He who hesitates is lost.

On the streets of Vietnam, at least. At first glance, traffic here appears to be ruled by ultimate anarchy, the worst nightmare of any western traffic regulator. The truth is, the rules of the road are very simple. DON'T HIT WHAT'S IN FRONT OF YOU! That's pretty much the only rule going. If you follow that, and you trust the people behind you to follow that, you're on your way to a fab roadtrip in Vietnam! Of course there are some finer nuances to help you cope with the lack of any real adherence to traffic lights, road signs, or lane markers. Heck, intersections don't even have stop signs!

Note the dude at 90 degrees to the others...he just plowed through moving traffic without a hitch.

- Steer around anything in your way...even if it puts you out of your lane. The person behind you will do the same to avoid you, even if it brings them into traffic coming the other way...because the traffic coming the other way will swerve to avoid them, and so on. Like a giant ballet.

- Always pay attention to the road ahead! Traffic conditions can change any time, from a free and clear road to two trucks trundling towards you...BOTH in your lane!

- Be confident - always remember to hesitate is to be doomed! When you are approaching what looks like a sketch situation, do it at a constant speed, so all other participants can judge your actions and plan to not be in the same place you are at the same time. No speeding up, stopping or swerving!

- Since 90% of the vehicles on the road are bikes, the name of the game is 'fill up space'. If there are cars stopped at a light, don't hesitate to fill up every available inch in between them with your bike. Also if there is space in front of an oncoming truck, don't hesitate to fill that as well - the truck driver will probably expect it and be ready to slow down so that he doesn't mow you. Just make sure you don't STAY in that space. Or the driver won't have much choice.

See? 90%. I counted.

Can you see any discernible order in that chaos? Can you see anything at all? Damn that camera sucked.

The city of Hanoi itself pulsates with life, the traffic twisting in and out of the streets and alleys, never stopping, yet never seeming out of place. The seamless weaving imparts an organic quality to the whole scene, as if all the bikes and their drivers subscribed to come higher conscience. The whole system rests on the competence of each individual driver, and more than anything I want to join in to this collective consciousness, to be one with the stream of life teeming in the streets of this nation's capital city. The trust implicit in each twist of the throttle, each tap of the break, each time a driver enters a stream of traffic without so much as a glancing over his shoulder at oncoming traffic is surreal.

I loved to sit on the corner in Hanoi and have a tea at the stands set up there. People watching has never been better, and I was even lucky enough to be offered to share a tobacco bong by an old local driver. Hanoi is an appropriately fascinating city for a fascinating people. Their vigor, flexibility and resilience can be seen in everything from their leaders' manifestos to every element of day to day life. An old man blazes past on his turn of the century vespa, followed by a young girl pedalling slowly by on her bicycle. The contrast is pleasant, the bustle of a people with somewhere to be and the tranquillity with which they do it. The feeling of the people seems to be one of exuberant happiness, an overcoming of obstacles and the final return to what they've wanted all along: peace and independence.

Vietnam really got the shit stick handed to them by history. I have never seen a country whose people believe more in the principles of peace, freedom, and brotherhood. Every written word of Ho Chi Minh attests to this, and his countrymen seem to have taken up the call. And yet Vietnam has been mired in war and oppression for thousands of years, first under the Chinese, and since the 1800's by the French, then by the Japanese during WWII, followed by the senseless invasion of the US, which was criticized worldwide as completely unnecessary and overblown, a case of an oversized bully picking on what looked like the littlest kid in class. The statistics on the amount of bombs dropped during this war are jaw-dropping...there were more bombs dropped on some CITIES in Vietnam than in the entire WWII conflict in the European arena! Not to mention the napalm, the gassing, the horrific war crimes committed by US soldiers...whole villages of innocents murdered without rhyme or reason: women, children and the infirm all, because a foreign soldier couldn't tell friend from foe. The effects of that conflict last even to today, with the ecocide of Vietnam's jungles and the deformations of it's citizens due to Agent Orange, or the ever present danger of unexploded ordinance.

That is a BOMB. I was amazed at the size of the shell...imagine the blast radius?

A bomb crater in the DMZ. You can't really tell how deep it is, but these were EVERYWHERE. And those are just the ones that haven't been filled up.

