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Published: November 12th 2008
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Well, I've been lazy in keeping up with my travel blog however, I will do a better job from here on out....promise, unless I lose access to a computer, you'll hear from me.
So, going wayyyy back to Beijing is when I suddenly halted my blogging. After Southern China I made a 24 hour sleeper train ride to Northern China and on the way met a couple of Beijing-ers who spoke enough English to make acquaintances with. They kept saying, "Danny, one more question" and after an hour of explaining American culture to them and their sharing of Chinese culture with me, they would again say, "Danny, one more question." I was exhausted when we arrived in Beijing at 10:30 pm, but they insisted on taking me out to get some food and sing some kereoke (I made the mistake of telling them that I enjoyed kereoke!). They called a couple of their friends to meet us for dinner, and after eating strange and wonderful Chinese food until my stomach would burst, we hastily taxi'd over to a Disco, which had a small private kereoke TV room. The six of us sang kereoke Chinese style and drank watered down beer
until my bladder would burst, with a massive club crowd bouncing just outside our private room until 3am! What an introduction to Beijing! They would not let me help in paying for a dime of this.....they insisted that they wanted me to feel welcome, and I certainly did.
Beijing is a city with a very long thousands of years history. The city of the Last Emperor P'u Yi served as the puppet emperor here inside the increasingly run-down Forbidden city, which was the royal city for the ancient aristocracy of China surrounded by HUGE walls and a moat in the center of the peasants' city. The forbidden city is an enormous maze of repeating courtyards and houses for the royal concubines, Emperess, Emperor and all of their thousands of royal servants, which served as thier adult oppulant playground. The scale of this place cannot be described in words.
After a week and a half in Beijing, I left on the 12 hours overnight sleeping train back south to Shanghai to meet Ethan. We spent a week in Shanghai exploring and obtaining visas for Vietnam, etc. And then headed south to Guillin and Yangshuo for another week and half. I've
already described those areas in prior blogs and will jump right over to Vietnam (V).
We decided to tour SE Asia sooner than we expected due to our Vietnam visa only having 30 days from Nov.1-Dec.1. So we headed south on a couple different busses. It took about 24 hours of bus riding and bus station down time to get to Hanoi, which is in the Northern tip of V, which is a bustling city of scooters and mopeds and horns blaring constantly. The traffic here makes the chaotic traffic in Shanghai seem tame. To cross the street you just step out and slowly but steadily make your way, and the oncoming traffic of scooters and cars just flows around you like a giant school of fish swimming past a rock in their way. Its a fascinating experience.
The hotel where we stayed convinced us to book a package tour (which was very inexpensive for everything it included) through Halong Bay for an overnighter, and then Sapa (high mountain minority villages) for two days of trekking and staying the night with the villagers, and a 5-stop open ended bus ticket to take us south through Vietnam, as well as our
internet cafes
slow!!! drives you nuts! hotel stay and visas for Cambodia and Laos! They were a veritable walmart one stop shop, this Vietnamese Hotel! Great customer service, and even though the hotel was two star budget, it was not bad at all considering the price of $5/ night.
Halong Bay was gorgeously set with Karst pinnacles similar to those found in the south of China, except with the sea still covering 2/3 of thier height. The water was mildly salty and warm enough to swim in even at night when the air had cooled down a bit. We spent the night on a pretty classy boat with a private room and met quite a few amazing people. A couple from the UK, a couple from New Zealand, some older folks from Switzerland....you always meet great people while traveling, and even some amazing contacts in other countries with invitations to visit 😊
After the boat trip we got on a bus for the 3 hour ride back to Hanoi, then an overnight train later that night to Sapa, where the cultural minority still live and now due to tourism, thrive. They continue to adorn their traditional cultural attire and still cultivate rice on the vast and
Big Pink Bus
You'd think that it was a big gay Al's Big Gay Bus to Vietnam.....not quite, but Ethan and I represented. immense rice terraces that they have built over a thousand years span of time. These small fiesty peppery people have learned quickly the rules of free enterprise and they know how to market their goods to you with the ulitmate high pressure sales pitch that would make a even the best car salesman crawl out of his skin. They know the importance of making a relationship with the unsuspecting Danny by asking your name and age, and a list of questions about your family and your pets, and then they divulge all of thier village details.....and you really do learn a lot from them...all the while this conversation is taking place you are trekking in the mountains and along the rice terraces. The feeling you get from all of this is a passionate welcome that makes the heart warm and fuzzy.
Then, just as you enter thier village where lunch will be served, all of a sudden each one of the little women who had made a relationship with you pounces on you to purchase each and every shoulder bag; pillow case; bracelet; belt; headband; blanket that they have ever made, along with, oh, around 200 of their little friends
also begging you to "buy form MEEE" "no, buy from MEEE!" The warm fuzzy feeling suddenly turns to one of self-foolishness, "why did I fall for their nice interest in ME?" and as you want to support them in their livlihood, but are so overwhlemed that you cannot even navigate through the crowd, and so you purchase from them on the spot to relieve yourself of them, only to discover that this actually serves to amplify the crowd around you, as they smell blood like little sharks, since you have pulled out the wallet. (I mean this all in good fun, of course, and I had a marvelous time even if it was a bit intense)...... You feel like a celebrity that everyone wants a piece of, and if you don't give it they pull the sad sad face trick. They could teach us some of their marketing strategies in the universities of the US!
So, next is Central Vietnam............wait and watch!
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