I am officially a fan of Vietnam after the past day or so. I'm just getting back to Hanoi after taking a 2-day/1-night cruise in Halong Bay. That place is absolutely gorgeous. It was literally something out of a movie. Just nothing but clear blue skies, calm waters and green islands with caves underneath...literally thousands of those islands. I don't know if I'll ever have a chance to go there again, but I sure do hope to do so in the future. My man Jon took a bunch of pictures and I hope to post some of them up here once get gets them downloaded to his computer back at Stanford.
I wasn't always diggin' Vietnam as much as I am right now though. When we first arrived a few nights ago, I couldn't get over how dirty Hanoi was. For what I considered to be a major city, this place looked like something out of "Mad Max beyond Thunderdome". My reaction got even worse when I saw our hotel room. My man Travis had gotten us the room for only $25 per night, so I couldn't be too disappointed, but the room looked like something out of a circa-1950's house with older furniture, a blue leather sectional, a TV with no channels that worked, and a puke-green mini-fridge with drinking water in it. All of this was a disappointment, but it got laughable when i saw the bathroom, which had a toilet, a urinal, a small sink, and a shower head sticking right out of the wall with no shower stall..It was the strangest thing I'd seen in a minute. Then, it got wilder when I looked up in the bathroom and saw a roach that had to have been 5-6 inches long on the wall...no lie, that joint looked like something out of some computer animator's terminal. It was so amazing that it took me a few minutes to shake off my shock and kill the thing. That first night in Hanoi was not the big move at all.
Once I got past all of that, Hanoi wasn't too bad. The streets are dirty and buildings look run down, but all of the tourist sites were really nice to check out. The ighlight of the day was going to Ho Chi Minh's monastery and checking out his body. he's been dead for over 35 years, but the Vietnamese have had him preserved for display for all that time and, as I walked into the building, all I could think of were the songs "You'z a HO!" and "There's some hoes in this house". Even better, they refer to Ho Chi Minh as "Uncle Ho"...I don't know why, but that is so funny to me :-) Seriously though, seeing the way folks live out here has given me a whole new perspective on the little things that we often take for granted in the US and the devotion that the Veitnamese people have for their country makes me have the utmost respect for them and their patriotism.
**The stuff in the previous two paragraphs was in the last entry that got lost while I was posting it, so I hope it makes it through safely this time around.**
One more thing before I go that might amuse some of you...I'm sitting here at an internet cafe with a bunch of computers and I an seated beside a bunch of vietnamese kids playing video games. Also, I just happen to be wearing a cut off shirt because it was hot as a mugg on the boat when we left it. Anyways, when I sat down, one of the kids came over to me and asked my name. Once I told him, he started saying a bunch of stuff in Vietnamese and all the other kids started laughing, so I got a little pissed and said "What?!?!?!" in a stern tone. I think this kids saw that I was getting mad, so he said something else and then made a gesture to flex his biceps. Next, he grabbed my left biceps (which he barely was able to get his little hands around) and said something that sounded like "big"...me and my man Jon almost fell out because the Vietnamese kids were respecting The Kid's "swole"...now that's why I am all about hitting those weights and gettin' my swole on :-)
Aight y'all, time for me to get off of here and hit the airport...next stop: Bangkok.
***UPDATE***oh my damn, now this kid has me on his webcam showing me off to some girl he's chatting with for some odd reason...the swole must be so crucial to these folks out here. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Posted by marquis930 at September 17, 2005 10:49 AM