Vietnam: Hue and Hoi An

Vietnam's tendency to have their major tourist cities start with the letter "H" makes for catchy blog titles.


Made some Vietnamese coffee and now I'm pumped (at 1:40 am) to write another entry. :)


So now we're in Hue which was the former capital of Vietnam during the Nguyen dynasty in an attempt to unite northern and southern Vietnam. Any time we heard about central Vietnam, fellow travelers would say between Hue and Hoi An that one of them is boring and disappointing while the other is fantastic. The problem is that everyone always mixes up the two cities and nobody can quite remember which one was which! So I'm here to clear that up right now: Hue is incredibly boring and Hoi An is wonderful and vibrant and lively. The main thing to do in Hue is to see the Citadel, which was built to house the Emperor and family. Unfortunately the Citadel was heavily bombed during the war, which means the main thing to do in Hue is to see some ruins. Yes some of the history is interesting and worth learning, but the Citadel consists of meandering through fields and fields without any guidance or understanding of what each empty piece of land originally was. As a historical site, it's poorly structured and uneventful. There are about two original buildings  that survived the bombing, but I use "original" loosely as one of them was completely renovated on the inside (and the other is closed to the public) and then there are two re-built buildings that emulate what the Citadel used to look like, which leaves about 20+ plots of overgrown grass and weeds with bits of rubble if you're lucky. The whole thing can be covered in a couple hours. Also I think I've mentioned this before, but this is yet another city that has no business being as expensive as it is. And we ran into not one, but three places that carried out the most annoying and petty "I'm going to pretend there was a miscommunication that ultimately ends in me overcharging you" gag ever, which is when we order a bottle of something like sprite or iced tea (which is 12,000 dong) versus a can (20,000 dong) and then they either tell us the prices are switched or they just give us a can and then charge us (one restaurant went so far as to take a pen and draw arrows on their menu pointing to the true prices, because even though it clearly said "bottle ....... 12,000 dong," it's actually 20,000. Sorry the menu's just printed wrong. Our bad. But yeah you're going to have to give us that money.) It's the principle of the thing gosh darnet. So there were a couple of museums that we went to as well, such as the Ho Chi Minh Museum. There is one in every city, but trusty Lonely Planet said that this one is "better than most" as he lived there for about 10 years. Another common theme in Hue was that every place was completely empty and would look closed when we showed up. So we'd walk in and then someone would eventually come out and sell us a ticket and then they'd go turn on all the lights and the fan for the museum, because why leave on all of this electricity when literally nobody is coming in? Funny, eerie, and weirdly empowering (like we paid for a private viewing) to be the only ones in the museums (in that whole city really). We also ended up eating at an Indian food restaurant for dinner as we had wanted some for a while. We got into Hue around 9 am and left around 7 am the next morning. And our total expenditure for that day (which Julia will go into more detail in another post) was only on lunch, dinner, and two museum tickets. So that's Hue.

