A-TEAM, THE

Hello everybody. I know it has been a long time since we have last posted and I apologize for any anxiousness that you (Mom) may have had. Unfortunatly though, we don't have a lot of time to post right now. I am not even letting Puff near the keyboard because I know that although she will write a wonderfully articulate and descriptive post, she will spend over 3 hours doing so and I am tired and have resorted to playing the "I'll be bitchy if we can't go back to our bungalow and sleep now" card. Unfortunately that means for you all that you get a very short, and perhaps more laconic (a new word I learned from all of the GRE studying I have been doing - although I am not sure if I have used it properly) post.

Tomorrow we will head off to an uninhabited island where only a handful of toursits are supposed to be. We have heard that it has the best snorkelling in all of Thailand and Puff is looking forward to spending10 hours a day looking for new fish. I tend to have panic attack after panic attack when I go snorkelling so I am looking forward to finding a nice deserted and coral-less beach to swim in and play on. We are right now spending our first night in a town that is "off the beaten path" in Thailand and I am kicking myself for not being able to travel to northern Thailand. I now understand why backpackers can get trapped in this country.

Puff and I are far from being trapped however. We may have regrets about not getting to northern Thailand, but we are so looking forward to going home to the most wonderful and perfect country in all of the world! I can't wait to have loads of skim milk. Bowls and bowls of plain cheerios. Real milk with my tea instead of coffee-mate. Cheese! Wonderful and delicious cheese. And ... AND, hot showers. Yes, Canada is the country for me.

As for the next 8 days we will continue to soak up the sun so we can have the darkest tans possible when we go home and make you all jealous. We will post again from Bangkok (Sun or Mon) where Puff will catch you up on the details and I will to whet your photo-appetites by posting a few pictures of our most recent adventures.

Love you all (and I can't wait to see you)
Bug

I guess I should be upstairs helping Bug pack for tomorrow's flight to Bangkok, but I'm sure she has everything under control. Besides, I can't neglect the Jewish side of me that insists I need to take full advantage of the free internet at this guesthouse. I'm sure my mother would approve.
Two nights ago we left the historically significant town of Hue, where we made excellent use of our short stay. Our first night in Hue was spent at an outdoor cafe sampling the local Huda beer and having a delightful conversation about the economic impact of tourism in Vietnam with a very sweet German couple. Once again, I have to shout out to the Germans. The German backpackers have continued to prove themselves as the most sincere, interesting and friendly travel companions. And this is coming from a Jew. Who knew?!

Despite our previous experience on Vietnamese tours, we decided since we only had one full day in Hue it would be worthwhile to take a motorbike tour to several of the major sites, which were quite spread out across the city. It turned out to be a valuable afternoon and we were pleased that our money was well spent. Despite the fact that he had a bad case of the sniffles and a greying comb-over that blew in my face as he carted me around on his motorbike, Mr. Trung, our tourguide, was quite amicable and very knowledgable of the city. He took us to several sites including a local Pagoda where we listened to Buddhist monks chanting away, one of the famous royal tombs, local shops where they make incense and conical hats, and the ancient ruins of the Citadel. Even though Bug and I have just about had it with wandering around ancient ruins, Mr. Trung's personal addition to the tour made up for it by leaps and bounds. While we were visiting an old US bunker and overlooking a scenic river bordered by mountainous jungle, he told us a little bit about his life and his experiences in a re-education camp during the "American" War (a.k.a. the "Vietnam" War in North America). He told us of his son who is engaged to a Quebecoise girl and is anxiously waiting the completion of several papers finalizing the legalization of their marriage, and consequentially his son's move to Canada. When Mr. Trung told us he hoped his son would be able to move to our home country, we told him that we hoped so, too. (On another note, I appreciate that there is a fine line between patriotism and ethnocentrism, but Bug and I are both proud to admit that the Canadian tourists we have met on this trip have been some of the most courteous and socially conscious foreigners. We're right up there with the Germans!)

We relaxed with two refreshing bottles of Huda to mark the end of a satisfying day and then jumped on the bus for what was to be one of the worst bus rides we have taken so far.

It is unanimously agreed among travellers and locals alike, there is just no faster or cheaper way to travel up the coast of Vietnam than the bus. Bug and I have tried travelling with several different bus companies and at the end of the day they are all more or less the same. The quality of the bus, and thus the comfort of your trip, is the luck of the draw. We have had some winners and some losers, and let me tell you...this was not even close to being a runner up for tenth place.

