Month: January 2018

So I’d like to take a little bit of time to reflect on this trip.

First thing I’d like to say is THANK YOU to Sean for putting up with me this trip. I know I can be a pain in the ass to be around, and to be honest I’m amazed we didn’t want to kill each other after spending 20 straight days together. But I had a fantastic time travelling with you buddy! Let’s do it again sometime.

I also apologize for some mean things I might have said about you on this blog. I realize I sometimes use it as a place to “vent”, even though it’s a public form can see it, and it might not be appropriate to type those things here. Plus you can’t really defend yourself when I’m the one typing it. In any case, I think I cleaned up most of my blog posts to get rid of any angry rants I may have said about you or anyone else.

Again, thanks for travelling with me. I hope you had as good of a time as me 🙂

Next, I want to talk about the things I lost. On this trip, I lost

-2 charging cables(plane from SF to LA)

-A neck pillow(plane from LA to Taiwan)

-My $70 20,000 mAh charging block(may he rest in peace, left on a bus from Sappa to Hanoi)

Really I’m only sad about the last one. But I do constantly lose things on trips. My 2 month trip to the east I lost sooooo much shit(I think I have a blog post about it).

In terms of things I learned, I think I learned a bit more how to travel with someone else. This trip was the longest time I’ve spent with another person travelling — it was really fun, but you realllllly get to know a person, both the good and the bad(Sean has the *BEST* German impressions — ask him to do one sometime lol). It can really strain a relationship — I had a friend that told me she went on a trip with her best friend, and after that they didn’t talk for 6 months. I didn’t want that to happen, so I tried to be pleasent, and when I saw I or him was getting sick of the other, gave some space. Maybe even just spending a day or a couple hours away from each other can help with that.

Next, I learned a lot about Vietnam. I went in not knowing much about this history of the culture of the place, and I feel like I have a bit more understanding of it and how people feel(especially towards Americans).

As always, I learned a lot about myself. I realize what I think is important to me — rock climbing, going on adventures, having stories to tell — and what’s not so important to me(massages). I think I want to focus more of my trps around the outdoors and beautiful sights I can see — some of my best memories during travels are always outdoors stuff. The cave lodge in Thailand, the trail in Iceland, climbing on Cat Ba. So I want to do more of that, and less “fluffy” stuff — like hanging around Hanoi and eating a bunch. While that’s FUN, it’s not really fullfilling to me; it can be a fun treat at the end of a long day, but I don’t want it to be the primary reason for me travelling.

I learned there is a fine line between planning things out a bunch when travelling — having every hotel booked — and being a bit more flexible when you travel, maybe only booking the first night. I realize Sean probably likes more of the first thing, and I more of the latter. Everybody’s different, and there’s no right way to travel.

I think I got a bit better at “making friends” during this trip. I met a couple of people that were really cool that I added on Facebook, and even one person who climbs in SF that I’ll probably meetup with again really soon!(Also because I have some of her gear lol).

All in all, it was a great trip. I think we ran out of things near the end(I was struggling to find stuff to do in Mue Ni, and I was realllllly disappointed that we weren’t going to be able to spend time in Hue). But luckily it all worked out in the end.

I think if you REALLY want to get to know people in these countries, you need to move even SLOWER. 2 weeks is enough if you want to plane and overnight bus to places. But if you had, say, a MONTH, you could really slow things down, taking the train through the whole country, staying in the same spot for a week or so, travelling with other friends, etc.

But anyways. I had a great time.

And I think, with this, I’m done with Asia for a while. I think I want to concentrate on either South America, or maybe finally hit up Europe, or go to the Phillapines, or something like that. Maybe even the middle east, who knows. But Asia I need a bit of a break from.

And that’s it! Onward and upwards. Thanks for reading.

This blog tales  kite surfing, drug deals, and a reflection of the trip.

The last evening I spent in Mue Ni, Sean had already left to Siagon. I was staying one more day to do another lesson of kite sufing.

So I end up staying at some hostel — it was about $5 a night for a room with 6 people in it. This hostel was nice — a bar, a pool, breakfast/dinner, the works. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me.

Everyone at the hostel is like ridiciulously hot. All these young Europeans, with their perfectly tan bodies and perfect abs, and same for the girls. I’m just thinking. how do you look *THAT* good and drink that much? How great it was to be young.

Me being an old geezer decided just to go to my room and go to bed. At 10 pm. Luckily I just turned on some music and was able to drown out their partying.

The next day, wake up, eat breakfast, buy some sunscreen that says “very water resistant”, and then kill a few hours before my kite surfing lesson.

It ended up being a great lesson. I learned how to try and stand up on the board. And I did it successfully 2 times!, going about 30 meters on the water each time. It was soooo much fun. But it was also really hard. A couple of times I gave the kite too much power and ended up slamming face first into the water(really painful…). Near the end of the lesson, I had a problem getting the kite back out of the water; it ended up getting tangled in a bunch of fishing lines, and I had to eject from the kite and swim back to shore(FYI, this kite surfing area is FILLED with fishing lines attached to water bottles that float the surface. Pretty freaking annoying, as you constantly get caught in them).

After the lesson, I took the sleeping bus back to Saigon. I told Sean I’d split the hotel both nights(the hotel was $100/night which is OUTRAGEOUS for Vietnam prices). The main reason we got the hotel was because of the “infinity pool” on the top. Unfortunately because I was getting there after 10 pm, the pool would be closed. So the only time I’d be able to enjoy it was the next morning.

So anyways I get there around 10 pm that night. Then we go on the search for food. I get some boba(YAY BOBA), and Sean ends up asking some friend he knows about a good place to eat(since everything seemed to be closed). She suggested this “backpacker ally”. And boy was it a good suggestion.

Here’s a video of the area, and Sean dancing:

I eat some street food which is obviously delicious. Then we begin the drinking!

Now at around this time I had decided I wanted to get a gift for my friend Molly — there was this really cool tobacco in the north we smoked called “thuoc loa”, which basically means loa tobacco. It’s actually  just tabacco that is 8 times stronger than regular tobacco. When you smoke it, you get a sort of weed high for about a minute, then it goes away.

You can read about it here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotiana_rustica

Being tobacco, I assume it is legal to bring back to the US. But never having bought “drugs” before, I wasn’t quite sure how to find it. It’s primary smoked in the north(like all in the streets of Hanoi and whatnot), but not so much in Siagon, which is where we were.

So I try to smooze up a guy. I find one of the bartenders at the bar we were at, buy him a shot, and then ask about 10 minutes later if he knew where I could buy some. He asks a guy, who in turn asks a guy, who disappears. And I never hear from them again. Well damn, that failed 🙁 But hey, at least he enjoyed his shot!

And then we bought another guy a drink, because why not. Here’s said guy:

Next, we go big. Last year in Thailand we bought a “tower” of beer:

This year, we did the same:

Some things don’t change ahaha.

After that, the night gets a lot more-drunk. We go play pool at some point. At this time I’m pretty sure I’m plastered judging by the deteriorating state of my selfies:

We go to the top of a club and go dancing. I remember dancing all about, keep bumping into tables and stuff. In hindsight I realize I was probably drunk of my ass, but at the time I just figured it was a small dance floor(which it was!). Finally at like, I think 4 am or some shit, we go back to our hotel. At some point before getting back to the hotel, I call Molly. She had the kid she was babysitting in the back of the car, and I apparently was like, “make him say shit! Make him say motherfucker! Fuck fuck fuck!”. Sean said something like “this is what I’ve been putting up with for 3 weeks” in the background. Of course she promptly hung up on me. Super inappropriate. Guess I’m not a very funny drunk 🙁

I thought I had set an alarm for 6:30 so I could go up the infinity pool the next morning and see the sun rise. But I missed the alarm somehow. That’s okay though, I still got to go up and enjoy the pool. Ladies:

and I had some delicious pad thai:

After that, Sean left. Goodbye Sean! Thanks for putting up with me!

