What the hell was I thinking???

2011-11-11T09:09:00.000-08:00

Lots to tell, jes' been very busy......

....mother-in-law (who has helped us immensely in talking care of Emily - albeit that we're PAYING her to do so) in the hospital has greatly increased the burden for Tam and I in terms of taking care of Emily and reducing our free-time......had a couple short-term teaching clients pop in and occupy a LOT of my time the past coupla months..........

.....I hafta head to Ho Chi Minh City for about four and a half days on Monday the 14th.....gonna take some WELL-DESERVED R&R and will write in greater detail then!

Sorry 'bout that!

-E-

2011-08-23T09:02:00.000-07:00

Yet STILL MORE random blatherings.....

......as I sit outside the Allez Boo in a pissing Saigon rainstorm under a huge-ass patio umbrella drinking an ice-cold (and rather strong, but significantly over-priced) Singapore Sling.....

...and here it is.

Christ I love Ho Chi Minh City. It's sooooo anti-Hai Phong in about a million different ways, that it just makes my head spin......

I'm down here getting a visa renewal for Vietnam - as I've written here last December, they only give you a THREE-MONTH MAXIMUM visa now in Vietnam, and you get ONE IN-COUNTRY renewal of that visa AT THE CITY WHERE YOU ORIGINALLY GOT IT (e.g. - the airport that you flew into when you entered Viet Nam...thusly, I try to avoid Hanoi and I try to fly into Ho Chi Minh City, because it just gives me another excuse to get outta Hai Phong and go to Viet Nam's closest approximation to anything resembling a real city). After THAT, ya gotta fly back out of then back IN TO Viet Nam to grab a new three month visa.....irritating, believe me.....

Anyways, back to the blatherings, before the now-wind-driven rain causes this netbook that I'm typing on to short out.....

*************************************

Tam and I had our friend Anthony's fiancé Van over for lunch the other day, where I made my renowned chicken wings. Now, Van is from the middle of Cat Ba Island, the first island (and the largest) in the Halong Bay chain. Cat Ba is kinda a rather rural kind of place (except for Cat Ba town, a dot at the bottom of the island numbering a whopping one thousand souls that is a touristy beachfront resort area with all mod cons). Whenever Van comes to visit us, she always brings gifts, like thee freshest of fresh shrimp, octopus, etc. etc.

So, as I was making the wings, I saw something move slightly in this box the size of a beer case that Van brought over.

"What the fuck was THAT?" I thought to myself.....couldn't be one of the dozens if mice that had infested our (now former) house....little large for one of them. So I said to my wife - "Ermmm, Mat Ong? I might be losing it, but I SWEAR that I saw something move around that box over there. It looked pretty large and....."

"What, Hon?? Oh God - that's just the chicken that Van brought over for us!"

"Uhhhh....no, Hon - this fucking thing MOVED.....chickens don't move....unless they are alive, and......and.....an....."

....and I looked in the box....sure as shit - a live chicken! I jumped backwards about ten metres, and sputtered something that I think was something along the lines of "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING DOING IN OUR HOUSE????"

"Honeeeeeeee - Van's from The Countryside, and this is a traditional gift for visiting a friend's house and ......."

Her voice just trailed off....I was in a kind of numb shock.....I mean, I have received bottles of vino, casseroles, 12-packs of Molson, what have you from friends coming over for a meal....but this was my first live chicken that I have ever received as a gift.

I never asked what happened to the chicken afterwards.....I think that Tam's father took it home with him......

*************************************

Just sad how the entire socio-economic situation is currently unfolding in The States....which pretty much reaffirmed my decision NOT to return there with my family in the IMMEDIATE future (MAYBE things will become more balanced and just sometime down the road, but I ain't holding my breath on that one)......

I mean, you get these people (and there are LARGE numbers of them in The States currently) who aren't slow, they're not (to the best of my knowledge) developmentally disabled in any manner, but rather they are purely anti-intellectual! Ignorant is too kind of a term to describe these sorts! These folks do not believe in admiring the ultra-affluent, but instead, they prefer to idolise them! To the point where these morons will nod like donkeys waiting for you to feed them the carrot whenever some tea-bagger fuckwitt screams at 130 decibels - "WE MUST GIVE PEOPLE LIKE THE KOCH BROTHERS AND RUPERT MURDOCH RELIEF FROM THESE OPPRESSIVE TAXES AND STIFLING GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS!!!!" and these brain-surgeons actually BELIEVE THIS!!!

Tax cuts on things like Corporate taxes, Capital Gains tax rates, and such do NOT PRODUCE SHIT FOR ACTUAL JOBS!!! That is thee biggest lie of the whole failed supply-side/trickle-down economics sham!! These people and corporations simply POCKET THAT CA$H!! They do NOT re-invest in their factories or stores or whatever and create expansion and thusly, the need to hire more people.....that is THEE BIG LIE!! How ignorant do people have to be to not realise that a vote for somebody like Michelle Bachman is NOT going to bring back that job they just got laid off from at the screen door factory!!

And NOW The Republican Party wants to end the tax CUT on the payroll tax, which currently assists those in the $0.00 to $110,000 annual income bracket - a bracket that needs SEVERE assistance right about now. And when they actually GET this tax cut, THEY spend the money, which leads to the economic phenomenon known as "The Money-Multiplier Effect"....and THAT is thee way to grow an economy....not supply-side/trickle-down fallacies......

....just very distressing.

*************************************

Had a party for my daughter's one year birthday party a coupla months ago....Emily is thee best Father's Day present I could have ever gotten.

*************************************

A father's worst nightmare occurred to a friend of mine the other week. Gotta fone call at 7:25AM a couple weeks ago. Now, I don't care if the fucking house is on fire, I do not physically move at 7:25AM (unless I have a flight to catch or I'm still awake from last night….and THOSE days are fading fast)….but the ringing on my cell fone was persistent. Muttered something like "Jesus fucking Christ - this had better be good….." and finally answered it....
(NOTE - Cell fones in Viet Nam don't have voicemail. It's NOT a technology issue or anything of that sort. You just CANNOT GET voicemail here…..it's a cultural issue. You cannot even buy an answering machine for your landline here. Some sort of Asian/Vietnamese thing where they really dislike the idea of leaving messages, sooooo……..)

"Ernie, Ernie" I heard in a thick accent that I knew well……it was Michael the Nigerian.

"Mikey…I mean, what the fuck, man, it's seven - twent….."

"Ernie! She's gone and she took my kids with her!!!"

I shot up and stood straight up in bed in about half a nano-second. Whooooa….fuck - THAT will wake you up….even if you're on four hours of sleep and a screaming hangover (like I was that morning)!!!!

"Mikey? WHAT THE FUCK are you talking about??" (It was one of those things where you KNEW what the fuck he was talking about....but you simply did not want to acknowledge it....and you were hoping that his next response would be something like - "APRIL FOOLS!"or something like that)

"Vicki! She took Philip and Theresa and she didn't come back when she was supposed to and NOW she's not answering her cell fone and....."

"Mikey! MIKEY!! BACK UP THE FUCKING TRUCK!!! Now, come on - we can only pray that there wasn't an accident or something like that! Come on....there has GOT to be a simple explanation for this and..........."

No.....

I knew there wasn't......

Their relationship had been on the rocks now for quite a while (at least the past 18 months or so)....I pretty much figgered THAT out when Michael pretty much was being the single parent to his kids and Vicki went off to France for some job of some sort and Michael just absolutely refused to talk about their relationship, Vicki, and anything about her, really, other than she's "just working in France".......

.....so, a few days BEFORE this phone call, Vicki had returned to Hai Phong to visit.....things went well for that time, then Philip and Theresa and Vicki all disappeared suddenly.

As it turned out, Michael LOCATED them a coupla weeks later, but his mother told him to back off......leave them be.....let Vicki have the children.....calm down.....it will prolly work out best for them for now......things like that! That made absolutely zero-fucking-sense to me......but he heeded his mother's words, and left them be......

....I didn't ask.

More blatherings in about a week or so.....going to head to The mountainous rain forest in the foothills of the Southern Himalayas forra couple of weeks in the end of September.....I'll post before then!

-E-

2011-07-14T11:04:00.000-07:00

Been busy.....

It's the busy season (Summer - when parents look to place their children into supplementary English language programs at ESL centers and schools), so my schedule's been full. Lost about 50% of my client base when I was in The States for a family medical emergency (sadly, the Vietnamese are rather impatient and had gone elsewhere for their English instruction), but through some contacts and some glad-handing, I was able to replace most of the clients who had departed.

In addition, a good friend of mine here in Hai Phong had to head back to her home base of Toronto to attend to a severe medical situation involving her best friend, and she covered for my ass when I was back in The States, so I was more than happy to return the favour and cover some gigs for her.

*******************************

FUNNY shit - Got back to Hai Phong in early June, only to hear my wife mention - "Hon, the Pudoodoo people have been calling me asking when you are expected to return from America....."

"Oh, thass nice....are they going to take me to Parkson (thee big-ass Fru-Fru mall in Hai Phong) and then to the salon and film an episode of 'Extreme Makeover - Vietnam Edition'?"

"What is 'Extreme Makeover'? I don't...."

"Never mind. Anyways, why they calling for me?

"They would like you to work for them."

Wow....just git offa the plane, and.......THIS? I mean, I KNEW that there was a severe statistical disparity in the ratio of Tây English teachers / number of teaching positions in Hai Phong...... but, man, after the E-Mails I sent to their Director, Dung (see post of June 20th, 2011), I thought they'd try to pop my ass on some sorta blacklist or something.....

"Errmmm....Mật ong, tell 'em that, regretfully, I have just come to an agreement with the firm of Wardrobe and Dresser to commence work on a project involving intensive displacement, relocation and resettlement in Lê Chân District.....and that I will be occupied for some time with this contract."

"What? Who is being dissettled and replaced in Lê Chân?"

"My socks......"

"I don't understand....why are your socks being moved?"

"Tell 'em I'm busy...."

*******************************

A coupla weeks and a few phone calls later - "Honey, the Pudoodoo people are really quite insistent, and are eager to meet with you."

"Tell them that, whilst I am honoured, I am not interested."

"I have told them that. They still wish to meet with you."

"Christ - FINE!! Ask 'em when they wanna meet....scheeeesch!!"

"They ask if right now is a good time."

*******************************

So, they came over, an older managerial-type lady and a younger girl, and they were pleasant folk, but sadly, they either couldn't grasp or outright refused to accept that I was not interested in working for their Centre. I had politely explained the situation that had occured at Pudoodoo the last time I had attemped to initially work for them and then assist them with locating another Tây teacher and how that really made me lose my face and created much dishonour (truthfully, it didn't, 'cause Yanks tend to become more pissed off at a situation like that more so then they would be embarrassed and shamed), but they kept stating repeatedly over and over that Mister Dung is no longer employed there and blah blah blah and yadda yadda yadda......

....they ALMOST did it.

They almost wore me down!

LITERALLY, about 45 minutes later, I rolled my eyes and said, "fine, whass the deal?"

"We do not understand, I am sorry. WHAT deal?"

"Well, I had sooooo many issues last time that I attempted to contract with you folks....about salary, my earring, my attire, yadda yadda yadda....that....well....it's just really not worth either of us wasting our time."

"I see. I am sorry about all of that. What would you like?"

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!! Cool....an actual OUT!

"Well, this 'attire' thing. I mean, in my culture [notice that I had stated "....in my culture...." instead of "...in my country...."], the educational professional wears the traditional costume of a Bills T-Shirt, khaki cargo shorts and Teva sandals, and....."

....and they actually agreed to that!

SHIT!!! This wasn't working!

"As far as salary, goes, I am going to require a rate of ten bazillion Vietnam Dong per classroom hour [or some shit like that....can't remember what I had stated exactly] , and...."

....and they actually agreed to THAT!

Errmm....this was NOT going well.....

"Well, looking at all of my other clients on my busy schedule, I can only teach for you on the Ides of the fourteenth Lunar month, providing if the ancestors approve, and......"

"Oooooh....we are sorry. We will need you on the days of Tuesday and Thursday every week and......."

"Oh - không tốt! I cannot allow you to rearrange all of your student's schedules like some sort of sock drawer just to suit me!! That would not be right!!! And, you see, with my current clients, well, they have been with me for many moons, and they are depending on me to instruct their students on those specific days and......"

"Aaaaah...we see. We will discuss this and contact you on Saturday, if that is OK with you?"

"Oh good, good....thank you - that would be great....."

Well, they called my wife on Saturday and explained that, whilst it brings them much sadness, they must decline my offer to teach for them. I was bummed - I wasn't able to continue with them to the part where I demand a 24K gold-plated limousine with an open-air Jacuzzi in the back and a bar inside stocked with Glenfiddich and a few hookers comes and picks me up and drives me to and from Pudoodoo.

