Epitaph


Well.....the EEE pc came through with flying colours. Nailed ALL Wi-Fi signals and did splendidly on all RJ-47 LAN connections with no difficulty. Didn't have to endure any GRUELING tests, though, like, say, seeing if it could survive a 371 metre drop from the Jetsons tower (I think its real name is the Oriental Pearl TV and Radio tower.....or something like that) or seeing if it could survive having drunken Uyghers pour beer all over it or anything.......but still, it didn't let me down, soooo........

...hell, as I was typing this in the darkness whilst crossing the International Date line, a flight attendant saw me typing on the EEE pc and went apeshit!!! “OMG!!! Whaaaa??? Where??? WOW!!! How.....?” I gave him all the details on how much ($350 - $450 depending...), where I suggest buying it (www.newegg.com) , the operating system (LINUX), etc. etc. etc.

Vietnamese chicks really dug the EEE pc.......

STILL, though.....its toughest ordeal lies ahead. I mean, Part II of Road Trip From Hell is not gonna be a series of seven ultra-smooth flight segments and a mellow (albeit slow) overnight train ride throughout a three-week time frame.

I mean, this thing is in for a rough ride the next three months as on Wednesday, it'll be “Helix, meet EEE pc. EEE pc, I'd like to introduce you to your new best friend, Helix”

Naw......it'll be interesting to see which one dies first.......

I swear.....literally.....I almost forgot how to use WinBlows XP.



Just sucks that I had to end a really enjoyable adventure in SouthEast Asia by spending a week in Shanghai......

You cannot judge a nation by one place....otherwise, after Guangzhou, I woulda thought that China was neat.......but then I went to Shanghai and found out that -

• The Shanghainese really don't like each other at all (for all this Chinese philosophy of how Chinese society functions when the one becomes part of the whole and all that bullshit). Naw......they can't fucking stand one another!!

• NOBODY who I've talked to (several people) and asked who lives there really likes Shanghai at all!!!

I really can't stand this place......I'm homesick, people are not friendly here at all, I'm Asia-ed out and I really want to go home. Yeah, I had amazing times in Bangkok and especially Hanoi (I mean, “Plan Y” has me coming back to one of those two cities!), but it just sucks that I had to end this adventure on a low note by spending a week in Shanghai.

I mean, my sister who is a serious, SERIOUS Asiaophile (cinema, culture, anything at all Asian) and who LOVES MegaCities (making an annual pilgrimage to New York City).....and you'd put the two together.....and you'd figure that Shanghai would be like being in EIGHTH Heaven (not Seventh Heaven, 'cause 8 is a good number in China) for her....................

.....errrmmmm....no. Even my sister didn't care for Shanghai. No, she didn't despise it as much as I do, but still....if she didn't care for it, then THAT is saying something about this place.

For me, Shanghai is probably tied as thee shittiest place I have ever visited (tied with Miami.....except that the air is cleaner in Miami, the ground in Miami has more trash and litter, and the people in Miami are more belligerent).

Much like what Pennington (of the British) said in Kentucky Fried Movie's A Fistful of Yen.....yes, it's worse than Detroit!

Prologue for Part II of Road Trip From Hell coming up in a tomorrow!

Hope ya enjoyed this!!

-E-

So, got back to....

....the hotel at 5:30am-ish, and took a vid of the Huangpu River at sunrise....




Then I died.

After spending about half the day in bed Thursday, got up around 1PM, lied in bed for another hour, begged for an IV, but really didn't want to pay the extra 600 Yuan Room Service charge for an IV, so I did without.

Went out to the other side of the River (the ultra-modern, skyscraper section called Pudong) later that evening riding under the Huangpu on a little tunnel train called “The Bund Sightseeing Tunnel.” Imagine thee most cheeezy light show you have ever seen at any “science and technology” museum back in 1975......and you have The Bund Sightseeing Tunnel. Except for the fact that if you buy a 70 Yuan (ten buxx) round-trip ticket, you get a free admission to the Shanghai sex museum at the other end of the tunnel.


Been to the one in Amsterdam in '92.......seen one sex museum.....seen 'em all......

On Friday, my sister went off on her own to hit the Propaganda Shop and get some Mao stuff. I totally vegged back at The Seagull and proceeded to type out seventy names and addresses to be mailed as invitations to my father's grand 75th birthday gala in Buffalo next month.

Now, on that fatal Wednesday night/Thursday morning, the Uyghers had implored us to come back to the bar/club/cafe Anar on Friday night, as there'd be DJ's and lotsa fun. Given that we'd swore that we were all BFF and brothers 'till the end and all that sorta talk after your tenth gin-n-tonic (or ninth glass of vino)....we didn't have a choice.....we'd promised them.

Sis and I firmly agreed that, on Friday evening, no, there would NOT be 5AM drunken debauchery or anything of that sort. Naw.....few drinks....back at hotel at Midnight......MAYBE ONE A.M. if we really wanted to push it!! But thass IT!!!!!! Firm and Final!!


Goddamm Wheeee-Gers!!! They make thee best laid plans go astray.......


For starters, the DJ's they had (three of 'em, an American ex-pat who called himself “Ozone”, a local who called himself “Fish” and some guy named Ben Huang who, supposedly, is HUGE in the club scene throughout China) were really cool, played good shit (Eugenius?? Had not heard them in years!! Beat Happening?? Them neither!! Not since I was a DJ at KTEQ in Rapid City - off the air since 2000 since the FCC now requires that all public airwaves be reserved for large, commercial corporate conglomerate broadcasters [fuck you, Clear Channel]) and were really cool to hang out with.

Fish had some stuff that he made and called it “Happy Pills” and sold it at thirty Yuan per jar. At first, I had serious reservations after seeing a sign at the bar advertising "Happy Pills" at 30 Yuan. Turned out it is just pure sugar candy, but he tossed us a jar on the cuff.

