Saigon street scenes

The most famous backpacker ghettos are, well, exactly what you'd expect from the modern connotation of the word "ghetto". Dirty. Sleazy. Etc.

I rather like the Pham Ngu Lao section of Saigon, though. Sure, you have do deal with the occasional ladyboy prostitute riding alongside on you on a motorbike on the sidewalk trying to get you to purchase his/her ... services. (Not only is this is a true story, it's happened many times.) But on the whole it's cleaner and more low-key than, say, Khao San Road in Bangkok or Thamel in Kathmandu.

I've been to Saigon four times and I always stay at the same place. It's on an alley street just off the main intersection. You can see the THANH sign on the right side of the street in the middle of the photo.



Also note how many motorbikes are parked on this little side street. The family that owns the hotel always remembers me, although I wonder if I'm not just getting the fake Southeast Asian smile. Ah, well, the price is right. Although I could do without the stairs.

Virtually every hotel I've seen in Vietnam is what we would consider a rowhome back in Baltimore, a narrow property in a block of identical properties. In the hotel in Saigon where I stay I can touch both walls in the stairwell.

They always put me in the same room. While it's undeniably sweet that they remember the exact room I stayed in, almost three months later, I haven't figured out a way to politely tell them (and allow them to "save face") that I would really rather not be on the top floor.

This is the view looking down the stairwell from my room.


Every time I return it's like doing the Everest Base Camp hike again! The ropes are a pully system they use to raise and lower linen, cleaning supplies, etc.

Just around the corner is an intersection of two major thoroughfares. Note how the traffic is moving in all four directions simultaneously. Also note the the name of the building in the background.


And I was worried about being an American in this part of the world...

One of the hardest things about traveling in this part of the world is dealing with children who are either selling or begging. There are women who walk around with baskets of household items like nail clippers, facial tissues, and so on in one arm, with an infant in the other. It's hard to say no to them.

It's even harder to say no when there is no mother, only a child of five or six with the basket of goods for sale.

Of course the scam here is obvious: No one buys anything. They just give money to the child. It's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. If you don't give the child money she gets in trouble. If you give her money it encourages her parents to continue making her beg.

My admittedly hopeless method to save footing on the slippery moral slope is to give the children money if they will let me take their picture. You have to be one hardhearted bastard to say no to this face.



One of the typically Vietnamese experiences is to sit at one of the impromptu bar/restaurants that pop up on the sidewalks at night. Some offer food but some just offer "fresh beer" or bia hoi, draft beer. It tastes almost as good as dirty dishwater but it's 5,000 dong per glass, which means you can have four beers and get change back for a dollar.

Usually the stools are about eight inches high with a surface area about the size of a paperback book. (I am not exaggerating to make a point!) This particular stall serves a full menu of surprisingly good food and has actual chairs.



Notice that the chairs are actually two chairs tied together. Apparently chairs here aren't built to withstand fat tourist butts. The table here is quite high for a bia hoi stand. The cart to the right has snails and clams for sale in the bowls, and dried squid hanging from the top.

I'm going to Disneyland!

There's a scene in "Apocalypse Now" where the crew gets mail. Lance, the professional surfer, is reading a letter from home:

"I was on a trip to Disneyland. There can never be a place like Disneyland, or could there? Let me know."

Lance says "Disneyland. Fuck, man, this is better than Disneyland."

The 'this' Lance refers to is of course the Vietnam War, which in his estimation is better than an amusement park...

That line is echoed in a passage from one of my new favorite novels, "Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson. After seeing news stories about plagues of locusts, typhoons, cannibals, and so on, Randy says "This whole continent is like fucking Disneyland without the safety precautions. Am I the only person who finds it surreal?"

I dragged these quotes out as a way of illustrating (in extreme fashion) the alienness of this part of the world to western visitors and the power it can hold over the imagination. As Randy muses, "No wonder so many Americans come here on business and never really go home again -- it's like stepping into the pages of Classics Comics."

