Onwards through the Xianjiang Desert

July 5, 2017

At the hostel in Korla I picked up a business card for a hostel in Kuche. I got off the train, hopped in a taxi, and got dropped off at the hostel, only to be informed that this place doesn’t take foreigners. Agh! China! Why must you make this so difficult? It was kind ironic that the girl at this hostel that only deals with Chinese people spoke perfect English, but at the hostel that does take foreigners in Korla, they speak zero English. Hmm. She informed me that I’d have to stay at a hotel, which would cost about $20. I can handle that.

Apparently there is a bit of an oil boom around this place, so big hotels have been popping up in the last few years. I picked the closest one. I know how to book a room just fine in Chinese, but of course the receptionist is plastering me with a million questions. Fortunately translation apps are getting so good now that she could just speak into the phone and it would pop up in English. They wanted my age, occupation, marital status, previous destination, next destination, etc. Who knows why. They like to keep strict tabs on everyone in Xinjiang.

Ok, so the one cool thing to do in Kuche is called the Tianshan Grand Canyon. But it’s like 60 miles outside of town. I read there was a bus, so I stopped at the bus station. No bus. Damn. I guess it’s taxi time. I found a guy to take me there, wait, and take me back for about $40. The drive out there is really interesting, lots of red, jaggedy rock mountains. It was raining when we got there and apparently they weren’t selling tickets right now because it was a flash flood warning or something. Great. It was time to play the waiting game. A little later on the rain was reduced to a drizzle and a chinese guy came in to buy tickets. Soon enough the Chinese guy starts yelling his head off at the ticket selling guy, who is just sitting there with his arms crossed. I’ve seen this a couple times now, but I presume yelling and screaming during an argument is more socially acceptable (and maybe more effective?) in China. In the end he got his tickets 5 minutes later, and I got the go ahead too!

It’s a ten minute walk to get into the canyon and soon enough you’re surrounded by towering orange/brown rock walls on both sides. It was actually a good thing that it had been raining because it created some little waterfalls cascading down the sides. After 40 minutes there was a booth and the guard said I couldn’t go any further, which was kind of a bummer, but what can you do. On the way home we got stopped by the police and I had to get out and they scanned by bag, checked my passport, and asked me a bunch of questions about what I was doing outside of town. I showed them the photos of the canyon. What did they think I was doing out there?

I haven’t touched on this yet, but the police presence in Xinjiang is stronger than I have seen anywhere else in the entire world. It’s pretty nuts. On our trip outside of Turpan we were stopped at police check points about 7 or 8 times. Usually they just check the passports, or sometimes they just let you keep going, but the police checks are everywhere. And the thing is the amount of violence there has been in Xinjiang doesn’t warrant this level of security. There have a been a few small time Uygher terrorist incidents a few years ago, nothing recently, but it appears now they use fighting terrorism as a guise to oppress the Uyghers and keep them on lockdown. In the cities they have built these mini police stations every other block. It’s pretty wild. Shocking that the Chinese government are a bunch of assholes to anyone who isn’t Han Chinese.

that's a cool looking building, let's put a police station in front of it

But anyway, it’s the Uyghers that make Xinjiang such an interesting travel destination. The Uygher parts of town are about a million times more interesting to walk around than the Han parts of town. They’re much noisier and chaotic with big markets, street side vendors, massive circular nan bread and guys grilling lamb kebabs everywhere, vibrant traditional dress, cool architecture (the wooden doors are always very ornate) and interspersed with the occasional mosque and the policemen with big guns. So that’s exactly where I got dropped off when we got back into town. After traveling so much in the country it’s neat to be in China that doesn’t feel anything like China.

And that was about it for Kuche. Next up was the train to Kashgar, which was supposed to be a 10 hour ride, but it got delayed for 6 hours, making for a very long travel day. My six bed cabin was me and a young Uyghur family with a bunch of young children. The husband and wife looked to be in their early twenties and already had three kids. It wasn’t the best arrangement for sleeping, but they were all very friendly, although the communication was lacking. I’m pretty sure the one girl had never seen a white person before, because when I was sleeping I’d peek my eye open and sure enough, she was still staring at me from the other bunk. A little bit creepy! Train rides in China are always interesting. Finally we made it to the city of Kashgar in the far far southwest corner of the country, which is basically the hub of Uyghur culture, and a spectacular city. That’s next!

The Southern Silk Road Route: Turpan

June 26, 2017

This mainly Uygher city lies 2.5 hour away from Urumqi by bus in the middle of the desert. Well pretty much all of southern Xinjiang is desert, but Turpan is especially hot. It clocked in at 44 degrees celcius/111 farenheit when our bus arrived in the mid afternoon. I checked into a hostel and set out to explore a little bit. The city itself is pleasant, with some walkways lined with grapevines overhead and winding sandy streets with traditional clay-made homes on the outskirts of town. I found the Emin minaret, which I guess is the largest of it’s kind in Xinjiang, or all of China for that matter, but it’s really not that exciting. After over an hour of wandering I had to call it quits due to the heat and relaxed in the hostel for a while.

The thing about Xinjiang is it is on Beijing time (as all of China only has one timezone) and due to it’s far westward location the sunset doesn’t set until almost 10 pm! A lot of the locals go by their own time zone, which is two hours behind Beijing time, which can lead to some confusion scheduling things if you don’t know which time they are referring to! But anyway I wanted to go see the sunset over this ancient city outside of town (Jiaohe), so I took a nap and set my alarm to 8:45pm. Unfortunately the gates were closed, but this guy came up to me and said he could join this tour called ‘Jiaohe at night’ and he’d give me a good discount. Sure, why not. I didn’t really feel like going home empty handed.

I guess the tour had just started so he hustles me inside the little museum area and I catch up with the group and of course the group is all Chinese and the tour guide is obviously speaking in Mandarin. Oh well! The displays had English on them at least. Our group then goes outside where they give us some fruit and then we hop on the tour bus that takes us into the ancient city. To my surprise when we got to the entrance there were men dressed as ancient soldiers carrying flags, girls wearing white dresses carrying lamps, and a king and queen. This wasn’t just ‘hey look at the city lit up at night’, this was like a whole production. So not only could we check out the ruins of the city, but at certain stopping points there was a mock sword fight, a ceremony for the king and queen, and then a natural amphitheater complete with musicians and dancing women. It was much more entertaining than I would have expected. And walking through the city seeing the rock formations and homes dug out of the earth was cool too.

The next day I went to the museum, and then met up with some other tourists (there really aren’t many foreign tourists in xinjiang!) and we hired a taxi to take us out to see some stuff east of the city. We got to see some Buddhist caves (which had long since been looted and the buddhas defaced), an old city that was basically a ghost town (it usually inhabited for the benefit of tourists, but it got too hot so they went home I guess), and the sand dunes in the desert. It’s weird starting after 2:30 pm and still being able to get in a solid 8 hours of touring! We got back, found a little restaurant to have some spicy noodles and lamb kebabs and called it a day!

The next day I would take the bus 6 hours down the highway, Southwest, in the direction of Kashgar to a city called Korla, which is just a big Chinese city and stopover destination. When I saw these cities on a map and how remote they are, I guess I was expected like little dusty, run down, desert towns. But’s it China after all, so nope! High rises, 6 lane roads, traffic jams, towering billboards, shopping malls etc. And lots of curious looks when they spot the white guy. Fortunately my hostel was near the train station and I still retained enough Chinese to be able to buy my train ticket the next morning without any misunderstandings. Yay. Off to the next town, called Kuche.

Leaving Phnom Penh

June 23, 2017

Four and half months was enough!

I ended up staying a little bit longer than I expected due to some poker related reasons, but I finally had a nice little upswing and booked a ticket to Bangkok. I can’t even remember how many times I’ve been to Bangkok, but it’s always perfect for a short stop. I’ve done pretty much all the touristy things there are to do in Bangkok, but I still like picking random neighborhoods just to wander around in. And taking a boat up and down the river is always a good, relaxing way to the see the city and it costs less than a dollar. Then you’ve got the food, the thai massages, rooftop bars, craft beers, the nightlife, hookah cafes, etc. It’s hard to not like Bangkok!

I always manage to spend too much money in Bangkok though, so I only stayed for two nights and then flew to Urumqi, in western China, via Kunming. What I’ve noticed is the biggest problem booking Chinese airlines that connect somewhere else in China is that they make it very difficult to transfer to your connecting flight if you don’t have a lot time. Upon arrival they gave me the boarding pass for the connecting flight, but I still had to go through immigration, then security, and then get all the way to the other end of the airport. I had to cut in the security line and then jog through the airport and I made it three minutes before the gate closed. Whew! After missing my connection between Beijing and Shanghai on the first part of this trip, I wasn’t letting that happen again!

After a few hours of a very scenic flight, I was in China’s far west, the Xinjiang province. Fortunately I have a friend who lives in Urumqi named Mila, who I traveled with about 5 years ago in southwest China. She was able to take some time off work and pick me up from the airport and take me out to lunch. We had some Xinjiang noodles (lagman) which are spaghetti like noodles topped with a semi spicy, kind of oily, tomato based sauce, full of meat, pepper and onions. In fact they say that Marco Polo got the idea for spaghetti from visiting this region of the world and brought it back to Italy. That’s what I read somewhere at least. The dish is very tasty though.

Afterwards she made sure I could find my hotel and helped check me in. Although she thinks I can’t do anything for myself when I’m in China, which isn’t totally true! But I can’t understate how nice it is having a Chinese friend. For example I can’t get a SIM card in Xinjiang because I’m a foreigner so she was able to buy one for me. And if I ever get in a situation (usually in a taxi) where I can’t make it clear where I want to go, I can just call her up and put her on the phone. And then there’s Chinese hospitality. The first night her and her sisters took me out to a nice Uygher restaurant, the second night we made dumplings together, and the third night she took me out to an outdoor Chinese restaurant. And I couldn’t pay a single dime, no matter how hard I tried. Just wasn’t gonna happen. Seriously though, Chinese people are way too good to their guests.

