so i'm back home but was mad neglectful with this blog during the china portion so i'm gonna write all the entries over the course of this week both for whatever readers I may still have and so I don't forget the madness that was this trip
anyways the first thing i did when i got back was have a carnitas torta and it was amazing
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Hue-t! I'm not ready to leave Vietnam yet! (cept I did and am in Hong Kong right now)
As you can tell from the title, I've already left Vietnam and two weeks was really too short for such a fabulous place with such amaaaazing food and people. But It's time to write the recap on Hue and our last night in Saigon.
Hue is one of the old capitals of Vietnam and is located right in the middle of the country between Hanoi in the North and Saigon in the South. We rocked the night train there with our Malaysian buddy Edward and I actually slept pretty well since this time the train didn't have a bunch of cockroaches. What sucked is I was sort of getting sick and then in the first day in Hue I pretty much overdid it and felt terrible the whole day. First we went out in the heat and got some Bun Bo Hue at this restaurant that my buddy Dennis recommended then we went to the Citadel which is basically the Viet forbidden city (like the one in Beijing). It's even called the forbidden purple city. Anyways it was pretty hot out and my regular ultra sweatyness was really peaking and I was just starting to feel really exhausted and light headed. Anyways we eventually finished and were able to cab it back to the hostel to chill for a bit.
We were def staying in the party hostel of Hue which sucked cause I just wasn't in the condition to party. After we sat for a bit we went to go look for another restaurant that Dennis had recommended. This time though, our cab gave us the huge runaround. When I realized it I started pointing to the map and angrily gesturing to Edward who was sitting shotgun. When we got there (it was closed) we only paid the guy 40/67.5k. He was confused and we kept trying to show him on the map where he had fucked us. He didn't speak english and we didn't speak vietnamese. We sort of had a standoff and he called over some woman who also didn't speak english. we showed what happened on the map and I think she said "well you cheated them" because after that he basically gave up. We walked away to go to greener (and open) pastures.
We made our way down to Lac Thanh which is famous for being run by a deaf man. In vietnam everytime something successful opens there's tons of copycats on the same block. This was no exception and makes me wonder if the other restaurants were also staffed by deaf folks. It'd be fucked up if they faked it, we really don't know. They pretty shamelessly advertised themselves as the same place and all their signs even quoted the lonely planet. Anyways inside the restaurant people sign the wall and we found the signatures of Dennis, my friend Katrina, and their whole UCLA crew. Pretty cool. Sadly the food wasn't that awesome. I mean it wasn't bad but compared to our next meal it was decidedly sub par. We did get to try the famed Banh Khuoi which is described as a "vietnamese taco" and was this egg batter taco thing with shrimp, pork, and veggies. Did i mention it's fried? Yet it's as good as it sounds
About a half mile from there was the "night food street" and oh what a glorious place it was. We sat down at a street stall named Thuy and had hella nem lui (pork on bamboo sticks put into spring rolls, decadent ass barbequed pork belly, and this other pork thing that comes with little rice dumplings. IT WAS FUCKING AWESOME. Sadly we couldn't cab it back and the walk home was really difficult due to me being sick.
Next day I resolved to take it easy and pretty much did just that. Highlights include going to get diff Bun Bo Hue for lunch along with other Hue specialities like Banh Beo (little rice pancakes with shredded shripm and fish sauce), and Banh Nam (Riced paste with shrimp and pork inside wrapped in a banana leaf. Then that evening we had a redic decadent return to the night food street which started with more of the tacos and what seems to be the most popular taco joint in Hue, a return to Thuy's featuring half of a charcoal roasted duck that just about might have been the best thing I've eaten this year, more of the pork dumplings, a jaunt at a popular fried rice place, and finally another taco. It was mad filthy awesome. Sort of inexcusable due to our sobriety.
The third day (our last) was marked by Edward's departure to Hoi An and us going out to the same restaurant where i had Bun Hen (dry noodles with special hue clams) which was spicy and deeelicious, some banh lac (same as Banh Nem but with shredded shrimp, i actually didn't like) plus a later snack of Banh Ram It (shrimp over rice cake over a bit of pork over a fried rice cake about slider sized.) which was pretty tasty as well as a texan burger at our hostel. I know this all sounds mad gluttinous, and to a certain degree it was but we were splitting everything and all the Banh stuff is pretty small.
Finally flew to Saigon and had a horrible time getting to our last hostel. On the street we were staying on the numbers sort of just start over again at random intervals and to make a long story short it took us 3 cabs to get there. 2 cabs to eventually get us to somewhere with wifi so i could use my ipod to find the hostel's number and the 3rd cabbie spoke to the concierge so we finally made it.
Here's where it got waaaay weirder. Our concierge was this swiss french guy who was impossibly weird. He was like the "yesssssssssssssssss" guy from the simpsons but real. I'm not even kidding. He was pretty impossible to talk to without laughing. I really am not a good enough writer to describe him but if you see me, ask me to do an impression and maybe i'll be able to convey how nuts this guy was. The thing is he was also suuuuper friendly but his weirdness just made my skin crawl.
We didn't wanna spend long in the hostel and went into town center (our hostel was by the airport) and findally made it to the Banh Xeo place that had thwarted me before. These Banh Xeo (think vietnamese dosa?) were enormous and we had 10 spring rolls after. These were probably the best spring rolls we had during our whole trip in Vietnam. After that we went to the bar area we had stayed at before. We went to both the bars we'd hit up before and it was cool cause all the folks remembered us. At the bar AK Hideaway we met the owner who was this Brit that couldn't have been more than 2 years older than me. He talked to us for a long time because he was super excited that we knew a bit about british hip hop. There was also this nice ausie guy who between their two accents I think I only understood 2/3 of the conversation.
Finally we made it back to our hotel where the frenchman was thankfully asleep. I didn't wanna take any chances though so I stacked our bags in front of the door so he would have a harder time pulling a psycho on us. As you can tell I don't fuck around. Luckly we survived the night only to have quite a harrowing next day.
Hue is one of the old capitals of Vietnam and is located right in the middle of the country between Hanoi in the North and Saigon in the South. We rocked the night train there with our Malaysian buddy Edward and I actually slept pretty well since this time the train didn't have a bunch of cockroaches. What sucked is I was sort of getting sick and then in the first day in Hue I pretty much overdid it and felt terrible the whole day. First we went out in the heat and got some Bun Bo Hue at this restaurant that my buddy Dennis recommended then we went to the Citadel which is basically the Viet forbidden city (like the one in Beijing). It's even called the forbidden purple city. Anyways it was pretty hot out and my regular ultra sweatyness was really peaking and I was just starting to feel really exhausted and light headed. Anyways we eventually finished and were able to cab it back to the hostel to chill for a bit.
We were def staying in the party hostel of Hue which sucked cause I just wasn't in the condition to party. After we sat for a bit we went to go look for another restaurant that Dennis had recommended. This time though, our cab gave us the huge runaround. When I realized it I started pointing to the map and angrily gesturing to Edward who was sitting shotgun. When we got there (it was closed) we only paid the guy 40/67.5k. He was confused and we kept trying to show him on the map where he had fucked us. He didn't speak english and we didn't speak vietnamese. We sort of had a standoff and he called over some woman who also didn't speak english. we showed what happened on the map and I think she said "well you cheated them" because after that he basically gave up. We walked away to go to greener (and open) pastures.
We made our way down to Lac Thanh which is famous for being run by a deaf man. In vietnam everytime something successful opens there's tons of copycats on the same block. This was no exception and makes me wonder if the other restaurants were also staffed by deaf folks. It'd be fucked up if they faked it, we really don't know. They pretty shamelessly advertised themselves as the same place and all their signs even quoted the lonely planet. Anyways inside the restaurant people sign the wall and we found the signatures of Dennis, my friend Katrina, and their whole UCLA crew. Pretty cool. Sadly the food wasn't that awesome. I mean it wasn't bad but compared to our next meal it was decidedly sub par. We did get to try the famed Banh Khuoi which is described as a "vietnamese taco" and was this egg batter taco thing with shrimp, pork, and veggies. Did i mention it's fried? Yet it's as good as it sounds
About a half mile from there was the "night food street" and oh what a glorious place it was. We sat down at a street stall named Thuy and had hella nem lui (pork on bamboo sticks put into spring rolls, decadent ass barbequed pork belly, and this other pork thing that comes with little rice dumplings. IT WAS FUCKING AWESOME. Sadly we couldn't cab it back and the walk home was really difficult due to me being sick.
Next day I resolved to take it easy and pretty much did just that. Highlights include going to get diff Bun Bo Hue for lunch along with other Hue specialities like Banh Beo (little rice pancakes with shredded shripm and fish sauce), and Banh Nam (Riced paste with shrimp and pork inside wrapped in a banana leaf. Then that evening we had a redic decadent return to the night food street which started with more of the tacos and what seems to be the most popular taco joint in Hue, a return to Thuy's featuring half of a charcoal roasted duck that just about might have been the best thing I've eaten this year, more of the pork dumplings, a jaunt at a popular fried rice place, and finally another taco. It was mad filthy awesome. Sort of inexcusable due to our sobriety.
The third day (our last) was marked by Edward's departure to Hoi An and us going out to the same restaurant where i had Bun Hen (dry noodles with special hue clams) which was spicy and deeelicious, some banh lac (same as Banh Nem but with shredded shrimp, i actually didn't like) plus a later snack of Banh Ram It (shrimp over rice cake over a bit of pork over a fried rice cake about slider sized.) which was pretty tasty as well as a texan burger at our hostel. I know this all sounds mad gluttinous, and to a certain degree it was but we were splitting everything and all the Banh stuff is pretty small.
Finally flew to Saigon and had a horrible time getting to our last hostel. On the street we were staying on the numbers sort of just start over again at random intervals and to make a long story short it took us 3 cabs to get there. 2 cabs to eventually get us to somewhere with wifi so i could use my ipod to find the hostel's number and the 3rd cabbie spoke to the concierge so we finally made it.
Here's where it got waaaay weirder. Our concierge was this swiss french guy who was impossibly weird. He was like the "yesssssssssssssssss" guy from the simpsons but real. I'm not even kidding. He was pretty impossible to talk to without laughing. I really am not a good enough writer to describe him but if you see me, ask me to do an impression and maybe i'll be able to convey how nuts this guy was. The thing is he was also suuuuper friendly but his weirdness just made my skin crawl.
We didn't wanna spend long in the hostel and went into town center (our hostel was by the airport) and findally made it to the Banh Xeo place that had thwarted me before. These Banh Xeo (think vietnamese dosa?) were enormous and we had 10 spring rolls after. These were probably the best spring rolls we had during our whole trip in Vietnam. After that we went to the bar area we had stayed at before. We went to both the bars we'd hit up before and it was cool cause all the folks remembered us. At the bar AK Hideaway we met the owner who was this Brit that couldn't have been more than 2 years older than me. He talked to us for a long time because he was super excited that we knew a bit about british hip hop. There was also this nice ausie guy who between their two accents I think I only understood 2/3 of the conversation.
Finally we made it back to our hotel where the frenchman was thankfully asleep. I didn't wanna take any chances though so I stacked our bags in front of the door so he would have a harder time pulling a psycho on us. As you can tell I don't fuck around. Luckly we survived the night only to have quite a harrowing next day.
Monday, May 10, 2010
From the Bay to Halong Bayayayayayayay
We more less ran out of stuff to do in Hanoi after two days (still some pagodas and the mausoleum) but rather than try and strech 4 hours of stuff in to 2 days we opted to go to to Halong Bay instead. If you've never heard of Halong Bay it's about 3 hours from Hanoi and is a bay full of these giant rock island things. It's really crazy looking. Straight Avatar shit really. It's supposed to be pretty hard to take a day trip there and folks really recommend you stay overnight so we signed up for a boat tour.
We hopped on the 8 am bus/van to Halong Bay, got there and were herded onto a tiny boat whose pilot was wearing a rainbow sombrero (maybe it was part of his job? maybe he just wanted to be stylin) and went to the larger boat where we were gonna spend the next day and a half. We got to the boat (I'M ON A BOAT!) and got to know the other folks on our tour. We had some Irish, Aussie, British folks , and 1 american who were all the young 20's crowd. On top of that we had 2 old japanese dudes who looked pretty gangster along with a middle aged vietnamese woman who Mr. Ota called his sweetheart. Overall the group of folks was really chill. Pretty sausage festy but i suppose that's the story of my life.
They took us to these awesome caves which were just full of insane stalagtites and stalagmites. It was called surprise cave apparently because the 3rd chamber had a rock that couldn't be anything other than phallic. So surprise! ... it's a dick! There was also a lucky turtle statue and stuff that you could pat for good luck. Our tour guide who called himself "Lucky" after surviving a drunken scooter crash, made tons and tons of bad jokes and pointed to various other rocks that sort of looked like people or monkeys. I imagine someone got really high and just went in there and was like "look a monkey! look a man and woman kissing" and just named everything.
Afterwards we got to go kayaking in the bay which was mad fun. It was my first time kayaking and I def dont' want it to be my last. we got to go in some cavey places and met some british girls that we got to chat with for about 20 minutes before parting ways. After that we took the little boat back to the main one and took turns jumping off the top floor. When I was swimming back to the boat i managed to cut my leg on something sharp underneath. Pretty small cut and pretty AWESOME.