Dissapointed in my failure the previous night to find the Thuoc Lao, I set out today to find some. I was going to do a food tour that morning, but this was much more important. I was on a MISSION!

I first ask the bar tender if he knew a place that might sell it. He referred me to a hookah-like louge, saying they might sell it or they might know. Seems reasonable. I uber over there, and the place is closed(of course, it’s the middle of the day). There are some guys doing construction inside, I ask them about the tobacco, and they just point me to the convenience store across the street. Nope, that’s not exactly what I want…

So next I head to a boba place to think it over. I had read online(on reddit, of all places) that people were able to buy at local markets. So I find the closet street market, and head over there. The market ends up being pretty weak, with not much stuff being sold. No bongs/thouc lao to be found. Damn.

So next, I head to an indoor clothing shop called “Siagon Square”. I don’t think they’d sell it here, but it was a 4 minute walk, so why not. Anyways, no such luck there either.

A quick note about the shopping in Vietnam: people say its AMAZING and the stores are CRAZY, but it’s seriously nothing compared to Bangkok. Hell, the shops in Vietnam seem smaller than some American street markets!

Anyways, I next head to the holy grail of street markets, ben thanh market: the biggest street market in Vietnam. I was hesistant to shop here because I figured they’d rip me off, but I had no choice.

I get there, look around, and no thouc lao! Wtf! Internet you lied, there’s no tobacco here. I walk to some shop that was selling cigarettes, and I ask them. The woman laughs at me, and points me to a hotel down the street. Hmm, strange a hotel would sell it, but whatever. I go to the hotel, which is very fancy looking, ask about it, and no such luck! Damn. Wtf lady, what are you on about?

This was turning into quite the adventure.

I then find a cigar shop on google maps. Maybe they’d know! I walk to the shop(sweating my balls off in the process, why is it so hot in Vietnam!?!?), only to find out that the shop is CLOSED. Also it looked to high-class to be selling this kind of tobacco.

At this point I was pretty dishearted. I had spent about 4 hours searching for this holy-grail-tabacco, with nothing to show for it.

I was just about to give up and get some food, when I decided I’d go back to the backpacking area we were in last night and try there.

So I uber over, and ask the first sketchy-looking guy I see, “thouc lao”? He just points me down an ally way. I’m like, uh…okay. So I go down the ally, and it’s actually not that sketch. It’s got hotels and shit, and white people walking all around. I ask a few more people in the ally, “thouc lao”? And they just keep pointing me deeper and deeper down the ally. Uh oh D:

Finally, I come out the other side of the ally, and onto the street. Damn, I must have missed it. I ask a guy near a cigarettes stand, in desperation, “thouc lao”? He says, hold on a minute, I think I got you. He talks to a few other people, and then this guy comes up to me, and says he has some. But we’d have to take a ride to where it is.

Oh-kay? I guess. I ask him how far and he says “15 minutes”. So we hop in his VAN.

Didn’t my Momma tell me not to do this? Anyways, being slightly scared I was gonna die, I start live sending Molly my location:

Indeed, what the hell am I doing.

The guy was a taxi driver, so he turns on the meter. Already I’m getting fucked, because he’s charging me like 5,10,15$ for this cab ride.

He starts making chit chat like a normal person, talking about how he loves americans, but northern vietnamese don’t(Vietnam war and all that). The he tells me his grandfather fought in the war. Oh god, is he gonna murder me because I’m American?

Then he asks me how much I’m going to buy. “10 kilos”? “You sell back in America, yes?” Oh jesus, now he thinks I’m a drug dealer! I can’t carry 10 kilos of this shit, jesus christ. “No no, 100 grams”. He doesn’t seem to understand. At this point I don’t want to upset him, since he’s going out of his way to drive me here, and if he thought I was going to buy massive amounts of tobacco and I don’t, will he murder me? Oh Jesus ._.

He’s confused by the 100 grams, so I say “0.1 kilo”. “Oh, 1 kilo?” No motherfucker, that could smoke out all of the bay area for a year. “No, 0.1 kilos. 100 grams”. Finally he realizes, “oh :(” with a sad face. But he keeps driving and doesn’t murder me. Yusss.

He then starts making obcense jokes, “oh, Americans very big like THIS(gestures with a wide circle)”, but vietnamese girls very small, very tight(gestures with a small hole). Oh Jesus dude, like I just met you, I don’t wanna talk about this. “I have a girlfriend” I say.

This whole time he’s driving, but not to anywhere sketchy. Eventually he gets off the freeway, and to this brightly lit street where they’re selling a bunch of Chinese new years stuff. He stops in front of a cart that looks like it’s selling bongs(bingo), and tobacco! Maybe I’m not going to get murdered after all? We hop out, and I can see more clearly they have these HUGEEEE bags of tobacco. They’re like long thin bags, about as half as tall as me. He tells me they’re about 800 grams each. And he wanted me to buy like 6 of those? No way that’s allowed through TSA lol.

Eventually he shows me the bags of “Thouc lao”, and they’re pretty small. Maybe a bit bigger than a brick. I’m like oh, that’s not too bad. So I ask how much for a bag — only 100,000 dong!!! (That’s like $5). Like fuck yeah, give me 2 of those! Each bag has roughly 100 grams; so this ends up being the equivalent of about 200 cigarettes worth of tobacco. Which actually isn’t that crazy of an amount if you think about it. But remember this is about 8-9 times stronger than normal tobacco, so it’s really like 1,8000 cigarettes. Lol.

So anyways, I tell him 2 bags, and a bong(100k dong, or about $5), and then I’m like okay, I’m done. Lets go. He offers to drive me back to my hotel — I feel bad if I say no, and I don’t want to upset this guy. He says yes, and doesn’t turn on the meter. Sweet!

We get back to the hotel in a mostly uneventful ride. At the end, he’s like, “oh I drive you there and back, so just double your one way fare”. I originally thought he was just going to drive me back for free, but that’s foolish thoughts lol. It ends up costing me 460k(about $20), which is the most expensive ride I’ve taken in all of ‘Nam. I give him a 500k, expecting him to give me change. Nope, he just takes my money. That’s okay, I just want OUT of this car lol. I’m feeling all sketched out.

For some reason, since this is basically the last Vietnamese person I’ll probably interact with, I offer him a USD $1 — just as a keepsake. He takes it, thanks me, and hands me back a “fake” $100 bill he was carrying around. Haha.

I hop out of his car, and END that terrifying, but kinda fun experience. Yay, I didn’t get murdered!

Now how to get this through TSA…

Now technically, the stuff is tabacco. You can read the wikipedia article I linked higher up. So there’s nothing illegal about bringing it through TSA. The problem is, it looks sketch, and it doesn’t really have proper labeling(just a white placard that says “thouc lao” and a picture of a guy smoking). Also I didn’t get a reciept, so if customs needs that, I’m SOL.

I figure I’d keep it on my carry on so if it DOES get confiscated, I’d be there to see it. I don’t want them shifting through my checked in luggage without me knowing.

If you look on the website, you are allowed to bring x number of cartons of ciggerates through. You are also allowed to bring “rolling tabacco”(which is what this technically is”), but they don’t say how much. I guess each “port” or city of entry has different requirements of how much you can bring through. San Francisco didn’t really say how “much” you could bring in, but it did have a PDF from 2006 saying all rolling tobacco was taxed at 50% the price you bought it at, and I’d have to fill out a form. So I’m like okay, that’s what I’ll probably have to do.

