borneo baby

Borneo’s been epic.  Sitting in the airport now waiting for my flight to KL where I’ll just kick it for a couple days before flying to London for the Rally.

So I flew into Kuching, in Southern Malaysian Borneo, almost 4 weeks ago.  Kuching was pretty sweet and I was blown away by the infrastructure, cleanliness and friendliness/honesty of the people.  Like it's almost scary how honest and genuine is here.  I guess I was expecting more of Vietnam or something.  Malaysia’s a cray cray blend of natives, Filipinos, Chinese, Indians and other nationalities so obvi the food is money.  Like it’s so money AND it knows it too.  Noodles, curries, Chinese roasted pork, laksa, etc…so good.

From Kuching I went to Bako National park where I hiked through pretty awesome jungle for a few days.  Saw some monkeys tide hunting on the beach, a bunch of wild boars and the night hike was cool too. 

Went back to Kuching after Bako and went to an orangutan sanctuary.  Nice seeing them in the “wild” technically but after about 10 minutes around 100 tourists showed up so I bounced.

A couple days later I road a speed boat up river to Kapit, a logging town that’s about 1 square kilometer.  I wanted to hang out with the infamous Iban people, the headhunters of ancient lore.  But I didn’t want to pay for some stupid tour and I heard two things.  First that some drunken dickhead runs all the tours and charges about 10x too much.  The other is that the Iban are so hospitable that it’s possible to get invited into their longhouse and end up paying nothing.  I opted for the latter.  It sounded more legit.  So I spent about a day doing what I had read online – cruising through the market, sparking convos at restaurants, etc…it all seemed pretty weird and I didn’t get very far.  I mean, like WTF is supposed to happen?  “Oh hi mam, how much do you sell your eggplant for?  Why of course, I’d love to come stay with your family and eat your food at your longhouse!”

So anyway I bought a couple bottles of rice wine and some cigarettes (supposed proper gifts for the Iban) and caught a minivan ride out to the most popular longhouse thinking I could navigate from there.  Well, showed up and it was completely torn down with a new concrete longhouse next to it.  So I was all like, “Nah brah, take me 15km that way, drop me off at the end of the road, and I’ll walk an hour upriver to this other place I heard of.”

He pretty much told me I was retarded, which I guess is fine and then took me to the end of the road.  He talked to the family at that longhouse and they informed us that the longhouse family up the river had gone in to town for the day.  I could spend the afternoon with them waiting for them to return to guide me back to their longhouse. 

Well the afternoon turned into evening and it became apparent that they weren’t returning (which was normal I was told as often the villagers spend the night in town instead of trekking back).  So yeah, got invited to stay with this guy’s family.  It was a modern longhouse, but in talking with them, no one really stays at wooden longhouses anymore.  The family was really awesome and generous…they took me around to different longhouses and I got to meet their extended family, had food, tons of tuat (homemade rice liquor).  They took me over to a famous wooden house with skulls and all, which promptly charged me 65RM (like $22) for just being there.  So, yeah, then I got a real sense of what the few remaining wooden houses are doing.  They still had satellite TV, toilets and cellphones though.  Their tats were awesome and scary at the same time. 

Went to various longhouses where we were continually invited in for more tuat and assorted foods.  Someone had killed a wild boar earlier that day so I sat out in the back with the men picked at roasted pig head and downing the rice swill.  Then more visits, more chatting, more boozing and then a huge feast with 30 some odd Iban.  Borneans, and especially the Iban eat with their hands so it was a pretty messy affair for me. 

Went back to the dude’s longhouse (I really had no idea what his name was) and someone there had also killed a pig so we had a second pig roast.  The whole while the dude and his family are offering me more of everything, told me they don’t want my money and that they’re just happy to have me there.  I was the first foreigner at this longhouse they said.  

After pig roast number two and pretty sloppy by this point, we went and “showered” in the river while the dude’s dad hunted frogs along the riverbank.  Got back to the house and figured it’d be a good time for a sleeping pill and I’d call it a night.  Oh no no no.  Then they called me out for dinner – 100% hunted or foraged from the jungle.  Different jungle plants, fried grubs, fish, etc.  Pretty good.  “Cool, now time to brush my teeth and peace,” I thought. 