Hoi An on the other hand is a sharp contrast to the dullness of Hue. It's a small former port city that managed to stay on the map even after being heavily bombed (and rebuilt) and after losing its status as a major port to nearby larger towns by being declared as a Unesco World Heritage site in 1999. It's the first I've heard of an entire city being a World Heritage site although I'm sure there are a few others as well. Such a smart move and such a beautifully fun preserved city. Where do I begin! There are tons of 600-year-old houses (I say "tons" as in relative to your average town) as well as temples, pagodas, chapels, and old workshops and they're all in Old Town. So what you do is buy an Old Town ticket, which is a package that gives you 5 tickets for you to use as you like amongst the 800+ historical buildings. Sounds overwhelming but a lot of them are actually free and the most popular and interesting ones are obvious as you walk around. The old houses had similar themes with blends of Chinese, Japanese, and Thai architecture. I know I'm going to forget or mix up some of the main facts but I believe Chinese was in the roof tiling which was often a Yin and Yang design, Japanese was in the pillars (which had three vertical lines to represent the three lines on the human palm and five horizontal lines to represent the main elements of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water [I looked this up so we're all set, don't worry this is correct]. I kind of like that these are the main elements because what happened to Wind? And why is Metal in there? Obviously a lot of thought was put into it but I had never heard of these being the main categories in which everything naturally breaks down, but maybe if I sat down and started a list I would find that everything really does fit neatly into those five), and Thai is in everything else. Since the houses are built right on the water, many of them get flooded during the rainy season, so they have lines marking water heights during various years, some of them taller than Julia! Rather than building the houses on stilts (a la traditional Lanna homes), they still have a first floor with furniture, but the wood is a strong wood that doesn't get damaged so all of the non-water-resistant items just get moved to the second floor during this time. It's fun to think about how having 5 or 6 feet of your city flooded once a year could just be a natural part of your life. Just, yup this is when I boat to school instead of walking and oh yeah the living room is just going to be underwater for a couple few MONTHS so we'll just eat upstairs.

We also went to the Tran Family Chapel which was full of history and interesting facts. For example, when babies in the family were born, they would bury the placenta in the backyard to cement/reinforce the idea that no matter where they traveled in life, they would always have a part of them back home. They also have these antique yin and yang coins that you shake in your hand while making a wish and then throw it into a bowl; if they land one side yin and the other yang then you will have success in that endeavor. A wish in this case is not your typical "I wish I could fly" type of deal but more of a realistic "I hope to be successful in my career." What I love even more is that the guide said you can do this up to 3 times to try and get yin and yang and if even after 3 times you weren't successful, THEN maybe you should rethink your wish. I'm no statistics major but I'm pretty sure that those odds just show how much we as humans come up with superstitions and rituals that will only feed into our belief that we will be successful and that all is good and that life will work out in the end. A brilliant psychological move on the part of the brain I should say, so, tip of the hat to our minds. We also went to an ancient apothecary which we both thought was going to contain some awesome old-timey medicines and bottles with interesting facts about how cocaine used to be used for toothaches (true fact), but it was just...a room full of plates? That was weird. Oh I should mention that most of these places are still occupied by the homeowners who live upstairs, so some of them feel like you're just wandering into someone else's home uninvited.

Ah and Hoi An is just so beautiful. The colors! All the buildings are this rustic yellow that works perfectly with the climate of the city. The way the sun hits the buildings at any time of day, but especially during sunset is just a photographer's dream (except really, an SLR-owner's dream). It's the main city where we wish we had brought Julia's SLR (but we were ultimately glad we didn't because we were too afraid it would get wrecked (not to mention take up half the space in our tiny backpacks) and though there are plenty of artsy photos to be taken in Vietnam, we had a good enough time with my dinky point and shoot). There are tons of crafts and beautiful clothing sold there as well. Julia and I normally don't seek out souvenirs for loved ones back home; we're more the type to buy something that jumps out at us. But here we found the perfect small gifts for my dad and for Kali (not telling though! It's a surprise!). :)

Hoi An also has an awesome and vibrant night life. There are tons of beautiful strings lights and lanterns throughout the city and there's an hour in the night when they turn off all the lights and everybody sits there in the intimate and dimly lit dark. Then when a gong goes off to signify the end of the Earth Hour-esque time, everybody cheers and takes a sip of their 4,000 dong "fresh" beer on tap. Sigh, I miss it already :). We also wandered into a bar that served very cheap "shots" and "buckets." Why the quotes? Well I tried to get a good scale picture but the shots are barely bigger than a thimble (not exaggerating....maybe a little exaggerating but think tiny) and the buckets are actually literally just jelly jars. Love it. They also had a pool table and a wall that you could write on (I'll try to include the pictures at the end) and the sweet owner pleaded with us to stay, even if we didn't buy anymore to drink because they just need it to look like it was a cool hangout place, so we spent a good hour as he gave us tips on how to improve our pool game haha. Also if you're white and looking for a job (again, white is a loose term here, since I'm considered white in Vietnam), it's a thing in this town to hire you to promote their bar (which just means handing out flyers to tourists every night). Tempting, because we would be paid the same amount as we do teaching. Last but most definitely not least, this is where we tried more signature Vietnamese dishes like the White Rose which is a dumpling stuffed with shrimp and spices. Omnomnom.

