Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Thailand Photos
Thailand Photos are going up here: http://picasaweb.google.com/tunafishandgrits/Thailand
Laos Photos
Pictures are syncing now. You can check out Laos photos here: http://picasaweb.google.com/tunafishandgrits/Laos
Laos
Laos was pretty cool. I spent a day in Vientiane, which was pretty laid-back. There wasn’t a whole lot to see, but I really liked the vibe there. It was great to finally be in a country where somebody isn’t constantly trying to sell me something. If you walk down a busy street in Vietnam or Cambodia about every 15 seconds somebody will try to sell you something. The constant barrage of “Motobike, motobike, you need ride? Where you going?” and “We have best food, you eat here!” and my personal favorite “You need majuana? You want party? You need lady? I have nice lady for you!” really starts to grate on your nerves after a while. Thankfully, there’s none of that in Laos. Every once in a while a guy will offer you a tuk-tuk ride, but you can politely say “no thanks” and they leave you alone rather than following you down the street thinking that if they annoy you enough that you’ll change your mind.
I actually was considering starting a chain of T-shirt stores in Vietnam and Cambodia. I would only sell one shirt in various colors and sizes. Every thing one of them would say in both English and the local language “If I want a room/ a ride/to eat/to buy something/drugs/to pay for sex, I’ll let you know. Now fuck off!!!”. I’d make a killing.
As you can tell I’ve found Laos to be much more relaxing. And while Vientiane was just a pleasant day stop, Luang Prabang was pretty cool. There’s tons of outdoor stuff to do in the surrounding area, as well. I took a long 7-hour hike the second day we were there, visiting a couple small hill-tribe villages on the way. Those were pretty nice as I feel our stops to the villages weren’t staged at all. I’ve gotten the impression from other travelers that similar village stops in more developed and touristy countries like Thailand can be very staged, even to the point of the villages being completely fake Epcott-esque constructions set up to parade tourists through. So I think doing this stuff in Laos was a good call.
Another day I was here I spent the day (well, supposedly I was going to spend the day, in actuality I spent about 3 hours with another 3 hours of waiting around) riding elephants. I signed up for the more hard-core (and expensive) program where you ride the elephants bare-back instead of sitting in a chair they’re saddled with or using some kind of harness. I also some time learning how to mount and dismount the things and steer them. Finally, I went down with all the professional elephant handlers at this sanctuary to give the elephants a bath in the river, which was a blast. Check out the photos as there are lots of nice shots of me giving my elephant a scrub-down. Given the amount of time I was on the elephants the program was pretty expensive, but well worth it. It was without a doubt one of the coolest things I’ve ever done.
The food in Laos was just decent. The whole 6 days I was here I never had anything in a restaurant which really impressed me that much. However, there is some really great street-food. I had a couple of great meals in the stands set up on the river in Vientiane, and also had some quite good stuff I picked up on the street with all the night-food stalls in Luang Prabang. In particular, all the grilled stuff is really good. They’ve got lots of whole grilled fish, grilled chickens, little grilled birds with the heads and claws and everything, pork ribs, you name it. And it’s all pretty good. However, my luck unfortunately ran out regarding street food during my stay in Luang Prabang. The second night I was here I ended up crapping my guts out all evening after chowing down on some fruit shakes, some unidentifiable meat thing, and some cold sausages that were very tasty but I think had been sitting out a little too long. I suppose that given all the down-market places without running water in the facility that I’ve been eating at it was bound to happen sooner or later.
I’m on my way to Chiang Mai now. Hopefully, I’ll get my pictures uploaded while I sleep tonight. It’s been a week since I’ve been in a hotel with internet access, so I haven’t had much opportunity to synchronize all my photos. There should be a fair amount of places in Thailand with wifi, so hopefully all the Laos pictures will be up soon.
I actually was considering starting a chain of T-shirt stores in Vietnam and Cambodia. I would only sell one shirt in various colors and sizes. Every thing one of them would say in both English and the local language “If I want a room/ a ride/to eat/to buy something/drugs/to pay for sex, I’ll let you know. Now fuck off!!!”. I’d make a killing.
As you can tell I’ve found Laos to be much more relaxing. And while Vientiane was just a pleasant day stop, Luang Prabang was pretty cool. There’s tons of outdoor stuff to do in the surrounding area, as well. I took a long 7-hour hike the second day we were there, visiting a couple small hill-tribe villages on the way. Those were pretty nice as I feel our stops to the villages weren’t staged at all. I’ve gotten the impression from other travelers that similar village stops in more developed and touristy countries like Thailand can be very staged, even to the point of the villages being completely fake Epcott-esque constructions set up to parade tourists through. So I think doing this stuff in Laos was a good call.
