noodle quest 2006

there is one vietnamese channel that as far as i can tell, only shows skits of small children (lip) singing and dancing in costume and at other times shows montages of bird pictures with soft silly grocery store music accompanying them. on other notes, Jue has grown on us and he is now one of our favorite new friends. other fantastic new friends include dutch people- everyone from holland that we have met and have yet to meet. they seem to be so worldly and smart and interesting. i have been blown away by the wit, kindness and self possession of every dutch person i have met. holland never really interested me before but now i think maybe i will visit. we took the boat back from cat ba island to ha long city and it only took half the time as it did the day before so i guess we were cruising around the other day. the boat was a bit more crowded today which only meant more random and interesting people and stories to meet and hear. this included two british boys who appeared to be traveling vey haphazardly- showing up in locations they knew nothing about which was working out for them about 80% of the time. i felt a bit braver jumping off the boat today and so i did a dive instead of my staple cannonball which was halfway between okay and death-defying. then we lunched at the same place we had the day before but it was much tastier including delish tofu in tomato sauce and french fries which we ate with chopsticks. it was the british boys, collin and paul’s, first time eating with chopsticks so we all laughed at them a lot. then back on the bus and stopping at a rest stop where we saw emily the australian (and sadly, her NASTY toenail or rather lack thereof) in addition to a snake in a bottle of whisky for 48 cents which supposedly a lot of people drink. maybe it is the vietnamese rendition of the worm in the tequila bottle? next we came back to hanoi and switched hotels to the youth hotel’s partner hotel called “little hanoi” which was just down the street and a whole lot nicer for the same price. now our room has two big beds, a balcony with beautiful oak french doors, a clean bathroom with a big tub, a 6 seater leather couch, glass coffe table, tv, armoire, etc. for the same 8$ a night. we are averaging about 40$ a day between jessie and i which is about what we had figured, maybe a little less han we anticipated. everyone we meet appears to be doing the same route as us, north to south in vietnam, then land cross into cambodia, then into thailand, then up into northern thailand and into laos. i think we will run into the same people again and again which sounds fun. hopefully we will run into the british girls again as we truly loved hearing girls our own age speaking to each other like “well isn’t that lovely, then?” So after we moved, we visit our old hotel again and say hello to some friends like lee, spring, alfie and jue who are all hanging out at the hotel and also some travelers we were hanging out with before we went to halong bay. then we decided to put on some makeup and go to a vegetarian indian restaurant. if we thought the men loved us in our sweaty messy haired dirty moments we could not have envisioned what a little mascara would do. we jumped on a rickshaw type thing, gota bit hassled by our driver for more money when we arrived, ate some indian food, walked around the lake, went into a weird club with a singing woman rotating aroudn a giant lazy susan with people sitting around watching and drinking, jumped on one moto (oops, that was truly the last time we do 3 on one bike) and came back here. i think we might do a little shopping tomorrow. i have already made my shopping list for hoi an, which is a town full of tailors who can handmake everything. one of the ducth women i met told me that in addition to pants, dresses, shirts etc, they can also make custom made bathing suits and shoes! i am freaking out a little bit. i am going to set aside some money and just go nuts. i have not bought a thing yet besides food and water and am a bit afraid to break the seal but i always knew hoi an would be a shopping mecca for me. today in the hotel some french woman came in holding a vietnamese baby she had obviously just adopted and xui, a dude who works here, told me, “she bought that baby here in hanoi!” i wonder if that is how they think of the adoption process or if it was a translation error. hard to tell. although i am still learning vietnamese words, no one ever understand me when i say things because vietnamese is tonal and while i am pronouncing things correctly it is impossible to make the correct pitches. the other day i asked a moto driver “odo pho an chai” which i am positive means “where can i find vegitarian noodles” but i think in a different pitch or something that must mean “i want to stick a hot fork up your nose and pull out our brains,” because he looked really confused and a bit mad. hmmmm…. more pictures coming soon, maybe tomorrow. it takes a very long time to upload them ao tomorrow night i will let them upload over night.

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