Hanoi to Bangkok...and then some: Evan's Adventures in Southeast Asia: Final words...

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Final words...

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all people cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand eachother, we may even become friends - Maya Angelou

I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list - Susan Sontag

No comments:

Post a Comment

SIGHT OF THE DAY

A lovely little roadside restaurant in central Laos had the following items on their very tattered menu: Food Frying With Fodder (choices included Food Frying With Chicken and Food Frying With Muntjak Deer (whatever that might be). There was Food To Hit (dishes such as Hiting Melon, Hiting Papaya, or just plain Hiting). You could also choose from Fish Sour Soup - Half Cooked, Fish - Half Cooked (semi-sushi?), Fried Meat Pork, Tom Yam Cuttle Soup, Fragrant Chicken (smells like chicken!), Fragrant Pork, Roasting Muntjak Deer (aha! it's deer), Roasting Wild Pork, Steming Potato, and last but not least, Mixed Cuttle Fish Salad. Mmmmmm.....I went with plain old Food Frying With Chicken
Roadside billboards around Cambodia imploring people to turn in their machine guns and hand grenades to the local authorities
Mole hair. Grown to incredible lengths and obviously groomed with care. I just don't get it.
Cambodian Independence Day falls on November 9th - still a few days away, but in the town square across from the internet cafe, hundreds of parade participants are out practicing their manuevers for the big day. There are they typical contigents of flag wavers, soldiers, and community groups carrying banners like you might find in any American city come the Fourth of July. In addition to regular marchers, there is also a column of probably 50 or 60 men wearing identical blue kevlar-laced outfits with minesweepers over their shoulders. They are being followed up by a dozen mine-sniffing German Shepards and their handlers. It says alot when your country recognizes the (on-going) work of its minesweepers on Independence Day.
Ok, this time it was me. When I left my room last night to head out for dinner, I intentionally left the windows open in an attempt to cool the place down. Unfortunately, I also left a light on which lured hundreds (thousands?) of little fruit fly bugs into my bedroom. When I got back the walls and my bed were crawling with them. Nothing to do but sweep them away and attempt to sleep - yeah, right. They instantly began to crawl all over my sweaty body - not biting, just bugging the hell out of me. In frustration I groped around in the dark for my bug repellant. In the half-light of the room I aimed the bottle and sprayed....directly into my right eye. It couldn't have been a better shot. I stumbled out of bed and spent the next 20 minutes under a running shower (as per the poison control directions) before returning to bed with the bugs.
As the rains continue to fall, all the foreigners in town inevitably buy up the local ponchos at inflated prices (mine was a steal when I bought it on a sunny afternoon in Hanoi!).The ponchos are all designed to be worn while riding a motorscooter - ie, you throw the front flap over the handlebars of your bike to keep your lap dry. In order to prevent the poncho from obscuring the bike's headlight, they all have a stitched in square of clear plastic that settles over the headlight. However, if you're not riding a scooter, the clear patch happens to fall right over the goods of the person wearing it.Picture dozens of tourists walking the rainy streets in their lollypop-colored ponchos...with their crotches properly protected and proudly exposed.
Vendors in Hoi An - particularly those promoting their tailor shops - have developed an efficient tactic for stalking their prey - me. Women (so far it's always been women) prowl the streets on motorbikes and pull along side of you, whether you're walking or riding your own bike, engage you in a little small talk and then make their pitch. It threw me for a bit of a loop the first time it happened at 30km per hour. They've all been nice enough and eventually throttle down when they realize that I'm REALLY not interested in a silk suit. Once they spot another potential target they zoom off in a cloud of dust and exhaust.
Lining a stretch of sidewalk near the Perfume River in Hue, several men assemble their outdoor pet shops early each morning. Wheeling impossibly huge fish tanks into position over broken concrete, hanging birdcages and their chirping occupants from nearby tree branches, and securely leashing a few small puppies and the occasional kitten to the nearby lightposts: Open for Business!
Among the hill tribes (montagnards) of Vietnam, many of the women sport a bee-hive hairdo that would put any Colorado City polygamist to shame. Vietnamese law requires that everyone riding on a motorbike must wear a helmet. Add the two together and you get a woman wearing a helmet that is fully 9 inches off her head. Hey, at least the doo is safe!
Most of the major (and sem-major) towns that I've been to have a large radio tower built on the highest chunk of land in the neighborhood - not unusual in itself, except that they're all replicas of the Eiffel Tower.
Riding a rickety Chinese-made bike in downtown Hanoi, deafened by blaring horns, choking on exhaust, surrounded by motorscooters, taxis, lorries, and buses, I suddenly pull into line behind another bicycle, the sight of which instantly calms me. I can't see the other rider because the load strapped to the back of his bike is several feet taller than he or she is. It's a lattice-type frame on which hangs dozens (maybe hundreds) of clear plastic bags filled with water and GOLDFISH of all sizes. So there we are at a stop light, chaos all around, and three feet in front of me are hundreds of beautiful goldfish just hanging out in their snow-globes, probably wondering what the hell was going on. It made my afternoon.
A line of matching bicycle rickshaws, stretching for over a city block, inching slowly through the downtown traffic mayhem of Hanoi, each carrying a sweaty, bloated, pale-skinned foreigner wearing identical white country-club outfits. Ahhh....just like the good ol' colonial days!

Hanoi to Bangkok...and then some: Evan's Adventures in Southeast Asia

About Me

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Final words...

No comments:

Election Day 2008

Urban artwork

Bangkok street performer

Burmese temple in Tachileik

Monks on the move

Places I've Been in Thailand

Places I've Been in Laos

Places I've Been in Cambodia

Places I've Been in Vietnam

Vientiane Buddha

Blog Archive

Burma-style transport

New use for old junk

Happy (not "happy") in Vang Vieng

No purchase, no picture!

rice cake, rice cake, rice cake.....

The name says it all.....

Lost in translation?

Lao-style graffiti

Roasting coffee on the Bolaven Plateau

Pha That Luang in Vientiane

Traveling large in Laos

Patriotic billboard in Pakse, Laos

That's a duck.....on a bus

Transport Lao-style

Slow day in Vientiane

Simple Pleasures in Luang Prabang

Cambodian crosswalk.....don't ask

Kampuchean Wat

Ooops.....

Watching boat races in Phnom Penh

Morning on the River

Breakfast

Storm clouds over the Mekong

Basket boats on China Beach

Hoi An water front

Fisherman off Da Nang

Bicycles in Hoi An

China Beached Boat

Slow day near Hoan Kiem

Parking lot in Hanoi

Saigon's old Presidential Palace

Da Lat's Catholic Cathedral

Bao Dai's Art-Deco Palace in Da Lat

Straight to the point....finally

Oh, the irony....

Canals around the Hue Citadel

SIGHT OF THE DAY

Royal stamp

Bit of rain at the Hue market

Outside Sapa

Followers