V for Vietnam
// March 11th, 2008 // Vietnam
Hey everybody!
2 weeks no posts huh? Time flies when you’re having funoodpoisioning, yep I got struck down, way down again from a dodgy mexican pizza that rendered me useless on the bathroom floor for 48hrs or so. But its okay, I’m sort of getting used to it and I have Annett to nurse me. Her nurse skills are a little one dimensional though, limited purely to saying “maybe you should eat a banana” every 5 minutes (she read somewhere about bananas being good for the stomach) even while I’m incapable of not throwing up water. Banana’s are her one size fits all get well cure. If my leg fell off she’d rush up bananas in hand, mashing them into the wound and covering, waiting patiently for the miracle fruit to help sprout me a new limb. For someone so anti-marriage she’d manage an excellent “old wife” of the “old wives tale” fame, she collects them like trophies “you should drink at least 12 liters of water a day” “you should never drink water when eating hot foods, it only makes it worse” “I’ve read that you shouldn’t walk and eat, it puts un-necessary strain on your stomach” “you should sleep at least 16hrs a day” etc etc, the conclusion being that we’d have all been better off staying back in the safety of the womb. Anyway enough of me poking fun at my lovable, and long suffering german comrade. What else have we been up to?
- Well we’re in Vietnam now. Its pretty nice, and pretty pretty, I guess. That sentence sums up my sum what lukewarm reaction to it. We’re trying to keep open minds, we’ve heard so many bad stories about Vietnam, but so far, touch wood, not to tempt fate, throw salt over my shoulder, hang a horseshoe round my neck its been a-okay. The Vietnamese really like to haggle, their good in the deal and whipsmart when it comes to taking money off tourists. You have to be really on your game, but its cheap here so even if you get the bad end of a deal it will only cost ya a $ or 2, so its no biggie.
- We’ve been to moped haven Hanoi, the royal tombs of Hue and now we’re at the Beach and ancient architecture home of Hoi An.
- We took a 3 day cruise to Halong Bay, Vietnam’s premier attraction. Halong bay is hundreds of beautiful small islands off the northern coast. This was are first organized excursion, so we were a little concerned. We went for the most expensive and highest rated agent handspan. The trip turned out to be a real beauty. I was apprehensive on the way there as the bus seemed to be full largely of homosexuals and germans, neither of which I am and I thought I might be a trip outsider. But on arrival we split into two (figuratively) and boarded a cracking boat (photos on flickr soon). Homosexuals and Germans only have limited time it seems as they were all on the 2 day cruise, leaving just 7 of us with the whole boat to ourselves for the rest of the cruise which consisted of……cruising (shock, shock horror), exploring caves, swimming, kayaking, eating and drinking a lot, lounging on the sun deck, going to Cat Ba island and staying in the best hotel I’ve ever been to with its own private beach, and travel to and from Hanoi (7hrs total) for $170, expensive by Vietnamese standards, laughable by ours. With us was an American couple, an American girl traveling alone, and a couple from Switzerland (the german speaking part). They all turned out to be very nice, bar the American man who drove me mental as he kept trying to give me advice the whole time. Anyone who knows me well will know just how little I like advice, I get angry if someone even tells me the genre of the movie we’re about to watch. Its my way or the highway. This guy was pulling out maps and showing us exactly where the bus would drop us in hypothetical future cities we may or may not visit later down the coast and all in this american deadpan style
“Well the bus is going to drop you about here. Most of the action is around here. We stayed here, you don’t have too but it was a very nice hotel, you know you can always bargain with the hotels, or I have a good tip for you, ask how much the price is without breakfast. We’ve saved a lot of money that way, and you can always get a better breakfast for your money.”
I’ve got a tip for you, shut up.
3 days of this started to grate. My favourite being the last day during the breakfast buffet at the hotel on Cat Ba Island. Here he had the audacity to reccomend something he’d seen a girl do, which was to
“take some bread, take some cheese, take some ham and made a, sandwich! Now thats smart!”
He’s recommending making a sandwich to the English! Unbelievable, we’re the Olympians of the Sandwich. Its like recommending that Eskimos look under the ice to find fish, or advising the Americans how to get fat (he was very fat, something working to his advantage in Vietnam. He said everywhere he goes people shout “happy budda” at him and come and pat his belly (for luck)).
The American girl travelling alone was having the most ambigious trip you can imagine. She didn’t know where she was going to visit, how long she was going for, everything was just “until the money runs out”. If that happens too soon she was going to revert to the traveller fail safe – teaching english.
Call me an asshole, but I do chuckle sometimes when I hear Americans talking about teaching English. Despite my inability to spell or punctuate I am proud to speak “the Queens English”. Americans speak diet, sugar free, no added fat, melts in your mouth not in your hand, frickin’ how y’all doin’ American English. Here’s what I imagine learning English, American style looks like
Day 1 – The Basics
Gutterball, Super Size, Data and Aluminum, Have a nice day etc etc
Days 2-5 – Like Etiquette.
When is the appropriate time to use the word like. Like Americans like really like using the word like. You may have noticed.
Day 6 – Turkey dinner, Prom, finish.
Okay thats horribly stereotypical and I’m a big American culture junkie but there you go. I would make a terrible English teacher and I don’t pretend otherwise.
- We’ve both gotten very unsettled. Usually people do this type of trip as a break from real life, you know its a break and things will return to normal when you get back. For us there is no back to return to, as there is no home as such. I’m an English quasi German suffering a serious dose of nationality crisis. Annett’s as German as Wurst but has lived in the same city basically all her life and has no plans to return there,and wage wise its probably more lucrative to work outside of Germany and translate into German. So we don’t know even which country, no actually which continent we’ll move to next assuming we don’t kill one another in our sleep first (naturally we’re spending an unhealthy amount of time together on the trip). The more time we spend in Asia the less sense it seems to me to return to Europe. Its so cheap out here, the coupon sites already make enough to live and I haven’t spent one minute on them in the past fortnight. If I spent some real time on them I think I could live very comfortably on 2hrs of work a day. Annett could easily be a freelance translator or English, German or Spanish teacher (she has a staggeringly huge knowledge of how languages work, I think she’d be excellent at this, especially if she can acquire that little thing called patience). So the trip feels like it’s sort of turned into more of a future place to live reconnaissance rather than just bumming around. Things might change but thats the current thinking. I’d be okay with settling down now somewhere here and then exploring Asia slowly from a local base (I guess Thailand makes the most sense), as after a while its harder to appreciate the beauty of a beach, temple, night market, museum each time you see one (nearly every day). I don’t want to lose my wonder for the sights and sounds, or for them to all blur into one and you just can’t get under the skin of a place like when you live there for a few months. So lets see if we can find somewhere to match the charms of East Germany.
Lots more happened, but I wrote tons already and I’ve been rambling for paragraphs now, so i’ll stop. I guess it lunchtime where you are now, so may I reccomend you
“Take some bread, take some cheese, take some ham and put them together to make a sandwich”.
Now that is smart.
Possibly related, hopefully entertaining other posts:
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fletchy
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ZensurZebra
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ZensurZebra
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Matt
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mone
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mumsy
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Alex
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Annett