Another day I was here I spent the day (well, supposedly I was going to spend the day, in actuality I spent about 3 hours with another 3 hours of waiting around) riding elephants. I signed up for the more hard-core (and expensive) program where you ride the elephants bare-back instead of sitting in a chair they’re saddled with or using some kind of harness. I also some time learning how to mount and dismount the things and steer them. Finally, I went down with all the professional elephant handlers at this sanctuary to give the elephants a bath in the river, which was a blast. Check out the photos as there are lots of nice shots of me giving my elephant a scrub-down. Given the amount of time I was on the elephants the program was pretty expensive, but well worth it. It was without a doubt one of the coolest things I’ve ever done.
The food in Laos was just decent. The whole 6 days I was here I never had anything in a restaurant which really impressed me that much. However, there is some really great street-food. I had a couple of great meals in the stands set up on the river in Vientiane, and also had some quite good stuff I picked up on the street with all the night-food stalls in Luang Prabang. In particular, all the grilled stuff is really good. They’ve got lots of whole grilled fish, grilled chickens, little grilled birds with the heads and claws and everything, pork ribs, you name it. And it’s all pretty good. However, my luck unfortunately ran out regarding street food during my stay in Luang Prabang. The second night I was here I ended up crapping my guts out all evening after chowing down on some fruit shakes, some unidentifiable meat thing, and some cold sausages that were very tasty but I think had been sitting out a little too long. I suppose that given all the down-market places without running water in the facility that I’ve been eating at it was bound to happen sooner or later.
I’m on my way to Chiang Mai now. Hopefully, I’ll get my pictures uploaded while I sleep tonight. It’s been a week since I’ve been in a hotel with internet access, so I haven’t had much opportunity to synchronize all my photos. There should be a fair amount of places in Thailand with wifi, so hopefully all the Laos pictures will be up soon.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Finished with Cambodia
So my time in Cambodia has come and gone. Not including my travel time, I spent a little over a full day in Phnom Penh and 3 and a half days in Siem Reap. The most interesting part of the Phnom Penh was the Royal Palace. I take that back, the most interesting part of Phnom Penh was the fact that it had by far the hottest women I've yet to see on this trip, but after that it was the Royal Palace. The Killing Fields were interesting to see but not all that impactful. They weren't presented with any information that I didn't already know and I didn't have a decent guide to put things into context. It was still definitely worth the trip just to see, though.
All the Angkor temple ruins were pretty fascinating. I hired a private guide and a driver so I could cover as much as possible in the 3 days I had. Even then I thought the guide was holding me back. I can apparently hike a lot faster than he can. Still we got pretty far afield and were able to cover just about everything worth seeing within 50 Km of Siem Reap in the 3 days. I did get gouged a bit by the travel company I arranged this through. When I bought the guide and driver I was given the impression I could extensively customize the tour and wouldn't have to pay that much more to add in additional places. I ended up having to cough up another 70 bucks to see a couple of the things I wanted to that weren't on the standard tour, which pissed me off a bit. The other disadvantage to the private driver was all kids selling souvenirs and other crap converged on me like a swarm of bees when I got out of the car. I can't really blame them. They see a lone guy show up at a temple in a minivan with a driver and a private guide looking like a fucking Maharaja (or Tom Daschle??) and they probably figure (incorrectly) that he's got money to burn.
The Cambodian food is pretty good. It wasn't quite up to Vietnam's standards, but still quite tasty. You can definitely get some wackier stuff there. In the 6 days I was around, I ate some barbequed snake, crocodile, and frogs 3 different times. You can probably tell I liked the frogs. I particularly liked the ribbity soup I had that was filled up with little frog legs, frog bodies, and lemony broth. Yum! They've got tons of seafood. There's a massive lake in the middle of the country that is one of the most productive fresh-water fisheries in the world, so fish is a big part of the diet. It's a good thing, too, since the cows here are so damn skinny.
The one thing I'll be happy to get away from is the dirt. You get expectedly dirty going to the temples, but aside from the ritzy parts right on the river Siem Reap itself is a big dust bowl. And there is trash absolutely EVERYWHERE in Cambodia. I'm not sure if it's because they can't afford proper waste disposal or if it's just a cultural thing, but there was litter all over the place. The people were great and I enjoyed my time, but it will be nice to get somewhere where I don't feel like I need to hose myself down after walking down the street for 20 minutes. I'm on the plane from Siem Reap to Vientiane as I write this, so we'll see if Laos is any better in that regard.