Mila worked during the day, so I had that time to explore a bit around the city myself. Urumqi isn’t the most exciting place, it’s your usual big, crowded, mostly ugly Chinese city. The thing that makes it more unique than the usual Han Chinese city is that is has a large population of Uyghers, which are the Turkish Muslim minority. They’re the reason the cuisine is so diverse here, and it’s kind of cool seeing mosques and bit of muslim flair in a Chinese city. Sadly they have become somewhat of a marginalized group and their relationship with the Chinese government is not very good. Their hopes for independence have been almost completely quashed. In Urumqi they mostly live segregated in the poorer southern part of the city. They have a big market that is one of the more interesting things for tourists to do.

Other than that market I went to the museum and did a small hike up a rocky outcropping called red mountain. And that was about it! Oh, and lots of eating. I had to find restaurants with photos on the menus otherwise I’d have to do the point and hope to get lucky method (which normally doesn’t turn out very favorably). After three days I’d had enough and it was time to head a few hours outside Urumqi to a desert town and old silk road destination named Turpan. More on that place next time!

Excursions Outside of Phnom Penh

June 18, 2017

Ok, the blog is back on. I didn't really bother keeping up with it for a while because, well my life isn't all that exciting when I'm not traveling. I play poker most nights of the week at the casino and during the day either play poker, go to the pool, get a massage, maybe go to the market and cook up some food, etc. Outside of not having a steady income, it feels pretty normal!

Sometimes I do like to shake things up a bit, which usually means renting a scooter and exploring outside of the Phnom Penh. There's very little out there that explicitly beckons a tourist, but you've got lots of countryside, fun little dirt side roads, cows and chickens everywhere, wats/temples abound, and lots of easily excitable children. It really is a nice way to spend a few hours or a whole day (if your butt doesn't get too sore).

Although it's not always without it's difficulties. I've had a couple of flat tires, been caught in some thunderstorms, and even had a bike just totally die on me two hours outside of the city. In that last instance I ended up getting hand towed a few miles down the road by a friendly guy on a motorbike to a gas station, had to call the hotel i rented the bike from and wait two hours for them to send a tuk tuk out to me, load the bike into the tuk tuk, and lug it home for another 2 hours. That wasn't fun, but it was never really stressful. Things will eventually work themselves out here in Cambodia, it's just a question of how long it will take.

Here's me crossing the river on the ferry. If you want to go East of Phnom Penh the ferry(s) are the way to go. It's interesting how much different it gets on the other side, it goes from big city to countryside basically as soon as you step off on the ferry.

One of the places I visited was a little island called Koh Dach. On the tip is a beach (if you can call it that) and whole bunch of little wooden/straw huts in the water, which you have to wade through to get to. It's a popular spot for Cambodians to get together and eat, drink, and swim. You've got vendors that also wade through the water from hut to hut selling food, drinks, renting inner tubes.

When riding around you've also got the wats (temples) everywhere. A lot of times it's surprising how nice they are, given how poor the surrounding are. It sounds like a lot of money gets pumped into building/redoing these temples that could be much better spent on community development projects and education, but who am I to judge these peoples priorities are. But anyway it's worthwhile to stop by and have a look around and wave hi to the monks giving you inquisitive looks.

And really, you never know what you're going to find on any given day, which is part of the fun. The day I took this photo above, I was randomly driving around and I had no idea it was a Cambodian holiday, I just stopped in to the see what all the hubbub was about at the wat. Turns out it was the birthday of Buddha and there was stuck going on at every temple.

The countryside is also very pleasant. It's not particularly breathtaking, but it has it's moments.

So there's always a way to keep yourself busy in Phnom Penh!

A Day in the Life

March 24, 2017

So here's a little overview of a fairly typical day in Phnom Penh

EDIT: I indented each bullet point, which now appears as really weird spacing in each point. I tried to undo it, but it didn't fix it. Sorry!

11:00: Wake up. This also the time that the light gets through my window at the right angle as to shine on my face. Various faint construction noises can also be heard, but usually I'm good at drowning them out. I chug some water and pack up swimsuit, towel, and change of clothes.

my little studio apartment. I kind of like it.

11:15: Head out. I'm already starting to sweat as I walk down the staircase, it's a freakin sauna in there. As soon as I exit I get hailed by the tuk-tuk who is waiting outside, shake my head and keep walking. Also say no to the tuk tuks on the next corner. And the various other tuk tuks and motorbikes that go by. It's a never ending process.

11:25: Get to the hostel pool. They don't care if you use the pool as long as you're paying for something. I get the mango smoothie almost every time, then find a spot for my towel near the water. After half an hour I'm way too hot and have to hop in. Sometimes I'll chat up the backpackers if there are any already in the pool. There's also a nice shaded enclosure with big cushions and pillows to chill out. The only downside is the hostel plays the same crappy music list on repeat every day. Really the worst music.

Hostel pool. Sadly it gets hardly any sun in the late afternoon

12:30: Change clothes and head on over to Riverking to get the poker game started. It always starts around this time, which is pretty damn early for degenerate gamblers! You can keep your cash in the cashier, which is nice, because I don't like walking around the city with a few years salary of a poorer Cambodian in my pocket. There's free food and drink, so I'll start off with a coffee and then order some lunch. The food here is delicious actually. Normally the action is pretty tight, but sometimes you get the rich Cambodians who are waiting to play Omaha for much higher stakes and they'll dick around in the Hold'em game and give away some money.

3:30: The omaha game starts and most of the fish leave the hold'em game to play in that game. Sometimes I'll leave and sometimes I'll keep playing depending on the lineup. For todays example I'll head out and go to gym to pump some iron. The gym I normally go to is only a half block away from Riverking. It's just barebones work out equipment and it looks like a bomb went off inside, as none of the weights are racked. It's like a treasure hunt finding the matching barbell! The gym costs $1, and is populated by sweaty shirtless Cambodian guys. Well it's impossible not be sweaty because there's no AC and no fans. After 15 minutes I'm pretty much dripping sweat and after 30 I'm going to overheat. So I keep my workouts nice and short these days!

4:00: Massage time! My favorite massage place is actually located in the hotel that Riverking operates from. For $10 you get an oil massage as well as use of the sauna/steam room/hot tub/ cold tub. And it's a legitimately good massage, these girls get in there nice and firm. If you get a massage in the tourist area it will be $12 for an oil massage, no other amenities, and will suck about half the time.

Also some days I feel like switching it up and I go to the Seeing Hand massage place, where they train the blind people to give massages. This is where I go if I want to bring on the pain. They don't mess around here. Three out of the last four times I've been here they have given me this hulk of a woman. Normally I ask for a strong massage, but for her I say medium and she still has me crying out in pain at least a few times during the massage, which she finds amusing. Rather than be like 'sorry sorry!' she just says 'too strong' and chuckles. It's cheap enough though, at $6/hr for a traditional khmer massage.

5:15: For today's example I'm going to cook dinner for myself so now it's time to head on over to the local market for some fresh produce. My dinners are usually some forms of stir fry, but I'll switch it up with a salad, green curry, ramen, or a burrito bowl knock off attempt thrown in there. If my fridge is empty I'll pick up onions, peppers, tomatoes, chilis, garlic, ginger, cilantro, bok choy, eggs, chicken breasts, and maybe some fruit like a mango or mangosteens. All of this probably cost $5-6. If I'm getting ripped off it can't be by much! Plus I can at least ask how much and know all the numbers in Khmer, so I'm not a total noob.

some prices of western foods are kind of ridiculous

5:45: Normally I wouldn't cram this much stuff into one day, but lets say today I'm being super active and I want to go take some photos before the sun sets. I grab my camera and go down to riverside around the National Palace and hope to get a few good shots in. There's always a ton of people sitting around here, eating, selling stuff, monks wandering around etc. It's pretty cool.

6:30: Get back to the apartment, crank that fan and AC and relax for a bit. Maybe go on CNN and other fake news outlets and get annoyed with American politics.

7:00: Make dinner. Usually just roasting a bunch of veggies, putting on the rice, then doing a nice easy, tasty, chicken stir fry.

8:45: Shower, get ready for more gambling action. Casino time.

8:55: Walk down the street and find my motorbike guy. I don't have to bargain the price or tell him where I'm going, he already knows, Nagaworld!

9:00: Get to the casino, ogle some of the smoking hot girls working there, and make my way up to the poker room and hop in the action. Some days there are lots of fish, particularly from China, and the action is great and I will not remove myself from the table until the bad players lose all their money or the table breaks. These days I'm here until 4-5am usually. Other days there aren't many fish and it's mostly regulars and then I won't stay as long. I'll either go home or maybe see if other guys are hitting the bars and try an meet up with them. In that case I'll stay out till 3 or 4 am, which is when most bars shut down. On a very rare occasion I'll go Pontoon, which is the big club that stays open until 6 or 7am.

I got in big trouble for taking this photo! I took two but only deleted one, ha

what kind of casino wouldn't have female dance troupes out on stage every night playing obnoxiously loud music?!

So that's more or less what my days are like in Phnom Penh! It's not too bad!

Coming to Cambodia

March 24, 2017

From Ho Chi Minh City I booked a bus to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. After about 3 hours you get to the border crossing where you hand your passports to the guy in the bus and basically just walk through the Vietnam exit counter the Cambodian entry gate. We didn’t talk to a single person at customs, just walked through, no questions asked. I’m pretty sure that was the easiest border crossing I’ve ever had! We paid $30 for our tourist visa, which I thought was only supposed to be $25, so it wouldn’t surprise me if that extra $5 was a bribe for speedy service. Or the people on the Cambodian side don't care at all and turbo stamp every passport, that would make sense too!

