Familiar Thais

I flew to Chiang Mai on the Monday and almost instantly remembered what I preferred about Thailand, but what I also disliked about it. I had a 6 hour layover in Bangkok and didn't feel like checking my bags and making my way into town for such a short time, so I just hung out at the airport, reading and watching movies. Even in the airport I was quickly reminded of just how prevalent prostitution is here. There were plenty of older western (that's the backpacker's official pc way of saying white) men with young girls who were either going on trips together or saying goodbye. I hate to assume it's all prostitution because I have met some lovely and legit western/thai couples, but sometimes when's there's such an age difference, it's hard not to assume. Anyways, I killed 6 long and expensive hours in the airport without much event. I ate at the mcdonald's there, which is the first time I've had rotten ronnies since getting to Asia. I had the samurai pork burger just to make it a little more authentic.

I finally arrived in Chiang Mai in the evening and went to my guesthouse. I had to argue with them to get a room because I had booked online last minute, and I guess they hadn't received the reservation yet. But I had an email confirmation from the booking website, and when I started demanding my deposit back, a room magically became available. Crisis averted, I unloaded my bags and went and explored a bit of the town, stopping at one of the many roadside massage places to work some of the travel stress out.

The main reason I was in Chiang Mai was for Songkran, the Thai new year. In theory it was supposed to start on Wednesday, but the festivities kicked off early as I learned the hard way on my way to meet up with Kim and Carissa at their guesthouse. Songkran is a water festival, and I believe the symbology is that the water is meant to wash away all the bad from the previous year and leave people with a clean start. I'm not sure how the festival looked when it was first celebrated, but now this pretty much means it's one big city-wide water fight for 4 days straight. So I was caught a little off guard on my walk when I got sprayed and splashed. The girls and I quickly bought some waterguns and decided to join the festivities. Songkran is such amazing fun. I felt like a kid again, spraying anybody and everybody with water as they passed by. That's the tricky part about Songkran – nobody is immune, so if you're outside, you're getting wet. It was such good stress relief too. As you could probably tell from recent posts, my nerves had been worked pretty thin in Vietnam. So spending 4 days blasting people in the face with a supersoaker was very therapeutic, and re-energizing. The second day was grey and rainy, but that didn't stop everybody from lining the streets once more and dousing eachother. I think I overdid it a bit because the following day I could feel my cold flaring back up, so I decided to lay low in order to not make it worse. Unfortunately this also meant I couldn't leave my room until after dark as to not get drenched again. So I went out on the last day and made the most of it, my clothes saturated within minutes. Chiang Mai has a big moat that runs in a big square around the old town. This is where the majority of the water ammunition comes from since they're not about to waste that much clean water. The downside to this is that the moat water in Chiang Mai makes the Rideau Canal water look potable. I bought a drink at one point during one day and within 1 minute of leaving the 7-11 I got sprayed, and undoubtedly got some water in my drink to. I chucked it and learned my lesson... only eat/drink indoors during songkran.

Once the sun went down though, the waterfights stopped and there was lots of celebrating... long streets were lined with vendor stalls selling food, clothes, and anything else you might need. The food in the street markets is the cheapest around, and often the tastiest, so we would go there as often as possible. Once the festival ended I spent the next few days just hanging out in Chiang Mai, exploring what the town had to offer. I also met back up with Gabriel, one of the two Americans I met when I had landed in Bangkok in January, and travelled to Phuket with. So we had a couple good nights out as well, catching eachother up on our travel stories. Unfortunately for him, he was at the end of his trip, so he had to head down to bangkok a couple days ago to fly home. He was kind enough to give me his thai cell phone, which has come in handy. I've been perfectly content without having a cell for the last 7 months, but it has definitely proved useful, trying to set up meeting times with friends I've made.

I finally said goodbye to Kim, Carissa, and Joanna (also from the volunteer program in Cambodia who met us in Chiang Mai). They were headed down to Bangkok as well to move on to other places, and I headed north on my own again. I haven't travelled on my own without friends being in the same city for more than a day or two since Cambodia, so it's a nice feeling.