I was gonna bring it back.......but HOW the fuck am I gonna explain THIS at PDX Customs??











So, we DID get outta there, and it wasn't another 5AM morning at The Anar..........

.........just 4:15 this time.

Uyghers are interesting folk. A marginalised minority, much like the Mongols and the Tibetans, they don't care much for the Han majority (who compose about 85+ percent of the populace of China) but are very warm to Westerners. Whilst generally being Islamic, they're (DUH!!!) not huge on the Saudi/Middle East hard-line Muslims that tend to follow the more.....uhhhh....fundamentalist style of the faith.

bin-Laden would NOT open a nightclub in Shanghai.......


Saturday morning, my sister wakes me up screaming at me on a searing hangover about several things I may or may not have done over the past thirty-nine years to piss her off and the fact that she has GOT to catch her flight in three hours. Needless to say, after less than 4 hours of sleep after a night of wigging out with the Wheee-Gers, this was NOT what I needed right now! After an unpleasant scene, we parted ways. Please forgive me, Sis!! Sorry, with about MAYBE four or five exceptions, I generally don't travel well with others......


Fled the severely over-priced dump known as The Seagull on the Bund Hotel and went to a Motel 168 in the Pudong District across the Huangpu River.

This was NOT the Motel 168 in Guangzhou (which was an absolute palatial estate compared to this dump – at half the price). Naw, this place gave me a “split-level room with King-sized bed” for 320 Yuan (fiddy buxx). Cool.....

THEN, I saw the room.

I never knew that a room that is 23 feet long and 12 feet wide could be configured into a split level that somehow fit a King-size bed. But they did it. No fridge.....not terribly nice. But lotsa good, cheap restaurants nearby, so I spent Saturday and Sunday Nights there and, on Monday, went to the Motel 168 located inside the terminal at Shanghai International Pudong Airport.....cause the closer I got to gittin' the fuck outta this city, the more at ease I felt.

So, on my final afternoon in Asia (Monday the 28th), I decide to go to the bar in Motel 168 Pudong Airport for a few ice cold Tigers. Now, nobody seems able to tell me WHEN they built this hotel, and it's very difficult to tell – but I think it was in the last five years, 'cause this airport was built fairly recently.

Now, as seen below in the hallway outside my room, the decor is......uhhhh.....1970's 2001: A Space Odyssey.









OK.....but as I went up to the eighth floor to the bar (hey....number 8 floor – good place to have a bar – lucky number=lucky bar) and walked down the hallway towards the bar.....what I saw blew me away.


Yeah, true, my batteries were dead as a door nail, but I simply HAD to run all the way to the store in the airport terminal, get some new ones, and film this:



And here I leave you from Shanghai with a few final observations -


Shanghai is the only place where....

.....in a corner store, I saw Hello Kitty brand........uhhhhh.......feminine hygiene products.

• Shanghai is basically HYPER-speed Capitalism......yet for all of the things (like, literally eighty-five percent of things) priced at WESTERN-WORLD price levels, the average Shanghaian makes about 150 Yuan a day (20 buxx USD, maybe).....man, and people say that the gap between rich and poor is getting outta hand in America?

I mean, I'd walked down a street that had nothing but real estate offices on it (Caldwell Banker, Century 21, et. al.) and they listed apartments that are, like, 900 sq. ft. that rent for anywhere from 2000 a month up to four thousand a month......THEE cheapest condo to BUY is at around 100,000

......oh, yeah – forgot: Those rents that I just quoted?

Those are in US DOLLARS!!!!!

At 7 Yuan per buck....do the maff.....

Sooooo.....let's say that your average Shanghai worker works his ass off to the tune of 80 hours a week and pulls in 300 Yuan a day – at six days a week, thass $240 USD a week, Bud! Factor in food costs, transportation costs and......uhhhh.....no.

You have about as much chance as becoming a homeowner as I do.....meaning, none. (Not that I'd actually WANT to become a homeowner.....I drift around waaaaaaaay too much.....maybe when I'm eighty years old or some shit like that).

It's the worst combination for a society: Hyper-Capitalism economic system with an authoritarian government system. I mean, I feel the best would be market socialism and democratically elected leaders.......but that's jes' my view on things....

It's no wonder that EVERYBODY is out forra scam here. It was weird. I was having lunch with this 30-year-old Gord guy from West Van (Canadian from West Vancouver, British Columbia) at a Subway on East Nanjing Road pedestrian mall, and he goes to Shanghai fairly frequently for business. And he heard about my scam, nodded and laffed!!!!!!!! He told me thee exact same coffee shop that this girl led me to!!! THAT SAME EXACT SCAM was thee first one HE got caught on as well on his first trip to Shanghai.....except his tab was 4000 Yuan (made me feel a bit better).

Later on that same day after I had lunch wiff that Gordie guy, after dark, I go to Just a normal bar and fucking again....some chick comes up and sits down next to me and chats me up and wants me to buy her a beer....... so I shake my head strongly “no!!!”

Now?? After more than a week here? I see the next scam walk up to me and it's gotten to the point where right when they start to get into their beginning of their scam, I scream “FUCK OFF!!!!” in English, and storm away.

I know....I know.... it's not cool, because it shows a loss of face (which the Chinese are HUGE on), but shit here's really gotten to that point......

• Went to GM's national China headquarters, about three blocks from my Motel 168 here in the Pudong district. WAS gonna go into the showroom and if a salesman came up to me, WAS gonna ask: “So, how many of these cars are built in the United States.,.....since, after all, GM is an American-owned company?”

My “do-NOT-be-a-dick” warning light came on and I thought better about that idea.....