I mean, I really did NOT want to come off as arrogant in ANY manner, as I despise arrogance to the 12th exponent, but these folks would just NOT GIVE UP. And I didn't want to be rude and just state "NO!!! OK?? GOT IT??" (ya generally don't do that kinda thing in Asia), so I hadta reach for the stars.....

Dung was gone...and these ladies really, genuinely, seemed like sweet people.....but that last experience left a really bad taste in my mouth about the company as a whole...and, in addition, that whole crrreeeeeeeeepy militaristic thing of students screaming "TEACHER, TEACHER - PLEASE PICK ME!!!" and that weird ritualistic little dance they are forced to do every time they want to answer a question just almost gave me nightmares about Brown-shirts......

More soon.....

-E-

2011-06-20T15:15:00.000-07:00

So, it's been two-and-a-half years now.....

.....that I have been residing in Hai Phong.

It's amazing how things happen. I didn't expect this....I know it's trite to say, but, Jesus - Guess things don't go as planned.....wow......

What was the plan....??

Errrmmm.......weeeeeellll.......there really wasn't a "plan" per se.....

OK. Well, then, what was I expecting (or, perhaps, predicting) in, say....oooooh......January, 2008?

Well, if we're gonna start at the beginning of '08, it had pretty much been made clear in my mind that I wasn't going to continue working in the rather toxic environment (NOT involving only myself, but several colleagues in my workplace) I had been employed in during the previous two years. I'd go into detail, but let's just say that if something really weird happened, and my and my family's asses DID somehow end up back in The States, I'd like to obtain at least a kind of neutral reference when a future potential employer comes calling round inquiring on my deep, dark, misty past. Sooooo, it was January-ish 2008 when I had decided that I had best take some time off, recoup, and get back at it with a fresher mental state of being!

So, figured that early April was as good a time as any to depart said place of employ. In INITIAL retrospect, this was a colossal mistake, as, unbeknownst to me, this time had marked thee very beginning of the economic depression that the United States and most of Europe is currently mired in (LOTTA good that minor in Economics did me, considering that I didn't even see this shit coming at that time).

That was INITIAL retrospect......in the LONGER-TERM retrospect, it was probably the best thing I coulda done. Yeah, stability is gone, but stability (to an extent) is overrated, especially when you compare it on my new unit of economic measurement. No, it's NOT the "Consumer Confidence Index", nor the "Durable Goods Consumption Indicator".....but rather the "Misery/Stability Ratio Formulator."

I have nooo idea exactly WHAT the fuck that is....but it sounds impressive. Just gimme time - I'll write a dissertation defining the Misery/Stability Ratio Formulator....then I'll hop over to Stockholm and grab my Nobel.

Or, I could just swing by Stockholm and scream - "I am NOT George W. Bush and NOR am I Milton Friedman, so mind if I just grab one of those gold medal thingies over there and leave?"

Hey....that seemed to work for a certain United States President.....so why not try it?

Anyways, I miss my co-workers (a lot of good, caring souls still toil away at that place), but I see most of them whenever I head back to my home base of Portlandia (I'm really sorry....seriously I am....but I will never consider Hai Phong "home" in any manner of speaking or expression). I have been ironically blessed in being able to return to Portland at least once a year. I say "ironically blessed" in that the circumstances that have returned me to the United States a few times during the last two and a half years have NOT always been very pleasant ones.

Anyways this tangent is extending too far.....

Cashed in some accumulated frequent flyer miles in March of '08 and figured that it's time to get out of the country for a bit. Didn't know where, though! Resided briefly in the U.K. and have been to Europe more than enough times. WAS supposed to go to Australia in '98, but that got nixed when I cashed in THOSE miles to take my then-girlfriend and myself back to Buffalo to attend a former acquaintance's wedding that I got invited to by proxy. Needless to say, THAT turned out to be a waste of time off and airline miles. But Oz wasn't what I was I was looking for at this time....wanted someplace weird. Reeeaaalllly came close to hitting Southern Chile, Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego (I'll go to the ends of the Earth to view stunning Geography, and it really does not get closer to the end of the Earth than Patagonia), but I decided to spend a month is Southeast Asia.

Why?? Why the hell not?? I mean, it doesn't get anymore "un-Western" and weirder than SouthEast Asia.

As written in this very same blog three years ago, I had spent a month in China, Vietnam and Thailand and basically had a blast!! One day after I returned from Asia to Portland, I began what would end up being a 12,000-plus mile scooter ride around the perimetre of the United States. Upon completion of that ride in early August, I had settled back into my Cedar Hills abode and, refreshed and ready to hit it, begin the task of seeking employment again.

THAT didn't quite work out......the economic depression was, by that time, in full swing.

With rapidly dwindling savings, and frustration setting in from the unsuccessful job hunt, I had given up in December of '08 and rolled the dice - gonna take my chances teaching English in Viet Nam. Already had a job offer in hand after about five inquires (one job offer), which was one more job offer than I had received in The States after countless resumes and applications (zero job offers).

NOW, back to the original point: WHAT was I expecting to happen (at that time - January 2009)??

Well, I had obtained a six-month visa for Vietnam, and made a half-assed plan where I took most of my possessions and tossed them into storage, stored my car in a friends garage and let another friend use a computer that I had built from scratch (and this fucker was HOT - quad-core AMD Phenom with 4 gigs of RAM and this thing could launch space shuttles)!

IF everything seemed to go well in Vietnam AND/OR the Economic Depression in The States had remained OR had gotten worse (it had gotten worse in June of '09) after six months, I was gonna sell my stuff in storage, give my car to my friend whose garage it was stored in and give my computer to my other friend who I loaned it to.

Truthfully, I was expecting that shit would simmer down in The States by Summer '09, I'd be hearing any day from a company or Governmental agency about a job offer, and I'd prolly head back!

Errrmmm-hummm......

Instead, I met a girl, fell into love, and we opened an English language school together! Plus the Economic Depression in The States was getting reeeeaaaal ugly.....so the half-assed plan AT THAT TIME (Summer '09) changed to "Weeelllll.....I'm gonna hang here for the immediate future and see what happens....."

....and now? I'm married, with a beautiful daughter.....do freelance/independent contract work teaching English.....and really can't imagine just WHAT the hell I'd be doing if I had never left America. Given multiple friends and relatives of mine who were and/or are unemployed....I literally shudder at where I'd prolly be at right now in The States.

"OK, thass nice. So that was Summer 2009. What about NOW?"

Well, before December 2010, I HAD thought that my family and I would head over there....first-world standard of living, better education for my daughter, yadda yadda yadda, and, before I took off for a visit to Buffalo and Portland in December, I was looking at the cheerleading of MSNBC, FOXNEWS, CNN, etc....literally pretty much ALL of 'em..... and how there'd be advertisements from The U.S. Chamber of Commerce/Commerce Department/Forbes, etc that were masquerading as "news stories" with headlines like "Consumer Confidence Index hits highest mark in four months" - "Unemployment drops for the third straight month" - "Recovery is enroute!!" and shit like that....and, I'll admit - I let it get to me and it did give me the warm and fuzzies inside.....

And I was also looking at Wall Street and how The Dow and the NASDAQ were doing quite nicely, thank you!

Well, hell, I figured! We're heading over to The States!! Better education for our daughter....first-world standard of living.....blah blah blah......

Then, I landed.

I'd spent four-plus months in The States (December and January 2010-2011 and again March - May 2011), and I basically landed on Main Street, USA......boots-on-the-ground......for four+ months....

....I wasn't too sure WHAT or WHICH America it was that Wall Street and the major media outlets were looking at and talking about as recovering nicely, but, economically, it was a polar opposite from the America that I saw.

The main deal-breaker, truthfully, was how I had been soured by the current cultural mindset of large numbers of Americans. In the beginning of shit times, say mid-2008, you were unemployed and on the dole and the reaction of both, individuals and the populous in general was pretty much - "Aw man, that sucks! Really sorry to hear that...."

.....NOW, the collective American persona has literally become this rampant fucking self-absorbed hate-fest!! "Obamacare can burn in hell - I GOT HEALTH INSURANCE through MY job...." - "Fuck 'em, yeah: LET'S DO drug-testing for those receiving Public Assistance!!" - "Let's send Welfare recipients into abandoned prisons that we converted to dorm-style accommodations and teach them proper hygiene!" - "I'm going to join The Tea Party".......

....stuff like that! All of which were direct quotes I had heard myself or read that were attributed to everybody from The Man On The Street to high-level politicians!

The environment in The States has become so filled with venom, it had gotten to the point where I wasn't really sure if I wanted my daughter to grow up in a society where the weakest and those least able to defend themselves became a handy scapegoat to the masses. Masses that are either too ignorant, too lazy or too self-absorbed to peel back the mask and discover the real reasons why the United States is actually in the economic shitstorm that is has been in for the past three years running!

"'Real reasons why....' the United States is in an economic shitstorm? What the hell are you talking about?"

I could write a book on explaining this, but the only thing I can tell you right now is that the "Dirty F*cking Hippies Were Right!"

I mean, the entire four+ months there were rather traumatic for me. NOT because of the reasons listed above so much, but simply because in early December 2010, I HAD IT DEAD SET IN MY HEART OF HEARTS that this was going to be it!! My family and I were headed back there to America....ittza done deal.....

I DID get the warm and fuzzies inside me from hearing the media spout stories on the "improving" economy like cheerleaders at a high-school football game in Texas, I WAS concerned about the quality of education in Viet Nam, and I had an unlucky run of a few ugly incidents occur here (see below) that pretty much put all the nails in the coffin of the idea of my family and I staying here in Vietnam.....all the nails that would later be ripped out by the metaphorical crowbar of actually witnessing the REALITY of surviving in The United States in 2011.....

Consider these episodes displaying the loveliness of North Vietnam for me wanting to head back to The States:

EPISODE ONE - POLICE SQUAD (in color):

About seven or so months ago, I was relaxing at home with my family when somebody rang the doorbell. I went downstairs and answered it. It was some Vietnamese guy who spoke no English, and my Vietnamese wasn't that good on that particular day....so I assumed that it was a student's parent, and I went and got my wife and I proceeded to head back upstairs and hang out with my daughter.

Later, I ask Tam if that was some student's parent or something. She responded that, no, actually it was a policeman, and he's snooping around because my wife and I aren't legally married (because I refused to pay a 50 Million Dong bribe to the Hai Phong Department of "Justice" for the actual legal marriage paper [yes, it IS 50 Million Dong as the going rate and I have TWO foreigners who had paid this bribe to said Hai Phong Department of Justice for the coveted paper to prove it]). "Oh, that's nice" I said and went back to my business, not giving a single shit about this.

Tam then stated that he would be back with his supervisor this afternoon. "GOOD! I'll be here." I told her, smiling. "No, you will leave the house!" she responded back, growling. "Sure, whatever, mật ong" I shot back smiling.

So, around three that afternoon, they came back and rang the doorbell. I, through the locked wrought iron
cage that is our front gate, handed them a note that I had punched through Google Translate. Now, Google Translate is THEE worst translation program on Earf, but it's quick and efficient and gets the gist across (kinda). The translation basically stated that my blood daughter and I reside here, and that you you WILL LEAVE MY FAMILY ALONE and not bother us ANYMORE. If not, then I will make some phone calls, and it will not result in a pleasant situation for you two!!

This note was being read by said police while a very pissed off 6-foot 215lb. Westerner father with a veeery ugly Billy Idol snarl plastered on his face was stating in a very loud voice "KHONG HOI LO, VANG?" ("NO bribes, you understand?")....

....these cops basically shit themselves.....literally! Christ - I'd hate to see them in an actual CRIME situation, like, say, an armed robbery at a convenience store or something......they'd prolly be cowering behind the dumpster.......

So, I asked them in my shitty grasp of the Vietnamese language if they understood....to which they responded "yes, yes"....so I said "Good! Now you can go talk to my wife" and let them in. They chatted with my wife all the while I watched from the opposite side of the room and glared whilst bouncing my daughter up and down on my lap.

They left, and I was fully expecting the riot squad to be showing up in about fifteen minutes, NOT planning to deport my ass, but rather to plant my ass into Tran Phu prison (one of the "Big Five" prisons in Vietnam, and conveniently located less than two blocks from my house)!

But they never came back.....which I thought was odd....because, at the very least, I was fully expecting [and SLIGHTLY hoping for] them to deport my ass....but no.

It was some days later when I had asked my wife - "Mật ong, what ever happened to those two cops who were harassing us the other day? They didn't come back!"

