haley+gabe

Well guys, as we predicted, we’re still here.  Sapa has swallowed us up and we can’t seem to leave.  Life here is simply lovely and we have settled in to a really nice routine.  We are beginning to wonder if we will see any more of South East Asia this time around.

We are becoming locals, of sorts.  The hilltribe ladies recognize us on the streets of Sapa now and comment on how we are still here…and on how we have still not bought anything from them.  We started volunteering most  school days at Sapa O’Chau, a non-profit school that teaches English to hilltribe teenagers so they can have a future in the tourist industry (as trekking guides, working in hotels or restaurants, etc.).  The kids are really smart, their English is pretty amazing, and helping out at school is really fun.  It’s not a rigorous program by any means, but they are all well on their way to being conversant in English if not already there.  In the mornings we play a warm up game or two (think hangman or karaoke to UB40 or The Beatles) and then help them work in their workbooks.  In the afternoon sessions, we focus on the theme of the week (last week was “the world”) with small group activities or games.  Most kids have never even been out of the mountains so learning the geography of their country’s neighbors was a big deal.

no, no ‘q’s’

Haley helping Ms. Si and Ms. La

So what do we do the other half days, you ask?  Good question.  We wander the trails of the Sapa valley getting phenomenally lost each and every time, and somehow repeatedly failing to learn from our mistakes.  It is highly recommended that when trekking the trails of Sapa’s surroundings, one hires a local guide.  We have still not done this (at least technically – yesterday we paid two locals at two different times a couple of bucks to get us back on track when we were so lost and so unclear as to where the trail was that we were considering backtracking 4.5 hours the way we came).  We have been on 11 hikes.  We have gotten lost 11 times (FYI, getting lost is defined as having no clue if you are on the right trail at least 50% of the time you are walking.  Around here, stats any better than 50% count as totally knowing where you are going).  A typical day in Sapa goes like this:

• Wake up and gape at our gorgeous view for a few minutes; get organized for the day.
• Head down to breakfast which looks out at the same gorgeous view and, incidentally, is the same food every day too.   Boiled eggs and tea for me, Banana pancake and fruit shake for Gabe (there aren’t many choices).
• If it’s Mon – Thurs, head to school for morning session, or head out on a hike before school’s afternoon session.  If it’s a weekend, head out on a hike.
• Over breakfast we look at one of the completely useless, inaccurate and not-even-close to scale maps of the area, while visually surveying our planned route from the window or balcony.  We always feel confident that we have a good, clear plan and the path we are going to take is totally obvious.  Who needs a guide?  We can see it with our own eyes.
• After this point, everything goes to hell.

banana watermelon juice for breakfast

We wander down the main road until we get to our favorite trail entry to the valley.  Here begins anywhere between 4 and 7 hours of slipping down muddy paths, wrong turns, crossing extremely questionable looking bamboo bridges over raging rivers, trails that fork 20 meters after a local tells you to take it (at which point that local is nowhere to be found), trails that fizzle out after you’ve gone too far to be able to justify doubling back, local after local laughing at you or telling you that you can’t go that way or shouldn’t go that way or that way won’t take you to where you say you want to go (all in charades of course, no one speaks English – or Vietnamese for that matter), and also endless breathtakingly gorgeous scenery.  While we never have any clue where we are going, it is overwhelmingly enjoyable to wander aimlessly through the valley.  Along the way we see:

• Young boys herding buffalo – that’s their job in the family (or if there are no sons, the job falls on the daughters).  These tiny boys herd these gigantic buffalo around the steep hills of the valley.  They climb on them while they are resting, they jump on them while they are walking, they stand on them while they are eating, they ride them whenever possible (often facing backwards), they whack them with all their might – and these docile buffalo just wander on, chewing their cud and barely noticing the boys are even there.
• Small, completely filthy children with no adult supervision, or pants, whatsoever.  This is a curious thing.  The no supervision thing I kind of get (though every kid in Sapa would be in Child Protective Services in the U.S.).  Mom’s are in Sapa selling, Dad’s are in the rice fields or drunk on rice wine (there seems to be quite an alcohol problem here).  So kids are kind of on their own.  Older siblings (and we are not talking about very old – like 4, 5, 6 years old) care for younger siblings (infants that are like 8 or 9 months old) – often the infant is strapped to the young child’s back, I assume by Mom and Dad, and I can’t see that the kid gets unstrapped until an adult comes home to help.  As far as the no pants thing goes, my guess is that if a kiddo is too young to be potty trained, he/she is naked from the waist down until they work it out for themselves – not a lot of diaper action around here which is great for the environment, not so much for hygiene and sanitation.  And, no matter their age, all kids are caked and smeared with dirt and mud.  Their faces, their hands, their feet, their clothes – everything.  They spend their days playing in the muddy hills of Sapa – and they look it.

