If you plan to travel far, and will have long layovers (like our 11 hours in Narita today — currently on hour eight) I highly recommend saving up frequent flier miles and booking first or business class tickets, or, if you travel often enough, making your way into the platinum club (or whatever it is called at X airline) or shelling out the dough for a membership at an airline’s lounge. Here are the reasons:

1) more comfortable seats than anywhere else in the airport

2) quiet. You only hear an announcement when a flight is boarding for someone in the lounge. I think I’ve heard one or two today.

3) free snacks.

4) free drinks.

5) free internet.

6) free newspapers and magazines. (though most the mags tend to be about golf or business… yawn…)

7) check-in at the lounge. Skip the lines and get personalized attention. We purchased liquids at the duty free shop in Bangkok, forgetting the american liquid ban. The lovely people at the lounge found a box for us, boxed them up, and will bring them to the plane for us. Sweet.

8) SHOWERS!!!! The shower room I was just in was nicer than the bathrooms in half the hotels we stayed in. Taking a nice hot shower after a redeye flight and before a huge transpacific flight is freaking awesome. I want to go take another one.

Now if they just had free massages too…

note: this is all in reference to the AA Admirables Club at Narita Airport. As they say on the internets, YMMV. Some just may have those massages

In the dark early morning of the 23rd Mike and I checked out of our guesthouse and took a tuktuk to the pier. Along the way we saw the monks of Luang Prabang making their daily alms rounds, all the citizens of the town (and many visitors too) lining the streets with big bowls and baskets of food to offer. It was beautiful to see the long lines of saffron robes in the blue-grey early morning light. Somehow both of us forgot to take a photo.

We were headed to the pier to take a two day boat trip up the Mekong river to Houei Say. As we arrived there were a couple men at the top of the giant staircase leading down to the river. They verbally confirmed that we were in the correct place and told us to go on down, but leave our luggage for the porters to carry down. So we made our way down the steps, slightly worried that our bags would actually make it onto the boat. I couldn’t help but think, they just told me this was the right place, but I really have no proof that it is. It was though, the bags made it down, and I thought about how on one hand one needs to be particularly vigilant about their safety when travelling, one also needs to be able to relax a bit and just let things happen the way they are going to. At times it can be a difficult balance.

The boat:

On the boat we joined a group of 6 French travelers. We waited a few minutes for the boat to be loaded and the final two travelers to arrive, a German couple, and then sailed off. The sun was still rising at this point, and we chugged along through the morning mist drinking tea and eating croissants and baguettes.

The Mekong river is very difficult to navigate. There are many rock formations in the river, often reaching to just below the surface of the water, so the captain must know the river very well, where to direct the boat at any given moment. When we entered a very thick fog a short time into the trip, we had to stop on a sandbar and wait it out. Fortunately it did burn off and shortly we were off again to our first scheduled stop, the Pak Ou caves.

These caves have been used as a Buddhist altar for centuries. There are thousands of Buddha statues inside, all left by people coming to pray, so some are very new and some ancient, some disintigrating:

Our second stop was in a small village of under 200 people where they make rice whiskey (or Lao Moonshine as we came to call it.) For some reason we felt the need to purchase a bottle. Here’s Mike on his way out of the village:

We stayed on a nice hotel in a town called Pakbeng and then left for our second day on the river, once again much too early in the morning.

There was only one stop on the second day, at a weaving village. We got to see the town and witness some weaving and spinning of yarn. After purchasing some of their woven goods, Mike and I returned to the boat, arriving ahead of the other members of our trip. We spent some time interacting with the kids of the town, who had all gathered about the boat and stared at us. We soon learned that the best way to communicate with them was by making them laugh. Mike pulled out some tricks, including the one where you make it look like you are taking off the end of your thumb, which they got a kick out of and spent some time trying to figure out how to do it for themselves. Another hit was taking photos of them and then showing them the images. They found it really funny to see themselves on our cameras.