• The Chinese have NO concept of “simple wash-dry-fold” laundry. They only do dry cleaning.......and that's like where they dump shitloads of cleaning chemicals processing my four T-shirts and four pairs of shorts and pressing and putting on a hanger and wrapping plastic around my hemp shirt (to the point where whatever hippy who stitched it together much be rolling around on a bad trip after hearing this – “Maaaaan, dry cleaning is soooo establishment!!!”)

• Avoiding MegaCities like the plague, I had always thought that they no longer manufactured twin-sized beds anymore! I mean, even children nowadays after, like, seven years old, sleep in double/full-size beds!

Then, I discovered that, in Asia, hotels offer their standard rooms with twin-size beds. My sister advised me that, in her many pilgrimages to New York City, that twin-size beds are the standard there! Jus' kinda weird to me......made me feel like I was back in the Army.

• I really didn't wish to place a one-minute boring-ass video of my MagLev ride on this blog (especially since the Goddamm batteries in the camera went dead before it hit its max speed of 257 MPH) .....so, if you reeeeaaaallllly wish to see it, it be on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP8VECoqxOw
  

Final Asia report coming up shortly!

-E-

Shanghai Pudong International Airport offers some really great views......

.....my personal favourite is looking out the rear tail cone window of a 747 flying away from it!!


Well.....dear sister is now safely on her way from San Francisco to Buffalo and should have arrived as of this writing.

What can I say?? Shanghai sucked thee moment I got there.

Hadta meet my sister at the airport at 10:50pm last Sunday night. My plane from Bangkok landed at 4:00pm.

Tired from less than four hours of sleep my last night in Bangkok, hungover, and just not terribly glad to be in Shanghai, I wearily head towards the MagLev train to go to East Nanjing Road downtown, where I desperately need a recharge for my used-up pre-paid SIM card, and a couple other things.

Again, NOT trying to offer excuses, but I was deathly jet-lagged, severely tired from lack of sleep, and hungover outta my skull. All wanted was a pint after I got my pre-paid fone recharge and just to mellow out forra bit before I hafta go back to the airport and meet my sister at 10:50pm.

Well, after looking around vacantly whilst standing in the middle of the road in the pedestrian mall that is East Nanjing road, I couldn't find a typical, normal bar!! So some girl comes up to me and asks me if I need help. "Yes, I'm looking forras place to just grab a pint and decompress!" So she tells me to follow her to this coffee shop that serves P.G.O. (beer). She somehow invites herself along, but I don't really give a shit. So, grab a couple pints of Carlsburg and this girl orders two glasses of vino. Kill those, then I determine that I gotta catch the last Maglev back to the airport to meet my sister. Grab the tab and head out and I then..........whoa............whhhooooooa.........

What the FUCK??

600 Yuan??? exsqueeze me???

By This time, after seeing all the people selling fake Rolexs on East Nanjing Road, and all the other trash and shit that walk around that street, I realised that I had been scammed.

Uhhhhh.....yeeaah, refuse to pay, call the police?? Don't think so, as A) - HAD to be there at Shanghai Airport under direct orders to meet my sister the moment she got off the plane NO MATTER WHAT and B) - What the fuck good was THAT gonna do anyways except waste time???

I mean....the Chinese think the Yanks are behind the whole "Dali Clique" issue in Tibet.....ballistic missile triggers "accidentally" sent by the U.S. to Taiwan (the best friends of the Chinese) and the cops are probably on this take anyways!!

I call the police.....and I woulda been the one in the clink with my organs being harvested!!!!

Live and learn......at least I hope that her kickback was a hefty percentage.....


So, meet my sister at the airport (plane was 35 minutes late due to a minor typhoon in Hong Kong), and she doesn't get out of the baggage area until an hour later.

"Uhhh.....they lost my (and fifty other people's) bags, E."

So dear sis goes 36 hours without clean clothing (as the shit that they sold on the high street there would have made thee most dowdy grandmother cringe with fashion fear!!!) and is NOT a happy camper.

So, we don't do a whole hell of a lot the first three days except hang at The Blue Frog pub around the corner from the first hotel we stayed at in the French Concession district.

Pretty much, this city made New York City look like a bunch of emotional, caring, loving people!! Shanghai made Boston look like its residents sincerely cared about your well being!!!!

Just total unfriendly assholes (and I'm NOT just saying that because I got Shanghai'd)......basically, if you are not ready to be scammed......or you don't wish to buy anything from someone....or don't wish to give someone some money.....??

Then FUCK YOU!!!! Go ask someone else for assistance. From the person on the street to the clerk at the convenience store.....same attitude.

That is LITERALLY the attitude of the vast majority of people in this city.

Guangzhou this place AIN'T....thass for sure!!!

So Sis eventually gets her baggage, and on Wednesday night, we go and grab some food at a place that my sister wished to try because it was listed in Lonely Planet.

I ordered some sort of beef item, and my sister ordered some sort of pork item....

Errmmm.......I had never had meat-flavoured JELL-O before:









Man, THAT sent the 'ole Yum-O-Meter right offa the Goddamm scale!!

So, shortly after that, we returned to the hotel I picked (the Seagull on The Bund........errrmmm.....just don't try this place......we'll leave it at that. Great location.....great views......everything else was just gross), got captivated watching World Championship Snooker for an hour, and decided that we had to go out somewhere.

Sis suggests this place listed in Lonely Planet called "Pirates" that was waaaay the hell out in the West corner of the French Concession district off of the beaten track. It was described as fun and unpretentious.....and I didn't really care, so I said "Sure!! Why not?"

Well.....Pirates wasn't there anymore. Instead, this little cafe-bar called "Anar" was there that had just opened up, like, a week ago, and even though it was, like, 1:30am....they didn't care!! They let us in, served us, and tossed us a few drinks on the cuff and we sat around hanging out with these folks for a while......