After you cross the border into Cambodia you begin to realize that everything looks just slightly worse than in Vietnam. The roads, the quality of the buildings, and the cars and motorcycles people are driving. Plus it was late in the afternoon so there were tons of pickup trucks filled with Cambodian laborers taking them home from wherever they were working during the day. I believe the average daily rate for someone working out in the countryside is $1/day. It’s an extremely poor country. If you’re going to get culture shock anywhere in SE Asia, Cambodia is probably the most likely place.

We arrived in Phnom Penh at around 8pm, and the bus dropped us off at the side of the road, about a mile away from the touristy area. If this was my first time in Phnom Penh I might be getting nervous, as it’s usually not fun getting dropped at some random place at night in some run down, 3rd world city. But Phnom Penh doesn’t scare me. There were tuk-tuks and motorbike guys waiting around so I hopped on a motorbike and we were off.

So I made it to the backpacker street and found some hostel to stay the night at a whopping price of $4/night. The room was like a jail cell and the bathroom had a resident cockroach. Good thing I was only staying one here one night. If you get cheap accomodations in phnom penh you get what you pay for!

After dropping off my stuff I just wanted to wander around for a little bit, reacquainting myself with the city that I had first visited six years prior. I walked down the riverfront where drink ladies were hawking beer and soft drinks and little kids were playing some sort of game involving only their sandals. I strolled past the happy pizza places and ignored about a dozen offers to buy weed. After a bit I turned down one of the main bar streets, where dozens of girls sit outside their respective bar and beckon you to come in. I declined, but I couldn’t resist the offer of chicken shawarma for $1 from the streetside food cart. So yeah, Phnom Penh is definitely the dingy, seedy place that I remember it for! But the roads were better, there were more western style restaurants and coffeeshops, and it looked as if new buildings were coming up everywhere. Some would say it’s on the up and up!

quick iphone shot of a few bars on 136 st. They don't like you taking photos!

Now normally I don’t like staying in big cities when I’m traveling, but my goal in Phnom Penh was to make some money playing poker. Surprisingly the city has one of the better poker scenes (if not the best) in Asia. The two main venues are Nagaworld, which is the casino, and a poker room hosted inside a hotel, called RiverKing. If you’re a new player to RiverKing they let you stay at the hotel for free the first few days and then charge $10/day after that, so that’s where I ended up. The poker room is nice, they give you free food and drinks, and it’s a pretty close-knit community. Most of the friends I’ve met in Cambodia play at this poker room. The only downside was the games weren’t as juicy as I was expecting. But the games at Nagaworld were better than I was expecting and they routinely have rich Chinese and Indian tourists/businessmen drop good amounts of cash at the poker tables. So that’s where I usually play.

So far things have been pretty good. My only main gripes are the garbage everywhere, the occasional awful smells that want to make you puke in your mouth, the overwhelming humidity, and the tuk-tuk drivers. These guys are incredibly annoying. You can’t walk down the street without every tuk-tuk trying to get your attention even if you make it extremely clear you don’t want a god damn tuk tuk! They will say “hey man, tuk tuk?!” while you’re already inside a freakin tuk tuk! If you try and ignore them, they only ask louder and more aggressively when you walk by. And then once you walk past them they’ll whisper ‘hey, you need weed, marijuana, lady?’ as a last ditch effort. Agh, I can’t stand these guys. I saw a grumpy looking old man walking down the street the other day with a shirt that said “NO TUK TUK TODAY” in bold print and I cracked up. Perfect shirt.

But besides all that, I’m still enjoying the city. Everything is so close together. Basically anywhere I’d want to go is in a two mile radius. And the food scene is surprisingly decent. There are lots of expats in Phnom Penh so you can find pretty good American style burgers/wings/pizza. But then you can also find, Mexican, French, Italian, German, Turkish, Lebanese, Israeli, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, really anything! I don’t eat Khmer food as much as I thought because there’s just so much variety here. Along with the food I like the chaotic city life, the temples, the grand palace, the markets, the monks walking around, the women carrying stuff on their heads, the cheap beer, cheap massages, walks along the riverside, seeing movies in the small cinema, the pool at the nearby hostel, and it goes on an on! There’s plenty of things to keep me entertained here in Phnom Penh!

Overall Thoughts on Vietnam

March 7, 2017

Food:

When I think back on Vietnam the number one thing I will think of is how much I enjoyed the street food. I ate an incredible amount of Pho and other noodle soups and never got tired of them. I looked forward to gobbling down noodles just about every night. Plus there’s also good bbq meats, spring rolls, wontons, corn pancake things, the banh mi sandwiches, and the usual meat + rice dishes. Oh and fruit smoothies, lots of of those too!

Coffee

Dark, delicious, and everywhere. I normally had mine with condensed milk to offset some of the bitterness. If you buy it at a local place it costs 50-75 cents. I also like the idea of condensed milk in coffee, it’s already sweet so you don’t to add any sugar.

Prices:

Vietnam is an incredible bang for your buck. If I stayed in a hostel it would normally cost me $5, and many of them had free breakfast. And it was halfway decent free breakfast with a baguette and eggs, not the usual toast and butter stuff. You can find an okay hotel room with TV and aircon for $10-15 in most places. Some other prices:

Motorbike rental for a day: $5

Bicycle rental for a day: $1

Ban Mi sandwich: $1

Pho: $1.50

Chicken + rice: $2-3

Western style meal: $5 +

Bus: a few hours on a tourist bus is like $5-7

Massage: $8-9 for an hour

Beer: Can be had for 50c at the supermarket and very local places. $1+ in tourist places.

Train: I think I overpaid quite a bit because prices were jacked up around Tet, but I paid $33 for my overnight sleeper that took 12 hours.

Sightseeing: A lot of the smaller tourist attractions/temples cost $4-5, which was actually surprisingly high by Vietnam standards.

Multi hour tour (caves, boat rides etc) $10-12

Shisha: $8-10. I guess it must be expensive to import this stuff.

So overall it’s pretty tough to spend too much money!

Landscape:

Spectacular karst formations in the North, some nice scenic highlands in the central region, and south is pretty boring, just rice fields here and there (which you can find anywhere). So if you’re into the scenery, the north is definitely where you want to be.

Beaches: For a country with a gazillion miles of coastline the beaches in Vietnam are not that great. You don’t come to this country for beaches, or scuba diving for that matter.

Local people: Overall they were pretty friendly. The more touristy the place the more the locals are going to ignore the tourists for the most part, and Vietnam is certainly a touristy place. Once you get outside the main areas people are friendly, but then again hardly anyone speaks English outside the main tourist areas. Also the touts didn’t really hassle you too much, so that’s nice. Other backpackers complained about people trying to rip them off all the time. Well, welcome to Asia.

Safety: Like most of SE Asia, as long you’re doing normal touristy stuff, and not buying hard drugs, the only real thing you have to worry about is small time scams and petty theft. The motocycle bag/purse/phone snatch is more common in Vietnam than any other place in SE Asia, so that’s the main thing to worry about I would say. Despite this, I still say Vietnam is a very safe country.

Language: Tough to learn! The words that you see written in English characters are almost never pronounced how you’d think they’d be pronounced. Plus it’s a tonal language so there can be six different ways to pronounce a word thereby changing it’s meaning by how you say it. You also have address older/younger men and older/younger women differently, there’s no just saying ‘you’, which only adds to the complication. I didn’t learn as much as I’d hoped to.

Other tourists: Well the crowd I mostly hung out with was the younger UK/European backpacker type people, because those are the other people that also travel solo. I am getting a bit old for that backpacker scene though. Then you have the usual package Chinese and Korean tour groups that you pray you don’t get stuck with when you’re at any tourist attraction. Then you’ve got the Russians. In the beach towns of Nha Trang and Mui Ne, they are everywhere. They own a lot of the bars and restaurants, the signs are all in Russian, even a bunch of the locals speak it. Although I guess there are less than there used to be with the Ruble collapsing. I’ve met very few travellers who enjoy being around hordes of Russians, myself included.

Solo Travel: Extremely easy. Almost too easy. Tourist buses are cheap and take you directly to the main tourist areas, multiple times a day. Taxis, tuk tuks, mototaxis, are everywhere. It’s almost not worth it to take the local bus because you have to get to and from the bus stations, wait while they’re trawling around town picking up roadside passengers as well as blaring the horn all the friggen time. And no aircon. For me the first local or bus or two was amusing, after that I’d had about enough.

Weather: Just don’t go to north in January/February. It’s miserable. I mean I got particularly unlucky with the added rain, but there’s no point in seeing this gorgeous scenery shrouded in clouds and fog and cold. For me basically the whole country was cloudy, so it’s hard for me to remember Vietnam very fondly when I was hurriedly moving south, hoping for better weather, never getting it and continuing that cycle until I was already in Ho Chi Minh City. But it’s hard to not recommend a country to other people because the weather sucked for me!

So overall Vietnam was kind of disappointing for me. A lot of it was because I didn’t really mesh with many people this time around. Unlike most of the other countries I’ve been lately, I met almost no one around my age, and I just don’t really care to hang out with the 18-23 year old backpacker crowd anymore. And normally if I’m not meeting people I want to hang out with, at least I can work on my travel photography. Well it’s a lot harder when it’s cloudy and drizzling all the time! I don’t think I took a single landscape photo that I’m proud of. Well that’s mostly because all the cool landscapes are up north and I axed most of that out of my itinerary due to the weather.