Even after the horror and bloodshed of that pointless conflict, Vietnam had no time to stop and rest, having to invade Cambodia to save them from their own rulers during the Pol Pot regime and becoming wrapped up in yet another pointless Sino-Soviet proxy war. And yet the people keep on. As Ho Chi Minh told the American administration in the 50's - we will struggle and we will suffer, but we will not give up. I would not believe this to be true for any country more than Vietnam. One fine day on the beach in Nha Trang (a big beachy backpacker spot) I even came across a community AK-47 training session...a soldier teaching girls from 15 to 25 how to assemble and use an automatic weapon. In some countries, this would have been horrifying. But in Vietnam, you had the sense that it would be used to protect their precious independence, and not to impose war on anybody else. The Vietnamese have seen enough of that.

Who wants to bike Vietnam?!

Bowl of Pho - $1
Room - $3
Hat - $1.33
A water and 3 cups of tea - $0.66

Sitting on a stack of styrofoam on a random street corner smoking a tobacco bong with an old local man and being so zonked I can barely write - priceless

Pulling out a stack of 50k notes in front of a bunch of people who probably make 50k per day - MISTAKE

So I made it Hanoi, and my first thought was: I want to bike this country. UnFORTUNATELY, Curtis, who I knew would be down 100% for that plan, had just departed for home, and I was a leeeettle bit pensive about driving 2000 km alone on a rickety Russian bike that would probably break down a good 10 times. Not only that, but I had just less than three weeks in the country, and the drive would have taken a solid 10 days of driving, minimum. SO that adventure will have to be put off for another day. It's GOING to happen. Curtis promised me.

So I settled for the usual backpacker route, heading down from Hanoi to Saigon on a bus that allowed you to stop at multiple cities on the way. I hit up Halong Bay (to see the spectacular karst peaks), Ninh Binh (supposedly the Halong Bay of the rice paddies), Hue (an ancient capital riddled with bulletholes), Hoi An (the tailoring capital of SE Asia), Qui Nhon (a quiet, more laidback beach), Nha Trang (the tourist beach of Vietnam), Dalat (I don't really know what was going on there since I was sick and in bed...and almost quarantined in the hospital for H1N1...jerks) and Saigon (the bustling economic metropolis). The plan was to rent bikes as often as possible (because it's FUN to drive in Vietnam!!) , check out the cities and then get out to see the real Vietnam, the part that the travel agents refused to tell me about. (Really they did, they told me I was a tourist and therefore wanted to go to the tourist places...no help at all!). I had a crap-o disposable Kodak on me, so I wasn't able to take THAT many pics, and the ones I did take didn't turn out that hot...but here are a few of em anyway.

Halong bizzle nizzle.

A pretty river near Nha Trang.

Vendors in a street market in Hoi An.

The biggest flag in Vietnam. No, I'm not lying to you. Yes, I know it looks really small. It's called perspective, people!

As I was wandering the streets in Hanoi one day I noticed a local electric company worker about to do some maintenance on one of the poles along the street. The funny thing was, he didn't seem to have much equipment other than gloves, a hard hat and a wrench. No ladder, no safety harness, nothing of the sort. The next thing I know, he reaches up, grabs a thick, low lying cable and clambers up like a monkey onto the roof of a nearby building, from where he begins his repairs. Really?? You can only chuckle at these shenanigans. I should probably mention that wiring along the streets looks more like spaghetti than any ordered electrical system.

Here is another shot of roadside electrical maintenance. You can't really tell but that's a dude on a bamboo ladder tugging on random wires with his bare hands.

Apparently Vietnam is also the second largest producer of coffee behind Brazil. I will leave you now to cogitate about that fact.

Curtis Curtis Curtis Curtis

Curtis

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Curtis told me to write a post only about him, including his name a bunch of times...so I did. I also included some pictures. Is that enough words?

Curtis enjoys heavy firearms.

Curtis used to have a little duck friend who he cared about more than anything in the world. They even shared cookies in gondolas. But then Curtis lost him. Ok that was mean, Derek just decided that he wanted to live at the Great Wall of China. But really Curtis just lost him.

Curtis doesn't buy thin cigarettes. He says they are for girls. So he buys cigarettes with red hearts in the filters. Those are for Curtis.

Curtis likes long walks on the beach, and seafood lunches. Especially with dumplings and chao sao bao. Hold the sea cucumber.

Curtis is stupid and can't read signs very well.

He likes to keep other people's gardens spic and span.