The ride from Hue to Hanoi was approximately 12 hours so we opted for the night bus and hoped to sleep the ride away. We tried to make ourselves as comfortable as possible, but we soon realized that we had lucked out with this bus and were irritated to discover that the sticky plastic bus seats only allowed us to fit about three quarters of our butt on the seat. Together, we were half a butt cheek short of a seat. Now we have noticed it is common practice to spread out over a bus, as we are certainly not the only westerners to find the bus seats a teeny bit snug. If room permits, no one has any complaints about one person taking over two seats. But of course, it wouldn't be any other way for the two us. As more and more people boarded the bus we became less and less-than-happy campers. We were looking at a jam-packed bus. We were stuffed in there tighter than a pair of knockers in a push-up bra. There were even people sleeping on the floor. And to top it all off there was Yanni-wannabe instrumental easy rock blaring in the speaker right next to our heads. It was so terrible that Bug tried to squish bits of toilet paper in her ears to lesson the agony. We were not impressed, but we didn't have the chutzpah to ask the driver to turn it down. We had to suffer like all the rest. When we remembered the 12 hours we still had to go, we each glowered at our surroundings and stifled a massive temper tantrum.

Our luck soon changed when two snotty girls boarded the bus at our first pit stop. They flopped on the seats in front of us and when I greeted them politely and asked where they had just arrived from (which was a reasonable question since they boarded the bus with a few locals 30 minutes outside of Hue) they coldly remarked that they had just finished a tour. Both girls were clearly grumpier than old men and looked around distastefully at us and the other passengers. Now even though Bug and I were not in the greatest of moods, being the good-natured Canadians that we are, we were still friendly, polite and cooperative with all those around us, knowing that everyone was obviously as uncomfortable as we were. This was much more than you could say for these two party-poopers. Bug and I watched in astonishment as they tried to take over two seats each while some passengers had exited for a toilet or smoke break. They didn't get the hint when the bus gradually filled up again and they were the only two people who did not have passengers sitting next to them. Finally an older Vietnamese man tapped one of the girls' feet (yes, she was sprawled out horizontally on both seats) and motioned that he was going to sit next to her. She got up in a huff and stomped across the aisle to sit with her friend, who was also in a snit about having to sit up and share her seat as well. Bug and I now had a new source of entertainment. These girls were too much. I joked to Bug that these girls must be royalty and maybe I should ask them what happened to their tiaras. We soon forgot our own discomfort as we watched the person in the seat in front of the girls tried to move his seat back into a reclining position. Well, the snotty-boom-botty girl was not going to have any of this. She rudely told off the guy in front of her, insisting that he couldn't move his seat back because there was no room. She had crossed her legs and pushed her knees up against the back of his seat so that he couldn't lean back, even though her seat was leaning back and encroaching on Bug's small space. She was a serious, hardcore bitch. But it was great! Bug and I were so happy to see these two poo poo heads so pissed off and annoyed, we had completely forgotten our misery in the name of justice! We laughed to ourselves while we listened to the two knitwits babbling angrily at each other in their own language (which I think was Swedish or Danish or Finnish or something). Just when we thought things couldn't get better, the bus driver turned on the music again..but this time Yanni had been replaced with bass-thumping, engery-pumping techno dance music! Yes!!! Bug and I were howling. We couldn't wait to see the bitches squirm in there seats! It was not long before one of the dingbats stormed out of her seat and pushed her way to the front of the bus, stepping over the guy sleeping in the aisle, and fiercly making her complaint to the driver and the rest of the bus. The bus driver turned the Energy 108 remix down a notch, but after Princess Di returned to her seat, it wasn't long before DJ Vietnam was spinning again. Bug and I happily cuddled into eachother and were eventually lulled to sleep by the glamour girls' grumblings and the effects of the sleeping pills (don't worry, mom, it was only half a Gravol - no need to get all "Valley of the Dolls" on me).