So at this point, I’m pretty sure I’m mostly done with doing any more solo travel in SE Asia. Too touristy and too many backpackers and big package tour groups. I have absolutely no desire to go back to Thailand. Plus I’ve seen almost everything I want to see here anyway. I would go back to Myanmar however because that country is awesome. And maaaybe I would go back to the Northern Vietnam at the right time of year just to get that iconic nature photo of the water filled rice terraces reflecting the golden sunset light. Ahh, damn it.

Ok, so Vietnam was still pretty cool and has a lot going for it. But it’s just not quenching my wanderlust for new cultures and experiences and getting off the beaten track. I’m in Cambodia playing poker right now, and if all goes well my next stop will be the Stans (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan) in Central Asia. I’m thinking these countries will be more in line with my travel goals!

Ho Chi Minh City

March 3, 2017

So after a bit of relaxation in the beach town of Mui Ne it was time for the hustle and bustle of big city life in the sprawling Ho Chi Minh City. I hopped on a tourist bus, which nicely puts you right at the tourist district, as opposed to some random bus stop that you have to navigate away from. It just so happened the bus let us out right in front of this large flower market, with people buying bouquets of all sorts for the upcoming Vietnamese New Year, Tet. Well it was dusk at this point and I wanted to wander around and take some photos before the dark set in. I felt kind of silly walking around with both my backpacks on and getting in the way, but oh well.

After that I found the narrow little hostel street and booked for a few nights. One of cool things about Ho Chi Minh City is all of the little mazelike alleyways in between the main streets. They are fun to explore and easy to get lost in, but never too lost. And there are Vietnamese flags everywhere, even more than in America, which is impressive!

I ended up going out with some people at the hostel for the Vietnamese staple: Pho (pronounced fuh). I had been eating pho and other noodle soup varieties (bun bo hue, bun cha) basically every night and never get tired of it. Even now that I’m in Cambodia I’m still getting some mad pho cravings, especially now that I’m writings this! It’s weird, I rarely got in the mood for Asian noodle soups at home, but now I’m hooked. The fresh basil and mint and whatever other herbs they give you on the side really round out the dish so well. Mmm. And it’s so cheap. I’m pretty sure I’ve never spent less on food than I did in Vietnam. Vietnamese street food is the bomb.

This isn't Pho, but bun bo hue, which is a pork based broth

We checked out the main tourist street, which runs for a couple blocks. It has about what you’d expect for SE Asia, lots of bars, cheap beer, bbq places, a few clubs, some girly bar, tons of massage places, and motorbikes everywhere. In HCMC you have to be especially careful on the street with phones, cameras, and purses and whatnot because the motorbike snatch and grab is not uncommon, especially later on at night when tourists are drunk and the streets are empty. I’d met two people on this trip who fell prey to this sort of thing, just walking down the street looking on google maps or whatever, and wham, phone ripped out of their hands and the dudes on the bike are long gone. I’d like to think I’m travel savvy enough to not let it happen to me! We ended up settling on bar with some shisha (or hookah, or whatever you want to call it). The flavoured tobacco industry is going strong in Vietnam, and I’m all for it!

So I mentioned Tet before, and now it was only a day away. When walking down the streets, especially outside the tourist area, it was quite strange seeing so many stores closed up, as many people go back to the provinces where they have family for the New Years celebrations. You don’t really want to be traveling around this time, especially South to North, as that’s the direction most of the locals are traveling and all the buses and trains get booked up. I had to do laundry, and the hostel couldn’t do it because their laundry person went home, and it was difficult finding a laundry place that was still open! I did find one though, and thank god, because I put that off for way too long. So anyway, the city was actually kind of quiet compared to normal.

I was originally planning on doing some touristy stuff like the war museum, but that was also closed, so no go. All in all, I was really lazy in Ho Chi Minh City! Mostly just wandering around the alleys and chilling in coffee shops. It was kind of fun walking around near midnight of Tet as people were praying at the temples, lighting off fireworks, and getting drunk. I got invited to drink a few times, but usually nobody knows much English so it gets pretty awkward fast! I appreciate the sentiment though. The next few days it was very common to see people sitting in groups outside drinking and eating all day.

As for me, three days of no activity was making me restless, so I decided it was time to rent another scooter and do some exploring around the Mekong Delta area further south of HCMC.

the train getting close to our final destination

Nha Trang

February 4, 2017

Nha Trang is basically a beach party destination, more specifically a Russian beach party destination. I mean I knew there would be lots of Russians but damn, I was surprised at how much they had taken over. Russian run bars, restaurants, tour agencies, etc. Even some of the locals could speak Russian! I’m always amused at Russian tourists. They seem to only travel to their specific little enclaves, ie Goa in India and Pataya in Thailand, presumably because they can’t speak much English. They seem to have a surly, argumentative aura around them, not smiling or laughing much until they’re pounding down some vodka. I did get to talk to a drunk group of them at the shisha bar, and they were certainly entertaining! And they do really love Putin!

I know enough Russian to understand these!

I settled on the biggest hostel in town, which advertised a TV room, which I was hoping would have the sports channels. Sadly it was more for movies, and I would have to find another place to watch the Packers game. I ended up renting a bike and exploring the town a bit, but it was really not the most interesting place. You could tell tourist numbers must be down from their peak, presumably after the ruble collapsed, as many of the hotels on the fringes of town seemed to be in state of disrepair. As usual the weather was overcast with spats of drizzle, so the beach was out. I talked to an expat who said he hadn’t seen January weather like this in 20 years. Woop woop.

So I think I mindless rode around every nook and cranny of this town. I was finally getting a pretty good feel for the Vietnamese traffic and how bike etiquette (or lack thereof) worked. There is a method to the madness. But you have to be on constant alert with people pulling off side roads into your lane, people driving down the street the wrong way, potholes etc. But this is all standard. The Vietnamese never seem to mind if someone cuts them off or runs them out of their lane, they just brake, scoot over or whatever, and keep on their way. No one ever gets angry at these things!

The hardest thing for me has always been left turns into busy intersections. If there’s enough people you kind of form a pack and work your way out there and eventually people will be forced to go around you. It’s like schools of fish, impatient fish, on big loud motorbikes. So when your making a left turn and no one else is, it’s pretty intimidating just forcing your way out into oncoming traffic and hoping people just find their way around you. But it always happens! Same thing with walking across a busy intersection, you just have to keep walking and let them go either in front of you or behind you. It’s only if you stop suddenly that you get into trouble!

So I met up with the Irish guy I’d met on train for some food and then we headed back to my hostel, which had free beer for happy hour. It certainly was quite the party hostel. People beer bonging beer mixed with vodka, pounding shots of the super cheap Vietnamese rice wine, etc. Not coincidentally, lots of Irish! We hit the bars later and it was nice to get in a party night. It ended at the beach, which is always the best place for a nightcap!

At 3am it started dying down and now it was time for me to find a sports bar that was still open! Well that wasn’t happening, so I attempted to stream it back at the hostel. But after very laggy results and the Packers already down two scores I passed out and missed most of the game. I guess for the better!

The next day was a bunch of laying at the beach with no sun and then off to the next destination: Mui Ne. It’s pretty similar to Nha Trang, just more chill, with some sand dunes. Still lots of Russians. And it’s great if you’re into or looking to learn windsurfing/kitesurfing. It was cloudy again, so I decided to not stay long. Vietnamese New Year (Tet) was coming up, and travel arrangements would be getting more difficult, so I thought I’d just hang out in Ho Chi Minh City for that. Of course it was sunny the next morning in Mui Ne when my bus left for HCMC!

Danang and the Night Train

January 29, 2017

Danang is Vietnam’s 4th or 5th biggest city. To get there from Hoi An it was 45min by local bus. I paid like $2.50 (probably double what I was supposed to pay) and I fired up the kindle while waiting for it leave the station. Well that turned out to be a futile effort! As soon as we hit the road the Vietnamese music went full blast and the horn did not stop blaring. This guy would literally be honking every 5 seconds. As soon as he would come up to a motorbike he would get as close as possible and just lay on the freaking thing until they moved. Even if we were picking up someone who flagged the bus down on the street he would never come to a complete stop and the person getting in would have to go into a little jog and hop on the moving bus! After he’d lurched everyone out of their seats for like the 5th time jamming on the brakes, the lady in front of me did the crazy sign next to her head and raised her eyebrows. Ha. Well at least the Vietnamese thought this guy was nuts too!

As for Danang there is not really anything to do inside the city center itself, but it has some cool things to do on the edges of town. So once again, motorbike rental is the way to go. I only had one full afternoon/evening in Danang, and wasn’t spending the night, so I hoped the hostel I stopped in at would let me leave my stuff there for the day. I ended up paying them $3.50 (more than half of what it costs for a bed!), rented a bike and I was good to go. First stop: Marble Mountain.

It has a name that sounds like a stage in Mario Kart, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I got there. I knew it was supposed to have stuff carved into caves and that was about it. It was midday when I arrived, which meant battling the crowds of the Chinese and Korean tour buses.

The place was certainly interesting. And by interesting I mean creepy as hell! In a Dante’s Inferno sort of way. Carvings of religious icons, goblins, ghouls, skeletons, people being killed and their souls being dragged off into the netherworld. All within a dimly lit cave of course. I liked it! And that was just inside the caves at the base of the mountain. You could take an elevator to the top of the mountain where there were more pagodas and cave chambers. This involved a rain delay (shocking) but definitely worth it! At one point you're passing through this narrow stairway and it opens up into a massive chamber, with some small temples build into the sides, plus a huge Buddha carved up high into the rocks. Really neat place! I spent much more time here than I thought.