So I get to the airport, and get through Vietnamese security no problem. The guys actually didn’t even look at the screen when my bag went through.

The same thing at the Taiwan transfer security checkpoint — don’t even bother looking at the bag.

When I get to the US security checkpoint, I’m sweating bullets. I’m not really worried I’ll get arrested or anything — again, to the best of my knowledge, this stuff is legal — but I *am* worried that my shit will get tossed for not having proper labeling. I look at the customs form, and it doesn’t have anything for tobacco — which is weird since tobacco is a pretty common thing to bring through customs. They do have a section for “plants”, which I guess tobacco technically is. I decide to say I have “nothing to declare”, since technically tobacco wasn’t on there. But when I got to the passport checkpoint area, and the guy asked if I had anything to declare, I just said “tobacco”. “How many cartons?” “Oh not cartons, just rolling tobacco”. He just looks at me a second, writes something on the back of my customs form, and lets me through. Okay.

Then I got to the customs guy that scans your shit. He was sending most people to the left(people who didn’t need shit scanned I assume), and some people to the right for extra screening. Oh god, here comes the anal probing. He takes one look at my customs document, AND SENDS ME TO THE LEFT. No extra screening. Didn’t care to see my tobacco. Woohooo! Home free. I walk as quickly as I can out of the customs area and into the arrivals area and into the cool, San Francisco night.

Now I never *lied* at any point during this process, and I technically didn’t bring anything illegal into the country. But I definetly skirted a few gray lines. For one, on my customs document I probably should have said I had something to declare; but I told the guy verbally, so no harm there. Second, the guy that checked my passport probably should have said I had something to declare, but I guess he thought checking the rolling tobacco wasn’t worth it, so signed my documents saying I had nothing of interest.

So I got lucky I get.

And that’s how I “smuggled” a bunch of tobacco into the USA. CBP, if you’re reading this, IV’E GOT NOTHING TO HIDE.

hahaha…

 

I’ve lost track of the days. But I’ll try and recount the events that happened. This post recounts the time I spent in Mui Ne(besides the last day which happens tomorrow), and the stories within. We learn about local culture, learn about our food, learn lots of kite surfing, spend time chilin’ and learn stories from people we meet.

Here’s where I’m typing from. I’m in a hostel(that only costs $5 a room for the “mid” teir room!). I picked up my smoking habit again:

Here’s a pic of the room:

 

The story starts were the last post left off. The bus we are from Sappa on makes it to Hanoi.

We make it to Hanoi, and go to our hotel. Sean booked a fancy-ass hotel($50 a night, wow!), so we were greated with TANGY/ORANGY soda-water. Sean tells me this is the standard greeting at high-end east-asia hotels.

We get into our room, and they have only one King bed :O. We’re like, “hey, this isn’t what we ordered, we need 2 beds”. Turns out, it IS just two beds, just squished together. So one of the hotel attendants spends the next 30 minutes undoing the beds and putting separate sheets on them while we sit there awkwardly.

We then go out for food. Sean wants to go to a “place that’s rated well”. TBH though, I’ve just been using a list of resturants in Hanoi recommended by Lonely Planet, so any place we go to will be filled with white people. But we go anyways, and alas, it’s filled with white people. Food is good though.

We then walk back home(its about 10 pm by this time), and I try and stop at a very very local-looking shop. It has no english writing, and it looks like a whole in the wall. I thought they sold boba. As I’m trying to translate some of the words the menu has on my phone, some buff Vietnamese guy comes up. “Can I help you?” he says. “Yeah, we’re trying to buy food here. It’s boba right?” “Sorry”, he says, “locals only”. “It is sweet soup here”.  This was the most polite xenophobia I had ever heard. It basically translates to: ‘White people not allowed here’. We’re like, oh okay, and just quickly go on our way. I’m not going to argue with this guy, he looks like an Asian Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. I’m a bit disheartening the rest of the night, as I’ve never been turned down by my race. I guess this is how minorities must feel when they’re turned down for some shit-ass reason.

Here’s breakfast the next morning. I was disappointed the pink thing wasn’t filled with meat(I’m forgetting the name for it):

The next day, we make a trip to the “Hanoi Hilton”. This is a place that was used by the Vietnamese to hold American prisoners during the Vietnam war, primarily American pilots that were shot down over Hanoi.

What I DIDNT know, however, is that it was originally built by the french in the 1800s to hold Vietnamese political prisoners. Vietnam had a war against the french (the first indochina war), which the VIetnamese successfully defeated the french. The french treated the Vietnamese like SHIT this whole time, often torturing them and holding them in solidarity and wahtnot.  According to Sean, at some point before WWII, the french released control of Vietnam. But then after WWII, they were like, “hey, we want Vietnam back”. So they tried again to take control of Vietnam. They started losing(see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_in_the_Vietnam_War). During this time, Communism was making big waves in the world, and as we all know America was like “fuck communism!”. So seeing the french losing, the US gave more and more help to the french to win this war. Because we didn’t want North Vietnam to become communist! Eventually, we started our own war, and started trying to kick the Vietnam’s ass. As you know, we lost, and were eventually pushed out of Vietnam. But during our time trying to fight them, they used the “Hanoi Hilton” as a place for captured soldiers.

So the vietnamese seriously got the bad end of the stick. The whole time, they were just trying to have independence from colonialism. And to their defense, they fought off the french twice, and the americans as well.

The funniest part of all this, which Sean pointed out, is if we had just let them be after the first french occupation, they probably would have been a republic!(And I think they were breifly between the 1st and second french occupation). But because the french/americans tried to take them over, and other external factors during the time, they turned to communism as a form of governance.

Now obviously some of this is oversimplified and might be incorrect, but I think it’s important to understand our past, and how the world came to be what it is today. And most importantly, understand that sometimes you arn’t right, and your country isn’t right. In this case, and I’m sure most Americans would agree, the Vietnam war was a mistake(by the way, they call it the “American war”).

Speaking of not being right, I’d like to point out that the Vietnamese like to down-play the conditions Americans faced in the prison. They pretended(according to all the videos they had on display), that american were constantly playing basketball, and drinking, and celebrating Christmas, etc etc. I doubt this is true. But it’s always fun to see a government downplay the atrocities it committed.

Sorry for the long rant. Lets get to the fun stuff. Here’s some pics from the prison.

These would be used to hold the feet of prisoners:

Here is the alleged bag and shoes they’d give to american prisoners during their time in the prision. I doubt this very much though:

Fun story, that at one point on Christmas eve(when the french occupied Vietnam), over 100 Vietnamese escaped through the sewers. Here’s the sewers they crawled through. Even at my thinnest, I could NEVER fit through this:

We also saw a real-life gillotine which was used to kill political prisoners during the French occupation:

Some holding cells with all the Vietnamese people’s legs shackled:

 

Morbid stuff.

Anyways, after that we got some ice cream, and then hopped on our plane to Mue Ni. Pretty uneventful flight, we got some food in the airport, I got a shotglass for my collection, called Molly, then we hopped on our bus. Again, it was a LUXURY bus, so all leather everything, just like Sean liked it.

We finally get to Mue Ni at around 10 pm. We roll up to our hostel. Here’s a picture of the sign:

We walk in, and it’s got a nice garden area in the center, and a little bar. There are russians EVERYWHERE. More on this later.

When we go to the bar, we see a few americans drinking with some of the locals. We join them for a bit of fun. It turns out they had all been drinking since around 3pm, so they were pretty drunk. We join them in their shenanigans. Also, since all the food was closed at this point, they cook some ramen for us. So nice! They just put all our food on a tab(or rather, we put it on our tab; they trust us to write the correct stuff). We talk with the other Americans; one of them just moved to SF 6 months ago, and lived in Nob Hill. What a coincidence! So many San Franciscans(and nobody from NY, sorry Sean!).