Later in the night we did squid fishing, which is just sitting on the edge of the boat dangling this thing with 4 hooks in the water until a squid just comes up to it to take a look and you jerk it out, hook him, and bam have a squid. In 3 hours one guy caught 1 squid. Still pretty cool. We did kareoke after and I was personally very proud of my renditions of "can you feel the love tonight" and "wild horses". The folks in our group chose pretty funny songs. I must say that the dutch have very quaint taste in music.
During the whole trip hte food was basically shitty chinese american food which was pretty dissapointing. The highlight was deep fried pieces of corn. woooo.... They also charged 2 bucks a beer which seems cheap but in town you can get beer from a quarter to a dollar so it was basically highway robbery. Outside the boat tons of ladies in smaller boats come around and try to sell you food and beer which is at the normal 1 dollar price. If our boat crew caught us though we'd have to pay an extra 50 cents a beer. So if you get caught it's still cheaper. Lucky said they used to shoo the women away but people weren't getting drunk and having fun so now they just let them come by. The highlight was one of them started pulling of Felix's foot and leg hair. I suspect it was a marriage proposal.
The next day we just sort of boated around for a bit and caught the van back to Hanoi. We made a new friend named Edward from Malaysia who is now travelling with us. He's also a photographer and has got me doing high contrast black and white photography which is basiclaly the EVERY SHOT LOOKS AWESOME MODE.
Once back in Hanoi we had some more Bun Cha, caught a water puppet show which might be the most entertaining two dollars I ever spent then got the train to Hue where I'm typing from right now.
Pretty sweet trip despite the shitty food but it could certainly be worse. I'm really glad to have seen Halong Bay cause it was pretty fucking awesome.
We hopped on the 8 am bus/van to Halong Bay, got there and were herded onto a tiny boat whose pilot was wearing a rainbow sombrero (maybe it was part of his job? maybe he just wanted to be stylin) and went to the larger boat where we were gonna spend the next day and a half. We got to the boat (I'M ON A BOAT!) and got to know the other folks on our tour. We had some Irish, Aussie, British folks , and 1 american who were all the young 20's crowd. On top of that we had 2 old japanese dudes who looked pretty gangster along with a middle aged vietnamese woman who Mr. Ota called his sweetheart. Overall the group of folks was really chill. Pretty sausage festy but i suppose that's the story of my life.
They took us to these awesome caves which were just full of insane stalagtites and stalagmites. It was called surprise cave apparently because the 3rd chamber had a rock that couldn't be anything other than phallic. So surprise! ... it's a dick! There was also a lucky turtle statue and stuff that you could pat for good luck. Our tour guide who called himself "Lucky" after surviving a drunken scooter crash, made tons and tons of bad jokes and pointed to various other rocks that sort of looked like people or monkeys. I imagine someone got really high and just went in there and was like "look a monkey! look a man and woman kissing" and just named everything.
Afterwards we got to go kayaking in the bay which was mad fun. It was my first time kayaking and I def dont' want it to be my last. we got to go in some cavey places and met some british girls that we got to chat with for about 20 minutes before parting ways. After that we took the little boat back to the main one and took turns jumping off the top floor. When I was swimming back to the boat i managed to cut my leg on something sharp underneath. Pretty small cut and pretty AWESOME.
Later in the night we did squid fishing, which is just sitting on the edge of the boat dangling this thing with 4 hooks in the water until a squid just comes up to it to take a look and you jerk it out, hook him, and bam have a squid. In 3 hours one guy caught 1 squid. Still pretty cool. We did kareoke after and I was personally very proud of my renditions of "can you feel the love tonight" and "wild horses". The folks in our group chose pretty funny songs. I must say that the dutch have very quaint taste in music.
During the whole trip hte food was basically shitty chinese american food which was pretty dissapointing. The highlight was deep fried pieces of corn. woooo.... They also charged 2 bucks a beer which seems cheap but in town you can get beer from a quarter to a dollar so it was basically highway robbery. Outside the boat tons of ladies in smaller boats come around and try to sell you food and beer which is at the normal 1 dollar price. If our boat crew caught us though we'd have to pay an extra 50 cents a beer. So if you get caught it's still cheaper. Lucky said they used to shoo the women away but people weren't getting drunk and having fun so now they just let them come by. The highlight was one of them started pulling of Felix's foot and leg hair. I suspect it was a marriage proposal.
The next day we just sort of boated around for a bit and caught the van back to Hanoi. We made a new friend named Edward from Malaysia who is now travelling with us. He's also a photographer and has got me doing high contrast black and white photography which is basiclaly the EVERY SHOT LOOKS AWESOME MODE.
Once back in Hanoi we had some more Bun Cha, caught a water puppet show which might be the most entertaining two dollars I ever spent then got the train to Hue where I'm typing from right now.
Pretty sweet trip despite the shitty food but it could certainly be worse. I'm really glad to have seen Halong Bay cause it was pretty fucking awesome.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Bring on the Hanoizeeee
I'd say that when people think about cities in Vietnam they really only thing about Saigon and Hanoi sort of falls by the wayside. Well I'm not gonna lie, Hanoi is nuts, perhaps even more so than Saigon (though I like Saigon more). It's louder and more crowded (still got nothing on India) and you'll walk around at night and just so much random stuff going on it's pretty crazy.
We got in around 5:30 and took a cab to our hostel. This is the first "look at me I'm a hip hostel" place we've stayed at so far on this trip. There were a few in Europe we went to but I think it's less common in Vietnam. But yea, it's run by aussies, has a movie room, 8 computers, wifi, a pool table, and sells beer. It's kinda cool but I don't know I'm just less into this scene than I was before. Maybe I've grown out of it, maybe I don't feel like partying with euros when I'm in Asia, I'm not totally sure.
After we dropped our stuff our we went out and stumbled into this massive night market and just sort of wandered around till we stopped at a stall for some bomb as pho ga (chicken pho) and then wandered to another stall for a beer, then finally, though unintentionally found our way to the "beer corner" which is quite aptly named. Picture an intersection with 5 streets, 3 of the corners with "bars" or basically tons of plastic chairs filled with 20-40 people, foreign and viet, with the other two corners featuring a random art store and a fro yo joint. It's pretty insane. We knocked back a few, chatted with some Israelis then went to this bar that some polish dude on a scooter gave us a flier for.
Whackest bar ever. Up 4 flights of stairs, expensive drinks, shitty shitty shitty live band, and us trying to get out asap. Afterwards we went to this other popular looking street stall and sort of went to town. We got some beefsteak in gravy and fries (they recommended it), roast pigeon, and roast frog with lot leaves. The beef was way disappointing and everyone else was eating it, bizzaro. The pigeon was just as tasty as they do it in Chinatown. A tiny bird made of all dark meat, and the frog was delicious as well. Felix wasn't really that down for either but he tried so we are proud of his pallettes continued development. I wonder if it's due to proximity that northern Viet food tastes a lot more like Chinese food to me.
Today I woke up for another NBA game and once again it was a blowout but while I was watching it one of the dudes that works here pretty much just came up, asked if he could change it, then proceeded to watch his soaps for an hour. Not gonna lie, not cool man. Just cause I'm actually paying to stay here I feel that I should get dibs on the tv. It's water under the bridge but was bizzare enough to be worth mentioning.
BUN CHA - picture tiny little bits of grilled pork and grilled ground pork in soup. now add a huge ass pile of veggies, soup, noodles, and eggrolls. toss it all together and taste the glory that is bun cha. It's street food but there's a few joints that serve it too. I don't think Hanoi has that much local food so it's one of their main things and it's really pretty awesome. If i opened a bun cha place at home it would blow up.
Cha Ca - I think this is Hanoi's other thing. Basically there's a stove on your table with hella garlicky ass fish. Then they toss in an obscene amount of green onions and leeks and stir it around, toss it in a bowl of vermicelli and fish sauce and you go to town. This is sort of fancy hanoi food i think and it's pretty decent but not as life changing as bun cha. We went to one of the somewhat well known copycats of the really famous place where its' supposed to be really really had to get a table.
Hanoi also has a lot of the crazy Ho Chi Minh stuff. We missed out on his mausoleum because it's only open from 8-11 AM. We were able to check out his old house as well as his stilt house which still had his fish tank. I personally feel like Ho Chi Minh's Goldfish would make a great band name. There was also this one column pagoda which is this small is pagoda on one single column rising out of the middle of the water. Some people think it's too small to be impressive but I really dig the way the water and the shrine jive with each other. Finally there's the totally insane Ho Chi Minh Museum which is organized thematically so there's like a section on the media an on the war and like a 3d version of guernica. It's really totally insane. I'll post pics soon because I'm sort of at a loss to describe it.
Anyways the next blog post will be on Halong Bay!
We got in around 5:30 and took a cab to our hostel. This is the first "look at me I'm a hip hostel" place we've stayed at so far on this trip. There were a few in Europe we went to but I think it's less common in Vietnam. But yea, it's run by aussies, has a movie room, 8 computers, wifi, a pool table, and sells beer. It's kinda cool but I don't know I'm just less into this scene than I was before. Maybe I've grown out of it, maybe I don't feel like partying with euros when I'm in Asia, I'm not totally sure.
After we dropped our stuff our we went out and stumbled into this massive night market and just sort of wandered around till we stopped at a stall for some bomb as pho ga (chicken pho) and then wandered to another stall for a beer, then finally, though unintentionally found our way to the "beer corner" which is quite aptly named. Picture an intersection with 5 streets, 3 of the corners with "bars" or basically tons of plastic chairs filled with 20-40 people, foreign and viet, with the other two corners featuring a random art store and a fro yo joint. It's pretty insane. We knocked back a few, chatted with some Israelis then went to this bar that some polish dude on a scooter gave us a flier for.
Whackest bar ever. Up 4 flights of stairs, expensive drinks, shitty shitty shitty live band, and us trying to get out asap. Afterwards we went to this other popular looking street stall and sort of went to town. We got some beefsteak in gravy and fries (they recommended it), roast pigeon, and roast frog with lot leaves. The beef was way disappointing and everyone else was eating it, bizzaro. The pigeon was just as tasty as they do it in Chinatown. A tiny bird made of all dark meat, and the frog was delicious as well. Felix wasn't really that down for either but he tried so we are proud of his pallettes continued development. I wonder if it's due to proximity that northern Viet food tastes a lot more like Chinese food to me.
Today I woke up for another NBA game and once again it was a blowout but while I was watching it one of the dudes that works here pretty much just came up, asked if he could change it, then proceeded to watch his soaps for an hour. Not gonna lie, not cool man. Just cause I'm actually paying to stay here I feel that I should get dibs on the tv. It's water under the bridge but was bizzare enough to be worth mentioning.
BUN CHA - picture tiny little bits of grilled pork and grilled ground pork in soup. now add a huge ass pile of veggies, soup, noodles, and eggrolls. toss it all together and taste the glory that is bun cha. It's street food but there's a few joints that serve it too. I don't think Hanoi has that much local food so it's one of their main things and it's really pretty awesome. If i opened a bun cha place at home it would blow up.
Cha Ca - I think this is Hanoi's other thing. Basically there's a stove on your table with hella garlicky ass fish. Then they toss in an obscene amount of green onions and leeks and stir it around, toss it in a bowl of vermicelli and fish sauce and you go to town. This is sort of fancy hanoi food i think and it's pretty decent but not as life changing as bun cha. We went to one of the somewhat well known copycats of the really famous place where its' supposed to be really really had to get a table.
Hanoi also has a lot of the crazy Ho Chi Minh stuff. We missed out on his mausoleum because it's only open from 8-11 AM. We were able to check out his old house as well as his stilt house which still had his fish tank. I personally feel like Ho Chi Minh's Goldfish would make a great band name. There was also this one column pagoda which is this small is pagoda on one single column rising out of the middle of the water. Some people think it's too small to be impressive but I really dig the way the water and the shrine jive with each other. Finally there's the totally insane Ho Chi Minh Museum which is organized thematically so there's like a section on the media an on the war and like a 3d version of guernica. It's really totally insane. I'll post pics soon because I'm sort of at a loss to describe it.
Anyways the next blog post will be on Halong Bay!
Hoi An changed my life with a little thing called Mi Quang
Hoi An is this old school town in central Vietnam just South of Da Nang. It's pretty small and is famous for the "old town" section of it which is part of the whole UNESCO thing. Our hotel was pretty cool, the concierge was way friendly and cute to boot. Our room was sorta redic cause I think they're for couples not two dudes backpacking. I say this because there were rose petals on our bed and our bathtowels were arranged in two swans making a heart on one of the beds. Sweet. Anyways it was actually the nicest room we've stayed in so far and had a proper shower as well as AC and cable. I was even able to wake up and watch some NBA playoff action which would have been sick is the game wasn't sort of a blowout. (hawks can't hang and the Vinsanity is back).
All the old town stuff is cool, and well, old and if you're into that sorta stuff you'll dig Hoi An. Everyone is really nice too and though some folks are trying to hustle you they give up pretty quick.
It's also got some fantaaaaastiiiiccccc nooooodddddllllleeeeesssss. There's two types. They're both awesome.
