Tourist

My time in Hanoi is slowly coming to an end. It was a good stretch but I'm starting to look forward to travel a bit again. I managed to break the monotony of working and to inject some excitement into my life, apart from the daily motorbike trip to work and back again. It was time for me to be a tourist again.


Two weeks back, together with some of my flat mates and friends, I went to a magical place called Snake Village. The purpose of Snake Village? To eat snakes of course! Now, as some of you may know, I'm not that big on food. I see it as fuel, to keep me going, and if I like something, why change? But on the other hand, I do try new things and though the idea of eating bugs, spiders or other creepy crawlers didn't really excite me, indulging myself on a snake did have a certain manly appeal.


So off we went, to Snake Village, on the outskirts of Hanoi. It's not really a village, more a neighborhood where you can find a large variety of restaurants specializing in cooking snakes. Like everywhere else in Vietnam, shops specializing in certain goods or services tend to concentrate in one area or street. Their thinking: if your shop is not on “the street” it's not good enough.


This concept is taken to the extreme though; say for instance you want to buy a alarm clock, you go to alarm clock street, you want to buy toys, go to toy street. The school where I'm teaching is located in the small water pump and generator street. You've got scrap metal alley, 24-hour food road, bamboo furniture avenue and second hand leather jacket street. This also means that sometimes you have drive for at least an hour in a heavily congested city to acquire something.

Anyway, back to Snake Village. There all the restaurants serving tasty snakes are conveniently located in a very small area. When you enter the restaurant the owner will offer you and your group a choice of several different snakes. The bigger, or more dangerous (and more endangered), the more expensive. Then, after selecting one, the owner / cook will beat the snake senseless on the ground, take a knife, cut open the snake along the belly, drain the blood and take the (beating) heart out together with some other vital organs.


Two things happen next. The blood, mixed with rice wine, is offered as a drink, the (still beating) heart and other organs such as lungs or bile have to be eaten (or drunk, in my case) raw. Different organs will bestow different powers or strengths. The rest of the snake is used in a large variety of dishes, from soup, to meatballs, a kind of fried rice dish with snake meat and spring rolls. It's amazing that they use every part of the body, nothing goes to waste. Even the scales and spine are used. Snake meat tastes a bit like chicken or beef, but a lot more “chewy”.


After Snake Village I took a couple of days off. With a slightly upset stomach I took my motorbike and drove two and half hours south to a town called Ninh Bihn. I never realized that I actually didn't venture out of Hanoi for the last least three months. Being in the countryside was a great change from the chaotic, noisy and polluted streets of Hanoi. No more sunglasses or face mask to protect my eyes and senstive lungs against exhaust fumes, dirt and other toxins.


Close by to Nihn Bihn is Tam Coc and famous for it's karst mountains. In appearance Tam Coc is very similar to Halong Bay of UNESCO Heritage fame, but instead of the mountains rising out of the sea, the sometimes bizarre formations jut out of endless fields of rice paddies. The motorbike is great to get off the beaten track and you've got a couple of great little roads snaking through the countryside. The scenery is amazing. I met a couple of cool backpackers and I spent a blissful Sunday driving around, climbing mountain tops and taking pictures.


That was two weeks ago. But, rest assured, I haven't only been a slave to my students. I also had a great time with friends and flatmates. Sadly enough a couple of friends had to leave, but not before we had a good send off.


I've got one month left of work. Afterwards I'll travel a bit through northern Vietnam before heading of to my next destination: China! That was all for today. Good luck, take care and have a great weekend!

In the City

Dark clouds are forming over the city of Hanoi. Thank god, I say! The weather has been changing ever so slightly the last couple of weeks. It's still quite warm sometimes, but the rain showers start coming more and more. It's definitely becoming more chilly; autumn is on it's way in the north of Vietnam. Apparently it gets so cold here in the winter that you have to wear a jacket. The insanity!

All is well. I moved into a new house with a couple of friends. It's across the Red River from the main city in an area called Lon Bien. You have to traverse an old, rickety railway bridge to get here. Funny enough, this bridge was designed by Eiffel - you know the guy - and is still standing to this day.


It's a completely different area where I'm living now. Every morning I wake up and it feels I'm in the countryside. Instead of the always present rumble of motorbikes and cars, the beeping and the hustle and bustle of a big city, I hear roosters, dogs, birds and the wind. From the roof terrace (yes, we have one) I look out onto of field of some kind with corn or wheat. Quite nice.