"Oh, I know, Hon. I went down to the station house and soothed everything over and paid them a bribe!"

It was like The Rocketeer...I went straight through the fucking ionosphere!

Finally, I landed back on Earth.

"Whaaa....how....where....*sputter* *sputter*....WHAT THE FUCK, Tam???!!??"

"Honey...your actions caused them to lose their face, and it....."

"LOSE THEIR FACE?? They are harassing and threatening MY FAMILY and you are concerned about EMBARRASSING them??!!??"

"Hon....they were very angry at you and because....."

"They were ANGRY AT ME? Mật ong, I almost had to run to the drug store and buy them some Depends, for Christ sakes....."

Still, they haven't been back since....although there have been rumours that the Canh Sat (Police squad - in color) DO read this blog, so maybe the paddy wagon might come by after all.....

EPISODE TWO - BARNEY AIN'T BE LIKIN' NO CRIPPLE CRACKA:

Somehow, they found me.....

....they always find me.

Be they Police Squad (in color).....be they some Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese who have been living in a Western nation for most of their lives) who wants to ask me a trillion questions and wants to know what life in Hai Phong and what teaching English is really like....be they some director at some English language school who is begging me to teach at their centre.....

.....they always find me.

I haf no idea how! I TRY to keep a low profile, but it really doesn't matter. ANYBODY in Hai Phong can easily be found. NONE of your business is really YOUR business....NONE of your privacy really exists in Hai Phong. There really isn't much to do at all in Hai Phong....so the populous here just engage each other in massive amounts of gossip. And given that, in a city of 2.5 Million people, I'm one of, say, maybe a hundred Westerners....well, the "sore thumb" factor really comes into play here......

....so, anyways, about five months ago, these folks come up and ring my doorbell. "Oh Christ, NOT AGAIN!!" was my first reaction...but they (kinda-sorta) spoke English....so I knew they weren't Canh Sat ('cause I had been told [DISCLAIMER - I DO NOT know as fact that this is true] that all Canh Sat are REQUIRED to have a very rudimentary grasp of English, but that most of the cops just buy their English language certificates). So I invited them in and didn't have any green tea for them, so I tossed them some beer.

Apparently, they wanted me to teach at their brand new kiddie-kiddie (Kindergarten through, maybe, grade three) English language school once per week. I told them, regretfully, that, whilst I am very honoured by their interest, that I must respectfully refuse. You see, I freelance and contract with private groups of parents to instruct their children on the English language or private groups of adults for whatever specific purpose they need to improve their English for, or I do individual tutoring (usually TOEFL tutoring or F-1 visa consultation). Sadly, I do not whore myself out to larger English language schools (I done did that for the first three months of my tenure here and that wore thin real quick), but I explained this to them in a most appropriate manner (I didn't use the exact terminology of "I'm not gonna whore for you!").

Which is funny, 'cause thass exactly what I ended up doing.....

Despite that I attempted to nicely explain to them that I am NOT their ideal candidate, the director and his minion were quite insistent that I teach for their school. They then went over to their corner of the wrestling ring and slapped my wife's hand. She then entered the ring and said "Hon-neeee, I feel that it would be a good idea for you to try out teaching at their centre."

Gotta love tag-teams.....

So, I said "Fine....I'll do a brief teaching session for you....it'll be an hour.....it'll be at my normal hourly rate of blah blah blah (NOTE - I do NOT do "demo" lessons! "Demo" lessons are basically free labour for the school where the director evaluates your teaching performance and determines whether it is a good idea to hire you or not. They're basically unpaid teaching sessions that can last anywhere from fifteen minutes to two weeks. I don't waste time with demos.....they're basically for high school dropouts who have little or no experience teaching. It will be my privilege and my honour to provide you with references....but please, don't waste my time with demo lessons!) .....and I'll see you Saturday Morning."

It was some kiddie school named "Pudoodoo" or something weird like that (JUST NOW checked antique "sent" E-Mails...place is called "Popodoo" and if you're really bored, well, here they are) with a purple dinosaur as their mascot that suspiciously resembles this one thing that used to sing "I love you....you love me...." on PBS back in the early 90's. Got there Saturday Morning at thee appointed time, and I'm just literally standing around for like half an hour, admiring the carved ceilings, the totally spotless interior and mammoth wall murals and figuring "WOW! Somebody dropped/invested an ASSLOAD of ca$h on this place" when a teacher's aide finally came up to me and led me around. Finally, some management-looking figure came by and said - "OH! We are so glad that you are here! Please come this way...." and she took a closer look and said - "Oh, I am sorry....you must remove your earring."

Now, the last two jobs (actually thee ONLY two jobs) that I was told I must remove my earring resulted in me removing myself from their employ....uhhhh....so, this was not getting off to an ideal start! Still, I was bored, so I humored them and took out my Kokopelli earring and continued....

"Errrmmm....uhhhh.....the appointed time was 8AM, and I had agreed to an hour....and we're already 30 minutes into it, so we prolly should get the show on the road here. Where's the classroom?"

"Ah...yesyes...you teach soon. Follow Miss Hang (a teacher's aide) into classroom"

So, I go into the classroom, play a flash-card game with animal pictures on them with a group of five-year-olds and then gesture to a student for an answer to "What animal is this?"

......

......

......

......

"Uhhhh....Miss Hang? I guess this student doesn't know.....?"

"No, no Mr. E, you must shout 'WHO WANTS TO ANSWER' to the students."

"Errrmmm....OK - 'WHO WANTS TO ANSWER?'"

Twenty loud, high-pitched squealing voices all should back "TEACHER TEACHER - PLEASE PICK ME!!!!!" all the while doing this bizarre hand-rolling, ritualistic dance.

"Errrmm....whoa.....seems kinda militaristic....."

"I'm sorry....I don't understand...."

"Never mind. OK, great, so class is done....uhhhh, where do I meet Mr. Dung (the director guy who came over to my house) and settle things?"

"Soon...but hurry!! Now, we have presentation!"

"Uhhh.....'presentation'? Is there some sort of ceremony when you present me with my pay for this hour [which actually by now was at 90 minutes]? Or is somebody going to present me to Mr. Dung? Uhhhh........"

"No, no - we have a presentation for the parents of the students! They are seated in auditorium. OK OK! Now, here is what you do and say and......"

"Whhhhoooooa! Back up the truck here! Uhhhh....there was nothing mentioned about a 'presentation' involving parents and...."

"Please - we must hurry. Now, you will hand out a balloon and a candy to each student in the front of the auditorium and you will ask - 'Students? What is THIS animal...and you will shout WHO WANTS TO ANSWER?' to the students and then......"

"Waaaay....WHAT?"

"No time. Here, put on Podudu T-Shirt. It fit you. It XXL size"

I examine the bright red garment - "Lady, this thing wouldn't fit a Goddamm hand puppet...."

"ooooooh....is OK! Is OK! Just go into auditorium now!!! Hurry!!"

Oh Christ....I was being whored out! "Whored out" basically in the respect that, as mentioned earlier in this post, in Hai Phong, there are maybe ninety Westerners in this city of 2.5 million people. And maybe, on a good day, twenty of them actually are teachers of English (and, much to the chagrin of the Directors of the English language centres in this city, all twenty of them KNOW each other. I say "...to the chagrin of the Directors...." because all twenty ALSO tend to look out for each other, soooo.....)!! So, obviously, there is a numerical disproportion that creates a severe shortage! And what happens is that when a school is lucky enough (or does enough fast-talking and promises the Moon) to actually bag a Tây, well, shit - they GOTTA parade the Tây around as much as they can for drumming up some business!!

(Obviously, this DOES NOT happen in Ho Chi Minh City or Hanoi, which is where over 90% of those Westerners teaching English head towards).

So I was being whored....great.....

So, after about 30 minutes of dancing like a clown in front of appreciative Vietnamese parents, I finally met up with Director Dung.

"So how do you like our school?"

"Errmm....it's....uhhhh.....interesting...."

"Ahhh! Good, good! So we see you on Monday, and....."

"Errmm....right, sure. Now, about my pay for today - I was actually here at the appointed time of eight o'clock, and it's now ten, so......"

"Yes, we need to talk......"

Aw fuck!! Here we go again........

"You see, you only teach and present for one hour so....."

"Fine....skip it - just give me the hourly pay and we'll call it good....."

"Ahhhhh.....yes, we need to talk......"

"Uhhh....what now?"

"Well, your attire. You see, we have our staff dress in formal clothes and, well, you come here dressed as you do, and......"

"So sorry! SOOO sorry! On Monday, I wear proper dress!!" (Like, you're really gonna see my ass back here on Monday??!!??)

"Ahhh....good good. But for today, you not dress correct....so I can only pay you XXXXXX....." (which was a hundred thousand Dong less than agreed upon, because, apparently, my usual costume of a red and black striped Baja sweater and khaki slacks weren't good enough).

"No problem [there was NOTHING I wanted more than to get the fuck OUT of there....the place was giving me the severe creeps]! I take 100,000 Dong LESS then what we AGREED upon today! Great. However, in the future, I come back on Monday with button-down shirt and formal dress trousers.....and my rate is now XXXXXX Dong per hour" (basically 300,000VND more than what we agreed upon for today).

"Aaaaah...we cannot do that......"

So basically, right then and there I said my final good-byes and that was that. Before I left, though, this guy actually had the cubes to ask me - "Aaaaah....so - you know other foreign teacher who can work for us??"

"I'll ask around for ya!"

*********************************

Well, for some fucked-up reason, I actually DID ask around for him. Did NOT ask around actively at all....but an American friend of mine was in some fiscal dire straits....severely dire straits!! I was NOT pleased at all with the concept of mentioning Podudu to him....but, shit - when a guy's got 200,000 Dong to survive on forra whole fucking week ('cause his regular school was NOT giving him the weekly number of classroom hours they had agreed to give him), well....desperate times call for desperate measures!

Now, this guy is as Cracka as they come....not MUCH teaching experience, but he has a Master's degree in ESL, really sweet kid who has a birth defect of some sort (never asked him at all about it ever) that forces him to walk with a rather pronounced limp in his left leg. So, I sent him there. Called Dung and told him to expect my American friend to come over and do a class for him Thursday morning at ten!

I call my friend Thursday at noon -

"Hey! Soooo....pretty scary place, innit?"

"Uhhh....I wouldn't know"

"Ahhhhh...gotcha. Skipped out on the whole deal. Prolly NOT a bad idea on your part.....they're kinda dodgy like I told ya, and ....."

"Uhhhhh....no. THEY skipped out on ME."

"Sorry?"

"I dunno.....got there, and waited in the lobby for, like, 45 minutes. Then this, like, receptionist finally comes over to me and says 'Uhhh, we do not need you. Thank you....' I ask why, and what's going on, and she only says something about how '...we want Ernie to teach for us...' or something like that, and I asked to see this Director Dung, but she said that he was busy and she then gave me 50,000 Dong for my transportation costs to get there......"

Soooo.....back on came The Rocketeer virtual jet-pack as I flew in rage PAST the ionosphere this time and just about into outer space!

I HAD planned to go over there to Podudu myself and, uhhh, have a word with Dung when a normally rather violent Aussie friend of mine (for some weird reason) talked me outta that idea.

I KNEW the fucking score....he wasn't perfect! (TRUST ME - the Vietnamese demand perfection in appearances- gold shops/cash exchange points won't even accept an American $20 bill if is has a TINY tear or has a small ink spot on it, for example).....

....so, instead, I decided to play dumb and E-Mail Mr. Dung. Below is the cut-and-paste from the E-Mails:

2011/2/19 
Mister Dung -

I had been trying to get ahold of you.  I am trying to find out what happened with the Tay teacher that I had sent there. Â I told him this would be a position of a few days a week and it will pay at least 400,000VND per classroom hour.

___________ told me when he got there that he sat in the front office for half an hour, then was told that he was not needed, and then sent home.

He was not paid for a half hour of his time wasted.  He was only given 50,000VND for transportation expenses.

Could you please tell me the truth as to WHAT EXACTLY happened and why it did not work with _________?

Many thanks,

-E-

***********************************

From - DungLV  02/19/2011

Hi Ernie,

Sorry Ernie, I did not hire him because his legs are not good for performance and you did not talk about this to me.

Thanks and best regards.

***********************************

Hello Mister Dung....

I am very sorry.  I do not understand? 

Is it _________'s legs that are going to be teaching the students, or his brain?

I think what has happened here is that with both myself and with _________, you did NOT make the criteria/requirements  (tiêu chuẩn/yêu cầu) known to myself or 
to __________ (for example, business-style dress, no jewelery, perfect physical condition) before asking us to teach.

Sadly, not compensating _________ for his time spent waiting to teach (30 minutes)and giving him only 50,000VND for the transportation cost was dishonourable for PoPoDoo school to do that.