They say they’re going to wake up at 6 to go to the market to buy some fresh fish. So we decide to join them.

Next morning, 6 am, ring ring ring, we wake our tired-asses up, and head to the market. Since we don’t have enough scooters(there’s 5 of us including me and Sean), its decided that they’d take a cab and we’d take a scooter.

So we ride me and Sean on a scooter. Sean being a bit shy holds be by the shoulders. It’s actually really hard to control a scooter with two people on it and I struggle a bit to not drive us into a ditch. I eventually get the hang of it, and Sean starts to get intimate with me and hold me by my love handles. Finally the intimacy I had been hoping for the whole trip!

We get to the market at 6:30. It looks like this:

Each of those “boats” is a circular. I had never seen boats like that. It was the tea cups in Disneyland. Very strange. A couple days later I saw some “use” those boats; basically they just paddle around in oars. They’re not really meant for going fast.

We walk around, a bit. Btw, if I didn’t mention, one of the ladies running the guest house(Lien) had come with us. So she was helping translate for us of us and bargin for us. Everyone at the fish Market knew here(they would be like “Lien! Lien!” which I thought was really cool).

Sean ended up buying some crabs and some Shrimp. I don’t eat sea food, but I had a grand time going around and being like, “how about these? how about those?” Every time we bought something, 2-3 Vietnamese people would come up to us with fish hoping we’d buy something.

Here’s some of the items we saw(note the ice means it’s not fresh):

Here’s Sean with his takeaway:

Shit was SUPER cheap. Like maybe 10$ for all of that.

At one point, our other American friends went off to buy some fish on their own. They almost ended up buying some old fish(which I learned you could tell it was old/dead/not fresh by the fact that it had ice in the container), but luckily Lien stopped them before they made the mistake 😛

Next up: get me some chicken! Lien said we were going to go somewhere local to buy fish, and I didn’t realize what this would truly mean. This next part is not for the faint of heart, and would be one of the most memorable parts of my trip.

So we drive over to a local farmer, and are presented with this: a collection of LIVE chickens to choose from:

They wanted me to pick a LIVE chicken, then they would kill it, de-feather it, and sell it to me. I told them to pick the smallest one, (about 1.6 kilos), which cost about $10.

They kinda treated the chickens like shit TBH. All the chickens feet were bound, so they couldn’t fly/hop around. And when picking them up, they’d pick them up by one wing, which would cause the chicken to cry/sequel/whatever chickens do.

After I picked the chicken, they weighed it(while it was alive)he took it out back to kill. I asked if I could watch, and Sean filled them.

WARNING: THIS IS NOT FOR THE FEINT OF HEART. IF YOU DON’T WANT TO WATCH A CHICKEN BLEED OUT, DO. NOT. WATCH:

To summarize the video, he basically slits the chickens throat, and lets it bleed out. It definitely squirms and flaps its wings and cries out. But its all over in a minute.

Even Lien, we eats chicken a lot and lives in Vietnam, did not want to watch this process. I thought it was horrific and horrible animal cruelty. Later on, I did some research, and it turns out this is a pretty standard way to kill chickens(we do this a lot in the US). It seems it only lasts about 15-30 seconds for the chicken and then they become unconscious. Doesn’t seem *that horrible*, but if you’re a vegetarian maybe you disagree.

After that, he like greased the chicken up with something. Not sure what it was. Then, he put the chicken in this defeathering machine. I didn’t really get a picture of it, but it looked like a container with a bunch of jets in it that’d spray the chicken. After about 30 seconds of spraying the chicken(with really, really hard water I’d guess), the chicken was completely defeathered!! Absolutely amazing. Then he washed off the chicken:

Next, he cut open the chicken. He cut out it’s stomach and some other organs. When he cut open the stomach, we could see some of the food the chicken had recently eaten. The stomach was like a yellow hard sack with what I assumed was bird-feed the chicken had recently eaten inside of it.

He also took out the intestines and some other stuff. I don’t know what it was, I’m not good at anatomy.

They it gave us the chicken in a bag, and we took it back with us.

Pretty freaking surreal that this chicken was alive not 5 minutes before, and now it looked like something you’d buy in a super market.

We went home, then took a nap. After napping, we woke up, an asked Lien to cook our chicken. She had offered to cook the chicken and sea food for us, which was really nice.

She basically just boiled the chicken for us for 15 minutes, and gave us the whole chicken(on a plate), along with 2 plates of rice.

Sean had gone off to get some money at an ATM at this point, and had left my high-and-dry to deal with this chicken situtation. I rarely cook, and have NO FUCKING IDEA how to cut a whole chicken into edible pieces. So I  grab a kinfe, and try my best to cut the chicken into pieces that I recognize/are edible. I do an awful fucking job. At some point, I think the Dad of the two sisters running the place comes buy and says something in Vietnamese, all the way laughing at my white-boy-ways.

Here’s a pic of the chicken after I had cut it up and had a bit to eat:

Note you might not be able to see it, but the chickens head and everything are still attached to the left.

Again, it was fucking surreal to eat a chicken that had just been alive like an hour before. I picked it out, watch it get slaughtered, de-feathered, and then the end result cooked. All the mystery of where my food comes from had been removed.

I’ll be quite honest, I definitely lost my appetite a bit through this whole process. It felt fucking weird eating a chicken that had just been alive. Completely surreal. I’m sure this is normal for you(the reader) or many people throughout the world who do this all the time, but I wasn’t used to it.

This whole experience will definetly stick with me for a long time. It makes me question if I really need to eat as much meat as I do; it makes me not really want to eat all different types of meat, and makes me want to respect the food that we DO eat.

I’ll be honest, me and Sean didn’t eat like 50% of the chicken(we ended up throwing it away), and I felt AWFUL for letting the animal suffer for basically what was my “enjoyment”. We didn’t know how to eat many parks of the chicken(neck, head, feet, etc), and weren’t hungry enough to eat some of the meat. I want to make sure that if I do ever eat an animal live again, I know how to properly utilize all the parts.

Okay, enough about the chicken.

Next, time to Kite surf! Sean and I headed off to a Kite surfing school on the scooters we had just rented after our chicken-eating incident.

Here’s Sean on his scooter:

A bit about kite surfing: its a sport where you use the wind and a giant kite to propel you along the water. It requires somewhat windy days, and is really, really fun. And relatively safe compared to other sports(snowboarding/skiing, rock climbing, etc).

It takes about 17 hours to get confident enough to kite board on your own. We didn’t have that kind of time, so we decided to just take lessons and see where it went.

We showed up to the place, went in the back, and were greeted with this sight:

As you can see, the kitesurfing shop as seen better days. Apparently it was high by a typhoon/giant wave a few weeks ago, and it was a bit of a wreck. But it didn’t deter them from running their lessons!

We ended up booking 7 hours worth of lessons with a guy named Hong. Cost us $260 USD each. Typically things like adventure sports costs the same amount of $ no matter what country you’re in. Which is really a good thing, because it means they don’t lower the bar on the training for these types of classes.

Anyways we go out the first day. They first show us how to use a small kite on the beach two handed; then one handed; then he moves us onto a bigger kite. He teaches us how to fill up the kite with air, how to attach the lines from the bar to the kite. He teaches us how to safely escape/detach from the kite if it were to get dangerous/pull us down/ect. Then, he takes us into the breakers, and makes us control the kite from there. It’s hard to control a kite when the waves are constantly bashing you all over and trying to knock you off your feet!

Finally we get fully into the water, and do what he calls “body surfing”, were we use the kite to accelerate our body while swimming. Pretty tough stuff to do!

