Hello from Catba Island! a fairly large island in Halong Bay, about four hours’ bus ride and two hours’ boat ride from Hanoi. It’s gorgeous here, and much nicer than Hanoi…lots of open space, not too many people, no aggressive moto drivers, and generally much more laid-back. And the scenery is *amazing*. Halong Bay [...]
Apologies for the last email; I hit some random key on the keyboard, and before you know it, well…
I arrived in Hanoi this morning on the night bus–it turns out not to be too bad, only 12 hours between Hue and Hanoi (not bad for some 800 km). Some of the roads are good Cambodian [...]
Well, I’m learning more about the tourist scams in Vietnam. It seems every country has a different way of ripping off tourists: in Thailand, it’s blithely upping the asking price, in Cambodia, it’s guilt-tripping. In Vietnam, it’s slipping extra items into the bill. And mysteriously changing the price, usually halfway through negotiations, or post facto.
I [...]
Oh, Great Mother, never again. I can’t believe I actually *did* that…
So, I spent yesterday morning wandering around Hoi An, and napping–I’ve been feeling a bit tired and so have been sleeping more than usual, to forestall any new colds. The vendors had all watched me wander around for several days now, and–this being a [...]
First, I had a very surreal moment last night when I opened up Yahoo! News and found Liberate headlining the tech section…weird. You never really expect to see people you know in the news. ( http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=569&ncid=738&e=1&u=/nm/20021228/tc_nm\ /tech_liberate_dc , if you’re interested.)
I hope things are OK there, but I suspect not. I’m rather glad to be [...]
So, I spent yesterday touring the local area on motorbike, covering about 140-160 km total. on the back of a motorbike, in the rain, that’s quite an experience–fortunately i had the sense to bring a dry set of clothes, and a rain poncho.
We started out in the morning, when I got out of my hotel [...]
First, it appears the Rathole Tradition of hotels is continuing for a third night: the current hotel turns out to be windowless (or rather, they have a window, and even have curtains for it, but it opens onto a blank concrete wall), damp, and musty. Unfortunately there are no better rooms and probably no drier [...]
Well, here I am in Hoi An, Vietnam. I arrived here this morning via a very modern MD-82, much to the relief of–well, most of my body, which was not looking forward to more jouncing along awful roads.
Airports are really cool. They have these X-ray scanning things that you put your luggage into, and then [...]
Today is Christmas, and I’ve been thinking about forgiveness. I visited the War Remnants Museum today (formerly the American War Crimes Museum) and it makes me awed–and humbled–that the Vietnamese have basically forgiven (and now welcome) Americans. To Americans, it’s the war where 50,000 U.S. soldiers died. But to the Vietnamese, it’s the [...]
…and I hope you all are having a much merrier Christmas than I am. Yesterday’s “four-hour boat trip” turned into a 13-hour nightmare–well, actually, up until we arrived, it was only 13 hours of standard Third World travel (I’ll write more about that later). After we arrived at 2am, though, we spent half an hour [...]