Day 27: Prostitute Wednesday

It's Wednesday right? You walk down the street, and if you glance into traffic for only a second, a motorbike will pull up beside you with two women on it: one older, disinterested, the Driver; the other young, usually pretty hot, but made-up to her back teeth, the Worker. I didn't actually hear what their sales pitch was, but it was probably something along the lines of "you! young foreign man! if you pay me money you may have sexual intercourse with me!". It lacks the subtlety of "massage!" This happened to me four times in 25 minutes today, and only today. The funniest was when I was waiting to cross the road and one happened to stop in traffic in front of me. The Worker opened her mouth to say something, but I just waved them on down the road, and traffic started moving at just that second so the bike moved off without her getting to say anything.

Day 26: Saigon. Shit. I'm still only in Saigon

I've been waiting years to do that title. Nothing has even really happened in Saigon. It seems like a pretty nice, modern city. I went to the Reunification Palace, and the war museum (hello, deformed children photos). I went to a restaurant that served food from Singapore, like beef. Beef only comes from Singapore. I've been offered drugs and motorbikes a lot.

Anyway. One travels to discover oneself, and in amongst all the 21 hour train journeys where I explore the inner recesses of my mind, trying to discover what kind of person I am and whether I'm happy with that, I've wondered what would happen if I tried to grow a beard. Doing it in college seemed pointless, seeing as Conor and Enda were present. But it's been about two weeks since I shaved in Shanghai, and I'm wondering if I should leave it straight through to Christmas just to see what happens. It's kind of annoying to have, but when will I get this chance again?



So tomorrow I'm going to tour the Cu Chi tunnels, and Thursday I'm taking a two day boat up the Mekong into Cambodia. You could argue that I'm doing this because of Apocalypse Now, and you'd probably be right. Right now I'm going to see what Lars Von Trier has been up to, there's another post below this that I just published too, check it out.

Day 23: Hoi An, the anagram lover's Hanoi

The Hoi An Old Town (or Ancienttown, as all the signs put it. Or, at least one sign put it) is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a really nice place to go on a date. I didn't date anyone there, but if you're hanging around at a suburban shopping centre somewhere, and feel like asking out the girl next to you, take her to central Vietnam. This link from the UNESCO website gives next to no information about it. (Side note: the Ha Long Bay entry seems to imply you can have a dragon tour guide. This is not the case).

Anyway, here's a couple of pictures I took of the place.









I got totally insulted by a dog in a restaurant. Yeah, I'm eating in restaurants that have dogs wandering about. Restaurant is kind of a grandiose term for it anyway, it's more of a place that happens to have tables and food. Anyway. It was lying on the floor a few feet from me, and I was doing the get-a-dog's-attention stuff, clicking my fingers, whistling slighty, and so on. It drags itself to its feet with a look of tired resignation, walks five feet further away, and lies back down. I was hurt. Of course, when my food came, it was a different story.

In that same place, a couple of days later, (it was just outside the hostel), there was an Australian guy and an older Vietnamese guy sitting at a table, with a lot of alcohol sitting on it. The Vietnamese guy was on the phone for a bit, talking, and when he's done, he turns back to the Australian guy. "That guy who's been phoning you and calling you a dog," he says, "that's her boyfriend and they live together". Aussie guy looks very pissed off. "That's why she'd never let me come to her place. I came all the way to Vietnam for that bitch."

When I first got to the hostel, I was given my room key and walked upstairs. On opening the door, there was a naked Argentinian guy standing there. Oh, sorry, he said. Don't worry about it, I replied. That was the only time we spoke.

The beach in Hoi An was lovely. I spent over an hour in the sea jumping into waves. I didn't take any pictures, I had nobody to look after my camera while I was in the water. I had rented a bike, so I cycled the 25 minutes back wearing only swimming shorts, this beacon of pale drifting through the countryside, being gawked at by everyone.

At another dinner I met a Dutch guy who was telling me about when he went to Burma back when it was called Burma, and of escaping Europe for good.

The time came to leave, I bought a ticket for the bus to Saigon. They said it would arrive the the hostel at 1.30pm. After a long period of being jerked around, the bus departed from a separate travel agent at 7.30pm. And it was awful. Don't ever get a sleeper bus in Vietnam. The entire trip they either play a) American action movies dubbed by one angry Vietnamese lady or b) constant pop music. The first one sounds like this entertaining, ridiculous thing that would be perfect to pass the time, but you can only take so much of someone talking over Jason Statham before you try to lie down on your tiny bunk and suddenly you're bounced a foot in the air by a pothold and SOUND OF SMASHING GLASS AND YELLING VIETNAMESE LADY.