can’t speak vietnamese, english or maps

dirty buffalo kids

dirty rice paddy kids

• Chickens and chicks, ducks and ducklings, pigs and piglets, cats and kittens, in ridiculously cute numbers.
• The wimpiest guard dogs and puppies you will ever meet in your life.  All with vicious barks and often in small, intimidating packs, but if you take one step toward them they turn into total wimps, tails between their legs.

guard dogs in training

• Stunning rice terrace, after stunning rice terrace spilling down the mountainsides.
• Hilltribe villages – usually consisting of 2 to 5 very basic wooden houses with mud floors, and no shortage of animals, and lots of small children yelling “hello” as you approach and “bye-bye” as you pass
• Pungent marijuana fields (presumably to make hemp clothing but we have been offered hash by an 80 year old indigenous woman in town on more than one occasion so I am pretty sure there is some funny business going on, too)

typical hike scenery

beautiful plants

• Fields of indigo plants for making dye to color the traditional costumes for the hilltribe communities
• Corn fields
• Long-stem rose fields, with each rosebud individually hand-wrapped in newspaper and tied shut with a piece of ribbon (presumably to keep the bud tight and closed until it’s ready to be cut and sold in the market)
• Bamboo jungles
• Gigantic insects, butterflies the size of your hand
• Gushing rivers and confluences
• Cascading waterfalls
• Idyllic swimming holes
• Etc., etc.

nice clean river (some are muddy, but for some reason this one was very clear)

perfect swimming hole

this picture actually makes the tourist trap, littered disaster of Cat Cat Falls, look great. Now you don’t have to go, just enjoy the picture.

Haley, proud of making it half way across a bamboo bridge.

Us way up high trying to make it to Cat Cat from Lao Chai.

If you look close you can see another bamboo bridge. We were very happy to see this as it meant that we wouldn’t have to try to swim across the river.

When we finally make it back to town, we are usually exhausted, starving, and pretty much resemble the local children as far as cleanliness (in that we are caked in dirt, not pants-less).  We get clean, get a bite, and then study the route we have just taken from our balcony, marveling at how we could have possibly gone wrong.  Again we see the intended trail and again we see no sign of a trail on the route we took.  We vow to get a guide the next day.  And then the next day, we do it all again.

We have also made some fun friends in the local ladies in town.  Yesterday our friend Sa sewed a handmade patch on my jeans where they were starting to wear thin and fixed my fraying headband, and today she’s bringing some other handmade wares from her village to town for us to peruse (she commutes 2.5 hours walk each way, each day).  She has spent not one day in school in her entire life, cannot read or write, yet she speaks H’Mong (her native language), English (which she has learned 100% from tourists) and Vietnamese (most H’Mong do not speak Vietnamese).  She is probably about 35 and has never been out of the mountains of Sapa.

Haley, Sa and Bai patching Haley’s jeans and fixing her head band in the square in Sapa.

So that is our simple life in Sapa at the moment.  We are starting to make noises about moving on but with the continued perfect weather (65 to 80 F, only ever rains at night, usually accompanied by a gorgeous lightning show across the valley, $4 five-course dinners, $1,000,000 view for $20/night), it’s hard to imagine being anywhere else.  We’ll keep you posted.  And we love you.

Love,

Haley and Gabe

Other notes:

They fixed the water pressure in our shower.  I am now washing my own hair.  Gabe is still getting massages while he waits.

We went to an amazing local market in another mountain town last week.  Overwhelming and crazy and different.  Not for the faint of heart.  Not for animal lovers, either.

We are very close to China.  We even went to the Chinese border last week.

The honking situation in Sapa puts Hanoi to shame.

If you want to get in good shape fast, train at 5,200 feet.  If you want to have the experience that you are breathing oxygen while doing so, head a little closer to sea-level.

We now speak more Black H’Mong than we do Vietnamese (or Thai).

Unlike Argentinian wine and bread, and also unlike Thai cuisine and fresh shakes – uber-fresh, healthy, vegetarian Vietnamese cuisine does, in fact, a smaller ass make. Well that coupled with 4-7 hours of daily hiking.