To borrow another line from "Apocalypse Now":

"Saigon ... Shit. I'm still only in Saigon."

I refrain from using profanity on this blog but I am a film nerd, after all, so it was inevitable I would eventually quote from "Apocalypse Now". I use that last quote ironically, of course, because I'm thrilled to be back in Saigon. I came here to take a class which will certify me to teach English. Then I hope to find a teaching job and live here.

The official name of the place is now Ho Chi Minh City but no one -- not locals, not foreigners -- calls it that. It's Saigon. Or, more correctly, Sài Gòn.

When abbreviated it's usually HCMC, which I find fascinating since that's the English version. The Vietnamese name for the place is Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh, which would be TP HCM. I do see this abbreviation but not often. I suppose this is just another entry in the list of "Things that may interest only me".

I had planned on starting a class here on July 27, but long story short, I'm going to wait until the next course starts on September 7. That will give me some time to do a little sightseeing, visit friends, and properly prepare myself for a four-week course, then living and working in a foreign country for the first time. I've never lived in a foreign country. Florida is the farthest I've ever lived from home.

Excuse me for a moment while I freak out.

Ok, I'm back.

I was able to find a flight online that just had to have been a mistake. I've done three flights between SE Asia and the US, so I had some idea of what the flight would cost. Imagine my shock when I found a flight from JFK to Saigon on Singapore Airlines -- one of the world's best -- for $502!! I had to take a puddle-jumper flight from BWI to JFK but it was worth it.

Singapore Airlines rocks. I couldn't sleep because they kept waking me up to feed me. Seriously, have you ever had an airline give you too much food? The flight attendants all looked Asian fembots, or visitors from a futuristic Utopian society where they grow genetically perfect women in giant pea pods. The airline lost one of my bags, which was bad, but delivered it to my hotel a few hours later, which was good.

By contrast, my American Airlines flight from BWI to JFK was a comic disaster. After paying the exorbitant luggage fees the cost of my 30-minute domestic flight was nearly half the cost of my 25-hour journey half way around the world. When we arrived in New York, two hours late, the pilot overshot the parking space so we had to wait 10 minutes for them to push us into place. It's a sad commentary that if I had started driving north instead of dropping off my rental car I would have arrived in New York ahead of my flight.

I felt bad for a family of six behind me traveling to Kolkata. We started boarding 30 minutes late, sat at the gate for 30 minutes, then drove out onto the tarmac and parked for an hour. It was only there that they were informed there was absolutely no chance they would make their connection to their Air India flight in New York. They would have to pay to stay overnight at their own expense and fly out the next day. Had they known sooner they said they would have simply stayed home -- for free -- and flown out of BWI the following day.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: Whoever runs the US airlines really needs to get out and travel a little to see how to properly run an airline. Instead of flying first class on American or United or whatever, they need to fly coach on Thai Air, Iceland Air, virtually any of the foreign non-budget airlines.

Foreign airlines realize that most of us like to take some stuff with us when we travel, and don't charge us for it. My luggage fees for the half-hour flight from BWI to JFK were almost as much as the airfare. There's a reason the US airlines are all in trouble, and it's because, almost without exception, they truly suck.

But I digress....

I was asked if I was going to continue the blog. I don't know how often I'll update it. I have a feeling it will be a series of nearly identical posts.

"The students threw food at me today. I got fleeced at the market. Another mild day, only 147 degrees."

I enjoy writing the blog, though, and I suppose I'll keep writing as long as it makes just one person happy, even if that person is me.

Faces

One complaint I get about the blog is that there aren't enough pictures of people. So it was completely in character for me to publish a post thanking all the wonderful people I met and not show any of them.

Part of the reason is that it took me forever to organize all my photos. I was crushed to discover that some of the CDs I burned were corrupted. Some of my photos are gone. I have all the most important sets (Everest, Great Wall, etc.) but it's still a bummer. Even so, I came home with almost 11,000 photos. Let's match some of the faces with the names of the people I met.