We got our little headquarters because everybody was looking for a new place to stay. The task was quite daunting: cheap, for seven people, for a short time and available immediately. But it worked (and the rent is ridiculously cheap) after a couple of days searching. That's the big advantage of living in Lon Bien: its relatively close to the city, cheap, but still not that popular to rent a house or place. Disadvantages: it's out of the way, internet is crappy and the house was very basic with no furniture or kitchen present (though not anymore).


What makes it cool is that my new flatmate's (7 in total) are all awesome people and we get along really good. Everybody is quite creative: some paint, others make music and two of the guys are into fixing up motorbikes. Some teach, other volunteer. Funny enough, everybody here has got a similar attitude to their stay in Hanoi.

For the time being living is good. In a month or two we'll see where winds of change will take me.

After Hours

Well hello there, have you been waiting long? Have no despair, it's time for another update. The sun is shining outside - instead of what you people may think, it's not only mayhem, death and chaos here in Asia. There's been a couple of earthquakes and tsunami's (in the following order: Samoa, Sumatra, Sumatra, Tonga) and one typhoon that skirted Hanoi and made landfall a good deal south, but all is peachy perfect here.


We had a little bit of rain the last couple of days, but nothing serious; no torrential downpours, or streets turned into rivers, just a little drizzle that sucks monkey balls if your driving around on a motorbike.


But life here, though mistakingly Vietnamese and interesting, is quite mundane. I go to work, teach (getting better at it, if I might say so), go back and hook up with one of the many new friends I made the last couple of weeks. One beer leads to many and before you know it you wake up again, very late into the next morning. Damn those after hours! One more day relegated from the present to the past, from an is to a was.


Now to say that I didn't have any free time would be a lie, but fair enough, I'm getting a bit complacent with the blog and taking pictures. Lugging around a big photo camera is not something I do every day. But, yes, I do go out once in a while and shoot some photographic evidence of my stay here (including drinking buddies and friends).


But life is good here. Big city, bright lights and every day there's something new to do or to see. The Vietnamese are funny people; the crazy things you see. I was thinking about doing some short "Observations of Hanoi" the next time, but I guess I can't leave you with one as a teaser:

Little human kids abound on the streets and like their grown-up counterparts they need to do their "thing" every now and then: pee and poo. But the youngest ones get a little help from their mothers in quite an unusual way (from our viewpoint of course).

When the baby needs to go for a number one, the mothers hold the kid up, at least at chest height, take their pants (or whatever) off, hold their legs apart but supporting the butt and let them pee like that. And they do this facing the street. I think they like the spectacle it presents. It's quite a sight when you round a corner walking or driving and you have a split second to dodge a little arch of yellowish liquid emanating from a kid-devil aiming at your face.


Signing off on a happy note: I have become an uncle again! My sister Janina didn't give birth to one, but to a twin, a baby boy and girl! As long as she's not going to bring the kids up the Vietnamese way, pee-ing wise, I'll be happy. ;-)

Here We Go Again

It's been a while since I last updated The Great Escape. There's no real excuse, I guess. Although I have been a bit busy. Not too much, but enough to keep me occupied. Also, there’s no real escape possible from my own duty to write a bit every once and a while. Should try to do it more often. Laziness is my favourite sin.



Anyway, good news. I found a job! Yup, that's right, as we speak, I'm working as a – drumbeat – English teacher in the beautiful capital of Vietnam, Hanoi. Have to dress up nicely everyday, go into a private language school, stand in front of a dozen or more eager, yet awfully shy Vietnamese and listen to myself speak for a hour or and a half or more. I have been doing this for a week.



It’s actually pretty good fun. Different students respond to different approaches, but one always works and that’s fear. It feels good to be feared. Just kidding. Some kids do the darnest things, but most of the time they’re pretty cool. I’m teaching different proficiency levels and to different ages. Some classes are 11-year olds that require a lot of work, others are mid twenties to thirties and quite eager to learn.



Normal questions I get are: what is aims? How do you spell probably? Where are you from? Do you have girlfriend? We talk about modal verbs, pronouns, articles, pronunciation, gerunds, some stuff I never heard of. Pretty impressive learning material. They don’t know that sometimes I don’t know what the hell I am talking about. But hey, you have to learn quick isn’t? And you can always say: how do you think you spell that word?

