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-

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-