Cau Lau - This is like noodles with some broth and pork and stuff. Apparently you can only really get legit Cau Lau in Hoi An because it needs to be made from water in one of the towns wells. I'm not totally sure I buy this but we asked the cute concierge at our hotel where the locals went for their Cau Lau fixes and after wandering for a while we found it and it was legitimately great. Like a lot of the great Vietnamese food I've had, the flavors a subtle and the textures of the hand cut noodles, tender roast pork, and fresh herbs along with fried wontons and peanuts really is wild.
Mi Quang - Noodlepie describes it as just sort of whatever is lying around the kitchen tossed together. This seems sort of true but it looked like of the 4 bowls of mi quang i had (in 2 days) all the ingredients were made for it specifically. My best bowl was made by this old lady in the market and made my nose run, upper lip burn, and my heart sing. (too cheesy?) it was literally one of the best bowls of noodles I've ever had in my entire life. It was sour, salty, spicy, sweet, and flavors I've never experienced. It was full of fish cake, herbs, chicken, pork, and the assorted sauces of all those ingredients mixed together. If I ever do move to Vietnam you can bet I'm going back to that stall. I'm pretty sure we picked the right one too because ours was full of other old folks who probably figured out which one was best and then proceeded to eat there every single day.
Anyways other parts of the trip include copious amounts of caphe sua da (which makes all the vietnamese people laugh when I try to say it, they also ALL ask if I'm Vietnamese which i suppose is a compliment), white people in rice hats, lots of cute dogs, and tailors at every corner.
Two more anecdotes I want throw in:
One of the places we went for coffee was the shop that was clearly the local zone. Most of the other stores just have foreigners and this one just had people who lived in Hoi An. The chairs were the little plastic ones and when I got up with my knees spread the chair stuck to my butt. Now my ass isn't that big, but my legs were spread so that's what made it happen. I'm just sayin. Anyways everyone seemed to find it funny and laughed with me. One of the ladies near us was chatting with us and then took us to her clothing store and tried to convince us to buy some tailored stuff. Shockingly when we said we weren't gonna get anything she was still nice and just said to come back if we changed our minds.
The other is one of the nights we got really trashed, talked about how we could takeover the food world by storm when society reacts back against the organic pure taste trend and just sell space food. We also discussed how certain food types were like different basketball players. What made this awesome is we ate a bowl of cau lau, mi quang, ban xeo, and this thing of bbq pork wrapped in rice paper. It was straight filthy decadent. Really just an insane amount of food. And to top it off it only costs $6 for the both of us. Wild.
Hoi An was cool. Two days there was more than enough and then we went back to Da Nang to get our flight to Hanoi. Flying is noticeably more expensive than trains, twenty vs fifty bucks + the cost of one nights' lodging because when you take a night train you don't need a hotel) but on the flipside a 14 hour train is less than an hour flight. That's a pretty huge difference.
Anyways I'll make Hanoi a separate post cause it deserves it.
All the old town stuff is cool, and well, old and if you're into that sorta stuff you'll dig Hoi An. Everyone is really nice too and though some folks are trying to hustle you they give up pretty quick.
It's also got some fantaaaaastiiiiccccc nooooodddddllllleeeeesssss. There's two types. They're both awesome.
Cau Lau - This is like noodles with some broth and pork and stuff. Apparently you can only really get legit Cau Lau in Hoi An because it needs to be made from water in one of the towns wells. I'm not totally sure I buy this but we asked the cute concierge at our hotel where the locals went for their Cau Lau fixes and after wandering for a while we found it and it was legitimately great. Like a lot of the great Vietnamese food I've had, the flavors a subtle and the textures of the hand cut noodles, tender roast pork, and fresh herbs along with fried wontons and peanuts really is wild.
Mi Quang - Noodlepie describes it as just sort of whatever is lying around the kitchen tossed together. This seems sort of true but it looked like of the 4 bowls of mi quang i had (in 2 days) all the ingredients were made for it specifically. My best bowl was made by this old lady in the market and made my nose run, upper lip burn, and my heart sing. (too cheesy?) it was literally one of the best bowls of noodles I've ever had in my entire life. It was sour, salty, spicy, sweet, and flavors I've never experienced. It was full of fish cake, herbs, chicken, pork, and the assorted sauces of all those ingredients mixed together. If I ever do move to Vietnam you can bet I'm going back to that stall. I'm pretty sure we picked the right one too because ours was full of other old folks who probably figured out which one was best and then proceeded to eat there every single day.
Anyways other parts of the trip include copious amounts of caphe sua da (which makes all the vietnamese people laugh when I try to say it, they also ALL ask if I'm Vietnamese which i suppose is a compliment), white people in rice hats, lots of cute dogs, and tailors at every corner.
Two more anecdotes I want throw in:
One of the places we went for coffee was the shop that was clearly the local zone. Most of the other stores just have foreigners and this one just had people who lived in Hoi An. The chairs were the little plastic ones and when I got up with my knees spread the chair stuck to my butt. Now my ass isn't that big, but my legs were spread so that's what made it happen. I'm just sayin. Anyways everyone seemed to find it funny and laughed with me. One of the ladies near us was chatting with us and then took us to her clothing store and tried to convince us to buy some tailored stuff. Shockingly when we said we weren't gonna get anything she was still nice and just said to come back if we changed our minds.
The other is one of the nights we got really trashed, talked about how we could takeover the food world by storm when society reacts back against the organic pure taste trend and just sell space food. We also discussed how certain food types were like different basketball players. What made this awesome is we ate a bowl of cau lau, mi quang, ban xeo, and this thing of bbq pork wrapped in rice paper. It was straight filthy decadent. Really just an insane amount of food. And to top it off it only costs $6 for the both of us. Wild.
Hoi An was cool. Two days there was more than enough and then we went back to Da Nang to get our flight to Hanoi. Flying is noticeably more expensive than trains, twenty vs fifty bucks + the cost of one nights' lodging because when you take a night train you don't need a hotel) but on the flipside a 14 hour train is less than an hour flight. That's a pretty huge difference.
Anyways I'll make Hanoi a separate post cause it deserves it.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Ban Xeo Fail + Trains All Day Errday Saigon-Nha Trang-Hoi An
To pick up where I left off, we went to go find the legendary Banh Xeo46 which was dissapointingly closed for what looked like those two days all year. Luckily there was mad street good outside and we went and saw what looked like a crackin Com Tam place. The owner was way amused by my camera and was showing me what shots I should get. Mind you no conversation was happening just a lot of smilling and pointing. The food was bomb diggity tooo and cost like $2. We also copped some mangosteen of a tip from my friend veronica. We didn't really know how to eat it and the fruit lady we got it from sensed our confusion and cut it open revealing the awesome looking fruity bit within.
We still had some time to burn so we figured back to the bars would be a good way to go. The folks who work at the bars pretty much just stand outside and try to convince you to come in. We didn't really have any particular plans so when this dude at the "boston bar" was like come in friends we were like sure w/e. Inside we're pretty sure he started hitting on me which was sort of awkward but I do suppose I'm flattered. We met this british dude too who was doing a whole 1 year trip around the world. Pretty jealous of that. By the time we got a few beers under our belt it was about that time to catch our night train. The difference between stations here and in India cannot be overstated. The ones here have convenience stores that make India's supermarkets look like food stalls. What's even crazier was that the train LEFT AND ARRIVED ON TIME. We haven't been accustomed to this in a while. On the down side our berths had plenty of roaches which, though I know can't bite me, the thought of them and the relative discomfort of the cot meant that I don't think I slept more than an hour or two during the trip.
We got into Nha Trang at around 5:30 Am napped in our hotel and went to hit the beach. Nha Trang is supposed to be like THE beach town for vietnam and it didn't really disappoint. We posted up at this one spot and got some beers. Hella people come up to try to sell you things, from sunglasses, to fruit, to random books, to fresh seafood that they cook on the spot. We ended up copping some sunglasses which felix is self conscious in and I went for it with one of the seafood ladies. They have these little charcoal grills and pretty much cook your fresh ass seafood on the spot, I had some crab, shrimp, scallop and snail. She had lobster but I couldn't do it on my budget sadly. It was delicious and though I know i got ripped off it was a worthwhile experience.
The water in Nha Trang is ridiculously warm. Like warmer than the water I use to shower. It's also mad salty and buoyant and makes for a great let me float around time. These random viet dudes who were swimming gave us this thing of 6 pieces of styrofoam abour 1x1" tied together in a bundle. It was sort of cool cause you could sit on it be neptune on his throne.
Anyways to end the night we went to this popular bar called the sailling club and there were these two hippie girls from Japan doing the poi ball fire spinning stuff and I'm not gonna lie one of them was the hottest thing since fire. The entire bar just sort of watched them do their thing for like 2 hours and it was pretty funny seeing the various patrons and staff hit on them. I took some pretty sweet pics and got one of their emails so I'll send them over eventually.
That part was pretty awesome. What wasn't awesome is we stayed to watch till two and were supposed to wake up at 4:30 to get the train to Da Nang. Needless to say we woke up at 5:30 (when our train left) and had to leave the hotel by 6 AM due to the amazing institution of 24 hour checkout... So we got to the train station in Nha Trang, were unable to get a refund, and then had to get a train to Danang for 12:45. This also meant we had 6 hours to kill starting at 7am. CAN YOU SAY AWESOME?! Luckily one of the main non beach attractions of Nha Trang was nearby. It's this really cool buddhist temple with a sick altar, giant reclining buddha, and even larger seated buddha. It was siiiick. We then got some mi quang and banh mi from a street stall that was legit and proceeded to waste the next 3 hours in the only bookstore in nha trang, also conveniently located near the train station. Luckily I've been dying to read the Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives book as well as stuff on BBQ and Scotland. Finally before we left we had a delicious 1$ bowl of ox tail pho.
The train itself was pretty misereable because felix and I are really just too big for the seats. At least two big to sleep. It didn't stop Felix but I don't think I slept more than one out of the 9 hours on the train. One part was really funny though when this large late-middle aged vietnamese woman started talking to me, in vietnamese, and pointing to my cargo shorts and laughing hysterically. She didn't know a word of english and unless she's talking about food i don't know a word of vietnamese so all i could do was smile. Maybe she was saying "HAHAHAHA Look at those cargo shorts! what is this? 2002?" She randomly talked to me a few more times on the ride and all i could really do was smile and nod.
The train also had TV's that showed shitty american movies like the never ending story and MI2 as well as lots of tom and jerry. What made them hilarious was every character in every show/movie was narrated by the same deadpan vietnamese woman. It made MI2 much better in my opinion
We finally got to Danang at 11 and had to take an hour cab to Hoi An. The cabbie who picked us up seemed sort of drunk and drove us somewhere close where a lady took over from him. During the course of the ride I had to pee like it was the end of the world and getting her to stop was mad difficult due to the language barrier. When I was eventually able to get her to stop on the way her and felix shared a laugh as she realized what I was doing. When we finally got to the hotel they were sort of closed and the very groggy but cute receptionist had to sort of wake up before we could finally get to our room to end the 12 hours of sleep in 3 days marathon.
I'll write about Hoi An tomorrow because I'm still here!
Other highlights of Nha Trang:
1. Grilling your own meat on a charcoal grill on your table! a sort of out of the way local joint and it was bombbbb
2. Eating claypot fish at a restaurant that supports a local orphanage!
3. getting EXTREME CLEAN bodywash so i can feel EXTREMELY CLEAN
4. You can buy Jim Beam and Coke in a bottle as a complete beverage
We still had some time to burn so we figured back to the bars would be a good way to go. The folks who work at the bars pretty much just stand outside and try to convince you to come in. We didn't really have any particular plans so when this dude at the "boston bar" was like come in friends we were like sure w/e. Inside we're pretty sure he started hitting on me which was sort of awkward but I do suppose I'm flattered. We met this british dude too who was doing a whole 1 year trip around the world. Pretty jealous of that. By the time we got a few beers under our belt it was about that time to catch our night train. The difference between stations here and in India cannot be overstated. The ones here have convenience stores that make India's supermarkets look like food stalls. What's even crazier was that the train LEFT AND ARRIVED ON TIME. We haven't been accustomed to this in a while. On the down side our berths had plenty of roaches which, though I know can't bite me, the thought of them and the relative discomfort of the cot meant that I don't think I slept more than an hour or two during the trip.
We got into Nha Trang at around 5:30 Am napped in our hotel and went to hit the beach. Nha Trang is supposed to be like THE beach town for vietnam and it didn't really disappoint. We posted up at this one spot and got some beers. Hella people come up to try to sell you things, from sunglasses, to fruit, to random books, to fresh seafood that they cook on the spot. We ended up copping some sunglasses which felix is self conscious in and I went for it with one of the seafood ladies. They have these little charcoal grills and pretty much cook your fresh ass seafood on the spot, I had some crab, shrimp, scallop and snail. She had lobster but I couldn't do it on my budget sadly. It was delicious and though I know i got ripped off it was a worthwhile experience.
The water in Nha Trang is ridiculously warm. Like warmer than the water I use to shower. It's also mad salty and buoyant and makes for a great let me float around time. These random viet dudes who were swimming gave us this thing of 6 pieces of styrofoam abour 1x1" tied together in a bundle. It was sort of cool cause you could sit on it be neptune on his throne.