There are only 25 Tay Tieng Anh teachers in Hai Phong (between V.A.T.C., Tyndale, Apollo and other centres) and, sadly, they all are friends with each other.

When things like this happen, the word and the news about _________ not being allowed to teach at your centre because of how his legs are will travel quickly to the other Tay teachers in Hai Phong, and they will not look favourably upon PoPoDoo.  I don't talk about things like this to other Tay teachers....but other people might.

I am sorry that this story had to have such a sad ending, when it could have had a happy ending for all.  What a pity.

Best of luck with PoPoDoo's future success!

E

No shit - the middle E-Mail was thee actual quote-by-quote response from Dung.......Jesus......

Now, obviously, one would suspect that the collective ass of my wife, my daughter and I would be running straight to The States screaming "ARRRGH! Get us OUTTA HERE!!" after these two episodes (and a couple others that, in the interest of brevity, I did not include here)......

....but after spending time examining the economic and cultural landscape in the United States for an extensive period of time and not particularly liking the way it has shifted, we're back to the "Weeelllll.....we're just gonna hang here for the immediate future and see what happens....." stage again.....

Plus, I don't really kill myself here and we do allright!! Literally!

The entire concept of working 45-50-plus hours per week for some absolute douchebag supervisor/manager who would throw you under the bus in a heartbeat if it meant saving/promoting his or her career....weeeelllll....honestly? It gives me nightmares.....

BUT.....BUT...we ARE investigating the possibility of actually moving to another location inside Viet Nam (which, to me, would make all the difference in the world)....

So stay tuned......

Cheers,

-E-

2011-06-11T09:55:00.000-07:00

Well....so much for writing tonight.....

LOVELY evening here in Hai Phong - there were (and prolly still are) swarms (no, I mean literal swarms) of flying ants inside our house this evening. Attracted to ANY light source, multiplying in 150% humidity (physical air temperature here at 11:30PM = 80°...."RealFeel" temperature = 99°), plus given the fact that no Vietnamese house is actually "sealed" like houses in, say, The States are (NO ductwork/no screens on the windows [they'd be stolen in about literally five minutes]/no climate control whatsoever save for one A/C unit in the bedroom), errrmmmm....it's not really conducive to typing out anything vaguely resembling a long narrative about the past five months....sad, 'cause some strange shit went on during that time.

Naw fret......all will be told shortly. Like, whenever I can turn the main fluorescent tube light on in the ManCave to the point where I can actually write something where I don't hafta swat away flying ants every other sentence.

Flying ant season goes from late May through to early July....but it ain't gonna be THAT long 'till I post...meebee a few days.

Anyways - saw this piece about a Tennessee law that bars the posting of any "distress-causing" images on any sort of Internet medium. Pretty troubling shit! Check it

Had some weird shit occur here in Hai Phong a few months ago that had me guaranteed to have my ass and my wife and daughter's asses running off to The States.

Shortly thereafter, spent a grand total of 18 weeks back IN The States at various intervals between December and June and saw and heard some weird shit that also pretty much guaranteed that my family's collective ass would be planted inside Viet Nam (but NOT in Hai Phong) for the immediate future....

Christ - I really gotta look at bribing someone in order ta git into Canada.....

.....details will be explained in a few days!

Cheers....

-E-

2011-06-08T00:01:00.001-07:00

Been busy....lotsa stuff happened in the past three months.

Some good...some not so good....

Gotta git back ta writin'.....

New post coming Saturday Night.

-E-

2011-03-02T09:36:00.000-08:00

Ahhhh......Tet......

We have just gotten past the Tet (or Lunar New Year) holiday here.

Tet is where about 90% of the foreign population begins a mass exodus out of Vietnam....usually to a place where they don't celebrate the Lunar New Year so....uhhh....fervently (e.g. - Korea, The Philippines , Thailand, etc.).

Those of us who are married to Vietnamese remain behind.....like an Allied soldier watching stranded the beach as thee last and final evacuation boat departs Dunkirk......

The Tet ritual generally goes like this - Two days before the Lunar calendar New Year's Day, EVERYTHING and ANYTHING closes down! This includes major supermarkets as well as the old lady next door who sells groceries out of her living room. Thusly, in the week before Tet, supermarkets are jammed and prices escalate markedly (and they usually don't retreat back down after Tet either).

The MAJOR supermarkets, electronics stores and other large institutions GENERALLY open back up about four days after the Lunar New Year’s Day……whereas all of the smaller shops (about 90% of retail and services in Vietnam) generally open “…..when they feel that it is a lucky day for them to do so” from what my wife tells me.

This can be anywhere from the day AFTER Tet to a couple weeks later…….depending on what the Fortune Teller has told the owner of the specific shop in question.

Given that the Vietnamese have soooo few public holidays (like, maybe three or four) during the rest of the year, this kinda makes up for it!

You just basically PRAY that shit like your computer, your hot water heater, your fridge, etc. etc. does NOT decide that Tet would be a great time for it to also go and take some time off…..

And you’d also best have a skooter at your disposal, because, during Tet, taxis have developed a holiday tradition of A) – Generally being nowhere to be found and B) – putting a bag over the meter, sorta like giving the taxi meter its own personal Tet Holiday time offa work……which then results in the taxi driver quoting you a rate of about four times the cost of what the meter would say to your destination.

Ahhhh…..Tet…..

Anyways, my Tet this year revolved around taking several hours outta the day and riding around with Tam, Emily and Tam’s parents and visiting every known relative and friend within a five mile radius around the city of Hai Phong. I had asked why these folks just don’t come and visit us, and my wife said something about how they are the most junior in the family hierarchy….so it is we who must go around and do all of the visiting.

Now, this entire visiting thing is NEVER actually arranged in ANY manner whatsoever! Nobody calls anybody….people just kinda flit from relative’s house to relative’s house and half the time, there is nobody at home. Since they do not have voice mail on their landlines or cell fones here, no messages can be left and nothing is organized. A 60% success ratio of finding relatives at home is generally considered a good job on your part.

So, on the forth day of Tet, a couple Vietnamese friends of mine and a couple Tay and Viet-Kieu friends and myself all decided to accept an invite from my friend Anthony's girlfriend Van for a couple fun days on Cat Ba Isalnd. So we piled onto a JetFoil and took the hour ride to the island.

As far as places to escape from Hai Phong go, Cat Ba Island is one of my favourites! It's not two hours on a skooter or three on a bus or train (like Hanoi or Bai Chay are).....it has decent Tay food and decent beaches that are clean and are not overrun by hookers and hawkers (like Do Son). It has enough services in the main town (Cat Ba Town - the town the boat is approaching in the third pic below) and the island has a beautiful interior that is easily accessible by using a rented skooter. And it was ESPECIALLY nice being Tet and that the island was almost deserted!

Fun, quick yet relaxing boat ride from Cang Ben Binh (Hai Phong passenger port)....

....into Cat Ba Town, where a minibus was waiting for us at the port to take us to Van's house for an amazing seafood luncheon....

Followed by off-road skooter riding to do a bit of hiking in Cat Ba National Park.....

Van doing a balance beam act......

Hien and her son Cong on top of a rock formation....

A painful earthen stairwell that took us to the highest elevation on the island

I haf noooo idea WHERE these deer came from. Did not know that they were indigenous to Cat Ba Isalnd...

We call this "Dogwood".....

All was good, though, because none of us violated regulation number 3.....nobody in our party attempted to make any changes to the exiting landscape.....now the ENTERING landscape, well, THAT was another story.....but the exiting landscape, we left it alone and allowed it to leaf freely.....

So, the next day....we woke up in our hotel in Cat Ba Town and I grabbed a cheese omelette for breakfast....

....and after my dish was delivered to me, I was waiting for Leslie Nielsen to walk out and rip out a line straight from "Airplane!"

....and then, we hired a private a tour boat (no, NOT the one that sank eight days later) for, like, 700,000 Dong (or thirty-five bucks) to cruise around Ha Long Bay forra few hours with a stop at Monkey Island.

First stopped off at a fish farm house (they're these tiny houses that float on the Bay that people live in with tanks surrounded by fine mesh netting where they raise fish) to grab some lunch to cook up. All seemed to be well until they saw ole' round eyes....then the price magically went up to 600,000 Dong for a four-pound fish (it wouldn't even cost that much PREPARED at a nice seafood restaurant)....so we went on and decided to eat after the tour.

....and who said that the Vietnamese don't know how to multi-task? I'd say cuddling your child whilst rowing your boat with your feet and waving at tourists is a pretty Goddamm good example of multi-taksing, if ya ask me......

"LOOK, Ba....Tây on a boat!"

.....and then.....some of them DON'T multi-task....

ALWAYS good to have the guy piloting your ship taking a nap whilst your ship is somewhere in the middle of Halong Bay......think I can now see HOW and WHY that boat sank last month.....

Then we headed off towards Monkey Island....

.....this is where shit got weird.....

We got off the boat at Monkey Island and we walked around the beach and looked around a bit.

Apparently, it's some sort of nature reserve that isn't supported by ALL of Vietnam.....

I couldn't really shoot a pic of this sign with one hand, so I put my beer down on a flat rock and snapped a pic of this sign.

And I turn around, and....WHAT THE FUCK????!!!???

Jesus....THAT freaked me out! Well, at least it wasn't good beer....

Then, I hear a shout from down the beach a few hundred feet where my friends had gone, and apparently, one monkey jumped from a tree and, on the way down, grabbed a can of Coca-Cola straight from the hand of my friend Suzanne and shared it with his offspring.....

...well, the amusement ended shortly thereafter, when Hien's young son, Cong, and our friend Van, started teasing the monkeys.....

....this was not a wise move as they both got attacked and bitten.....

Van got gouged in the thigh, and Cong got bitten in the foot. Needless to say, the boat ride back to Cat Ba Island was quite tense.....I mean, most of us had seen the first ten minutes of the film "28 Days Later", so we kept a close eye on them.....

They turned out allright, though....couple shots....no rabies....no tetanus.....but still, it was freaky.

Back to teaching....Tet is done.....

....more soon!

-E-

2011-02-11T10:08:00.000-08:00

A couple of pics of life in Hai Phong.....

Well - life here don't suck so badly now that Big C FINALLY brought back Castle Milk Stout.....

...still, though - when meandering over to the diaper section, I saw this.....thought to myself: WOW!! If I have a Japanese goon baby who can fly, then THESE are the diapers that I want!

It was Tet, so this involves going to all the long-lost relatives houses who are flung alllll over the entire city.....a process that can take anywhere from five hours to three days....

On the way to my wife's aunt's house, I saw this thing....man, I've been tryin' ta Pimp My Ride like dat for years now....still no luck!

And then, once we got to said aunt's house....I casually looked over at the curio cabinet, and got flashed by Porky Pig! WTF??

More in a couple days....some pics from a rather strange trip to Cat Ba Island! After that, I'll write a long-ass post about the past couple years, and plans and such!

-E-

2011-02-03T09:06:00.000-08:00

And it's now been.......

......two years (by the Lunar calendar.......two years and a few weeks by the Solar calendar) since I first arrived on these shores.

Before I drone onwards, I wanna take this opportunity to wish all a very happy New Year and much success in this, the year of the Cat (or, of the Rabbit, for our friends up North in China).

Oh - forgot: I never did finish writing about the trip back from India. Well, after several delays of several hours, I had an overnight layover in Singapore (thanks to the &$%^@*$#$& people at JetStar Pacific airlines), before doing an INTENDED 24-hour layover in Ho Chi Minh City ("Saigon" to some), then back to Hai Phong.

Was NOT pleased at JetStar suddenly changing my flight from what had been scheduled as Kuala Lumpur to Singapore to Ho Chi Minh City in a one-day shot into breaking it up where I hadta spend an overnight in Singapore!

Singapore, for starters, is a veeeery expensive place. Secondly, it's rather draconian in it's laws (whilst I don't go running around vandalising things, the state-administered beatings with a thick bamboo cane on Michael Fay and Oliver Fricker for graffiti and vandalism pretty much spoke volumes about the country and its mindset to me) and, whilst I've never been there before, it's not a place I really wanted to go to.

Well, FINALLY landed at Changi Airport in Singapore at 11:00pm local time, ran through the terminal, blew through customs and immigration (VEERRRY efficient) and just by seconds caught the last train into the city at 11:15pm (after a train employee saw me fumbling in a bewildered manner with the tubeway ticket machine and grabbed me and threw me over the railing to the train and told me to pay at the other end.....otherwise, I found out later, it's a $50 cab ride or sleeping at the airport). The guy at the turnstile OUT of the tube at the station that I disembarked at refused to take my money and waved me on!!