Here’s a pic of Sean practicing on the beach:

Kite surfing is interesting. You were a belt, kind of what you would wear in the gym when lifting heavy weights. The kite attaches to this belt, and all the “power” from the kite is transferred to the belt. Because of this, you feel all the power of the kite in your back.

Here’s a picture of the bar:

The kite has 4 lines running from it: two “power lines”(the center ones”, and tow “steering” lines(the left and the right). All the power/pulling goes through the center lines, and into your back. When you steer, you use the left and right lines. To steer, you kinda pull it like a steering wheel. Note you DO NOT USE A LOT OF POWER to do this. You can steer with your pinkies if you want to, because all the power of the kite is going through the center lines. This was a really hard lesson for Sean and I to learn; when the kite is going out of control, your instinct is to pull hard on the bar and try and force it to turn. When in reality, you don’t have to use much power to turn the kite, which is what causes it to go up/down.

Anyways, he showed us a lot of kite surfing techniques. This guy was a GREAT teacher. He had actually won 2nd place in an international kite-surfing competition, as I later found out. Great guy.

After a long day of kite surfing, we headed back to the guest house. We got dinner, and I promptly went to bed at 8 pm. I was FUCKING. TIRED.

The next day we woke up at around 10 pm. I had slept for 14 hours. Lol. We didn’t have kite surfing lessons until 1 pm, so I was bored without much to do, so I didn’t wake up. If I don’t have anything to do in the morning, why wake up?

Btw, the night before I had a “vanilla milkshake” as part of my dinner:

This shit was FUCKING DELICIOUS. I ended up having 4 over the course of my stay here. It was basically condensed milk with vanilla in it. Soooo gooood.

Also another note, Mui Ne is FILLED with Russians. Like, it’s even known as “little Moscow”. A lot of restaurants are in Russian, and the menus at most restaurants have Vietnamese, English, and Russian. After a bit of googling, I find out there’s direct flights from much of Russia and Russian-block countries to Nhan Trang and Siagon. And a lot of tour companies have packages to stay at Mui Ne. Plus, this is winter for Russia, which is FUCKING COLD, so obviously they’d want to go somewhere warm. And since the flights are only 5-6 hours, then why wouldn’t they come here?

Anyways, back to the story. Next morning we wake up, eat breakfast(Sean falls on the bike a little bit on the way to the restaurant and gets a scrape), and we go to the kite surfing place. The wind was bad, so there was to be no kite surfing that day.

No problem. We decide to do one of my vietnam bucket-list items: JET SKI!

For $30 for 30 minutes, YOU can get on a jet ski! They bring two of them out, and we go to town.

Unfortuntely I don’t have any pictures of this because I hadn’t planned on doing Jet Skiing on this day and didn’t bring my go pro.

But let me tell you, Jet Skiing is AS EVERY BIT OF FUN AS YOU THINK IT WOULD BE.

Basically you just have a control that you pull for throttle, a wrist bad that’s attached to the ski for automatic shutoff should you be thrown off, a start button, and thats IT.

We fucking cruise around, going this way and that. I try going “full throttle” a few times, but get scared because it’s really fucking fast, and you get quite a bit of air, which means you get slammed back down on the waves pretty hard.

Me and Sean do a little bit of racing(I win of course), we spin around and stuff, just a grand old time.

Seriously, jet skiing is better than sex. Actually, it kind reminds me of sex. For some strange reason. Maybe just all the power between your legs, the exhilaration, the total absorption in the moment. It’s amazing.

At that moment, I really wish I had a girl with me riding on the back. The only thing that would have made it better. I’m looking at you Molly.

As one point I use the bouys as markers and make a game of weaving in and out of the bouys. Pretty fun stuff.

Eventually the guy waves us down with a life jacket to let us know our time is over. We return the skiis. Then something really embarrassing happens:

When I went to get on the jet ski, there was a key on the table; I picked it up assuming it was for the jet ski, put it in my pocket, and promptly forgot about it.

Turns out it was one of the Vietnamese guy’s keys to his motor bike. It had come out of my pocket at some point during my Jet skiing, lost to the ocean. And this guy didn’t have a spare.

I felt AWFUL. And like an idot. I had lost this guy’s key! Why he hadn’t stopped me from picking it up in the first place I don’t know, but I was still responsible.

I talked to Hong(our Kitesurfing instructor), and he told me that it cost 250 to replace the locks on his bike. 250 DOLLARS??? No, 250k Dong(about $10). Whew. I felt horrible, so I learned how to say “I’m sorry” in Vietnamese, and then gave the guy 400k and apologized to him. I felt super bad.

He came back up to me 5 minutes later and gave me 200k back. Apparently he only needed 200. That really restored my fate in the Vietnamese people. Left and right on this trip, people had been taking advantage of me, ripping me off. But this guy had enough honestly in him to say, “hey this is too much”. Which I thought was cool.

Anyways after that we went to some bar, got a bunch of sushi(yes cucumber sushi *IS* sush*), and headed back to our guesthouse.

There I took a FAT nap, while Sean wandered around and did whatever. He got a “massage” ;D

I woke up, and got a chance to really talk to Diem and Liem. Remember the name of the place we were staying? Diem and Liem Guest house? Well apparently that was the names of the sisters that ran the place! Here they are:

And with Sean:

They ran this guesthouse and lived here with their family. The one on the left is married, the one on the right was not.

They originally used to be waiters at a restaurant a couple years ago. After doing that for a couple of years, their family decided to sell “fish sauce” to local Vietnamese people. After making enough money doing that, their father decided to sell some land, and then build some guest houses. They built 5 houses about 4 years ago. They took out a loan with the bank, paid it off, then built another guest house. Then then took out another loan, built another 5 about 2 years ago, and then built another 6 about 3-4 months ago.

They run this house with a third sister(who’s name is not part of the place LOL). Apparently it’s standard to have 2 names for a hotel, but 3 is “not good”. The third sister also doesn’t speak english(Lien said she was “lazy”), so she’s the one who ends up cleaning a lof the rooms/preparing food.

Lien(the one on the left, who I talked to the most) studied tourism in college. That’s also how she learned to speak English.

She mentioned that they didn’t have any more land to expand any bigger, and even if they did, they would need to hire more help, but they wouldn’t trust anyone else to clean/help run the place(because of stealing).

It was really cool to be able to hear their life story. They were super friendly, and if anyone ever has to stay in Mui Ne, I would *HIGHLY* recommend this place.

 

Also, that evening we got to talk to a Russian guy. He worked for a guitar manufacturer, and lived in Syberia? I think it was. He had travelled to Corona(near LA, which I had never heard of), as well as SF and other places. He was there with his family. He had paid $500 all inclusive(including room + flight) to be there in Muni. I told him I paid $1600 just for the flight, and he started at me blankly lol. #Privilege I guess. But he was very friendly! In a reserved Russian sort of way. His wife and daughter were fucking gorgeous. Sean is right, Russian woman are on another level…

So anyways, that closes out that night. We went to bed, because at 4:30 AM the next morning we had a jeep tour the to sand dunes. We were originally going to ride our motorcycles to the dunes, but there were apparently police traps along the way that would stop you and make you pay 1-2 million dong(about $100) for not having a license(note that you need an international license to drive a scooter over 50cc, and we didn’t have that license. Most of the Vietnamese government doesn’t give a fuck about this, but here they like to milk the tourists for all they got). A lot of time, they wouldn’t even be “real” police, but entrepreneurial Vietnamese dressing up as policing, and creating road blocks to slow you down. People online said if they didn’t look like real police to just keep driving past them(even if they are following you). Sounded sketch AF if you ran away from real police.