Anyways to end the night we went to this popular bar called the sailling club and there were these two hippie girls from Japan doing the poi ball fire spinning stuff and I'm not gonna lie one of them was the hottest thing since fire. The entire bar just sort of watched them do their thing for like 2 hours and it was pretty funny seeing the various patrons and staff hit on them. I took some pretty sweet pics and got one of their emails so I'll send them over eventually.
That part was pretty awesome. What wasn't awesome is we stayed to watch till two and were supposed to wake up at 4:30 to get the train to Da Nang. Needless to say we woke up at 5:30 (when our train left) and had to leave the hotel by 6 AM due to the amazing institution of 24 hour checkout... So we got to the train station in Nha Trang, were unable to get a refund, and then had to get a train to Danang for 12:45. This also meant we had 6 hours to kill starting at 7am. CAN YOU SAY AWESOME?! Luckily one of the main non beach attractions of Nha Trang was nearby. It's this really cool buddhist temple with a sick altar, giant reclining buddha, and even larger seated buddha. It was siiiick. We then got some mi quang and banh mi from a street stall that was legit and proceeded to waste the next 3 hours in the only bookstore in nha trang, also conveniently located near the train station. Luckily I've been dying to read the Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives book as well as stuff on BBQ and Scotland. Finally before we left we had a delicious 1$ bowl of ox tail pho.
The train itself was pretty misereable because felix and I are really just too big for the seats. At least two big to sleep. It didn't stop Felix but I don't think I slept more than one out of the 9 hours on the train. One part was really funny though when this large late-middle aged vietnamese woman started talking to me, in vietnamese, and pointing to my cargo shorts and laughing hysterically. She didn't know a word of english and unless she's talking about food i don't know a word of vietnamese so all i could do was smile. Maybe she was saying "HAHAHAHA Look at those cargo shorts! what is this? 2002?" She randomly talked to me a few more times on the ride and all i could really do was smile and nod.
The train also had TV's that showed shitty american movies like the never ending story and MI2 as well as lots of tom and jerry. What made them hilarious was every character in every show/movie was narrated by the same deadpan vietnamese woman. It made MI2 much better in my opinion
We finally got to Danang at 11 and had to take an hour cab to Hoi An. The cabbie who picked us up seemed sort of drunk and drove us somewhere close where a lady took over from him. During the course of the ride I had to pee like it was the end of the world and getting her to stop was mad difficult due to the language barrier. When I was eventually able to get her to stop on the way her and felix shared a laugh as she realized what I was doing. When we finally got to the hotel they were sort of closed and the very groggy but cute receptionist had to sort of wake up before we could finally get to our room to end the 12 hours of sleep in 3 days marathon.
I'll write about Hoi An tomorrow because I'm still here!
Other highlights of Nha Trang:
1. Grilling your own meat on a charcoal grill on your table! a sort of out of the way local joint and it was bombbbb
2. Eating claypot fish at a restaurant that supports a local orphanage!
3. getting EXTREME CLEAN bodywash so i can feel EXTREMELY CLEAN
4. You can buy Jim Beam and Coke in a bottle as a complete beverage
Monday, May 3, 2010
HCMHSaigon Days 2+3
I'm really enjoying this city. I think I could do 6 months here without too many problems. It's not as cheap as India but it's still mad cheap and stuff like decent internet connections and other trappings of home abound. I might look into doing some sort of teaching program here. Maybe ideally try to find 4 diff 6 month programs in like Vietnam, Japan, China and Taiwan. That would rock really hard and I'll start looking into it when I get home. Law school isn't going anywhere.
Anyways Felix got in yesterday around 12:30 so I had some major time to kill in the morning. What was sweet was that the Mayweather fight was totally on TV here and I was able to watch it at a bar for roughly the price of one beer. That guy is nuts, he's really crazy good in a scary way. You can tell from the way he moves that he sees literally everything going on in pretty much slow motion. I've seen a lot of fighters and I've never seen anyone so perfectly read their opponent and just know exactly what punch Mosley would throw and where. He was literally 6 steps ahead of his opponent and was able to just throw perfect counters after perfect slips. I think if he wanted the knockout he would have had to rick getting hit a bit more so as his reputation for someone who isn't really into taking risks goes he pulled the safe path and just picked apart his opponent and dominated him in the way that was least likely to get him hit. I really don't know how Pacquiao, as much as I'm a fan of the guy, would do against Mayweather.
Anyways after the fight I sat on the street to wait for Felix since our hostel was in a little as alley that you would be pretty unlikely to find. I ended up sitting there for over an hour and in my boredom bought a pack of 555 cigarettes which i've never seen. Something about being in Asia makes me want to smoke. Earlier in the morning I was perusing this amazing food blog about Vietnam called NoodlePie (http://www.noodlepie.com/0) and was writing down the names and addresses for what are considered to be the best spots by locals. If you know me, you know I'm really into getting the local flavor on stuff and do my best to stray away from the famous tourist places. I really like going to restaurants and everyone just being like wtf is this guy doing here. So when Felix got in I pretty much had our meals planned.
First off we had Bun Oc which is snail soup! We went to this place: http://www.noodlepie.com/2005/09/tip_off_bun_oc.html and got some Bun Oc and this other thing of snails and fried bananas. Felix probably wouldn't have gone normally but since I caught him disoriented from a red-eye flight I was able to just drag him along. It was delicious. The fresh herbs and the light sourness of the soup really jived with the texture and taste of the snails. I personally haven't had snails in a few years and was a little worried but it was bombbbb.
Afterwards we went back and felix napped while I chilled at a coffee shop with free wifi waiting for dinner.
Dinner was awesome too! we got Banh trang phoi suong (http://www.noodlepie.com/2005/04/porked.html) and it rocked our socks. Tender slices of boiled pork with an obscene amount of veggies and this really tough rice paper plus noodles and plenty of fish sauce! We also got some spring rolls which were unreal in the softness of their inside and some Bun Bo Hue. Fucking awesome. The waiter thought I was Vietnamese and tried talking to me but all I could do was sort of stare blankly and say I was sorry.
We chilled in the area for a bit and eventually headed back to our backpacker area where ewe eventaully went out to a bar because we really haven't been drunk during the trip much. India's heat is just too forbidding to hangovers. The first bar we went to was called "Bread and Butter" and was owned by this dude from Baltimore. It was pretty Irishy in terms of music, patrons, and programs. The folks there were super cool and we chatted about how hard it was go get a job with the Irish expats who were now teaching English here. The idea of all these Vietnamese people learning English with an Irish accent is pretty hilarious. During periods of serious conversation the bartender, who's been here for 4 years, was breaking down some pretty real stuff. He was talking about how prostitution and sex work here is such a means for survival in a country that is desperately poor despite the glitz of Saigon. He was saying how one girl, who might well be married, could make enough money with foreigners that she could support her entire extended family and buy houses for them in the countryside. He was saying how this is compounded by the taboo on premarital sex so that women, once no longer virgins couldn't afford to be burdens on their families and would almost have to come to places like Saigon to do sex work. It was pretty unreal. He said that compared to the US where a lot of women that do sex work were sexually abused as children and their work was an extention of the mental scarring, here it was really just a job. A job that pays more than damn near any other jobs in Vietnam, especially for women.
Eventually that bar closed and we went to one down the street that the dude from Seattle in our hostel said was owned by his friend. It was sort of dead by the 3 bartender girls were nice and there was this group of fairly obnoxious Irish girls that wouldn't really leave us alone. The said we were boring and that we weren't making conversation but honestly I just didn't really have anything I wanted to talk to them about. I told them I could fake it and went into "LOOK AT ME AND HOW ENTHUSIASTIC I AM ABOUT YOUR LIFE" mode to try and turn my sarcasm knob all the way to 11 but it sort of went over their heads. Talking to the bartenders was cool though and one of them told us about the Mekong Delta and stuff. After they closed we went to walk around and saw a really busy Hu Tieu stall so we sat down. The bartender from the Mekong Delta was there and she told me what to get and it was bombbbbbbb. While there the Irish girls harrased us again.
Then in the 3rd and final bar we went to, they were still there to harrass us a bit. This last place, T&R was all foreigners except for the bartenders. We had our last beers and stumbled home.
We got to follow this up with the awesome hangover morning wake up at 7:30 to go check out the Cu Chi Tunnels. We dragged ourselves and our headaches over to the travel agency and eventually got picked up by a van. In our group was two argintineans, 2 latvians, 4 swedish girls, an old German man (who was from Munich and lived really close to my friend Beverly!) and 2 New Zealanders. Everyone was cool and we got to know each other throughout the day. The driver introduced himself like this: "Hello, I'm Joey, like a baby kangaroo. So I'm your baby kangaroo." he was pretty redic and opinionated and said stuff like how people in the south hate the north for taking away a lot of their wealth after the war and that northerners were just jealous. I guess political repression here is no where near China's where you can be damn sure no one would say stuff like that. He still revered Ho Chi Minh though. He also said he liked Obama and said that our president had pledged to help all the agent orange victims. He also said that he liked obama because he was the first "chocolate baby" to become president. I don't know if he's just mad not PC or if that's the standard parlance of Vietnam. He certainly didn't say it in a disparaging way.
Along the way we stopped at this place which was called handicapped handicrafts where supposedly people who were victims of Agent Orange work to build handicrafts and that all the money spent there would go towards their benefit. I'm not sure how true that all is but I bought a cool piggy bank anyways.
The tunnels were nuts. Seeing all the traps and stuff were insane. Our guide was pretty hilarious and replete with terrible terrible jokes. Felix and I also got to fire an AK47 and M60. Both were insanely loud and the "rangemaster" if you can call him that, was redic. He was just laughing the whole time and patting our backs. It was bizzaro world. If you ever find your way out here I'd def check out the tunnels, they're worth the half-day trip. We also saw a really awesome/poorly narrated movie about the war where the VC soldiers would get medals called "America Killer" and stuff. Because of our guides thick accent I ended up having to explain a lot of the stuff to the Argintinean and German people. I think I'm just more used to the accent and those folks weren't really native speakers anyways. Some crazy stuff we learned was that in the vent holes Americans would use dogs to try to sniff out the VC. The VC countered by taking American clothes and putting them near the vents to confuse the dogs. We also dropped tons of cobras from India and Thailand which apparently did kill tons of VC but also provided food for them and venom to lace the traps with. The tour culminates with a 100 meter tunnel that's about 3.5 feet high with exits every 20 meters if you freak out. Felix and I did 40 and were sort of over it since we're both a bit tall and were sort of scrapping the roof the whole way. That and it was mad hot in there. Outside the tour guide said I could be a VC because I was keeping up with him. I guess thats a big compliment for him?
Anyways we eventually got back and went to this place called Quan 94 (another noodle pie place http://www.noodlepie.com/2004/04/cool_crabs.html) that specialized in crabs. We had awesome deep fried soft shell crabs and pork/crab rolls. The crabs were so fresh they were literally alive by the entrance and just tossed in the fryer when we ordered them. Fucking AMAZING.
I'm just digging the food here way too much. Like I could do this all day everyday. Indian food 3 meals a day feels heavy but Vietnamese food, unless you gorge on com tam, never really gives me the same feel. It just tastes mad fresh too.
Right now we're chilling at a coffee shop with wifi burning time till dinner (we gonna Ban Xeo it up!) and then we got a night train to Nha Trang at 11. This is one of those constants of backpacking, having no where to go and lots of time to spend. These sort of coffee shops where I can swill caphe sua da in AC excellence make it waaaay easier.
Sadly I'm going to conclude the post with something that made me furious here. There was some fucking hick american berating one of the workers here who got him the wrong beer. He wanted a Saigon red and she brought him a Siagon green. He literally accused her of lying and was saying how she needs to learn english because it's the money language. I really should have stopped it. I was really close to just smashing a chair on his head. I hate it when Americans go to someone else's country and are indignant about their lack of proficiency with english. For fucks sake we're in Vietnam, people here speak vietnamese, the onus needs to be on you to talk to them. I regret not stepping up but short of just beating the shit out of him and getting arrested I'm not sure what I could have done. I probably should have done it anyways. He then went and sat next to some Vietnamese girl who was just sipping her drink and loudly told her the whole story making her uncomfortable enough to leave halfway through her beverage. When she left she shot me and the folks near me that "wtf was that guy's deal" face and we all just smiled sadly back at her. Honestly if i catch that guy pulling that crap again, which is unlikely, I'm going to say something. My blood was boiling then and it is now just thinking about it again. The fucking nerve of that man.
Anyways all the images here are from NoodlePie and I'll change them to some I took and add more when I get to be on a more private computer. If you're the NoodlePie guy thanks so much for writing your awesome blog and if you want me to take down the pics just message me and I would be glad to.
Anyways Felix got in yesterday around 12:30 so I had some major time to kill in the morning. What was sweet was that the Mayweather fight was totally on TV here and I was able to watch it at a bar for roughly the price of one beer. That guy is nuts, he's really crazy good in a scary way. You can tell from the way he moves that he sees literally everything going on in pretty much slow motion. I've seen a lot of fighters and I've never seen anyone so perfectly read their opponent and just know exactly what punch Mosley would throw and where. He was literally 6 steps ahead of his opponent and was able to just throw perfect counters after perfect slips. I think if he wanted the knockout he would have had to rick getting hit a bit more so as his reputation for someone who isn't really into taking risks goes he pulled the safe path and just picked apart his opponent and dominated him in the way that was least likely to get him hit. I really don't know how Pacquiao, as much as I'm a fan of the guy, would do against Mayweather.