I arrived in Pai two days ago and already love it here. It is a very small, laid back town. There aren't many attractions here, just a quiet respite from the hectic pace down south. Since being here I have not been offered a tuk tuk ride, drugs, or souvenirs once... you have no idea how nice of a break this is. I'm staying in a little bamboo hut, so I was surprised on my first morning to be woken up early, not by drunks, but by roosters crowing and birds chirping. It's messing with my head man! It's very much a hippie town, and it turns out you need to be careful. Not in the sense that you might get mugged, because I've never felt safer on this continent. Let's just say you have to be very cautious when ordering food with mushrooms in the ingredients. That aside, everybody here is very friendly and introduces themselves quickly. People actually smile here because they're happy, not because it will help their bottom line! So today's my third day here and I don't plan on leaving for a few more days yet. I'll be taking lots of pictures in the next few days hopefully, so check out my album a little later and there should be some new pics. I couldn't really get any photos of the craziness from Songkran due to the inherent danger of getting the camera soaked. Then how would I be able to take all these pictures, right? Here's a random video of it I found on Youtube if you want an idea of what it's like. Until next time, have a happy Easter!

A pleasant beginning of the day to you, Vietnam

I headed up to Dalat on the 29^th, which I soon realised was poor planning on my part. The 29^th was my birthday and the prospect of spending 8 hours of it on the bus was not appealing. It turned out to be the best bus ride I've had since arriving in Asia as the seats were comfortable and I actually had leg room. So that was a pleasant surprise. I arrived in the evening to a less pleasant surprise. Dalat was friggin cold! It's up in the mountains, which means the temperature actually dips beneath 10 degrees at night. I know that sounds kinda whiny to some of my Canadian friends still dealing with snow, but when you're used to lows of 35 (read: neener neener neener), 10 is a shock to the system! Luckily I had kept some warm clothes from Europe, and lugging the heavy hoodie and jeans around in my pack for 3 months finally paid off. Carin had left for Dalat the night before, so we ended up meeting up for dinner and she was kind enough to buy me a birthday beer. It was a much more subdued birthday than in previous years, but when I think of all the partying I've been doing on this trip, it's just one more day anyways. The following day I did the easy rider tour of the Dalat country side. This is where a bike driver will take you around the hills and some of the small villages nearby. It turned out to be a great day, and an amazing experience. The views were breathtaking. I could tell something was different in the hills, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it until I climbed one of them for the view. There's pine trees there! That's how friggin cold it gets, there's pine trees! Anyways, we made lots of cool stops, including a temple, a waterfall, the aforementioned hike up the mountain, a coffee plantation, a rice wine factory, a cricket farm, a flower farm, a silk factory, a “crazy” house designed by an eccentric architect and a bunch of other stuff I'm forgetting. My driver offered to take me to a dog factory, where they raise, slaughter, skin, and butcher dogs for their meat. As curious as I was, I think I made the right decision in declining. Dalat itself is an aesthetically impressive town. You can really tell the French spent some time here as French villas line the streets and hillsides – a few even still have some bullet holes in them from the war.

I'd had enough of the cold weather, so the following day I took another bus down to Nha Trang. The bus ride was only a few hours, but the views were just as impressive on the way down. We were in the clouds for a while, making visibility tricky at times. But the views were similar to the Amalfi coast bus ride, except instead of the Mediterranean to the right, it was gorgeous valleys and other mountains off in the distance.