Now, in the few days before this trip when I got this notice of suddenly having to do an overnight in Singapore, a wave of dread had washed over me and never subsided! The average hotel in Singapore goes for $189USD per night on thee cheap! Coulda done a youth hostle for forty bucks, but I left my youth hostle days of crashing in a cramped dorm room with ten Euro-trash guys snoring with stinky feet about ten years ago. Dug up a hotel room in the red-light district that was clean and tiny forra 'bout $60USD.

Not much when I went out that night walking around the red-light district: Ya couldn't smoke in the bars, and the basic bottle of Tiger beer set you back about $7.00USD and my favourite drink, The Singapore Sling, commanded a whopping fifteen buxx USD! I mean, they make pretty decent Singapore Slings in Hanoi (and at ONE bar in Hai Phong) for, like, three bucks, and I make a really good Sling myself........but when I read that a Singapore Sling at the Raffles Hotel (the place where the drink was first invented) was going for around $35USD, I was floored!

I mean, imagine going to the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York (where the Chicken Wing as we know it, was first created) and dropping forty bucks for ten wings! Jesus.......

I mean - all in all..the people there were waaaay cool, friendly and helpful! Great folk.....but, hell - lighten up on the prices, woulda ya, guys??

An uneventful layover in Ho Chi Minh City the next night was a welcome relief! Went to my usual stomping grounds around District One, but sadly noticed something different in the six months that I was away from that town. The old, gritty, sin-and-debauchery filled backpacker area of Pham Ngu Lao and De Tham in District One was starting to become very gentrified and yuppiefied. And THEN on the taxi ride to the airport for the flight back to Hai Phong, I see this atrocity sticking out like a sore thumb....

I mean - where'd the fuck THIS thing come from...and WHAT planner actually approved it?

Aw well.....times change....things change...

So, made it back to Hai Phong, crammed a ton of classes into a two-week timespan, and headed off Stateside for a five-week winter break.

***********************************

And here I am......

....two years after first landed in Hanoi at 11:00PM that fateful night in January 2009, back when I had the "yeeeaahhh....well....we'll see what happens...." attitude and I was basically planning a simple six-month escape from the real world.....

....and I didn't have a single Goddamm clue that it was about to become my real world.

Next up - TWO YEARS! What's happened, why's it happened, and what's next.....

-E-

2011-01-25T02:29:00.000-08:00

Jes' ta let ya'all know.....

A) - Tomorrow is "Mister Kitchen" Day and

B) - I WILL continue this blog and write on about Singapore in a few days.....

-E-

2010-12-11T11:50:00.000-08:00

Well.....I THOUGHT that I was prepared.....

......I mean, hell - I'd seen The Holy Trinity of Indian flims ("Ghandi", "Outsourced" and "Slumdog Millionaire")......so I thought that I was good to go!

Errmmm.......no.....

OK, well, as mentioned in the previous communique, I hadta flee Vietnam by AIR ONLY to get a new visa!! I had picked India because it was a bizarre and very exotic culture and plus airfares there were cheap! Now, AirAsia was ofering thee same cheap fare to ALL it's destinations in India! Well, I just hadta figgger out which one I was gonna go check out!

Well, I had a choice between Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Trivandrum, Bangalore, Hydrabad (sp??) And some other city who's name I had forgotten (I *THINK* it was called "Trichy" or something like that....but it didn't sound easy....just a bit tricky!).

I had immediately nixed Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai because I hate over-crowded mega cities (a mega-city is any city with a population over 3 million) in ANY country and I already live in an over-crowded mega-city in a developing country so I wasn't really up to seeing what the Indian version of Hai Phong would look like.

ALMOST did go to Bangalore because I really really wanted to go visit a call center and see the guy who I would talk to about problems with my Capital One credit card....you know, the guy who sounded like Apu from "The Simpsons" and who told you his name was "Peter" whose call center was in "Utah"......

.....I just wanted to swing by and ask "Peter" if he thought that The Jazz had a good chance of overcoming Portland and Denver and taking the Northwest Division title this season, thass all.

But, for the million or so "Peters" who imported lucrative call-center jobs from The United States, life has been good.....good to the point where it (as well as I.T.) has made Bangalore one of India's most expensive cities! This was reflected in the hotel prices....which prompted me to give Bangalore a pass this time round.....

Hydrabad? Not a big fan of any place whose name begins or ends in "bad" (which takes out Pakistan and about half of Germany for me)....and I had never heard of "Trichy" which I recall meaning either dodgy or a parasitical worm.....so I had decided on Trivandrum!

I was ready for this town - I have competed in Pub Quizzes on three continents, so I had the Triv part covered! and Rum? Well, shit....place a Pina Colada or a Mojito in front of me and watch how long it lasts! So, I was satisfied and excited to visit a place called TrivAndRum.....

So, I was done in Malaysia (and deeply wished I coulda had just another 2 days to go see Malaysia's only casino, SE Asia's biggest amusement park, the Petronas Twin Towers.....and a coupla other things) and was in a stare-down with a 2AM wake-up call and was gonna see who flinched first. I prepared for this by staying up 'till 11PM drinking a six'er of Tiger......the two AM wake-up call would flinch.......I would pay.

So woke up at 2AM (and felt literally like a zombie for the next 20 hours), jumped a cab to KL Sentral station, grabbed a bus for less than 3 bucks for the 35 mile ride to the airport and got there an hour later for my 6AM flight to Trivandrum!

Decent flight, and the plane landed at an airport that made Cat Bi in Hai Phong look absolutely luxurious by comparison. It was funny - we had to wait for the Immigration guys to run to the desks when we got there (because there are only a couple International flights there per week).

Got out of the airport and saw a buncha soldiers guiding us out the door whilst toting those scary-ass looking machine guns with all the holes in the barrel (to cool it off) that looks like it can wipe out an entire platoon. I'll always tell a TSA toadie to go fuck himself if he or she gits outta line.....but these people had that "fuck-with-me-and-I'll-shoot-you-a-new-orifice" look on their faces......

Really weird leaving the airport....NOTHING built up at all!! A few houses amongst the palm trees and one ATM machine and thass it. No hotels, restaurants, mom-and-pop stores....nothing. Creepy.

Booked everything at home before departure. Found Trivandrum City's hotels to be severely over-priced for India, so I accidentally stumbled upon a place that said it was close to a beach. I am always a big fan of close to a beach. Then I found out that this hotel was in a place called Varkala Beach......which happens to sit about 40 miles NORTH of Trivandrum City.

I figgered why the hell not, booked the place via E-Mail and got a one bedroom apartment for 1700 Rupees per night.....about $40USD.

Grabbed a rickshaw outside the front gate of the airport and was gonna pay 100 Rupees (two-buck-fiddy, maybe) for a four-mile ride to the Train Station and grab a train to Varkala Beach......but let the guy driving talk me into 600 Rupees to take me all the way to Varkala Beach. Talked with an Australian couple later who took the train and said the fare to Varkala Beach was 25 Rupees (fiddy cent). I was incensed until they told me that I was wise to take the rickshaw because "......a sardine in a tin has more room than a human on that train does..."

A line of rickshaws in Varkala Beach....

The rich, Corinthian Leather interior......a Lux Interior.....

Scary, wet ride in a downpour from Trivandrum airport to Varkala Beach...

So, an hour-an-a-half later, we get to a village (which I presume to be Varkala village) and my rickshaw driver doesn't know where the Shiva Gardens Homestay. Nor do I! He asks somebody at a shop who doesn't know, I then ask to borrow the driver's cell fone (to call the place), but he claims that he doesn't have one. I slooowwwllly get the idea that he's had enuff of the long ride and 600 rupees wasn't terribly to his liking and that he just wants ta dump my ass and git back on home to Trivandrum! So, I hop outta the rickshaw and walk down a muddy path (that I guess functions as a street) and ask a few people about the Shiva Gardens......no dice - never heard of it.

About a quarter mile later, I reach the end of the muddy path (passing some newer construction and a bunch of backpacker-type hotels and the odd [what passes here for a] "resort" along the sides of this path) and end up on a rather nice beach!

"Hmmmm.....can deal with this" I thought to myself!

Not to be.....

I showed the E-Mail printout to a few people along the way: "Ahhh....yes yes....North Cliff district! OK, you go up these stairs (pointing to this endless-ass Earthen staircase) and then go left....walk for a while, then you in North Cliff area!"

"Errmmm....ahhhh.....so, ahhhh, The Shiva Gardens ISN'T in this area with an easy walk to a nice beach?"

"No no! It is up there Sir!" (points to this ledge-looking place about a mile or so from where we are).

Joy.....

So, I walk the Stairway-To-Heaven and, at the top, cross a small parking lot that doubles as a staging area for old Ambassador taxicabs and rickshaws and also operates as Varkala's heliport.....

....and past the hospital where The Government takes care of Nature -

So, when I git to the end of the car park/taxi-and-rickshaw stand/Heliport, I see a really neat little village of shops and bungalows and nice little well-kept hotels....cooooolio........

"Well!" I thought excitedly - "I can easily deal with this......."

......or not......

LITERALLY NOBODY had heard of The Shiva Gardens! It had been going on about two-plus hours of walking around now, and my backpack was getting heavy. I was just about to say "Screw it!!" and grab one of these cute little hotel rooms right on the cliff (I didn't pre-pay the Shiva Gardens....but was reaaallly leery of bad Karma should I decide to stiff 'em) when I finally found one guy who was like - "Uhhh....yes yes - you go by the CD music shop, then turn left and through the little pathway past the small marketplace and Shiva Garden back there....."

...and, about a kilometre later, in the middle of the Jungle, I found The Shiva Gardens.

Ya gotta understand - places here do NOT have detailed addresses like - "Jones Hotel, 123 Anystreet Lane.....right off the corner of Anystreet Lane and Bumblefuk Road next to the Library"

Noooo....I got -

Shiva Garden
North Cliff
Kurakkanni
Varkala
Trivandrum District
Kerala
India

Uh-huh......

Now, I can't say enough about the owner and staff here - AMAZINGLY FRIENDLY folk.......but, I mean, their website did a great sales job. Check it - http://www.varkalahomestay.com/

Now, ".....perched near a majestic red cliff...." led towards very liberal interpretation of the word "near".....and I loved the Al Fresco dining -

Now, I was NOT in the mood for Posh de la Posh resort accommodations........but I wasn't really expecting this degree of roughing it.....

Still, though - the one-bedroom apartment WAS INDEED spotless and quite cozy.....

...but being in a tropical jungle almost on the Equator...there were some weird-ass looking bugs! I was a bit freaked....was expecting to see some nasty bizarre tropical jungle insect that had the body of a crab and the head of a social worker attack me on my way to my room.....

Owner and staff again were amazing - the owner (the guy on the right in the pic below) hacked my bill to a flat one thousand Rupees per night (meebee $22USD) because it had rained the entire two days I was there!

But, vegging on a cliff-front restaurant with several ice-cold Kingfishers, and enjoying some AMAZING curry....well....all was well with the world.....

*************************

Few more pics.......

Saw several women HARD AT WORK on a construction site (whilst the menfolk were kinda lingering about)....hadta snap this pic of this one lady and admire the dexterity displayed of balancing that big-ass basket on her head.....

"Back in a bit, Honey...just gonna take the cow forra walk...."

Veggin' while waiting for a rainstorm to pass and enjoying a few cocktails at a restaurant while watching a cliff-side fish barbecue........

....prolly grilling this fresh-caught Marlin.....

The dodgy-looking stairwell to the beach from North Cliff. WAS gonna head down there after a few pints, but it had been raining all day, and when ya git to be MY age....and ya got a wife and kid, and....and.....shit - running outta excuses here......

Local artist selling hand-screened T-Shirts......THIS was some impressive stuff.....

After two days of rain in Varkala Beach, I took off back to Trivandrum (exactly when the rains stopped and the sun came out and it got hot). Caught a rickshaw to the train station and hopped a train.

I remember seeing scenes in the Holy Trinity of Indian flicks (Slumdog Millionaire and Outsourced) showing these people literally hanging offa moving trains and thinking - "Cute, guys....niiiice exaggeration....real funny....."

Uh-huh.....

Trivandrum City itself was really disappointing. A friend of mine had told me that - "They really don't have restaurants on the street in India as we know them. You can't just go inside and grab a table and git waited on and eat! You order and take it away and that's all there is there!"

Yeah....suuurrre....OK...whatever.

Well, he was right! There was NOTHING of ANY sort of amusement in Trivandrum City....restaurants, cinemas, pubs, this, that....whatever....nothing. Walked all over the city forra 'bout a good four hours......nothing. Nice people......nothing really to do......nothing of any interest to shoot pics of....so I just went back to my hotel and crashed, as I had a 7AM flight out the next morning.....

