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-

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-

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-

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-

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-

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-