I forgot to mention in the last post that our frantic xe om ride from the bus to the train station in Hanoi was where Julia got her "Thai Tattoo" or "Vietnamese Victim" (the second one I made up so don't go around repeating that one), which is a burn on your calf from the muffler/exhaust pipe that's exposed on the right side of the bike. Since motorbikes are so common, these burns are also really common. We walked into a pharmacy and pointed at it and they immediately gave us everything we needed to treat it. And at one point we were stopped on the side of the road to fix the gauze/tape and a woman stopped and was like "from motorbike yes?" and gave us advice on how to help it heal. All in all NOT a fun wound but a great battle scar story once it's healed.

We stayed in Hoi An for a few days and then we were on our second overnight bus to Nha Trang, the "hedonistic beach party capital." Halfway done! The second half of our Vietnam trip consists of Nha Trang, Dalat, and Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). Then I'm going to slip in an entry about more of our current happenings, which include volunteering at our local dog shelter, participating in weekly pub quiz nights, more vacationing, and preparing for the new school year.

If you're reading this between when I posted the writing a la carte, then the supplementary pictures (part of a complete breakfast) are coming so check back! (I think I'm getting a little loopy as it's now 3:30 am). Although I am admittedly in a great mood as I finish this entry because of all the reminiscing about our trip to Vietnam. :)

Vietnam: Hanoi and Ha Long Bay

For U.S. citizens, Vietnam requires a visa no matter your length of stay. Through extensive research we discovered that rather than going through all the hassle at a Vietnam Embassy in Bangkok, we could apply online to get a Visa on Arrival. Supposedly this entails paying a small fee to a program that gets a letter from immigration asking Vietnam to let you in. You then go to a station when you arrive, fill out a form, pay another fee for the visa itself and badabing badaboom you've got your visa. We were sufficiently worried that this may not be a real thing and that we would end up getting deported from Vietnam before our vacation even started, but through Julia's faith in research and my Dory-like faith in not knowing what's going to happen but trusting it'll be okay, we stuck to this service and it all worked out perfectly. We brought American dollars to Thailand just for this purpose because many countries still accept USD as well as their local currency. (We'll see if that remains true in another 20 years or so.) And holding American money is like holding play money, except it's not nearly as fun because unlike almost any other currency in the world, it's incredibly boring and all the same color. I'd like to think that once your "home" currency becomes not just weird, but sufficiently surreal to hold and use as valid money, then you have definitely lived long enough somewhere else to call it home.

Our first couple meals in Hanoi were Banh Mi, which are Vietnamese street sandwiches, heavily influenced by the French (hence the baguette) but with sufficient Vietnamese flare (everything inside of the baguette). Julia LOVES these and I quite enjoy them as well. They vary from doner kebabs to simple sandwiches with omelettes (made to order of course), laughing cow cheese (the most common cheese you'll find in Asia since it doesn't need to be refrigerated), lettuce, tomato, cucumber, possibly pâté or some other meat, mayonnaise, hot sauce, and whatever else you can think of really. If I could bring street food to California, I would in a heartbeat. It's funny that it's something quite prevalent in New York City and even on boardwalks for some of California's beaches, but it's still not something that is frequent or widely accepted. It should be. Let me tell you, we are thoroughly missing out in America.