Nope again.  One of their neighbors was having a “going away” party which in Iban culture is a blend of pagan rituals and well I guess western customs of getting wasted.  So in I went, at this point half drunk and pretty spacey from the sleeping pill.  The kid was sat in the middle of the room with about 40 of us in a circle around him.  An elder brought me two bowls of cock blood (rooster not penis, thank you) and I had to spoon one into the other.  Then the elders smeared the blood on the kid’s hands and forehead.  They then took turns waving the bowls of cock blood over his head and then brought in a live chicken to do the same.  This was followed by wiping his hands with cock blood, placing money in them, and then hard boiled eggs on top of that.  He then had to eat the eggs with mouth only and then the ritual was complete. 

Next day I went out hunting grubs much like Timon and Pumba in the jungle which consisted of digging through rotting logs.  Cool to do it once but pretty happy I don’t do that everyday. 

So yeah, spent the remainder of the day just laying around I guess, as they do there, and then bounced.  But right before I left the dude’s uncle came over who apparently is the head of that longhouse and said that I had to pay 50RM per night…it was “longhouse” rule.  Sounds like he just wanted money.  So yeah, that left a pretty sour taste in my mouth after the dude and his family repeatedly told me I was their welcomed guest and that I wouldn’t pay.  Even upon paying the guy and his family apologized and said they had to listen to the uncle.  Watev. 

So from Kapit I went to Niah where I did a hike to a cave full of maybe a million bats and swallows.  Pretty cool.  From Niah went to Miri which felt kinda like the Jersey Shore. 

With a few days before I was to meet up with Kank and Lily in KK up north, I decided to bounce from that armpit town and head to Brunei.  Cuz I mean, what the heck is in Brunei?  Well in short, nothing.  There’s nothing in Brunei.  There’s mosques and a mall.  I watched two movies in two days.  But I DID go diving, which was reallllllly nice there…dove a wreck of a WWII American minesweeper that had thousands of barracuda circling overhead.  Even found some bullets among the wreckage.  Ironically it was sunk after it hit a mine.  So yeah, the diving was well worth it.  The staff and other divers really made the trip…they were awesome. 

From Brunei went to KK and met up with Kank and Lily.  Ate for like 3 days straight, just powering through fish, crab, shrimp, softshell crab, etc…thuper good.  Fave was the curry leaf fried softshell crab and grilled stingray.  Then went over to Semporna, dove for a few days.  Sipadan blew my mind.  The following is just a count of the things I saw to help jog my own memory.  Unless you don’t have much else to do, it’s ok you skip it:

-       Hawksbill turtles

-       Green turtles

-       Clownfish

-       Crocodile fish

-       Schooling Jacks

-       Schooling barracudas

-       Great barracudas

-       Banded sea krait (top 3 deadliest snakes on earth)

-       Whitetip sharks

-       Black tip shark

-       Moray eels

-       4 kinds of puffer fish

-       pipefish

-       bumphead parrot fish

-       cleaner shrimp

-       dove a sunken oil rig

-       cement ship

-       American minesweeper

-       Seahorses

-       Giant grouper

-       Stonefish

Had a lot of fun with them out on the islands basically boozing, eating and chatting and then now working my way to KL. 

mixed emotions, no sex but all the same problems, HCM's legacy, in Borneo

I had a nice last couple weeks in Vietnam.  Rosita and Clarita paid me a visit and it was as if no time had passed at all.  We picked up where we left off in Guatemala and had a blast.  We kicked it in Hue a bit then rode down to Hoi An with Hieu and the gang.  I surprised the ladies by rolling up at the 4 star Pacific Hoi An where we stayed for free obvi.  From Hoi An we went to Mui Ne which isn't much but it beats Nha Trang.  Then to Saigon, spent some time there, said goodbye to Rosita and then Claire and I headed to Vung Tau, a beach town a couple hours aways frequented by Saigoners.  Had a nice couple days, came back to Saigon, did what else but eat and then flew through Singapore to Malaysian Borneo.  I had BK breakfast then a bacon blue cheeseburger with a fried egg within 3 hours so needless to say I felt a bit sick.  But oh so worth it.

As I flew out of SGN I wasn't quite sure how I felt.  Vietnam's always fascinated me and I'm so glad I had the opportunity to spend three months there.  I left the country with an album full of great experiences and a peak into Vietnamese culture but also with a multitud of questions and sad truths that confound my perspective on Vietnam.

