misadventures on the night bus

After our trek up Mt Fansipan in Sapa, Vietnam, we took the night bus back to Hanoi. On the way down to Sapa from Hanoi we'd gotten crappy seats in the way-back of the bus (the seats wouldn't go fully back since they were up against the back, making sleeping more difficult). We had the same seats on the way back, but luckily the bus wasn't full, so we were able to switch seats - awesome!

It was definitely looking like it would be a much more relaxing trip this time around. But then, everything changed when this old guy got on the bus and sat behind us. At first I didn't notice anything because I was playing a game on my iPhone, but he started poking me, speaking in Vietnamese, and making bizarre attempts at pantomime. At first I thought he was trying to get me to tell Sanne and Mie (who were talking about glitter and ponies and stickers, or whatever girls talk about, and gigglinng loudly) to be quiet. This seemed strange in itself, since this guy was blaring music from his cell phone.

But no, that wasn't it. Turns out that he just wanted to talk with me. As you probably know, I don't speak Vietnamese. But that certainly wasn't about to stop this guy! He prattled on for over half an hour while I nodded, said "mmm hmmm", and constantly repeated "I'm sorry, I don't speak Vietnamese."

After about 5 minutes we had realized that this guy was nuts, and were trying our best to disengage from this guy. It wasn't very easy, though, since he didn't exactly respect normal social cues, like when I put on my headphones and went back to my iPhone. He just poked me to get my attention and kept on going. Mie was seated the furthest away from him, so she was just able to go to sleep. Lucky her! (although karma got her back later when the old guy kept on poking her with his feet while he slept). The old guy was mostly talking to me (lucky me), so Sanne had a chance to avoid him as well. At least, she would have if he wasn't sitting in the aisle and fully leaning his elbow and arm in her seat so he could get closer to me. Good times.

The final straw was when he grabbed my hand and put it on his chest, then put his hand on my chest, all while repeating "Ho Chi Minh." I got desperate and tried to pantomime that it was very late (it was 8:30 PM - sooooooo late!) and I was extremely tired, then shut my eyes and tried to ignore him. Even then he poked me at least 3 times while I was "sleeping" to show me stuff on his cell phone, etc.

Finally he got the hint and went to sleep himself. Hallelujah! The rest of the night passed without incident, except for the half dozen times he poked Mie with his feet while sleeping. I certainly wasn't expecting a simple bus ride to be so dramatic. I guess you never know what kind of adventures await you when you board a bus in Southeast Asia. Never a dull moment!

reenactment of the bus incident - a sleeping me (well, at least I was pretending to be asleep to get some peace and quiet) is poked by a cell phone wielding crazy dude. . .

Conquering Mt Fancy-Pants

side note - thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes It's tough being away from home during birthdays, but all the emails/facebook posts made it much easier. It also helped that I had a great 29th (gah!!) birthday party abroad, complete with a birthday cake and some awesome presents, thanks to Mie and Sanne. Ok, back to the regularly scheduled blog post:

While in Hanoi, we decided to make the trip out to Sapa, an area in Vietnam famed for its natural beauty, and an extremely popular site for treks. Rather than do the simple hike through a few villages which most people do, we set our sights on a 3 day, 2 night mountain trek with a guide and porter (the porter would carry our sleeping bags and the food for our meals). Our target, Mt Fansipan is the tallest mountain in Indochina. It has some gorgeous scenery along the way and the summit offers amazing views of both Sapa (where the mountain is), and even China! However, Mt Fancy-pants is much easier to say and to remember, so that's how we referred to it for the duration of our trek.

Our trip had a rather inauspicious start: we boarded the night bus to Sapa in Hanoi only to discover that a) the sleeper bus we were on had partially reclining seats rather than the fully-reclining bed-seats we were used to, making it much tougher to get a food night's sleep and b) our seats were at the very back (the worst seats on the bus), where they couldn't fully recline because they were up against the back of the bus. Additionally, the seats in the back were up on a little platform, which meant that I couldn't rest my feet on the ground, making it difficult to be comfortable enough to sleep. Kind of annoying to be getting a bad night's sleep before a big trek. At about 5AM we made a stop where a bunch of people got off. I was psyched, as this meant I could grab a better seat. Unfortunately, about 15 minutes later they switched us to a different bus, which was already almost completely full! I ended up on a seat with my huge backpack in my lap, and Mie and Sanne were forced to sit on the floor. Again, not the best way to start off a 3 day trek, but we made the best of it, joking around with our fellow travelers who were also stuck on the floor.

