Good day, top of the morning!
It’s St. Patrick’s Day, go drink egregious quantities of green beer and slap strangers on the back over jokes you only heard half of while stuffing your face with fatty foods.
Today marks 6 months that I’ve been traveling. I left my home on September 16th 2009, now it’s March 16th, 2010 and I’m in Nha Trang, Vietnam I will say that time truly does fly when you’re having fun. Half a year used to crawl when I’d force myself to crawl into my car every morning before going to a job that paid the bills but gave me no thrills.
I’ve done more and grown more in the last 6 months then I did in the last 6 years, I would not change it for the world, if you’re thinking of doing something like this, I urge you to just go for it. I have not met one person in in my travels who regrets doing it, not one. In fact, everyone agrees it’s the best move they ever made.
How are ya? I hope you’re doing well, better than I. It’s midnight and I’m just getting out of bed, what a night last night was, this place DOES GO OFF THE HOOK AT NIGHT. However, there are definitely some undercurrents here, let me elaborate.
First, if you swim after the bar at ~3am with a crew, don’t go too deep, you can feel it pulling you. Enough about that though, also watch your stuff. Check this, remember how I complained a few times about losing my ipod and not really caring about the ipod but mainly the contacts it held? Well I ran into one of the “missed contacts” last night.
It’s time to stop worrying people, what is meant to be in life will be so and you will never know until it happens, but it will, if it’s meant to be so. Crazy how things work out.
After the swim we went to an afterhours at some new Swedish friends place. After that I helped escort this fine lady home, unfortunately she had her wallet and camera stolen last night while swimming. Also, the gent I am traveling with, he had his wallet stolen from the bar.
Like I said, there are some undercurrents here. We joshed with a street vendor who warned us before we went out that lots of theft happens here and it’s a problem, only late at night though.
Could not find this ladies hotel to drop her off so we wandered the city streets eating baguettes, drinking ice coffee and some pho for good measure.
As it is 6 months, I will do a fast recap for those of you just tuning in or who are somewhat new to this here website. I went from Ottawa – Vancouver – Las Vegas – Los Angeles – Thailand – Malaysia – Singapore – Indonesia (Bali & Java) – Back to Thailand – Laos – Cambodia and now I’m in Vietnam. Dare I say, Vietnam is definitely tops, if not extremely close. Where next? I have a few ideas but as you know, I’m not much of a planner or organizer for that matter.
It’s midnight, I haven’t eaten anything and I just woke up. Time to grab some pub food and have a celebratory green beer while saying “cheers” and making meaningless banter with total strangers on topics which probably aren’t of particular interest to either of us.
Tips hat,
P.S: All these photos are from my hotel rooftop, indeed.
P.P.S: I will have lots of “back in Nam” stories.
Update: Went out for some food and made my way to the “Sailor’s Club” which is the happening night club, ran into some friends and chilled, then hit up “Why Not” which is the “afterhours club”. For some reason it looked more like a high school dance, a pathetic one at that. Random strangers sucking face and dancing to horrendous music, snore.
On the way home, some moto pickpockets approached me, it’s women almost always women here, you have to tell them to “get lost” in more or less words a few times before they get close. Supposedly they are all over you for like 1 minute being all “friendly” then take off. You’ve been warned.
Furthermore, I spoke with more people and more people had things stolen. I will say this, if you’re in a jam packed crazy club, ALWAYS BE MOVING. If you’re dancing, dance like you mean it, none of this 2 step crap. A moving target is always more difficult and will probably be avoided.
Greetings,
Below the line below is what I wrote for the update, went out for breakfast and holy sh~t, this place is heaven on earth. One of the most beautiful setups I’ve seen in ages. This place is sweet! I’ll let the photos I added do the talking, and to think, I can stay here, in a hotel for ~$10US a night. Split it with someone, that’s $5 a night or $150US a month, sick, yes?
It’s still early so most “party people” aren’t even up yet, I wouldn’t be had I not taken the night bus, I can’t wait to see this beach in full swing and supposedly the nightlife here is excellent.
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I will take a moment from running up the wall and doing tweaked out backflips from one bed to the other in my new hotel room in Nha Trang, Vietnam. I caught a night bus yesterday and “VOILA, je suis ici”. We bought a 4 or 5 stop open ticket from Saigon aka Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi. It cost us $30US each and each bus is a sleeper bus, pimp. I passed out most of the evening, only waking up at each stop to shovel food in my face.
I’m traveling with one of the gents from the Mekong Delta and just checked into a nice 3 person hotel room for $12US a night. They wanted $15US but I wasn’t having it. This way I have an “extra bed” for my couch aka electronics.
We were going to look for other hotels but decided “fogettabout it”. My friend spotted a goddess of a woman and I went to talk to her. She told us where she was staying but said her camera got stolen with some money. I’ll pay an extra few $$$ a night to hope that doesn’t happen.
I digress.