We actually ended up having a horrible night's sleep anyway. The bus made several stops during the night and Bug and I just could not get comfortable. When we rolled into Hanoi at 5:30 am, the bags under our eyes were bigger than the ones we had stored under the bus. We clumsily hobbled off the bus and waited about 20 minutes for the free taxi we were promised that was going to take us to a guesthouse. We were told that if we didn't like the first guesthouse we were dropped off at, the taxi would keep taking us to other places until we found a room. Too tired to think, we gratefully climbed into the minivan with another Irish couple. When we arrived at the first guesthouse, they told us they had double rooms available for us, each for only $6. The only catch was that the rooms wouldn't actually be available until the guests checked out at 6 or 6:30am. The four of us piled into the lobby and sat down on our luggage, weary from travelling and doubly exhausted from a horrid bus ride and a subsequent poor night's sleep. The clocked ticked on past 6, 6:30, 7:00, and two hours after we had arrived, we started to be suspicious. The guesthouse clerks kept telling us the rooms would be available later and later. First they said 7am, then 10am, then 12pm and then 6pm. After about 3 hours of waiting, other guesthouses began to open and we started wandering around a city we weren't familiar with, in complete exhaustion, to try to find a decent available room. To make a long story shorter, the four of us were dicked around by numerous guesthouse touts, dragged on motorbikes to a different area of town, continously lied to about the availability and prices of rooms and then yelled at by guesthouse clerks when we confronted them with their contradiction. Finally, we were led to one guesthouse that promised $7 rooms, free internet and breakfast. By this time we were completely fed up as we had been waiting for hours for a room and were sweating from carrying our huge bags all around Hanoi. All we wanted was a bed. The four of us sat in the lobby of the winning guesthouse, the one we're at now, and while we waited for our rooms to be cleaned, we finally introduced ourselves to each other over baguettes and a can of Tiger beer. They were a very nice Irish couple and we couldn't have been stuck wandering around the city with two more patient people. We had a nice chat about our travels and the two bitchy girls on the bus (they had been in the two seats in front of the girls while we had been in the two seats behind them) and then gladly stumbled off to our rooms to catch up on the missed sleep. When Bug and I crawled into bed it was 12 noon.

We did, eventually, catch up on our sleep and since our trying guesthouse adventure we have actually been having a wonderful time in Hanoi. We are staying in the Old Quarter and even though we only have about 2 days to wander the streets, we have made the best of it and feel like we have gotten a tiny taste of this whirlwind of a city. We decided to skip the traditional city-wide tour and explore on foot, collecting our last Vietnamese souvenirs while we have the chance.

After Hoi An, we certainly don't need any more clothes, but that doesn't mean we couldn't find a way to spend more money in this country. Thanks to Lonely Planet, we were informed that one can get dirt cheap prescription glasses with designer lenses made in just 20 minutes! Well, how can you turn up an offer like that? The answer is: you can't. We spent the better part of today having fun trying on different frames and taking pictures with our camera for comparison. Over a delicous lunch, we each settled on a pair and had a new pair glasses made for $30 US!! I'm sure you'll be able to sympathize with my highly justified need for a fashionably cute pair of bubble gum pink spectacles. I appreciate your support. Really, I do.

Aside from the new specs, this evening was a highlight of our trip in Vietnam. Bug and I bought tickets to the ever-popular water puppet show, a traditional Vietnamese performance art for the last 1000 years. Our $1.50 tickets were the best value we have spent so far on this trip. The show was absolutely magical. The show took place on a tank of water with an elaborate, colourful backdrop. Vibrantly coloured, wooden puppets sprung up out of the water and performed a serious of vignettes whilst being accompanied by live music and song. The music was incredible and the puppets splashed around, sometimes spouting water or even sparks or smoke. Bug and I loved every minute of it and afterwards talked about our favourite scenes over a delicious glass of bia hoi, local Hanoi beer that is only 25 cents a glass.

Thanks again for all your comments! We can't wait to read them from the sunny beaches of Thailand!

Love,

Puff

Once again, I feel the need to let you know how much your comments make us feel closer to home. And just for the record..we fully support the use of our blog comment page as a chat room. As long as our readers don't start cyber dating each other (unless you already are) because that would just be creepy.

I realized that I did not fulfill the promise of my last blog entry by submitting a quick entry to let you know that we were not consumed by the typhoon. My bad. Thankfully, Cimaron headed north and completely missed Vietnam (yay for us!!) but crashed onto the coast of South China (not so yay for China).

We are indeed safe and sound in Hoi An, Vietnam, having an awesome time. We stayed in Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City for about 4 days and immediately started to unwind, as hoped, from our tense days in Cambodia. We are now in the sixth country we have visited so far on this trip and as usual it took us a few days to adjust. There is still a lot of poverty here, however compared to its next door neighbour, Vietnam is sailing in the breeze. This is exemplified by many subtleties including the less aggressive and prevalent nature of panhandling/begging, the fewer number of people with missing limbs, and the absence of homemade cardboard rice cookers in the gutter. And our persistant constipation since crossing the border is also a hint that albeit delicious, Vietnamese food sure takes it's sweet time moving through our digestive tracts.