As tourism is still relatively fresh in Vietnam, it's still easy to get that "raw feel" lacking in places like Thailand for example.  Riding a bike not 5 minutes outside of Hue's congested city center grants you a scene of Vietnam stuck decades in the past.  The idyllic Vietnam, with farmers willing their water buffalo forward to till their rice fields, women weaving baskets from bamboo, etc.  At the same time however, the repercussions from Vietnam's lack of development undoubtedly mar your experience negatively from time to time.  From what I've learned, Vietnam was mired in absolute poverty until the mid 90s or so, around the time when Clinton reopened "friendly relations" with Vietnam.  Before then, Vietnam had forged through a handful of wars in succession (French, American, Cambodian) without mentioning their own civil conflicts during and after WWII.  The wars, coupled with the whole "communism doesn't actually work" thing, made Vietnam a pretty miserable place to live.

As a result, the Vietnamese have developed a remarkable ability to survive.  They take Machiavelli's "the ends justify the means" to an entirely different level.  When you spend time in Vietnam, it's easy to see why they won all those wars, including a beatdown of a much more powerful American army.  The Vietnamese are incredibly resourceful, making sandals from old truck tires, for example.  They're also admirably resilient, working through and overcoming obstacles that most Westerners would wilt at.  And discomfort?  Not in their genes.  You think an American citizen would live 60 feet below ground in a tunnel 3 feet high for 6 years?  Oh and you need to call reception because you think the hotel's 400 thread count sheets feel more like 300?  Chances are the receptionist sleeps uncovered on a bamboo mat on top of a wooden "bed".  So sorry if she doesn't understand your pain and agony.

But there is no war in today's Vietnam.  Yes, poverty is still plentiful and government corruption impedes the advancement of many of the lower classes.  But in the cities of Vietnam today, there is no concern for a B-52 raid or rationing of rice or complete destruction of the city's water system.

The younger generations that inhabit the cities of today have transformed, have bastardized this enviable ability to survive into a vile sense of greed that drives them.  Of course not everyone is like this, but in my experience many Vietnamese in and out of the tourism industry work under this unspoken law of "greed is king".  Nobody trusts each other.  Everybody thinks that the other is lying to them or trying to rip them off.  So they try to exploit the other person first.  Yes, it's tough to do business with that kind of environment.

Petty theft is routine, tourist agencies charge one customer double the price as another just to skim off the top, college girls work as hookers on the side.  It's not because they need to buy food for their family or because their dad has cancer.  Teenagers steal purses, tamper taxi meters, lie about guest commission, etc. not out of necessity but greed.  It's because they want to buy an iPhone or a new motorbike or a nice flat screen.

Is it that much different than Western cultures?  Yes and no.  I don't indemnify bankers that give out predatory loans or used car salesmen for example.  But the extent to which greed rules is surreal.

Which leads me back to the war...why were we so worried about this "domino effect"?  How would things be if the US had won the war?  What is communism today?  Well honestly I think communism's worst enemy is itself.  It clearly doesn't work and nobody, except for those in power, actually believe in it.  Vietnam is developing exactly like China.  It's technically communist but as lil Wayne says, everything goes "to the almighty dolla".  Communism in Vietnam isn't this "everybody shares everything" policy.  To me, communism in Vietnam means that there's only one party, the elections are rigged, they censor some things and government officials have free reign to do as they please.  Which, again, I would argue isn't entirely that far from what we have in the States, though we do a better job of hiding it.  If you have money, you can do whatever you want.  If you don't, you're a slave to the state.

I also have to wonder what Ho Chi Minh would think of today's Vietnam.  He's basically a god in Vietnam, with his face all over billboards, their money, names of schools, cities, whatever.  He accused the American "hamlet" campaign of providing infrastructure to rural villages to stave off communist influences as nothing more than concentration camps designed to indoctrinate villagers.  But he himself oversaw "re-education" camps where they sent citizens to be tortured into submission, into preaching the Communist gospel.  And what would he think about kids today putting "iphone" stickers on their helmets or watching MTV?  What about how government officials go charge random "taxes" to rural peasants?