At about 8am we arrived at the Summit Hotel in Sapa, the base for our trek. After fueling up with a big breakfast, we headed off on the trek. Oh, quick fact: remember the amazing scenery and the incredible view from the summit I mentioned earlier? Something our guide books and travel agent had failed to tell us is that that's what you can expect when you hike in the winter. In the summer, you can expect views of clouds, and that's about it. And yes, you get rained on. While we were less than thrilled by the prospect of 3 rainy days of hiking, we went off on the hike anyways.

At first I was very careful to stay as dry as possible, even taking off my shoes/socks to wade through a small stream. However, I soon realized that keeping my shoes dry wasn't going to be possible, and was just a waste of time. I think I realized this at the time when we had to wade through a rain-swollen river, then walk through a 30-foot mud puddle. Once I stopped trying to navigate only the dry patches I discovered that hiking was much faster - bonus!

We hiked about 3 1/2 hours to the first base camp, then had a big lunch while trying to dry off / warm up as much as possible (we were high enough up that it was on the chilly side). Let me tell you, after a long period of exercise, food tastes so much better! I don't think I've ever enjoyed a cold bacon sandwich as much as I did for that lunch. After lunch we reluctantly put our wet shoes back on and trekked another 3 hours to the second base camp, where we'd spend the night. We quickly changed out of our wet clothes, huddled around the fire to get some warmth back into our bodies, and roasted our socks over the fire to try and dry them before tomorrow. Our guide and porter cooked us up an amazing meal, and then we went to bed early, exhausted from a day of trekking.

Our night on the mountain was the exact opposite of our night on the bus. I have never had a better sleep in my life! I curled up in my Queen-size bed, wrapped myself in blankets, and slept like a baby. Haha, I am of course lying. Our "bed" was just a raised platform inside a hut, with no padding. We each had sleeping bags, but mine wouldn't zip, so we ended up huddling for warmth, waking up every 45 minutes or so to shift positions so a new area of our bodies could deal with the hard floor. It's all part of the adventure. At least, that's what I kept telling myself.

I woke up in a rather grumpy mood, as it had poured last night, and from what I heard in the morning, it was continuing to pour. I was not looking forward to hiking to the summit in a downpour, and was strongly considering giving up and just hiking back down the mountain. But then our guide came in and told us the rain had stopped. It turns out that the rain sound I was hearing was a stream right outside our door, and the stormy weather I had seen was just fog. Now I was psyched for the hike, and proceeded to annoy Mie and Sanne with how chipper I was at this early hour!

Over breakfast, we had a meeting of the travel-planning committee (something Mie, Sanne, and I do every few days to figure out where we'll be going, and what we'll be doing). We decided that, rather than deal with another cold/wet night on the mountain, we'd hike all the way down today, so we could spend the night in the hotel. However, Sanne and I still really wanted to climb to the summit, so that meant that we had a long day ahead of us! We bolted down another large meal (gotta have energy for the hike), and then Sanne and I left our packs at the camp, and took off for the summit with our guide. Man, it is so much nicer to hike without rain and without a backpack on! We made very good time, took 15 minutes at the top for the requisite summit photos, then back down we went! Round trip took 4 hours, 15 minutes.

At the camp we met up with Mie, who had done an excellent job guarding the fire in our absence, had lunch, then set back down the mountain. It was much nicer than yesterday, since now we were going downhill, and while there was occasional rain, for the most part it was simply overcast, and for the most park we could even hike without ponchos! Long story short, we hiked and hiked and hiked, and finally made it completely down the mountain in 1 day rather than the normal 2 days, and only one person fainted from exhaustion along the way! We then made it back to the hotel where we reveled in the hot showers, had an amazing dinner, and slept in real beds. I'd say the trek was a lot tougher than we'd expected (basically because of the weather), but I still had a blast. And we got lots of good stories out of it. See below for documentation of the good times.

getting up close and personal with my backpack on the extremely crowded final leg of the bus trip to Sapa

group pic on the rainy mountain, decked out in our $1 ponchos. While I really appreciate that Mie and Sanne bought me a poncho while they were out shopping, I would have preferred a color other than purple. You know, like pink. Or fuchsia.

whoops - that was NOT a big dry rock in the middle of the path after all. My bad.