The bus ride is ~12 hours and it was good times. Met some people along the way. The plan? REST UP and do nothing all day and hit this town like it stole from us to night. There are many clubs supposedly “Sailor” something is the main “go to”. We’ll have to see.
The scenery here is out of this world, do I regret this trip? HAHAHAHAAHHAHA NO! Do I want to go home for the summer? ! HAHAHAHAHAH NO!? Seriously, the more I think about my life, Asia, North America, everything… My heart just isn’t in North America anymore, it’s boring and vanilla. I like excitement and chunky monkey, if that makes sense to you. That said, I do have some “things” I need to wrap up back home, so who knows.
Met some cool people living in Saigon, may revisit them. Also, I got my teeth cleaned for $5us yesterday at a nice place. It was $10us for a clean + polish. She said my teeth are good so just a polish will do. $5US that’s like the price of a crappy 6″ subway sub back home. Also, I bought the same camera I broke for $200us.
Vietnam is truly one of my favorite countries this far. People will ask and I always say “I don’t know, that’s too hard”, not anymore. Vietnam has everything and look how much coast line. This place is beyond beautiful and I think they have a golf course.
After this, we’re going to Hoi An*(sp?), Hue, Hanoi then Halon Bay. After that? Who knows. Of the people I met yesterday, one girl from the US is moving back to Hanoi, exchanged phone numbers, always cool to chill with someone who lives there.
I just got here, I have much to do so this is it, for now.
Tips hat,
P.S: Ice coffee in Vietnam is out of this world and what is with people saying the local people aren’t friendly? You want them to do handsprings and somersaults while rolling out a red carpet for you? Try going to say Ottawa and saying “hello” to random strangers on the street, they will look right through you, trust me.
Update: Went out for breakfast, took these photos. This place is heaven, more to come.
Tags: Beaches, Ho Chi Minh City, Nha Trang, Saigon, Vietnam
Good day,
Not feeling bloggy, this will be brief but hopefully loaded with photos. I went on a private tour of the Mekong Delta and had an amazing time. Here is a brief outline of how it went down and whatnot. If you have not already read this, I suggest you read it first.
We got picked up near our hotel at 10am and made our way by moto to the Mekong Delta. Once arriving went on a boat ride through the tight lanes and visited many places from small villages to candy shops to places where they make all sorts of whiskey. Sample everything and move on. Best part of a private tour? You can leave whenever you’re ready.
After that check out the small village, some fish farms and hang out at night to see the large volume of fireflies. For dinner we decided to eat King Cobra. They caught it in front of us, prepared it and then we eat it. It’s an honor to eat it’s heart while it’s still pumping and it’s liver as well. I eat both and felt like more of a man, or something like that.
The snaked turned into an amazing curry and for dessert, we drank it’s blood. Supposedly it helps your eye sight, I think it worked. I have LOTS of video of this entire process which I will update, one day, when I’m bored. That said, more you travel harder it is but stay tuned. At one point, the cobra spat on one of my friends arms, he immediately rinsed. Supposedly it is “ok” but if you have a small opening or you start scratching later, not so good.
The next day we took off to the floating market, that was pretty cool but not what I expected, saw more people making candy and whatnot, eat some good food, drank some good coffee and just cruised. Spent a good portion of day just driving around in the boat going places. Lots of small lanes that are like side streets and people live right on the river. The market didn’t have “that much”, mainly just people selling ridiculous amounts of pineapple and other things of that nature.
I should have added photos to last update, it was quite thorough, looking back. On the way home ~1 hour or so we stopped at a local market and bought some rats. The guide said he liked rat more than chicken so we thought “sure”. The process of them killing and preparing the rat on the side of the street is also on video and will be shared at another time.
The rat tasted gamy to say the least, I won’t be eating rat again. One of the gents we were with quite liked it actually. I’d much rather eat cobra than rat any day. Then again cobras eat rats so that kinda makes sense. This market had everything and everything was alive. It’s insane how back home people are so removed from the process of killing something to eat it. We just buy these neatly packaged portions like you’re buying a back of chips, quite the opposite over here.
Final day, did a bit of fishing then we checked out the snake museum which also was an anti-venom hospital for locals, soldiers, etc… Actually it was more of a zoo than anything. It was a good time and then we made our way home before checking out the Chinese Pagoda, 250 years old.
On the way, we saw a guy with a basket on the back of his moto stuffed with dogs for the market. Saw the same with pigs the other day, these dogs look like they came from someones couch. It’s odd how we feel for dogs but have total disregard for whatever else shows up on our plate each day.
The trip was good, 3 days was plenty. Our guides where knowledgeable and quite nice. I never once got the vibe that anything sinister was going on. It’s good money for them and a great experience for us, it’s collaboration at it’s finest, ladies and gents.
Since being in HCMC I’ve just been relaxing, except for the night I wrote the last update, making a move soon. I recommend visiting the Mekong Delta if you are in the neighborhood. Private guide was cool, we could do whatever we wanted out there, literally.
If you are a friend of mine and want our private guides number, just ask. I will make a video blog out of the eating rat and king cobra experience that will be shared at a later date, hopefully not too much later.