Like most Asian countries (maybe all), respect for elders and of general customs is of utmost importance.  Things like handing money over with two hands, bowing to say hello, never sticking your chopsticks in the rice, you name it and many customs that go unnoticed to Westerners are used to show respect.  This is def something I wish would transfer to our culture.  But for all the respect given to elders and traditions, women are still second class citizens.  They need to be submissive to men.  They should aspire to be a good housewife and pump out many children (hopefully boys) for her husband as he spends his evenings chain smoking and downing beers with his friends.  Men only want to marry virgins (maidens as they call them in English) yet obviously young men need to relieve their "urge" from time to time and pay a visit to a whore.  Which of course is totally respectable somehow.

So yeah.  Vietnam continues to be a fascinating place and one I will continue to go back to.  I don't mean to paint it in such a negative light in this post, but you can refer to past posts to reaffirm my love for the country.

Flew down to Kuching in Malaysian Borneo yesterday.  So far I'm loving it.  They speak English, nobody's hawking me and there's a silly variety of sinfully delicious food be it Malay, Indian, Chinese, so forth.  Heading to Bako tomorrow for a couple days getting weird in a remote jungle.







                                                                                                                 

still not ted, making bread, best job ever, cross-eyed, girlfriend?

Fuck.  It's 6am.  How did I get in my bed?  Why does my mouth taste like vomit?  And why is my head spinning?

It took me a moment, but I remembered what had brought me to that point before passing out for another six hours.

I suppose last night was yet another example of why I feel incredibly blessed to "burn" these four months chilling in Vietnam.  Except of course the projectile vomiting.  It's been a month since my last post so lemme back track a bit and I'll return.

Many people have asked what I do here so let me explain.  When confronted with the reality that I had to ship my passport to the UK for two months to acquire my Mongol Rally visas, I had the option of returning to Guatemala, kicking it in Vietnam or sitting on my thumb with mommy and daddy.  So obvi I chose Vietnam.  My heart remains in Latin America and I figured it'd be good to spend time in bewildering SE Asia before I headed back to Latin America for a long stint.  So, WTF do I do here?

Well honestly I live much like any other underemployed 25 year-old but I don't do drugs all day to burn the time.  And I don't even like that term underemployed.  Let's call it funemployed.  What's nice about living in a country where I don't speak the language and don't know many people is that I do whatever I want, whenever I want.  I am, in other words, precisely embodying the virtues outlined in the Bachelor Party Year constitution.  I came to Vietnam to focus on myself and my biz.  I live like a monk.  I awake around 630am, out the door and on my bike by 730am.  Head to one of three noodle soup stands and get bun bo cha (spicy beef noodle soup with meatballs) or if I'm feeling a bit naughty bun bo cha cua (spicy beef noodle soup with crab meatballs).  I've recently found a place that serves up the Southern special, bo ne (fried eggs with meat on a cast iron skillet covered in spicy tomato broth).  I down a caphe sua daa (iced coffee with condensed milk) and hoover my breakfast.

Then it's off to one of two coffee stands.  I go to one when I want to be left alone and the other if I feel chatty as I know about half the clientele there by now.  Another coffee and then it's back to the hotel room/junkie den/office by 9am.  Then, jittery and bugged out by the multiple coffees, it's headphones in, EDM live set on and to work I go.  I spend my day working on a few projects:

1) Promoting and managing this Spanish school in Guatemala which at this point has become my main source of income.  Thanks Wikinvest for the online marketing and SEO experience - the school's killing it now.

2) Kijani Grows biz dev.  We just got funded for our Guns 2 Gardens program in Oakland and are moving in to our first real office this week.  I've decided to move back to SF in January 2014 for at least 6 months to help grow the biz.

3) Hoi An Silk Village - like I mentioned earlier, I've been doing some consulting for this new tourist attraction in Hoi An.  Got the sales manager removed, made people like us again and built a new site.  Glad that project's done.

4) Working on fellowship and research applications.

5) Mystery guest - I fortuitously found myself as a mystery guest and quality assurance spy for a 4-star beach resort in Hoi An.  Free unlimited food, private beach access, amazing room.  What was the first thing I did when I checked in?  Yep, you knooooow it!  Took a bath.  Bathtub even had a headrest homie.