Anyways after the fight I sat on the street to wait for Felix since our hostel was in a little as alley that you would be pretty unlikely to find. I ended up sitting there for over an hour and in my boredom bought a pack of 555 cigarettes which i've never seen. Something about being in Asia makes me want to smoke. Earlier in the morning I was perusing this amazing food blog about Vietnam called NoodlePie (http://www.noodlepie.com/0) and was writing down the names and addresses for what are considered to be the best spots by locals. If you know me, you know I'm really into getting the local flavor on stuff and do my best to stray away from the famous tourist places. I really like going to restaurants and everyone just being like wtf is this guy doing here. So when Felix got in I pretty much had our meals planned.
First off we had Bun Oc which is snail soup! We went to this place: http://www.noodlepie.com/2005/09/tip_off_bun_oc.html and got some Bun Oc and this other thing of snails and fried bananas. Felix probably wouldn't have gone normally but since I caught him disoriented from a red-eye flight I was able to just drag him along. It was delicious. The fresh herbs and the light sourness of the soup really jived with the texture and taste of the snails. I personally haven't had snails in a few years and was a little worried but it was bombbbb.
Afterwards we went back and felix napped while I chilled at a coffee shop with free wifi waiting for dinner.
Dinner was awesome too! we got Banh trang phoi suong (http://www.noodlepie.com/2005/04/porked.html) and it rocked our socks. Tender slices of boiled pork with an obscene amount of veggies and this really tough rice paper plus noodles and plenty of fish sauce! We also got some spring rolls which were unreal in the softness of their inside and some Bun Bo Hue. Fucking awesome. The waiter thought I was Vietnamese and tried talking to me but all I could do was sort of stare blankly and say I was sorry.
We chilled in the area for a bit and eventually headed back to our backpacker area where ewe eventaully went out to a bar because we really haven't been drunk during the trip much. India's heat is just too forbidding to hangovers. The first bar we went to was called "Bread and Butter" and was owned by this dude from Baltimore. It was pretty Irishy in terms of music, patrons, and programs. The folks there were super cool and we chatted about how hard it was go get a job with the Irish expats who were now teaching English here. The idea of all these Vietnamese people learning English with an Irish accent is pretty hilarious. During periods of serious conversation the bartender, who's been here for 4 years, was breaking down some pretty real stuff. He was talking about how prostitution and sex work here is such a means for survival in a country that is desperately poor despite the glitz of Saigon. He was saying how one girl, who might well be married, could make enough money with foreigners that she could support her entire extended family and buy houses for them in the countryside. He was saying how this is compounded by the taboo on premarital sex so that women, once no longer virgins couldn't afford to be burdens on their families and would almost have to come to places like Saigon to do sex work. It was pretty unreal. He said that compared to the US where a lot of women that do sex work were sexually abused as children and their work was an extention of the mental scarring, here it was really just a job. A job that pays more than damn near any other jobs in Vietnam, especially for women.
Eventually that bar closed and we went to one down the street that the dude from Seattle in our hostel said was owned by his friend. It was sort of dead by the 3 bartender girls were nice and there was this group of fairly obnoxious Irish girls that wouldn't really leave us alone. The said we were boring and that we weren't making conversation but honestly I just didn't really have anything I wanted to talk to them about. I told them I could fake it and went into "LOOK AT ME AND HOW ENTHUSIASTIC I AM ABOUT YOUR LIFE" mode to try and turn my sarcasm knob all the way to 11 but it sort of went over their heads. Talking to the bartenders was cool though and one of them told us about the Mekong Delta and stuff. After they closed we went to walk around and saw a really busy Hu Tieu stall so we sat down. The bartender from the Mekong Delta was there and she told me what to get and it was bombbbbbbb. While there the Irish girls harrased us again.
Then in the 3rd and final bar we went to, they were still there to harrass us a bit. This last place, T&R was all foreigners except for the bartenders. We had our last beers and stumbled home.
We got to follow this up with the awesome hangover morning wake up at 7:30 to go check out the Cu Chi Tunnels. We dragged ourselves and our headaches over to the travel agency and eventually got picked up by a van. In our group was two argintineans, 2 latvians, 4 swedish girls, an old German man (who was from Munich and lived really close to my friend Beverly!) and 2 New Zealanders. Everyone was cool and we got to know each other throughout the day. The driver introduced himself like this: "Hello, I'm Joey, like a baby kangaroo. So I'm your baby kangaroo." he was pretty redic and opinionated and said stuff like how people in the south hate the north for taking away a lot of their wealth after the war and that northerners were just jealous. I guess political repression here is no where near China's where you can be damn sure no one would say stuff like that. He still revered Ho Chi Minh though. He also said he liked Obama and said that our president had pledged to help all the agent orange victims. He also said that he liked obama because he was the first "chocolate baby" to become president. I don't know if he's just mad not PC or if that's the standard parlance of Vietnam. He certainly didn't say it in a disparaging way.
Along the way we stopped at this place which was called handicapped handicrafts where supposedly people who were victims of Agent Orange work to build handicrafts and that all the money spent there would go towards their benefit. I'm not sure how true that all is but I bought a cool piggy bank anyways.
The tunnels were nuts. Seeing all the traps and stuff were insane. Our guide was pretty hilarious and replete with terrible terrible jokes. Felix and I also got to fire an AK47 and M60. Both were insanely loud and the "rangemaster" if you can call him that, was redic. He was just laughing the whole time and patting our backs. It was bizzaro world. If you ever find your way out here I'd def check out the tunnels, they're worth the half-day trip. We also saw a really awesome/poorly narrated movie about the war where the VC soldiers would get medals called "America Killer" and stuff. Because of our guides thick accent I ended up having to explain a lot of the stuff to the Argintinean and German people. I think I'm just more used to the accent and those folks weren't really native speakers anyways. Some crazy stuff we learned was that in the vent holes Americans would use dogs to try to sniff out the VC. The VC countered by taking American clothes and putting them near the vents to confuse the dogs. We also dropped tons of cobras from India and Thailand which apparently did kill tons of VC but also provided food for them and venom to lace the traps with. The tour culminates with a 100 meter tunnel that's about 3.5 feet high with exits every 20 meters if you freak out. Felix and I did 40 and were sort of over it since we're both a bit tall and were sort of scrapping the roof the whole way. That and it was mad hot in there. Outside the tour guide said I could be a VC because I was keeping up with him. I guess thats a big compliment for him?
Anyways we eventually got back and went to this place called Quan 94 (another noodle pie place http://www.noodlepie.com/2004/04/cool_crabs.html) that specialized in crabs. We had awesome deep fried soft shell crabs and pork/crab rolls. The crabs were so fresh they were literally alive by the entrance and just tossed in the fryer when we ordered them. Fucking AMAZING.
I'm just digging the food here way too much. Like I could do this all day everyday. Indian food 3 meals a day feels heavy but Vietnamese food, unless you gorge on com tam, never really gives me the same feel. It just tastes mad fresh too.
Right now we're chilling at a coffee shop with wifi burning time till dinner (we gonna Ban Xeo it up!) and then we got a night train to Nha Trang at 11. This is one of those constants of backpacking, having no where to go and lots of time to spend. These sort of coffee shops where I can swill caphe sua da in AC excellence make it waaaay easier.
Sadly I'm going to conclude the post with something that made me furious here. There was some fucking hick american berating one of the workers here who got him the wrong beer. He wanted a Saigon red and she brought him a Siagon green. He literally accused her of lying and was saying how she needs to learn english because it's the money language. I really should have stopped it. I was really close to just smashing a chair on his head. I hate it when Americans go to someone else's country and are indignant about their lack of proficiency with english. For fucks sake we're in Vietnam, people here speak vietnamese, the onus needs to be on you to talk to them. I regret not stepping up but short of just beating the shit out of him and getting arrested I'm not sure what I could have done. I probably should have done it anyways. He then went and sat next to some Vietnamese girl who was just sipping her drink and loudly told her the whole story making her uncomfortable enough to leave halfway through her beverage. When she left she shot me and the folks near me that "wtf was that guy's deal" face and we all just smiled sadly back at her. Honestly if i catch that guy pulling that crap again, which is unlikely, I'm going to say something. My blood was boiling then and it is now just thinking about it again. The fucking nerve of that man.
Anyways all the images here are from NoodlePie and I'll change them to some I took and add more when I get to be on a more private computer. If you're the NoodlePie guy thanks so much for writing your awesome blog and if you want me to take down the pics just message me and I would be glad to.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
HCMCSaigon Day 1
After the flight of insanity I finally got to Vietnam. Once I got out of the airport some old ass guy approached me for a cab. He wanted $15 US which I just ended up paying him because I was too tired to argue and he looked like he needed it anyways. It turns out he was 75 years old and still a cabbie so I really don't mind that I got fleeced on the ride.
By the start of the show (it took over an hour to get started from when I got there) the two Spaniards had left and I had made three new vietnamese friends with varrying command of the english language. It was really cool talking with them. One of them was from the Mekong Delta, one was from Dalat, and one was from Hanoi. They were all sort of making fun of each other's regional accents and stuff which was pretty funny. The guy from Dalat was a Korean major and was helping Korean companies do business in Vietnam and the girl from Hanoi and the other guy from the delta were econ students at the same school. The girl said she missed home a lot and that her mom calls her once a week but that she can't really call back because the cell phone fees are too expensive.
They talked to me about vietnamese history and about Ho Chi Minh who they called Uncle Ho. One of them was like "he's a great man but had two problems, smoking and bad marriage." we concluded that no one was perfect though.
When I finally got back to the hostel I ended up being assigned to the 6th floor (really the 7/8th) with no elevator. Boy was that a fun walk. The room was cool both literally and figuratively. They folks in there were from Thailand and Seattle and the AC was powerful and awesome.
Vietnam is Dac Biet.
The address for my hostel was 219/8 Pham Ngu Lao st. If you're wondering what that fraction means, so was I. No such address exists on the street. But on a whim I followed the alleyways and ended up finding it. I guess the system makes sense. I guess. As it turns out I was here too early (11AM) and that they wouldn't have room until 1pm. I figured I'd get a start on the city since Felix would have plenty of time to do Saigon after I leave for home. I asked the staff for a good com tam place (broken rice) and set out. the staff guessed I was from California because i knew what broken rice was and they were like this place is called Com Tam Cali, you'll like it. They gave me a little map with the joint marked and I found it pretty easily. It seems like most of what's to see in Saigon is pretty compact. I got to the restaurant pretty early so I figured I'd check out the market nearby. It was pretty cool and full of just tons of everything included a big food area. I sat down and had some less than clean looking spring rolls that were pretty good and some iced coffee. It's hard to describe the marketplace. Think super clusterfuck for everything you want as far as you can see. Pretty wild stuff.
When I went to the restaurant I ordered a Pennyworth drink out of curiosity and some com tam with shredded pork skin, the pork egg cake, and the fried tofu wrapped in shrimp. The pennywort drink (http://wanderingchopsticks.blogspot.com/2008/02/nuoc-rau-ma-vietnamese-pennywort-juice.html) was the worst thing i've ever had. I think they literally put fish sauce in it because it tasted like crab juice. Literally crab juice. Like in the Simpsons episode where they go to NYC. I killed it just cause they waitress said it was good for me but I wanted to vomit pretty badly. The com tam was good but the portions are nowhere near American sized which is something I was warned about. The pork skin was meatier as was the pork egg cake. The shrimp thing had more water chestnut which is tight. On an interesting note the fish sauce here is waaaaay fishier. Like it's way fishy. It's really super different from nuoc mam at home. Not like bad but shockingly different.
When I finished it was only 12:30 so I figured I'd go for a stroll. This ended up being a 10 hour stroll but let me go through it chronologically ish. Saigon doesn't have auto rickshaws like India. Instead it's full of dudes with scooters who want you to ride on back. I wasn't that keen on it and had nowhere to be so I refused them but literally like 3-5 people a block will ask you. One of these groups after I said no was like well how about this and did the classic sex hand sign (finger through hole made of thumb and index. I found this hilarious and the guy showed me a business card and was like how about her. The girl on the card was an import model from the US named Kaila Yu (http://poohatur.com/wp-content/gallery/import-models-from-the-day/kaila_yu_2.jpg) which was pretty funny. I eventually dodged them by going to one of the many western coffee shops that are now everywhere in Saigon. What's cool is they all have free wifi!
On that note, it's really one of several things that's making Vietnam waaaay more relaxing and easier to deal with than anywhere we went in India. Everything is easier and less chaotic. The traffic is much lighter and everyone obeys the speed limit pretty much. It's hardly orderly by American standards but compared to India's Ihavenocrosswalksandreallyalmostnostoplights it's waaaaay easier to deal with. The AC/WIFI Oasises that he coffee shops represent are such a godsend. When the heat gets to be too much you can duck in to one, use a clean bathroom, cool down, and surf the internet. It makes a huuuge difference. No way I could walk around an Indian city for 10 hours they way I did today. Also there's actually sidewalks here. Most of India requires walking on the side of the street because the sidewalk is either covered in motorcycles or literal flaming piles of garbage. And honestly it's just less loud and less crowded. Here everyone isn't trying to pass each other on the road and as a result the honking is as oppressive. It's still nutty by American standards by compared to India the traffic in Saigon is pretty damn tame.
