We're in Singapore now. Just went for a swim in the pool and sat in the jacuzzi for a bit. Tarik's playing some free XBox while I write. This airport is great for having a 6 hour layover. Here are some wrap-up bests/worsts of the trip:
Favorite Country: Thailand
Favorite Big City: Saigon
Favorite Small City: Chiang Mai
Best Swimming: Ha Long Bay
Best Aquatic Scenery: Koh Tao
Best Land Scenery: Sapa
Worst Touts: Phnom Penh
Most Upset Tarik was: Koh Tao restaurant when it took forever to get our french fries. (Tarik didn't actually order fries but the rest of us did and we had all basically finished our meals before they were brought out. If you know Tarik you know why he got upset about this.)
Most Upset I was: Phnom Penh when a bell hop asked for a tip. We had been on an awful 5 hour bus ride followed by being attacked by tuk-tuk drivers, brought to a crappy hostel in the middle of nowhere and then to a crappy hotel in downtown PP. We had asked to see a room and had left our bags there after deciding we wanted it. We then went back down to check in. The bell hop then "showed us the way" up to our room that we already knew where it was, turned the lights on, pressed power on the air con remote, pressed power on the TV remote and couldn't actually get the TV to work. Then before he left he had the nerve to ask for a dollar tip. I was steaming.
Coolest Temple: Angkor Wat
Best Hostel: Spicy Thai, Chiang Mai
Worst Hostel: Hometown Hotel, Phnom Penh
Best Run: Around the Chiang Mai Park
Worst Run: Lost in Sihanoukville
Wish I Had Seen: Central Vietnam, Laos
Could Have Done Without: Sihanoukville, Phnom Penh
Best Food: Northern Thailand
Best Meal: T House, Bangkok (Tarik will say the Soup Lady in Saigon)
Best Looking Females: South Vietnam
Hardest to Understand Locals: Chiang Mai
First Place I'll Return to: Southern Thailand
Most Underrated: Thai Cooking Course
Most Overrated: Hanoi Temple of Literature
"How the Hell did we get here" Moment: Chumphon at 3:30AM watching the World Cup finals
I'm going to add some more pictures to this blog when I get back and will give a link to all of the pictures that I put up on Picasa.
Also, I hope to continue this blog once I get back to the States as I will be mostly on the road for the next month as well. It will probably become more of a focus on 3 things: Drinking, Running and Traveling; as those are 3 things I love to do and do often. I will try to write once or twice a week. If youare interested in following: Great! If not, I hope you enjoyed it thus far. If you ahve ideas for me to write about or suggestions for me, send them to: peter.sneeringer@gmail.com
Monday, August 9, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Ha Long Bay, Hanoi and the end of the trip
Sadly, it's coming to an end. Today was our last day in Vietnam. Haven't blogged in a while so here's a quick recap of the past 5 days:
We caught an overnight train back from SaPa to Hanoi. We had a sleeper car this time which was infinitely better than the trip up there, though I still couldn't extend fully in the bed. We arrived at our hostel at 6AM for a noon check in so we ditched our bags and went in search of air con. Hanoi is miserably hot. It's high 90's and humid everyday. I wasn't feeling well after the train ride and napped about 4 times that day. We feel asleep at the temple of literature (it was really boring) and got yelled at by a security guard. We went in search of "food street" and found some outdoor stalls to have a nice seafood lunch. Went to a night market that night that apparently only sold bra's and phone accessories and shoes.
The next day we left early for 3 days in Ha Long Bay. It was beautiful. The first day we spend on a boat, traveling through the hundreds of large steep rocky islands covered in trees that fill the bay. We kayaked around some islands, went into a cave and dove off the boat. The food on the boat was great (squid, shrimp, make your own spring rolls, etc) and the rooms were surprisingly spacious. The next day we got dropped off on Cat Ba Island, the biggest in the bay, and opted to cycle around the island as it was too hot for trekking. We saw Hospital Cave which is a very large cavern that was used as a hospital during the war. It had 3 floors, 17 rooms and a cinema!
Then we went to Monkey Island, a private island owned by the tour company. There we meet up with the other boat from our tour company that had all the fun young people on it and the trip got much better. We swam, played soccer on the beach, kayaked, ate some great food, played drinking games, partied with a Vietnamese man whose daughter had just gotten accepted to college so he bought everyone 3 rounds of beers! It was great. (Note: These Scottish guys taught us the greatest "drinking" game ever. It's not so much a drinking game as a game to play while you're drinking. It's basically the little green man rule from kings - there's a little green man sitting on your drink and you have to remove him before you drink and put him back after - but the penalty for forgetting him, instead of just having to take a drink - not much of a penalty - is that the the man runs away and the rest of the group gets to decide where he's gone, then you have to retrieve him. Hilarious. He can go anywhere. On the bartender's head, in a little kid's pocket, swimming in the ocean... and you can't explain it to anybody until after you've gotten the man. fantastic. Anyway...) We were up late and then woke up early yesterday to catch a bus back to the big island to take a bus across it to catch a boat back to the mainland to take a bus back to Hanoi. Loads of traveling but really fun. Unfortunately, I was not feeling well at all. We got back to Hanoi, showered, ate and crashed.
