The Book of Jones

So... The weather sucks. I think this is part of some vast conspiracy throughout my life to deny me a single sunny day on a beach. I think I've spent at least 2 months on a beach in my life, of which maybe 1 week it has been sunny. Hopefully it will clear up by the time I get to Phu Quoc. Looking back, I should have gone to phu quoc straight off, then sihanoukville (southern cambodia), then phnom phen etc.

Nha Trang is on the verge of becoming south beach - the beach is being overrun by 30 floor hotel/condos, although the streets still feel like anywhere else in vietnam (vendors, motos, open sewage etc.). I think it would be an awesome city in the sun, but not really in the rain.

Some other thoughts -

Shwarzenegger's stuff - sounds kind of interesting. I admire the fact that kids would be eligible for state healthcare regardless of immigration status, but this really should extend to adults as well. Its all well and nice for xenophobic / racist conservatives to talk about how their money shouldn't pay for illegals to get health care, but the argument is based in stupidity. If you don't have healthcare, you get sick. When you get sick, you go to the emergency room. Guess who pays that bill? Guess how much more it costs to treat someone at the emergency room then via a regular doctor? Either way you pay the bill, but if you ensure everyone, you spend much less money. Frankly, I could care less what your viewpoint is, but if you make the argument not to provide care for illegals, you're advocated spending more money. So you're taxing Californians so your xenophobic fantasy can be realized.

iPhone - Looks cool. I'm probably going to have a hard time not buying one. But there is one sticking point - cingular. Specifically, their data rates. If I pay $500 for a phone, I should be able to use the internet anywhere. That's the killer feature - dashboard weather / maps / whatever everywhere I am. Not just where there is wifi. But I'll have to pay another $10-$40 a month for this. My cell bill right now is $30 (+ taxes) a month. I don't want to pay $50 a month, +$500 for the phone, +$200 to buy out my contract from tmobile. If it was $30 a month, I would do it. But $50 is just plain stupid.

Cell phones have always had two major problems - the phones suck and the service sucks. Now there is (what looks to be) a great phone. But the service still sucks. And, honestly, even if the phone is great, the service would still limit how I used the phone. If I can't surf the web, download songs / movies / tv / whatever, then why am I going to pay a premium for that?

Hue

Hue was a nice if boring city. It was very, very quiet, not much going on, and it started raining the night I got there. Which was kind of a killjoy. I took the train in (a night train - 7pm to 8am), and got about 3 hours of sleep. Once I got into the city, I headed for a hotel, rested a bit, and wandered around the citadel. Interesting place, if very damaged. Hue was captured by the NVA (north vietnamese army) during the Tet offensive and held for about a month, so most of the city was destroyed (which you can tell, especially in the area of the royal palace, which is mostly just bullet scarred skeletons of buildings).

You can also tell from talking to people around that the people were greatly affected by the war. The first (and only, so far) time I've had someone mention the American war to me was in Hue - a moto driver asked the usual "where are you from?", to which i replied america. He acquired a somewhat dour face and mumbled "my father died because of america." Needless to say, it was one of the most awkward moto rides I've had since then - just kind of silence. I couldn't really say anything - saying something about my own pacifism would just be me trying to trivialize what we did.

Hoi An

Hoi An makes me wish I owned a much better camera. I regret not bringing an SLR of some type - the lighting here isn't amazing, so high speed film / good light sensors would be nice. The colors / light here is really beautiful - the pouring rain reflects light all over everything.

It's funny - the government, as part of the restoration / preservation of the old town, strongly encourages painting everything this orangeish yellow color. Which looks nice enough, but its very clear there were other cool colors as well. Any paint that's chipping exposes irradescent blues, reds, and other bright / colorful tones. The only comparison I can think of for this city is the city in Chocolat. Its all narrow streets, kind of winding, with very old houses on all sides.

Also, Hoi An is known for its tailors, and every other shop seems to be a tailoring place. I'm considering ordering a suit to be made- its around $100, and the suits are as good as any you'd get in the states (for 5 times the price).

So... haven't posted in a while. Spent 3 days in Luang Prabang, and now on the 3rd(ish) day in Hanoi. Luang prabang was interesting - very well preserved city, but a bit too yuppified. Every random street had a high-end interior design store specializing in something random. Like Lao silk duvet covers. Or Lao silk window covers. Or Lao silk vase covers. Lots of Lao silk was the general theme, in case you haven't guessed.

As one person put it, the sandals-and-backpacks set has been replaced by the loafers-and-briefcase set.

None-the-less, I stayed in a nice guest house - wood floors etc etc. The only problem was that Laos has some sort of national midnight curfew. For everyone in the country. Like bars kick people out at 11:45 and at midnight you get a ticket for not being in your hotel room. And, as the official government bulletin in every hotel room stated, "Prostitution is not only illegal, it is also extremeley dangerous".