I don't want to end the entry with complaining, so in conclusion, Hoi An was lovely and I recommend it to anyone. Get a suit made, I would have if I had more time there. Eat ridiculously cheap food. People seem to take pictures of their meals when they go places, maybe I should do that.

Day 19: One short day in Ha Long Bay

The hostel arranged trip out to Ha Long Bay, which is about 3 hours away from Hanoi. I chose the spend-one-night-on-the-boat option. There were 9 of us in the group, myself + 4 Germans, 2 Kiwis & 2 Brits. We got out on the water by noon and had some lunch, took a trip to a cave (see: bottom of this entry). The boat parked outside the cave and we kayaked over to the beach. It was beautiful, the water was the warmest I've been in outside of times people pee in the pool.

It looks a lot like Guilin, except bigger. I'm putting in a photo with a Vietnamese flag for emphasis.












In case you're sick of beautiful scenery, here's a rock that looks like a penis:

Day 18: Hanoi is all about the motorbikes

Everywhere you go, there's the familiar shout of "Hello! Motorbike!". For as cheap as you can negotiate, a random guy on a bike will give you a lift to wherever. I walked to the train station to buy my ticket to Hoi An, and decided to give it a shot on the way back. I pointed at the hostel on the map and we agreed on a price, which was about 60c. It was supposed to be a pretty short ride. Unfortunately (I guess, I had time and wasn't bothered) the guy either couldn't read a map or didn't know his way around Hanoi, so I went in a big loop for about 20 minutes through the mental traffic.

Day 18: There are more white people than Vietnamese in Hanoi

I'm serious. There's people with backpacks and maps and cameras everywhere. (I'm aware that I'm one of them).

When last I wrote, I was in Guilin. After the boat trip and a pause in Yangshuo, I spent the evening there drinking weak but absurdly cheap (600ml, 60c) beer and playing pool. The next afternoon, train to Nanning. Nanning seems only to exist as a place to pause before going to Vietnam. There are very few hostels, and the one I stayed in was full of information on how to get visas and buses to Hanoi. Which was handy, considering that's where I was going.

Met a couple from Kerry getting the same bus as I was, we started out early to catch it at 7.30am. It was hard to sleep on the bus as they had the TV and speaker system playing crappy Chinese pop music and ads for the entire thing, but we got to the Vietnam border before noon anyway. Chinese customs, Vietnamese customs, a new country, a new bus.

When we got to Hanoi, there was a really pushy guy on the bus trying to get us (me and the other two Irish, the bus' caucasians) to stay at some specific hotel. We told him we had booked places, he said, ok, we'll take a taxi together to "Oakwater" and go from there, it's closer. I pointed out that we hadn't said where we had booked places but he was undeterred. He kept this up when we were outside getting our bags and it got to the point where I had to say to him "we're not going with you, seriously go away". He went away.

I had a walk around Hanoi's Old Quarter and around Hoan Kiem Lake. It's pretty cool, though every single person is trying to sell you something. Mainly books and drugs. It's nice to look at though, it seems less of a generic big city like Seoul and Shanghai, or anywhere that gets enough people.

In my walking, I had a map from the hostel, which noted a massage place not too far away. Seeing as my back is something of a mess, I thought, hm, sounds good. I walked to where the arrow on the map was, and sure enough there was a massage place, but I didn't see the name written anywhere to indicate it was the massage place. It was on hospital grounds though, how bad could it be? Worst case scenario, I have to politely turn down a handjob. I went in.

They asked for money up front. 80,000 dong, which is a little over 3 Euro. I forked it over and was brought around the corner into a room. The massage girl put something down on the table, gave me a hanger, said something in Vietnamese and left. Shit, what do I do? On the table was a towel and a pair of shorts that had a waist maybe twice as big as mine. It's like a Zelda game, you have items and a goal, you just have to figure out what to do. Any kind of wrong move would be pretty embarrassing. There was a shower cubicle adjoining the room, so I figured, towel, hanger, I must have to shower. Nudity was a big step though, if that was a mistake, weirdness would surely ensue. I showered quickly, and came out wearing only the giant shorts, with the waist drawstring tied up tight. I sat on the table.

The girl came back in, said something, and went for the string of the shorts and started to untie them and pull them down. Oh shit. I start to lower them confusedly. My ass is exposed now. As soon as it gets to this level, she says something that clearly means "oh god, stop there". So I end up lying there, face down on a table that has a hole cut in the cloth for your face, but no hole in the actual table, so you can't breathe, fan blowing on my bare ass. She climbs on the table and sits on me. The massage begins. It's pretty bad. She's kind of just randomly rubbing my back and grabbing handfuls of flesh and letting it go. I'd gone semi-regularly to the massage place next to the gym back in Toyohashi, so I got used to what it's supposed to be like when someone knows where muscles are and what to do with them.