Originally I thought I’d have time to hike the mountain overlooking the city, but daylight was running thin, so I only had time to check out the lady Buddha statue, also on the outskirts of the city, that’s the largest of it’s kind in SE Asia (I think). Also cool! I had time to get a bite to eat, collect my bags and start heading towards the train station. A woman on a motorbike saw me walking with all my stuff and offered to give me a lift. Nice woman! Nice city! I liked Danang!

Vietnam has a nice train system running up and down the country and I knew I wanted to take it for at least part of the journey. This would be my longest travel stretch, so I figured this was the ideal time. Although it wasn’t cheap: $33, which is a pretty massive amount by Vietnamese public transport standards. But the prices were jacked because it was getting close to Tet, the Vietnamese new year. Fortunately the massive migration at that time of the year is mostly South to North, so at least I was still in the position to be able to book a train in the first place.

In each car there were 6 beds and I had the top bunk. In my car was a Vietnamese family, and Irish guy, and a Chinese girl. The girl was trying to get me to switch with her to the middle bunk, because the top bunk has a tiny bit of more space. I’m like twice her size. Sorry lady. I wasn’t a big fan of her. The Irish guy was cool though. We’d go on to hang out later at our intended destination: the beach town of Nha Trang. 10 hours of travel time and maybe 5 hours of sleep later we were there. Our hopes of bright sunny weather were quashed however. But I had bigger things to worry about, figuring where in this town I could watch the Packers game at 3:30am!

The route so far. Still chasing the sunshine.

Hoi An

January 29, 2017

Everybody loves Hoi An! Especially the youngish backpacker girls. It’s a cutesy little tourist town with a nice (motorbike free!) walking street and lots lanterns everywhere that look cool when lit up at night, very photogenic. It’s got a river that bisects the main strip and you can take a boat ride down it or stop for a snack riverboats that line the sides. It’s great for shopping and souvenir collecting. You can buy custom made clothes and suits for cheap and you can show them a photo of any type of clothing that you saw a celebrity wear and they can try and recreate it. Well I packed enough clothes myself, so I wasn’t really interested in those things, but many are! Oh and beaches too.

As for me, it was pretty meh. I mean Hoi An is nice, and I did enjoy getting those signature lantern photos at night, but if you’re not there to shop, and the weather isn’t good for the beach, there isn’t a whole lot to do. After walking around for an hour or two I pretty much had the whole placed covered. But the no motorbike thing is highly underrated! You can’t go hardly anywhere in Vietnam without having to dodge ‘em all the time, then you’ve got the incessant honking to boot. Walking on a busy road with trucks and buses blaring their horn every four seconds is annoying is hell! So good work Hoi An, Vietnam needs more of this. I also did like the local food in the market. It’s around 20 or so stalls all jammed together with the women who run them simultaneously cooking and shouting at you to take a seat. I picked an empty booth and one ordered some corn pancakes and spring rolls. The pancakes you fill with some Vietnam herbs, wrap it, and then dip in peanut sauce. Surprisingly good!

During the day I rented a bicycle for a dollar and decided to do what I usually like to do, cruise around the countryside. It was a bit cool and cloudy, so good weather to be on the bike. It’s always fun to turn off the main roads onto the dirt tracks that lead out to rice fields and see where it takes you. Of course the locals are usually amused or confused when they see the tourists venture into the places. The other nice thing is that they have little coffee shops everywhere in Vietnam, so you can stop in, relax, and pay 50c and get an iced coffee. The coffee is dark and strong, so I usually get mine with condensed milk. Tasty!

Oh, I also feel like I need to mention that google maps works offline now! It’s like the greatest thing for traveling ever. I might never get lost again! Haaa, not. I’m actually writing this from Ho Chi Minh City and they have all these tiny little alleyways and even those are on google maps, it’s great. I can’t count how many times I’ve been on a motorbike just cruising every street trying to find something/somewhere familiar as to ascertain my relative location. Those days are over! It’s an exciting time to be alive!

So let’s see I probably biked 30 miles or something and at that point my ass just couldn’t handle it any more and it was time to make it back. I booked a night train for the next night, had a few beers with people at the hostel and took an early night. So two nights in Hoi was plenty for me. I met some girls who had been there over a week… I couldn’t really understand that one. But to each their own! Next up: Danang and night train to Nha Trang.

Hue: The former Capital

January 20, 2017

The sun has been spotted! For the first time since I flew from Chicago I have seen it!! Up until this point a good day was completely cloudy with only a little bit of drizzle. Ugh. It’s been a long time coming! I was actually able to take out my camera and have nice light and not have to worry about hiding it under my poncho in the rain! Although right now I’m having some electrical problems with my camera to computer USB connection, so I can’t post any photos until I buy I card reader (I hope). But I’ll post them here when I do!

As, the title suggest, now I’m in Hue, in central Vietnam. It was the former capital of the Nguyen dynasty from the early 1800’s the mid 1900’s, so it has lots of cool historical stuff to see. Although a bunch of it got destroyed during the war, sadly. A Dutch girl and I rented motorbikes and headed to check out the emperor’s tombs outside the city, as well as the Imperial City, walled off in the heart of the city. I guess the Imperial City got bombed pretty badly during the war, so most of it is restored, with fresh looking concrete. I think downtown Naperville probably has more actual historic buildings, but it was still interested to walk around and learn the history. But wow, was it nice to have a sunny day. I actually burned quite a bit, as I hadn’t even thought to buy any sunscreen yet!

The Emperors’ tombs were quite the spectacle. It wasn’t just the tombs themselves, each Emperor had is own little walled in sanctuary, complete with lakes, gardens, pagodas, and god knows how many concubines. They lived well! Interestingly enough, one of the emperors, Tu Duc, is not actually buried in his supposed tomb. Two hundred laborers set off to build him a separate tomb in a hidden location somewhere outside the city. Apparently when they returned, all of them were beheaded, as to keep the secret safe. How’s that for a thank you? Brutal! And to this day, no actually know where his real burial site is…

Now I’m backtracking, but before I arrived in Hue I was situated in a more rural place called Phong Nha, which is known for its caves. It actually has the largest cave chamber in the world in the Hang Son Doong cave, but to experience that one you have to do a 5 day expedition for the small sum of $3,000; which is a little too steep for me. But there are a bunch of other caves in the area that you can ride a motorbike to. And of course being in a cave is a good way to escape the rain!

I’d also read about a place called ‘Pub with Cold Beer’ which is a little place in the countryside and they grow all their own food and when you order chicken, you have the option to kill it yourself. It sounded like a cool concept, I wasn’t sure if I’d do it myself or just watch it happen, but it’s nice to know exactly where your food is coming from! In the age of ‘farm to table’ this was about as real as it gets. But sadly the path was too muddy to get there and we had to turn around after getting our motorbikes stuck. Some local famers were laughing at our attempts in vain!

And before Phong Nha I was in Ninh Binh, which is known for it’s beautiful limestone rock formations, similar to Yangshuo, in China. It was a great place to rent a motorbike and cruise around the countryside! Of course it was cloudy all the time and occasionally misty or drizzling, so the photos I took were disappointing. I can only image it during the summer…

So overall this trip has been fine, but this weather has certainly dampened quite a few things. I guess there was crazy flooding in Southern Thailand and now Vietnam is getting the tail endof that storm. And as glad as I am about our little bit or sunny weather, turns out it is just a tease! Here is the forecast for the my next two destinations:

AGHGHGHG. I guess I will be getting to the very south ASAP.

Hanoi

January 20, 2017

From Shanghai I booked a flight to Hanoi via Hong Kong. I know I said I was going to New Zealand, but the funds are a little tight this year, so I ended up cancelling that flight and heading to the last Southeast Asian country I hadn’t been to: Vietnam. Now Vietnam doesn’t make getting a visa as easy as the rest of SE Asia. You need to apply online for a pre-approved visa on arrival letter. Once you have this stamped letter you then give it to the visa office at the airport and then they will issue you your visa. I was stuck behind a bunch of tour groups in this process, so it took about two hours waiting at the airport to finally get my passport with my 30 day visa back.

After that I finally made it down to baggage claim only to discover my bag wasn’t there. I checked to see if they maybe picked it up and stashed it somewhere, but nope. Not this again! In my small experience these Chinese airlines suck with transferring luggage. I filed a report with the lost luggage desk, gave them my email, my hotel’s phone number and address and headed on my way. My flight was two different airlines (China Eastern + Jetstar) and the only number they gave me was the Hanoi airport’s lost and found department. I also didn’t have a working phone number, so all contact would have to be through my hotel. It was not very reassuring.

Photo I found online with some Hanoi traffic. Pretty wild!

I hopped on the bus to the city center and found my way to the hotel during a slight drizzle. It turns out this drizzle would not stop for the next three days I was there! So needless to say, I didn’t enjoy Hanoi very much. It literally did not stop raining/drizzling the entire time I was there. The weird thing is January is supposed to have the least precipitation out of any month in Vietnam. In the north it’s supposed to be kind of cold, and maybe cloudy or foggy, but not rainy! So under normal circumstances I would have left as soon as possible, as Hanoi isn’t really that interesting of place. But given my current predicament I was basically trapped! After more than 48 hours I had heard absolutely nothing from anyone. No emails, no phone calls the hotel, no nothing. I was able to call Jetstar’s Vietnam office and they just told me to call China Eastern! The lost and found department at the airport also had nothing, or at least that’s what I thought they were telling me in very broken English. Hmm.

this was the only picture I took in Hanoi on my phone

Finally in the afternoon of the third day the hotel reception told me my backpack had showed up. What?! No phone calls or emails or anything? But okay! I couldn’t really complain, I was just glad to be able to get the hell out of this city. I was starting to go a little bit nuts. Originally I had planned on seeing some other famous sights in the North (Halong Bay, Sapa), but this weather was so unseasonably rainy and miserable that I couldn’t deal with it any longer. I had also considered buying/renting a motorbike and driving it all the way down to Ho Chi Minh City. But driving in a cold drizzle for the first week of the trip sounded awful, so screw that too. I took a local bus to a place called Ninh Binh, 100km south of Hanoi, in a fruitless search for greener pastures.