All the Angkor temple ruins were pretty fascinating. I hired a private guide and a driver so I could cover as much as possible in the 3 days I had. Even then I thought the guide was holding me back. I can apparently hike a lot faster than he can. Still we got pretty far afield and were able to cover just about everything worth seeing within 50 Km of Siem Reap in the 3 days. I did get gouged a bit by the travel company I arranged this through. When I bought the guide and driver I was given the impression I could extensively customize the tour and wouldn't have to pay that much more to add in additional places. I ended up having to cough up another 70 bucks to see a couple of the things I wanted to that weren't on the standard tour, which pissed me off a bit. The other disadvantage to the private driver was all kids selling souvenirs and other crap converged on me like a swarm of bees when I got out of the car. I can't really blame them. They see a lone guy show up at a temple in a minivan with a driver and a private guide looking like a fucking Maharaja (or Tom Daschle??) and they probably figure (incorrectly) that he's got money to burn.
The Cambodian food is pretty good. It wasn't quite up to Vietnam's standards, but still quite tasty. You can definitely get some wackier stuff there. In the 6 days I was around, I ate some barbequed snake, crocodile, and frogs 3 different times. You can probably tell I liked the frogs. I particularly liked the ribbity soup I had that was filled up with little frog legs, frog bodies, and lemony broth. Yum! They've got tons of seafood. There's a massive lake in the middle of the country that is one of the most productive fresh-water fisheries in the world, so fish is a big part of the diet. It's a good thing, too, since the cows here are so damn skinny.
The one thing I'll be happy to get away from is the dirt. You get expectedly dirty going to the temples, but aside from the ritzy parts right on the river Siem Reap itself is a big dust bowl. And there is trash absolutely EVERYWHERE in Cambodia. I'm not sure if it's because they can't afford proper waste disposal or if it's just a cultural thing, but there was litter all over the place. The people were great and I enjoyed my time, but it will be nice to get somewhere where I don't feel like I need to hose myself down after walking down the street for 20 minutes. I'm on the plane from Siem Reap to Vientiane as I write this, so we'll see if Laos is any better in that regard.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Cambodia Photos
Hey gang. I've got a new web album where I'm dumping photos from Cambodia. You can access it here: http://picasaweb.google.com/tunafishandgrits/Cambodia
I know that none of the pics I've uploaded have descriptions yet. I've got a long bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap tomorrow, and if the road is sufficiently flat to type on my computer while driving I'll try to fill out all the descriptions for botht the Vietnam and Cambodia albums then.
I know that none of the pics I've uploaded have descriptions yet. I've got a long bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap tomorrow, and if the road is sufficiently flat to type on my computer while driving I'll try to fill out all the descriptions for botht the Vietnam and Cambodia albums then.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Wrapping Up Vietnam
So I just spent another few days in Vietnam. The last day in Hanoi was uneventful until the evening. I got out for dinner a bit late, and couldn’t find the restaurant I was planning on eating at. By the time I gave up on trying to find it, I realized almost every other place was closed as well. This is probably my biggest peeve with Vietnam: all the restaurants close so damn early. Even in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, you’re pretty much SOL if you want some good authentic Vietnamese food after 10:00 PM, even on the weekend.
So I started wandering around aimlessly looking for any place were I could get fed something other than pizza and spaghetti (the bullshit tourist places tend to be open later). I saw one place that had a bunch of people in it and the lights were still on (at this point it was around 10:30), and popped in. I asked if they were still open for dinner, and after some guy from the big group of Vietnamese dudes that was filling up the place jumped in to translate I found out that the kitchen was closed. However, the translator guy asked if I’d like to join them. They had a bunch of leftover grub (water buffalo and pork, kick-ass!) and I ended up socializing with them for about an hour and a half. They even ended up picking up the whole tab for the meal over my objections, which I felt particularly bad about since I likely make more money than all eight of those guys put together. It was a really great experience.
After Hanoi, I went to Hue, a medium-sized town on the coast in the middle of the country. They had some tombs from the Vietnamese emperors, and a couple interesting pagodas, but not much else. It was definitely worth the day though, as I went to this dive-y little hole-in-the-wall where I got these lemongrass skewers make out of some kind of pork paste that were served with all the standard Vietnamese accoutrements (rice paper wrappers, sliced unripened baby plantains, bamboo shoots, herbs, and the ubiquitous sweet-sour-spicy dipping sauce). Killer.