Hanoi is the current capital of Vietnam and it's where our friend Jenna (who was Julia's roommate in India and whom we realize we've seen in 4 countries now, which we believe confirms us as lifelong friends) is currently living and teaching English. These two facts combined to make Hanoi one of our obvious favorite cities in Vietnam (though you'll soon see that it's actually hard for us to pick favorites because every city was wonderfully unique. It's actually easier to pick the cities that weren't quite up to the high standard that the rest of tourist-Vietnam sets). My absolute FAVORITE dish by far was Bun Cha. It's this delicious soup served with vermicelli noodles and basically grilled pork meatballs. And you dip in various greens and herbs. It's served at a coolish temperature, which is interesting because it seems like it's supposed to be served hot. It's also only available from 11 am-2 pm throughout Hanoi, though I'm not sure of the reason. It's awesome because people will set up stands in alleyways that just have one sign that says Bun Cha with an arrow underneath. So you go and sit down on these extremely temporary plastic miniature stools and eat this incredibly delicious meal. And then an hour later the whole station is gone without a trace. Jenna toted us around on the back of her motorbike to tons of local food stalls and coffee shops, including a coffee shop that is hidden behind an art store. You actually drive your bike through the store to park in the back and then go up a bunch of winding staircases to get to this absolutely beautiful view of Hoan Kiem Lake in Old Quarter, which is basically central Hanoi. We tried egg drop coffee which is delicious Vietnamese coffee topped with a sweet whipped egg yolk. We also tried delicious traditional Vietnamese drip coffee with condensed milk. And we tried Vietnamese coffee with yogurt, which gives it a really tangy creamy taste.

Food aside, since Jenna lives in Hanoi and isn't really a tourist (like us with Chiang Mai, but more so with Thailand as a whole), she did some touristy things for the first time with us. One of these is the Water Puppet Show which originated in the rivers of northern Vietnam and moved to an enclosed theater. It involves puppeteers waist-deep in a pool using a rod to manipulate the puppets and tell traditional stories of Vietnam. It was pretty cute and fun to watch and one of those must-dos for Vietnam and specifically Hanoi since that is where it originated. We also went to Beer Corner, which isn't a specific place but rather a fun activity where you sit on those ubiquitous miniature plastic stools (which Julia says isn't good for people with long legs. I wouldn't know) and drink a cup of 5,000 dong draught beer (which is about 20 cents but is equivalent to paying like a nickel for beer). From the "Fresh beer" signs we learned that vendors sell beer that production centers make fresh everyday and it goes bad within 24 hours because it doesn't have any preservatives. It's an interesting concept and a one of a kind experience, though can get a bit hectic with vendors being really pushy about you sitting at their corner, ordering more beers, or leaving immediately after you've paid. It's also something that easily went from a fun local tradition to a backpacker craze in Vietnam, but no complaints here for almost free beer. :) We also walked around Old Quarter where all the shopping is. The streets are laid out in a very interesting manner; they are named after the product that is sold on the street. So most streets begin with the word "hang" which means merchandise or shop, followed by the name of the product. If you're looking for scarves, try scarf street. Maybe you need jewelry from silver street or a raft from bamboo raft street. It's great and it's almost like a child's drawing coming to life with such an intuitive and simple way of laying things out. What's fun and very meta is that many stores sell things like mannequins or LCD signs, which is kind of confusing. I'll be looking at a bunch of naked mannequins, wondering what clothing the store is selling and then I'll realize they're selling the actual mannequins. Or I'll be reading a light up sign to see what it's advertising, and it's blinking the words "LCD Sign."