The driving here, however, is even more chaotic than Cambodia. It's unreal. There are tons more motorbikes here compared to Cambodia where half the road was clogged with cyclists, thus the general speed of traffic is much faster. Intersections are still a blur to us but we have figured out that the Vietnam version of the traffic light (which is rare and hard to find) usually consists of a light on only one side of the road and it sporatically shines red to suggest stopping. The absence of a light means go ahead and plow your way through. Crossing the street is an absolute nightmere. We have watched many locals do it and each time it looks like an optical illusion. They just start walking on to the road and magically all the bikers swerve around them. Bug and I usually wait until we see a local about to cross, grip eachother's arms, clench our jaws and tailgate the brave local to the other side. On more than one occasion the local person we followed into the motorbike hurricane happened to be a microscopic, hunch-backed seventy-year-old lady. They are fearless, let me tell you.

We are also still getting used to the local currency, the Vietnamese dong. It is quite challenging to compare prices when there are 16 000 dong to 1 US dollar, however it is even more challenging trying to say "dong" with a straight face. Strangely enough when ever we ask, "Do you prefer dong?" (as opposed to US currency which is also widely used) no one else even cracks a smile. Go figure.

We stayed with a super friendly family-owned guesthouse in Saigon and spent the days following a do-it-yourself walking tour kindly outlined by Lonely Planet. We hit the major hotspots of the city including Reunification Palace, the War Remnants Museum and we even had a little ride on a cyclo, the city's bicycle version of a riskshaw and a million times less steady than the trishaw ride we had in Melaka. We were not too impressed with the War Remnants Museum, despite the raving reviews we heard from fellow backpackers, so we opted not to go on the famous Cu Chi Tunnels Tour and see more dismal war remnants but instead take the $5 full-day tour along the Mekong River. The itinerary promised a scenic boat ride to the Mekong delta, learning how to make Vietnamese rice paper, a visit to a local honey bee farm, tasting honey wine and tea with fresh honey, listening to traditional music, rowing down the Mekong in a row boat, visiting a coconut candy factory, sampling the mouth-watering coconut candy, and eating a delicious Vietnamese lunch. Sounds great, no?

What an adventure that turned out to be.

We boarded the tour bus at 8:30am and were excited to be two of about 35 other tourists ready to rock the Mekong delta. We were not so excited, however, to be two of the only people under the age of 80. This was our first indication that maybe this tour was not as "action-packed" as it sounded. We spent the entire 9 and a half hours sitting on our asses, moving from the bus, to a boat, to another boat, to a chair, to a boat, to a table, to a boat, to a table, to a boat, to another boat, to a bus. We didn't actually "do" anything at all on the tour. But we did a lot of watching and a hell of a lot of sitting and during the 2-second rice paper-making demonstration I tried to make sure I wasn't doing any snoozing. Despite the fact that lunch was a miniscule rice/vile-slab-of-meat monstrousity that we barely pecked at, I think we actually gained 10 pounds from the lack of physical movement exerted on the trip. For some reason, our tour guide was convinced that activities such as sifting through coconut-shell kitchen utensils and other souvenirs was tiring and so he instructed us to "relax" for 15 minutes after each stop on the trip. Our visit to the honey bee farm consisted of 35 people crowding around some guy holding a piece of bee-covered honeycomb. The more adventurous folks had the option of touching the honeycomb to get a little drop of honey on the tip of their finger. Wow. Excitement. We were then herded to tables and chairs where we could sample a thimble-sized cup of honey tea and pick our noses for 15 minutes.

The best part of the tour came after the tea when a group of 3 musicians appeared and sat on chairs in front of us, ready to serenade the group. The three men each played a traditional Vietnamese instrument and they accompanied a woman who joined them after a few minutes to sing. I can't really describe to you what this foreign quartet sounded like but I think Bug said it best when she said afterwards, "it was like the sound of someone disemboweling a cat." The earth-shattering sounds eminating from the group combined with the bored looks on the instumentalists faces and the sincere flowing arm-and-hand gestures made by the vocalist was a serious cause for concern. Bug and I were ready to bust a gut. But the pressure was on. Not only was the whole group sitting in silence, facing forward and fully attentive to the band, but several of the older Vietnamese tourists on our tour were tapping their feet (seemingly impossible because there was no coherent rhythm) and the few of them who weren't were glaring at Bug and I during the performance! I could feel their eyes drilling into me with a warning: "Just go ahead and laugh you ignornant westerner. Just go ahead and laugh at our culture and heritage which we've been so happy to show you! We make ourselves vulnerable to judgement and you take full advantage! Boo, you westerner! Boo!!" Well, this of course just made it all the more difficult to keep from cracking up. I flashed back to a time in grade 8 when me and and my best friend were forced to sit straight-faced through a school assembly where a fellow 8th-grader twirled around the stage perfoming a self-choreographed ballet routine to Somewhere Out There in a tutu. Man that was tough. But at least I had the excuse of being in grade 8.