Don't remember much of what happened......just several toasts.....then swearing that we were all BFF....then brothers....then they play Uyghur song for us.....then I think we somehow made it back to our hotel well after sunrise....

They were Uyghurs (pronounced "whee-gurs")......not genuine Shanghaiese ("Shanghaian"??)......ahhhhh......NO WONDER they were so kind!!!!!

Can't remember details.....but here's a very brief pictorial of the night:









3:30am











4:00am




4:30am












5:00AM


More observations and some National Geographic-type pics next post!!

-E-

Still alive.....

Naw.....I didn't get Shanghai'd in Shanghai (well, actually, I did....but I didn't get lost, my money did - That'll be a story for this weekend)....

...I'll post another chapter thass between 300 to 1800 words after I pawn off the responsibility of babysitting my sister from myself on to Cathay Pacific Airways on Saturday or Sunday......

-E-

Interesting being able to view.....


.....soooo much International news on this trip.

Kinda funny: Hadta learn from The Guardian that The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was circumvented by the Bush administration regarding the use of torture at Guantanimo!

Thass jussss grreeeaaaat! Yeah....real nice: We get our advice for torture from FOX TV shows!

Interesting seeing this on the front page of the copy of The Guardian that I picked up. OK...cool....cool.....so, uhhhh, yeah....I'm SURE that this at least gets a page 37 blurb somewhere on the MSNBC.com or CNN.com websites.....right......right......hello....??

Hell no!!! Not even a paragraff or ANY mention of this......

I love US media.....perhaps my Canadian friend Gord is right: He opined that "Americans will mock themselves and their leadership all the time....but when a foreigner does it, they go apeshit!!"


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Right.....soooo, where was me again?

OK. Caught an AirAsia flight from Saigon to Bangkok. Uneventful flight.....nice airline ('cept there's no booze onboard). WAS gonna take a bus from BKK airport to the SkyTrain and then walk to my hotel, but from what very little I could understand from folks at the airport, it involved somehow finding the first bus from the airport terminal to something called the "Bus Operations Terminal" - THEN catching bus 552 to the On Nut SkyTrain station - THEN taking the train to the Nana station.....then walking fifteen minutes to the hotel.

Given that I was jet-lagged, tired and hungover.......I wussed out and took a cab.

While still in Saigon, I emptied the wallet and went nuts and made reservations online at this place called the President Solitaire in Bangkok for a whopping hundred buxx a night!!!! Especially for someone like me, thass a shitload of ca$h! Was expecting a decent hotel room...kinda big...kinda nice....cool.












Nope.....

What I got instead was probably one of thee top three rooms I have ever stayed in in my life (along with the Centre Suite at The Seneca Niagara Hotel-Casino in Niagara Falls, NY and the Executive Penthouse at The Queen Victoria Hotel and Suites in Victoria, B.C.)!!!

Too many amenities to list.

If Saigon resembles New York City......then Bangkok is literally identical to (sans flying cars) what Ridley Scott portrayed Los Angeles as in 2019 in Blade Runner.....




It's in the Sukhumvit District - Sukhumvit is apparently the "riche International district" and with all the doughy plump white guys hanging around with 17-year-old Thai girls, I could believe that to be an appropriate description.

Having basically only one full day here, I decided to check out Bangkok's transit system. They do have buses, but I checked out their SkyTrain and their Tube. Took the SkyTrain from the Nana station 10 minutes walking from my hotel, to its Northern terminus. From there, went down to street level then underground to catch their tube Southbound back to the Nana SkyTrain station.




Few observations.....

- SkyTrain

The SkyTrain is clean, air-conditioned and has TVs in it (just like Atlanta's MARTA does). Uhhhh....it's also fast, 'cause it has it's own right-of-way (elevated tracks).

Unlike Seattle's and Springfield's Monorail (and like Vancouver, B.C.'s SkyTrain).....this actually GOES somewhere









SkyTrain platform from ground view










SkyTrain platform from underneath the tracks











Inside SkyTrain Nana station










End of the line (Northern terminus of one of the SkyTrain lines)

- The Tube

The Tube here was neat, clean air-conditioned, and the cars were no different than any other city's subway cars (somewhat wider, maybe) with no TVs.

So, I walk into the tube station, ask the guy in the ticket booth for a ticket to Sukhumvit, and he hands me a Goddamm black plastic poker chip! I told him that I raise three tube rides, but he wasn't budging!









You actually scan the poker chip much like a magnetic pass against the turnstyles.....and it opens them for you automatically.......weird....

At the completion of your tube ride, you drop it into a slot and the machine opens the turnstyles to let you out!

So I walk into the tube station, and I hear blaring music. Look around and see a row of shops underground (a LOT like Montreal's Metro tube stations) but I still couldn't figure out WHERE the music was coming from....





.....walked around a bit more.....and saw an actual band (think the Luc Besson movie Subway).




This was just thee only one tube station that I walked around. It was NOT a central tube station.....and I wouldn't be surprised if there are several other like it throughout the city.

Shit......they DID do trains RIGHT here!!!

Uhhh.....Tri-Met?? Ya listening???

HERE! Here ya go, Tri-Met. Here's an idea to help you un-fuck what you already fucked up with the MAX lines.....

It really shouldn't take more than an hour to get from Beaverton to PDX Airport! Soooo.....at Goose Hollow, pop an EXPRESS ROUTE on an ELEVATED SkyTrain (or underground tube) THROUGH - I repeat - STRAIGHT THROUGH downtown with only ONE stop (at Pioneer Courthouse Square) and have that line rejoin the normal MAX line at NE 11th Avenue MAX station! THAT WAY, people who wish to get from the East side to the West side (and vice-versa) in a REASONABLE amount of time can do so without having to ENDURE the train stopping literally every two Goddamm blocks!!

