Can't Get No...

Satisfaction. Apparently Mick Jagger was kicking it around Hoi An last night looking for a little Brown Sugar, or maybe some Honky Tonk Women. We didn't see him, but we heard from an Aussie at the restaurant we had dinner at that he was only one block away walking around town. Oh well, maybe we'll run into him tonight and end up singing Stones tunes together at one of the hundred and seventy-six karaoke bars packed into this little town. I'll be sure to keep you all informed and updated.

Man Capri Update

The crafty Asian market has designed version 2.0 of Man Capris. We saw them in a market in Hong Kong. They look like regular man pants but they have two sets of leg zippers. One to cut them down to man capris and one to cut them down to shorts. The revolution is coming. Watch out!

Worst of the worst: Showers

We've been meaning to post an entry about our accomodations. Which ones were nice, which ones were ratty, which ones catered to septagenarian Danish gymnasts (I know it sounds weird, but it happened). I'll start off by giving a description of our showers.

For the most part the showers in New Zealand and Australia were all right. There was a pretty standard and universal shower head we saw all over both countries. It wasn't the Ritz, but we usually had a pretty reliable flow of warm water with good pressure. Things changed a bit in Asia.

Our hostel in Singapore had mostly ensuite rooms (private shower and toilet attached to your room). But we chose to stay in a double with shared bathroom to save a little money after going overbudget in Oz and NZ. It actually turned out to not be that bad because most everyone had their own bathrooms. I never saw anyone else in the one I used and the cleaning crew came through every day and hosed it down pretty good. Water pressure was decent and there was plenty of warm water. Things went downhill in China.

Our hostel in Beijing was quaint and friendly. It had a popular common area with bar and DVD player which attracted folks from other hostels. Every night the place was packed with backpackers swapping stories about their trip to the Great Wall or the Forbidden City. Because the dollar is pretty strong against the Chinese Yuan and China is cheap to start with we were able to get a private double ensuite. The room was fine. The shower...not so much. It was clean, I'll give it that. But there was absolutely zero water pressure, slowing down to a trickle at times, and the water temp ranged from sub zero to scorching nuclear waste, changing without warning or reason. The daily shower became an object of intense focus as we had to take them. Beijing is the dustiest city in the world and we were picking dirt out of our ears by the time we returned to the hostel each night. So, we took turns putting ourselves through the Chinese Water Torture. Some days we were pleasantly surprised, some days, not so much. But I'm pretty sure I would have kept my Beijing shower had I known what was in store in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is Tokyo, New York, and Las Vegas all rolled into one. We arrived at approximately 10:00 PM on Easter night and the main drag in Kowloon (part of the city but not on Hong Kong Island) was lit up and buzzing with people. As soon as we stepped off our bus dozens of touts ran up, offering cheap accomadation to everyone with a suitcase or backpack. We had already booked a room so we just kept saying no thanks, no thanks, no thanks, get away, I already have a room, please leave me alone, get away dirtbag, no thanks (this became a common occurence/annoyance over the next couple of days as there are guys trying to sell fake watches and suits every ten steps in the tourist and restaurant areas). After a quick detour to another hostel on the same floor of the building as ours we checked in and got to our room. Even though we'd paid for a shared bathroom they put us in a private room with ensuite. Of course, calling it ensuite is being pretty generous. It was a room the size of a small closet with THREE beds in it and an absolutely TINY "bathroom" with a toilet, airplane bathroom sink, and a shower head in a bucket. No kidding. And that wasn't the bad shower.

The next day they moved us into the room we paid for. It was a small closet with two beds and we had to share a bathroom with four or five other rooms. This bathroom would move my mom and sisters to tears. There was actually a bathtub/shower combo but the shower head was again resting in a bucket. The water pressure was beyond non-existent and the temperature was a Beijing-like metamorphosis of arctic to solar flare and back again in the span of seconds. It was almost impossible to clean oneself without laughing or crying. I couldn't figure out which one I should be doing. But mercifully we left Hong Kong a day early to get to Vietnam. The pictures of the place we booked in Hanoi looked so much nicer than the rat hole in Hong Kong. Surely the shower would be nicer, right?

To be fair, the bathroom at the Old Darling Hotel was much cleaner and bigger than the one in Hong Kong. In fact the room itself was gargantuan in comparison. The showerhead was nicer and much more powerful. The floor was clean. There was a clean hook to hang your towel. It was just that the hot water tank emptied fairly quickly. This was where I invented my "hokey pokey shower". I had nary a drop of warm water and therefore I had to soap and rinse in a "you put your right arm in, you take your right arm out" kinda fashion. Luckily the next day we both had plenty of hot water.