Shanghai

January 11, 2017

I touched down around 11am I was off to the high speed rail to get into the city. My big backpack got flagged going through the conveyor belt and I had to step aside so they could search it. My bag is the kind that only opens through the top. So if you want to get something at the bottom of it, you have to take everything in the top out first. That’s why I’m kind of particular about how I pack it. So I start pulling out clothes and clothes and more clothes. She motions to keep going. I’m just yanking everything out of my bag and dumping it all over the counter. Finally I get to the bottom which is just my camping equipment. She motions for me to keep going. At this point I’m pretty steamed, and take the rest of my bag and dump in on the floor. She runs the backpack back through the machine and looks around confused because apparently she can’t find what she’s looking for. I have no idea what she’s looking for. So I’m like really, REALLY?? in Chinese. She then starts running through my 2 pouches of camping crap and triumphantly pulls out a pocket knife. Got me. Security saves the day! Shanghai 1 Adam 0.

I have to then repack all my stuff and eventually meander over to the high speed rail. The thing is pretty sweet! It goes over 300 km/hr (200 mph) and takes you from the airport to close to downtown in 8 minutes. You are flying on this thing. It’s the first enjoyable part of this trip so far! Wooo. After taking a different train I emerged from the subway and was greeted with the best kind of weather. Cold rain! After a quick slog to the hostel and lecture on not emailing for being a no show I was given a bed and it was nap time!

Take that, Chicago public transportation

I had a chance to wander around that night when the rain turned into a light drizzle. The skyline is fantastic! The Oriental Pearl building is quite the sight. I think we need more buildings purely for show! It stands along with all the other newish skyscrapers that dot the downtown across the river. Our side of the river (called the Bund) is made up of old European style buildings, which look a bid odd in China! The drizzle also made for some interesting photos with all the reflections and all the umbrellas everywhere. It was a good night, except it even though my camera was originally waterproof, it apparently is not anymore, as some of the electronics got messed up. It’s still usable, but now I have to navigate everything through the lcd screen, which sucks and makes it much more difficult to change settings quickly. More challenges!!

The next day I had a little tour all planned out by a friend of a friend who lives near Shanghai, named Amanda, who offered to show me around. I was expecting just her and a friend so I was a little surprised when it was four girls who showed up the next morning. Okay by me! We started by going back to the Bund to take some skyline photos, which looked pretty abysmal in the cloudfog. After that is was off to the park and the historic Chinatown. We went to a steamed bun place for lunch, which was delicious, although I forgot to take photos. They paid the bill when I went to the bathroom, those sneaky girls. I protested, but I knew it was useless. The Chinese are always very hospitable to their guests.

Doesn't look as great during the day, does it?

Shanghai is known for it's sweet steamed buns

So we wandered around a bit more, lost one of the girls, and lo behold she shows up with tickets to the ancient Chinese history/buildings tour. After we finished that one of them distracted me with cookies and then Amanda magically reappears with tickets to the temple. They seriously have this stuff down to an art. You don’t even get the chance to offer to pay for anything. It’s already too late!

At this temple you can pray to different Gods for things like children, power, love, money, etc. I was suggested to go with the two single girls to the love god, so I tagged along. I couldn’t help but notice the one in her late 20’s was taking her bows very seriously! You don’t want to be single and a woman approaching 30 in China!

For dinner they made reservations for us at one of the most popular hot pot places in the city. The place was massive; you could get lost walking through it. It’s been a few years since I’ve had hot pot, so I was pretty excited. For those that don’t know what hot pot is, it’s just boiling broth that you throw in whatever food you want to cook. It normally has a spicy side and a non-spicy side. I sat on the spicy side. We ordered tons of stuff, veggies, quail eggs, tofu, sliced beef, sliced lamb, pork on the bone, even pig brain! Only one of the girls likes pig brain, but she REALLY likes it, so we ordered it. I’ve had it before and I agreed to have some too. It’s soft and kind of melts in your mouth and does a good job taking on the flavor of the broth. It’s only gross when you really think about it. You’re eating brains!! Ewwww.

So this hot pot was like a two hour event. All these girls are pretty small, but they weren’t eating like it! I was impressed. After we finally finished we agreed to call it a night. They had to drive two hours to get home and had work the next morning. I tried again to help pay for the bill, but no, no, no, wasn’t happening. Anyway it was pretty awesome of them to drive all the way out to Shanghai and show me around and treat to everything. These are people I’ve never even met before!!

Well I had one last day to do some more wandering and check out the downtown area, and then that was it was it for Shanghai and China! It was good to be back! Just need to brush up a bit more on my Chinese next time!

The Start of New Trip: Off to Shanghai

January 11, 2017

Well it's that time of year again! January 5 was the start of this misadventure. I flew from Chicago to Shanghai via Beijing. The flight to Beijing is 14 hours, and this year I flew with Hainan Airlines, as their flights to China are crazy cheap right now. Sadly I wound up stuck in the middle seat, but at least I would be sharing my row with skinny Chinese people. This year I went with my preferred method of preparation for overseas travel: sleep deprivation! With back to back nights sleep of less than 4 hours of sleep I was ready to crash hard on this flight. After a meal of chicken and rice, I zonked out for about 6 hours, which was a little less than I’d hoped, but still workable. Now I just had to kill 8 hours with TV and movies. Two Bourne movies and two random Chinese movies and I was pretty much there! Although after about 12 hours there really is no comfortable way to position your butt on the chair anymore, regardless of how many times you try.

Our flight map, as seen from the top of the globe

I had found out on the flight that in Beijing we would have to retrieve our bag from baggage claim and recheck it, which was lame. Our flight was a little late, plus we burned a bunch of time taxiing and had to wait for the bus to take us to the terminal. Then my backpack was one of the last ones to make it through baggage claim and things were not looking good for my transfer. A long line going through the scanner at customs had things looking pretty bleak, and having to change terminals all but ensured my fate. Check In closed. AGHH. It can never be a smooth start to one of these trips! Then of course Hainan Airlines wouldn’t refund my money or put me on another trip for free, so I had to make a new plan. I’d read the Hainan airlines customer service was horrible and if you missed your connection you were probably SOL, but I never realized they didn’t just send your bag to the final destination! Hmm. Well you get what you pay for I guess. Time to find a new flight.

Beijing airport only has free wifi if you put in your phone number. Now I don’t have a working number here, so no wifi for me. And all the free wifi places also operate like this. Crap. Even the pay wifi service Boingo wasn’t loading. Trying to speak to a Chinese cab driver with mediocre Chinese skills is always a nightmare. Trapped at the airport! However I could connect to Wechat (a chinese messaging app) so I was able to get one of my Chinese friends to send a photo with the details of an airport hotel to show the taxi driver. As soon as you step outside into the taxi line, you can just feel the smog and pollution hit you. Its pretty crazy. Beijing winter is cold, smoggy, and miserable. Talk about a place I did not want to be.

I hopped in the cab and tried to show the driver the hotel on my phone, but he started driving to get out of the queue before I could show him the screenshot. Of course I didn’t save it directly to my phone and when we got outside the airport wifi zone it didn’t load in wechat so the driver pulled over yabbering at me a million miles per hour in Chinese and all I could say was wo buzhidou! wo buzhidou! (I don’t know, I don’t know!). So paid the base fare and get out. God I hate Chinese taxis. Aaand back to the airport. Seriously, China is by far the easiest country to hate when you first arrive.

Finally I got Boingo to load and booked a 7am flight the next morning. At this point it was getting late and I decided I was just going to sleep in the airport, I’d have to be there at 5am anyway. Plus I had my sleeping pad and travel pillow so I was pretty much good to go! A few hours of really crappy sleep and I was on the plane and off to Shanghai. Thank god!

Back to South Africa

June 10, 2016

So for the end of my trip I had two weeks to do all the things around Johannesburg and Durban, which is a lot of stuff! Compared with the rest of Africa, South Africa is chalked full of cool touristy activities. Animals, coastline, beaches, diving, hiking, history, battlefields, you name it. So I decided the best way, given my timeframe, was to rent a car and cruise around for those two weeks. Plus so many of the places I wanted to see were not easy to get to by public transit. Ideally I would have stayed at a hostel for a few days to try and recruit people to rent the car with me, but once again, no time. From Mozambique we took a bus from Maputo to Johannesburg. My German friends got off at Nelspruit, as they were going straight to Kruger National Park, which is the biggest safari destination in South Africa. I however arrived alone at Central Park station in Johannesburg, right in the middle of downtown, which, to my first impression, did seem like the safest place to be.

Luckily there were five car rental places right at the station, so I went straight there to see if I could rent a car. Of course there were lots of cars they had available to rent, but being a silly American who can’t drive manual, I had a very difficult time finding one to rent. All the Europeans I talked to thought it was very amusing that I had no idea how to drive stick! Finally after checking with the first four places, I found one that had an automatic! Some little Honda. Yes!

So it was cheap enough, $30/day, and after filling out all the paperwork I was good to go. Now my main concern was getting used to driving on the left hand side of the road. At this point I didn’t have a smartphone, or wifi, or a map, or a guidebook, or basically anything. I had some addresses of hostels on my laptop, but that had died, so I was basically flying blind driving around downtown Joburg. And downtown Joburg is NOT the place you really want to be driving around cluelessly. It’s shitty, rundown, crowded, and it felt like the equivalent of driving around the South side of Chicago without having any idea where to be going. Not fun.