One of the beautiful places to visit in Vietnam is Ha Long Bay, which is a 4.5 hour bus, boat, bus ride from Hanoi. It's a weekend getaway of kayaking, snorkeling, rock climbing, scuba diving, and breathtaking views. Cat Ba Island is one of the more popular and largest amongst Ha Long Bay's 366 islands. Jenna loves rock climbing there so much that she goes there about twice a month, which is saying a lot considering the long and tedious trip to get there and back. You know when guide books tell you the on and off seasons for visiting certain places? And since it's dependent on weather it usually just means that off season has lower prices and fewer people. That's why my family always went to places like Death Valley in the summer time or Sequoia National Park in the winter. Well for Vietnam (and I imagine much of southeast Asia), off season means basically nobody else is there but you. This became very apparent in places like Cat Ba Island. It was like that one time my parents and I went to Coney Island when it was closed; a place that's normally lively and somewhat chaotic and filled with noises and sights and smells is just...closed. It was kind of fun to be two amongst a mere handful of tourists and locals on the island, despite the construction and less-than-perfect weather. Jules and I really wanted to go rock climbing because many sources told us about how it's the perfect place for beginners and experts alike, but we just didn't have the funds. Instead we took a peaceful kayaking trip around the islands as well as a hike to Cannon Fort which boasts amazing views of the bay below. Unfortunately our weekend getaway was incredibly foggy the entire time so we definitely did not get to see the epicness of Cat Ba's beauty. Jules and I got some great pictures of us holding up the guidebook (with a picture of what the view should look like) over the real viewpoint (which is what we actually saw). When it comes to the weather, you win some and you lose some.

The trip between Hanoi and Hue (in central Vietnam) is the longest trip that a backpacker takes in Vietnam as there aren't any tourist destinations between these two cities even for the traveler who likes to go off the beaten path. We had bought a train ticket from Hanoi to Hue that was leaving at 7:30 pm the next day, which enabled us to spend a day and a half in Ha Long Bay before heading back to make the evening train. We wanted to leave the island around 1 pm to give us plenty of time to get back to Hanoi, possibly share a meal with Jenna, and comfortably get on the train. Unfortunately, this is not what the universe had planned for us. The earliest bus we could get was 2:30 pm. With a 4.5 hour trip, this would be cutting it a bit close, but there wasn't much we could do but hope we made it on time. A bus, a boat, a bus, and another bus later, we pull up to the bus station at 7:20 pm, our backpacks ready and our anxiety high. The minute the bus stopped we jumped off and hopped on a xe om, which is basically a motorcycle taxi. We told them we needed to be at the train station in 10 minutes to make our train and they thoroughly understood that. I know this because they ZOOMED through Hanoi. That was one of the fastest and definitely most dangerous rides I've ever taken, putting full trust in a stranger to keep us alive. We get to the wrong train station at 7:29, which I communicate to them and we immediately hop back on and go down to the correct station. We SPRINT into the station and my watch, the train station clock, and my iPhone all say it's 7:30. But the train had left. Even describing this moment now, sitting in my home in Thailand, fully aware of how the story ended, my heart is starting to beat fast again. I was SO upset. Yes it was our fault that we weren't earlier, but I know for a fact that the train left early and that just killed me. Those tickets were $32 each, which is a lot of money by American standards, let alone by our Thai living standards. We worked so hard to save enough money to go on vacation and we just threw $60 out the window. I was thoroughly upset and did all I could to get at least a partial refund, but they just wouldn't have it. What bothered me more was their lack of customer service; it's simply not a thing in Vietnam. There's no such thing as trying to reach an understanding or making the customer feel valued. If you're not buying something from me, then go away, is the attitude there. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but it is definitely very different from America, where a business arguably can't get away with that kind of attitude. Let me be clear here, it sounds like I'm complaining that they didn't immediately come to me with a glass of water and a pat on the back. What I'm saying is the way they wave their hand away and ignore you before you even say a word; the way they throw your ticket at you or frown or roll their eyes and act like you're the scum of the earth. It's something I can deal with as a whole, but in this moment it took all I had to keep it together and try to persuade them to even listen to me at all. At the end of it though, I was able to get through to a lady who explained that she just couldn't do anything because it's against the law to refund money after 4 hours before the train departs. Sigh.