For further reading - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varkala

Next - getting Slung into Singapore.....

-E-

2010-12-04T10:02:00.000-08:00

Sorry 'bout that....

Just kinda ran off an' left ya.....

....actually, been (near) deathly ill the last coupla days. WAAAAY too many late-night landings followed by WAAAAY too many crack-of-dawn takeoffs (and nowhere even close to enough proper quality hours of sleep in the bed in the hotel room).......

Cold/Malaria/Dengue Fever/Swine Flu/Yellow Fever/etc.....

....be up and running on or about Tuesday!

Tell ya about India and Singapore and Ho Chi Minh City!!

Cheers.....

-E-

2010-11-26T04:58:00.000-08:00

Every so often......

....just to shake shit up and scare people and impress the populous by providing the illusion that they're taking a hard-line stance on immigration, The Powers That Be here will start sending out rumours ("OH NO!! There's gonna be a crackdown on visas and foreigners working here!! Heavens to Murgitoid!!") and making strange policy changes.

Before September 2009, one could grab a visa for Vietnam for 6 months or a year and get it renewed rather easily. However, there has been ranting and raving from several quarters (and, rightfully so) that illegal Chinese workers have been coming in and working and taking jobs (which is strange - because the Chinese are saying thee same thing about The Vietnamese).

So, like the Transportation Security Administration puts up a presentation of "security theatre", The Powers That Be put up their own production, which I'll call "immigration theatre"! Basically, in the TSA's security theatre, nobody is truly genuinely protected, but it makes certain segments of the population feel better at MUCH inconvenience to another segment of this population (the flying public, in this case).

In the play called "immigration theatre", it also makes certain segments of the population feel better (unskilled Vietnamese labourers), to a great inconvenience to another segment of this population (namely, E.S.L. teachers and other skilled foreign workers). I say this is theatre because, simply, the lone, solo Chinese worker may not get in and/or may be deported, but most of these MEGA-projects are built with Chinese Yuan Renminbi.....therefore these Chinese conglomerates who develop these projects want THEIR PEOPLE building them!!!! So they just simply bring their people from China in with them to the construction site!!

The Powers That Be here will then go to the building site, scream and holler and threaten and try to kick these workers out....then the Chinese developer will threaten back to A) - Stop the project entirely B) - Call in the Chinese Military or C) - pay a big 'ole bribe.

After A, B or C occurs, life goes on as normal!! So it's theatre, nothing real, nothing concrete, just a show!

Except that foreign skilled workers (especially free-lancers) and E.S.L. teachers don't quite have the same sort of influence as, say, the Chinese Yuan Renminbi - so because of the visa changes imposed though "immigration theatre" (NO more 6-month or 1 year visas AT ALL/THREE-MONTH VISAS ONLY), above-mentioned foreign skilled workers (especially free-lancers) and E.S.L. teachers have three choices:

Pay a thousand-plus dollars and a lotta ass-kissing and get a three-year green card/residency permit/work permit

Get the three-month visa RENEWED INSIDE VIETNAM through someone who, ahhh, "...has a good relationship with The Powers That Be....." - usually at $200 or so per three-month renewal

Fly out to Thailand or China or any nearby FOREIGN COUNTRY and fly back in and get your NEW three-month visa over the Internet and pick it up upon arrival - THIS costs, like, sixty bucks not including the cost of the plane ticket. But ya GOTTA FLY....can't cross land borders for the three-month visa (cute, huh?).

Had THOUGHT about (and actually BEGUN the process of) getting the green card....but after having my baby (well, no - actually, my wife had our baby, but still), I was NOT big on the idea of remaining in Vietnam long-term, soooooo.......I stopped the green card procedure and decided that 'll just hop in and out every three months until my family and I move permanently to The States!

Sooooo, my visa was almost up and I hadta figger out where I was gonna fly to forra few days! No way for Bangkok - GREAT city, but I'd been there enuff times. WAS gonna go to the Uyghur region of Xinjiang in far Northwest China and party with the Muslims there (and these people DO party), but connecting flights were a nightmare and it wound up going over $600USD, so I nixed THAT idea.

Instead, I pieced together some HYPER-CHEAP flights (with a couple long-ass layovers [30 hours in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and an overnight in Singapore] and a 3am wake-up call to ride the 40 miles out to the airport in Kuala Lumpur to catch a 6AM flight) on a couple of rock-bottom budget airlines and decided to head to India!

So, on Turkey Day, I got to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, another place I've never been to before, and begun my 30 hour layover.....

Hell!! I'd never been there before, and given that I'm a big fan of stamps in my passport, I got a cab to my hotel and began walking around the town....

The cab driver didn't say a word for the first five minutes, then he asked me where I'm from.....

"America" I replied.

"Ahhh....Bush" he said in a flat tone of voice.

"Not anymore" I stated. "I can't fucking stand that guy"

The cab driver's face lit up - "AH! I am wrong! Obama! Obama! Yes. He is a friend to Muslims"

"Well, shit, so am I, Ace!"

"Sorry? Pardon?"

"Naw, I just said that I like Obama" (hadta lie a bit here).

"Muslims are friend to America"

"I know they are! And most thinking American are friends to Muslims"

Sadly, we reached my hotel before I could chat further.....but it was kinda sad that his guy hadta try to explain that main-line Islam presents less of a threat to the safety of the United States than some Christian elements do.

Still, while Malayia IS a predominately Muslim nation and there ARE flare-ups (like this) from time to time, it seemed reeeaaalllly diverse and peaceful there - Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Whites, Arabs, People from India, Asians......kinda a neat place all in all......

My hotel....not a bad place at all! $20 per night, clean and easily accessible to lotsa cool stuff.

Malay is kinda a weird language....a lot of it looks like phonetically-spelled English. Like, for example, "Immigration" is spelled "Imigresen" and the above are just a couple more examples.....

ALWAYS remember to leave a can of Guiness to the Altar of Santa!

Woke up at The Crack of Noon starving.....got up, walked around the city, and I saw this! REAL FUCKING DONUTS!! Now, I will eat a donut every ten or twelve months back in The States, but since we have nothing like them in Vietnam, I was gonna dive in......except that I could NOT find SIMPLE, NORMAL Glazed at this place......

So I got these potato thingys soaked in curry and then wrapped in fried dumpling batter.....GOOOOD stuff.

Proceded to walk around some more until I encountered what seemed to be thee world's largest mall (it's called Times Square, and it actually is the world's third-largest mall), complete with an indoor amusement park! WAS gonna ride the roller coaster, but it was all pay-one-price vs. separate tickets for each ride, and time was running short. Now, IF I had another four hours to kill, well.....

Shortly before this, I had gone to what must be thee world's largest computer geek mall and just drooled! LOTSA neat gadgets, with most of the computers being cheaper and faaaaar newer technology than what we can get in Vietnam (except the digital cameras were priced about twice as much as what you can get them for in The States)......basically, it was a lotta fun window shopping, but after a while, this wasn't the exception - it seemed to be the rule in terms of the city's landscape! Kuala Lumpur basically seemed to be one huge-ass crass commercialism site.....it really wore thin after a while....and, while it's helped develop the nation at breakneck speed, there really seemed to be very little in the way of urban character......

One thing that Vietnam inadvertently got right was taxing thee living shit out of automobiles!! No automobiles are manufactured in Vietnam, so they are subject to a 100% duty and tariff upon import......thusly doubling the actual cost of a car. Traffic in this town is a nightmare......

The Monorail here was cool, and, unlike Seattle's, it A) - actually GOES somewhere and B) - goes faster than ten miles an hour!

"Is there a chance the track could bend?"

"Not on your life, my Hindu friend!"

(I sooooo wanted to say that while I was in Kuala Lumpur)

Finally, it was just funny to see that what I thought was easily thee best film of 2010 prolly got more advertising in Malaysia than it did in The States! Still, though, again - being a predominately Muslim nation, I'm kinda surprised that they showed this flick at all.....

Off to bed - I got four hours of sleep before I gotta git up at 2:30am and head off to India.....

More in a couple days!

-E-

2010-11-20T07:52:00.000-08:00

A trip to the countryside......

.....AND a few other random pics!

My friend Suzanne holds an English Club for people out of her house once every week. This is just an opportunity for folks who wish to improve their English Language skills or just want to constantly practise speaking English so that they don't lose proficiency in it. She collects a tiny sum from each participant, and turns around and buys chips and snacks an pop and the like!

Every other week, I'll hop over there and volunteer (because there are so few Tay in Hai Phong, and these are good people)....though it's not really volunteering. It's more like having a few pints and a few smokes and talking with people.....I genuinely enjoy it!

So a couple weeks ago, two of the members, Hop and Hien, organised a field trip to a countryside village called Vinh Bao (pronounced "Ving Bow") where one of them was born and raised (Hien) and the other one still lives (Hop)!

Fun time....saw a water puppet show, hand carving of wood, meet Hien's 99-year-old-grandfather.....just a relaxing, fun time and great to get outta the city!

One of the places that we visited was this big-ass temple with this neat statue park on rather expansive grounds!

The English Club on a bridge on the temple grounds

Cool looking statue....

Dat with village children on a mule.....

Me greeting villagers.....

Being on religious grounds at a temple, I'm sure I'm gonna burn in hell for taking these pics....but, hey - I'm sure The Buddhists have a sense of humour!

THIS was incredibly cool...man - and right when ya think that everything nowadays is mass-produced in China quickly, cheaply and by machine.....

*************************************

Now, a few random pics -

Suzanne also had a birthday party a few weeks ago that I had the pleasure of attending! Lotsa food, beer, cake and fun! The cake we got her says "The Queen of Hai Phong" on it because that is what a lot of us jokingly refer to Suzanne as, being that she's been here over four years and is (to the best of my knowledge) one of the longest-residing Tays in Hai Phong......

.......which, shortly thereafter, led to a bit of a food fight with Julie and Jena.

Saturday the 20th was Vietnam National Teacher's Day. One of the gifts that I got from some of my students was this cool apple clock, with the little apple-looking guy that swings on a pendulum at the bottom of it. Also pictured are just some of the many flower bouquets that Tam and I received! Just confirms what great students we have!

...just soooo glad that I didn't hafta go through the pain in the ass of actually cooking this chocolate bar!

....and finally - a couple pictures of Emily, as promised!

Flying outta Cat Bi (the name of the Hai Phong airport) on Thursday.....let's hope this horse is still wandering around in front of the airport when I return....might need a ride home and taxis are expensive!

More when I land...prolly Friday or Saturday!!

-E-

2010-10-22T13:18:00.000-07:00

Cat Ba Island.......

It's always interesting when a friend comes to visit (ESPECIALLY for me.....twelve time-zones away from everything that I know, that a visit from a friend just does amazing things for my well being). You tend to actually GO to neat places nearby your home that you'd never visit on any ordinary day! Like, how many of us in Buffalo actually GO to Niagara Falls? How many of us in Denver actually GO to Nederland? And, in Portland, how many of us go to Bend?

Cat Ba Island is one of those places - technically, it IS ruled under the jurisdiction of the Hai Phong City/District People's Committee (because it's only 90 minutes away by "fast boat"/180 minutes away by "slow boat"/30 minutes away by "swimming" from Hai Phong)....BUT - with air that can actually be breathed, water that appears safe to actually wade into, and an astounding lack of concrete....it couldn't be more night and day when compared to Hai Phong City proper.

So my friend Anthony flew in from Scotland (after a four-day stop in Siem Reap/Angkor Wat, Cambodia) and was fully expecting to fall in love with Viet Nam.

Landing in Hanoi in the middle of the 1000th anniversary of the city's founding gala and it being similar to Times Square on New Year's Eve with wall-to-wall-to-wall-to-wall humanity and the airport shuttle bus driver declaring - "OK....me not go further. Too much crowd! Everybody out here!" about a good 2 miles from our hotel and THEN finding that the brand new unused SIM card that I gave him (that I bought ten months ago and never once used) refused to function (oops!) and not having a clue WHERE exactly he is in one on thee most bizarre street layouts in the world, followed by being badgered by everybody for "Motobike! Motobike?" "Massa? Massa? Boom-Boom? Boom-boom?" "Me get you hotel with special price!" all day every day QUICKLY soured his views on Vietnam.

Now, I really despise ANY large city in Vietnam (Da Nang being the only possible exception, 'cause it doesn't feel or act like a large Vietnamese city) and I ONLY use places like Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City to escape the skull-crushing boredom that IS life in Hai Phong......but, man - coming from Siem Reap and the Cambodian Countryside straight into Hanoi hell.......that hadta be a bit of a shock!