6) Cunt punting this stupid bitch from Oz and rebuilding Hieu's business.  You see, this fat chick named Sarah Avenell that lives on 375 Benowa Road in Gold Coast, Australia (for SEO purposes) helped Hieu build a website and TripAdvisor for his motorbike tour business five years ago when she was living here.  Noble right?  Well not if you're this abominable whore.  So she took a 20% commish for simply forwarding online bookings to him (no translations or anything) and is such a drunk she only had about a 50% response rate to emails.  Then she went back to Oz several months ago and fell completely off the radar.  Zero responses to any customers.  She didn't even pay her hosting fees so the site shutdown.  Customers find them via TripAdvisor, click to the site, and then nothing.  So long story short, we finally got a hold of her and said look, just give Hieu the passwords.  You clearly have moved on and he has no way to earn money right now.  She gave us an unrepentant NO, which I can only imagine was accompanied by her jowls jiggling as she stuffed another Twinkie in her fat face.  She said it was her business and she would do as she pleased.  Right, so even though you're 35, live with your parents in a gated community and drive a $60K Mercedes (thanks Google StreetView), you're more important and you don't mind putting Hieu and his 9 drivers out on the street.  So it took about two weeks, but I've made a new website and TripAdvisor account and gone guerrilla on the old TA account so we're now redirecting all business to Hieu.

Then I go eat lunch, generally com thit heo (rice with pork and veggies), then charge into the countryside on my bike.  Come back after an hour or two ride, snack on banh mi op la thit heo (baguette with fried egg and grilled pork), shower and then practice Spanish before the gym and dinner.  After dinner I chill on the corner with my adopted Vietnamese grandma (I swear the most amazing smile ever) and a promoter from a local bar.  Chat a bit about culture, life, watevs.  Walk home, relax a bit, pop a sleeping pill at 9, read until 10 and then I'm out.  I drink very little and have stopped smoking pot (sorry, I cracked the other night, but no more).  My body and mind feel pretty tits mcgee right now.

Right, so back to the beginning.  After helping Hieu get his business back in order, I've become a bit of a legend with his family and other riders.  So I get a free ride to meetings and such and I've spent quite a few nights with Hieu and his family at his house over dinner and drinks.  He invited me to his house last night, the anniversary of his father's death.  Apparently in Vietnam the entire family, extended family and any family friends gather to pray to the altar, feast and get really wasted.  It's not the first time I've been invited to an Asian family's gathering, so I knew what was coming - "the let's get the white boy shithoused game."  Hieu's nephew picked me up at 4pm and we headed over.  A few beers and an onslaught of incredible foods.  Appetizer of jellyfish salad (much better than Chinese jellies), then soup with fried wontons stuffed with pork and shrimp.  Beers and the omnipresent "Yo!" or cheers were of course abundant.  Then out came banh cuon, or soft rice noodles with roasted pork and then stewed pork shoulder.  Redonk.

So, feeling a bit buzzed, I sat back and soaked up the experience.  Here were 50 or so family members and friends in this tiny one-bedroom house partying and feasting, all in the name of a dude that died 40 years ago.  Pretty sweet tradition.  I felt honored to be part of the celebration.  It's one of those things that make me happy I'm spending a lot of time in one place, really trying to get to know a particular culture instead of only nibbles of a handful as typical traveling enables.

So as the plates were being cleared at around 6pm I thought to myself, "Hey that wasn't so bad, I haven't drank too much yet."  Ah but then the big boys showed up.  So I get invited over to one table.  One of the guys spoke a bit of English so we started talking.  Turns out he was a soldier for the South during the War.  He spoke fondly of those days, when he was my age, blowing lines of coke before jumping onboard a Huey and manning a 50 caliber machine gun.  Things weren't so nice, however, when the North won the war and he was sent to prison.

Anyway, he really got the drinking going.  "Cheers" isn't the same here - you don't say cheers and then have a sip.  Well, sometimes you can, but the general expectation is that you kill the glass.  So as I was the first foreigner to attend this family event, amplified by my help with Hieu's business, the remaining crew was pretty keen on this whole "let's get this kid blackout."  Saying no to older people in Asian cultures isn't really recommended and I especially wasn't going to do it at a semi-sacred event.  When I did try to suggest we merely take a sip they said something in Vietnamese which I can only assume meant "Don't be a pussy and drink honkie."