Moving on, I walked over to the revolutionary museum that was sort of whatever. It wasn't that well stocked and lacked AC or decent fans. Interestingly enough it's a popular spot now for doing wedding photography cause it was a pretty garden out back and one of those classic looking center staircases in the middle of the foyer. Some of the exhibits were interesting for their historiography (how history is written) just for their abjectly political use of terms such as all VC fighters are called patriots in the "American Way of Aggression". I don't deny that there's some truth to this but this sort of obvious politicization of history is something a lot of museums try to avoid despite the political undertones that usually follow any exhibit.
After that I went to the War Museum which was an insane trip. It has tons and tons of really graphic pictures of the war on both sides though with a decidedly "look at what brutes the Americans were" slant. There's insane photos of Agent Orange victims and bomb victims as well as a full scale reproduction of the "tiger cages" that the Diem regime used to hold it's political prisoners. There's also tones of American artillery, planes, helicopters, and tanks that we must have left behind. There are huge exhibits about foreign support for Vietnam during the war as well as emphasizing how much it cost the US in terms of lives and money. There's really great art in there as well as some great exhibits from Japanese photographers. If you ever go to Saigon it should be at the top of your list for things to see. After going through it it's really hard to condone anything the US did during the war. I think we confused an earnest movement for self determination with part of the Soviet plan to take over the world. In any event this is a longer conversation that has no place in this blog but if you'd like me to elaborate we can discuss it at length somewhere else.
Back on track.
Saigon also has it's on Notre Dame which is pretty cool as well as a sweet old school post office. After checking those out I walked all the way to the Southeast end of the pier and then ducked in a shop for some caphe sua da. The guy working there was really excited that I was American and in Vietnam for so long and I showed him a bunch of my India pictures. He called me and Felix handsome which was funny. He also said how Bruce Lee was his hero and some other stuff I can't remember.
After that I had my first pho experience of vietnam and I have to say it was weird and different. The broth was waaay beefier and the meat really had that strong beef taste thats normally absent from pho. The hoisin and spicy sauce were also different as were the mint and basil. It makes me wonder if I've ever really had real pho before today of if this was some weird aberration.
Finally to end the night I figured I'd walk back and on the way in one of the main square on the route there was a huge stage and two jumbotrons set up so I figured I'd sit and see what happens. Eventually I asked this group of two spaniard backpackers and one vietnamese girl and they said it was for the liberty day celebrations. For those of you who don't know, April 30th 1975 was the day the US withdrew from Vietnam and Saigon fell. It's called Black April in the US and Liberty day in Vietnam. Anyways there was a big musical show for free and as the history major I am I really enjoyed seeing how the narrative of Vietnamese history was crafted. It was like a musical basically that started with the Vietnamese fighting of the Chinese in a song, then a traditional dance, then another song about moving the capital to hanoi, then a sort of french song, then a sort of american-y song with soldiers doing balet and then like a vietnam is modern song, then a pop song, then a song about tradition, then a song about birds and I guess the rising of vietnam. I don't speak vietnamese so i have no idea what they were saying but based on the costumes, tone, and images I'm pretty sure I have it right. It lasted 2 hours and was sort of exhausting but you can't knock free entertainment. The dancers were also hilariously off time.
By the start of the show (it took over an hour to get started from when I got there) the two Spaniards had left and I had made three new vietnamese friends with varrying command of the english language. It was really cool talking with them. One of them was from the Mekong Delta, one was from Dalat, and one was from Hanoi. They were all sort of making fun of each other's regional accents and stuff which was pretty funny. The guy from Dalat was a Korean major and was helping Korean companies do business in Vietnam and the girl from Hanoi and the other guy from the delta were econ students at the same school. The girl said she missed home a lot and that her mom calls her once a week but that she can't really call back because the cell phone fees are too expensive.
They talked to me about vietnamese history and about Ho Chi Minh who they called Uncle Ho. One of them was like "he's a great man but had two problems, smoking and bad marriage." we concluded that no one was perfect though.
When I finally got back to the hostel I ended up being assigned to the 6th floor (really the 7/8th) with no elevator. Boy was that a fun walk. The room was cool both literally and figuratively. They folks in there were from Thailand and Seattle and the AC was powerful and awesome.
Vietnam is Dac Biet.
HOLY CRAP THIS WAS A LONG DAY: Poojarsantankal -> HoChiMinhCity/Saigon
Ok, technically it's two days but I didn't really sleep on the plane so it really just feels like a looooong daaaaay.
To start it off, during my last day in India Felix and I went to Hotel Saravana Bhavan, the veg place we eat at literally everyday when we're at the school, for the last time and pigged it out. We got our chola poori, parota and side dish, and parota and mixed veg on and this time we did it high class, and by that i mean AC style. At HSB there's an AC and Non AC sect and the prices are inflated by 3-8 rupees per item if you opt for AC. It's never that hot in there so we normally don't do it but this time Non AC was full so we figured we'd step our game up and go for it. And honestly at the current exchange rate it cost us like 80 cents more. In retrospect this might have been worth doing every but w/e.
Afterwards we went to the tailor I dropped my fabric for the shirts to. (I'm not sure if i mentioned this in previous posts but I wanted to get some shirts done cause it's like a hot 5-6 bucks to get TAILOR MADE SONNNN) and as expected he wasn't done yet. That's pretty much how India rolls. He was done with two of them though so Felix said he'd pick up the other one the next day. I'll explain why that makes sense in a second. Anyways after that I put one of them on (they have inside breast pockets, it's awesome) and got in the cab to go to the airport. It was a fucking miserable ride with the Indian stop and go/weave as much as possible style of driving for 2 hours. I was quite distraught.
So now to explain the flight thing. When I was planning the trip Felix was like yo I'm leaving on the 1st, get your ticket for then. In a moment of awesome absentmindedness I booked my for like 12:10 AM and his was for like 11:00PM. So technically we're leaving on the same day but they're both redeye flights so here I am in Saigon a whole day ahead of him.
Back to the story. Chennai airport is rated the #4 worst airport in the world and for good reason. It's so fucking stupid. Let me count the ways it made me want to stab myself. First off, you need a ticket to get in. This doesn't makes sense in the world of E-Tickets. I buy shit on line then go to the airport to get my ticket. Instead Chennai wants me to argue with the guard until he lets me in. Next you have to get your checked bags pre-screened before you even go to the ticket counter. This is made even more awesome by each airline having their own damn machine, few of which are clearly labled. After that you have to find the line for your flight. Not just your airline but your specific flight. Next the person manning the computer apparently can only type with their thumbs and it takes a solid 25-30 more minutes to do something that every other airport I've been in accomplishes in about 10 minutes. When you finally get your shit sorted security makes you add tags to your carry on bags for some inane reason and makes a point of stamping the tag as well. I guess it never occurred to them that pre-stamped tags would be easy as shit to make. They also confused which bags they looked at in the x-ray and insisted I had a water bottle. I did not. Next toss in the fact that people in Chennai don't understand that I'm mixed and look at my Jewish name with a high degree of skepticism and make me repeat who I am. Then to make it more awesome they don't know which plane will be at which gate till about half an hour before your flight. So you just sort of sit and wait and when you do find out you get to have literally 5 separate people clear your boarding pass. Ahh what amazing repetition of labor. Then I got the extra special experience of being in gate 9 which isn't really a gate but a tunnel to the tarmac where you get a bus to your plane that's in the middle of fucking nowhere.
The extra awesome cherries on top were what really made this all shine. There was an incoming flight from Mumbai that was over an hour late with people who were slated to be on our plane. Instead of shifting them to a late flight my 12:10 flight took off at 1:34. We just sat in the plane for nearly an hour and a half. Amazing. Then on my flight I had the aisle/exit row seat which is basically the most leg room you can get in economy but the guy ac cross from me had insane burping issues and literally burped/grunted loudly about every 2-3 minutes. For the entire duration of the flight. I can't tell if I hated it or if that guy was awesome. In his defense, with the inflight meal he had some Hennessy which he poured his beer into, then pounded it, then promptly got his 2nd beer. Maybe he was just so full of win that he was super gassy. Needless to say I had myself a glass of scotch to quell the insanity. To add insult to injury the only movie in the on demand listing was Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief...
Luckily things got way better in the layover at Kuala Lampur. That airport is amazing. It's mad baller/state of the art. We landed in the auxiliary terminal which was as nice as any airport I've ever been in (SFO, LAX, KIX, HKG) and then took a sweet train/subway thing to the main terminal which had baller as shit like a Herrods and a Cigar store. I bought some Cuban Cigarrillos, satin one of the reclining chairs, and enjoyed the free wifi on my ipod touch. It was way rad. The rest of the experience on Malaysia airlines was awesome. The food was great + it came with 3 Ferrero Rochers (one of my favorite candies) including even the fruitcake, the staff was super on their shit, and I was tired enough to sleep for most of it.
Anyways random observation on Malaysia from just the airport: most of the women wearing headscarfs had these cool hood ones and they were in all manner of colors to match whatever they were wearing for a pretty damn stylish accent.
I'm gonna make Saigon Day 1 it's own post because it's also long and deserves to be recognized on it's own.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Elephant Blessings
In certain Indian temples they have elephants who are trained to bless you once you give them a coin. It's pretty cool:
Awesome India Moments but I'm Pretty Ready to Leave
India is wild. It really is. It's almost always hot, crowded, smelly, inefficient, and the power just sort of cuts out whenever it feels like it. It's really a pretty difficult place to travel and I think if I were in my 40's or 50's it would be too much because even at 22 I'm pretty over it. Now this might just be the awesome heat rash on my back talking but 3 weeks is a good long time here.
India is wild. It's fucking awesome. The culture and temples are amazing. In the west people tangentially acknowledge India as being one of the worlds great civilizations but most people still don't really get it. When you come here and just understand the depth of the culture and just how long it's gone on you really can't help but be absolutely flabbergasted and impressed. Temples people went to worship Shiva in thousands of years ago are being used today for the exact same reason.
People in India are crazy. You literally have to argue with every single autorickshaw driver and merchant who will fleece you for 3-4x the amount you should be paying. Sometimes trying to find people to do stuff is impossible. Yesterday I was looking for a tailor to whip me up some shirts and we went to 4 different places where folks just wouldn't do it by Friday despite obviously not working on anything. Today going to mail something in the post office took 1 hour and a solid 3 blocks of walking in 98 degree weather.
People in India are crazy. Two days ago we went to get an autorickshaw to go home and met Dhas. Dhas is a Christian and was excited to hear that Felix worked at a school that specializes in Kuttu (a local street theatre performance) and did a dance for us. Then when we got in his auto-rickshaw he got so excited by my camera that he took us to his house, introduced us to his entire family, had us take pictures with them, then took us to 4 separate temples where he tried to convince his brahmin friends to let us take pictures of the Idols which is forbidden. Dhas didn't care since he's a Christian and was just excited to show us India.
Everyday you're in India you'll definietely be frustrated by something but often enough someone like Dhas comes around and it gets really awesome really fast. For instance on Dhas' street we met Ashwin, the self proclaimed Kung Fu master of the area. Though I'm leaving for Vietnam tomorrow I'm really glad I came here for the last 3 weeks despite the 8-9 times where if I could have hit reset and ended up in Foster City I probably would have.
Dhas Dancing:
Us with Dhas' Family:
Check back with this blog too because I'm gonna put in more pictures and VIDEO!!!!
Sunday, April 25, 2010
45-0 + Slow Dog/Slow Lady (Bangalore)
There isn't really much to actually do in Bangalore in terms of sights and stuff but otherwise it's probably the most cosmopolitan/westernish city in India that we've been too. There's KFCs and McDonalds and Nike and Adidas stores up the wazoo. We even went bowling here. Felix beat me bt a solid margin but our scores were really pathetic regardless. I won't put them here but the total was in the 140 ish range. maybe.
Anyways Bangalore has this fucking awesome bar named NASA and it's spaceship themed. The drinks are called like liquid fuel and it's super awesome camptastic inside. Pics to come. We had a few pitchers and then went outside and were like damn it's 4pm no a sunday and we are buzzing.
I also got this totally sweet Doraemon fake zippo!
Our train got in around 6 am yesterday and as a result of hotels' 24 hour check out policy we were kicked to the curb today at 7am. Nothing here opens until 8:30 or really 9:00 so we got to do some pretty sweet curb sitting and went to this one coffee shop there the soundtrack included a new vengaboys song we've never heard, 6 different 50 cent songs, and an uncensored version of "My Neck, My Back" by Khia. Mind you this WAS ALL AT LIKE 7:45 AM!!!! Madness.
Anyways yesterday besides getting drunk at NASA we went to an italian cafe with a lot of workers from Nagaland which is in northeastern India and is essentially southeast asia but owned by india for strategic purposes. What this means is there's a lot of Southeast Asian people in Bangalore but they're Indian by nationality.