It's a great way to earn money. It's a fun, though tiring job – it's been a while since I was working properly, heh.



Anyway, just a quick recap of my previous travels. After slowly heading northwards, and stopping in such magical places such as Dalat, Danang and Hue, we (me and my Dutch friend Wai) arrived in Hanoi. Wai soon had to leave for back home. After a quick visit to that fantastic place called Halong Bay I checked into a cheap guesthouse and locked myself in a hotel room. Hour after hour I was busy sending out resumes, job applications and cover letters. To break monotony I went out and visited one of the many museum's around town.



Luckily an old travel friend of mine helped me battle the loneliness and boredom. Biking buddy Britton showed up after doing the same Vietnam route, only a couple of days later. Many bottles of beer Hanoi later I woke up one day with a job interview.

Unfortunately my camera hasn’t been fixed. Apparently something is seriously wrong with an internal component (prisma? prism? Vietnamese accent’s are sometimes confusing) and the friendly repairman at the official Canon repair centre tried to be helpful and suggested that when I would go back home to Ha Lan (Holland) I should try to hand it in for a replacement. Warranty only works within the country that I bought it. Though, he added joyfully, picture quality has not been affected! That’s real swell pal, but that kite is not going fly for the foreseeable future.

It does mean I can take pictures; I just have to work harder to get a photo that’s showable.



I’m busy trying to settle down here for a bit. Looking for a new place to stay, meeting new people, getting my visa sorted out. Also, I rented a cheap motorbike to get around. Hanoi is not as busy as Saigon, traffic wise, but it’s still quite a challenge sometimes. There’re no road rules, the bigger the means of transportation the more right of way you have. I’ve been taught three rules to successfully navigate the narrow and cluttered streets. One, treat traffic in Vietnam like a river: it flows around obstacles at a steady pace. Second, worry about everything you can see, in front of you and in your peripheral vision; everything that happens behind is none of your concern. And the last rule, when crossing a road or an intersection use “human shields” in the form of other motorbike drivers or cars who are doing the same thing to shield you from oncoming traffic.



Some of the pictures I uploaded are courtesy of Wai, because of the problems with my camera mentioned before. That’s all for today. Hopefully I’ll be able to upload a little bit more regularly when things have quieted down. Gotta go now, classes are waiting.

We've Gotta Get Out of This Place

Hey there kids. It's been a while since my last update. Plenty of stuff happened between then and now - most of it good, some of it not so good (but nothing terribly nasty).



First the bad news: for the immediate future there's not going to be any more nice pictures. Something went wrong along the way and messed up the camera. Too much dirt, too much cleaning and now I'm stuck with a piece of shiny and complex technology that only works when it wants to. The camera is screwed, but apparently not unrepairable. I can take it to a service centre in a couple of days.



On to the good new. I'm in Vietnam! And it's absolutely amazing. The people, the country, the vibe on the street, the tsunami of motorbikes buzzing the roads. The hectic energy in Saigon is electrifying. And the Vietnam War (it's called the American War here) is still omnipresent. But there's a whole lot more to the country than just history.



At the moment I'm travelling with a Dutch friend of mine, Wai, with whom I met up in the former capital of South Vietnam. Slowly we're making our way up north to Hanoi. But time is tight and there's so much to see. That's also one of the reasons I wasn't able to update the website sooner.



We're currently in Dalat - a delightful little town that's commonly known as the "Vietnamese Alps". For the first time in five months I'm wearing long pants, shoes, long sleeve shirt and jacket. Madness! It's nice and cool here - but unfortunately enough it rains. Alot.



Anyways, I promised myself not to make this one post too long in writing and instead focus on the little gems I managed to capture on film during the first two weeks in Vietnam. It took me an awful lot of time. Lucky me though, hotels in Vietnam are pretty modern and while I'm busy uploading the latest photographs on wifi, I just finished up downloading the Tour of Duty soundtrack, Vietnam War era old school rock and roll baby. You have to keep the atmosphere right, huh?



So tomorrow I'll be on the bus listing to that sixties classic made possible by The Animals: "We've Gotta Get Out of This Place". A golden oldie, but an ironic choice, because this is the last place at this moment where I want to get out of.

Till next time.

