noodle quest 2006

If you are reading this, friends, you will know that we are alive and okay so everything is cool, okay? OKAY?!?! last night after passing out for a while we searched out dinner at a cool little cafe called crossroads cafe which had a bunch of cute boys playing guitar and we ate friend rice and drank nasty beer called “bia hanoi.’ yuck it gave me permanent chills and grew some hairs on my chest. we fell in love with 2 cute shy boys that worked there and we flirted wordlessly with plenty of exagerated winks until we were scared that the police would violently enforce a curfew that appeared to be in effect as the roar of the moto horns and engines had died down a curious amount. we went home and passed out. last night was really hot. it was very hot. it was the kind of heat that makes you feel straneg and question things you always took for granted such as, can the human body actually maintain it’s form (skin, bones, organs) in inhumane temperatures. in the morning we ate bread and coffee and arranged a moto tour with Jue (soft j, oo, ay) who we knew from the hotel and his buddy Alfie. First we went to the Ngoc temple at Huan Kiem lake which was super cool. it is dedicated to a warrior who returned this magical sword to it’s rightful wner who is the super large turtel from the lake which has a really fat juicy neck. we used our walkie talkies giving one to Jue and keeping one. if it wasn’t easy enough to make friends around here the wlkie talkies would have sealed our fate- vietnamese people want to start a religious movement around these two way radios, thanks elyse and dave! next we went to a hectic market where we were the only non-viets and people were not very glad abuot it althuogh i saw a lady eating a bowl of rice, spinach and larvae which made my day. next we hopped back on the motos and went to the temple of literature which is dedicated to confucious and his parents! they must be so very proud. after that we ate some lunch at this crazy restauarnt. they offered dog on the menu which my sicko side wanted to view but not eat. Alfie found it for me in the back and he said it was a nice big one but i chickened out and couldn’t look. our meal included delish spicy tofu in tomato scallion broth, fried tofu with sesame dipping sauce, and garlicky greens and mushrooms, all delish and still no diarreah to speak of! we are being extremely careful. it is likely that i fear diarreah more than knife fights which brings us to another interesting (read; totally crazy, ridiculous, surreal and minorly horrifying) event. after lunch we were brought to the museum of ethnography which was a beautifully comprised collection of artifacts, photographs and film about the minority groups of vietnam includign the hmong, tay, tao, and muang people. also there were models of traditional houses outside. when we got out we walked out and headed toward the motos. as we were about to get on i saw that Jue was getting yelled out by some dude in a t-shirt and aviators. i said to jessie, let’s get out of here, because i thought they were going to scream at each other and smack each other around. as we were turning to go walk back towards the security booth and the museum jessie caught sight of a kitchen knife. she alerted me and we atarted to get the hell out of there. as we looked over our shoulders Jue was in a head lock and one guy had a knife to his neck while three others were punching his head, back and sides. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh! Alfie jumped in throwing punches all around. holy shit! we were freaking out kind of and we ran into the security booth. i hid and so did jessie but she peaked out and gave me upddates on what was happening. everyone around us was only mildly alarmed except for this swiss woman who was really freaked out. after it was all said and done the boys told us it was time to go with them. we weighed our options and sent ount prayers to the universe that the craziees wouldn’t follow them and us. they assured us that it was just dumb boys fighting vietnamese style so we went with them. unofrtunately they flicked off the crazies as we were leaving and one of them started running after us all but we had motos and he had only feet so we won. wow that was nuts but jessie and i remained calm and operated very functionally, so reader feel proud instead of afraid, okay? OKAY!?!? it was really nuts though. we came back to the hotel and decompressed and passed out. we were going to go to water puppets show but instead will play on the internet so we can wake up earlier to go on a two day cruise down halong bay nicluding, bus, fancy boat accomodtions and all meals for three days for 22$. good deal. okay i am going to upload some photos now, check them out!

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 2nd, 2005 at 10:12 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.