We went to go look for this pretty famous japanese restaurant named Harima and when we finally found it at 5pm we realized they didn't open for another hour. Luckily we were able to chill at a cafe downstairs and we watched the film "Taken" in it's entirety. I've seen it before and watching Liam Neeson own EVERYONE never really gets boring. When we did get to the restaurant it was mad fancy and had all these indian dudes in japanese waiter outfits which was sorta funny. we got Agedashi Tofu, Kaarage, Katsudon, and an Okonomiyaki. Generally when you get foreign food in India it only vaguely resembles what it's supposed to be. The japanese food at Harima was definetely the real deal but of course was not as good as what you could get at home. Harima was also my first experience with the poop hose. Sure this is TMI but if you're reading this you know how real I keep it. Anyways I guess the hose is cool. It's really not that uncomfortable or anything but when i twisted the nozzle it loosed at the bottom and sort of sprayed water on me/everything else. For me the jury is still out on he hose but I plan on exploring it more.
We also stopped at this Jimi Hendrix themed bar and it was basically full of random rock album covers/pictures that included Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, and one of the guys from Pink Floyd. They also played the video and song of Stairway from the song remains the same.
VH1 Classics here shows the most random videos. We saw Karma Chameleon by Culture Club, Video killed the radio star, love shack, and and Whitney Houston's "i'm every woman". Bizzaro.
Anyways to explain the title you have to realize that Indian bars are not like American ones. They're literally just full of dudes. Like all dudes. Like when we were in NASA it was a ratio of 45 dudes to 0 girls. YEA DUDES. And literally every bar is pretty much like this.... The slow dog/slow lady thing is from when we were walking around this morning sort of delerious from being kicked out at 7am we saw this dog walking around slowly and felix said slow dog and we both immediately launched into a rendition of "Slow Ride" by Foghorn but with the words "slow dog" instead. Then we saw a slow lady and did the same thing.
So to end, we are in a coffee shop with internet called "coffee day" and they technically opened at 8:30 but in america this would mean people setting up from at least 7:30. Here it means they got here at 8:30 and still aren't totally opened yet. Like it's 10:00 AM, a full hour and a half from opening and they're still setting up. Indiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
BY BOAT OR BY GOAT I WILL HAVE MY PRIZE (Hampi)
Look how excited Felix is for ruins!
Hampi is this pretty awesome small town in central India that used to be the capital of one of the major empires. It's full of amazingly awesome ruins and really really really insane rock formations. It's also got lots and lots of monkeys, cows, lizards, dogs, and one elephant! Hampi also had by far the most power outages I've had to deal with in India. Normally there's been 1-2 outages a day in most cities, Hampi had 6-8.
The best outage, if best if really the word, was out first night when a storm blew down a tree and we literally lost power from 8pm until around noon the next day. You might think "that's not so bad, i'll just light some candles and it'll be dandy!" WELL YOU'RE FUCKING WRONG. IT IS HOT AS SHIT IN HAMPI AND WHEN YOU HAVE NO POWER THE ONE FUCKING CELING FAN DOESN'T SPIN AND YOU HAVE ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE WORST NIGHT EVER I HAVEN'T STOPPED SWEATING IN 15 HOUR DAYS. Yea, it sucked. I had to sleep with a wet towl on me just to not be hot enough to go insane. A lot of people in the neighborhood slept outside but there's mad mosquitos there too so it seems like a bad idea for my Idon'twanttogetmalaria plans.
Despite the rough start Hampi is pretty cool. I went to the river in the morning to watch them wash the temple elephant (her name is Lakshmi!) and the whole village was pretty much there bathing and washing clothes and stuff. It was a really cool scene and lots of people and naked babies just chillin in the river. The grown men were still having water fights and the brahmans were sitting around meditating. I learned two things that morning: it takes over two hours to wash an elephant and it's crazy how many peoples lives still revolve around a river for their water usage.
We rented a scooter and walked a lot and saw all kinds of crazy ruins and old temples and stuff. There were a few super awesome statues that stuck out like one of the bull Nandi who's Shiva's mount and looks really like homer and a really awesome ganesh one and this really great one of Lakshmi Narasimha which is one of Vishnu's incarnations where he has the head of a Lion.
Bull:
Vishnu Lion:
The main temple there is called Vittala temple and it's super old, super big, and super awesome. We took a boat there which is a pretty short ride but we got to sit in this awesome circular boat and were lucky enough to be joined by two fucking awesome looking pilgrims who chilled with us and asked for cigarettes. They were totally nuts looking.
Boat:
Pilgrims:
Vittala Temple:
On the way back we figured we'd walk but since this is India there is no clear path and we ended up basically having to boulder our way home. There was a herd of goats near us who we passed and climbed some difficult ish rocks. As we stopped to catch our breath the goats trotted by and clearly took an easier path than we had. After that we figured we should probably just follow goats since they knew what was going on and they pretty much lead us back. It was pretty cool and the inspiration for the title of this blog post.
Thank You Goats
Anyways a few quick hits on Hampi:
1. We stayed at the Gopi hotel that is clearly building an empire on one of the blocks. They owned a convenience stand, two buildings of rooms, a rooftop cafe, and an internet cafe.
2. there was a ridiculous stoner ass bakery with blacklights and stuff that had crazy blacklight posters of ganesh and shiva. the food there was quite good for the most part, great pizza and decent fallafel but their attempt at a burrito was the saddest thing ever. Just picture lasagna with beans tossed in. it was one of those "have you ever even googled burrito?"
3. chopsuey is weird friend noodle stuff in sweet and sour sauce. It's not good.
4. Some ant decided to crawl in my shoe and bite me for a while. it really sucked and hurt like the dickens!
5. there's this other restaurant called the Mango Tree that has a really nice view of the river and pretty good food. it also had a cockroach the size of my thumb just chilling nearby.
6. Everywhere in hampi serves this lemon mint juice thing. basically a virgin mohito and the most refreshing thing ever.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Mumbai Redux: There were some funny parts
Now that the horrific night of the crazy bus is behind me I'd like to add an addendum to the Mumbai leg of our journey. There were some sort of funny/bizzare parts.
One cab driver came up to us and was really really really trying to get us to take a tour with him. He mentioned a few wierd things like that he would take us to a really really poor muslim home and that we could take pictures of 10 people living in 4x6" room or something like that. He said it would be like Slumdog Millionaire. He also said he'd take us to a street nicknamed Fucklane Rd (notice the redundancy) where we would meet boys that looked like girls (ladyboys for the unitiated...) and that they looked like Michael Jackson.
Cab Driver:
Lay Accross My Big BRAAAAAASSSSSSS Bed - Our Trip to Goa
First off, let me explain the title. We went to this restaurant called Stone House and there was this singer who was taking requests and singing crappy romance songs really slow and poorly and in an amusing way due to his accent. When he played "Lay Lady Lay" by Bob Dylan, a song I really like, he butchered it and put all the emphasis on the word "brass". It was painful. Anyways.
Goa is this state in west India that used to be run by the Portuguese until after Indian Independence and is this bizzaro beach state that feels a bit like Santa Cruz and is famous for being a super party spot. At least in the 90's or at least during peak seasons. Unfortunately for Felix and I, it's 2010, not peak season, and I had some stomach issues the whole time.
We stayed in this cool house called Villa Ludovici. Our hosts were this Indian/Portuguese family (their last name was Gonzalez!) and they were suuuuper nice. They had 3 dogs, one named Rex who was skittish, Shalom (named by a previous guest who was Israeli), and Goldy who was fat and incredibly friendly. There was also this dude there who was Indian and had lived in the UK for 18 years and was now just teaching surfing and kayaking in Florida. In a random note, one of the guests was from Moscow and moved to England, specifically Hastings where the folks from Felix's mom's side of the family reside. I've been there and it's a raaaaandom ass place for a Russian to go live.
Speaking of Russians, Goa is fucking full of them. I guess they just come here to do what old russian people do which is sit in the sun, get gross leathery tan, and drink. My dad said they're probably all "new russians" which means new money mobsters. I wouldn't fuck with them and neither should you. One of their wives was def doing topless sunbathing and I kid you not, they were over a foot apart. It was really weird. In other news the restaurants there all have russian menus and since russian (and western) beach wear is much skimpier than indian women who pretty much just wear the same saris they do everywhere, indian dudes just sort of stand on the beach and stare creepily.
We stayed in the town of Candolim whose beach features beer shack after beer shack after beer shack. It would have been a great place to get sloshed and sit at the beach but my stomach wasn't having it. In an amusing note, the shacks have bathrooms which are just four walls, no roof, and sort of a toilet. It sounds weird but there's something definitely soothing about hearing the ocean sounds while you do your business. Candolim's greatest feature is the River Princess. I giant fucking ore liner boat that got stuck 10 years ago about 100ft off shore. It's enormous and if you like irony and are sarcastic like Felix and I you will find it awesome.
Otherwise it's a huge eyesore and has actually effected the erosion patterns on the coast so parts of the beach have these 40-60 ft long burlap tubes of sand labeled "geotubes" to shore up the shore. Apparently the Goan government dragged it's feet to take it out and tried for the first time in 2005. By then the boat was too rusty to drag out and now it's stuck. Indian judges have declared it a state disaster and no real hope is in sight. It can't be good for the environment.
In another amusing story we went to this popular beach called Vagator and sat down for a beer and these two ladies came up trying to sell us shirts. They literally just sat down in the sand and talked for like 15 minutes then really turned the pressure on. One had these silly shirts that I sort of liked so I bought 2 and then the 2nd one Sandra was unhappy because I didn't by anything from here and really turned the thumbscrews up. Saying that it wasn't fair and we were making her sad. It took sooooo loooong to get her to go and right after she left, only to come back for one last try later, another girl apparently named Pandra sat down and tried her best. Pandra chatted for a while and we were like we have no money go ask the russians and she said they were bad people and never bought anything. Pandra also took 20 minutes at least just to say we were making her sad before she finally left.
Anyways a few quick hits:
1. the meals were all super forgettable. really all pretty w/e.
2. Our last night was in Margao which is a transport hub for the beach part of Goa. They had cable with a lot of english channels and we got our discovery channel on.
3. On the train to Hampi (where I am now) we had no food besides hobnobs and we ate the whole box. If you're not familiar with hobnobs they are this wonderful british oat biscuit and you really must try them.
Goa is this state in west India that used to be run by the Portuguese until after Indian Independence and is this bizzaro beach state that feels a bit like Santa Cruz and is famous for being a super party spot. At least in the 90's or at least during peak seasons. Unfortunately for Felix and I, it's 2010, not peak season, and I had some stomach issues the whole time.
We stayed in this cool house called Villa Ludovici. Our hosts were this Indian/Portuguese family (their last name was Gonzalez!) and they were suuuuper nice. They had 3 dogs, one named Rex who was skittish, Shalom (named by a previous guest who was Israeli), and Goldy who was fat and incredibly friendly. There was also this dude there who was Indian and had lived in the UK for 18 years and was now just teaching surfing and kayaking in Florida. In a random note, one of the guests was from Moscow and moved to England, specifically Hastings where the folks from Felix's mom's side of the family reside. I've been there and it's a raaaaandom ass place for a Russian to go live.
Breakfast At Villa Ludovici:
Goldy, The House's Dog:
Speaking of Russians, Goa is fucking full of them. I guess they just come here to do what old russian people do which is sit in the sun, get gross leathery tan, and drink. My dad said they're probably all "new russians" which means new money mobsters. I wouldn't fuck with them and neither should you. One of their wives was def doing topless sunbathing and I kid you not, they were over a foot apart. It was really weird. In other news the restaurants there all have russian menus and since russian (and western) beach wear is much skimpier than indian women who pretty much just wear the same saris they do everywhere, indian dudes just sort of stand on the beach and stare creepily.
Dudes be starin:
We stayed in the town of Candolim whose beach features beer shack after beer shack after beer shack. It would have been a great place to get sloshed and sit at the beach but my stomach wasn't having it. In an amusing note, the shacks have bathrooms which are just four walls, no roof, and sort of a toilet. It sounds weird but there's something definitely soothing about hearing the ocean sounds while you do your business. Candolim's greatest feature is the River Princess. I giant fucking ore liner boat that got stuck 10 years ago about 100ft off shore. It's enormous and if you like irony and are sarcastic like Felix and I you will find it awesome.
Otherwise it's a huge eyesore and has actually effected the erosion patterns on the coast so parts of the beach have these 40-60 ft long burlap tubes of sand labeled "geotubes" to shore up the shore. Apparently the Goan government dragged it's feet to take it out and tried for the first time in 2005. By then the boat was too rusty to drag out and now it's stuck. Indian judges have declared it a state disaster and no real hope is in sight. It can't be good for the environment.
It says" DMD Moscow":
In another amusing story we went to this popular beach called Vagator and sat down for a beer and these two ladies came up trying to sell us shirts. They literally just sat down in the sand and talked for like 15 minutes then really turned the pressure on. One had these silly shirts that I sort of liked so I bought 2 and then the 2nd one Sandra was unhappy because I didn't by anything from here and really turned the thumbscrews up. Saying that it wasn't fair and we were making her sad. It took sooooo loooong to get her to go and right after she left, only to come back for one last try later, another girl apparently named Pandra sat down and tried her best. Pandra chatted for a while and we were like we have no money go ask the russians and she said they were bad people and never bought anything. Pandra also took 20 minutes at least just to say we were making her sad before she finally left.