Makes sense, right......?

It ain't brain surgery.....

A downtown is a DESTINATION.......a downtown was never meant to be a transit HUB!!!!!


- Food and drink

For some reason, hotels and food are absurdly cheap here (my hotel here, if placed in the US, would go for around $300 a night). But a pint or a mixed drink at a pub here will set you back six buxx or more.

Got a 750 ml bottle of gin at the supermarket for, like, six buxx. But at same supermarket, saw a bottle of Lindemann's Chardonnay (that you pick up at WinCo in Portlandia for, like, $5.95) priced at TWENTY BUCKS?? WTF?? I mean, Winco's a LOT further from Australia (where Lindemann's is vinted) than Bangkok is!!!


Jes' forra laff, I like to see how badly food that I enjoy is done in other lands. I've had thee two worst Margaritas in my life in Tijuana and Quebec City. I've had thee worst wings and Labatt's Blue in Manchester, England.

Stumbled into a place called Bully's Pub, and ordered "Buffalo Wings", chili and a margarita.

They were all good!!! The wings blew away BW-3's Thai wings, the Chili and the Margie were also really good.....

.....asked a waitress, and found out that the owner of the place is a Yank. A-HA!! Figures....

Pad Thai here is OK....not anywhere near as good (I think) as most Thai restaurants in Portlandia.

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This sucks......I could easily stay here another five days.....but I'm off tomorrow to meet my sister in Shanghai for seven days......sometimes, things just work out that way......

Between my experiences in Hanoi and Bangkok.....I have NOW come up with a "Plan Y" that now eclipses my "Plan Z" for when I return to Portlandia in August from Part II of Road Trip From Hell.

The hope is to return, get SOME SORT of quasi-decent planning job in Oregon and resume life happily ever after. Failing that, I'd find some sort of half-assed occupation in Portlandia. Failing THAT, I HAD planned on falling back on moving to Michigan forra year, becoming an official resident, and going to Grad Skool.

The thought of Graduate Skool is about as pleasant as the thought of spending the afternoon with an insurance salesman!

THAT is "Plan Z"

Plan Y??

Do some serious research, get accredited, and skip off to Hanoi or Bangkok and teach English. IF it comes to this.....I'll attempt to teach standard English.......NOT Ernie English.

More from Shanghai.....

-E-

Blew through Saigon in 21 hours.....

.....and, while it WAS NOT pre-determined.....in the short time frame I was there, I really didn't care much for the place. Nothing cute.....nothing with character....just teeming amounts of people with a lot of lights and video billboards. A lot of activity in several little back alleys as well (hotels, pubs, restaurants, shops, etc. etc.)......but yet, a LOT of green space in terms of parks and the like. Reminded me a lot of New York City.....

......I really dislike New York City.

Slept in late 'till, like, 10am. Showered, shaved, and grabbed a late brekker, and hiked a couple miles to the War Remnants Museum (from the American War). Got there at 11:45am, and spaced out the Vietnamese Lunch (11:30am - 1:30pm) where, of course, it was shut down! So, I mill about the area, come back at 1:30pm, and they're having electrical issues with the lighting and, thus, can't open yet!!

I say "Screw it!" as I gotta be at the airport by 4:30pm for a 5:45pm flight to Bangkok. Find a cafe, have a couple pints, git back to my hotel at 3:45pm. Grab a taxi and I'm set....

Except that Saigon traffic at 4PM on Friday LITERALLY......LIIITTTEEERRRAALLY does NOT move.

This sucks!

BARELY make the flight, taking a full hour to go 7 kilometers from my hotel to the airport!

Was glad to see the back of that place.....


Final pics from 'Nam....












The front desk forgot to warn me that they were rebuilding the building across the alley.....so I woke up at 10AM with pounding jackhammers and general construction noise (Christ know how much of that noise I had actually slept through before 10am).........












The whole Froggy bidet thing still kinda weirds me out. I mean, the 'Net sites I looked at before I departed implored me to bring a roll of toilet paper! My friend and former co-worker Sambo had been to Vietnam, and had concurred with that idea, but simply stated that: "....they use water over there."

"They use water over there"?? What the hells THAT mean.....

I'd find out later, as every Vietnam hotel that I stayed at had a Goddamm GARDEN HOSE NOZZLE attached to the toilet.....

Uhhh.....yeah......I opted for the toilet paper option...



Finally, since no country besides Vietnam would accept my dong, I had to git rid of it before I flew outta Saigon. Not an easy task, as I carried big dong around with me, and only had hours before the flight....

Here's a pic of me showing off my dong......










OK.....so me is leaving Vietnam now ....thus, no more bad Leslie Nielsen-style "dong" puns (although when I tried to turn it in at a currency exchange booth in Bangkok, they laffed at my dong)......

More from Bangkok later.....

-E-

Left Hanoi and.....


.....flew into Nha Trang.

OK, so I was flying on something called "Vietnamese Airlines"! This thought had scared the hell outta me!! I mean, I was expecting a WW-I prop plane with Ho Chi Minh at the helm with the passengers lying five-across each wing.

Nooooooooo..........nope!!

Bluntly??

This is THEE best airline I have EVER flown!!! Airbus A321's built five minutes ago, Rockwell-Collins Airshow 4200 model three-dimensional GPS software to watch, SPOTLESSLY clean planes, REAL actual meals that you DIDN'T HAVE TO PAY FOR!! VERY friendly staff and seats have a LOT of legroom for some bizarre reason......

I have flown on one or two airlines before in my life......

....and I would MUCH rather fly in Coach on Vietnam Airlines than in First Class on Northwest Airlines (which is basically like somebody went into Archie Bunker's house and stole 12 vinyl/pleather recliners from 1967 and those recliners are STILL residing in Northwest Airlines First Class). Closest anything the US has that comes close to Vietnam Airlines is jetBlue....and even jetBlue has a long way to go to compare to Vietnam Airlines!!!