Also, check out the new ‘videos’ page to see lots of videos from our trip.

A fun fact for our readers: There actually is a place that is hotter than Bangkok in May….that would be Hanoi in June. Coincidentally, that is where we are now.

We arrived in Vietnam on Tuesday afternoon and despite desperately missing Kumiko, we are settling in nicely. The past few days have been a whirlwind – Hanoi is Bangkok on steroids or Bangkok is Hanoi on Quaaludes or something. It is teeming with action: commerce, motorbikes, scammers, crazy smells (good and bad), things being bought, things being sold, scammers, cops hassling people, touts, scammers, honest workers, street vendors of all kinds, scammers, and on and on. It is staggeringly hot and humid here but we have a nice A/C room in the Old Quarter with a charming balcony that is pretty much too hot to use. Earl says we shouldn’t be such pussies about the heat, but Earl is probably surfing right now in nice cool water so what does he know?

We had a nice first evening wandering the streets of the Old Quarter and marveling at the motorbike situation – more on that in a moment – and trying to find a place to have our first Vietnamese culinary experience. As we were too hot and scared and culture shocked to go straight to the street food, we ended up at a place that was recommended to a friend of a friend called Green Tangerine – an upscale, elegant restaurant (think Le Colonial in S.F.) in the Old Quarter. That being said, I still had to flick a 3 inch long cockroach off our table. Dinner was amazing though. And we have had some great street and regular kind of place meals too.

a couple things not apparent at first glance: 1)the stools are so short, it's almost not worth it, 2) the floor is so nasty you are very happy to have a stool

We have also checked out The Temple of Literature (gabe says boring, haley says pretty), and another temple on an island in the middle of a lake with a giant embalmed tortoise (both say boring), and have done a lot of wandering the vibrant and charming streets of the Old Quarter (highly recommended). We also spent the better part of a day involved in what has inexplicably become our favorite pastime when in huge, chaotic, overwhelming, and staggeringly hot Southeast Asian capitals: electronics shopping (highly not recommended). The A/C in Hanoi is substandard at best and we did not find what we were looking for…we did not find even one mall. We did however discover urban mirages – sometimes it is so hot a furniture store starts to look like a restaurant with A/C.

lake temple in hanoi

We also visited the Women’s Museum of Vietnam and saw a fascinating mini-documentary on the female street vendors of Hanoi (most street vendors are women anyway). A typical day is going to the market at 2am to buy their goods for the day (flowers, fruit, shellfish, etc.). They then walk the steaming streets of Hanoi carrying two huge baskets of goods suspended from each end of a long stick which is balanced on one shoulder (or if they are fortunate, they have a bike they can push the goods around on). On a good day they finish around 3 or 4. On a bad day, maybe 7. Then they go “home” which for most is a room shared with 10 other women in a boarding house, which costs about $0.35 night per person. Then back to the market at 2am. They go back to their native villages every 12 days if they are lucky, where they tend to their children, rice plots, and ceremonial duties, and bring with them what they have earned in those 12 days – which is usually about $20.

everyone is happy with this pineapple transaction

Before I get to two-wheeled modes of transportation of all sorts as promised, I have to address the sidewalk situation here. Sidewalks are for everything but walking, and there is nothing “side” about them. They are absolutely front and center in Hanoi life. I don’t know how to say sidewalk in Vietnamese but I can assure you its literal translation does not include anything that could even imply it would be used for “walking”. Sidewalks are reserved for the following activities: motorbike parking, haircuts, shaves, midday naps, dish washing stations, play areas for small children, restaurant seating, store front overflow, in areas with slightly wider sidewalks – motorbike driving (and the corresponding tormenting of pedestrians by way of honking at them incessantly), street vending, touting, evening chatting sessions with friends, beer and tea “street” drinking, Badminton (incidentally, parked motorbikes serve as fabulous makeshift nets), cooking family dinners over charcoal burners, eating family dinners, and much much more. Again, anything BUT walking.

sidewalk drinking

sidewalk selling

Ok, so now the motorbikes (and cyclos and bikes and electric bikes and taxis and cars). There are a number of rules for navigating the streets in a vehicle in Hanoi:

1. Go. And go fast when possible.
2. Stopping at red lights (when there actually is one) for the full duration of the light is considered a pussy move. That being said, you are not penalized for doing so.
3. Activities that endanger your life and the lives of others while driving a motorbike are encouraged. Some possible activities to choose from: texting or talking on a cell phone (no predictive text or headsets, please), tickling small children, and water gun fights with fellow drivers. If you lack a cell phone, small child, or water gun with which to be distracted, looking in any other direction than the one you are going in is a suitable substitution.
4. Honk as much and as often as possible. (While I have not yet been able to confirm this, I believe that hefty fines are imposed for honking less than 50 times per city block.)
5. Moderate physical contact between pedestrians and your motorbike is acceptable if the pedestrian is the slightest bit in your way.
6. You can put as many things on your motorbike as your tetris ability permits: 10 foot long Bamboo poles, boxes stacked 8 feet high, dozens of bags of concrete and full-sized refrigerators are some examples. Bonus points if your load impedes your ability to drive safely or the visibility of other drivers.
7. If going the wrong direction on a one way street, or alternatively driving on the wrong side of the street, is the more direct route to your destination, or if you just feel like it, you should by all means do so.
8. Only get out of the way, slow down, or yield to avoid fatal accidents. If death is not threatened, no use arriving 10 seconds behind schedule.
9. Young children on bicycles are welcome on the road and under no circumstances should they wear helmets or be supervised by a responsible adult. Also, no coddling. Offensive driving is the game and children should not get special treatment (by the by, no helmets for children also applies when they are passengers on motorbikes ).
10. The right of way goes to the most aggressive driver. When there’s a tie – which is 99.9% of the time – the free-for-all method should be applied.
11. If you are going to have a car, it should be as expensive and ostentatious and luxurious as possible, and the size must not, in any way, be appropriate for the tiny streets of Hanoi. Range Rovers, Lexus SUV’s, and Mercedes SUV’s are preferable. If you are going to get a regular car, it should be a ridiculous looking Porsche sedan.

So the sidewalk situation coupled with the motorbike situation might leave you with the question, “where does one walk”? And my response to that is that I have no effing clue. We are still trying to master crossing the street. The basic idea is find a break in the massive wall of motos where the first moto that makes up the wall theoretically would have time to brake before hitting you if you stepped in front of it. Step in front of it, pick a route (and stick to it), keep your speed the same, and pray. Most of the time the motos and cars miss you. Sometimes you get an un-friendly nudge. Always you get honked at.

frogger haley

So that has been our first few days in Hanoi. We leave tomorrow for a 3 day boat trip to Bai Tu Long Bay (an extension of Halong Bay) and are super excited. After that, we are determined to find a place to settle and live simply for a month or so in Northern Vietnam. Talk soon. We love you all.

Haley and Gabe

A few final thoughts about our time in Southern Thailand:

rain over phi phi leh. kumiko left and it's raining...this sucks

Everyone loves Kumiko. Everyone.

Dave Matthews dance parties are awesome at 19. They are even better at 33. Gabe did not participate and claims not to like Dave Matthews because he is not female.

Replacing overconsumption of Argentinian wine and bread with overconsumption of insanely delicious Thai food and fruit shakes does not a smaller ass make.

You can sunburn through clear plastic first aid tape. Trust me on this one. Unless you want to sport a ridiculous sunburned but soon-to-be suntan frame around a wound you’ve been covering, apply sunscreen like a college graduate would.

Pad Thai does not get old.

Agreeing to share a room with two women who have been friends since college is an indirect relinquishing of your right to sleep over their right to late night gossip and reminiscing.

Kumiko’s food will always be better than yours no matter what you order. Plan accordingly.

Kumiko – thanks for an awesome visit.  Now come back, please.

thank you

This is the last night of the Haley/Gabe/Kumiko adventure. One last time to chillax on our beautiful balcony with the nice ocean breeze and the sounds of waves breaking onto the shore.  Tomorrow we’ll have to part ways – Haley and Gabe off to their new adventure in Vietnam via Krabi and Bangkok, while I sadly start my journey home with one last night in Bangkok.

Instead of brooding over the nearing end of this wonderful trip, I’ve been thinking of all the fun things we’ve been doing together.   In light of our new favorite activity, Elevator, I decided to structure this blog entry  around the # of rounds we have played the last 2 evenings, to Haley’s dismay (she thinks it takes too long to play to 17 – it’s true).

1:  # of jellyfish stings that I got on our snorkeling tour today. This was my first sting ever, and I didn’t even see the jellyfish.  It still stings a bit and it happened 4 hours ago

2:  # of Koh Phi Phi islands we visited. Koh Phi Phi Don is where we are staying (where everyone stays) with the touristy main village, and Koh Phi Phi Leh is the uninhabited smaller island of the two, known for Maya Bay where “The Beach” was filmed.