Anyways, he found the hotel, and he took a train to meet me five days later in Hai Phong. Helped me do a few classes ('cause the kids always love to see a new Tay, especially one as enthusiastic as Anthony is, 'cause the Tay generally avoid Hai Phong), and he really got to enjoy Hai Phong!

So, on his last coupla days here, he really wanted to see Halong Bay.....so we headed out to Cat Ba Island!

Anthony with my friend and fellow English Teacher, Mrs. Hien

A lake on the interior of Cat Ba Island

View of Halong Bay from Cat Ba Town beach number 1

Hidden Pagoda along a road (if you can call it that) on Cat Ba Island

....and, about a mile past the pagoda, we were told by workmen intentionally creating rockslides (kinda like how they do avalanche control in the Rocky Mountain West) that we hadta turn back.

So we turned around, took a different road, and saw some cool rice paddies.....

....and a piglet parade.

The Beautiful Game - Vietnam Countryside style!

Fishing vessels along the shore - Cat Ba Island

....but I have been performing acts of Social Evil since 1968!

Still, though - that'd be a great name for a band: "Acts of Social Evil"

Travel time over.....back to work.....more soon.....

-E-

2010-10-04T10:37:00.000-07:00

Made it back.....

Sadly, had to leave Sapa on Tuesday Morning. Grabbed my laundry, packed up the skooter and headed off into the sunrise (well, no....not really - it was 1PM when I took off, but still).......

Took the back mountain roads of QL 4D (which was ripped to shit from landslides and a near-total lack of actual paving) and a much better QL 32 (which was only partially ripped to shit from landslides and had a partial lack of paving on it).

No place to stay along the road with Internet in it until I got to Ha Noi. There was a cafe in a town called Nghia Lo that had Wi-Fi....but I really wasn't up for leaving my room, soooo......

By the time I got to Ha Noi Thursday Afternoon, it had struck me that this IS THEE closest that I am gonna get to enjoying anything resembling a real city (and that term being used on Ha Noi is a stretch) forra while. So, even though I had easy Internet access, I put away the computer and went out and hit the town Thursday Night......and the town hit me back!

Too much fun out in Ha Noi 'till the wee hours on Thursday Night led to a 1PM Friday ~~Morning~~ Afternoon departure and a few days of recuperation when I got back to Hai Phong!

I'm alive and missing Sapa badly. Trying to talk my wife into moving there....explaining that we can milk cows for a living up there whilst we teach them English (the cows, not the residents).....

So, from Sapa to Ha Noi, here are some more National Geographic-style pics from the ride home!

Hope you enjoy 'em.....

More madcap, zany wild times from Hai Phong coming up in a week or so....

-E-

2010-09-27T03:05:00.000-07:00

….and up the hill we go.....

For the hotel in Lao Cai, I got reeeaaallly lucky: Ha, the owner of the Anh Phoung II and her lovely English-speaking daughter “Tina” [DON'T THINK thass a native Viet name from ten centuries ago] gave me information, free moon cake, tea and cheap beer. Building was rather new, room was very clean and had new air-conditioning. GREAT staff....really helpful and friendly.

Lao Cai is the type of place that you PASS THROUGH on your was to Kunming, China or Sapa, Vietnam.....there really is no reason to stay in Lao Cai unless you need a rest and a place to crash. I needed both.

There is precious little info as to which hotels in Lao Cai don't suck....since nobody wants to write about Lao Cai except to say, like a policeman at a car crash - “There's nothing to see here...please keep moving”....so I got lucky that I found a real gem!

'Course, TRIED to pop this place onto Trip Advisor, and they come back with some shit like - “Uhhhh....yeeaaah. We don't know about this hotel, so bring it to our attention first, we'll look into it, and THEN we'll allow you to write a review on this place!”

I mean – after getting that response, I could only sit there, like, WHAT THE FUCK?? I mean – is TripAdvsor.com gonna FLY SOMEBODY OVER TO LAO CAI to verify this hotel?? Or do they have a network of spies in every town and village that they contact for verification??

Left Lao Cai around 1:30pm after doing about an hour's worth of research on Trip Advisor trying to find a hotel in Sapa that didn't blow. Spent AN HOUR doing this because I was over-confident that the skooter WOULD make it up the hill to Sapa.

Headed up the Sapa road. Sign said that I was 35Km away. The first 15 kilometres were a gradual rise and were OK and not terribly threatening.

THEN, the final 20Km is where things rapidly began to suck! The grade began getting steeeeep to the point where 30 kilometres per hour was taxing the engine BADLY, landslides would close the lane I was in every 5 kilometres (thank Christ I didn't encounter any live landslides....that woulda put a damper on my fun), and there was a heavy mist and a blinding fog and the temperature had dropped about 5 degrees (or about 9 degrees F) every two thousand feet. Plus, sheer vertical drops and no guardrails only added to the fun and games.

Mud-caked, cold, wet, pissy, and just fucking relived......I pulled into the village of Sapa an hour later.

AND, after driving around the village for another hour, I FINALLY found one of the six hotels I had put on my “seems acceptable list” for Sapa. Finally found the Sapa Summit hotel. Decent place with a nice view for 350,000VND, but a 1 KM hike into the main downtown area of the village (where the markets, shops, bars, cafes, etc. are). GREAT walk down to the village....SHITTY walk back up to the hotel (given that I haven't resided at elevation in over six years and that I “accidentally forgot” to quit smoking).

So, tried a couple other hotels over the next couple days while eating curry from an Indian restaurant, French toast from a Western restaurant, shopping, and just bumming around town, dancing with happiness that I finally found Tay food again, when I decided to text my bud Finchy.

“So, how was the Northern Route?”

“Great! Awesome! So, we're in Viet Quang and we're gonna vege and check the marketplace in Bac Ha village tomorrow morning!”

“Viet Quang???!? Bac Ha?!!? Dude, on my map thass a fucking HAUL over some not-nice roads to Sapa. You SURE that you're gonna make it to Sapa tomorrow before sundown?” (like we had agreed upon)

“Uhhh....gonna hang here and catch the marketplace at [some little tiny bumblefuk village] that only happens on Tuesdays. So, we'll prolly be in Sapa on Tuesday.”

“WHAT?? Uhhh, Dude?? We had agreed a couple days ago that we are to meet up in Sapa on SUNDAY! I have been hanging here since Friday Afternoon! What the fuck??!? Naw, Dude, I ain't hanging here for another four days! Besides, we hafta make it to Dien Bien Phu (where Vietnamese peasants/fighters defeated the French in 1953) and Mai Chau (cool looking White Thai ethnic minority village near the Laos border)!!!”

“Ahhh.....yeaaahh....wellllll.....just come on up and meet us here in [inset name of some little tiny bumblefuk village here] and catch up with us there. Ummm....yeah, well.....we kinda took too long on The far northern loop that we took, and we really want to see these marketplaces, so we're gonna hafta take a pass on Dien Bien Phu and Mai Chau........”

“Uhhh...we had agreed to meet in Sapa on Sunday, otherwise I wouldn'ta rushed up here!! And I do NOT feel like fucking back-tracking....and I really wanted to see Mai Chau and Dien Bien Phu!! WTF? Woulda been nice for you to tell me this BEFORE I hit Sapa. Fine, whatever.....I'll be heading out on my own.”

Reeeaaaalllly truthfully pissed me off, as it pretty much wrecked the entire ride that we'd been planning for over a year and fucked up my vacation.....a vacation that I caught A LOT OF SHIT FOR from my wife an several friends on Facebook for taking off from home for 2 ½ weeks!

So, I thought that I would just vege in Sapa and enjoy the perpetual wall of white (BLINDING cloud fog) that resided outside my balcony all day/every day.

Truthfully?? I REEAAALLLY enjoyed it! It reminded me of home, and the roads outside of Sapa reminded me, both – climate and geography – of Highway 6 throgh Oregon's Coast Mountain Range! This bought MUCH happiness to me, made me less homesick, and thusly, I was in NO hurry to get back to the hell hole that is Hai Phong. Took a stunning ride further up into the mountains and stopped by a tiny Hmong hamlet and bought a couple gifts for Tam and Emily.

It was Saturday afternoon here, so I figgered I'd eat happily, drink at a few bars, shop a bit and vege and, on Sunday at midnight, I'd watch the Bills debacle online (since Sapa is a reasonably developed tourist village with lotsa Wi-Fi), crash after The Bills game at 4AM and leave Tuesday morning for Hai Phong!

On Sunday at noon, got to my next hotel, got to my room.....computer connects to Wi-Fi, but Wi-Fi does NOT connect to Internet. Told the front desk....they said they'd have somebody repair it this afternoon.

Six PM.....no Internet....getting nervous.....

Finally at 6:30pm, a guy comes over and starts looking at the Internet and Wi-Fi routers. The Wi-Fi router in the first floor lobby/cafe works fine, but the one on the top floor of the hotel ain't connecting to The 'Net!! This guy really did not appear to have a clue, so I took matters into my own hands. I grab a stool to stand on, reach the router, pull the plug out for five minutes, plug it back in.

No dice.

Punch the "reset" button in the back of the thing for ten seconds.....

....no dice.

Gave up - figgering that either the wiring is bad or the router itself (which did not have "Made in USA" or "Made in Japan" on the back of it, but rather "Made in Hurry") was shot. Ask to change to a different room in a different part of the hotel and looked at three different rooms and the Wi-Fi reception was shit in all of them. This is due to the fact that the Vietnamese have NO structures made of wood or gypsum drywall, but rather thee thickest, most durable concrete known to man!

Wi-Fi don't be liking thick, durable concrete, so it was a shit signal no matter WHICH room I chose. So, I grabbed a room abut 30 metres from the Wi-Fi router in the lobby/cafe. Put the laptop on a bamboo desk that I moved to right in front of the wooden door and got a tolerable signal.

Surfed the 'Net, called my wife and then my mom, and at 11:30pm, settled down and watched the pre-game show!

11:55PM - 5 minutes before the Bills-Patriots kickoff.....*Boooooooooo-whooop*!

Power cut. Unreal.....

I followed what appeared to be a really exciting football game on my cell fone (NO video or audio - just text play-by-play) until halftime, when my battery died!

Juice came back on at 11AM - 11 hours later.

Power cuts are a fact of life in Vietnam. In the main part of the country, during the summer drought this year, Hai Phong lost power once every two days for 12 hours at a time. But in Sapa, they have power outages during the best of times (something about how, due to their location, they get their electricity from China or some shit like that). But when the Bills offense finally woke up this season, the Sapa power grid took a nap!

Figures.....

So I'm writing this whole thing off and decided to see Mai Chau another time (IF there IS another time before we move back to The States), heading out back towards Hai Phong tomorrow morning (Tuesday). Gonna take a back mountain route back to Hanoi then Hai Phong ('cause I'd already seen whass on the way when I took the main road here). This will prolly consist of a buncha tiny-ass villages and Internet on this route should be about as common as, say, the Bills making the playoffs.

I'll try to post NEXT stop where I can get Internet.....if zero Internet, I'll be back in Hanoi Thursday or Friday....and I KNOW they got working Internet there.

In the meantime - enjoy some National Geographic-type pics -

Main street of Sapa Village

Views from the balconies of various hotels in Sapa...

The road from Lao Cai to Sapa!

NO! Jes' givin' ya shit....this appeared to be some sort of power line trail I saw on the ride to this little remote Hmong village about 10 miles outside of Sapa. Went up another 500 feet or so in elevation....saw waterfalls and got Tam and Emily some gifts there.

More views from the ride up to the remote Hmong village at the Lao Cai - Lai Chau provincial border.

Brekker in the dark during the power outage.

Hmong people

*******************************

Hell, we'll throw in a coupla videos shot frm the balcony of my hotel room at the Hotel Pinocchio taken a few hours apart -

More from wherever I get Internet on the way back to Hai Phong!!

-E-

P.S. - For further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa_Pa

2010-09-23T13:13:00.000-07:00

Lao Cai.....

Made the easy 80 kilometre ride into Lao Cai. Thought I'd give myself a break and an easy ride and just roam around the town a bit and vege. I took off two days behind my friend Finchy and his friend Glen and I just decided that it'd be best to meet them on the road instead of attempting to catch them. They ended up going to far Northern Vietnam going straight North from Hanoi and then looping West, then South, whilst I headed due Northwest from Hanoi and went off towards Lao Cai. Been texting them, and I guess the game plan is to meet them in Sapa on either Saturday or Sunday.

The tourist village of Sapa is about 35 kilometres South of Lao Cai...but from everything I had heard in Hai Phong, it's NOT a nice 35 kilometres!! I had heard horror stories (created in traditional Vietnamese fashion - that being from second-and-third-person accounts) about big rocks jutting up out of this dirt road and a sheer vertical ascent and aliens and Sasquach and things of that sort.