did this guy really think it was a good idea to bring a guitar along on the hike?

it was at about this point in the trek that I gave up on trying to keep my shoes dry. Note that the hike in general wasn't this crowded - we just came across one large group that was bottlenecked at this river crossing. Besides that we pretty much had the mountain to ourselves (because everyone else was sensible enough NOT to do the hike in this weather!).

ummm, Sanne, did you mean to leave your shoe in that mud puddle?

oh NOOOOOO! I think I just splashed a little water on my shoes! The horrors!

our dinner feast after the first day of hiking. Food after a long day of exercise always tastes sooooo good! Even the cold bacon sandwiches we had for lunch tasted fantastic.

snake!! Apparently it was quite poisonous, but thankfully was willing to hang out well away from the path and let me take pictures. Good snake.

whooooo! Made it!! At the summit of Mt Fansipan. Note the incredible panoramic view of China behind me. Apparently China is made of clouds.

neat looking landscape. Except for the part where we learned that the dead trees were from the US dropping defoliants all over the mountain during the war. ::awkward::

ok, I was definitely not expecting to see this halfway up the mountain

some of Sapa's famed scenery, as viewed from our hotel. We might have been able to see something like this during our actual trek if we hadn't basically been in a cloud the entire time.

getting artsy in Hoi An

While in Hoi An (Vietnam), I was eating lunch one day when I struck up a conversation with another guy at the restaurant. His name was Peter, and he was a freelance travel photographer / writer. Sanne had just purchased a fancy camera in Saigon, so he gave her some photo tips while we went on a photo safari.

I might not have a fancy camera (although I will probably get one when I get back - had some serious camera envy during the photo shoot), but I still like to think I can shoot some good pictures. Here are some of the artsy shots I took while thus inspired in Hoi An:

lanterns galore

cute baby

some cool flowers

kids with bike

leaf-covered street sign

peter taking a photo of some of the local kids

the kids gather around to see themselves on the screen

fisherman at work

cool fishing boat

fisherman casting the nets (this is incredibly tough - I tried and almost fell off the boat - now that would have made a great picture!)

Adrian's Motorbike Adventure - Exploring the Cu Chi Tunnels

While I wasn't in Saigon long(Saigon is officially Ho Chi Minh City, but everyone still calls it Saigon), it was still long enough for an adventure! I'd heard about the Cu Chi tunnels, some famous tunnels used by the Vietcong during the Vietnam war, and wanted to check them out. Unfortunately, I was too late to get in on the day's cheap organized tour, so I took matters into my own hands and hired a motorbike driver / tour guide named Dat to take me out to the tunnels and show me around. Dat was a great tour guide. He had actually worked for the US military during the war, and had many interesting stories about that. During the war he was paid about $2,700 a month, an absolute fortune back then in Vietnam, and he had a big house, his own car, et. But after te South fell, all that was confiscated and he was then sent to a re-education camp for 3 1/2 years.

Enough back story - on to the good stuff! The adventure started the second I left the guesthouse - little did I know that the main part of the adventure wasn't going to be the tunnels themselves, it would be getting there! I fastened a deathgrip onto the back of Dat's motorbike, and went along for the ride as he expertly weaved through traffic. I was more than a little nervous, but was reassured by the fact that Dat was 62 - if he'd made it to be that old he must be pretty damn skilled with a motorbike!

90 adrenaline-packed minutes later we arrived at the tunnels. There we saw some Viet Cong mannequins illustrating the life of the guerrillas, an exploded tank, and a bunch of nasty spike traps used by the Viet Cong. Oh, and obviously we saw the tunnels too. I actually got to crawl through them. Pretty intense! Clearly I am taller than your average Viet Cong, but those tunnels wouldn't be comfortable for anyone, except maybe Dr Evil's pint-size clone, mini-me. They were also quite hot. After just 200 meters of crawling I was also drenched in sweat. Hard to believe that the Vietcong did this for several kilometers!

All in all a fascinating day. And now that I'm back on solid ground I can say I was very glad to have gone by motorbike - certainly a lot more exciting than by car!

popping out from a secret entrance to the tunnels

hidden in the tunnel

termite mound with a hidden air vent for the tunnels

hangin' out on a disabled American tank

stepping on this would definitely ruin your day. . .