So we played that game for a bit and then they went home.  I was relieved.  They had brought out drinking food - cha, nem and garlic cloves and I thought I could just have some food, sneak a ciggie and relax as people filtered out.  But no.  Then a new batch arrived.  And another case of beer.  And so it went.  Pretty soon I wasn't even able to touch my elbow with my off hand as you do when cheers'ing older folks.  They were relentless.  It was like we were boxing and I couldn't get off the ropes.  Just taking one punishing blow after another, chugging beer at an alarming rate.

But I stayed composed.  Composed-ish.  Finally pleaded for a ride home at 9pm, stumbled into my room, spent a good 15 minutes vomiting and then passed out.  Happy anniversary dude.

The girl that works reception at the hotel next door is quite possibly the hottest girl on the planet.  Like no joke.  And I don't even like Asian girls.  Sleeping with her has honestly not even crossed my mind she's so hot.  I feel like if I did, it would I don't know, tarnish her or something.  So everyday I've said hi and we've had short conversations but I finally BPY'd it and asked her to dinner the other night.  You know, I'm pretty judgmental.  Very judgmental actually.  I've been called a "judgmental asshole" on a few occasions if memory serves me correctly.  But I admit that.  So since I judge all these white dudes young and old that come to Vietnam and Asia at large and marry a local girl that doesn't really speak English while not really speaking the native language, I thought hey well maybe they're on to something.  Maybe you can love someone without much verbal communication?  I mean, after all, who I am to judge if I've never experienced it?

Yeah, f that.  I'm going to judge the hell out of those guys.  After my experience there's no possible way one could ever have a meaningful relationship with close to zero verbal communication.  And this is like the hottest girl ever!!!  Don't get me wrong, I had a great time...we went to nhau, had some grilled meat and morning glory, drank a ton, got to know each other a wee bit better through broken English and very broken Vietnamese.  But yeah dudes, like WTF?  Don't be a creepy white guy just exchanging awkward smiles and high fives with your  "girlfriend."
  
Alright ya'll so that's what I've been up to here, jus straight kicking it.  Gonna be here for another month or so til Borneo and then London.  Remember kids - not all who wander are lost.

working with communists, travel hate, junkie den, refresh

So working here is tough.  Really tough.  I'm working kinda like a biz dev consultant for this silk "village" down in Hoi An.  First, the language barrier obviously.  Of course, it's not anyone's fault, but it's frustrating nonetheless.  Sometimes I talk to someone for 15 minutes in a really slow, drawn-out, methodical way, with the person nodding in agreement and saying "Yes, I understand."  Only to finish the process when the person asks me the original question, the one that I had just spent 15 minutes explaining.  There's also everyone's obsession with Facebook - it's as if Facebook holds the power to all life.  I just spent a week redesigning this website, but the only the concern they have is making FB more prominent or promoting things on FB.  F me.

Anyway, life goes on.  It pays the bills and it's an interesting learning experience.  I've come to realize that I don't really like traveling.  And I like travelers much less.  I much prefer living in a place for an extended period of time, getting to know the people, lay of the land, intricacies of that particular location.  Of course, I realize that it's impossible to do that everywhere you go and being a "traveler" or tourist is completely necessary if you're gonna go see places.  But what I say when I don't like traveling means that I just really don't like the 2 days in a place, on a bus, 2 days in another place, on a bus, etc.  And in Vietnam you meet a lot of people that are frankly beyond cliche.  They're wrapping up or starting their SE Asia tour and have only the most superficial knowledge of anything they're doing or seeing.  They get off a bus, stay at a backpacker hostel (cuz you ain't legit less you call yourself a backpacker), eat at a touristy joint for 10 times the price, party with other white people, take pictures of a few sites, get back on a bus and repeat somewhere else.  Or sometimes I meet the Henry David Thoreau's of SE Asia travelers, the ones who wear the baggy cotton pants that only westerners wear, go meditate on some dude's tomb and claim that they're a child of the earth.  All equally awful.

So it was nice when I met Aki, a fluid (read sexually free) Canadian chick that's been living here for 6 months working for a charity that's reviving traditional paper flower making (i couldn't make this stuff up).  Not only is she a much appreciated fluent English speaker, but she's been living in Asia for the past 5 years or so and we have pretty similar thoughts on living out here.  Thuy and I rode out to the village she works at and it was a pretty sweet lil Saturday.  We rode out through the back roads, racing through rice paddies, listening to the evening Commi news on public loud speakers, the usual.  Stopped for a quick snack (a whole roast duck) on the way back into town.  Pretty coo.