But what better place to be "stranded" than with Jenna in Hanoi. So we stayed another night and were able to find something called an Open Bus Ticket. Basically, you buy a ticket package that covers all of your transportation for the whole of Vietnam. They have one or two buses that leave everyday and all you have to do is book the bus on the day you want to leave. The total of those tickets for each of us was $42. So instead of rebuying the train tickets that take us only to Hue, we were able to get a pretty good deal. The reason people don't generally use the Open Bus is because they're fairly uncomfortable and a bit dangerous as the drivers go at incredibly fast speeds over bumpy roads.

So the next evening we were on a sleeper bus on our way to Hue.

And that was Hanoi :)



Note: I didn't have time to proofread this entry before posting so I apologize if my natural tendency towards using too many words to say things gets confusing, like this very sentence.

Bangkok Revisited

Alright alright already! So many complaints about lack of posting but we've been too busy living life! (Semi-joking, I've also just been bad with posting because the times when I'm most inspired to write, I'm usually in the middle of doing something like working or grocery shopping and by the time I get home I just want to drink tea and watch Breaking Bad and read the Ender's Game series while helping to cook some awesome new dinner that Julia thought up. It's now summer break and since we're back from vacation I have no excuses.)

We have so much to catch up on both on our life in Thailand and on our trip to Vietnam! I think I'll start with Vietnam and possibly go backwards from there. Because it was a 26 day trip that included a visit to Bangkok, I'll probably break it up into a few blog entries. So here we go, Vietnam travels days 1-3: Bangkok

Julia made this brilliant insight a while ago before we began teaching about how our memory of past experiences and people who have come in and out of our lives end up being summed up in a sentence. This not surprisingly seems to apply to many aspects of life, from the way we describe our 1st grade teacher to the way we describe that 6 month study abroad trip when we come back and everybody is like, "Welcome back! How was [insert country here]?" and there's no way you can answer such a broad question with anything but a sentence that you repeat for every person who asks. She talked about how it's crazy that we're going to be with these students and see their progress and develop lesson plans for them for a year (or in our case, half a year) and they'll go on to other teachers and other schools and live their lives and we'll become a sentence. The sum total of our effort and caring and love and it will end with, "Yeah she was a good teacher" or "Yeah I didn't really like my ___ grade teacher." It's an interesting thought about our impact on other people's lives and of course, makes one think about the sentence that other people and memories have become in our lives. (At the end of our last day of teaching, I turned to Julia on the ride home and simply said out of context, "Do you think we're a good sentence?" and after figuring out what I was talking about she smiled and said, "I think we are.")

I didn't really like Mrs. Gilbert, my first grade teacher, but I liked all other elementary school teachers.

India was a crazy amazing experience and it's weird to be back.

Vietnam was a beautiful place with history and we are so grateful we were able to go.

With this one sentence realization, we've been trying to focus on fleshing out the experience in our minds before we lose all of the wonderful and nitty-gritty detail. Luckily, with the help of diaries, blogs, and pictures, we get to capture even more about our experiences to share with others and to reminisce when we're older and are fondly looking back on our lives.

Our vacation began with a train ride to Bangkok, where we would fly to Hanoi (if you're looking at this on a map, [Kendrice and JB I'm sure you are] it doesn't geographically make sense for us to do this, but these were the cheapest tickets). Bangkok is still a part of Thailand so of course we enjoy the city, but the appropriate sentence for Bangkok would be, it just isn't Chiang Mai. Everything is expensive, there's not much to do by way of tourism (it's definitely a city that's probably more fun to live in than to visit), and it's hotter than Chiang Mai as it's further south and more of a metropolitan area. (I've emphasized this in our blog entries in the past, but I want to make sure to say once again that this is not me complaining, at all. In fact, if you could hear me read this blog entry out loud, you'd realize that the way I describe everything is just me putting my own spin on our experiences. Julia and I actually have more of a tendency to laugh at and appreciate experiences than it is for us to complain about or regret them.We lived in India for goodness' sake.) I should say though that street food in BKK is different from northern Chiang Mai food so we had an awesome time trying bits and pieces of every delicious stall we saw. Jules and I spent our time in Bangkok mostly wandering around, marking the beginning of our losing weight as we always do when backpacking because we walk EVERYWHERE to save money and (Alex you would hate this), we also don't eat as often as we should. But that isn't about saving money, it's usually just bad timing.