Lien said if we went early enough in the morning the police(and fake police) wouldn’t be there, but Sean and I didn’t want to deal with that stressful situation, so we decided to get a jeep hire for $20 instead.

We wanted to see the sunrise on the dunes, so that’s why we had to wake up at 4:15 AM.

But before we woke up, I posed for a shot behind the bar:

So. wake up, make it out to the dunes, and I get some sick shots:

This was my favorite shot of the day. I’ll probably do more processing on the raw file when I get home. Breaking bad style:

I’ll probably frame that one.

We had to pay a guy 400k to take us on an ATV to the top of the dune to watch the sunset. I talked him down from 500k, which I was proud of. Though it was still a super-rip off, because 400k is about $20, for about 5 minutes of riding to the top(we could have probably walked it in 20 minutes).

Anyways, here’s more shots:

And here are some of the red sand dunes. Sean was so sleepy, he kept falling asleep in the jeep. I don’t know how you sleep like that!

Here are the sand dunes:

After that, we went to the “fairy stream”. This place was beautiful, and only 4 minutes walking from our hotel!

 

Absoultely beautiful. Some of these are going on the wall.

After that, we went back for more kite surfing lessons. But not before stopping at Joe’s Cafe and getting some food!

Then we go back for some Kite surfing lessons. Since the lessons started at 1, and we had a bus back at 4, we could only stay 2 hours for the lessons. Seeing as that wasn’t a lot of time, and the wind was supposed to be really good the next day, I opted to stay in Mue Ni another day while Sean went back to Siagon. I really wanted to complete my (kite board) training (unlike Anakin), so Sean and I split up. I would stay in Mue Ni another night, do my kite surfing lessons the next day, and take the bus back that night. Sean would go back today, and I’d meet up with him the next day in Siagon.

So that’s where we’re at! I’m typing this from a backpacking hostel right now. I’ll meet up with him tomorrow, enjoy my infinity pool, and fly back Wednesday. My flight is late on Wednesday, so instead of doing the Chi-chi tunnels, I’ll probably go on a food tour in Saigon(because I want to be *properly* introduced to Vietnamese food. It’s my last chance!).

So if you read all this, thanks. This was a Looooong blog and probably took me 2-3 hours to write. I’ll probably try and make them a bit shorter(maybe 2 days combined max), as this was a fucking marathon to type out.

Thanks for reading!

This blog post will combine all the stuff that happened in our trip to Sa Pa.

Our trip started out taking a night bus to Sa Pa. I’d never been on a night bus before; basically, you sleep on the bus in these reclining chairs. I thought we’d get a horrible night sleep. Turns out it wasn’t that bad! The only thing was the seats were meant for Vietnamese people, so they were a bit short. But I was able to shove myself far enough up the seat to make it comfortable.

Here’s a pic of Sean in said seats:

We arrived in Sa Pa around 5 am. We were supposed to get picked up by a guy would would take us to a hotel, and from there we’d start our trek. Unfortunately, nobody showed up. This was from the internery Mr.Micheal had booked for us way back in Cat Ba, so we didn’t really have the name of the company or anything that was supposed to pick us up. It took us about 30 minutes of looking at our paper, staring at other people, and texting Micheal before we figured out what to do. Sean hadn’t gotten much sleep on the bus, so he was rightfully grumpy during this ordeal. I was a little worried, but in the end realized shit happens and if we couldn’t figure it out we’d make another plan.

Finally, we looked on the BACK of the paper, and realized it had the name of the hotel that we were supposed to go to. So we headed off to the hotel. Apparently a lot of people on our bus were going to the same trip, and they had all gotten picked up, just not us. Darn you Mr.Micheal.

But anyways, we ate breakfast, and geared up for the trip. I was going to wear my tennies for the hiking, but the guide said that we were going to be stepping in ankle-deep mud, so we rented some cheap rubber boots from her for $2. And thank god I did.

Oh, and remember that Indian couple that was on the party boat with us? Well apparently they took the same bus to Sapa, and were also on the trek with us! Don’t forget that, because they come into the story later…

So anyways we head off on the trek, and it is SUPER foggy. I was really worried we wouldn’t be able to see *ANYTHING*. Luckily, it cleared up as we went. Here’s some pics from the trip:

A cute doggo. I kept saying these dogs looked like Benjaman Button:

Other wildlife:

A somewhat decent view. This is about as good as the views got. But you can appreciate the scale of these rice fields. The valley went on for miles, and it seemed every viable square meter was covered in rice fields:

Here are some other pictures from the trek:

They also let us stop at one of the schools. I think it was elementary school. They were at recess, and when it was over, instead of chiming a bell, they hit a giant drum. I thought that was great:

Also kind of weird they just let foreigners roam around a kid’s school during recess, but what do I know.

I think this was one of my favorite pics from the trek. I wish I had a bit better zoom, but it’s pretty cool to just see one of the locals chilling along the rice fields:

More pics of us, yay:

On our way over, I saw this house with the rock in it. They literally built the house isn’t the rock. Why move it when you can use it?

They taught us a bit about making clothes on the trip. This here is indigo:

They use it to dye some of their plants. There’s a complex process of extracting the die from the plants that I don’t quite remember, but requires letting the dye to sit for a couple of months, followed by combining it with some sort of sand before using it for clothes. They said even a small field of flowers can yield a couple kilos of dye, which I thought was a good return on effort 😛 The whole process of growing and extracting the dye takes about a year.

During our hike we meet two girls from South Korea. One was from LA, the other from some city outside of Denver. They were English teaches in Korea. It was really cool to hear about their live stories.

We also got to see how the indigenous people made clothes. They sewed hemp using a manual sewing machine. Then they died it using that indigo died I talked about. Often the die would make the clothes very shinny, so to de-shine it, they would use wax. To apply the wax, they would basically get on this hover-board looking rock, and rock back and forth across the cloth. It looked really tiring, but the lady who did it looked really impressive/experienced.

They said in all it takes about a year of work to make a dress. ONE DRESS. Good lord.

The most entertaining story we heard on our trek was about how people get married. So some people have arranged marriages, and other times they “find love”. There is a “love festival” that goes on once a year where everyone in town gathers and meets other potential mates. If a guy likes a girl, he will kidnap her(yes you read that right). He basically takes her back to his family’s home for 3-4 days, and see if they get along. Since everyone in the village knows everyone, the guy’s family will tell the girls neighbors where she is so they don’t get worried. After that trail run, if the guy and the girl like each other, they get married. The guy pays the girls family 50 L of rice wine, along with an ox I think? and get married. Again, since everyone knows everyone else, they don’t give each other wedding rings after marriage. Everyone just knows. I thought that was pretty cool.

So anyways, after hearing this, I start talking to the Indian couple again. It turns out the girl works for some company near mine in SF! I don’t know what it was called(couldn’t quite understand), but I guess she travels around to lots of different offices to work, the SF office being one of them.

So anyways, I’m talking to her, and we get to talking about these arranage marriages. I was like, “oh, that’s somewhat similar to Indian marriages, right”? Seeing how you have to pay the other family, and the families are very close knitt, ect. She was like “NO. It is VERY different. The woman’s family pays the MAN for the marriage”.

And she’s right, there’s a big difference between the two cultures. I was just trying to make small talk, and I felt kinda bad I offended her. But I also felt like she also over reacted. Obviously I wasn’t trying to offend her, just trying to understand these different cultures and their similarities….

So anyways we keep trekking. Near the end of the 1st day of trekking we saw this bar. I thought it was a pretty funny name:

I also want to note that everything was SUPER FREAKING MUDDY during the hike. It was very hard to not fall into the mud. I think during the trek Sean fell into the mud twice. And one of our English-teaching south Korean friends fell once.