Being by myself and frustrated with work started taking its toll on me.  Not that I was depressed or anything, just a bit down.  So it was nice when a new acquaintance Hieu, a motorbike driver, invited me over to his house for dinner last night.  Riding over the bridge with the hills in the background at sunset reminded me how beautifully awesome this place is.  Went over to his place and experienced the male/female segregation for really the first time in Vietnam.  The men sat on the floor drinking and eating as the women cooked and then sat in the back part of the room gossiping and knitting.  Well, I guess it's how it is.  Anyway, dericious food and a much needed break from life in my bubble.

Going to Hoi An on Monday for a week of work down there.  Adios.

Oh yeah, just got a job in September in TBD Latin America to work with a microfinance institution providing student loans to kids (don't worry, it's not the same system as the US).  So going back to a place where I understand the language.  Thank Hey-zeus.

ghost riders, traveling man, employment and beyond

So been in Hue for 3 weeks now.  And I'm really loving it.  In particular, I don't speak the language and have few friends here.  So I'm able to be alone for 95% of the time.  Which I was unsure about at first, but I've come to realize how much I love being alone.  Not being anti-social per se, but having the opportunity to think and self-analyze.  It's really a luxury.  And I have no one to report to.  Being with some of my married friends here I've re-remembered how lucky I am that I don't need to field calls of "where are you honey?" or "i'm waiting for you at home, when are you coming back???".

So I've been spending my endless amounts of free time working out, reading and practicing Spanish, applying to fellowships and working on other side projects.  It's awesome, especially considering I spend about $10/day living like a king doing it.  One of my fav activities is going for long runs into the countryside, through rice paddies and by mud huts, with everyone looking at me like an alien.  Time will tell if I turn into Teddy Kaczynski but so far so good.

My friend from Guate, Shelley, paid me a visit a couple weeks ago and we had a good time traveling around Hue and then motorbiking it up to Paradise Cave.  We got to hum through the same karsts and rice fields that I traveled through via train.  Of course, we ended one of the nights "nhau'ing it" as I would say, getting hammered over grilled meats and rice wine in Khe Sanh.  The concept of "nhau" btw, is uniquely Vietnamese.  The loose translation is "getting wasted and eating lots of grilled meats".  So I can't come up with a single word translation in English.

Obvi we traveled with Nam, the same driver that took me and Alby to Hoi An last year.  I'm actually staying at his brother's hotel.  So basically through a variety of connections and the ability to speak English, I've partnered with a handful of folks here in Hue and am acting like a biz dev consultant for their businesses, all related to tourism.  In fact, a "quick" biz meeting with Nam tonight turned into a booze fest (vietnamese biz meetings either leave me hyper-caffeinated or drunk, drunk in this case) where we discussed starting Hue's first real homestay.  A small but growing part of me wants to become the Shantaram of Hue, with a hand in all tourism-related businesses like currency exchange, drugs, tours, homestays, restaurants, etc.  But no hookers.  I'd never do that.  Speaking of which, the low lifes about town have finally remembered me I think.  You know, the guys that offer you weed or girls or whatever.  I started saying things like "no hablo ingles" or "nah, I'm good your mom blew me this morning" and though they didn't understand a single word, I think they got the point that I wasn't interested.

But yeah, I'm gonna keep my feet moving.  Just focused on this silk tour in Hoi An for now...which is shaping up to be a fun project.  I've found my go-to's here, the places with good food and fair prices (the amount of arguments I've gotten into over white people prices is insane) so I feel really comfortable in my lil shell here in Hue.

Yeah, that's pretty much it for now.  All quiet on the western or far eastern front if you will.  Adios cabrones.

worlds colliding, life as a buffet, squat toilet train, settling in

My 4+ days in HK only solidified its place in my heart as the top spot in the world.  It just has everything...I think it's cute when NYer's blab on and on about how New York is the greatest city in the world.  To me it's as if Hong Kong stole NYC's lunch, ate it, then took a dump on New York's chest.  It's that good.  Spent some good time with Nathan, walked around a ton and really just ate.  I found myself in a legit dim sum place as the only white person and got to chase around the carts, bark in Chinese (or attempt to at least) like the others to get what I wanted and bump elbows with my fellow patrons.  Went out for drinks and Indian food one night and then ended up in a BYO ratty hip-hop/techno-pop club dancing until 4am or something.  Woke up naked in an unknown, luxurious apartment with a stunning view of the city.  Ate, what else, ramen, to kill the hangover and then had some of the bomb diggiest cantonese food for dinner/second meal of the day.  Even squeezed in a lovely beach day the following day.