He likes pandas, but is too cheap to pay to hug a real one.

He might like elephants more than pandas.

Curtis likes to break rules, like climbing over railings on Chinese tour boats to get a better view...of the crowd who didn't climb the railing.

Curtis really likes shopping for trinkets, especially rings and pipes that he will never buy.

The End.

Addendum from Curtis:

Hello

I have a Job

I hate my Job

I killed a deer

Dressed up as a fullmoon partier

danced

this is wht i did last month. i thought u would want to know for your book.

I miss u like a fat kid misses cake!

Curtis in all his...glory? I wouldn't call it that.

Lies and economics.

Whose responsibility is it to monitor and punish international agencies for falsifying economic statistics used to shackle less developed (or even affluent but floundering) countries to US hegemony?! (ahem, IMF, why do you think Iceland is afraid of you??) Whoever is responsible should be speaking up for the past 4 decades of lies! Isn't that a felony, at least SOME crime?? Can't these countries hire counsel to report their distress at the hands of untrustworthy officials whom we trust to guide our world economy to new heights of prosperity? The direct influence of the US over these international aid agencies must be shattered so that they cannot control foreign policy with such an iron hand as afforded them by their economic influence. I saw an article about that in the Economist the other day, I probably should have read it. But apparently book stores in airports aren't libraries.

Sorry for that rant. But it's true.

Beef, Beer Pong and Balloon Accidents

Enough with the jibba jabba and on with the journey! Since we had been on the road pretty hardcore for the past few weeks, we decided to cut a few destinations out of our trip and head down south to chill out at everybody's favourite spot in China: beautiful Yangshou.

View from the hostel rooftop. Told ya.

Our favourite river swimming spot.

We stayed at a place called Monkey Jane's which had a decent guesthouse and a bar with a good atmosphere, if only the owner wasn't so crazy...daily she would threaten to throw us out of the guesthouse, for excuses ranging from "You stole my speaker cord" to "You won't get naked after losing to me at beer pong". You heard it from the source...bat shit crazy!

We had a week in Yangshou, so we rented some motorbikes to jam around the countryside and check out a few spots. What we didn't know was that motorbike rental in China is much different than most of SE Asia. For one thing, it was about 6 times as expensive. For another, we were recommended the petrol scooters because they "go faster". We were not told that "faster" was 50 km/h and that the wheel diameter of these things was about a 12 inches. It was like riding a kids bike! When you're used to ripping around the Philippines at almost 100 klicks on semi automatic bikes (and that was me being a chicken on the throttle!) , this was child's play! Imagine my luck when my petrol bike broke down, and I was given an electric bike instead. Good for the environment: yes. Good for my need for speed: topping out at 30 klicks riding an open throttle...not quite. It's gonna be a long day of riding!

We checked out a few places like Moon Hill:

Looks like a moon, don't it?

Curtis climbed a random pole at the tip top peak of the mountain. Why? He had shoes.

On the way back down the mountain, Curtis fell off a cliff or something and sprained his ankle maybe. I thought he was kidding. Regardless, the old lady who was trying to sell us postcards fashioned him a bamboo walking stick and he took hours walking down the thousands of steps like some old wise man coming down off the mountain to impart words of wisdom to the world. Unfortunately, the only words of wisdom that came out of his mouth were "Stop taking pictures of me, asshole."

We also hit up Dragon Bridge, a popular spot to jump into the river below:

Doesn't look much like a dragon to me. But the water hurt when I landed. It's higher than it looks, I tells ya.

Then I swam across the river to make friends with a water buffalo. Mission failed.

On the way home we passed a fireworks shop, and Curtis - being Curtis - could not resist buying what would have been hundreds of dollars of fireworks back home...luckily in China it only worked about to $30 or $40. That night we took a water taxi to an abandoned plot on the other side of the river and set off all the fireworks in view of the rooftop bar of the hostel. What the people on the roof DIDN'T see was when the giant box of fireworks knocked itself onto it's side and began shooting balls of exploding light in every direction! I saw them start to shoot out over the river, exploding just a few feet above the water, getting closer and closer to the boat. In the intermittent light I could see the boat driver running for his life away from the ruckus, which is when I decided to make my own break for it once the explosives turned their sights on me! I start sprinting off to the right, dodging bursts and laughing uproariously as I periodically looked around for everyone else. Curtis and Sam were closer than I was to the fireworks, lighting them off, and I could see them alternating between hitting the deck, running for cover, and laughing their asses off as line after line of exploding phosphorus and magnesium shells zip over their heads in a haphazard free for all reminiscent of some battle in Vietnam! When the melee was over, we all stopped to catch our breath, more from the incessant laughing than from any running we did! Sam finally caught up to us and informed us that he had had no clue where anyone was, and that he was just running towards our laughter for safety! Good thing we thought it was funny! Wow that was a good time! The girls didn't quite agree with us on that fact. Let's do it again tomorrow!!!

