noodle quest 2006

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh! it has been so difficult to get online lately and i think i have to come to terms withthe fact that i will probably not be able to post any pictures until bangkok. i have tried to upload my photos from about 25 different un-functional computers at this point. i think i will just burn cd’s and hope to god that they don’t break in my bag. ugh.
okay…. here’s what’s been happening as of late. on the 25th, we said goodbye to dani as she was flying to delhi that morning. jess and i walked around and checked out some new hotels. we had breakfast in some prostitute stomping ground cafe in our neighborhood (pham ngu lao… or something) and then i felt weird and sick. i passed out on some laquer “couch” in a “hotel” lobby and jess scouted out a new hotel for us. it was this super cute little place on a side street with a alcony and it was very clean. then we napped for a while and i recovered enough to eat sushi! it was our most expensive meal yet (about 10 bucks for the two of us) but it was worth it. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM sushi tastes so good! it was only japanese people there- businessmen upstairs and dates downstairs. then we walked around the dong hai neighborhood for a while popping in and out of bars but realizing that the best entertainment we could have was some snickers bars and vietnamese music video television (not mtv, actually, although they do have that). the next day we had breakfast at a cute cafe and then took a cyclo (bike with a cart) to the fine arts museum. the whole dowstairs was devoted to pierre cardin, some self-obsessed french fashionista who’s photos were mediocre cool. upstairs was the cool vietnamese art with many paintings depicting war stuff but also earlier works. next we went to china town by way of a local bus which was very fun. it was really the winds of sheer luck that blew us to the bus station-correct bus-the right stop-the market. we walked around for a bit and then jess started to feel sick so we decided on some massages at the institute for the blind. that was a total trip. [read on]

i am so tired right now that every moving thing i see is appearing in short still flashes that make me shake my head and rub my eyes trying to understand. for the past 4 days me, jess, dani, and all of our buddies at keng hotel have been super lazy just drinking siagon beer, and flopping our sandy selves all over every deck chair, peice of grass and hammock in town. it was supremely awesome. if not for dani we probably would have stayed indefinitely as each new day brought us really cool and intreresting new friends and also brought me closer to my true vietnamese love, Linh, a super cool boy who’s mom ran the hotel. last night we went to a party with Linh and “Lou” this ridiculous guy that smacked jess (lovingly?) in the face for the entirety of the 13km ride to this party. the party was so freaking fun it hurts to think about it. we went to a club called mtv-dance-now-party-time or soemthing like that and just had so much fun. we ran into a friend, trang, a really cool girl who runs her own health spa in mui ne and it was really fun playing with her. unfortunately somehow a super light case of diarreah had befallen me earlier that day and drinking did not help things. i was really too happy to care though although i did think i might die for a minute there in the bathroom at the club. we got back to the hotel at around 12:30, chilled out with Linh and Lou and then got on our bus at 1:30am, way to drunk to be on anything but solid, unmoving ground. the bus was completely packed but luckily we all got seats- dani next to a brit who had his legs spread wide open taking up too much room, jessie next to the feet of one of the sleeping busdrivers, and me next to a kind of anxty teen who got off the bus at 5am in some random town. bye friend. we got into siagon at about 6am and crashed at some hotel that River and Xui from little hanoi reccomended to us. it is pretty smelly and on the fourth floor so we are struggling to get up there. we past out until 11 and then went to all you can eat pasta and salad which was totally amazing. we are going back there in a bit to watch a movie in their lounge. i just bought 25 new cd’s for 20 bucks. and 2 dvd’s for 2 bucks. i really thought i was done shopping. now jess is passed out, dani is on the internet somewhere and i am here at TM brothers travel center and internet cafe, somehow hungry again. tonight we are going to go out on the town for dani’s “going away party” as she is leaving for india tomorrow. she has been a superior travel addition and we have plans to all go to turkey together this august to visit alex.