Cordially yours,
Tags: Ho Chi Minh City, Mekong Delta, Saigon, Vietnam
Hello, Bonjour, Hola, Sin Jaue!?(sp),
Greetings from Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) in Vietnam. I just got back from a private tour of the Mekong Delta with a taxi moto driver. What’s cool is that after going on it, everything everyone ever wrote was true AND MORE. At the end, I even left a note and obvious a link to this here website.
Let’s just say it was something you’d never get on some hotel / tour office / whatever vendor. There was 4 of us, it was the the “Commonwealth” to as it had a few major players such as Canada (~1/3 it’s total land), Australia (Up there as well), England (Obvious). Ironically when you hear “Commonwealth” the largest player in terms of citizens is actually India with an extremely insane 1,000,000,000+.
Considering most of Canada is totally uninhabitable for most who are still enslaved to the old paradigm of labor for cash. As the the volume of those who earn exclusively from some mechanism that is totally devoid of time and space expands, demand for places that typically would seem “unthinkable” will begin to look QUITE desirable.
Digressing into an unknown tangent of real estate. I’m curious if you can purchase blocks of property that include a lake and it’s actual spring source drilled to whatever level is required legal to be “on your land”. After that, build a cottage and sell EXCLUSIVELY to extremely interesting people who have a means of arriving there. The most likely method would be a plane to some airport, another to a smaller than a float plane.
Ok, now that that’s done, you could sell water forever if you owned it. I had this idea about a half decade ago or more. Someone told me legally in Canada you cannot own a spring or something of that nature. That said, I have not looked it up or even thought it for a near half decade before typing this, here.
Back to a trip to the Mekong Delta in the Vietnam… First it’s really dirty, so dirty you wouldn’t want to swim in it unless your boat capsized and you had no other choice but to go in the water at last possible moment. People do everything in there from the most basic daily needs to a “boat & moto” shop on the side that has a floor covered black with oil that just drips. Garbage is definitely plentiful but not overwhelming. The smell is alright for the most part but at times you’d be smelling something rancid.
Going down the Mekong river is cool, the floating market in Bai Kai (sp?) is worth checking out. It’s a market but not really, just lots of people who sell egregious quantities of pineapple at rock bottom prices. Loving pineapple, this was alright. You check out all sorts of stuff along the way from coconut everything candy to snakes you hang out with. They also have this authentic old school Mekong band. They have instruments not seen elsewhere and gents who master them. They play some songs and then these ladies take turn with vocals in different songs. At the end, the ladies hand you roses, you roll some cash in there ~10,000-30,000 depending on what it did for ya and pass it to them.
You check out this local village of ~200 people who live on this island in the middle. It’s quite cool and in keeping with the whole “live anywhere if you don’t have to show up to work to get paid”. The people were really friendly and had some sick flat screen TV’s. Not all but some, obviously.
This place is truly out there from the city or anywhere really. Lots of places are still inhabitable due to potentially live munitions. We went with a crew of older moto taxi gents who were ~47-55 years old. Drive fast enough to keep up, pass the laggards, even start the “school” but NO unnecessary risks considering the ridiculousness of driving around this area on a moto. Saturday at 5:15 on not even a seriously main artery of the city was some crazy stuff a gent on the trip caught. I mean it’s just pure bedlam, drive and avoid.
A lady friend of mine was driving in Phnom Penh, It was quite insane. When she returns to Canada, people criticize her of driving slow. Germany has the autobahn and in Canada we have ~100 speed limit where ~120 is an often pace of traffic and people may go over that to pass part of the school moving, at a decent rate. Back home, people see a green light and JUST GO. I mean, running a red is consider “no mans land, bad news, no good, whatever.” Many places here, it’s just no mans land. People who are used to driving here automatically drive slower and are usually cautious at intersections. It’s really congested, extremely congested, those arteries are clogged.
What I do like is the fact that they have roundabouts, what drives me nuts and makes my mind want to explode while my blood boils(I don’t really care at all) is the fact that we have almost none. Ottawa has at most a handful of roundabouts, none more ridiculous than the one center of town. Anyways, it’s a 3 way in and a yield… Being used to the “regular roundabouts” if I should even have to qualify what one is. Anyways, I used to honk at people aggressively going around there and just flow like I owned the place. This one time, I honked this person to h3ll and it turned out this be this lady who freaked out point at the sign, last time I honked there.
I unplugged my battery hoping that miraculously this dead lousy battery is working again considering the charge said 47%, I was quite happy. Long story short it was getting low so I unplugged it hoping not to drill it to 0 again which could!? have been part of it’s demise and I lost a lot of text, let alone my train of thought.
It’s 5:17am and I’m going to bed after I push some photos on to this thing. Full Mekong Delta update to coming including but not limited to stuff that never crossed my mind until I got there. Moral of this diluted story is, if you’re going to go, get a private guide.
The other gents on the trip who had cameras and took these pics, full hat removal tip to thee.
