MOTO BIKE

The first month I was here, I couldn't believe the cheap taxi fares and took them everywhere. I've now developed a serious commitment to motorbike taxis, the cheap and infinitely more thrilling alternative. I used to ignore the guys sitting on their bikes waving their hand at me as I walked by, and I wondered who would actually get on a bike with some random guy. Taxis were reliable and comfortable. But really, who wouldn't rather speed on the back of a motorbike with the wind in your face (although there is a good amount of smog). Aside from that, they're cheaper and faster, so it's basically a win-win. Taxi drivers will usually try and go the long route and they often fix the meter, and now that I've developed my vietnamese, I can easily negotiate a cheap ass fare with a motorbike. On top of that, the drivers always take you through alleys and awesome shit like that.

saturday in hoan kiem

This past saturday my friend and I were hanging out outside KFC by hoan kiem lake, the center of the city where most tourists stay and where most of the people trying to sell you zippos, tshirts,and shine your shoes convene. We met a couple shoe shiners on the steps and were talking to them and making fun of tourists in vietnamese as they went by. I asked them how old they were and how long they'd been shining shoes. One was 15 and the other 16. They had to drop out of high school because they couldn't afford the 50 us dollars a year they have to pay. When I finally let them shine my shoes they first said one dollar, then after taking my shoes off they said one dollar per shoe and each of them took a shoe. They liked us, but still didn't hesitate to rip us off. After a few minutes a few cops rolled by and they immediately scattered. They came back and explained that the police will arrest kids around the lake and then make them pay or go to jail. When we walked away we could hear them yelling "fucky the police!!!"

according to the vietnamese

drinking beer will cure acne
sleeping with your door closed and the a.c. on will deprive you of oxygen
too many ice cubes are bad for you
you don't eat enough if you drink water with dinner

ZOMG TIGER JOOSE

The other night at dinner with a lot of people I was offered drinks from a suspiciously colored bottle of vodka. I accepted the drinks without protesting, but a few later the man offering them to me (the veteran who lost his leg) started making snarling noises and flexing his arms. I looked toward his daughter who was translating for me and she told me that it had tiger in it. They have it for special occasions and its about 600 dollars to make two bottles of it, pretty reasonable as they have to kill a FUCKING TIGER! This occasion ironically was the anniversary this guy lost his leg in the war. They noticed I seemed a little skeptical and reassured me, "oh the tiger was very old, very old." They keep the tiger in a cage with a tube going into its stomach so that whenever the tiger eats, the stomach acids go through the tube, for the sole purpose of making the vietnamese strong. And I just kept drinking...

jungles of vietnam

Just got back from a long weekend in the middle of the jungle. The area has started to see a lot more tourists going to see the culture of vietnam's ethnic minorities, but we got to go so far in where they said tourists barely go because its so remote. Our guide didn't even know the way and had to hire some of the villagers to lead him. We walked almost 40 km to get there, and stayed in a stilt house that the mayor of the village ran. We asked where the money from our stay went, whether they spread it around to other families at all, seeing as its a communist country, but our guide kind of went around the question, but he did tell us that some of it goes under the table to the police in the area. They didn't have any electricity and got power from water turbines. They just built an elementary school in the area, but if they want to go to middle school they have to travel 2 hours and go to boarding school. Most live on subsistence farming and only go grocery shopping once a month.

Uncle Ho

Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh led the country to independence on september 2, 1945 and died on the same day 25 years later. Since then his body has been preserved in a glass case for people to visit. I had the luck to visit this museum before it closed for the winter months because of humidity. At the door they make you give up your cell phone and any cameras. Once we got inside the room my family excitedly pointed to his body saying "Like George Washington!" and encouraged me to pray to him. All I could think was, uhhh...not exactly. I don't really pray to the dead body of a former president.

pagoda

MM...FOOD

the first week

The past week has been great. After my stomach’s adjustment to chili sauce and noodles for breakfast, some kind of bean curd, and chicken foot soup among other things, Vietnamese food is not really gag-inducing most of the time. I definitely still have to get used to being served literally the entire chicken on a place; head, feet, liver and all. I’m craving cereal for breakfast. But I didn’t come here to eat fruity pebs every morning.
My family is super cool. The grandma lives with them and is constantly speaking full Vietnamese sentences to me, to which I just kind of shrug or smile. My brother’s 14 and the only one in the family who can speak English (thankfully there’s one person).
Today we went to the office of my mom where I was invited by the men to drink. After throwing down my first shot of whisky, they all gave me a thumbs-up and offered me more. Only the men at the table got to drink; women aren’t really expected to drink and in the cafes and bars you typically only see a table of men drinking. My friend Julia ordered a drink at a café once and they only served it to the other guy at the table and started angrily speaking in Vietnamese when she took the drink. There was a big dinner at my house when everyone at the table was drinking wine, though, so it depends.
The office was a company that makes prosthetic limbs and I learned that one of the men was a soldier in the “American” war and had lost a leg. My brother translated that he was happy that an American was coming to Vietnam, something that’s demonstrated by most of the people. They don’t seem to hold any grudges over the war, which is really impressive seeing as we killed around 2-3 million of them.

GOOD MORNING VIETNAM

After a combined 20 hours in transit and a stop in hong kong, I've finally arrived in vietnam. Driving along the highway towards hanoi our bus driver rarely hit the brakes, instead opting to blast the horn anytime someone crossed the road, the standard protocol for the entire city. I thought it was pretty funny how in the middle of the rice fields that parallel the highway there are giant billboards right in the middle.
Crossing the roads has already become second nature after the first day. The key is to never stop and hope that the mopeds will judge your speed accurately and maneuver themselves around you. There are traffic lights, but they are almost universally ignored. Right now it's 6 a.m. and I've been up for the past 2 hours, right about when the rest of the city is beginning the day.
I can tell I'm going to have a sick trip....

p.s. the internet at this hotel is shitty so I'll add pictures and videos later