Couple this midnight curfew with the fact that everyone wakes up at 6 am daily to give alms to buddhist monks, and you get a very interesting night life. I think there were 3 bars in the city, with a net nightly attendance of maybe 30. Also, I was offered opium a couple of times - by a toothless old man on the street, by a moto driver, etc..

None-the-less, Laos seemed like a very nice place, especially if you're planning on spending a long time there. Definitely not for the party set, but still very nice.

I arrived in Hanoi on new years eve, and had an interesting New Years. First me and 2 guys i was sharing a hotel with got turned away from a club for being westerners (although the bouncers refused to admit that was the reason). Then, we go to another club, filled with the children of the nouveau rich. Which was interesting. Imagine everything bad about a club in the US - snobbiness, bad music, extreme frat vibe, and then couple this with a clientele that feels like it owns the town (and probably does, for that matter). Oh, and there were some interesting rules. Security guards enforced the informal code that men can't dance. So you just kind of stand on the dance floor watching women dance.

Hanoi itself is intersesting - very loud after Laos. I'm still getting used to all the street noise, but I enjoy it. It will be nice to get to the south and relax on the beach for a while. Right now, my itenerary for the next couple of days looks like a few days in Hue & Hoi An (historic towns right in the middle), then a few days in Nha Trang (white sandy beaches etc. - staying in a beach bungalow), then a few days in Saigon, then a few days in Phu Quoc Island (like Nha Trang, but supposedly excellent diving/snorkelling). Should be a fun 2 weeks.

I'm currently using the computer from hell, so this post is going to be bit rough. Phnom Penh wasn't actuall all that bad. The new guesthouse was marginally better. Although, it was on a main backpacker road, which led to some interesting sites. Namely, being offered all kinds of drugs every 3 seconds (chasing the dragon is more like being chased by a 1000 dragons here - i was offered everything from weed to coke to - in one case - "the good stuff, my friend!" - heroin). Also, I got to witness some wonderful child prostitution. There were a couple of older white men staying the guesthouse with clearly unrelated young khmer girls. Like 10 years old young. You could tell every other guest was disgusted by these men, but the owners of the guesthouse could have cared less. I'm not sure if i was scared or disgusted more, but it really made me sad inside for most of the rest of my time there.

I arrived in Siem Reap yesterday, and have been touring the temples. Absolutely amazing. Pictures do them no justice. Even the smallest ones are completely breathtaking. Every wall and surface is full of bas reliefs of scenes from Hindu and Buddhist mythology, every courtyard has a 100 buddha statues, and every statue has a monk burning incense. I never quite got how big Angkor is - Angkor wat is absolutely massive. It's like the grand canyon - from a picture, you'd think its big, but not that big. But it's absolutely massive. Angkor Wat itself is atleast the size of the berkeley campus, and that's one structure and i't's surrounding layer of walls, all covered in statues and reliefs.

Siem Reap itself is very touristy - everything is for tourists, and the khmer who live here are mostly in bamboo huts. The government has sponsored many huge projects here for tourism, so clearly a lot of money is coming in, but very little seems to have filtered down to the local people.

I wrote this a few days ago, but for some reason it got saved as a draft. So here it goes:

Just arrived in PP last night. It's, needless to say, quite interesting. I compared Saigon favorably to India - plenty of street life, vibrant culture, lots of people everywhere. PP is probably a better match. Arriving at night, the closest comparison would be to LA in Blade Runner - dark, lit only by cheap flourescents coming out of store fronts selling random stuff, tons of street vendors, etc. etc.. Prostitution is kind of a big deal here - I've been propositioned several times, including by the hotel receptionist ("your room is very big for one person, perhaps i find you friend? i have many friendly lady friends!").

Lonely Planet keeps referencing PP as once being effectively the wild west (10 years ago or so, when UNTAC ran the country after 10 years of no government post khmer rouge). It still seems to be now. I would love to see what the city was like 10 years ago.

For example, I was asked if I wanted to go to an army base outside the city to fire an rpg (rocket propelled grenade). When I said no, that I wasn't interested (it was $50. maybe for like $10 i'd consider it), they upped the ante by throwing in a cow I could shoot the rpg at. I don't think they realized that was really more of a dissuader than a bonus.

My guesthouse is the oldest in the city (1991, right after the UN came in). It definitely looks it - as ifa shell hit it a couple of years ago, and guests repared the rooms as needed. I'm going to move to a different place (a converted shanty on the lake) tonight, so hopefully that will be better.

Other than that, it seems like a pleasant enough city - very vibrant. Cambodia is a very beautiful country - much less developed than Vietnam. Agriculture (esp rice paddies and banana groves / plantations) is everywhere.