Viet Cong mannequins hard at work converting unexploded US bombs into their own explosives

me in the Cu Chi tunnels

back on solid ground with my daredevil tour guide/driver Dat at the end of the day

Adrian's Volunteering Adventure at the Cambodia Orphanage International

While traveling, I've had a huge number of exciting adventures. But you already knew that. At least, I hope you did - after all, "Adventure" is in the title of my blog!! One thing that I haven't been able to do as much as I'd like is volunteer, since I'm actually on a pretty tight schedule (6 countries in 4 1/2 months during round II o my trip, and counting), and a lot of volunteer positions want you for at least a month or two. Luckily, I have found some shorter term opportunities, such as my week at the Elephant Nature Park in Thailand. However, I was really hoping to have a chance to teach children ding my trip. I got that chance in Cambodia. A friend I'd met traveling posted something on Facebook about her experience volunteering in Battambang (Facebook is so useful while traveling). A few days, emails, and cell phone calls later, I was set. Side note: having a cell while traveling is SO helpful. It makes it so much easier to organize tours, meet up with fellow travelers, etc. And cells are cheap too - in Cambodia I paid $15 for a phone, and $5 for all the talk time I'd need, and in Vietnam I just bought a new Sim card for the same phone.

Ok, sorry for the digression - back to the main story. As I was saying, after we finished touring Siem Reap, Sanne and I headed back to Battambang where we'd be staying with a local family and volunteering for a week at the Cambodia Orphanage International (Mie decided to zip ahead to Vietnam where she'd do some trekking and then meet back up with us when we arrived there after volunteering). Contrary to the name, it's not actually an orphanage. Currently, its main contribution is as an English school for underprivileged Cambodians who live nearby, which is where we fit in, as English teachrs. (They are working on sponsoring local orphans by providing them grants of food/medicine to help support them until they come of age, but that's not how we helped).

Ok, again I digress - back to the teaching! We had 4 classes a day: young kids (emphasis on basic vocab etc) at 8-10 am and 12pm-2pm, and then older kids (emphasis on conversation) from 4pm-5pm and 5pm-6pm. Busy schedule! Especially for Sanne, who I had already learned from our travels was not a happy camper if she had to wake up before 11am. As most of you know, I'm used to getting up obnoxiously early for running etc, but it was still a bit rough.

The kids themselves were absolutely charming. They were clearly very happy, and loved learning, especially when we let them play hang man or sing songs. One thing I noticed quickly was that some of the students seemed to be simply repeating what they heard or read without really understanding what they were saying(in class, a lesson might just be each kid reading a page of vocabulary out load to the class. They also were able to hold basic conversations ("what is your name?", "where are you from?", "what do you like to do in your free time?"), but again I was concerned that they were just repeating stock phrass they'd learned but didn't really understand. I had a group of children who appeared to have very differing ages all tell me that they were 8 years old. In fact, one girl told me in one class that she was 8 (what everyone else was saying), and then in the next class with older kids she told me she was 14. I also never heard an answer to "what do you like to do in your free time?" other than "I like to read a book." Hmmmm. To help deal with this, Sanne and I devised several exercises to emphasize comprehension (Sanne deserves the credit here - we basically did what her teachers did when she learned Engish as a second language). My favorite of these exercises was Simon Says - the kids got extremely good at this quite quickly, and if I'd had more time I would have told them more and more complicated phrases. Hopefully the permanent teachers there will pick up where I left off.

All in all, this was a fantastic experience. On the one hand, it was frustrating to see the children struggling to learn English while dealing with a lack of resources and especially with the lack of a solid curriculum and with native teachers who themselves weren't completely fluent. However, they are doing their best with what they have, and it was very rewarding to help as much as I could, even if only for a week. I like to think that even in that short time I was able to help make at least some difference, especially by emphasizg exercises that require comprehension, not just repeating what someone else has said. If the native teachers follow this example, that would be huge!