Today I feel much better though the heat here is unbearable. We decided to skip the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum as it didn't seem to be that impressive and instead to walk around a market and see the city a little more. We also napped through the hottest part of the day. Great decision. Tonight we got one last bowl of Pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) and have to pack up for the morning flight home.
It's been a great trip. Tarik and I are still talking which is amazing. I wish we had 2 more weeks to see Laos but I'm grateful that I got to spend this long and now I have something to come back for. I didn't get a chance to run in Vietnam but it is way too hot here anyway.
Leave at 1:30 tomorrow afternoon, 6 hours in Singapore - going to the pool and possibly the spa - then 12 hours to Frankfurt and 7 to New York. Get in at 11AM Tuesday. Back to the good ole US of A.
We caught an overnight train back from SaPa to Hanoi. We had a sleeper car this time which was infinitely better than the trip up there, though I still couldn't extend fully in the bed. We arrived at our hostel at 6AM for a noon check in so we ditched our bags and went in search of air con. Hanoi is miserably hot. It's high 90's and humid everyday. I wasn't feeling well after the train ride and napped about 4 times that day. We feel asleep at the temple of literature (it was really boring) and got yelled at by a security guard. We went in search of "food street" and found some outdoor stalls to have a nice seafood lunch. Went to a night market that night that apparently only sold bra's and phone accessories and shoes.
The next day we left early for 3 days in Ha Long Bay. It was beautiful. The first day we spend on a boat, traveling through the hundreds of large steep rocky islands covered in trees that fill the bay. We kayaked around some islands, went into a cave and dove off the boat. The food on the boat was great (squid, shrimp, make your own spring rolls, etc) and the rooms were surprisingly spacious. The next day we got dropped off on Cat Ba Island, the biggest in the bay, and opted to cycle around the island as it was too hot for trekking. We saw Hospital Cave which is a very large cavern that was used as a hospital during the war. It had 3 floors, 17 rooms and a cinema!
Then we went to Monkey Island, a private island owned by the tour company. There we meet up with the other boat from our tour company that had all the fun young people on it and the trip got much better. We swam, played soccer on the beach, kayaked, ate some great food, played drinking games, partied with a Vietnamese man whose daughter had just gotten accepted to college so he bought everyone 3 rounds of beers! It was great. (Note: These Scottish guys taught us the greatest "drinking" game ever. It's not so much a drinking game as a game to play while you're drinking. It's basically the little green man rule from kings - there's a little green man sitting on your drink and you have to remove him before you drink and put him back after - but the penalty for forgetting him, instead of just having to take a drink - not much of a penalty - is that the the man runs away and the rest of the group gets to decide where he's gone, then you have to retrieve him. Hilarious. He can go anywhere. On the bartender's head, in a little kid's pocket, swimming in the ocean... and you can't explain it to anybody until after you've gotten the man. fantastic. Anyway...) We were up late and then woke up early yesterday to catch a bus back to the big island to take a bus across it to catch a boat back to the mainland to take a bus back to Hanoi. Loads of traveling but really fun. Unfortunately, I was not feeling well at all. We got back to Hanoi, showered, ate and crashed.
Today I feel much better though the heat here is unbearable. We decided to skip the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum as it didn't seem to be that impressive and instead to walk around a market and see the city a little more. We also napped through the hottest part of the day. Great decision. Tonight we got one last bowl of Pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) and have to pack up for the morning flight home.
It's been a great trip. Tarik and I are still talking which is amazing. I wish we had 2 more weeks to see Laos but I'm grateful that I got to spend this long and now I have something to come back for. I didn't get a chance to run in Vietnam but it is way too hot here anyway.
Leave at 1:30 tomorrow afternoon, 6 hours in Singapore - going to the pool and possibly the spa - then 12 hours to Frankfurt and 7 to New York. Get in at 11AM Tuesday. Back to the good ole US of A.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
How many people would like a peanut butter stout if I brewed it?
If you think you would like a peanut butter stout, please comment on this post.
In other news, Tarik and I are in SaPa, leaving in an hour to go back to Hanoi. This place is great. I love it. Especially when Tarik gets totallyfreaked out by the young village girls at the bar. They looked 12. The only bad part about this town is the massages. Apparently somebody told them that a foot massage consists mostly of hitting and prodding my calves for 29 minutes and pushing some weird thing into my feet for the last minute. It was not relaxing or fun and it kinda hurt. It appeared they were doing the same thing to the guys getting neck and shoulder massages as well. No more Vietnamese massages.