The best thing about this place was by far the beer pong. They would have twice weekly tournaments, where the "winner takes all" of the pot (actually just a fraction of it, once Jane collected her unannounced dues). Regardless, it was a lot of fun, and Curtis and I became the Canadian team to be reckoned with, on occasion even destroying the bartenders (who, understandably, played a lot of beer pong). One game we simultaneously scored a double bounce and an air shot in the SAME cup, forcing the other team to drink 5 cups in one go AND give us a free turn! I guess I would have to explain the rules of beer pong for most of you to understand that, so you'll just have to trust me that it was a good shot. In one singles tournament, by some twist of fate, Curtis and I were matched up against each other for a good old Canadian showdown! It was Canadian elimination round of beerpong. The mood was tense, the crowd ecstatic, as the two evenly matched Canadians stepped up the table to see who would move on in the elimination beer pong tournament, winner take all!

Ok so I lost, but it wasn't by THAT much, and I swear we are more or less evenly matched. If I HAD to lose, it should have been to Curtis. He lost the next round anyway, he sucks. What a waste of money.

So before we knew Jane was crazy, she invited us on an adventure out into the country to visit her parents and have a meal out of town. We all climbed into an early 90's Dodge Caravan and headed out on a road that was clearly designed for a 4x4. In good weather. In bad weather perhaps some kind of tank. We got to the house just as the rain started to fall in earnest, so our ride there merely consisted of destroying the shocks of Jane's brother's poor Dodge. As soon as we got inside the house, the antenna on the roof was struck by lightning and a deafening peal of thunder rolled around the countryside. We began to get the feeling that we would not be leaving any time soon!

So we ate dinner instead.

Countryside. Pretty, na?

Not so pretty on the way home...mostly because we had to literally take apart local farmer's stone fences to form some sort of road under the wheels of the van because they were so submerged in mud.

The mud was so thick we couldn't wear shoes or they would just be sucked off our feet as we were pushing the van through the countryside. The best part was being the dude behind the wheel well when the driver hit the gas and splattered mud from ankles to forehead. Too bad the girls didn't take the time to get a picture of us while we were playing in the mud =P

While in Yangshou we heard about this sweet, cheap-compared-to-home hot air balloon ride you can take over the limestone mountains, giving you an exceptional view of the river winding through the massive rock formations. We were even told that some drivers will take you right down to the river and dip the basket in the water, skipping along in good fun. Well we were skipping along somewhere all right, but it sure as poop wasn't on a river.

Not surprisingly, that flame is really hot.

Look ma, no haze!

So we're flying along peacefully, enjoying the scenery (although it was a bit hazy when the sun rose), and we start to approach some higher elevations. It isn't a windy day, but you can tell that we are moving along at a decent clip for a giant oversized balloon. All of a sudden the driver starts giving us tips.

Driver: "Bend your knees when we land."

Us: "Uhhh...ok...weird thing to say in the middle of the flight...we aren't even close to the clearing where we started."

Driver: "No, we land here."

Us: "HERE? Here where? In that tiny clearing there?? On top of a mountain, in the middle of nowhere? There aren't even any roads!"

Driver: "Don't worry, we land in the trees!"

Curtis: "I thought you asked him to dip us in the RIVER! He sure one upped you with this forest!"

Play along for a moment here. Close your eyes and picture a hot air balloon landing. You may have an image in your head of a hot air balloon descending slowly towards the earth and gracefully alighting upon the ground. This is not how hot air balloons land in even the slightest wind. Keep in mind these things have no brakes. Or a steering wheel for that matter. Which is probably how we ended up crashing through a forest on a mountain in the middle of nowhere. It was not the softest landing, skidding along the ground, smacking into saplings and pines that raked you with needles and branches until we finally came to a stop.

Driver (after crash): "Is this your first balloon ride?"