I just wish I had more time - if I had 3 months or so I would have tried to help build a stronger curriculum, and help teach the teachers how to make sure the students weren't just repeating what they said without really understanding. This was certainly an eye-opening experience about the challenges kids in these countries are facing, and what a difference we can make if we apply our resources (time and money) well.

the students of Cambodia Orphanage International. Here they're displaying the new notebooks / pens that were just distributed to them.

in an attempt to make sure the kids were actually comprehending the word definitions rather than just reading what the book said without understanding, Sanne and I devised a game where they had to label everything they see with post-its. As you can see, the kids got a real kick out of labeling the teachers' noses, ears, etc.

me and Sanne with our homestay family. The homestay was one of my favorite parts of this week. Our family was so friendly and welcoming. And it was great to get to see how a Cambodian family lives - our homestay was certainly a lot different from just staying at a (comparatively fancy) guesthouse, as you'll see from some of the pictures below.

the toilet / "shower" at our homestay. The toilet is the hole in the ground, the "shower" is the big reservoir of water and a water scoop. I have never appreciated a Western toilet/shower as much as I did on our first night back in town.

my bedroom during the homestay. I got the bed, while one son slept in the hammock, and the dad and the other son slept on the floor. Definitely not something you'd see in the US.

my main contribution to the COI - teaching them new songs. Here Sanne and I are teaching them Mary Had a Little Lamb. We also taught them Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

group photo with one of our classes

everything we did seemed to be fascinating. We eventually got used to being stare at while eating, while writing up emails on the laptop, or in Sanne's case here, while writing song lyrics on posterboard.

the class hard at work copying down the word for Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

Tomb Raiding in Cambodia - Exploring the Angkor Temples

Siem Reap is a fun city. It's on a river (come to think of it, all the cities I went to in Cambodia were situated on rivers), and has a good downtown scene, including a restaurant with comfortable chairs, free popcorn, and 50 cent beers. Good stuff. A couple bars also have huge projection TVs which are great for watching World Cup on. However, believe it or not, we didn't come to Siem Reap just for cheap beers, big TVs, and a river view. Siem Reap's claim to fame is its proximity to a series of temples built in Angkor between the 9th and 13th centuries as part of the Khmer Empire, the most famous of which is Angkor Wat, one of the 8th wonders of the world.

After arriving in Siem Reap, we were once again mobbed by tuk-tuk drivers, and once again picked the least pushy. After a long search, we finally found a good guesthouse, and made arrangements for a tuk-tuk driver and guide for the temples for the next day and took a quick tour of a local orphanage (I'm trying to find a place to volunteer in Cambodia, unfortunately it looks like volunteering in Siem Reap will be a no-go - all of the Orphanages there are being mobbed by volunteers on summer break). We then relaxed a bit, and went to the aforementioned cheap bear / free popcorn place to unwind from a long day of traveling, then called it a night.

Over the next two days we toured 9 temples, took about 300 photos, collectively drank about 12 big bottles of water, and had at least 35 children try to sell us cheap pirated copies of Angkor-Wat related books. Quite exhausting. Good times overall, except for the fact that our professional tour guide didn't know the proper time to wake up and catch the sunrise at Angkor Wat, meaning that we ended up waking up at 4:30 AM just in time to see the last 30 seconds of the sunrise (I was only able to tak one picture from a distance - by the time we got to the good photo spot the sky had lightened). Not a good way for us to start off the day. Luckily, we had a 3 day pass (and only used two days), so the next morning I woke up before our bus, ran (yes, ran. Nothing like a good ol' 4AM 8k run to start the day off right) to Angkor Wat and got the photos. And yes, I know I'm crazy.

Enough blabbing, on to the pictures!

cool carvings above a doorway at Pre Rup temple

an elephant surveys the jungle at Mebon Temple

the jungle is slowly reclaiming some of the temples

lions guarding the ruins of Preah Khan

group photo in the window of Bayon Temple

some of the many giant faces of the Bayon Temple

nose-to-nose with one of the giant faces. My guide LOVED setting up these kind of shots, and also took a picture of us where the spires of Angkor Wat looked like they were our hats. Whatever floats your boat. . .

group pic at the Tom Raider tree in Ta Prohm, nicknamed the Tomb Raider Temple because this temple was shown in the Tomb Raider movie. (If you haven't already guessed, the Tomb Raider Tree was the specific tree shown in the movie)

group pic at one of the giant trees in the Tomb Raider temple

ancient archaeological evidence that the Khmer people were the first to invent emoticons! OMG!

the "must-take" Angkor Wat photo - Angkor Wat and the reflecting pool

The other must-take pic - Angkor Wat sunrise. Well worth waking up at 4AM for the second day in a row so I could get this pic

Angkor Wat is an absolutely gorgeous ruin, and it looks amazing in the sunrise. But despite all that, this one dude was obsessed with this horse's rear end, and I swear was taking pictures for at least 10 min. Again, whatever floats your boat. . .