Anyways a few quick hits:
1. the meals were all super forgettable. really all pretty w/e.
2. Our last night was in Margao which is a transport hub for the beach part of Goa. They had cable with a lot of english channels and we got our discovery channel on.
3. On the train to Hampi (where I am now) we had no food besides hobnobs and we ate the whole box. If you're not familiar with hobnobs they are this wonderful british oat biscuit and you really must try them.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Mumbai, it's ok, I guess...
So I'm not gonna lie. Sort of over India at the moment and feeling a tad homesick. Backpacking here is no easy task, the heat, stomach parties, and constant haggling are definitely tiring. India is just full of constant arguing because we're foreigners. Everyone is trying to rip us off and it's really exhausting when it's happening 10+ times a day. It wasn't really as much of an issue in Tamil Nadu or Tirupati, but in Hyderabad and Mumbai it really hit it's stride.
Anyways. Mumbai is pretty metropolitan compared to the other places we've gone, we were in the pretty touristy area called Colaba and it had this one main strip where people just sell crap, from saris, to telescopes, astrolabes, compases, t-shirts, and bootleg cd/dvds. They all come up to you and if you don't have your strong scowl face on they will just follow you. There's also lots of dudes trying to sell you hash which is more annoying than it was in Amsterdam or Barcelona because here they follow you for a while. We learned to walk on the otherside of the street which is a bit less intense.
Our hotel was kinda cool but our bathroom was in the hallway and was literally the hottest and most humid place i've had to be in. It was literally insane. You would go in there to wash your hands and come out covered in sweat. On the plus side we had AC and cable and watched two fantastic movies. Well actually they were fantastic at all, they were pretty much the worst movies I've ever seen. Michael Jackson's "Moonwalker" where you get to see Joe Pescii sell out and "Torque" which is probably the worst movie I have seen in my whole life. It's basically the Fast and the Furious but with sport bikes. Sport bikes and Ice Cube. I want those two hours of my life back so badly but they are gone forever...
Anyways Mumbai Highlights:
1. Gateway to India - Big fucking gate by the pier. Pretty cool. There's tons of dudes there with nikon D40's trying to take your picture. They would come up to me and I'd be like "my camera is better than yours, why would i want a picture". They generally conceded. There were also tons of dudes with these giant balloons, like 4 ft long adn 1.5 ft wide. They were trying to sell them to us and I really wanted to be like "why the fuck woudl i want a giant fucking balloon? I'm an adult."
One of many Balloon Guys:
2. Elephanta Island - No elephants... but lots of monkeys, donkeys, and cows!!! There used to be a statue of an elephant there but it's since been moved. There is this really awesome cave temple with this really amazing 25 ft tall bust of Shiva with his eyes closed. It's mad huge, mad serene, and mad crazy that it was built on this island which is about an hour by boat away. I can't imagine how long it took to build. There's tons of monkeys too and they just sort of jack peoples food. The locals and Indian tourists hate them. I, on the other hand, think they're funny but they haven't tried to rob me yet.
3. Cool, though non AC museum! We saw lots of really rad Indian and Tibetan art work. It was pretty amazing but rediculously hot to the point that you couldn't really enjoy it.
4.Old Ass Synagogue - there's one in Mumbai that was built in 1884. Madness.
Yea,
5. Crazy Seafood! - I sort of overate on the seafood side. Because the exchange rate is pretty good you can get amazing seafood at reasonable prices. Like a whole crab for 12 bucks. Or a whole pomfret and and another curried fish for $15. Needless to say this gave me a pretty solid stomach ache that, to my chagrin, I'm still carrying with me.
Which leads to why last night was sort of one of the worst nights of my life. So in India they super overbook trains. Like up to 300 spots. And somehow me and Felix couldn't even get in while being #5 and #6 so we opted for a night bus. In the pictures it's really nice and has chairs that recline in to beds and a nice bathroom and stuff. The bus, in reality, was like the difference in McDonalds ads and how their food actually looks. It was grungy and there were not reclining chairs, just a 4 x 6" cubby that had to fit the two of us and our bags. To make it WAY MORE AWESOME there was no bathroom either. Remember my awesome stomache ache? yea that made the ride super awesome. It took two bathroom stops, one at 10PM and one at 5AM and they were both gnarly Indian Truck stop bathrooms. To make the trip more uncomfortable the AC was either really cold or non-existent and our cubby was right above the engine making certian parts of it burning hot. The road here was also pretty bumpy and insanely windey making for sweet bouts of motion sickness. We made it to Goa but last night was one of the more uncomfortable nights of my life to be sure.
Goa is ok so far, it's a beachy area and we're living in this old house which is chill but non AC. I'll let ya'll know how it's going in a bit!
Anyways. Mumbai is pretty metropolitan compared to the other places we've gone, we were in the pretty touristy area called Colaba and it had this one main strip where people just sell crap, from saris, to telescopes, astrolabes, compases, t-shirts, and bootleg cd/dvds. They all come up to you and if you don't have your strong scowl face on they will just follow you. There's also lots of dudes trying to sell you hash which is more annoying than it was in Amsterdam or Barcelona because here they follow you for a while. We learned to walk on the otherside of the street which is a bit less intense.
Our hotel was kinda cool but our bathroom was in the hallway and was literally the hottest and most humid place i've had to be in. It was literally insane. You would go in there to wash your hands and come out covered in sweat. On the plus side we had AC and cable and watched two fantastic movies. Well actually they were fantastic at all, they were pretty much the worst movies I've ever seen. Michael Jackson's "Moonwalker" where you get to see Joe Pescii sell out and "Torque" which is probably the worst movie I have seen in my whole life. It's basically the Fast and the Furious but with sport bikes. Sport bikes and Ice Cube. I want those two hours of my life back so badly but they are gone forever...
Anyways Mumbai Highlights:
1. Gateway to India - Big fucking gate by the pier. Pretty cool. There's tons of dudes there with nikon D40's trying to take your picture. They would come up to me and I'd be like "my camera is better than yours, why would i want a picture". They generally conceded. There were also tons of dudes with these giant balloons, like 4 ft long adn 1.5 ft wide. They were trying to sell them to us and I really wanted to be like "why the fuck woudl i want a giant fucking balloon? I'm an adult."
One of many Balloon Guys:
2. Elephanta Island - No elephants... but lots of monkeys, donkeys, and cows!!! There used to be a statue of an elephant there but it's since been moved. There is this really awesome cave temple with this really amazing 25 ft tall bust of Shiva with his eyes closed. It's mad huge, mad serene, and mad crazy that it was built on this island which is about an hour by boat away. I can't imagine how long it took to build. There's tons of monkeys too and they just sort of jack peoples food. The locals and Indian tourists hate them. I, on the other hand, think they're funny but they haven't tried to rob me yet.
Sign at Elephanta Island:
Amazing 3 Headed Shiva Statue:
Monkeys:
3. Cool, though non AC museum! We saw lots of really rad Indian and Tibetan art work. It was pretty amazing but rediculously hot to the point that you couldn't really enjoy it.
4.Old Ass Synagogue - there's one in Mumbai that was built in 1884. Madness.
Yea,
5. Crazy Seafood! - I sort of overate on the seafood side. Because the exchange rate is pretty good you can get amazing seafood at reasonable prices. Like a whole crab for 12 bucks. Or a whole pomfret and and another curried fish for $15. Needless to say this gave me a pretty solid stomach ache that, to my chagrin, I'm still carrying with me.
Which leads to why last night was sort of one of the worst nights of my life. So in India they super overbook trains. Like up to 300 spots. And somehow me and Felix couldn't even get in while being #5 and #6 so we opted for a night bus. In the pictures it's really nice and has chairs that recline in to beds and a nice bathroom and stuff. The bus, in reality, was like the difference in McDonalds ads and how their food actually looks. It was grungy and there were not reclining chairs, just a 4 x 6" cubby that had to fit the two of us and our bags. To make it WAY MORE AWESOME there was no bathroom either. Remember my awesome stomache ache? yea that made the ride super awesome. It took two bathroom stops, one at 10PM and one at 5AM and they were both gnarly Indian Truck stop bathrooms. To make the trip more uncomfortable the AC was either really cold or non-existent and our cubby was right above the engine making certian parts of it burning hot. The road here was also pretty bumpy and insanely windey making for sweet bouts of motion sickness. We made it to Goa but last night was one of the more uncomfortable nights of my life to be sure.
Goa is ok so far, it's a beachy area and we're living in this old house which is chill but non AC. I'll let ya'll know how it's going in a bit!
Thursday, April 15, 2010
So Hyderabad It's Good
Currently Fee and I are chilling at a internet cafe in Hyderabad trying to burn the 5 hours until our night train to Mumbai that I'm not super enthused about. Night trains are totally the most efficient use of time but they're sort of tiring and dirty. Realistically I know when I look back at this trip I'm really not going to remember the night trains so it's not a big deal I suppose.
Hyderabad is pretty cool. It's the capital of Andra Pradesh and used to be a big Muslim city and it's got a bunch of really cool mosques and stuff which is what we did day one here. First we went to the Charminar (sounds like charmander!!!! fire spin!!!) which is this big like square thing in the middle of this big road that looks like a Muslim Arc de Triumphe. It's pretty rad, but the stairs going up to the top aren't lit and are super narrow and inconsistently spaced. Near there is a mosque whose gates are made using clay from Mecca. Since Felix had a bag he had to wait outside while I walked around inside. It was cool looking but the ground is covered in pigeon shit and you aren't allowed to wear shoes. In India at major sites random dudes are around and they act as tour guides/really annoying dudes who follow you around saying things in unintelligble english then ask for money. It sort of sucks. When I got out Felix said he the dude he was chatting with got punched in the face by his friend and it was mad awkward so we both left.
Near there is a bazaar where it'll be a block of solid bangle shops, then a block of sari shops, then a block of metal stuff, then a block of rugs. It's insane, it's like free market economics don't work here because there's literally 30 of each store selling the exact same shit and they're all next door to each other. It literally makes no sense. In the bazaar we also saw a giant goat with floppy bunny ears. It was super weird. We also went to this palace type place called chowmallah and saw a bunch of old stuff. All pretty w/e. On the way to the restaurant we were going to have dinner at people kept coming up to us to try to sell us bangles. Why the fuck would we want tons of plastic bangles?! It defies reason. Luckily the place we had dinner (the next day too) Hotal Shadab, has the BEST BIRIYANI EVER. Biriyani is basically rice and meat i think baked together. It came with amazing yogurt and curry sauce on the side. It was def life-changing.
Chowmallah:
Our Sweet Chowmallah Photos:
insane looking goat:
BEST BIRIYANI EVER:
Our street has "bars" that we figured we'd hit up that night. We pre-gamed on some Tullamore Dew Whiskey that I brought Fee from the states and went out. The bars were really weird and un-chill. Some dude flicked his cigarette, probably intentionally, at me. We took the hint and went back to the room to drink more. The next morning sucked. Being hungover in India is the absolute worst. It's like the hottest and noisiest place in the world. True misery was experienced.
Day 2 we went sort of out of town to this place called Fort Golconda which is this enormous castle. It's straight up Helms Deep/The Two Towers status. Epic is a pretty played out word right now but it's super epic. Pics will be up prob at the end of the month, maybe sooner but iunno. Anyways it took about 2-3 hours to traverse the whole castle as we were periodically stopped for families to take their pictures with us. I think since it isn't tourist season and most foreign tourists only go to Dehli, Kolkata, Agra, and Mumbai we're quite the rarity. It's been a week and I've only seen 4 foreigners. After wards we checked out these crazy tombs nearby that all look like the palace in Aladdin but like miniature. And by miniature I still mean at least 4 stories tall. Then it was back to the biriyani place for round two and finally we went to this place in the travel book for some hookah.
Fort Golconda:
The place is called Mocha and it honestly feels like something that would exist in LA, it's probably the closest Hyderabad has to Habibi's in Westwood. It's overpriced (still cheap by US standards) and trendier than the sort of shit me and felix normally do. They have wraps, paninis, crustinis, poutine, and a huge selection of coffee and desserts. It's clearly where the Hyderabad young rich go. We got one of their premium hookahs, a chickin panini, fries with curry, coffee, and a pink lemonade and it came out to about $16 US. To put that in perspective, today our lunch at what must have been one of the fancier places in Hyderabad was about $8. What made Mocha redic was the soundtrack It was this huge mix of everything that was popular from 2002-2004. Each song wasn't played for more than 10 seconds either. Here's the list:
- nookie
- where is the love
- seed 2.0
- in da club
- this love
- sunday morning
- yeah
- bootylicious
- milkshake
- next episode
- stan
- we belong together
- my boo
- you don't know my name
- it wasn't me
- 19-2000
- gasolina
- what's love got to do with it
- holla back girl
- 1 2 step
- work it
- the reason
- clocks
- tempted to touch
- what's my name
- my perogative
- how you remind me
Today we checked out some random giant buddah statue in the river, think statue of liberty but with buddah and not nearly as big. Apparently when they were towing it out to the river it sank and took two years to recover. I personally wish i saw that instead... At the lame-o kids park type thing it was at there was a whole class of MBA students, 9 of which wanted their picture taken with us. We feel like celebrities! sort of...
Giant Buddha:
Anywayssss Mumbai tomorrow!
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