The Distance

I'm back. Back in the civilized world. For the last two weeks and a bit I went the distance. Through thick, lush jungles. Looking out over rolling green hills. Overcoming towering, ancient mountains only to find the next one, even bigger. Crossing fast flowing rivers brown with mud and sand in long tail boats. Navigating winding roads full of potholes, some of them washed out by mudslides. Dodging chickens, ducks, dogs, and swerving around milling water buffelo's or herds of cows. Driving through torrential rainstorms, practically blinded, the tarmac slippery wet. I went the distance. All 1800 kilometers of it. And it was one of the best experiences ever.


As you may know, over two and a half weeks back I rented a motorcycle, together with my Canadian friend Britton (of Cambroadian fame) here in Vientiane. It was a simple 110cc Suzuki, four stroke, half automatic. A motorbike, but also known as a scooter. The one you see every Asian person driving here. They are as common in these countries as bicycles or cars back home.

It maybe sounds crazy to explore the remote northern parts of Laos on a scooter, but truth be told, the paved roads are in general very good, the distances manageable and spare parts and fuel not hard to come by. What did we do with our backpacks, you may ask? We just took them with us, you silly. Strap them on the back with some bungee cords.

There was only one problem: the rainy season. Driving on mountains through a raging thunderstorm is, to say the least, quite an exhilarating experience. Arriving with all your clothes wet, soaked or damp is not. Luckily, after a scavenging tour of the local market in the capital we found some water resistant tarp and raincoats (and some handy little motorcycle gloves, very useful against those sweaty palms). Funnily enough, only on the last two days did we encounter big rainstorms. At that point it didn't matter that much anymore.

We could have rented a 250cc dirt bike. Bigger, better and faster. And more torque, which means climbing the hills happens a lot quicker. Top speed is a lot higher too. But without a proper motorbike driver's license driving a dirt bike can be difficult. We just didn't want to take the risk.

Before we left we met up with a Dutch friend of mine, Lydia. Unfortunatly for her, she was at the end of a fanatastic seven months traveling and had to go back home soon. Setting off from Vientiane, the first couple of days we slowly climbed away up north. First stop, after a day on the bike, was Vang Vieng, a curious place in Laos. See, in the whole country you have a curfew. The people have to be in bed around 23:30 or 24:00. Bars, restaurants and clubs all close around that time and afterwards the streets are completely deserted. The capital Vientiane becomes a virtually ghost town.

Except for Vang Vieng, which has bombarded itself to a backpackers party town. It has some beautiful scenery, with magnificent karts mountains overlooking the river that flows through the place. You can explore caves, go kayaking or rafting. Or you can go tubing. An initiation rite for backpackers in Southeast-Asia. For a day it's a lot of fun.

Tubing means you float down a river sitting in a big inner tube of a truck or other large sized vehicle. But in Vang Vieng it means you start the day (or afternoon) drinking in rickety bars built close to the river. Then you float down to the next. This you will do for a couple of bars, until your pretty much shitfaced, and then you take a tuktuk home or continue tubing down the last, big stretch to the town. At the bars you have swings or slides or other contraptions that will catapult you in the dangerously shallow river. People have died there hitting rocks underwater breaking their neck or drowning completely drunk. What an inglorious way to go.

Vang Vieng is not Laos. But a lot of people think it is. Which is the shameful part of the place (besides the hordes of drunken Westerns staggering back after tubing shouting, fighting and throwing up). After the hangover, and feeling curiously dirty, we set off again. Another day of hard biking ahead.

From Vang Vieng we went to Phonasavan, home to the Plains of Jar. This day was one of the longest. First north and then east. We drove for at least 300 kilometers which took us eight hours along narrow, winding mountain roads. You see some amazing vista's and landscapes. In the end we just managed to arrive the moment the sun was setting. Exhausted and wasted we checked in.

The Plains of Jar are a bit mysterious. Three fields of clusters of massive jars made out of stone have been found around Phonsavan. They don't know what they were for, or who made them, or when. They're not that impressive either; just big and stony. The interesting part is the unsolved questions surrounding these objects.