Got to Nha Trang, and had a reeeeeeaaaaallllly LOOOONG-ass bus ride from where the plane put us down on the tarmac to the terminal. Have a look -









THAT was bizarre.....the bus rode quickly, but we still coulda out-walked it because we landed right at the luggage claim (you can see my plane in the background)! Weird......

So.....took a cab, like, 30 miles into Nha Trang (they shuttered the old airport that was, like, three blocks from the beach) and grabbed a hotel room (I had dead-zero idea where to look.....so I looked into the Lonely Planet guide for Vietnam that my buddy Sambo gave me. They listed something called "La Suisse Hotel" and I went to check it out.

At first, it seemed OK.....

But when I got to my room and looked CLOSELY AND CAREFULLY at my bedding......I had seen swarms of little teensy red ants. These ants would NOT go away....they were militant towards me!! "Colonialist Imperialist pig!! Leave this room at once!! This is the proud, sovereign homeland of the worker's republic of Antnam!!" they screamed at me.....

....then they proceded to maul my ass whilst I was trying to sleep. Lotsa nice little bite marks and itchy bumps on my arms and legs!

Tried the Wi-Fi that they advertised at the La Suisse.....didn't work.

Made three requests.....still didn't work.

Noticed that, yeah, it is a nice, quite sidestreet......but the walk back to the hotel after dark is veeeerrrry dodgy. "Heeeey Misser.....me get you girl who do everything!!" "Heeey Misser.....smoke up?? Smoke up?"

Loved the extra secure deadbolt in my room....it was the first thing that I noticed when I got there -




















So, when I was having breakfast the next morning in the lobby, I looked out the doors and windows to the street. Saw the biggest-ass rat I have ever seen....just kinda meandering down the sidewalk. Too funny....

It was when I got my tea and I opened the lid to the sucre bowl and saw a miniature swarm of the red menace (the same ants that bit my ass up good the night before......either the same ants or their close relatives)......

.....at that point, I said "Fuck THIS!!!" and ran upstairs, crammed all my shit into my bags......paid the total tab, and left!!!

I mean, do not misunderstand me!!!!!!!! This is at third-world room rates....like five to ten bucks a night. Cool....nice....big deal, I'd say, and I'd laff about all these annoyances!!!!!

But I AM NOT dropping western-style room rates for something like that......naw......

So, I dropped fiddy buxx per night at a hotel two blocks down The Golden Hotel) and got their Family Suite. Muuuuuuccccch better........



Plus, their wastepaper bins are wishing not only me, but everybody happiness. I LOVED IT!!!! That is sooooo Asian and soooo cool. I mean, can you picture the scene?? It's a Sunday afternoon in Bumblefuck, Nebraska, or Bumblefuck, Alabama, or some place like that. So, a father takes his five-year-old son out shopping for wastepaper bins at the local Wal-Mart (because that's what fathers and sons do on Sunday afternoons in Bumblefuck - they go wastepaper bin shopping at Wal-Mart).

BOY: Look, daddy. I would like this one (points to bin pictured below).









FATHER: Huh? Whaaa? OK....lessee it.

(Boy hands bin to father)

FATHER: What the fuck's this, boy? "Happiness to Everybody?" Whaaaa kinda faggy-ass shit is this, boy? Christ Almighty.....why don't I jus' git you a Goddamm Barbie doll, now? I ain't buying this for you....and I swear to God that if yo Momma goes an' buys this for you, I swear I'm just gonna start tellin' folks that you ain't my son! Ya hear me??

BOY: But daddy....

FATHER: But daddy nuttin'!!! Now come on......let's find the "Proud to be an American" bins or the Walker: Texas Ranger bins.....


- Nha Trang is a weird place. It is alleged to be where people from Ho Chi Minh City go to get away. SHIT!!! If THAT'S the case.....I really don't want to hang much in Ho Chi Minh City (or "Saigon" as most people still call it).

Nha Trang is, like, a six-month hangout for ex-pat Aussies who can't afford to live on the beach in Queensland or South Australia and a tourist destination for Aussies who can't afford to go to Bali (where most Ozzies go). But it's weird.....it is very dodgy at night (I've walked down streets in Gary, Indiana at 1AM!!! But I ALWAYS take a taxi everywhere in Nha Trang after the sun sets).

But the thing that I really like is that, being a Socialist nation, they do NOT segregate the tourists. That always kind of disturbed me in Montego Bay and almost ANY Mexican beach resort town (e.g. - Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, Acapulco, etc.): They barb-wire fence off and place ARMED guards around several square miles of beaches to fend off the residents. THAT really always pissed me off.....these people are Mexicans and Jamacans.....it's their nation, they should have a right to access the beaches!!!! I'm really glad Nha Trang isn't like that.....watching the kids play in the surf yesterday was really kinda neat......

Other notes.....

- It seems that the beach isn't really enjoyable at all when it's 90 degrees out, 175% humidity, the sand has lots of tiny, tiny little pebbles in it (this wasn't exactly powered sugar-style sand here) and the water in the South China Sea is cold and refreshing....in the same way like how 95-degree bathwater is cold and refreshing....so I spent most of my time in Nha Trang in my hotel room in Arctic air-conditioned bliss......

Can I go back to The Oregon Coast now?????


- The Vietnamese concept of lunch is really weird. Between 11:30am AND 1:30pm, the people take lunch.......

OK, cool.....soooo??

Well, almost every single place shuts down during this period!! So they eat a bowl of Pho for, like, a half-hour....then take a big 'ole nap until 1:30!! It's weird. I mean, even the places that hafta stay open (restaurants, mini-marts, etc. etc.), the employees literally nap during this time period!!!! Sooo....if I absolutely hafta do something between 11:30 and 1:30.....I always try the mini-marts and restaurants where the people are awake.......'cause it's bad form to wake someone from a nap to go git you a pint!