Since we only stopped in three places, it’s probably clear that the majority of the trip was on the boat. We spent our time gazing at the view, reading, napping, gazing again. It was a lovely trip that I would recommend to anyone visiting Laos. The Mekong River is fascinating.

At the northernmost part of our trip Thailand was on one side of the river and Laos on the other. Even from the river you could see the difference between the two countries, by the sorts of buildings, the density of buildings, use of the land. The two countries are similar in culture, but not the same, and then there are the glaring differences of economic status and population. The Mekong River flows through Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, ending at the South China Sea. A trip down the whole stretch would probably be incredible.

From Ho Chi Minh City we flew to Luang Prabang on a small prop plane operated by Laos Airlines. After the incident with Vietnam Airlines, and the women on the bus to the plane loudly proclaiming that they had been warned against flying Laos Airlines and that they use bus drivers for pilots, it was a little nerve racking. But the flight was uneventful and actually just fine. The snack was quite good and the pilot seemed perfectly competent.

After going through customs there (where after choosing if you have anything to declare or not there is only one door: nothing to declare) we made it to our lovely bungalow looking over the Khan River and to the farms across it. The town (a world heritage site like Hoi An) is very walkable and full of temples. We were told that Laos is the land of Buddhists and elephants. Good, we like both.

We spent the day wandering around Luang Prabang, looking at temples, checking out vendors, and getting out of the heat. In the evening, the main drag closes to traffic and becomes the night market, which we explored a little bit. Neither of us tend to be big shoppers, but we do enjoy things like this with endless shops repeating the tchochkies of another culture.

Wow, this is an intense city. Very loud: people honk here more than in New York City - much more. Honking is how you part the sea of motorbikes to press forward, let everyone know that you taking a right turn from the left (I would say lane, but the notion doesn’t hold much weight), or just say, “I’m here”. People do use their signals more consistently than anywhere else I’ve noticed.

The people are mostly quite friendly, although you get the occasional staring person who makes you think you’re committing some atrocity of etiquette, but I’m pretty sure they are just staring.

It would have been nice to have been in a hotel that was more in the thick of things - ours was on this huge street mostly filled with embassies. The livelier areas (like the market) are much better for walking, more interesting, and more welcoming. We did however, walk to some museums and the “botanical gardens” which were quite funny.

Our visit to the botanical gardens came after a disappointing rejection at the water puppet show. After we had paid to get in to the museum where the theatre was, we were told (at the theatre) that they were only doing shows for private tour groups (all the old people in white hats being herded around with numbered paddles) and the next public show would be on Monday. D’oh! We’ll be gone by then, bummer.

Anyway, the gardens were disappointing, too. There were some trees with labels nailed into them (and of course numbered, like every other tree in Saigon), but mostly there was “World of Wonders”. This consisted of badly manufactured replicas of manmade landmarks, several of which were accompanied by badly manufactured dinosaurs. For example there was the Empire State Building with King Kong on top, and a T-Rex below. The Easter Island Statues were amidst a variety of dinosaurs. There was a leaning tower of Pisa made of dishes. It was comical and absurd.

What was more genuinely enjoyable was the market, where we picked up some long overdue wedding gifts (but not all of them, so don’t everyone get their hopes up). We also enjoyed wandering the neighborhood around the market and ate at a vegetarian restaurant call “The Original Bodhi Tree”. Apparently it used to be call the bodhi tree and was popular enough that others popped up around them with the same name.

Suprisingly, there is an open wifi connection at the airport here in Hanoi, so I’m posting from here. We don’t know if we’ll find connectivity in Laos, so it may be awhile before the next one comes. Anyway, we’re sure to get some nice pictures during out boat trip up the Mekong. Also, I have pictures from Ho Chi Minh City, but they are not uploading very well so they might not make it.

