Get Busy Livin or Get Busy Dyin!

So let’s catch up on the happenings of the past week…shall we? From Nha Trang Me, Andy, and our Kiwi friends, Amy, Kim, and Lisa (Lil’), all headed north to Hoi An. Hoi An is a cozy little colonial city about 500 Kilometers north of Nha Trang. It is famous for it’s tailors. I definitely do not enjoy shopping but was tempted by the low…low…prices! These places will make absolutely anything for you. You can get suits, jackets, shirts, pants, shorts, dresses, you name it. I decided to indulge. For just under $60 U.S. i got a chocolate brown winter jacket, very stylish i must say indeed, and i got a pair of jeans and another pair of khaki pants made. You can’t beat the prices. You pick out what you want and the next morning it’s done. You go back to try it on and they will make any alterations you want within an hour or two…amazing efficiency. The clothes themselves are alot cheaper than you would pay but having them tailored and fitted exactly the way you want them is freaking awesome. Mom…please tell me your proud…i finnally got a winter jacket. You might be able to take me out in public now…aren’t you happy?

After Hoi An we headed north to Hue…not much to see here so that’s why we only stayed one night. We wanted to head north to Hanoi so we had time to go to Halong Bay and to check out the city. We had to endure another 12+ hour overnight bus ride from Hue to Hanoi. These bus rides as i’ve explained are horrible. Knowing you have to take them is like knowing you have to go to the dentist to get teeth pulled. You’ll feel better when it’s done but the process is agonizing.

The bus pulled up to our hotel with the words “Camel Travel” written on the side…this would be an omen. As we would find out later, we could have gotten to Hanoi faster if we were on Camels. We placed our bags underneath and waited for the door to be opened. It was freaking hot outside and the idiot bus driver sat there and would not open the bus until the guy sorting out our bags was done…what a loser! As we waited to get in i turned to Andy and said:

“I don’t have a good feeling about this bus ride.”

He said:

“Relax..it’s early.”

The bus pulled away. Andy sat in the last row with the Kiwi’s and I sat one row in front. The bus ride was going extremely smooth…almost too smooth. The A/C was blasting. We were laughing and playing games in the back. Time was flying by…and then it happened. I crapped my pants…ok, that didn’t happen, but that would have made the whole thing even worse. The bus pulled over on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. People got out. I took a piss, while I was surrounded by woman squatting everywhere doing the same. The back panel was opened and the bus driver was looking at something in the engine. A few minutes later we were back on and all seemed fine. Then another stop a few minutes later. Same thing happened. The back panel was opened and they were all looking inside with a worried look. The thing about the people here in Vietnam is they can fix anything. When andy crashed his motorbike a guy fixed it with amazing efficiency. We figured they could do the same for the bus. As we got on the bus again and it pulled away, Andy said the following:

“When do you think we’ll stop again…I say 1:25.”

The time when he said that was just before midnight. No lying the bus came to a halt again at 1:25 on the nose…Andy called it. For the next 5 hours we would sit there without having any clue what was going on and when we would be leaving. Our bus driver was gone and soon so would our sanity.

We all got off the bus and tried to sleep on the pavement…didn’t work. We tried to play some cards, that worked for a little while. We tried to sleep again on the bus, and some were able to fall asleep. As the hours ticked by I kept thinking to myself:

“What the hell am i doing here?”

“Will we ever get out of here alive?”

I thought maybe I had done something wrong…I thought that old man potter may be at the root of the problem.

Then I shouted:

“I wanna live again…I wanna live again.”

Ok, once again, this didn’t happen. The quote of the night actually came from Lisa or Lil as we call her. Sometime just before sunrise when all was quiet she said the following:

“I could go for some Lasagne.”

You could go for some Lasagne? Are you kidding me. We had been trapped on a bus for almost 5 hours in the middle of nowhere and all you could think about was Lasagne?

I’ve learned to become very patient and very tolerant on my trip but this bus ride pushed me and I think everyone else to the limit. I thought about ways I could get out of here.

Should I commit a crime? Would anyone be able to arrest me? Should I run around naked screaming, “It’s the apocalypse…save yourselves.” Should I grab a chick and make out with her so that if it was the apocalypse at least I could say that I made out with a chick at least once? Should I start a militia and try to flip the bus over and light it on fire? Should I start crying and foaming at the mouth so that everyone would stay away from me?

Well…I did non of those things. At just around 6 in the morning, shortly after sunrise, our bus driver returned and somehow fixed the bus and we were off to Hanoi. We arrived in Hanoi just around 1:30 in the afternoon. We had turned a bus ride from 12 hours into almost 20…holy schneikes.

At the end of the day we made it. I couldn’t tell you how many buses we passed that were overturned, in a ditch or broken down like we were. I have to be grateful. The plan now is to head to Halong Bay. I fly to Hong Kong on the 29th.

Those of you who have met my friend Mark Lynch…he is getting married on the 29th. Mark is an active poster on the blog. If you would like to wish him well, you can do so on the blog.

Thank You…and goodnight now!

When we purchased our bus ticket in Saigon we were offered for an extra $3 a day trip out to the islands off the coast of Nha Trang to do some snorkeling and swimming. Nha Tran was our first stop on the bus ride north as you probably already read. It is pretty much a resort town for western tourists. So on the boat trip we would get food and drinks…it would be great, so we thought. Me and Andy met a few nice young ladies in Siem Reap that we met up with again in Saigon who bought similar tickets so we thought it would be a great day and a good laugh. Amy, Kim and Lisa are from New Zealand. Kim and Lisa are also sisters. We are all the same age and pretty much spend the day insulting each other until either Andy or Lisa goes too far and then we stop…I never say anything that bad, i’m very polite and kind.

