoo yesterday, it was fantastic in ways that no zoo in the U.S. could begin to emulate. They have many no bars exhibits where there is NOTHING between you and the animals. For example, one area called Fragile Forest contains flying foxes (bats), ring-tailed and ruffed lemurs, tree kangaroos, a two-toed sloth, many different species of birds and butterflies, and there is nothing, I mean nothing, between you and the animals. It's truly fantastic. Another interesting tidbit from the zoo, they have lots of North American critters that we would never think to put on exhibit, i.e. raccoons and squirrels (you have to go to the zoo to see squirrels here!). We're members of the zoo now, as we were in Atlanta, it's those little things that make you feel more at home.
Another interesting tidbit, on the bus ride home from the zoo I saw a macaque hanging out on the side of the road, so I guess S'pore still has wild monkeys too.

I had been telling everyone that we are exactly twelve hours off from Eastern Standard Time here. Right now, because of Daylight Savings I guess, we're actually thirteen hours ahead. So if it's 8 pm there, it's 9 am the next day here. Just FYI.

Some other random observations:

I've ridden the bus more in the last week than I ever did in the states. They have a kick-ass subway system too that we've been taking a lot. And a ten-minute cab ride runs you only about USD$ 3.

This place must be the toe-stub capital of the world. Workers layout out sidewalks and architects designing houses seem to have no problem with leaving one- or two-inch rises or drops in the footpaths. I have no idea why that is.

For a week now I've had no idea what time it is, nor even what day it is. Nice way to live.

Some random observations from around Singapore:

I'm feeling very tall.

There are at least a dozen karaoke bars within easy walking distance from where I'm at. Not the same without Tommy White though.

It's pretty durn hot here.

Hooray for mass transit!

Businesses spotted:
McDonald's (of course)
Starbucks (ubiquitous)
KFC/Pizza Hut/Taco Bell
Long John Silvers
Orange Julius/Dairy Queen
Swenson's
Border's Books
Kenny Rogers Roasters (yay! My favorite)
Subway
Burger King
Hooters (believe it or not)
Haven't resorted to American food yet. Still loving the hawker centers where you can get a huge plate of food for like two dollars.

We're booked to Vietnam. For a while today we thought we got on it too late; we went to one travel agent who told us there were basically no flights we could take anywhere within the date range we wanted. Then we tried to book online with Travelocity and Expedia and they both said they couldn't send paper tickets outside the USA. Finally we went by another travel agency that was recommended and they got us everything we wanted at the price we wanted. We leave on the 9th and are getting back on the 30th. We're coming back here, as opposed to going on to Cambodia and Thailand, because it looks like I'm going to have work here come the start of the year. That's great news! I'll be working on some graphical interfaces at the local pay scale (which is apparently lousy) but it's a foot in the door.

After running around taking care of all that mess, we stopped at a quaint local coffee shop (cough cough) and while we sat outside sipping our beverages, a mynah bird hopped up under the table next to us and proceded to serenade us. It's the little things.

Now we have a week to kill in the Singapore area. So many options.

We're here! After months of talking about it, then more months planning, we're finally here. I had my doubts at 5:00am Thursday morning when we were told at the United ticket counter that we couldn't enter Singapore without a ticket leaving within 90 days. Our original ticket had us leaving in May, of course we're not planning on staying in S'pore straight through to May, we're planning on going to Vietnam in four days, but we hadn't purchased the ticket as we were told it would be much cheaper here....Anyways, we just changed our return date and the lady at the counter took pity on us and didn't charge us the change fee on that end (changing it back however...) In spite of the counter agents pleasantness, I'm not impressed with United Airways. The plane was older then the plane we flew in on last year on Japan Airlines, and the seats were horribly close together, 18 hours spent with no leg room! Luckily on the flight from Atlanta to San Francisco and the flight from Hong Kong to S'pore we had emergency exit seats with abundant leg room, or it would have been 25 hours with no leg room. Also not a fan of the reservation system for United, i.e. the unexpected change of planes in Hong Kong, of which there was NO MENTION when we booked the flight, and the lack of notification that we would need to have passage beyond S'pore within 90 days before getting to check-in. 30 hours straight traveling is not fun. Last year we spent a night in Tokyo to break up the trip coming and going, I think that is really the smart way to do it.

Leaving the states one of the last images we saw was the beautiful Golden Gate bridge stretched out in the San Francisco bay. Nice image to have as a keeper. Actually from the plane we saw a lot of interesting landscape including some icy mountains in the Aleutian Islands.

Overall, my spirits are definitely better now that the move and the goodbyes are behind us. Now we just need to concentrate on what we have to look forward to. So far, I'm glad to be here.

Hello from 36000 feet. Marjorie and I are somewhere over the Pacific after our stopover in San Francisco. The day had an inauspicious start; while at the Atlanta airport ready to make our departure this morning, we learned that we would not be allowed to fly with our current tickets, which have us returning next May, since the longest you are allowed to stay in Singapore without a visa is ninety days. If we could show tickets onward from Singapore, that would be okay, but we were planning on buying those in Singapore. A wave of panic hit us. But the nice lady at the counter let us change our return date to a time just under ninety days from now.

Another surprise, of the not so unpleasant variety, is that we learned that our flight from San Fran to Singapore has a stopover (which was not mentioned at all on the web site we booked it from) -- Hong Kong. Neither of us has ever been. And even though we won't have any time to explore, it'll still be cool seeing it from the window.

And in a happy coincidence, I brought along a big fat book to read while we're in the travel-around phase of our journey -- Tai Pan (by James Clavell, author of Shogun), which (at least initially) is about the founding of Hong Kong.

Anyway. I was hoping I could tell you exactly where over the Pacific we are, as I brought along my GPS. But alas, I can't get a signal inside the plane. I suppose that's not surprising, in retrospect.

At any rate, we seemed to have left the US officially now. Can we call ourselves ex-pats if we don't even have a place to live yet?

I have nothing to do, and I'm stuck in a middle seat in coach, so forgive me if I prattle on about nothing. It's a United Airlines flight, so it's all pretty Western, but they did try to serve something remotely Asian for dinner; I had the spicy chicken with rice and vegetables, that came with tiny shrimp with rice noodles and the tiniest little bottle of soy sauce (I joked to Marjorie that it was like being invited to dinner at Barbie's; she said it all looked like it had been made in an Easy-Bake Oven). They just showed M. Night Shyamalan's movie, "Signs", which I saw in the theaters, so I just watched a little without listening. They're promising to show us some movie called "A Gentleman's Game" in a bit; it's about golf and sounds pretty lame.

Now that the movie's over they're showing the plane's position on the TV screens. We seem to be directly south of Anchorage, equidistant from there and Washington state.

Off to play some video games. My old boss lent me a demo copy of "Age of Mythology" which is pretty cool. I usually don't go in for those overlord sort of games...