Hanoi (March 8, 2011) -- I'm back in this chaotic city where horns blare, motors screech and where being a pedestrian involves harrowing moments of imminent peril.
I flew in last night from Phnom Penh and was sure that my luck would be better this time around since my backpack made it to luggage carousel before I got through passport control.
After bargaining hard about the taxi fare into the city, I threw my stuff in the trunk and the driver and I took off. We seemed to be going in an odd direction and not at all headed toward town. It was dark and the roads were dusty. The driver kept pointing out and slowing down outside of massage parlors.
"Right. I understand," I said. "It's a massage parlor. Let's go to the city now."
But we kept driving until we stopped to pick up a friend of his.
Then the three of us took a turn down an even darker dirt road that was lined with brick walls. Occasionally there were food stalls with steaming pots of something foul.
I didn't ask where we were going since they were sure to lie to me if they were planning on mugging me and leaving me in the middle of this maze that we had entered. I doubted that I could take both of these guys since they probably know some kind of martial arts stuff. So I just sat quietly and tried to stay calm.
A short while later we emerged out of the maze and near the airport again. We parked near a group of taxis with drivers standing around.
"You go with him," the original driver said, pointing to a surly looking chap who had a small car without a trunk.
So I switched cars and we were soon on the road to the city. I have no idea what that whole detour was about. If it was to scare me, then it was wonderfully effective.
The ride was going well until my driver came upon a busy, vehicle-clogged intersection and tried to turn down a one-way street which was filled with scooters and cars and buses coming the other way. I'm not sure why he did this -- it's likely that he was from the country, didn't know the streets well and knew only one way to get to the destination -- but it was a disaster.
What he had successfully done was to get his car smack into the middle of gridlocked intersection that featured all the traffic slowly coming right at us. It wasn't dangerous since no one was really moving, they were just inching along trying to get out. It was just stressful for him I imagine.
The worst part was when another driver slowly inching towards us in the chaos hopped out and came over and started yelling at my driver. I thought there was going to be a fight. Meanwhile, I was sitting in the back working on a play list of songs for my going-away party.
But we finally made it out and onto the open road. The driver and I both lit up cigarettes.
We weren't done yet, though. The driver had misunderstood where I wanted to go since knowing how to read a map or how to find addresses is an optional requirement for taxi drivers here.
Knowing how to press your horn for four consecutive minutes is the M.B.A. of taxi driving in Vietnam.
So I finally did arrive back at the Freedom Hotel. They were happy to see me and it was good to be back. I did notice though on my way to dinner down the street that The Lucky Hotel is just a few doors down and across the road from the Freedom. I probably should have been staying there the whole time.
But I'm loyal and so the Freedom Hotel it is. I also have a few other places in the area that I frequent. There's my pho place for breakfast every morning. I have a routine there; I walk in and the lady behind the steaming pot of noodles says either "pho ga" for chicken noodle soup or "pho bo" for beef noodle soup. I just repeat back to her whatever she says. And then we laugh.
Today is a free day in the schedule since the past week or so has been busy with tours and travel.
My last tour of the trip was to see the temples of Angkor Wat, north of the tourist town of Siem Reap in Cambodia.
My guide (in the loosest sense of the word) was a tuk-tuk driver who offered to drive me around the massive complex of temples all day long for $20. (A tuk-tuk is a motorcycle with a covered carriage in the back. Here's a picture of one.)
I wouldn't really recommend my guide since we started with the largest temple and then went in a circuit where the temples got smaller and less impressive. It would have been much better to go in the reverse order and end with the big one.
Like I said, he wasn't much of a guide. At one point I asked what the history of a temple was. "I have no idea," was the response.
Really? You're not even curious as to what this thing is that you drive to and sit outside of everyday? Good thing you're a pro at honking the horn.
The temples were cool for about the first two hours and climbing on them was exciting since the smallest mis-step would result in a sprained ankle or a broken leg and would certainly lead to major pain and a possible limp for the rest of your life.
And the heat made things even more Indiana Jones-esque. I would venture to say that it was well above 100 degrees F.
The best thing about my guide/driver, in his favor, was his insistence that I not try to walk from temple to temple. It was miles and miles between them and I would not have lasted long in the sweltering heat.
But I'm done with the heat for the time being since Hanoi is just as cold and cloudy as when I left it two weeks ago.
So this is how the trip ends.
I've not found any new religion or any enlightenment, but I really didn't come for that anyway. I took this trip to see a new part of the world and to have some time to reflect on where I've been and where I want to go next. I haven't made any huge strides on the second point besides what I had already decided, but it's been good to have some time to get some distance and reflect.
I did make some random observations along the way.
Peace -- Why do Japanese people always make the peace sign when posing for photos? The war is over. This is almost as strange as Asian people who don't smile at all in photos. They might as well be giving the camera the finger. I imagine them back at home showing their photos to friends..."Here's me in front of a huge temple. And you said I couldn't do it! Ha! Ice grill!"
Lazy fingers -- Vietnamese men grow their fingernails very long as a sign that they are so well off that they don't have to trim their own nails. It's disturbing and creepy and makes no sense at all.
Meeting point -- Here's how to negotiate is Southeast Asia; you ask how much an item is and then you offer to pay half. Eventually you end up in the middle and that's what you pay. It's quite easy once you get the hang of it.
DQ -- There is a Dairy Queen in the Phenom Penh International Airport. They don't have chicken strip baskets or biscuits and gravy. They only have chili cheese dogs, which aren't bad. I had to eat there just for the unabashed randomness of finding a Dairy Queen in this part of the world.
Improvements -- Thanks to dirty surroundings, filthy money and floating grime in the air, I've cut back drastically how much I bite my nails since I arrived. And washing my hands before sitting down to eat has also become instinctual behavior since I arrived because I suspect that the little bout of sickness at the beginning of the trip was due to underestimating how dirty this dusty part of the world actually is. Lesson learned all too well.
God bless you, Steve Jobs -- Riding on bumpy buses and on boring boats for hours at a time would have been terrible without my iPhone, which I nearly didn't bring. Thanks to the music and podcasts that I had loaded before I left, I was able to block out the terrible tunes the driver had chosen or the squeaky and loud phone conversation that the local woman behind me was having.
The iPhone was also a huge help because of the alarm that I used to get up almost daily to make it on time for morning tours and stuff like that. I'm not sure what I would have done without it.
On my first trip out of Hanoi to the Pink Pegoda, I befriended a French woman who was a few months into a year-long trip with her boyfriend around the region. As I got out my iPhone to cancel out whatever awful noises were happening around us, I asked her if she had brought an iPod or an iPhone along for the trip.
She lowered her eyes and shook her head slowly, "No, I didn't." Pause."That was a big mistake."
So that's the final dispatch for now, and that's why it was a bit longer than usual.
I hope the previous dispatches have been somewhat entertaining and less than annoying.
Until the next time, best of luck to everyone.
Take care,
Brett