We barely made without laughing, but we did, amazingly. We both silently agreed to save any further comment until we were ways away out of ear-shot of any one on the tour. Our next stop was the rowing we had so much been looking forward to. We had naively thought that being in row boats meant we would be rowing down the Mekong, but no, that wouldn't be very authentic would it? How much better to sit effortlessly in the boat and be rowed by a local Vietnamese person! And if that's not enough, let's make our rower a 70 year old woman who is barely bigger than my thumb and doesn't speak any English. Bug and I couldn't believe it. There were 4 of us big white people sitting in the boat while this tiny older woman paddled away trying to get us down the river. There were several boats in total but none with a rower that was as "unlikely" as ours. The other young male rowers soon paddled their boats ahead of ours and left our boat desperately wavering from one side of the river to the other, crashing into the reeds. Bug and I silently prayed to the heavens to help this little old lady steer us in the right direction. She was determined. We slowly and quietly drifted along while she paddled behind me sitting in a squat/straddling position. When she farted I thought I was a goner. Fortunately, I was the only one to hear her gaseous remark since she was directly behind me, because if Bug had heard heard it as well we would have doubled over in stitches. I held it together though, for the second time on the trip.

We finished this dreadful tour off at the coconut candy factory, which turned out to be a small shelter with a man stirring the liquid candy, a woman who poured it into a mould, and two girls who wrapped the candy in rice paper after it cooled. The whole process took 5 minutes. The candy was incredibly yummy...like sweet, soft taffy with a mild and delicious coconut flavour. While we savoured a little sample of the treat, we listened to our tour guide explain the visually obvious coconut candy-making process. He pointed to the candy and even though both Bug and I knew he was trying to say "peanuts," through his Vietnamese accent we both heard, "Sometimes we make it with penis." That was it. We both lost it. Right in the middle of his schpiel we looked at each other and the uncontrollable fits of laughter started. Well, what can I say. We held it together two out of three times. And two out of three ain't bad.

Aside from the tour, Saigon was good to us. We headed to our next destination, Mui Ne, a quiet beach town famous for its uniquely beautiful and most photographed sand dunes. We hired two motorbike drivers to take us to the red sand dunes, white sand dunes and red canyon and even though we took some beautiful pictures the motorbike ride alone was worth the trip. The road to the dunes was deserted, with coast and beach along one side and huge rolling sand dunes on the other. It sort of reminded me of the freeway in California that runs between the coast and mountains. Exhilirating. Peaceful. Poetic. The sand-sledding down the dunes was not that thrilling, but the drunk motorbike driver on Bug's motorbike made up for it. We swam in the beach at our guesthouse and rented boogie boards to play with in the waves and all around had a relaxing visit.

We are now about to leave Hoi An, an architechtural and cutural haven. Apparently there are many historically significant sites to see in this small town, but other than the ruins of My Son (which we visited on a half day tour) we have been here for 3 nights and haven't seen any of them. The reason is because, previously unbenownst to us I swear, Hoi An is known for their amazing local dishes only found in this town and for their numerous tailors who will make clothes for you at very reasonable prices. Yes that right, they will make your clothes. Of course most tourists seem to be ordering shirts, suits, and fancy Asian-style dresses, but Bug and I have uncharacteristly deviated from the norms of the fashion world. When the local tailors boasted that they could make anything we wanted, even from pictures from magazines, we went a little crazy. We tried testing their limits:
"So, would you be able to take children's clothes and make them into adult sizes?"
"Really? Well what about if I drew a picture of what I wanted. Would you be able to do that?"
"I see. Would you also be able to use two different colours and add horns or a tail?"

Needless to say, 12 items of clothing later we are now basically broke and we are forcing ourselves to leave this wonderful, G-d awful, fantastically budget-wrecking town. We bought our tickets to Hue, the town famous for Vietnam's conical hats, for tomorrow so now there is no turning back. Just one more stop for alterations tomorrow morning before we leave and we're outta here. I hope!

We'll be in touch again as we head towards Hanoi for our November 15 departure back to Thailand.

We miss you! (and lox and cream cheese and chicken soup with matzah balls and even Tim Hortons, believe it or not.)

Love,

Puff

Hey guys. I just spent hours uploading pictures and writing funny snippets for you guys, but I have lost it all :( I only managed to save these 3 pictures in the post. I hope you enjoy them.

This is beautiful Vietnam. Notice the organized electical wiring, a team of 3 parallel lines running from wooden pole to wooden pole. Yes this is a sign of better times.