We went to the Songkran Niyosane Forensic Medicine Museum & Parasite Museum. And I'll intro this with the Lonely Planet book description (as well as the description in the link), "This gory institution contains the various appendages and remnants of famous murders, including the bloodied T-shirt from a victim who was stabbed to death with a dildo." It was much more than that however. It was like if you took the Bodies Exhibit and made it so nothing had to be censored because we're in a third world and nobody would sue the museum for accosting their senses with such unexpected raw images. It included everything from real life preserved babies with birth defects to a section about how to test yourself for breast cancer (which included this awesome bust that had a small lump in it that you had to find. It was quite informative as I felt it's hard to determine when a lump is cancerous or normal, but this example showed me that it is in fact fairly obvious). The museum is across the river in an area dedicated to medical students. There is a school for medicine and nursing, clearly many talks are held here about the future of medicine, and there are tons of doctors and nurses walking around the area. In short, not many tourists go to this museum, so everything's in Thai and Julia and I had a fun time reading the Latin names for things and figuring out what that translates to in layman's terms. Interesting museum; probably not something people normally do in Bangkok.

When we first got to Thailand we were still suffering from jet lag, so we never had our "One Night in Bangkok" yet. So this time, we were sure to fit that in. In the evening we wandered around to places like Cheap Charlie's, this eclectic street bar (to say the least, I got a few low-quality pictures of the place for you tosee) run by an expat that serves extremely cheap drinks. For some reason we also got this huge hankerin' for Indian food but funnily enough, Indian food is way too expensive anywhere else in the world, which made me miss India a little bit (more on that later, as while we went to Vietnam, our friends Haleigh and Sarah made a trip to India that reminded us of how much we love/hate it and want to go back/never want to see it again. It's a complicated relationship). We also went to Soi Cowboy. As I've described before, Thailand's street system is composed of main streets with a bunch of side streets called "soi's." Normally soi's are the name of the main street and then a number, so we live on Nimman soi 8, but this soi in Bangkok managed to become so infamous that they were actually able to get a giant light up sign up that has the name of the soi in big flashy letters. I say infamous because this is where the red-light district is and it's what Bangkok is famous for as far as the sex industry. It's like Las Vegas on speed cramped into this one 400 meter street. We went to see it for many reasons: 1. Whether Bangkok likes it or not, it's a significant part of the city 2. We were curious and wanted to analyze it from our weird sociological and psychological perspective as two young girls who are probably about the same age as many of the dancers and "dancers" in the bars. Soi Cowboy is also where you go if you want to see the Ping Pong Show, which if you don't know what it is, I am not going to describe nor link to it. It was an incredibly uncomfortable experience walking down that street, not because anything happened with us, in fact we were largely ignored because we weren't older white men, but because of the things we saw. And all I wanted to do was learn about the girls and their story. Why are they there? Do they enjoy it? Do they want to achieve more in life? And who am I to judge? Who am I from my feminist American girl empowered perspective to assume that this is something negative and low-down from which Thai women need to be saved. Anyway, I could (and Jules and I did) go on about that forever.

So those were our activities in Bangkok! There are two airports in Bangkok and the one we were flying out of is actually an hour outside of the city. To save money (of course), we decided to take a train there, which meant that we had to leave at either 11 at night or 5 the next morning. Since our flight was at 7 and we didn't want to push it, we slept (or rather "slept") in the airport.

Next up: Hanoi and our wonderful friend Jenna

Terrible picture of Cheap Charlie's, but captures some of the eccentricities

Soi Cowboy

 

Julia sticking out like a sore thumb