Nonetheless, it continues. There's a pause, when you know something different is about to happen, and holy fuck she's kneeling on me. She walks up my back on her knees, and then back down. That part was pretty nice, actually. Then the legs, which felt a lot like someone grabbing bits of my legs for several minutes.

Then I have to roll over and lie on my back. If anything untoward is going to happen, it's going to happen soon. The shorts have been pulled up at this stage, thankfully. The leg "massage" continues, but due to the giant nature of the shorts, I'm sure there was a lot of visibility. So I'm lying there trying to ignore it, mentally writing this blog entry, when she tries to move her hand over and hits me in the balls on the way. Fucking hell. The worst of it is over with this, and as I'm leaving, someone with rudimentary English comes in and says I'm supposed to tip because "massage very good". I'm like, yeah, how much, and she pulls out a 100,000 note and points at it. This is, if you recall, more than I paid in the first place. I gave a 50,000, which I suppose is only 2 euro and got the hell out of there.

Going to Ha Long Bay tomorrow, expect many pretty pictures when I get back on Wednesday.

Day 15: I'm in Guilin and I approve of it

I took the Li River boat ride today and this is what it looked like. Two days before I came here, I had never heard of the place. Thanks, Weija.

















We stopped for a swim in the middle of it, which was the best part. Nobody had swimming gear though, so it was just underwear. I spend the second half standing of the boat trip next to a large, tattooed Polish guy in damp briefs. Totally worth it.

Day 11: Above Sea

Qingdao was pretty cool.

The hostel, called the Old Observatory, was in an old observatory, and one of the rooms for people to hang out in still had a giant telescope in it. As well as that, they had a huge outdoor deck, with tables and couches and a (kinda crappy) pool table. I was in an 8 bed dorm, which also contained one guy and five Chinese girls.

First afternoon, after spending longer than I should have getting around the government internet block, I took a walk around town with an English girl I had met on the boat from Korea. The area immediately outside the hostel was a pleasant stone staircase through the woods, which then emerged into a few hundred metres of destroyed houses. It was like a war zone. If and when I get to a decent-speed internet, I'll get some pictures up. Downtown we had gyoza, which was seriously good, and I felt obligated to try the local Tsingtao beer.

That evening, I heard Irish accents from outside on the deck, and found a group including three Irish and a bunch of other nationalities, all of whom were down from Shanghai. Myself and Anna, the girl from earlier, joined them for food. We got taxis down to near the brewery and ordered an inhuman amount of seafood, and more beer. And then out to a bar afterwards, there were flaming shots, with which I nearly managed to set a table on fire through sheer force of being a retard.

The next day I took it a lot easier. Walked through town again, went down to the seafront and down the pier. Hung out at the hostel with the Chinese girls from my room, eating pig skin (they said) and drinking (not very much) beer from a plastic bag.

I'm in Shanghai right now. Today consisted of a ten hour train.

I lost the seven of clubs. I think it's still in a book in Qingdao. However, a French guy I met in Seoul is going there this week, and may see me again in Thailand or somewhere. Don't give up hope.

Now: pictures.


The view from the roof of the hostel, Qingdao is a mixture of German-style buildings and generic skyscrapers. Before I got there, I somehow had the impression it was a pretty small place, but in hindsight it's got twice the population of Dublin.


The hostel's outdoor area, complete with dome.


It was apparently the first observatory in China.




I'm pretty sure there wasn't a war recently, but I can't be sure.


This is a picture of a street. Having been in Japan so long, it's kind of strange to see churches now.


You know it's a European style street because you can buy wine.



There were about two dozen couple taking wedding photos outside this thing. I thought it was for a catalogue or something.


The city from the pier.


The pier from, uh, a different part of the pier.

Day 7: Boat II, this time it's boatier

This is kind of a placeholder post. Blogger is banned in China, and the software I'm using to get around that makes things way slower on top of an already slow connection. So no pictures. I'll fill it out if I get a better connection in Shanghai.

In short, I got a boat from Korea to China.

In long, I got pictures working.








Leaving Korea on the boat, people started throwing bits of food to the seagulls, who caught on pretty quickly and spent about 20 minutes dive bombing the boat. The best part was when the food would go slightly behind them and they'd try to stop dead in mid-air, and look completely ridiculous.




As soon as we got on the boat, every single person started gambling.