Another interesting phenomenon in Phonsavan are the so called uxo's. Uxo's are UneXploded Ordnance – big bombs, cluster bombs (called bombies here), napalm cannisters, mines etc. They were dropped by the Americans during the Vietnam war. Laos was a integral part of that war and the strategy of both countries. North Vietnam used Laos to ferry supplies, men and weapons along the Ho Chi Min trail into South Vietnam. The United States bombed Laos to disrupt these supply lines and to attack the communist forces, both Vietnamese and indigenous Lao forces. The war escalated in the 60's into something called the Secret War which saw the communist victorious in 1975. A lot of people don't know that Laos, to this day, is the most bombed country in the world. And a lot of those bombs remain unexploded.

The next part of our trip took us in a loop through northern Laos. To name all the towns that we stopped along the way would only confuse you, my dear reader, but I want to give a rough overview of where we went. This was the part where we roughed it. Sleeping in primitive guest houses. Being on the road for hours on end. Just seeing amazing landscapes and passing through small villages. Children laugh and wave and you just have to keep constantly focused to evade the animals and potholes. No showers, no internet, no Western people, no bars with Falang food, no VIP buses. Only Beer Lao and noodle soup.

I would suggest you look at a map of northern Laos now to make things easier. After we left Phonsavan we traveled further east (towards the Vietnamese border). Then we went up north again. At a small place called Nam Neum (with one functioning, very simple and primitive guest house) we took the road west. We managed to do this stretch of road in two days until we got to our first outpost of the backpacker banana pancake trail again, Nong Kieaw. There we took a boat north.


Five hours on a river with no human being in sight. Pretty cool, huh? We got to a place called Muang Kham. This is the furthest north we got, in a stretch of Laos, wedged between Vietnam in the west (around the same longitude of Hanoi) and China in the east.


We traveled on the road west and then south to a place called Oudomxay. Funny enough, according to the road map we had, a couple of stretches of road were unpaved. Unpaved means dirt, huge stretches of road missing, potholes and in general very hard conditions to drive. You can go maybe max 30 km/h. But, lucky us, all those little dotted lines on the map were just recently paved, the tar still smelly and sticky, the road in perfect condition. After Oudomxay we went on a beautiful stretch of national highway to Pak Beng, a river town on the Mekong, another stopover in the banana pancake trail.


I can't recall if I talked about the banana pancake trail before, but let me explain: the trail is not one set route, but towns, villages or sights that everybody sees on their backpacker travels through Southeast Asia. In this region, you don't really travel, you just move yourself from one place to the next. And every backpacker place has restaurants or bars where you can get your favorites Western food from back home. Yup, that's right, the banana pancake.


Anyways, we took the riverboat from Pak Beng to Luang Prabang. This is a very popular way for fellow travelers to enter Laos from northern Thailand. It takes two days from the border. The first stopover is in Pak Beng. The second day (the stretch that we did, with the bikes tied down in the front of the boat) it takes you to the beautiful and relaxed town of Luang Prabang, a World Heritage Sight.


And there we met up with my Dutch friends (well Dutch and French) Lize and Romain. The last time we were in a foreign country, we were all studying in South Africa. It's been a couple of years and I have seen them far too little according to my own taste, but with determination and a bit of luck we managed to catch up with each other in Luang Prabang. They are here on a three week holiday and we were more that happy to show them around a bit.


The four of us went on a two day trekking hike through the countryside. There we stayed at a Lao family, got ridiculously drunk on Lao-Lao (locally brewed whiskey), rode an Elephant and washed them and then kayaked back. Especially the elephant part was a lot of fun. There is nothing stranger than sitting on the back of a pachyderm, who than ambles over to the river, walks in, goes under and sprays you with water. The floating elephant feces though, were a little bit unsettling and distracting.


The story almost comes to an end. After Luang Prabang we raced back down to Vientiane, with a stopover in that drinking hole Vang Vieng. After being on the bike for two weeks, we made it back. We left on the 3d of June and arrived back on the 19th. It took us 1800 kilometers, one broken bungee cord, a loose rear view mirror, two boat trips, one chicken run over, countless butterflies and kamikaze bugs genocided and, yes that was me, one bike crash on a extremely slippery mountain road during a rainstorm.


It took me hours to write this all down and get all the pictures selected and ready for the internet. That's one unfortunate consequence of not being “digital” for two weeks: a backlog of travel stories and photographs. I excuse myself for dumping so much information in one mammoth entry, but I hope it was worthwhile (if you made it all the way). Enjoy!



No better parting words to this blog entry than a little joke me and Britton had during our bike travels.

Destination? Unknown. Journey? Awesome!!!