Plus people are always standing partially in the street, jaywalking and running across the streets in front of you. It made me nervous as hell. Then you get the people who are constantly coming up to the car at stoplights trying to clean your windshield and stuff. I'm fine in the vast majority of travel situations, but this, combined with getting used to driving again, was making me seriously stressed out. And every time I’d try and hit the blinker it was the windshield wiper, because, ya know, they’re on opposite sides now! So I basically kept driving until I reached the highway, and kept driving until I saw the exit for a big shopping mall.

There I was able to buy a sim card for my phone and get some wifi and figure out where exactly I was. I was going to head to Kruger, so I decided to cut some driving time down tomorrow and drive straight to Nelspruit (3 hours away) tonight and meet up with my German friends at their guesthouse. I got to Nelspruit around midnight, but due to insufficient planning/maps I could not for the life of me find the guesthouse. I must have driven around the whole town twice before giving up and finding a dentist/lawyer office parking lot and sleeping in my car.

What I didn’t realize was that this was parking lot was right next to a school, which apparently did not have a parking lot. So at 6 am I was awoken by the sound of a dribbling basketball. There was a group of 10 year olds playing games in the parking lot. Wtf! I don’t mind sleeping in the car, but I hate people seeing me sleeping in my car. So I waited a while, occasionally popping my head up in the backseat like a god damn gopher, checking to see if these kids would scram. But noooo, they weren’t going anywhere. In fact more cars started showing up, dropping off their kids in this lot. Could I have picked a worse spot? Eventually I had to bite the bullet and roll out of my back seat with these little mutants watching me the whole time. Of course the whole car was fogged up and I couldn’t see anything while I was backing up, so I was praying none of these little gremlins were behind me. They weren’t and I sped out of there as fast as I could!

I ended up texting the Germans and they were also renting a car, so we drove together to some cave and a waterfall before I headed off towards Kruger. Now there was one place I wanted to hit up before Kruger, called Blyde canyon, which has a phenomenal viewpoint. Some of my friends I’d met earlier had made their facebook profile pic from this viewpoint, and all their friends were like, ‘wow, so amazing!!!!.’ So it must be a cool place! As I was driving there I managed to get a speeding ticket going 58km/hr in a 50, (5 mph over the limit) which is total bs, and it was the type of ticket you had to pay on the spot, which smelled like a scam to me, but what could I do? I had to go with one of the officers to the station to pay it, and I told them I wanted a ticket in the mail or a court date to contest it, and they basically told me I can pay or go to jail. So I paid of course. Then I tried to follow my google maps screenshot on my computer to get to Blyde canyon and managed to get hopelessly lost. I forgot how difficult navigating is without a smartphone and google maps gps!

So at this point I headed to Kruger, where I had already made reservations at a campsite. But you can’t drive after dark in Kruger, so I was speeding along trying to make sure I got there in time. So I made it through the first gate, and was driving on what was basically a 2 lane highway in the park going 100km/h (65mph) and got pulled over again by the traffic control. Apparently the speed limit in the park is 50 (35mph!) and they told me that I was going so fast that they could send me to jail. They said they’d let me off with a 2,000 rand fine ($135), but after seeing how flustered I was and that was most of the money that I had, they said 1,000 was fine. This was probably another scam too, I’m not sure. But anyway I made it to the second gate, where they told me it was getting too dark and I wouldn’t have enough time to drive to my campsite before dark, so I couldn’t enter the park. Great. Really great day. I ended up sleeping in the car AGAIN, up and ready to re-enter the park at 6am when it opened.

But driving around Kruger was pretty cool. The park has good roads is completely stocked with game. In a day and a half I saw probably 10 rhinos, 8 lions, lots of elephants, some hyenas, and all the other usual stuff like zebras, springbok, baboons, giraffes, etc. Sometimes it gets boring, but then you see a lion a few feet away or a family of elephants crossing the road in front of you and you’re like ok, this is pretty sweet! Overall it was a really good time. And I think I might have gotten lucky, because I met some people who drove around Kruger for 2 days and didn’t see any rhinos or lions, which I thought was crazy! After Kruger it was off to Swaziland, time to check another country off the list! Some Kruger pics:

the rhinos liked laying on the road in the early mornings for extra warmth

the lions don't care about cars at all, so they get up close and personal

a moment when you really like being on safari

no animals this particular morning, but nice light and cool trees

goodbye kruger! I wish this one was in focus!

Mozambique: Vilankulos

May 23, 2016

So Mattias, Manuel, Ronya, and I left our hostel at 6am were able to find the back of a truck, which we shared with a very large dead fish for the 13km’s to Inhanbane. From there we headed to the pier and hopped on a small boat heading across the bay all while a massive rainbow shone above us. After that it was a few more hours in a minibus to Vilankulos. Mattias, Manuel, and Ronya made the rookie mistakes of getting jammed in the back, while I was able to snag the front row, which has much more leg room. Suckers!

Ronja, Mattia, and Manuel in the back of the truck

Vilankulos is known for its beautiful islands and boat trips around those islands. So we got quoted from our hostel at $70/night for a day trip, which sounded a bit expensive to us. So we walked down to the beach where the dhows are negotiated a rate of $100 to get taken out for the day, lunch included. With 2 more german girls hopping on it would only cost us a more modest $17/person for the trip. We agreed to meet at 7am the next morning.

Of course before we could leave the skipper had to go the market and get our food to cook. There’s always something! Turns out we were also taking some of the locals who lived on this island with us as well, which was fine, it added to authenticity of dhow experience. We all waded in the ocean, hopped in and were off. The dhow is a single-sail boat that has no motor. The wind wasn’t very strong so we were off to a slooooow start. Like barely moving. I guess it will be a VERY relaxing boat trip. But after a while the wind picked up slightly, letting us move at something faster than a snail’s pace.

It wasn't in the best shape, but it had character

After about two hours, Ahoy matey! We had reached land. The island was gorgeous: white sand beaches, sand dunes, and an inland scrub forest. And we basically had it all to ourselves. The locals went one way to their little village and we went the other way to explore a bit. It’s always cool to be in a place this beautiful, but also to be the only ones there. After going for swim we embarked on a journey around the island, which would be much hotter and longer than anyone anticipated! I was glad I had my towel with me, which I used to cover my head and shoulders, desert bedouin style. A few hours later we finally stumbled our way back to where the dhow was anchored, and thankfully our lunch was being grilled up.

It was much more than we had expected! In the morning when we asked what was for lunch our reply was rice and tomatoes. But there were grilled fish fillets, potatoes in a tomato/onion/garlic chutney, rice, and pineapples. Really good stuff. We did a lot of eating and very little talking. Then we had a couple more hours to relax and swim, and then it was back to the mainland. Our dhow had a bunch of new passengers as well as a bunch of fish to be sold in the market. The breeze was a bit stronger in the afternoon and we made it back in only an hour or so. Very solid day!

The next day was a relax and do nothing day. I had some time to wander around the villages and the market, both of which are quite photogenic. But they’ll yell at you anytime you try and take a photo in the market. Photography can be challenging in Africa sometimes!

We decided that we did want to visit some of the other islands, and to do that we did indeed have to pay for the legit boat tour, with you know, a boat that has an engine. So we all coughed up $65 or so for a tour of bazaruto island, which is the most picturesque island of the bunch, as well as a snorkelling excursion. And it was very nice! On one side it’s all sand dunes with sand bars wrapping their way out into the ocean, which of course makes for lovely photos. So we had some time to climb the dunes and take a dip in the water before going snorkelling. The snorkelling wasn’t really all that exciting, but the boat ride was! Some sore bums all around.

We ate a very similar lunch to the first one, also delicious, and then had more time to chill on the beach before heading onwards. We stopped at one other sand dune island for a bit, and then sped off towards home. Another really nice day on the islands. We had one more chill day, and then we were all heading back towards Maputo. The bus left at 4am, so we thought: might as well just stay up all night until the bus leaves! Well this maybe wasn’t the best idea, but it did lead to an interesting night! We played drinking games until 11 and then headed to AfroBar, a place that is supposed to popular with locals and tourists alike.

Well there weren’t many tourists there, but we certainly did make a lot friends with the locals! Some people took their turns doing dances on the stripper pole they had there, not me of course, I would never do such a thing :p. We stumbled home at 2:30am, took a little swim in the pool, packed up our stuff and somehow made it to the bus station on time. It left at 5am, and let’s just say I slept well! Ronya let me sleep in her lap the whole time, which was a perfect pillow, so if you read this, thanks Ronya! I got off the bus around 1pm to break up the trip with a beach stop while the rest of the group would have another 5 hours back to Maputo. And that was basically it for Mozambique! I stayed one night on the beach and one more night in Maputo, where I met up again with Ronya and Manuel, and that was it! Time for South Africa!

Mozambique: Tofo

May 9, 2016

It’s my last day in the beach town of Tofo, so I thought I’d write a bit about it. The main attraction here is the diving, and it’s a bit more adventurous than most diving locations! You’re diving off unprotected coastline, so the waters can be a bit rough at times. This morning was especially wild, there was only one dive site that they would bring us to in the very choppy conditions. How the diving here in Tofo works is like this: you have a tractor that brings a rubber dinghy down the beach to the water. All the gear is already loaded into the dinghy. Then everyone gets on the sides of the dinghy and drags it out why the tractor is also pushing it from behind. Once you’re far enough in, everyone hops on the boat, they gun the motor, and you get out of there as quick as you can so you don’t get pummelled by the surf. From there, depending on the conditions, it can be another battle to get out to your dive site.

the tractor backing in to drag the boat out

This morning was the biggest waves we’ve had yet, and even though it was a short ride to the dive site, one guy was already making grunting noises and puking over the side. I wasn’t sitting near him though, ha. We got to the dive site, everyone rolled backwards off the boat, and headed down 30m to the reef. And the current was strong! You really had to hold onto the reef to avoid getting swept away. One couple decided it was too strong and head up right away. Eventually we got to point where we were more protected from the current, so it wasn’t so hectic.