Anyways, we eventually get to the homestay. It wasn’t quite a homestay as it was a hostel. It had a few private rooms, on the first and second floor, with most of the second floor just being an open sleeping arrangement. We got there at around 4ish, so we basically had the rest of the evening(besides the cooking class and the dinner) to fuck around.

This is when the first trouble happened. Remember that Indian couple that had been following us since the begginning? Well I guess there was some mix up with the rooms, and all the sudden I hear from the Indian woman,

WE PAID 30 EXTRA DOLLARS TO STAY IN A PRIVATE ROOM WITH A BATHROOM. I DONT CARE HOW YOU FIX IT, IT NEEDS TO BE FIXED. CALL THE COMPANY AND FIX THIS NOW.

She was really laying into our tourguide/homestay people. So a couple things:

1. First, while this isn’t technically a homestay, you’re still in someone elses house. You shouldn’t really be making demands from them
2. Don’t be a laying into this people! That’s so dickish. It was obviously a mistake and they’ll fix it. But being rude to “custom service”(as our other english-speaking friends called it) isn’t going to get things solved any faster.

Anyways, everyone who had a private room decides to offer up their private room for this lady if it’ll fix her problem. Everyone was super nice about it. We technically had a private room as well I believe(on the paper it translated to that), and though it never ended up materializing when they assigned us sleeping arrangements, we offered it up as well.

Eventually they got everything squared away. But after that incident, we didn’t really see much from the Indian couple besides dinner and breakfast the next day.

Now in her defense, this is probably not what she asked for. She slept on an overnight bus like us and woke up at 6 am(not the best sleep), then had to trek through all this shitty mud to stay in one of these rooms. They were both carrying “roller” luggage, which is not ideal for a country like this, or for activities like this. Pretty amateurish if you ask me. So they probably were used to more “lavish” travelling. Which there is nothing wrong with. But if that’s what you’re expecting, and then you have to go through all this, I can see how you’d snap.

So anyways, that was fun.

And actually, the rest of the night got pretty fun as well. We all got to meet each other.

We met a female German solo traveler who was travelling for 4 weeks on her own(for the first time!). She was really nice. Apparently germans get 4 weeks off a year! Who knew!

We also met the english teachers in Korea that I spoke about before. They taught us a lot about Korea, like everyone in Korea *must* go into the army for about 2 years(or was it 9 months?).

We met a couple that had met in Australia on a work-board program. One was french and the other from the UK. They were both pretty cute 😛

We met a Canadian couple and their friend. There were cool as well, though I didn’t speak to them much 1:1. There might have been 1-2 others but I’m forgetting. All the accents and names and stories tend to blend together.

So the night  devolved into drinking. First we played Kings cup(I had to drink the cup), then we payed some phone game that had fun requirements(like would you rather, do this strange thing, ask questions, get to know each other, etc). It was a pretty fun night.

We ended up going to bed at 10pm that night because we were all exhausted, and didn’t wake up till 9 am the next day.

Here’s some pictures of the girls:

On the left is Ahsley, a teacher in Korea. In the center is Johanna, the solo german traveler. And on the right is Natalie, also a teacher in Korea(she’s from LA).

Here’s a pic of us cheesin’ with Johanna:

So anyways, the next day we wake up, eat breakfast, leave. We do some more hiking, Sean falls in the mud again, you know, the usual. We eventually head back to Sapa. We originally had planned to go to Hanoi that night, but decided to try the cable Car on the suggestion of Alvaro(the Peruvian guy we met on the Junk Boat). We say goodbye to our friends :'(, then go to our hotel.

And then I shower for the first time in 2018. And what a great shower it was.

Leaving these people makes me really sad. They were all really cool, and I’d love to be friends with them. When you constantly meet people, and then never see them again, it can be hard. I find it emotionally draining really. I think someone like meet, I like to make deep lasting connections with people. I have a small number of friends but I’d like to think they’re good friends. But when you have a trip like this where you make a friendship and just end it the next day, it’s hard.

Although on the otherside, if you ever happen to travel to their part of the world, then you’ll have a friend there to visit!

So that night in Sapa, we decide to go out for some food.

Here’s our attempt at Hot Pot. I title it, “Two White Guys Fuck Up Hot Pot”:

The waiter constantly came over to show us how to do hot pot(even though Sean had done it before), we also set the place on fire because we couldn’t turn down the heat. Yeah know, white-guys-in-asia sort of stuff.

We call it an earlier night because we’re both exhausted again from the night. But not before I take my favorite picture of Sean on this trip:

The next day, we check out, pack up, eat breakfast, and head for the cable car. This car goes to the top of Fansipan, the highest peak in IndoChina. We sacrificed 1 1/2 days in Hue to see this cable car — basically we could spend a day here, or a day in Hue. I like mountains(sorry Jordan, gonna steal your phrase), so I decided this would be better. And Sean had already been to Hue.

Unfortunately, it was COMPLETELY fogged out. We couldn’t see anything.

The cable car ride up was cool though:

Kinda like you were floating in the air.

We got to the top, and took a couple of fun pictures:

Some random family approached Sean and asked him to be in their picture. First it was just the dad, then the dad and the mom, and then finally the whole family. Pretty funny:

 

Again, I was really disappointed in not being able to see the incredible views. When you think about it, you save up time all year to go on these vacations, and spend lots of money, and then you get there, and you can’t do the activity you wanted. But that’s just the nature of travelling. A lot of times things just go wrong, and to expect them to be perfect all the time is foolish.

I wrote a post on Instagram that summarized my feelings:

Not every day when travelling can be a winner. Sometimes things just go wrong. In this case, we planned an extra day in Sa pa and sacrificed a day in Hue to see the view from atop Fansipan, and got completely fogged out.

Part of travelling is accepting things won’t go as planned. I’m learning more and more to let go of my expectations and embrace whatever experience comes my way. And through these experiences I realize I’m not so much learning about the world around me, but about myself.

So that’s it! I’m on the bus now to Hanoi, Hanoi for a night and 1/2 a day, then Mui Ne. Onwards and upwards!

I’m going to try to combine two days into one, because they kinda flowed into each other. I’ll be going over NYE and new years day.

Here is the sunrise on January 1st, 2018. A great way to start the year if you ask me:

Record scratch. 

Now you might be wondering how we got here. So let me start from the beginning.

New years day we woke up at 6am on Cat Ba. I was so damn tired, but we had to catch a bus to Cat Ba Habour at 7 am. We wake up, pack, and catch our bus to the habor. Then we hop on a boat, which takes us to ANOTHER boat.

We do a mid-ocean boat transfer that is less safe, but oh-so-fun. I love the lack of regulations here. This was the first boat transfer of many. Here’s generally how the transfers work:

Anyways, we got on the boat, and proceed to wait like 3-4 hours for people to show up. Because we were coming from Cat Ba, rather than Hanoi, we got there much earlier than the rest of the guests.

Finally people show up, and the captain proceeds to tell us we have to get on ANOTHER boat(boat #3 at this point). We had already gotten cozy in our room, so we had to move all the stuff off. We eat lunch with our new-found guests/friends, and then hop onto the other boat.