Forgot the mention in the last post the multiple times we had to stop or motorbikes to left bulls ridden by little boys cross or a man taking his pigs for a walk down the road to get out of the way. Things I've come to expect and not think are out of the ordinary.
I'll be home in a week. Things I'm excited for about America:
In other news, Tarik and I are in SaPa, leaving in an hour to go back to Hanoi. This place is great. I love it. Especially when Tarik gets totallyfreaked out by the young village girls at the bar. They looked 12. The only bad part about this town is the massages. Apparently somebody told them that a foot massage consists mostly of hitting and prodding my calves for 29 minutes and pushing some weird thing into my feet for the last minute. It was not relaxing or fun and it kinda hurt. It appeared they were doing the same thing to the guys getting neck and shoulder massages as well. No more Vietnamese massages.
Forgot the mention in the last post the multiple times we had to stop or motorbikes to left bulls ridden by little boys cross or a man taking his pigs for a walk down the road to get out of the way. Things I've come to expect and not think are out of the ordinary.
I'll be home in a week. Things I'm excited for about America:
- Showers that are separated from the rest of the bathroom by some sort of curtain, glass, door, anything
- Bathroom that aren't always wet
- Flushing toilet paper down the toilet
- Mexican food specifically a burrito
- Pizza
- A cheeseburger
- Non-bottled water
- Everything not being wet all the time
- Not sweating constantly (although Sapa has been a nice change from that)
- My own bed
- Things happening around me that I understand
- Trash cans
- Not being harassed by every motorbike driver or woman selling something
- Waiters that don't had you the menu and then hover over you until you order
- Beer that tastes like something
- Sour patch kids
- Cheese
- Meals that cost less than $3
- Going wherever we want whenever we want
- Haggling
- Meeting random people
- Beaches
- Trekking
- Temples
- The randomness of traveling
Monday, August 2, 2010
Cambodian and Vietnam Pics
aTarik and Jui out NagaWorld Casino.
Tarik putting on his pink Mickey Mouse helmet before getting a moto ride to the soup lady.
Me drinking Che a dessert drink filled with many types of sweet beans, tapioca, pomegranate and coconut cream.
Our Mekong River guide pulling a full bird out of a jar of Snake Wine.
Me holding a 50 lb python.
Delicious pineapple!
Chicken feet for dinner.
SaPa
Tarik crossing over Silver Falls.
Betty.
The agricultural terraces that surround SaPa on every open bit of hillside.
Houng Lein Mountains around SaPa.
SaPa.
1 week left
Vietnam is cool. I really like it. The south and north are very different. We were in Saigon for 3 days and went to a couple of war museums. The propaganda there against the US and our "foreign aggression and imperialism" was intense. It seems that everyone in the country forgot that the South didn't want to be part of the North when the war started. We haven't really experienced any open dislike towards us but the Vietnamese in general don't seem to be as open to foreigners as the Cambodians and Thais were. Unless they're trying to sell you something there completely ignore you, cut you in line and honk a lot at you on the motorbikes. That's the other thing: the motorbikes here are way more intense. You can barely cross the street and even then you just start walking very slowly and hold out you hand and they will avoid you. You can't wait for a break in trafic because there hardly ever is one! It's very intimidating at first, though I'm used to it now.
The food in Vietnam is very good, though a lot of it is just soup. Even when you don't think you're ordering soup, you get soup. Tarik saw a show on TV before we left about "the soup lady" in Saigon so we spent a morning searching for her. We wandered for a while in the area we knew she was in and finally a woman who spoke no English but clearly knew what we were looking for started yelling and pointing. We followed her directions and found it. It was totally worth it. She had a small roadside stand where she boiled 3 large vats of soup with unknown meats in it. We didn't order anything she just pointed us to a table and gave us each a bowl and a plate of spring rolls. It was delicious, we think there was a beef sausage and duck meat in the noodle soup.
The next day we did an overnight in the Mekong River Delta. We took boat rides all around the river and the small canals through the area. The tour brought us to a coconut candy making "factory," a rice wine "distillery," a honey bee "farm" and many small towns along the river. The river itself was brown with silt and provide the most fertile soil in southeast asia. That is where a huge percentage of exported rice to the world is grown. That night for dinner we attempt to get some bbq chicken from an authentic Vietnamese food stall. We ended up with chicken feet! They looked gross and didn't really have any meat on them. They didn't taste like anything other than the chilli sause they were bbq with and most what was edible on them was skin and cartiledge. We paid and then went to get pizza afterwards.
The following morning we went to a large floating market that was full of houseboats with people buying and selling fruits and vegetables. I ate one of the most delicious pineapples I've ever had. Then I watched a woman kill, gut and scale 3 fish in about 45 seconds.