So now you're caught up on our shower experiences. Hopefully we'll add a couple more soon about food and lodging.

We're off to Sapa in northwest Vietnam tonight on the overnight train.

Thrillseekers...thy Mecca is Hanoi

I was fully intending to write a blog entry about how Beijing should displace Queenstown, New Zealand as the capital for extreme sports seekers. Sure, the Kiwis invented bungee jumping and jet boating down there. But after riding a minivan through Beijing at rush hour, dodging cars, 18 wheelers, bikes, pedestrians, tractors, backhoes, squirrels on scooters and all other forms of mobile transportation I figured the bungee jumping or canyoning in NZ must be childs play. No, Beijing at rush hour is child's play and NZ is for wimps. Hanoi is the center of the universe for the most dangerous, extreme sport I've ever seen...motorbike dodging.

There are approximately 3.5 million inhabitants in Hanoi, and roughly 3 motorbikes per person. You honestly can't help but laugh when you first see it. For us, it was on a minibus from the airport at 9:00 PM. As we left the airport area and started to get closer to town we noticed helmetless crazies scooting in and out of the traffic with the cars and trucks. There was a fairly steady stream around us, but they only outnumbered the cars 10:1. Once you get into the city it bypasses comical and heads for surreal. I'm not exaggerating when I say that in the heart of town there are literally one to two hundred motorbikes for every car... at night. During the day the ratio soars as everyone, everywhere gets around on these little rattletraps. You have to just sit back and take it all in at first. The sight of hundreds upon hundreds of Vietnamese ranging in age from ten eight to eighty zipping down little two lane city streets on a Honda (if they're lucky) or cheaper Chinese or Vietnamese scooter in the span of seconds is just hysterical. And you think to yourself, surely a light is going to change somewhere down the road and the flow will stop. Uh-uh. No luck. Actually, I should be more specific. A light very well might have changed down the road but that doesn't have any effect on the flow of traffic. I'm sure most of you have heard the expression about some city that traffic signals there are merely a suggestion instead of a law. I can honestly say that description fits Hanoi perfectly.

Intersections are the best. As George Costanza once said about auto repair shops "It's lawless there...it's like Thunderdome!" If you hesitate you lose. No one stops when they come to an intersection. They just weave their way through traffic. This goes for cars and buses as well. I could plop down in a plastic chair with a cooler full of cold beer and have a grand old time just watching traffic in Hanoi. But you know it's always better to participate in something than just to watch it. So, do you think we rented a couple of hot rods and joined the crowd?? Okay, no. But we did haggle with a couple of guys to give us a xe om (motorbike taxi) ride from the Old Quarter to the Temple of Literature. Oh, it's exhilirating. It's actually not bad at all once you're on the bike and in the flow of things. Everything takes on a Matrix-like feel. You see all the traffic moving around you in slow motion. You anticipate what the traffic is going to be like as you prepare to fly through an intersection with hundreds of bikes headed in all directions. It's a religious experience. And not just because I could see Cece praying on the back of her bike.

I keep telling her we're going to have to rent our own motorbike one of these days. Maybe we'll start slow and hire a couple down in Hoi An to take a day trip up to the My Son temple ruins or out to China Beach. That should get us ready for the real adventure...Saigon. Supposedly there are even more motorbikes and even more insane traffic there compared to Hanoi. If so, I might have found a new home.

You Know You're Chinese if...

A. You hauck up gigantic lugies and spit them anywhere and everywhere

B. You have nothing else to do so you join large tour groups all over Beijing, wearing matching colored hats and following around a 25 year old holding a flag on a fishing rod

C. You follow every Westerner you see offering to sell Gucci bags, Rolex watches, taxis to the Great Wall, North Face jackets, jade trinkets, and anything else under the sun at "best price in China"

D. You're a poor art student who had to come to the city to make money so you offer to usher foreigners through the FREE art gallery and tell them about the paintings (for a small fee of course)

E. All of the Above

Big Brother Was Watching

The long arm of the Australian law reached out and took a bit of our travel kitty right out of our pockets a few weeks ago. Apparently there was a speed and red light camera set up in Canberra right where the speed limit drops 20 km/h and the five-oh snapped a photo of our little Honda Civic cruising through at the old speed limit. They sent a nice little note to Aunt Cece and Uncle Harry to inform them of the infraction committed by their vehicle. My Cece had to complete the paperwork acknowledging that it was us, not the Kayes, who were driving. Hopefully the Australian authorities won't go to the trouble to send us a bill all the way in Atlanta. At least Aunt Cece called us as soon as they got the letter to tell us to watch out for the speed cameras. Lucky for us, we haven't been driving too much since then.