Flew from HKG to Hanoi.  You know, a lot of people say that there's no point or at least that they have no interest in going back to a place for the second time.  And yeah, I can see where they're coming from, but at the same time, you have such a different perspective going back to a place.  Spent a couple days getting lost in the back alleys of that Commi concrete maze, doing really what else, but eating.  Was treated to some awesome hospitality with the family that I stayed with last time and really didn't need to waste anytime doing things that I had already seen.  Just focused on the food.  Spent an afternoon on "beer corner" downing 25 cent cups of homemade beer, people watching and drunkenly philosophizing about life and what I wanted to do in the coming months.

Since I had already taken a night bus from Hanoi to Hue, I opted for the more expensive and less comfortable day train.  The thing is the means of travel you use gives you such a varied lens through which to view your journey.  And it didn't disappoint.  Though it was a honestly incredibly boring 14 hour trip (I got to watch "She's the Man"), the scenery was killer.  During the daylight we were humming along lakes and rivers, slicing through rice paddies and cruising through limestone karsts with only a handful of souls in the surrounding landscape.  It was kinda odd tho that in villages of mud huts, where people who know that after a lifetime of endlessly toiling in the same fields as their past generations and who physically work around the graves of their lost ones, ostentatious 16th-century replica Christian churches rose up in the "town" center.  And yeah, that's a really ugly run-on, so deal with it.  Like, where did these monstrosities come from?  A U.S. church?  USAID?  I don't really know.  But in a country like Vietnam something tells me it's not the government and that this aid money could be spent in better ways.

Anyway, got off the train in Hue and in about 8 seconds I was traveling through an entirely different lens, whipping through traffic on the back of a motorbike.  I almost forgot how fun that was.  Had the driver swing by my friend Thuy's office and successfully surprised him.  Caught up with him and then  checked into my fav lil crack den hotel.  Met up with Thuy again and by the time dinner was over (bun bo hue, so good) I had a job and travel plans for the next 3 months.

heng gap lai!

speed, more speed, walking across, lots of nothing, magners

This'll be brief.  Took the overnight bus from San Ignacio northwards.  Got off in that nothing town I mentioned earlier and Alby (rightfully so) suggested we get back on the bus and keep going to Ensenada.  Ensenada's a cruise ship border town so it's filled with cheap prescription drugs, dirty bars and creepy dudes.  Well when in Rome right.  So we checked in to an hourly motel and hopped on the party train.  Long story short, after an amount of certain stuff that would make Robert Downey Jr. spin, too many beers, a good amount of nudity and going to bed at 5am we woke up not with a hangover, but with an empty, hollow, omg what happened feeling.  I did manage to meet a really cool chick tho...that wasn't a hooker!

Anyway, a few days of recovery and we crossed the border by foot in Tijuana then trained it back to LA.  Kicked it in LA for a couple weeks doing frankly nothing.  Did have a memorable afternoon with Herm though.  And you know, being on the road and seeing stuff and what not as I've been doing, I've come to realize that it's these kinds of little things that you really end up remembering.  People talk about these transcendental, life-altering experiences traveling, but I would tell them to piss off and that life is really made up of events like this - We got stoned (surprise).  Made some lunch together, hung out, then walked down the cliffs on low tide and spent a couple hours hiking around and exploring the tide pools.  Blunted it (surprise).  Then we went into this cave that I had always seen but never been in.  The opening is about the size of a man on his stomach but once you crawl through it opens up to maybe 30ft x 30ft.  Really awesome afternoon with my lil bro.  And something that keeps you grounded in what the human experience is really about.

Hopped up to SF for 5 days, saw Bert and the gang which twas awesome, ate at HOPR (omg so good) and then flew over to HK.  So here I am.  Half drunk on Magner's in SoHo HK being British in Asia and staying with Nathan.  Talk soon once I'm back in Vietnam.