Saigon itself feels like the first real city we've been to. It has a financial part of town and its economy is not based on tourism. Bangkok was like this but we mostly only saw the touristy parts. We flew up to Hanoi in the north, bypassing many awesome sounding beach towns on the way up the coast. We went straight to the train station to buy a ticket to the mountain town of SaPa. Unfortunately there were no more sleeper cabins available, so we had standard bus-like seats for this 9 hour overnight train. It was miserable. The a/c in our cabin wasn't really working (every other cabin was nice and cool) and we sat right next to a sliding door which didn't stay shut and banged open and close every time the tarin turned. I knew it wouldn't be comfortable so I drank a bit hoping it would help me sleep, which it did except that when we arrived at 4 AM I was hungover and had to sit in the rear of a minibus as it bounced and turned it's way for an hour and a half up the mountains to Sapa.
It was totally worth it now that we're here though. This town is awesome! It's a small French-style town near the China border. There is lots of hiking and mountain villages around. We went to the market yesterday where the villagers were selling all sorts of handmade goods. Then we went for a hike up the closest mountain. Unfortunately it's always cloudy so the mountains in the distance are hard to see but that is offset by the fact that the low clouds are constantly moving and moving quickly. This gives the scenery a different feel every 10 minutes or so because you can seee new things in the distance and others are hidden. Today we rented motorbikes and drove around the winding mountain roads. We hiked up to a huge waterfall and drove over a pass to see some distant villages inthe valleys. It was all incredibly beautiful and I wish we didn't have to leave tomorrow.
Ok that was long enough. I'm going to try to upload some pictures now as well.
The food in Vietnam is very good, though a lot of it is just soup. Even when you don't think you're ordering soup, you get soup. Tarik saw a show on TV before we left about "the soup lady" in Saigon so we spent a morning searching for her. We wandered for a while in the area we knew she was in and finally a woman who spoke no English but clearly knew what we were looking for started yelling and pointing. We followed her directions and found it. It was totally worth it. She had a small roadside stand where she boiled 3 large vats of soup with unknown meats in it. We didn't order anything she just pointed us to a table and gave us each a bowl and a plate of spring rolls. It was delicious, we think there was a beef sausage and duck meat in the noodle soup.
The next day we did an overnight in the Mekong River Delta. We took boat rides all around the river and the small canals through the area. The tour brought us to a coconut candy making "factory," a rice wine "distillery," a honey bee "farm" and many small towns along the river. The river itself was brown with silt and provide the most fertile soil in southeast asia. That is where a huge percentage of exported rice to the world is grown. That night for dinner we attempt to get some bbq chicken from an authentic Vietnamese food stall. We ended up with chicken feet! They looked gross and didn't really have any meat on them. They didn't taste like anything other than the chilli sause they were bbq with and most what was edible on them was skin and cartiledge. We paid and then went to get pizza afterwards.
The following morning we went to a large floating market that was full of houseboats with people buying and selling fruits and vegetables. I ate one of the most delicious pineapples I've ever had. Then I watched a woman kill, gut and scale 3 fish in about 45 seconds.
Saigon itself feels like the first real city we've been to. It has a financial part of town and its economy is not based on tourism. Bangkok was like this but we mostly only saw the touristy parts. We flew up to Hanoi in the north, bypassing many awesome sounding beach towns on the way up the coast. We went straight to the train station to buy a ticket to the mountain town of SaPa. Unfortunately there were no more sleeper cabins available, so we had standard bus-like seats for this 9 hour overnight train. It was miserable. The a/c in our cabin wasn't really working (every other cabin was nice and cool) and we sat right next to a sliding door which didn't stay shut and banged open and close every time the tarin turned. I knew it wouldn't be comfortable so I drank a bit hoping it would help me sleep, which it did except that when we arrived at 4 AM I was hungover and had to sit in the rear of a minibus as it bounced and turned it's way for an hour and a half up the mountains to Sapa.
It was totally worth it now that we're here though. This town is awesome! It's a small French-style town near the China border. There is lots of hiking and mountain villages around. We went to the market yesterday where the villagers were selling all sorts of handmade goods. Then we went for a hike up the closest mountain. Unfortunately it's always cloudy so the mountains in the distance are hard to see but that is offset by the fact that the low clouds are constantly moving and moving quickly. This gives the scenery a different feel every 10 minutes or so because you can seee new things in the distance and others are hidden. Today we rented motorbikes and drove around the winding mountain roads. We hiked up to a huge waterfall and drove over a pass to see some distant villages inthe valleys. It was all incredibly beautiful and I wish we didn't have to leave tomorrow.
Ok that was long enough. I'm going to try to upload some pictures now as well.
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