We saw lots of shrimp, lobsters, a few moray eels, scorpionfish, pretty usual stuff. Then at the end of the dive when we surfaced the boat was really far away, and we could see it, but due to the size of the waves, it couldn’t see us. So we had wait maybe 20 minutes floating around before the boat was finally able to spot our orange inflatable device. Some of the people already in the boat didn’t look so good, three of them had thrown up already! We hopped on, and quickly sped off back to mainland. They really gun the boat when you get close to shore to get the boat as far up onto the beach as they can, which is kinda fun. Just another day diving in Mozambique!

I’ve been here 5 nights and have been diving almost everyday. But my stomach can’t handle any more than two of those boat rides a day. Tofo is touted as a place where you can see big stuff like whale sharks and mantas, but we didn’t see either. But did see some cool stuff like turtles, eagle rays, devil rays, blacktip and gray reef sharks though. Sadly no photos! One of these days I'll get a housing for my camera... Other than diving, it’s mostly been chilling on the beach. It’s low season, so everything is a bit dead. Tofo has really picturesque sand dunes, so it’s a popular place for South Africans to build house up on the dunes, overlooking the ocean. The other thing I like is how cheap the cashews are here. You get a massive bag for $2, tough to beat that! And there's one small village nearby, which I like to wander through.

Trouble in the village: a big snake! They have to call a specialist to remove it

they usually got some soccer games going

Tomorrow I’m heading north with two Germans and a Swiss guy to a place called Vilanculos, which has some nice islands and more scuba diving. In my head I’ve calculated it to take 6-7 hours, which probably means it will take 12! So one more week in Mozambique, two weeks in South Africa, and then it’s back home for me!

In Mozambique and up to date on the blog!

May 6, 2016

Hey Hey I’m actually all caught up with my blog now! It’s pretty shocking I know. But the stuff I’m posting now actually happened now or a few days ago and not 5 weeks ago! Malawi was a good country for catching up on my blog. Not much nightlife, not too many tourist attractions or tourists for that matter. Lots of time for writing and photo editing. There was even good wifi! You had to pay for it it, but still. I’m happy to pay a few dollars for good wifi rather than have free shitty/non-existant wifi.

So anyway, I’m in Mozambique now. Land of beautiful beaches and corrupt cops. It’s a bit trickier to travel here because it’s a Portuguese speaking country, but because I’m in the more touristy southern beaches, there’s still a lot of English. Sadly I had to axe the northern part of Mozambique from my itinerary because I was running out of time. Also I didn’t want to deal with the civil war stuff going on in the center of the country. If you’re traveling overland through the central provinces you have to take military convoys in certain locations because Renamo forces are shooting up buses, digging trenches in the highway, setting up ambushes, and just being a huge pain in the ass in general. A few people have been killed so far, and something unsavoury seems to happen a few times a week. Rather than deal with this military convoy stuff I decided to skip over it and fly directly to Maputo, the capital of Mozambique in the far south.

I booked my flight from Tete, which is 5 hours SW of Blantyre. Crossing the border was hilarious. I was with a Mozambiquan guy, and when he saw how the long the line was he told me to follow him. We just went to front, paid like a $1.50 and had some guy stamp us out. It took like 30 seconds. He also made sure I didn’t get totally ripped off changing my Malawi kwacha’s to Mozambique meticals.

minibus from the border to Tete. Kid on the far right has a skewer of rats

There’s no real backpacker places in Tete so I ended up at a hotel for the night, which was pricey, but they had good food and live music, so that was cool. The next day I took a motorcycle ride out in the middle of nowhere to this old church. It was really fun cruising the lousy dirt road through the little villages before finally ending up at this beautiful decaying church up on a hill. I love the African countryside. The little huts, women carrying stuff on their head, children shouting muzungu, the baobab trees, the complete lack of infrastructure. It was a really nice afternoon. That night my flight was supposed to depart at 8pm, but it got pushed back till midnight. I took a rickshaw there, which broke down, and we had to flag a different one to get to the airport. The flight was also delayed again and we probably took off at 1 am.

I got into Maputo around 3am, got my stuff and took a taxi to the guesthouse, where I promptly passed out. The place was pretty dead, like usual. I spent the next day wandering around the city, which doesn’t have much to see, but has a pleasant Mediterranean type climate, with cool breezes, palm trees, and a pleasant waterfront.

The following day I wanted to get to a place called Tofo, maybe 7 hours away, to do some diving. My hostel offered a shuttle service for $20 that left at 5am. $20 seemed very expensive compared to the last few countries I’d been in, and I didn’t feel like waking up that early, so I passed on that option. I’d take the normal public transportation. Big mistake!

I took a taxi to the bus station at 8am, which was far away and cost $8 by taxi. I found the correct bus, which cost $12, and I had to wait almost 4 hours for it to leave. Ugh. There was a bigger man sitting next to me in the window seat, forcing me to have like half by asscheek hanging out into the isle, which was obviously uncomfortable. AND it took 9 hours to get to the town outside of Tofo, called Inhambane, where I holed up for the night. So it was over 13 hours of travel instead of 7, if I would have just taken the damn shuttle. And I paid the same price. Idiot!

The next morning I finally made it to Tofo, which is where I’m at now. Land of deserted beaches and sand dunes and excellent diving. Finally!

Blantyre and Mulanje

May 5, 2016

5 hours south of Cape Maclear was a place called Zomba, which I read had some good hiking, and I was keen to get some sort of exercise in after hanging out on the lake for the last 2 weeks. I stayed at a place called Casa Rossa, a surprisingly good Italian restaurant that also had rooms. I was the only person staying there at the moment. I did some hiking the next day up in the plateau, which was nice enjoyable, with good views over Zomba town. But being all alone I was a bit bored and headed on after two nights to Blantyre, the second largest city in Malawi.

First order of business, apply for my Mozambique visa. I needed a passport photo, copy of my bank account, and hotel bookings. I had read online that one hotel booking should be sufficient, so I went on hostelworld and booked some dorms, only having to put 10% down. After printing everything out I was on my way to the embassy, where I was told I could only get a 7 day visa with 4 days of hotel bookings. Well I wanted more than that obviously, so I had to go back to hostel and fire up my good ole friend Photoshop, and start working away to come up with three weeks of hotel bookings. This was a giant pain in the ass of course, but obviously much better than paying for real accommodation, as I didn’t know exactly where I was going yet. I went back and they were satisfied, I just had to go to the bank, to pay the $81, and come back with the receipt.

This also proved much harder to than I expected as I couldn’t change kwacha to dollars at any of the banks because I didn’t have my passport. So I had to do it with some guys on the street, which turned out ok, besides the horrible exchange rate I got. And it was back to the embassy a third time, where they told me it would take three days. Just enough time to get some hiking in!

Two hours away is the Mulanje massive, a fairly surprising string of granite peaks in SE Malawi. So the next morning I took the minibus there, and started walking towards the Forrestry Office, 10kms up the road. I was hoping to start my hike this afternoon, but considering there were no buses to the office, the actual trip would have to wait until the next morning. The walk on the road was very pleasant though! At some point not far away from the main town I met a guy on the road who was also I guide, and he took me on a shortcut, to get to the lodge. He was actually just hiding me from all the guides in town, who would all be offering me their services. I had read that the most fair thing to do was book one from the office, as they supposedly had some sort of rotation system in place. Well I decided on a 3 day, 2 night hike, at the set price of $25/day which is an insanely good days wage in Malawi. I asked if I could get a discount on the last day as it would only be a few hours walk down. He said no. And oddly enough my guide turned out to be the guide who brought me there to the office. Weird! I sensed some shady dealings at work.

So we left at 7am the next morning to start the hike up into the mountains. It was steep, but nothing too bad. The way it was discussed was that I’d be hiking for most of the day and then climbing the highest peak the next morning. But we arrived at the hut at noon, and it was windy, cool, and misty, and I would have absolutely nothing to do for the rest of the day. So I told him I wanted to keep hiking. So we did another three hours of hiking and ended up a different lodge, this one actually had some other people in it, thank god! Two British girls, on break from their medical clinic work, were also there for the night.

So it was nice having some people to talk to as we cooked up our dinners. A dehydrated meal of Kung Pao chicken for me, and a much more cumbersome meal of rice, beans, potatoes, peppers, and onions for them. That’s why they needed a porter! They also made me some extra porridge in the morning, how very British! They also informed that the guides are supposed to be a negotiated rate, and theirs was less than half of what mine cost. Hmm.

The next morning the guide and I set off to climb one of the nearby peaks, which was about a two hour round-trip affair, with really nice views all around. As we were hiking I decided I’d rather end the hiking this afternoon, rather than finish tomorrow morning, kind of annoyed that he and the guy in the office lied to me about the prices. Plus I was paying him a full days rate for only a 2 hour walk down the mountain the last day. Of course he got upset that I said I was doing 3 days and now was only doing 2. I told him that I knew he lied to me about the price and I should only be paying half of what I was paying, and that I didn’t like how he took me on the shortcut to keep me away from talking to any other guides in town. So in the end, it was a long, quickly paced, awkward walk down the mountain. I paid for my 2 days at $25 like I’d agreed, plus a few extra for the cancellation, and that was that. A motorcycle ride and minibus later I was back in Blantyre.

I picked up the visa the next morning and was off into a brand new country a few hours later: the Portuguese speaking country of Mozambique!