I could not find ANYTHING about the surface composition of the road itself online, but did some Geographical research, and DID discover that, whilst not exactly sheer vertical, the ascent is 1500 metres over 35 kilometres....or a grade of 4800 feet over 21 miles.

THIS is what I was dreading......

I was trying to think of all of my geographic knowledge of Colorado and the places that I've been there (and I've been ALL OVER Colorado).....yet, thee only place that I could think of that might compare is Pagosa Springs to the summit of Wolf Creek Pass.

Nope.....

Looked it up: Thass only a 3600 foot elevation gain over 21.8 miles.......

Oh - and did I mention that I am attempting this on a 114cc AUTOMATIC skooter carring MY fat ass AND about 12 kilograms of gear on it.

Ohhhh......this has got "SUCK" written all over it....and there literally IS a good chance that my bike won't make it up that hill.....

....SHIT!! My mechanic warned me NOT to try this......

Guess we'll see tomorrow.....I got a fiddy placed on a bet in Vegas for a fried tranny, fried clutch or a blown engine for this farce.

Anyways, the ride today was nice...stunning low-fog-clouds-obscuring-the-mountaintops sort of scenery, and not much traffic. Saw a bunch of women about 40 kilometres outside of Lao Cai (basically in the middle of nowhere) wearing the traditional garb and carrying big-ass baskets strapped to their backs like backpacks.....straight outta National Geographic.....just too fucking weird.

Soooo, when we do hit the tourist village of Sapa, I guess these folks DON'T just dress up for the tourists, but they actually wear these clothes and carry these big-ass baskets and DO this kinda stuff every day!

In a fucked-up kinda way.....it's good to see that modern Western influences have not permeated every corner of the globe yet....

Got to Lao Cai around 2PM....stopped at a Wi-Fi cafe and had a beer and looked at GoogleMaps to find out where I was. Grabbed a rather nice hotel room for 300,000 Dong (sixteen bucks), and walked around the town a lot. Blew a twenty on the video slot machines (that were manufactured in 1997 - no shit! Seriously!) over the course of about an hour at a casino that didn't allow alcohol on the casino floor and paid you out in Chinese currency (RMB), since Lao Cai is right on the Chinese border. In Vietnam, The Government allows anything that they consider to be a four-star hotel or higher to have, like, ten table games and about 75 video slot machines, BUT the only access to the casino is for FOREIGN PASSPORT HOLDERS ONLY.

Fortunately, since I was on the Chinese border, I got to eat Chinese food!! This brought MUCH happiness to me, as I don't really eat Vietnamese food at all, and on this ride, I was getting really tired of Bun and Pho!

I won't go into much detail about my passion for Vietnamese food here....but about 95% of Vietnamese dishes are some sort of soup based products with different names....yet there is very little variance between them at all!! It's a huge-ass bowl of Pho and a side of white steamed rice for brekker, lunch and dinner. I mean, I like rice (preferably fried) and I can dig a good bowl of soup....but I mean - EVERY SO OFTEN!! So, my dietary intake on this ride generally consists of one bowl of Pho (Vietnamese for "soup-like product"), Bun (Vietnamese for "soup-of-a-different-name") or a Hotpot (Vietnamese for "Holy shit!! Yet MORE soup") a day so far......

......Christ - no wonder these folks are twigs when compared to other Asians and are absolute NEEDLES when compared to Americans or Australians.....

So, because this hotel (down the street from where I'm staying at) IS a "four-star" (and I use that term veeeerrrry loosely) hotel, they SHOULD have some Tay food....

....if they don't, then you can find my corpse somewhere betwen Lao Cai and Sapa.

Coupla pics.....

No, I didn't take this pic....but this is basically what I saw 40Km outside of Lao Cai (except these ladies in the picture are Black Hmong....whereas the ladies that I saw had much more colourful attire on....*THINK* they might be called "Flower Hmong"....not sure).

Just felt like snapping this pic looking out from inside a small restaurant whilst eating a bowl of Bun as the lady attends to a makeshift fire pit whilst the men stare vacantly out into the street.....

Main border gate between Lao Cai and the Chinese town of 河口瑤族自治縣. Didn't grab a visa for China (where ya hafta bribe a travel agent in Hanoi and wait three days......) and wish I had prepared better!

ON SECOND THOUGHT.....the railway bridge looks rather unprotected......

(Naw.....my wife woulda kicked my ass....thought better of THAT idea).

....and finally, after a hard day of adventures, I open the fridge in my hotel room and see this. Uhhh....."Corn Tea"?? I really don't know what to say......

More soon,

-E-

2010-09-22T04:25:00.000-07:00

Well, two days in and.....

....all seems to be going as well as can be expected (save for problems finding any working Internet and the inability of the brand new 3G USB modem stick to be installed onto my netbook, which runs LINUX).

Left Hai Phong around two PM Tuesday and hit a few long stretches of American-style Interstate near Ha Noi's Noi Bai airport, so I gunned the Yamaha (about as "gunned" as it's 114cc lawnmower engine is gonna take it....about 60MPH) and made it to a place called Viet Tri. Sticky, steamy, hot and engulfed in white haze/smoke (from EVERY agricultural field in a ten mile radius, which had people burning grass and other organic matter for some strange reason [maybe 'cause it was the night of the Lunar Harvest Festival here in Vietnam?]).....it was a rather unpleasant place. Add to that the fact that the hotel's Wi-Fi didn't work AND I was chasing cockroaches in my room half the night....well....that town kinda sucked!

I forced myself to give up trying to make the 3G USB stick work with my LINUX system and instead drank a few beers and watched a few episodes of "King of the Hill" before crashing out.

Woke up this morning and tried to get something to eat at the hotel when I told (in their best possible English) "No food here....no food here."

So I just got on the bike in a moderate rain and headed off towards Lao Cai. Put all of my stuff in this waterproof/airtight bag that thankfully remembered to bring with me, and, after about 45 minutes, the rain stopped and I rode 200 kilometres up some hills and amoungst some amazing scenery. Saw several groups of people wearing traditional ethnic garb (Hmong, maybe?) and was gonna take their picture....but thass kinda rude, so I rode on.

Made it to a village called Pho Rang about 80 kilometres short of Lao Cai and 110 kilometres to Sapa. Found thee one guesthouse/hotel in the village that HAS Internet access and also thee one cafe (if you can call it that) that has Wi-Fi. Appears that I won't be engaged in mortal combat with cockroaches this evening.....but NO fridge! I'll deal with warm pissy beer if I have working Wi-Fi and no cockroaches!

Hadta grab something to eat, as I hadn't eaten in 24 hours, so, as soon as I grabbed the hotel room, I walked to a food stand set up on the sidewalk across the street and grabbed a bowl of Pho Bo....which, is literally one of two Vietnamese dishes that A) - I know how to say in Vietnamese and B) - I know what's in it so I can eat it (the other one being rice).

Some pics....

In the foothills.....

Highway 70 about 30 kilometres southwest of Pho Rang.......

My next house.....

Now, next time your truck breaks down in the middle of the road....don't panic and run around and scream and curse and ask others for help. Simply do the Vietnamese thing by putting some large nearby rocks in front of the wheels so it doesn't roll and setting up your hammock underneath your disabled vehicle and having a nap!!

Two ladies selling fruit by the side of the road on Highway 70.....This was a weird situation, because as I was snapping this pic, a developmentally-disabled girl in her late teen limped up to me when she saw me taking pictures and started talking to me, really excited to see me. THIS was unusual, because whenever I'd stop in the rural foothills to take pictures, people would slllooowly creep out of their houses and out of nearby cafes and motorbike repair shops and veeerrry slowly approach me at the same speed as though I were a flying saucer that had just landed in their back yard [usually, I only get this reaction in Ohio]. I couldn't understand this girl (because my Viet was bad today and my Hmong was even worse!), but I got the impression that she wanted me to take her picture. She had what appeared to be burn marks on half her face and had about five teeth remaining in her mouth and, for some reason, one of them was the centre front upper tooth and all five were pearly white....which made me wonder. I felt bad for this girl and I pretended to take her picture......I really didn't want to put this girl out into cyberspace.....

Made it to Lao Cai province......

And, finally....if the deal falls through on the house in the third pic, then I'm gonna attempt to acquire this estate.....

Sllloooow, very easy 80 kilometre cruise to Lao Cai town tomorrow.....

More soon.....

-E-

2010-09-17T09:51:00.001-07:00

To go back to.......

.....the origins of this blog.

This blog was named "What the hell was I thinking???" after I had executed (what any sane person would feel are) a series or irrational changes in my life. These changes included -

In April, 2008, quitting a job in the Urban Planning field with a municipal government (I'll take that into greater detail with you all someday, but not right now as someday in the future, I may be seeking employment for others again [as I am self-employed right now].....and blacklisting is physically impossible to prove in court, sooo......)

Cashing in my frequent flyer miles and going to East Asia for a month....figgering "Why the fuck NOT?? I've never been there before?"

THEN, the day after I returned from said month in Asia (jet-lagged as all fuck), I hop on my skooter (a 1986 Honda CN250 Helix) and proceed to ride 12,500-plus miles around the perimeter of The United States (and parts of Canada) for the next three months.

Then, after realising that we are in the middle of an economic depression, spending five months looking for employ anywhere in the Lower 48....with no luck.

THEN, in January 2009, deciding that I can no longer survive on my dwindling savings, I accept a position in Vietnam teaching English......

.....and here I am. Still here today!

So, in yet another chapter of insane antics that have been undertaken by The E, I will be off on a three-week skooter ride around all of North Vietnam. This includes a good week or so in the mountainous terrain of Northwest Vietnam.

"Vietnam is NOT a geographically LARGE country, and it's taking you three weeks by skooter to go around only the Northern part??"

Errmmm......these are definitely NOT Interstate Highways that we're talking about here......

So, yeah.....we're also talking about one of the worst parts in the world (along with Southwest China) for landslides.....so this'll be a treat......gonna TRY to stay on the paved roads (and "paved" here is NOTHING like what "paved" implies in The States)!

....oh yeah - forgot: And it's only gonna be me, my buddy Finchy and a friend of his coming up from Australia doing this ride. No guides, no organised tour bullshit.....and between Finchy and I, we have a combined vocabulary of Tiếng Việt that encompasses maybe 200 words on a good day.....Finchy's wife and my wife are gonna be our only lifelines, so to speak. Let's hope that out fones don't get nicked or lost.....otherwise, it's back to the good old grunt-and-point.....

Thank God my father departed this realm this past April.....otherwise, he'd absolutely fucking KILL ME if he knew about this......

Still, though - this is supposed to be a geographically stunning region, and, with the Hmong, White Thai, and several other ethnic minorities, this should be a really interesing ride....

.....SUPPOSEDLY, some of the somewhat more developed villages along this Tour-du-Farce claim to possess Internet access, so I'll have my trusty ASUS EEE pc netbook with me (which has been recently reverted back to LINUX ), and I can't imagine a lot of wild parties, drinking, sex, gambling and such in these here parts, so I should have lotsa time for writing in this journal......

***************************************

Anyways, back to Ten Pictures of life in Vietnam......

- I LOVE going shopping in Hai Phong....'cause you'll never know what you'll see.....

....like Vietnamese employees hard at work, setting up a computer display screen for a vendor.

....or, that old Asian favourite, MSG! Seriously, the Vietnamese buy KILOS AND KILOS of this stuff.......

....or, a T-Shirt with a ticket stub on it from that cool late 70's punk band, The Buzzclocks.....

....and, to prepare for those intimate moments, you might wanna pick up some poke jelly......

....and, don't forget the young'un!! Always interesting to purchase products that were donated.....

Now, in the Vietnamese supermarket chain called Metro, they will bundle little goodies to the main product with strapping tape to make it more enticing to the prospective buyer. USUALLY, these combos make sense, like you might get a free scour-sponge with a bottle of dishwashing soap, or a free glass with a purchase of iced tea mix, or something like that.

This is one of the stranger combinations that I have seen.....Smirnoff Ice and soy milk....um-hum.....

...speaking of shopping - I'm onto my last gallon of Frank's! Anyone wanna swing by a restaurant wholesale place and grab me another coupla gallons? ;-)

...and then, it's off to the local bakery, where you discover that, 12 time zones away, no, you have not escaped the clutches of Bob The Rich and his evil empire.....

Now, all that shopping is gonna make one a bit famished.....so try the dandruff soup with noodles....it's wonderful.....

But if dandruff soup isn't your thing, then settle down for a nice goat barbeque and a few beers.....surprisingly tasty!

More in a few days from the road.....

-E-