Jeff: "Yeah...is it yours?!"

We had to recruit the help of the local farmer whose mountain we landed on to cut us a path out of our thicket and tow us out of the trees into a clearing where we could let the balloon down.

Unhappy campers...well, only until we heard that the rescue crew was coming to pick us up with beer! I bet they've got a few flats waiting at the office for just such an occasion.

And so Curtis and I drank lots of beer before 9:30 am, and continued when we got back to the city. No point in wasting all that good morning beer and staying sober!

Even Ronald got in on the action.

We had a few good jokes about this purported rescue team, whether they would arrive in a balloon and where the hell THEY would land, seeing that there is no recognizable steering mechanism. We'd probably have to save them before they saved us.

Theoretical Rescue balloon: "Can you guys grab this rope?? We're stuck in the trees..."

Ahhhhhh good times.

China: Progressive World Power or Oppressive Backwater Regime?

China. A country of unending size, where each city seems as far off as the last. (I can sympathize with backpackers travelling to Canada!) Exotic food delights you at each street corner, and beautiful landscapes surround you each time you depart from city life. For a country poised to take center stage in world economics, to become a superpower with a powerhouse of an economy, China still has a few surprises in store for visitors.

Children urinating in the streets, epidemic impoliteness in crowds, and other uncouth habits plague those who are not accustomed to such behaviour, but there are more concerning issues to be dealt with. An ingrained paranoia in the upper echelons of Chinese leadership has persisted seemingly since the dawn of Chinese civilization, starting with the first emperors who believed themselves to be immortal dragons - yet at the same time built their palaces with a courtyard 15 LAYERS of brick deep, to prevent subjects from the city common from digging under the palace to attempt assassination. In Curtis' words of the architect: "Well sir, if you're a dragon, couldn't you just...fight them? Or at least fly away?" At which the emperor would probably say: "Uhhh...yeah...well what if I didn't...you know, what if I didn't want to...nyeah...just put down the damn bricks, I'm the dragon emperor! Rraahh!!"

This paranoia persists today in their fear of a politically educated society. With internet censorship including a block of Facebook, Youtube, many blog sites and parts of Google itself, and with Lonely Planet China being confiscated at the border one has to wonder at the maturity and honesty of an elite so afraid of the truth being found by their own people. Not to mention some of the human rights abuses such as the disputed claim over Tibet and Taiwan that have garnered much international rebuke lately. China, although a grand and ancient country, seems to have some distance to cover before emerging as the world leader that many predict.

For another thing, Chinese tourism smacks of the rank and file proletariat. "Oh, we're making an 8th stop between here and lunch? Alright, we'll follow you in line wherever you go, as long as you've got that flag! Time for food? Okay. Whatever you say Mr. Tour Guide. Oh, that Mountain looks like Chaiman Mao, Zhou Enlai, AND Deng Xiaopeng? Ha ha, why it does, doesn't it! Don't we love them!" It seems that there is quite a bit of propaganda still in China, with the government seeking to control the thoughts of the general population in order to keep the reins of power as long as possible. For example, the Lonely Planet for any country can be bought within China, except for the China edition itself! They claim it has something to do with a map in the book that marks Taiwan as a separate country (which China obviously disagrees with), although I wouldn't be surprised if it had something more to do with some of the history presented by the unbiased authors of the Lonely Planet (compared with the government approved drivel printed in the tour books that are legally allowed to be sold in China).

This 'brainwashing' definitely has it's negative effects, but there is also a surprising upside to the information that the government crams down people's throats. They are incredibly well informed about different market systems, from communism (when that was all the rave in China) and more recently about the workings of a capitalist market system. China has pursued a calm and cautious approach when shifting their economy from a closed communist system to a more open market, compared with many unsuccessful market shifts in Eastern Europe and South America, to name a few examples. China has consistently resisted the Western world's requests to give up all authoritarian power in government and move to a completely free democracy, while at the same time moving from a centralized, government run communist economy to a completely free market. China has studied the history and mistakes of other countries who have tried to do this and failed, and has instead slowly opened up its market piece by piece, at the same time holding tightly to authoritarian power which allows for a controlled market shift with acceptable time to build the necessary institutions to accomodate such a shift. With its broadening economic freedoms comes a slower trickle of democratic freedoms, which China is accepting in stride. Not bad for a country who brought one sixth of the world out of abject poverty within the past few decades...