The morning of the boat trip arrived and I sat in my bed and could hear a small voice in my ear saying:

“Stay in bed…don’t go…please…tell Andy you don’t feel well…eat the $3.”

For a split second I almost did but figured worst case scenario it would make for a good blog entry. Me and Andy met the girls at the travel office at just around 8 in the morning where the bus picked us up and beeped it’s way toward the dock. While I was at the office I looked at the pictures on the wall of the boat trip. I saw people smiling. I saw a huge spread of delicious food. I saw people in crystal clear water, laughing, swimming and snorkeling. I saw friendly staff entertaining. What I would actually see on the boat was my life flashing before my eyes.

Pulling up to the dock and getting on the boat my feeling of uneasiness grew. We were crammed on to the boat like refugees with about enough space to not have to sit on someones lap. I got the lucky seat right in front of a massive speaker. We sat on the boat for a good half hour before it pulled away. The whole time I kept telling myself to jump off but I didn’t. The boat pulled away and i swear if this boat went any slower it would have been going backwards. The boat was probably made sometime in 1863. The wood looked like it was going to give way at any second. We were immediatley entertained by some awe inspiring rap music that blasted from the speaker right next to my ear. This music had no business being considered music nevermind being played on this boat. We were probably the youngest ones on the boat, it was mostly an older vietnamese crowd. One song in particular really got the crowd going. I’ll keep it as PG as possible without getting into to much detail. This song, which i’ve heard before as it is an American Rap Classic was about giving oral sex to a woman. The Lyrics go a little something like this:

“Lick my neck, my back…lick my (insert woman’s private area here) and my crack.”

Another good lyric which really got me grooving was this one:

“Lick it good, lick it good just like you should…Don’t stop just do it do it, gotta get your neck into it.”

I do apologize for anyone who get’s offended reading this but you have no idea how embarassing it is to listen to this music. Picture sitting next to your mom and grandmother or perhaps a mother in law. You anxiously sit there and pray that you are not asked what the song is about because the only real option you have is to play dumb and shrug your shoulders with a blank expression.

As we raced toward the islands we were told about what the day would entail. We would go snorkeling, have lunch, get down and funky with some international karaoke, go to a beach and then finish the day at some aquarium.

Our first stop would be Snorkeling. In order to go snorkeling or even get in the water you had to pay 5,000 dong. The particular site we were going to was a Marine Protected Area so i had no problem handing over the money as I knew they are most definitely taking great care of the coral and the surrounding beach. We must have been told about 50 times that it was marine protected. The boat came to a stop and dropped anchor. Right as we were given the ok to go in someone flicked a cigarette butt right into the water…classic moment. Nothing like getting all amped up to hit the water only to try to jump right on someone’s cigarette butt. The big problem, like i’ve explained before with countries here in SE Asia is that they have no knowledge of how to care for the environment. When I saw the cigarette butt get thrown into the water I looked around to see others and then thought that whoever threw it had unbelievable aim to actually hit the water, his chances of hitting another piece of trash were much higher. What the hell where they protecting this place from…fish? coral? clean water? It might as well have been a Trash Protected area. Knowing that my 5000 dong was going to go to helping keep this place dirty would have made more sense. Either way we climbed up to the top of the boat and jumped in. The colors underwater were amazing. At first I thought the reef may have been sponsored by Coca Cola or Marlboro, as those were the only colors you could see underwater. The reef was virtually dead…horrific. I’m so glad they’ve protected it so well.

So after an hour of negative 5 star snorkeling we headed to the other side of this island to have some lunch and do some more swimming. The sea was rough this day and as you can imagine people were blowing chunks all over the place. I kept thinking about the time dad took us fishing with his friend in Boston Harbor and me, dan and jeff all got sick and the guy riding the boat was getting drunker and telling dad to keep the chunks so we could use them for bait.

The younger crowd on the boat moved up to the top to prepare for lunch. As we waited for lunch I looked around at the other boats right next to us. The amount of trash going off the side of the boat was absolutely amazing. Cans, bottles, bags, you name it. It made me sick to see it. Then I watched a guy on another boat dip a bucket of water into the water and then dump it into the toilet in the back of the boat. As soon as he dumped it i noticed a rush of water coming out from the side of the boat, right underneath the toilet. A few seconds later It was a scene from Caddyshack. A few pieces of Baby Ruth came floating by the boat. I looked around and yelled:

“Don’t touch it.”

Ok, I didn’t actually yell anything. However there were loads of people in the water, not too far from it. Seeing the Baby Ruth’s float by, coupled with everyone yacking over the side of our boat and the surrounding boats took away my appetite. After lunch i did what any self respecting tourist would do…I went swimming. Now i’m writing this so you know I have lived to tell about it but there was doubt. In the water we were greeted by a guy pouring wine into these glasses for us. They set up this floating bar and had bottles of wine. The wine was pretty gross but it was free so why not. I felt like I was at a poor man’s springbreak or in Weekend at Bernies. We proceed to drink some wine and get loud and obnoxious to make something of the day. It proved to be the highlight of the day. Right before we got back on the boat the guy who was pouring the wine just chucked it over his shoulder to float away. I swam and grabbed it and gave it to him. Here is what his response was and i honestly think he believes it.

“The bottle is made from sand…it belongs here.”
After that we jumped back on the boat and we made our way to an island where we were let off to go and swim. As we pulled into the dock on this island we were greeted to the leftovers from lunch floating by in the water as we stepped off. Food comes from nature…maybe it just wants to go back to it’s home…sounds logical enough. 45 minutes of fun in the sun and we were back on the boat to finish the day at the aquarium. The Aquarium was an additional charge so we elected to stay on the boat.

The day finnally ended and me and Andy and the girls just laughed as it was one of those classic days that you had to laugh at.