Hoi An is a beautiful little town that has been set as a world heritage site for it’s historical significance. There is a very high density of tourists there, but the town has strict guidelines about building so everything has a quaint and friendly feel. After the bustle of Hong Kong, it was quite a nice change.

When we were buying our fly threads at “Hoa Cloth Shop” I kept finding my mind wandering back to an incident that happened on the way over there so before leaving the shop, I wrote up what happened in my journal.

Sometimes life throws you a beautiful event that shows you just how great humanity can be. In Vietnam Keely and I were walking down the street and are both taken by surprise by a curb. I was just startled but Keely twisted her already hurt ankle. She crumples on the ground and tears begin welling up - she’s really hurting. I crouched next to her to comfort her but didn’t know what to do. A Vietnamese woman came over and began rubbing peppermint oil onto her ankle. After this Keely could walk - it was very helpful. We were saying thanks and I wanted to pay her - I mean, she had this little kid and no shoes. But before I can offer her money she is gone carrying her kid off.

This happened hours after I was thinking, “oh great”, passing judgement on the entire culture based off some rambunctious teenagers behind us on the plane and a business man who felt entitled to the entire armrest and a few inches past it. (Actually, this was typical for airplane rides in Vietnam, but people on the street behave quite differently.) Such decisive kindness can make you feel foolish for harboring cynicism.

2. Tuesday 033

Originally uploaded by theloneconspirator.

Mike got this wonderful shot of a Hoi An fisherman tossing his net. I think he caught the movement beautifully.

I asked a travel agent in Bangkok to help me arrange our trip to Vietnam, and to set up a tour of My Son (ancient ruins) for us. He made it a full day tour, with Hoi An’s ancient town as a part of it. Not fully remembering the details of last time I was there I thought it would be ok. Unfortunately, I hurt my ankle again on Monday night when I stepped off a curb I hadn’t seen, and hurt it much worse than it had been (I believe Mike has a post about that experience on the way). Walking on Tuesday was nearly impossible.

Though I wanted Mike to go without me, our guide convinced me to go, saying that he’d hire a cyclo driver to pedal me around between sites, and then I’d only have to walk at the sites themselves.

The problem with ancient town is that they have taken the opportunity presented by having tourists captive to add in the hard sell. Neither of us have much patience for that sort of thing, and quickly tired of the tour. I also felt that further irritating my ankle simply to put up with sales pitches was bad.

Mike mentioned to the guide that we would rather not visit any more places where they are selling stuff, which felt a little awkward, but the guide whisked us off to a boat ride on the Thu Bon River, where this photo was snapped. It was a lovely ride, watching fishermen fish, the local flora and fauna, and checking out all the homes we passed by. Also: much more gimp-friendly.

Afterwards they dropped me off at the hotel and went on to My Son, where there is lots of walking necessary on uneven ground, so I felt it best I stay behind. Fortunately I went there last time, so I don’t feel like I completely missed out.

BTW — The ankle is still on the mend, but walking is much easier now.

Basically you wait for the stream of motorbikes to diminish from a class 5 rapids to class 3 or 4, then you step into the street and walk across, watching the oncoming traffic to see who is going to drive in front of you, and who will go behind. It’s pretty exciting.

As it is really too hot to do anything mid-afternoon in Saigon, I’ll take this loafing by the pool opportunity to write up a post about Hong Kong.

As I mentioned, the anonymity amid chaos of Honk Kong was a welcome change from Japan, but despite the noise and bustle of so many animated people the city was very clean. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to snap a photo, but there was a sign showing litter as a feast for vermin. Pretty good angle: no one want bugs and rats running rampantly, so don’t toss your crap onto the street. Maybe I should make such a sign for in front of our house in Seattle.

We visited Kowloon at night and strolled through some markets. A busy fervor of commerce was a pleasant (though not peaceful) perspective on a city that ranges from people fishing with no rod from the ferry dock for a living to super-skyscraper dwelling moguls of international commerce. On the main streets in Kowloon you will be harrassed by Indian men trying to get you into their stores to buy, “fake rolex, good copy!”. Flesh and blood spam like this makes me chuckle. They are quickly sorted out of my inbox.