- Vietnamese beer is FAAAARRRR superior to Chinese beer.

I'm on a flight to Saigon for 24 hours shortly....then two days in Bangkok! I'll post more shortly.....

-E-

Fotojournal of Hanoi.....


Start with a few pics of The Hanoi Hilton (today, there actually IS a Hilton hotel in Hanoi, oddly enuff).......



















Outside of prison























John McCain's flight suit (SOOOORRRY about that - can't quite figure out how to force the pic to go vertical on LINUX......so you'll hafta turn them around yourself).











Pic of the North Vietnamese pulling John McCain outta the lake he crashed in after geting shot down










Pic of prison doctor checking McCain out shortly after being shot down











U.S. Pilot possessions










I loved this!!!!!!!! If you click on the pic, and try to zoom in onto the upper right-hand corner of the text, you can read the "I-KNOW-that-I-just-bombed-the-fuck-outta-your-country-but-I-just-crashed-please-help-me" sheet that the pilot gives to the first person that he comes across after crashing and PRAYS that they aren't V.C.











As this used to be a French prison, here we have the guillotine, where the French Colonialists used to behead Vietnamese men and women who were considered "dangerous elements" (today, we have Guantanimo).


OK....'nuff of the prison pics.....

......still, though....just as an aside: I was always told and led to believe that John McCain was put into a tiger cage and tortured an' shit. Not the way the (North) Vietnamese fotograff things. There are photos in the Hanoi Hilton of pilots attending Christmas Mass, playing basketball, escaping.....well.....OK....not escaping.....but still, it's kinda interesting what people on BOTH sides of the war say about certain things.....

A few American veterans of Vietnam were there whilst I was visiting. Neat....


Other pics......












Now, when you are walking down the sidewalk in Hanoi, and you see the pic above, do NOT assume that the shopkeeper has kids or that they left out a toy dining room set right on the sidewalk for the neighbourhood children to play with. This is actually what full-sized adults sit on whilst eating in front of a Pho place. So, I decided to give it a go.....











A fellow diner.....











Really good stuff, though.....

Always found eating Pho (or anything else for that matter) here quite fascinating. Fascinating in the respect that if you go to ANY Pho restaurant in Portlandia (and there are a LOT of 'em there), and you get a bowl of Pho, well, shit......you'll get something that will fill up ten Vietnamese people (or three Americans) for the entire day. Christ, it's literally served in a Goddamm MIXING BOWL (I have NEVER been able to actually FINISH an entire bowl of Pho at any Vietnamese restaurant in Portlandia)!!!



Walked around after lunch and snapped a few pics....





























Hanoi actually has MORE skooters than Guangzhou. Thought THAT was impossible until I got here. Jesus.....every day here is like Sturgis, only with skooters instead of motorcycles (because you need special permission from the Government here if you wish to own a skooter or motorcycle over 125 cc's).



Gotta chuckle outta some things I saw on the street......










OH NO! Run, TinTin, run from the filthy red savages!!











Vietnamese for "XEROX".


Had enuff of walking.......time forra couple drinks and checking of E-Mail.....more soon!























-E-

Vietnam is thee only place where....


....you can have no dong, and still go to the ATM and pick up a bunch of hos*.

OK. So, me and muh trey Cracka buds hop into a minivan taxi and head to the border, 15 kilometres away. We get dropped off at a point about 1/2 mile from the actual border, and we hafta walk the rest up this steep-ass hill (not as steep as from my garage to my apartment, but still, steep enuff) and get to Chinese exit formalities. Blow through those in 20 minutes (one of the Dutch girls got taken in "The Room" [and ANYBODY whose ever crossed between the US and Canada more than ten times knows "The Room"] but she got escorted out of there and back into line in, like, literally 120 seconds with no worries) and got to Vietnam entry Immigration and Customs.

THAT took an hour, partially because there were, like, two tour buses from China and Taiwan, but also because they Immigration soldiers found it convenient to keep popping MY passport to the bottom of the stack whilst muh three Crackas (two Dutch, one Gordie) got blown through in about 20 minutes. United States Passport....love ya, Dubya! Thanks, you wanker, for ensuring that Americans get such great treatment abroad!!

Obviously, I didn't take any fotograffs.....NOT terribly wise at the China-Vietnam border! But after we crossed the border, the Dutch girls wanted to hop a train in DongDang Town (which, rumour has it, has wooden-slat/park bench-type seating) to Hanoi. The older Gordie gent was having none of that! I was neutral....I had had soooo little sleep as it was, I coulda cared less. The older Gordie Gent won out, and we hopped an air-conditioned bus right at the border for the 180 kilometre journey to Hanoi. JUST AFTER the border, a soldier hopped on the bus and checked everybody's passports again.









Tip: Make SURE that you shoot pics when border guards ARE NOT looking.....


So, after one of these scariest bus rides I had ever taken (scared for the little 100cc skooters, pedestrians, bicyclists and water buffalo on the road), we got into Hanoi. It was about a three hour ride INTO Hanoi...once INSIDE Hanoi, it was literally another hour.

Guys.....NEVER AGAIN bitch about the traffic in your city, please? You'd really hafta live through this.....after Hanoi, traffic jams in North America will seem like a truly Zenful experience. ESPECIALLY compared to Hanoi traffic on a bus with no bafroom onboard.

So, we get dropped off in front of a fairly posh-looking hotel (HMMM.....why THAT hotel?? Random pick, I wonder?) in Hanoi, and, thee moment I get offa the bus - WHOOSH!!! It felt like somebody immediately wrapped me in a steaming hot wet body towel. ALWAYS a nice experience for someone who gets physically ill in anything over eighty degrees Fahrenheit!! I go walk into said hotel, use their rest room, and ask how much for a room tonight?