It turns out the boats were part of the same company, and they actually tied them together during the evening party so we could easily move between them. Again if you look at the procedure for how to cross these boats, you can see why a bunch of drunk people trying to cross the boats might be dangerous in the middle of the night. But that’s Vietnam for you! *shrugs*

During lunch we met a Vietnamese child that must have been 11-12 with his family. He was from Ojai, CA but I thought he said Ohio. Sean proceeded to make fun of me the rest of the trip for misunderstanding him(because I had been saying stuff to him like, “oh, California is very cool, lots of fun stuff” etc etc).  I never did address him about this…

Sean and I were talking about cruises, and I mentioned how they had a BDSM cruise. We then talked about BDSM for a good couple minutes. We didn’t think the kid would understand what we were saying(because he was Vietnamese), but I’m pretty sure he understood every word. How embarrassing *face palm*

After lunch,we started the first activity for the day: Kayaking.  Me and Sean head off in our kayak, and using trusty google maps, we find a cool hidden cove we can kayak through. I REALLY had to go pee. So I told Sean lets go to the cove, I’d hop out of the kayak (with my shoes on this time!) and take a quick piss.

The first time I tried to hop out, my foot got pretty deeply stuck in the mud, and I had to come back in before taking a piss. I told Sean these muddy conditions are probably akin to what people experienced at the Battle of the Some or Verdun.  I told Sean we should try another part of the cove to try and hop out.

The second time, we backed the kayak up a couple feet, and rammed FULL SPEED into the shore to try and get the kayak up as high on the mud bank as possible.

This time I committed, and it did not end well. I ended up sinking up to both ankles in mud. My sandals came off, and I had to physically pull them out of the mud to get them back with my hands. This whole time I was struggling Sean was literally having a laughing attack. As was I. It was just so ridiculous that I couldn’t leave the boat to take a piss! I think that’s the hardest we laughed the whole trip.

Anyways here’s a pic of my footsteps after I got back into the Kayak. Note that I failed AGAIN to actually take a piss:

I ended up being covered in mud all over my pants. When we finally got back to the boat, the captain was like, “Where did you go, Japan? Why are you so muddy?” Pretty funny stuff.

After that, we had dinner. Safe to say it was DELICIOUS:

We met the other guests we’d be partying with that night. There was a group from France/Britain/Ireland, Hungary, a Lithuania guy(where my last name is from!), a couple from France, a Kiwi couple, some friends from Myramar, and a solo traveler from Peru/Australia.

After dinner, we started the Shananigans. Here’s kinda how the boats were parked, sorry I don’t have a better picture:

 

We slowly got more and more drunk as the evening wore on. Later on, they gave us free beer for a couple hours(but it was pretty shit). Here’s a picture of me with the bartender:

There was also a foosball table on the boat. Me and the guy from Peru(Alvaro) formed a team, Sean and one of the french ladies formed a team. We all had a good time playing, although Sean and the french lady were pretty unstoppable that night:

At one point the ball got stuck, so I tried to lift the table and spilled all the beer that was on the table. Whoops.

Sometime during the evening we some of the locals smoking something out of a bong. I asked if I could take a hit and they obliged. As soon as I hit it, I realized it was *not* tobacco. I thought it was weed and I’d be high all night, which is NOT what I wanted. I don’t like being high in public. But after about a minute, it wore off.

So I’m not really sure what was it in, but it was definitely a mix of tobacco and something else, and immediately had a coughing fit. One of the locals joked and asked Sean how many fingers he was holding up. Sean also started sweating PROFUSELY. One of the Myaramar girls was concerned for how much Sean was sweating. I thought it was hilarious.

I took a video of all this, but it’s one of those things that probably shouldn’t go on the internet. Ask me if you want to see it.

After that, more drinking. At one point I put on some bachata music again(because I wanted to DANCE damint), and danced a bit; Alvaro was a pro as usual.

Next we did some Karaoke. Or at least, we tried. Their song selection was absolutely rubbish(who doesn’t have Hotel California or backstreet boys???). So that stopped after 15 minutes.

As the night went on, I got drunk enough that I started hanging from one of the rafters in the dinning room…upside down with my feet. Unfortuntely, I have no pictures of that.

There were some Candian bros that were also there(think backwards caps). I start talking to them about weed, and then they promptly changed the conversation to Canadian football. Literally just confirming every stereotype I have about these kinds of guys. At the end of the party, one of them hooked up with one of the girls from the British/France group. And other people were telling me they were talking trash about the other passengers. I guess that’s what I’m doing now, but consensus seemed to be nobody really liked them. Lol.

At some point before midnight I gave one of the locals $3 and called my Dad. His birthday was on the 31st, and was happy to hear from me!

Anyways, we counted down to New Years, partied for about another hour, and then went to bed. All in all, a perfect new years. Couldn’t have asked for a better day.

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The next day, we woke up at SIX FIFTY. 6:50. Yes, on New years day. That’s when breakfast was, and they wouldn’t budge.

So we stumble out of bed, and take some sunrise pictures, which in hindsight was absolutely worth it. The one at the beginning of the blog is from that:

We had breakfast(delicious!).

After breakfast, we had to pay our tab for our drinks from the previous night. The staff said we had drank 14 beers and 6 waters, a couple cocktails and some wine. The last part was fine, but 14 beers and 6 waters??? Bullshit. He ended up charging us $80 for all the drinks!!! Probably the biggest rippoff the whole trip. We should have talked him down, but at the end of the day, $40 drinks/person for a whole night of partying on a boat really isn’t that bad…

Anyways, after that we went on another kayaking trip. Turns out they took us to the SAME PLACE we had been 3 days before on our boat tour around Cat Ba. This time though, we got to ride on a bamboo boat, and I had my nice camera so I could take better pictures.

Here’s the cave we kayaked through:

Other end of the cave:

A GREAT picture of Sean in my opinion:

Btw, here’s the pic of our boat docked at the kayaing station:

Then, we had a cooking class! They taught us to make Fresh spring rolls. I think I did pretty good and Sean did terrible. In his defense, he only had like 2 hours of sleep. Sorry Sean 😛 Here’s a one minute video of me making them in case you’re interested.

After that, it was time to say goodbye. We had to transfer to ANOTHER boat( I think this is boat 4 by this time).

Here’s some of our friends on the boat we left. They were staying an extra day so they stayed on our original boat:

Left is the couple from London(the girl was the one that was super drunk with me and danced/sung/had a good time). Middle was the french couple, and the Lithuanian dude is on the right.

The guy in the London couple didn’t drink at all, and had tattoos all up his arms and on his neck. The tattoos on his arms were blacked out(he had filled them in). He wasn’t at all like the stereotype you’d expect someone with that many tattoos would have. He was actually one of the nicest guys on the boat.

Lithuanian dude was Chill AF as well, but I didn’t get to talk to him much.

Anyways, we finally get to Ha Long City/Habour. There, we transferred to ANOTHER BOAT :O We then got on a bus, and made it back to Hanoi.

Our trip from Ha Long to Sapa and back to Hanoi is really confusing, and I had to explain the itinerary 5-10 times to Sean. In his defense, he misunderstood how we’d be doing some things. But I think it highlights how he likes things a bit more planned out, while I’m a bit more fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kinda guy. Like we’ve changed our Sapa itinerary a couple times now. But I’m thankful he hasn’t murdered me yet, and that he’s been chill with how many times I’ve changed the plans.

On our way back to Hanoi, Sean made a funny comment about the air quality in Vietnam. As you can probably guess, the air sucks here. Also a lot of people(read: everyone) here smokes. Sean says if you’re going to breath it in, you might as well enjoy it. Thought it was funny.

Anyways, that’s about it for today. We’re catching a night bus to Sapa, and should arrive there at around 5 am. We’ll see how well we feel. We really haven’t gotten a good nights sleep for a couple of days now. This is how my trip was with Molly as well: every day jammed pack and not much resting. Tomorrow night and the next night we’ll have actual places to sleep(not buses), and we might take a train back to Hanoi, so that should suck a bit less.

Anyways, that’s it for now. I’m typing this from a Harry Potter themed cafe(which is for some reason called “Always”). Here’s some pics:

And I finally got my Egg Coffee/Tea!

TTYL internet.