The notable turn from an essentially purely rosy perspective of Hong Kong came with our visit to the Big Buddha, which is amazing. Ha ha, I rolled that up in Katamari! The scale and beauty of the Buddha image is truly inspiring.

The experience of visiting the Buddha is accented by a backdrop of loud and abrasive (mostly Chinese) yammering. Of course, all of Hong Kong shares this condition, but at the Buddha it had the feel of being a bit disrespectful. I appreciate that everyone has different experiences, so it wasn’t really even irritating me, but just offered a different angle to the experience. Same goes for people’s adherence to posted rules. After a couple attempts, I got a good shot of someone tossing a coin in front of a “don’t throw coins” sign, but I opted not to take a picture of people taking pictures of the relic in front of the “don’t take pictures” sign.

After visiting the Buddha, we took a gondola ride which we caught in a “traditional chinese style village” complete with 7-11 and Starbucks. Ahh, official validation of the Big Buddha as tourist kitsch. *shrugs*

I’ll do retroactive posts about Hong Kong and Hoi An, but right now I want to write about this very interesting first night in Saigon.

So far in every place we’ve visited, we’ve had the luxury of taking the steps into the location’s shallow end and walking to as deep as we wanted, checking that out, and wandering back to safety. It takes some time to get the feel of any new place you go, and until you get that feel, it’s not quite comfortable. When we haven’t had friends to show us around, we’ve had a guide or at least a sense of where we were and where we were going - oh, and plenty of English speakers around that are used to dealing with foreigners.

In Saigon, we are staying in another ridiculously fancy Thai travel agent arranged hotel. So the defenses are a bit down, and we just traveled here so are a bit tired. Both of us were on the fence about how much to venture out for dinner - we were willing to just eat at the hotel and be lame. “We’ll still have two other nights here” was the sentiment that, when we found ourselves thinking it, drove us to get out. I mean, we’ll only have two nights after tonight! Better make the most of it.

Rather than take a cab to one of the vegetarian restaurants we know about, we decide to ask the concierge if there’s a place in walking distance. He tells us that there’s nothing in walking distance but he knows a good place we can take a taxi to. So, rather than taking stock of the situation and considering going to a place that we know something about, we get in a cab for this place.

The taxi dropped us off at the restaurant and this was when we realized that we had been pushed into the deep end of the pool. We made our way into the open air, street level restaurant by squeaking past a row of motorbikes to be a bit lost once we got in. Eventually someone who seemed like they knew what was going on pushed open some space for us at the end of a table. We were handed menus that were in Vietnamese. We recognized 7up and colacola. Sup probably meant soup. Other than that there was no English, and no indication that anybody could speak English. Our words were met by gawking faces and a bit of staring. At least we knew everything was vegetarian, so if worse came to worse we could just point at something random on the menu. We had been caught off guard - we didn’t even have our phrase book (hadn’t needed it before and barely expected to leave he hotel).

Once our complete ineptitude was abundantly apparent (we only know how to say “thank you”) someone who knew a little English came over. “Tofu” and “noodles” were words we could communicate, so that’s what we got. It was good, but a little strange as an old woman sitting next to us was just staring and staring. No smile or attempt at non-verbal communication seemed to have any effect. Just staring. We ate our food and sat around thinking about how we could ask for the bill (it seemed unlikely that the signing gesture had the same meaning here). Fortunately we got the check, paid, and left.

All in all, it was a good learning experience, but it was indeed a shock. A culture shock, yes, but also a shock about our unpreparedness. All the fanciness and touristiness had made us soft and this experience made suddenly clear how manufactured our Vietnam experience had been thus far.

hoian (11)

Originally uploaded by lady3jane.

Here’s a photo I like from Hoi An.