"700,000 Dong" (ROUGHLY about fiddy bucks)

Well, I'll shop around, I figure. So, I walk out into the parking area (too small to be an actual car park) and this Vietnamese girl comes to me and says "You need a room"?

Now, being thee over-cautious, suspicious, level-headed traveler, I said: "Sure!"

AGAIN, though, like when I arrived in Guangzhou, A) - I had almost zero sleep in the past 24 hours and B) - TRUST ME: This journey from Guangzhou to Hanoi is a LOT more difficult than it sounds. NO...it's NOT like flying from L.A. to PDX and then catching the Amtrak Cascades train to Seattle.......nooooooooo.......

So, I depart ways with muh Cracka buds, and me and two Chinese guys hop a cab to this hotel. It turned out that it's in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, cost 225,000 Dong (fifteen buxx) per night for a private room with private bathroom, hot water, A/C, mini-fridge, satellite TV from Hong Kong and a little lobby downstairs where you can surf their Wi-Fi and drink beer and smoke! Plus, some folks from Western Oregon University stayed here (probably because, up until three years ago, Monmouth, Oregon was a dry town).











Laundry service at $5 for doing a big-ass bag O' laundry, and they had a travel agent (veeeery helpful in these parts, and I can't believe that I am saying that).

Old Quarter Hanoi is probably thee, thee most amazing place on Earth! And, to repeat, I can't believe that I am saying that.....

Now, I enjoy Megacities (anything over, say, 4,000,000 inhabitants) as much as I enjoy a root canal......with no gas or Novocaine. And I enjoy temperatures over 80 degrees the same way I embrace watching the movie “Hard Candy.”

Put 'em BOTH TOGETHER....and for me it's just like having a tooth extracted whilst having my cubes extracted at the same time.....with no sedatives or painkillers of ANY sort.

Nope.....not Hanoi!

I can fill PAGES about Hanoi alone......so....let's just skip to the highlights:


Only place where.....

.......I have EVER consumed more pints of water than of beer.


Had a Vietnamese waiter offer......

.....to buy my "I have a Dream" T-Shirt off of me. Had to decline, as it was a gift. (I'm wearing it in the pic below - the Vietnamese gave me a job as a Banana Monkey, as they were quite impressed with my past employment history as a Counter Toad).












Being an older city....

.....Hanoi is organically-planned. In English? Meaning that the streets have ZERO rhyme or reason....they just got plopped there and paved as the Hanoians went along as time progressed. Kinda like London.....or Pittsburgh. No grid....no hub-and-spoke....just kinda there as they needed them. So, the very first night there, I accidentally left my GPS in the hotel.....and I hadta do the imperialist American thing and catch a bicycle rickshaw (PedCab) home to the hotel after giving the driver the crudly hand-drawn map. THAT was kinda embarrassing.....


Spent a couple hours at the Hanoi Hilton......

.....got a few pics of John McCain's flight suit. If he wins, the Vietnamese have stated that they will officially declare war against the United States.......


Was constantly pestered on the street.....

....the past couple days by various girls showing a fake-looking ID wearing nice white dress shirts saying that she was with some red cross-affiliated group and they always pestered me to sign some book.

Finally, after about the fourth one, to get her offa my back, I said I'd sign it. THEN I read it: It had “Name” - “Country” and “DONATION”!!! I told her that I had no dong (this was actually true!! I only had ten Chinese Yuan on me!) She kept pestering me, so I signed the book “Ulysses S. Grant” and walked away quickly from her!

Welcome to Vietnam, Ulysses S. Grant!


Was a touch bored, and I had a death wish.....

.......so, on my final day, I said: “Fuck it. I'm gonna stare death in the eye and see who flinches first!! I'm gonna rent a skooter!” Now, my family (and, I think, one or two other people) are seriously concerned about my safety over here....and when my mum reads that I rented a skooter, she's absolutely gonna have kittens!!! My father, upon finding out, may go into The Cleveland Clinic for an octuple bypass operation.....but still, I had to do this. It be great dishonour to Honda Helix should I not do this....

You rented a skooter in Hanoi. Yeah. Cool. Nice, who cares?

I mentioned in an earlier post about drivers in Guangzhou, China.

“Yeah. Nice. Who really cares?” you say?

Watch this vid I filmed yesterday of an intersection in Old Quarter Hanoi............




You should try it sometime.....it's almost as much fun as trying to cross a street here.....


I chicken-shitted out of......

......my mammoth marathon train / bus trip, where I was supposed to live on a train for 1900 kilometres from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City. Then, shortly thereafter, hop a bus or riverboat through Cambodia (which I had been warned by a few sources to avoid because of serious safety comcerns), up into Thailand.

It wasn't really a matter of chicken-shitting out of anything, just that I have time-constraints! Sorry.....HAD to spend more time in Hanoi.....there was no question about it. And I never even went outside the Old Quarter!!!!!

So, I fly to Nha Trang tomorrow to vege on the beach forra couple days, then a train to Saigon forra day, then fly to Bangkok for a day and a half, then to Shanghai to meet my dear sister.

HOW do I do this? Simple!

Flying throughout SE Asia on Vietnam Airlines and Air Asia is piss-cheap!!!! Just like Southwest airlines (but ONLY if you catch them at the right time). Train Hanoi to Nha Trang is, like, $80 one way, and takes 24 hours!

Vietnam Airlines? $98....takes an hour and a half.

Figure it out. Yeah, no adventure....but still.....I really hafta see more.....


Pics of Hanoi on next communique.....

-E-

*Dong is the Vietnamese currency....Hos is because all Vietnamese bills have Ho Chi Minh on the front of 'em!