I had a tour guide driving me around the city on scooter. This was really essential, as the tombs were 10-15 kilometers outside the city and I had a fair amount to see and had to do it all in just one afternoon. He was a pretty friendly young guy that spoke respectable English so it was a nice time. At around 5:00 I offered to take us both out for a 2nd lunch (well, might have been his first but it was my second). We had a soup cooked with a whole fish (just gutted) with all kinds of great crap like woodear, pineapple, chilis, yadda yadda. After that the guy spent some more time driving me around, doing things like dropping me off and picking me up from a massage, asking me if I’d like to be introduced to any of is Vietnamese lady friends, etc. He actually got a little clingy, so much so that it started to creep me out a little bit, and I ended up ditching out on him in the evening.
After Hue I spent a day and a half in Hoi An, a picturesque old trading port a couple hours to the south. I rented a scooter and went to the beach, but when I tried to part some Vietnamese guys started yelling at me. I never found the right place to park, and after driving around for another 20 minutes the sun went away and it got really windy, so I just drove back to town. I didn’t really want sand up my butt crack anyways, and it was sufficient just to take a scenic scooter ride and check out the beach.
Hoi An is renowned for all the custom tailoring and cobbler work. I spent some time checking out suit and overcoat options, but just ended up ordering a shirt and a pair of custom-made shoes. After the initial sizing and 2 separate fittings the shirt came out pretty good, although in regards to the quality it’s nothing special. If nothing else it will be a good travel shirt (i.e. a shirt that fits really well and looks decent yet I don’t care if it gets trashed) and will come in handy the next 3 weeks.
The shoes were a different story. When I went if for the fitting I saw what he had put together and it wasn’t impressing me very much. I told him I wouldn’t be keeping the shoes and to just keep my 50% down and not bother making any adjustments.
After Hoi An I caught a flight to Saigon. It didn’t impress me all that much. It’s quite metropolitan, and doesn’t have the charm of any of the other places I’ve visited. I took a day tour of the Mekong delta, and that was a bit of a snooze as well. The best part of the tour occurred when the bus was delayed for 90 minutes and we had to kill time in town. I spent it shopping for dress shoes (I brought the wrong dress shoes to wear out at night and was able to get a more appropriate pair for a paltry $15) and skarfing down street-food. I was a little concerned that the street food would give me traveler’s diarrhea and I’d be crapping my guts out during the 6-hour ride bus ride I had the next day, but so far so good.
During the Delta tour I met a guy from Sweden that was also travelling alone. We ended up grabbing dinner and hitting the Saigon bar scene. Unfortunately the normally pervasive Australian backpacker girls weren’t out in force (not the cute ones at any rate), so it ended up being just him and I getting boozy all evening.
Because it wasn’t all that exciting and because I wasn’t able to arrange a half-day cooking class, instead of spending 4 nights/3 days as planned in Saigon I just stuck around for 3 nights and 2 ½ days. Which brings me to where I’m writing the post on the bus from Saigon to Phnom Penh. I should be crossing the border into Cambodia at any time now. It’s probably a good thing, as I already spent 1 more day than I was planning in Vietnam. I should be able to make that day up in Cambodia or Laos so I won’t cut into my Thailand time, though. I’ll let everybody know what the deal is with Cambodia in a few days. I’ll probably just be in Phnom Penh for 1 day and 2 nights, after which I’ll have a long ride to Siem Reap, so it may be pretty soon assuming my hotel in Siem Reap has WiFi.
Now that I’m leaving Vietnam my temporary cell number will no longer work. If you need to get a hold of me urgently, call me on my regular cell number.
So I started wandering around aimlessly looking for any place were I could get fed something other than pizza and spaghetti (the bullshit tourist places tend to be open later). I saw one place that had a bunch of people in it and the lights were still on (at this point it was around 10:30), and popped in. I asked if they were still open for dinner, and after some guy from the big group of Vietnamese dudes that was filling up the place jumped in to translate I found out that the kitchen was closed. However, the translator guy asked if I’d like to join them. They had a bunch of leftover grub (water buffalo and pork, kick-ass!) and I ended up socializing with them for about an hour and a half. They even ended up picking up the whole tab for the meal over my objections, which I felt particularly bad about since I likely make more money than all eight of those guys put together. It was a really great experience.