Nobody observed smoking etiquette. Sadly.

In other news, I booked a flight (rather, three flights) from Kathmandu to Toronto for Christmas and new year, and then I'm going to spend something like ten days in New York. Where, exactly, I don't know yet. I then fly from JFK to Moscow to finish out the trip. So no Mongolia, no Trans-Siberian. No regrets.

Day 6: When you're stuck in a nightclub and you can't get out of it

Seoul was pretty fun. I did the tourist sights last time I was there two years ago, (temples! more temples!), so this time I just hung out. The hostel, in contrast to Busan, was swimming with people. I got talking to a German girl in my room who said that people were heading out to karaoke later. What better way to celebrate having left Japan?

Karaoke in Korea (Koreoke? You heard it here first) was dissimilar to Japan in that it wasn't nearly strongly enough associated with drinking like a loon. We did an hour an the machine told us we were finished. Oh well. We tried. It would have all been pretty uneventful if the staff hadn't stopped us on the way out and threatened to call the police.

Confusion.

They claimed that two people in our group had set off the fire extinguisher downstairs, and that we had to clean it up or they'd call in a SWAT team (possible exaggeration). Instead of just telling us who did it, they made us watch the security footage. It was the two French guys who had tagged along and nobody seems to have really talked to. They tried to talk their way out of it but were instead sent down to clean. The rest of us walked off.

The second night was messier. There was a group of 15, tequila, and a nightclub. I tried to leave at 2am, but wasn't in the kind of state where I could find the exit. I found the VIP section, and was told not to go in there. I found the women's bathroom, and was told not to go in there. But I still fared better than others. Seems like most people got lost on the 15 minute walk back. One guy got two taxis and still had to walk for ages.

The night after that was a quiet one.

Unrelated musical post

I've started to appear on youtube.

Day 4: Seoul Train

I swore I wouldn't do a Seoul pun. They're too easy, just sitting there waiting to be picked off. But here we are and we'll all just have to deal with it together. At the very least, it's true, I got the train from Busan to the ROK capital.


To rewind a little, the second night in Busan was better than the first. That guy I guessed was a middle-aged German hippy turned out to be a middle-aged French hippy who'd been travelling for two years non-stop. I asked him how he afforded it and he paused and said... uh, it's a secret. There was a Japanese guy too, as well as the owner, who brought out beers and Korean liquor and we sat around for a couple of hours. I think the owner guy might have been subtly hitting on the Japanese guy, but it could have just been drink-related.
The next day I was on the train to Seoul. It was pretty much the same as the Shinkansen in Japan. Seoul is much more promising, people wise, my hostel room is full of bags and mess and someone left a laptop just sitting there. Might turn out to be worth hanging out for a few days.
I'm so hungry. So very hungry.

Edit: I have now eaten and made karaoke plans with Germans.

Day 3: The perils of off-season

So, here I am in Busan, South Korea, sitting alone on the floor of an empty dorm. Check out the mosquito nets.

Summer has, I guess, been officialy over for six days, so there's nobody around. There was a Canadian guy I was talking to briefly, and someone who turned up today and looks like a middle-aged German hippy. Considering the circumstances, he most likely is a middle-aged German hippy. So I've just been walking around town on my own. It's reminding me of how Tehran was, in that I'm weirdly isolated and the city smells pretty bad.

However, she shining ray of awesome is this:



Gwangalli Beach. It's been two years since I last swam in the sea, at Pacific Beach in San Diego, and it's good to be back. I heart the sea.

In other news, I've been thinking for a while what to do for new year. I'm going to head to Mongolia around January 7, and flying to there from pretty much anywhere I could be is going to be expensive. So Bangkok maybe, I thought. A Thai island of some kind (good ones, not the leper ones)? Some random town in India? Shit, I thought, I should just go to Toronto. Then I realised I should do exactly that. Six months is too long for this being-alone thing. See you later, Canadia*.

*Not a typo.

Day 2: It could have been a brilliant Korea

Well, I made it. I paid for the privilege of cancelling my phone, got the subway, the wrong train, then the right train and got myself to Osaka International Ferry Terminal. The boat had musicians in the lobby, like it was a real proper cruise for people who take cruises.
I was in a room with two other guys (the trip was overnight), one of whom just sat on his bunk constantly playing the PSP, the other lay there half dressed watching Korean gameshows.
We sailed down the middle of Japan, under (I think) the bridge that joins Kyushu and Honshu.


And sailing through the remainder of the country at dusk was pretty nifty too.


Then bam, Korea.



You can totally tell that it's a different country, and not just any old picture of a random port. I'm going to go find the beach.