[travel] Beach blogging in Halong Bay, Vietnam

Hey there everybody,

I'm currently hanging out on a beach in a small private island in Halong Bay, Vietnam. Halong Bay is the sort of place where a Bond villain would put his hideout... it consists of thousands of jungle-covered limestone islands jutting out of the sea. You could build your fortress in a cave in one of these islands, and if you only entered and departed at night, no one would know you existed. I don't normally go for boat cruises or lazy days on beaches, but the tour I booked offered lots of opportunities for exploration of the islands, so I'm not getting bored at all. Today they offered a hike that 70% of the tourists chickened out on... it involved a 1000-foot ascent up craggy rocks to the tallest peak in the area, giving us stunning views of the archipelago. Amusingly, the fastest hikers were a German couple in their 60s. Yesterday was sea kayaking through ocean caves.

The other guests might find it amusing that my idea of a relaxing time on a beach involves blogging, but hey, that's how my brain works.

Also, I think if I were not here alone, I'd probably be doing something else right now.

[travel] I know the real price, motherfucker.

Vietnam is famous for price-gouging and scamming tourists, although a fellow traveler has noticed that they gouge each other as well.

I found I can bargain down food vendors by 20-50% and motorcycle taxis by as much as 80%, though I'm sure I'm still paying well above the local price. The strangest experience I had was with the public bus system though. We had been warned ahead of time that the price for the bus from Hoi An to Danang was 10,000 dong, but they often charged foreigners several times that. We arrived at the bus station prepared to negotiate, but saw no one to negotiate with. The operators just told us to get on the bus. Bad sign. In the station I noticed a sign in Vietnamese that said:

blablabla 10km – 4000 dong
blablabla 10-25km – 7000 dong
blabla 25km blabla Danang – 10000 dong

I took a picture of the sign.

We got on the bus along with a colorful assorrtment of locals, and a few miles later we were harassed for a much larger fare. My companion (an Israeli who has a lifetime of bargaining experience from the tough Arab street markets) told the fare collector we were only willing to pay 10000. He hovered over us, insisting on the larger amount for a while, and then moved on to shout at a nearby Vietnamese passenger about her fare. When he came back to continue bugging us, I showed him the picture I had taken of the fare sign.

He got a very annoyed look on his face and then took our 10000 dong.

The actual amount we were arguing over wouldn't even buy a coffee over in the US, but I want to make it a principle not to encourage skimming as long as it doesn't detract from my vacation experience. Personally, I found shutting down this guy's racket to be rather fun.

[travel] Motorbiking day 2

After the great success of our first motorbike expedition, we decided to go on another excursion, this time from Hue. This journey took us to a long sandy island that was filled with a mixture of schools and elaborate graveyards. The graves were all fairly recent and ran the gamut from simple sand mounds to incredibly ornate temples all mixed together. If the graves had some official name or significance attached to them, they'd probably be packed with tourists, as they are aesthetically fantastic. Instead, the only people around aside from us were massive throngs of schoolkids on lunch break. They all wanted to chat and practice their English, which was great fun.

At one point we took a side road and ended up at the entrance to a beach. The beach facilities were spare but massive – there were two enormous covered parking structures for motorcycles and cars, symmetrically placed to each side. Each parking structure had a symmetrically placed loud aggressive sales guy.. It was hilarious to watch the two of them symmetrically vying for our business from a couple hundred feet away, surrounded by a huge empty expanse of concrete and sand. We each headed toward one of them, made a big circle around them, and headed back out.

A few minutes later we were going down a small side street, and a guy sitting on his front porch waved for us to stop. Soon we were the star attraction of a family gathering on their front porch. Several other people from the neighborhood stopped by, and we found a lot to talk about despite the language barrier. There was arm wrestling, picture taking, comparison of heights, skintones, and shoe sizes, and what appeared to be an attempt to set me up with a girl who looked to be about 14.

We zipped along through several more small towns and rice paddies, and crossed back over a bridge that overlooked some ingenious mazelike fish traps.

Because most people on the road are riding bicycles or motorbikes, when you're on the highway you really see all the other people on the road. It's much more humanizing that way. I've watched many other motorists do double-takes as we pass by. Some of them have pulled alongside me and started conversations, which is charming but way too distracting for someone of my skill level. It's also beautiful to watch a flock of Vietnamese women all dressed in traditional white robes, bicycling along and talking.

This is why I like motorbikes... you can go all day without seeing another tourist, and you can meet people who are not yet sick of tourists.

[travel] Bad action movie cliches

Motorbiking in urban Vietnam is like a bad action movie chase scene cliché. As the protagonist and various villains are zipping along the street, a garbage truck pulls in, blocking half the road. As everyone moves to get around it, a child suddenly darts into the street, chased by her mother. Then, an oblivious old lady begins crossing a bit further down, carrying a long pole with various items dangling from it. Getting around her would be no problem except that there's now a truck coming the other direction and a bus passing it by driving into the lane of the oncoming traffic, and there's a huge pothole on the shoulder of the road where you'd normally pull over, and what is that rock doing in the middle of the road...

This would make a fantastic videogame.

[travel] Vietnam fashions

According to a fellow traveler who grew up in Vietnam, being somewhat fat was the fashion ideal for women even in the big cities as of 20 years ago. Now the fashion for women is to be as thin as possible. It's interesting... the US went through this transition a little under 100 years ago once the majority of people could purchase enough food to overeat. Basically, fatness used to be an (albeit unreliable) indicator of status as it implied wealth.

Weight aside, the prevailing Vietnamese city fashion involves wearing a lot of blingy ugly poor imitation designer clothing. Ick.