After Hanoi, I went to Hue, a medium-sized town on the coast in the middle of the country. They had some tombs from the Vietnamese emperors, and a couple interesting pagodas, but not much else. It was definitely worth the day though, as I went to this dive-y little hole-in-the-wall where I got these lemongrass skewers make out of some kind of pork paste that were served with all the standard Vietnamese accoutrements (rice paper wrappers, sliced unripened baby plantains, bamboo shoots, herbs, and the ubiquitous sweet-sour-spicy dipping sauce). Killer.
I had a tour guide driving me around the city on scooter. This was really essential, as the tombs were 10-15 kilometers outside the city and I had a fair amount to see and had to do it all in just one afternoon. He was a pretty friendly young guy that spoke respectable English so it was a nice time. At around 5:00 I offered to take us both out for a 2nd lunch (well, might have been his first but it was my second). We had a soup cooked with a whole fish (just gutted) with all kinds of great crap like woodear, pineapple, chilis, yadda yadda. After that the guy spent some more time driving me around, doing things like dropping me off and picking me up from a massage, asking me if I’d like to be introduced to any of is Vietnamese lady friends, etc. He actually got a little clingy, so much so that it started to creep me out a little bit, and I ended up ditching out on him in the evening.
After Hue I spent a day and a half in Hoi An, a picturesque old trading port a couple hours to the south. I rented a scooter and went to the beach, but when I tried to part some Vietnamese guys started yelling at me. I never found the right place to park, and after driving around for another 20 minutes the sun went away and it got really windy, so I just drove back to town. I didn’t really want sand up my butt crack anyways, and it was sufficient just to take a scenic scooter ride and check out the beach.
Hoi An is renowned for all the custom tailoring and cobbler work. I spent some time checking out suit and overcoat options, but just ended up ordering a shirt and a pair of custom-made shoes. After the initial sizing and 2 separate fittings the shirt came out pretty good, although in regards to the quality it’s nothing special. If nothing else it will be a good travel shirt (i.e. a shirt that fits really well and looks decent yet I don’t care if it gets trashed) and will come in handy the next 3 weeks.
The shoes were a different story. When I went if for the fitting I saw what he had put together and it wasn’t impressing me very much. I told him I wouldn’t be keeping the shoes and to just keep my 50% down and not bother making any adjustments.
After Hoi An I caught a flight to Saigon. It didn’t impress me all that much. It’s quite metropolitan, and doesn’t have the charm of any of the other places I’ve visited. I took a day tour of the Mekong delta, and that was a bit of a snooze as well. The best part of the tour occurred when the bus was delayed for 90 minutes and we had to kill time in town. I spent it shopping for dress shoes (I brought the wrong dress shoes to wear out at night and was able to get a more appropriate pair for a paltry $15) and skarfing down street-food. I was a little concerned that the street food would give me traveler’s diarrhea and I’d be crapping my guts out during the 6-hour ride bus ride I had the next day, but so far so good.
During the Delta tour I met a guy from Sweden that was also travelling alone. We ended up grabbing dinner and hitting the Saigon bar scene. Unfortunately the normally pervasive Australian backpacker girls weren’t out in force (not the cute ones at any rate), so it ended up being just him and I getting boozy all evening.
Because it wasn’t all that exciting and because I wasn’t able to arrange a half-day cooking class, instead of spending 4 nights/3 days as planned in Saigon I just stuck around for 3 nights and 2 ½ days. Which brings me to where I’m writing the post on the bus from Saigon to Phnom Penh. I should be crossing the border into Cambodia at any time now. It’s probably a good thing, as I already spent 1 more day than I was planning in Vietnam. I should be able to make that day up in Cambodia or Laos so I won’t cut into my Thailand time, though. I’ll let everybody know what the deal is with Cambodia in a few days. I’ll probably just be in Phnom Penh for 1 day and 2 nights, after which I’ll have a long ride to Siem Reap, so it may be pretty soon assuming my hotel in Siem Reap has WiFi.
Now that I’m leaving Vietnam my temporary cell number will no longer work. If you need to get a hold of me urgently, call me on my regular cell number.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Hanoi and Halong Bay
Sorry for the delay in getting a first post up here. We were experiencing some technical difficulties on the other side of the planet.
Vietnam kicks ass. Spent the first day in Hanoi checking out a lot of the major sites: the Old Quarter, Haon Kiem Lake, Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum, blah, blah, blah. The shopping here is killer and outrageously cheap. It's too bad this is the first stop on my trip. I've found all kinds of stash I'd love to buy, but can't schlep all the stuff around with me for another month in my backpack. I also grabbed a nice 60-minute massage that cost me all of $14.