I met Frida (Sweden), Anette (Sweden) and Paul (US) on my first day in Granada, Nicaragua. Here they are waiting for the ferry to Isla Ometepe, Nicaragua.


Two American college students, Ella and Kelly, getting me drunk on my birthday on the island of Utila, Honduras.

Frank (Guatemala), my dive instructor on Utila.


My Venezuelan friends Ana Cecilia (back left), Alejandra (back right) and Daniela (tongue) sightseeing in Morocco.


Francois (France), Kiyoshi (US) and Stephane (France) at the Yellow Blue Bus hostel in Moscow.

This hostel could have been a disaster. This is the entire kitchen. Behind where I'm standing as I take the picture is the one computer and the stove. There are 16 beds, one toilet and one shower. But I met some wonderful fellow travelers there, and the two Russians who ran the place, Olga and Jack, were incredibly helpful.

There was a large Dutch contingent in my carriage on the Trans-Siberian Railway heading to Beijing for the Olympics. The two couples closest to the window had children competing in the games. Pretty cool. I shared my cabin with Nelke, the woman in the front left. In the front right is my Swedish friend Kjerstin.


I also shared the cabin with a truly repulsive Russian couple. People enjoyed my horror stories about the Fun Couple and asked if I had any photos of them. I didn't think so until I was sorting through them and found this shot of him on one of the platforms (Krasnoyarsk, I think). It's one of the few times either of them left the cabin.


Appearances can be deceiving, but not in this case. He has such a large beer belly -- or is that vodka belly? -- it looks like he's pregnant. With quintuplets. They were noisy, rude and malodorous. It was like sharing a cabin with two wild animals. For 76 hours...

Kjerstin and I also hung out in Irkutsk. Here we are waiting to see the eclipse.


Katia is works at the hostel in Irkutsk where I stayed. She speaks English fluently, but it's her third language. She works as a French interpreter and translator. This shot doesn't do justice to how pretty she is -- and certainly gives no idea how sexy her combination Russian-French accent is! -- but it's the only photo I have of her :-(


Andrey, my divemaster in Listvyanka, shortly before we went scuba diving in Lake Baikal. I don't know who the fat, pasty guy next to Andrey is. Seriously, I'm paler than a Russian who lives in Siberia!


Elias and Sarah are a German brother and sister I met in Beijing. They took me to a night market where you can eat all kinds of crazy critters. Here he is eating a scorpion...

... and here she is deciding if she really wants to eat a bird's nest. It's a hardened ball of bird saliva, and tastes as good as it sounds!


Jade and Xan, Aussie sisters I hung out with in Kathmandu. I'm older than the two of them combined. Sigh.

Michal and Ricky, Israeli sisters I met rafting in Nepal. Here they are at the Peace Pagoda, overlooking Pokhara. In the background is the hill called Sarangkot with the Annapurna Massif towering in the distance.


I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the porters from my Everest Base Camp hike, Asharman, Lakapa and Dhana. It's humbling how much work these guys do and how they go about it with such good humor. They were always smiling, not just when they're getting their picture taken with what appears to be an x-ray of me. Look how much weight I lost on the hike!

Ngon, Jess and I, the day we met, on a boat tour of Nha Trang, Vietnam.


Luong at the airport in Danang, gorgeous even with "hat hair".


Lan and I at a coffee shop in Hanoi. I don't have any pictures of her smiling!


These are just a few of the people I met who made the trip so wonderful. Thanks the wonders of 21st-century technology it's easy for me to keep in touch with them.

Now that I'm getting over the post-travel blues I hope to continue the blog with posts from my next adventure, which I hope will start soon... Stay tuned.