Nha Trang was much warmer, which I was happy about. It's a beach down on the coast in the south central part of the country. The weather can be spotty, so you have to take advantage of the sun when you can. The beach itself is nice and very spread out, as opposed to the compressed beach in Sihanoukville. There's also fewer people bugging you to buy things on the beach. However, there are just as many in the streets. I must admit, I reached my breaking point for patience in Nha Trang. Normally I give a friendly no thank you to the touts and moto drivers, but it just gets so tiresome after a while, that it's impossible to stay polite. So now I either ignore them or give them grouchy grunts if they're lucky. One guy kept calling out to me “my friend my friend” but I just kept walking. So he jogged up to me to ask why I didn't want to talk to him. I told him I didn't know he was talking to me and he said “I said 'my friend'”. To which I replied that's why I didn't think he was talking to me, because he's not my friend. He then said “yes, I'm you're friend”, and I responded with “no you're not my friend. You're just another stranger trying to sell me overpriced shit that I don't need. You're the exact opposite of a friend”. Possibly too harsh, but it wears on you, having several dozen similar interaction day after day. The other thing that I must point out is that out of the 3 countries in Asia I've been to, the Vietnamese are the least friendly people from what I've seen. Most other backpackers seem to say the same thing...after having been in Cambodia, Thailand or Laos where people are generally laid back, the Vietnamese people just seem more aggressive. I get stared at constantly and many locals just blatantly point at laugh because of my beard/size combo. It's hard to explain if you haven't been here, but take my word for it...there's just a certain underlying hostility that's there. Not that this isn't a great country – I've been having a blast here. Certainly it's the most scenic I've seen so far. Just another aspect to deal with.

Anyways, back from my rant. I had fun in Nha Trang. Carin ended up making her way over the following day, so we went out for some drinks and made some new friends. We even found a shisha bar, which was a nice blast from the past. I spent my few days there relaxing on the beach when possible and taking in the sights.

After a few days I said my final sad goodbye to Carin and took the sleeper bus up to Danang. This was a less than enjoyable experience. The sleeper bus differs from regular overnight buses in that instead of seats, they have beds. I thought this was a great idea so that I wouldn't have to wrestle for leg room. Turns out they build those to Vietnamese specifications as well...the beds are tiny. I had to lie at an exact angle to have any sort of comfort. And I was on a top bunk in the middle of the bus, which meant that I was always dangerously close to falling off whenever the bus would take a sharp turn, which was quite frequent on the winding roads. There were tiny handle bars on either sides of the bunk, but not nearly enough to make me feel secure. I think I only got a couple hours of sleep, so when I arrived in Danang in the morning, I slept most of the day away. When I finally did get up in the afternoon and explored, I quickly discovered I hadn't been missing much. I was in a crappy part of town and there wasn't a whole lot to see or do. It took me three different restaurants before I finally managed to get somebody to serve me lunch instead of just laugh with other patrons about me. Clearly they don't get a lot of tourists in that area. The only reason I was really there was to catch a flight the next day anyways, so I holed up in my room for the rest of the day and just watched a few movies.

The following morning I got up very early to catch a flight up to Hanoi. When I got to the airport, I wasn't exactly thrilled to learn my flight had been delayed by 3 hours, but that's life on the run I suppose. I ended up meeting a couple cool people and hung out with them for a while. Once I finally arrived in Hanoi I made my way to my hostel where I met up with Kim and Carissa, two of my friends from Sihanoukville. We went out for drinks that night and caught eachother up on our travel stories. Another sign of my waning patience came on our walk to dinner. We were looking at the prices at one menu at a roadside eatery when a guy came up to me, poked me, and said “hello how are you” to me and then went back to his table, giggling with his friend. I kinda snapped and yelled “yeah fucking hilarious! You said hello to a big fat white guy with a beard! It's a barrel of monkeys!” I think it may be time to move on from Vietnam. Unfortunately the following morning I woke up with a bad cold. All of the buses and flights here are terribly over-air conditioned so going from extreme heat to extreme cold tends to wear on the body. So for the last few days I've just been lying low, recovering from the cold. I can't complain too much since this is my first time getting really sick (aside from the occasional Molson flu) since my bout of food poisoning in Italy. It's too bad since I really wanted to spend the time hanging out with Kim and Carissa, but I just haven't had the energy. They're heading to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand for the Thai new year in a couple days, so I decided to meet up with them and make up for missing out here. So that's where I'm heading tomorrow. I'm looking forward to moving on, since I've heard Chiang Mai is beautiful, but I will miss Vietnam, despite all of my complaints. Like I said, aside from all the hassle, it's a nice country.

Here are some pictures from Dalat. I've reached the max capacity for my former Picassa account, so this is a new one if you're keeping track.

Just in case, here's the first account with all of my pictures up until Saigon.

And here's the account from Dalat and whatever else the future holds for me.