3: # of people we got on a kayak, the Tri-Yak.  It was the best kayaking of my life – I sat in the middle and was in charge of taking pictures while Gabe and Haley did most of the paddling. Along the way, we saw tons of monkeys on little beaches that we’d pass and colorful little fish in the emerald-colored water.  We ended up stopping at a beautiful tiny beach that had a small opening between two tall imposing karsts cliffs. We set off to explore the mini landing and got caught in a rainstorm that Haley, the worry wart, thought would never end.  It cleared up after 20 min and we returned safely to shore.

3 peas in a tri-yak

waiting out the storm on our beach

pretty

haley says: "hi monkeys. where you guys going?"

4: # of liters of gasoline that we bought for our scooter adventures in Koh Lanta. They are sold in old glass and wine bottles by the liter. How I miss those scooting days.

no lines at the pumps on lanta

5: average # of (small) bowls that we each went through during the free daily tastings at our awesome resort. For whatever reason, the resort chose to do the tastings at 7 pm, and we’d show up starving. We shamelessly stood there eating bowl after bowl while “sampling” the food. See #12.

6: max # of showers that Gabe has taken in one day during the Haley/Gabe/Kumiko adventure.  So fresh and so clean clean.

7: # of hours it took to complete my previous blog entry.  Even though I had been an avid reader of the haley + gabe blog, I didn’t realize how much work went into producing each one.  But it’s a great collaborative process where everyone pitches in and that enables us to revisit many of the fun things that we did together.

8: # of days we traveled together.  I couldn’t have asked for better friends with whom to do this trip.  It was simply amazeballs.

team photo after dinner at viking

9: # of boats, both long tail and speed, that were at Maya Bay during our tour.  Basically, this place was a shit show.  The beach itself was surreal – a huge cove with towering cliffs on both sides that was shallow for about a quarter mile with jade water. But the tour operator didn’t give us a heads up that we’d be swimming to the other side of the bay where we had to jump off the boats, swim to a coral-filled shore with strong currents (everyone was getting cut up), climb up a very steep broken ladder with protruding nails, and hike over to the beach, where it was packed with people and strewn with visible trash. What the boat captain did say when we got there:  “Maya Bay.  One hour.  Jump here.”

haley and kumiko out in the water at "the beach"

shit show central on the way to the beach. here just crawl over these sharp rocks, then climb up this janky rope and wood ladder, but watch out for the rusty nails. you'll love it.

looks nice from here

10: # of Thai words we know between the 3 of us and managed with to get around Thailand. Sa-was-dee-ka to you, bitches! (please excuse the profanity at the end – it’s an ongoing joke between us on this trip)

11: # of rambutans I’ve eaten since arriving to Koh Phi Phi. Yummers.

love those hairy balls... err rambutans

12: # of dishes that are served and savored by us at the free daily tastings.  Some of our favorites were the fried (it’s actually stir-fried) papayas, fried pineapples and bananas, tom ka gai, massaman curry, and green curry. Just ridic.  See #5.

tasting buffet. but as the nice worker explained: some people (us) don't know what tasting is... so it becomes dinner

13: # of ideas from Haley and Gabe that I vetoed for this blog entry. They don’t quite seem to understand that this is an individual endeavor and should know better than trying to insert their opinions. I was actually lying about the collaborative part in #7. (Ironically, #13 was their idea )

14: max # of people allowed on long tail boats.

15: # of people who were actually on our long tail boat for the snorkeling tour.  Welcome to Thailand, yo.

16: # of pieces in which Thai pancakes are served.  Gabe tried both savory (egg & cheese) and sweet (banana & nutella), and both were delicious.  The only mystery is the orange colored butter-looking thing they use at the end to brown these crepes a la Thai.

17: # of cards that each of us had in the last round of elevator.  As Haley says, that’s too many to see all of your cards and slows down the game.  To date, I have not lived up to my words and have yet to win a match.

I can’t believe it has only been a week since I met up with them at the Blue Andaman in Koh Lanta on Monday. That encounter itself was surreal, as we emailed and skyped to decide on our meeting location 24 hours before we actually met up. And the rest is now history.  Thanks Haley and Gabe for letting me join the last portion of your Thailand trip and creating the best Thailand memories. I will miss you two and will eagerly be looking out for the next blog entry (which I know Gabe will appreciate having full control once again ).

Phi Phi summed up