So enough with all the unimportant crap, on to the food. I had the best $18 meal of my life for lunch the fist day here. I had some soup that was made with rice noodles, egg dumplings, whole plantains with the skin still on, and snails. I never would have guessed that skin-on unripe bananas would complement escargots, but I guess that shows you what I know. I also had some spring-roll like things with some sugar-roasted pork, fresh herbs, bamboo shoots, and other veggies. To top it off I had a whole bottle of Vietnamese wine. I know what you're thinking, and yes, it's actual grape wine. Even more surprisingly, it was good! Don't get me wrong, you wouldn't ever mistake it for a Grand Cru white Burgundy, but it was quite pleasant and went fantastically well with all the food. I also got to sample a couple other things. A couple young Vietnamese women were seated across the table from me, and I was chatting them up while eating. I think the saw me eyeballing the food they got and asked if I'd like to try any. Out of politeness I said "Thank you, but I couldn't", and unfortunately they took me literally. So I spent the next half hour forlornly eyeballing the beef stir-fry-like thingy they were hardly touching and hoping they'd offer again. When it became apparent that they were done eating and weren't going to ask again I sheepishly muttered "Um, is that offer to try that still available?". It was. I ate it. It kicked ass.
I spent the next day a half cruising Halong Bay. Words would really not do the place justice, so if you want the low-down on that, just check out the photos. I’ve already got a bunch up at http://picasaweb.google.com/tunafishandgrits/Vietnam, so feel free to check them out. We spent a lot of time cruising around, took a brief swim (at least I did, everybody else stayed on board), and visited a floating fishing village in the bay.
Did more kicking around last night, got another massage, and through a course of events that I won’t bother getting into ended up eating water buffalo at this little dive mom-and-pop restaurant with a half dozen Vietnamese guys. I took a cooking class this morning, and will knock around a bit more before heading down to Hue this evening.
BTW - I got a local SIM card for my cell phone. So I'm not currently reachable at my regular number. If anyone needs to text me or call I can be reached at +84 166 6 256 950.
Vietnam kicks ass. Spent the first day in Hanoi checking out a lot of the major sites: the Old Quarter, Haon Kiem Lake, Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum, blah, blah, blah. The shopping here is killer and outrageously cheap. It's too bad this is the first stop on my trip. I've found all kinds of stash I'd love to buy, but can't schlep all the stuff around with me for another month in my backpack. I also grabbed a nice 60-minute massage that cost me all of $14.
So enough with all the unimportant crap, on to the food. I had the best $18 meal of my life for lunch the fist day here. I had some soup that was made with rice noodles, egg dumplings, whole plantains with the skin still on, and snails. I never would have guessed that skin-on unripe bananas would complement escargots, but I guess that shows you what I know. I also had some spring-roll like things with some sugar-roasted pork, fresh herbs, bamboo shoots, and other veggies. To top it off I had a whole bottle of Vietnamese wine. I know what you're thinking, and yes, it's actual grape wine. Even more surprisingly, it was good! Don't get me wrong, you wouldn't ever mistake it for a Grand Cru white Burgundy, but it was quite pleasant and went fantastically well with all the food. I also got to sample a couple other things. A couple young Vietnamese women were seated across the table from me, and I was chatting them up while eating. I think the saw me eyeballing the food they got and asked if I'd like to try any. Out of politeness I said "Thank you, but I couldn't", and unfortunately they took me literally. So I spent the next half hour forlornly eyeballing the beef stir-fry-like thingy they were hardly touching and hoping they'd offer again. When it became apparent that they were done eating and weren't going to ask again I sheepishly muttered "Um, is that offer to try that still available?". It was. I ate it. It kicked ass.
I spent the next day a half cruising Halong Bay. Words would really not do the place justice, so if you want the low-down on that, just check out the photos. I’ve already got a bunch up at http://picasaweb.google.com/tunafishandgrits/Vietnam, so feel free to check them out. We spent a lot of time cruising around, took a brief swim (at least I did, everybody else stayed on board), and visited a floating fishing village in the bay.
Did more kicking around last night, got another massage, and through a course of events that I won’t bother getting into ended up eating water buffalo at this little dive mom-and-pop restaurant with a half dozen Vietnamese guys. I took a cooking class this morning, and will knock around a bit more before heading down to Hue this evening.
BTW - I got a local SIM card for my cell phone. So I'm not currently reachable at my regular number. If anyone needs to text me or call I can be reached at +84 166 6 256 950.
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