This day in history

Exactly one year ago today a clueless American traveler flew to Managua to begin what he hoped would be a one-year trip around the world. He was unaware that the week before there was a transportation strike in Nicaragua. Had he arrived just a few days earlier he would have been unable to get from the airport to his hostel in Granada. He also arrived at the same time as Tropical Storm Alma, and spent the first few days of his trip watching sheets of rain cascading off the roofs.

Despite his lousy timing and poor preparation he managed to survive for 341 days in 15 countries on four continents. The year anniversary of his departure finds him emerging from a three-week case of post-travel blues and planning his next adventure.

Thank$

I spent over two years researching this trip. Some of the travel blogs I read had a widget which allowed people to donate to the writer's PayPal account. At the time I was employed as a computer nerd so I wondered how it was done. I managed to add it to my blog and get it working.

I was surprised that people actually used it. I have been overwhelmed by the generosity of friends and family back home. I debated whether or not to list everyone who donated to the travel fund and decided against it.

The trip is ending a month sooner than I had planned, mostly because of the hugely expensive detour I took home for the holidays. Without your kind contributions to the travel fund I would have been home for a while already. The money I received added at least a month to the trip.

I wish I knew the words to express my gratitude properly. Thank you all so very much. This trip has literally been a dream come true. Thanks to your support I've been able to "sleep" a little longer!

The best part of traveling

It's such a cliche but it's true: It's the people you meet that make traveling so fun.

I'd like to thank a few of the people I met along the way who helped make the trip so magical. Most of the people I've met have been friendly, fascinating, fun, adventurous, generous ... I could go on. This list is nowhere near conclusive.

Pablito, Frida and Anette - My trip started in Granada, Nicaragua with Tropical Storm Alma directly overhead. It could have been a disaster but I was lucky enough to have met some of my favorite travel buddies on my very first day. Thanks for helping the trip get off to a good start despite the weather.

Kelly and Ella - I wasn't looking forward to my 41st birthday, but then I didn't expect to celebrate it with two gorgeous college girls on a Caribbean island! Thanks for one of the best birthdays I've had in years.

Ani, Ale and Dani - The Sahara trip could have been a complete disaster: three days in a crowded van in desert heat with the world's worst tour guide and me sick as a dog. It's a blessing to meet a travel companion who is fun, smart, adventurous and beautiful. It was nothing short of a miracle that I ended up traveling with the three of you.

Lily - One of my bestest friends in the whole wide world and my travel buddy in Spain, who was kind enough to make sure I saw every single piece of art in Madrid.

My guardian angel in St Petersburg - I'm not even sure you're real. How could the first person I met in Russia be an impossibly beautiful woman who is one of the few people I met in Russia who speaks fluent English? You said your name is Tracy. I may have dreamed you, but without your help I'd still be trying to figure out the subway in St Petersburg.

Mike and Laurie - I woke up on my first morning in Russia to find an Aussie couple in my dorm getting ready to explore St Petersburg. They were nice enough to invite me along on their adventures for two days, which was especially nice since Mike speaks Russian! Thanks for helping me ease into the most difficult country on the trip.

Volker and Heidi - We met in Moscow and then again in Ulaanbaatar. Thanks for inviting me along on the trip to the festival at the monastery and for all the good advice about Nepal.

Francois - We may have taken a few wrong turns but I appreciated your help finding my way around Moscow (and loved teasing you about your romance with the local girl). Count on me visiting you. (Note: He lives in Paris!)

The rest of the Yellow Blue Bus gang - Eric, Kiyoshi, Venk, Alex, Olga and Jack/Zhenya. My first few days in Moscow were stressful, since I arrived there sans wallet. The hostel was the smallest I stayed in: 16 beds, one toilet, one shower, one computer and one tiny kitchen. But you all made me feel at home and helped me resolve a difficult situation.

Kjerstin - It would have been a long three-plus days on the Trans-Siberian without your company. I'm sure we'll meet again. I'm equally sure beer will figure prominently.

The Dutch contingent on the Trans-Siberian - Thanks for making me feel like part of the family!

