noodle quest 2006

So i wasn’t able to sleep at all that night. i guess my post traumatic stress kicked in as did the hunger i was feeling since we missed out on having dinner as we were too exhausteed to leave the hotel. i was up all night thinking about the rest of our trip and things we wanted to do, random things like old memories and favorite books. i guess my life flashed before my eyes a few hours late. good thing it wasn’t too late. so the next morning we got up and boarded a van with three british girls which took us to a bus which took 4 hours to bring us to ha long bay. we ate some lunch and were put at a table with two weird germans, two chatty australians, 2 rich vietnamese guys and us. lunch was not so good, and does not warrant any details. then onto the boat. we got onto the boat and it was so hot we could have overflowed ha long bay with our sweat. hopefully i will have endless metaphors for intense heat as i don’t think it will let up for the next 5 months. the boat was amazing. well not the boat really but the boat trip. we climbed up to the top deck and saw wildly shaped limestone structures and little floating houses throughout the bay. we stopped at “surprise cave” for a moment where our guide, tu, pointed out various shapes and objects that some of the stalagtites and mites looked like. truthfully the trees elyse and i saw on some back highway in kentucky looked more like turles and people and mushrooms than these cave rocks did but it was really fun all the same. then back on the boat and out into the bay to dock for a quick swim. a dutch coupel jumped off teh second tier but jess and i opted for a jump off the first tier which was still pretty high. the water was so salty it was thick and we could not stop laughing because all of the vietnamese workers on the boat were laughing at us laughing which created a cycle that forced us to consume way too much salt water and lead straight to an amazing nap on the deck sleepily watching women row by on fruit boats, snack boats and fish boats. we stopped at another cave but decided we were caved out and stayed horizontal on the boat with the british girls, the australian couple who did not shut up, and the ducth couple who were very smart and worldly. we arrived 6 hours later at cat ba island from where i write right now. we ate some dinner which was really good; garlicky greens (a staple here i think), bean sprouts with veggies, chicken and carrot soup, grilled trout with tomatos, rice and some other stuff. i have ventured outside of my vegetarianism. i have not ordered meat yet but have eaten eat some… i am testing the waters. also i decided to test fate and eat a bite of watermelon. still alive, no diarreah yet to speak of. jess and i went to bed at 8pm and woke up at 7:30am for breakfast. the mattress was so hard when you knocked on it you can hear hollow sounds but i had the best night sleep yet in vietnam. some breakfast and then we took a moto to cat co beach 1. we wnated to go to cat co beach 3 as we heard it was the most beatiful. we might try and find it in a bit. the beach was okay, not extremely beautiful but fine. we had to rent chairs which was okay no problem (this is our favorite vietnamese phrase yet “okay no problem” pretty much everything is okay no problem. in fact, even after the fight, Jue, with blood dripping in his eyes told us ‘okay no problem, get on bike’). we met a nice spanish couple from valencia who were on their honemoon and we swam with them in the water and spoke spanish for a while which was fun. then we met some abrasive international business majors from the US who are studying in Beijing at the Beijing school of economics. one guy told me that China is not afraid to use nukes on the US and is prepared to loose everything east if some city that starts with an “sh” and that it won’t happen until afer the olympics in Beijing in 2008. he was a jerk. than they left after fighting with a few vietnamese people who worked at the beach (renting chairs). next a tour of about 40 chinese men in tight black bike shorts and red hats came to the beach. they all ran into the water where jess and i were and had too much love to give. i left and from the chairs i heard groups of 15 men at a time shouting to jess that they wanted to ‘love you come swim with me i love you bye bye.’ after that they wanted desperately to take photos with us. jessie allowed one photo and i took one photo of one guy taking a photo of one chinese guy and one jessie. then of course all of them wanted photos (as china is a communist country and everything must be equal, or something). i told them 100 US dollars for 1 photo and that was the only thing that made them leave us alone. jess felt only good vibes from them but i unfortunately (thanks to that young republican jerk) saw the nukes in their eyes and felt that they only wanted us for taxidermy reasons and souvenir purposes. hopefully i will feel better about chinese people again soon. then we jumped ona moto and went to lunch where we ate DELISH food. vegi fried rice, rice paper rolled spring rolls, and a banana pancake with honey dipping sauce and of course coffee. it was reaaaaally good. if i had one for grain of rice shaped space in my belly i would shove another pancake in it. we saw a nice australian girl that we met in hanoi who joined us at lunch. she is 20 years old and traveling the world sola. she has been hospitalized twice (one moto accident, she was driving, and one extreme vomitting) and today her toe was hurting and some local doctro choped off her big toenail while 10 vietnamese people watched. oooouch. emily g told me about toenails falling off b/c of calcium deficiency so maybe this will serve as a reminder to take those pills. ouch i really want to keep all of my toenails please. toay a little girl walked over to me and kissed my face. she was so cute that i put her in my back pack and ran away with her, or rather i had fantasies of doing such things. this town, cat ba town on cat ba island is kind of wack. it is all tourists and all of the businesses cater to tourists. in hanoi there are lots of hotels but still tons of business that has nothing to do with toursim. however, i think an organized tour is the only way to access halong bay so it is okay. we have decided likely to skip a trip to Sapa in the north as i think we are both feeling very anxious to see other places. everyone we have met here keeps saying that the people are milions of times more friendly and kind outside of vietnam. we on the other hand have lked most people here so it is hard to imagine places could be better although we are very eager to find out. there is lots of shouting on the street (i.e. moto moto moto 1 dolla 1 dolla dolla) and people say it is not that way in laos, cambodia and thailand. tomorrow we will return to hanoi via ha long bay and then we will spend a night there. the plan is to spend tomorrow doing a little shopping, sending some things home or to a friend in bangkok, hopefully do some yoga, and see the water puppets. the next day after that (friday, i think) we will head to hoi an which we are very excited about. mostly everything is okay no problem and we are having fun.

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