Katia - My Russian dream girl. One of my favorite memories of the journey was the night we sat up late talking at the kitchen table at the hostel in Irkutsk. Just my luck: I finally meet the perfect woman and she lives in Siberia!

Ally - Thanks for showing me around Ulaanbaatar. I understand why you keep going back to Mongolia.

The Mongolian couple I met on the train from Ulaanbaatar to Beijing - I had difficulty pronouncing your names so I know I can't spell them in English or Mongolian! I should have had asked you to write them down for me. Thanks for the ice cream. And congratulations -- by now you should be parents!

Elias and Sarah - Thanks for inviting me to the night market in Beijing, something I would have never thought to even try. Thanks to you I know what fried seahorses and scorpions taste like!

Jade and Xan - Yes, people, those are the actual names of Australian sisters I met in Kathmandu, and they look like you'd expect girls named Jade and Xan to look. Sorry we didn't have more time to hang out in Kathmandu. I kept waiting for you to invite me to join you in Indonesia but you never took the bait...

Ricky and Michal - Thanks for making the only American in a group of Israelis feel so comfortable and welcome. I will take you up on your invitation to visit!

Michael - We met in the back of a tuk-tuk in Ayuttayah and ended up spending several days touring northern Thailand. You've seen more of the world than anyone I've met and yet you're still as enthusiastic as a newbie traveler like me. You can count on a visit from me, too! (Note: He lives in Munich.)

Nila - I had so much fun hanging out with you in Phnom Penh I stayed an extra day. I'm glad I did, and would have stayed longer...

Jess and Ngon - Ironically it was in Nha Trang, the most touristy town in Vietnam, that I had my first "authentic" experience. Thanks for taking me out for real Vietnamese food. Jess, I'm sorry I couldn't make to Sydney to visit you. One day...

Nick and Evan - Two of the few Americans I met in SE Asia. We were sitting together on the ferry from Cambodia to Vietnam. Evan is from Towson! I learned a lot watching you interact with the locals.

Erich - The owner of my guest house in Siem Reap has worked in the tourist industry in SE Asia for over 20 years. He gave me a couple secret tips for Angkor Wat. I've met dozens of people who have been there and no one knew about either.

Emma and Phil - Another case of dumb luck, getting squeezed into a minivan next to a friendly and fun Irish couple. Thanks for the companionship. Phonsavan would have been a lonely place!

Phoan, Dada, Sompeh and Sam - My beach girls from Sihanoukville. I spent far too much money on bracelets and fruit, but it was worth it for your company.

Thanh - I almost hopped off the bus in Mui Ne to hang out with you. You're a hard person to track down but I'm glad we kept in touch!

Luong - The reason I flew four times in seven days. Need I say more?

Lan - I spent a lot more time in Hanoi than I should have, but it was worth it to spend time with you.

Day 341

After over 11 months I am back where I was on Day 1.

I didn't make it to my goal of a year, but I came darned close. I could have scratched out a few more weeks in SE Asia, but it was time.

For 11 months I've been living a dream. Now it's time to wake up. I thought I would burn out or get homesick or reach a point where I was tired of living out of a backpack and wearing the same clothes, but no. I am not ready to return to reality.

Please understand that I do have a sense of perspective. I know I am blessed. I have stood at the foot of the world's highest mountain and wandered the halls of the biggest religious building ever constructed. I have seen some of the world's greatest art, tasted some of the best food, been humbled by the kindness and generosity of strangers and awed by the exploits of true adventurers I've been privileged to meet.

And I have been buoyed by the support of friends and family back home.

I am incredibly fortunate. I know that. But I am sad it's over. And I think that's fair :-)

My flight home took 33 hours, plus the additional 30 minutes I had to wait for my father to pick me up at the airport. My parents were watching my sister's children that night, so I was greeted with lots of hugs and a custom-made "Welcome Home" sign.



My brain is still mush from the time change. When I'm operating at full strength again I'll publish a few more posts.