Christmas in Cameron Highlands

Seems I'm bound to spend every bus ride trying desperately to hold in some bodily function; usually it's needing to pee, but every now and then, just to shake things up, it's needing to vomit. The bus trip to the Cameron Highlands was of this second type. The driver tore up the winding, mountain roads while every person on the bus squeezed their wrists, swallowed repeatedly, and tried to focus on the ever-changing horizon line. I made it, though. I was one of the lucky ones.

Tanah Rata is the main backpacker town in Cameron Highlands. The surrounding hills are green and covered in either jungle or tea plantations. The symmetrical rows of tea bushes give a sort of aligator-scale texture to the hills they cover. Tanah Rata itself is a one-street town, and that street consists entirely of Indian restaurants and minimarts. Everyone in town knows exactly where you choose to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, and for any restaurant you choose to patronize, you are sure to deeply wound the feelings of at least three other Indian owners, who don't understand why the roti and chicken you had yesterday failed to bring you back.

I stayed at Daniel's Lodge, an extremely basic, hippyish backpacker run by the jovial, overweight Daniel, and two beanpole, identical fellows, Eddie and Gill, who are not actually related in the slightest, but who do accessorize with matching leather bands (Gill sells them on the main street some nights). The afternoon I arrived, a group of travelers was playing cards on the front porch. They told me it had poured steadily for the past two days. I went to dinner with the four people I ended up hanging out with the whole time: an ATWC-Toronto, Peter and Lavana, who are just out of college and very mild and pleasant; a chipper Brit named Jeff, who's working in New Zealand currently; and a Korean named Saemi (my only dormmate), who is studying tourism in KL, and who is forever being newly outraged at how little everyone seems to know about Korea. After dinner, we returned to the hostel: there's a fire out back every night, which everyone sits around while Gill plays folk songs on the guitar (mostly Tracy Chapman).

Luckily for me, the weather cleared up entirely the morning after I arrived, and was both sunny and cool for my hike. I'd picked an easy, introductory jungle trail, and was excited to walk along quietly in the woods, in contemplation of my life and its direction. On my way to the trailhead, however, I ran into an older Indian fellow, who I soon realized was this guide, Kali, who everyone uses when they need a guide. He's said to be the greatest guide ever; he's friendly and knows the Highlands up and down; he's 64, though he doesn't look it, and hikes every, single day; people pay him a lot of money to hike with them; and I was extremely annoyed when he decided to tag along with me for free. He was nice enough, and sure, it's great to have a guide and all, but I just wanted to walk along and think and listen to the birds, and instead, I was directed to look at millipedes and various plants, my palm was dyed with henna, and both my wrists were encircled with bracelets made of rattan. At the end of the jungle trail, we parted ways and I continued up the hill to the Boa Tea Estate, the biggest tea plantation, and had a very nice walk winding around the tea hills on a little goat trail.

Next day (Christmas Eve day and again, gorgeous weather), I picked the second highest mountain to hike and was walking to the trail head when I saw Kali going along in front of me. I jagged off the road and waited about ten minutes, before proceeding cautiously on my way. No sign of Kali anywhere and then, just as I reached the trail head, he popped out of nowhere from the other direction.

'Hello! Where you hiking today?'

It was a long day. After my initial annoyance wore off and I accepted the inevitable, I quite enjoyed Kali's company. He wanted to know if I still had my bracelets and, even though I told him I did (liar), he made me another one. And dyed my hand with henna again. After we hiked the mountain, we headed back to town by several other trails, including a closed one that Kali made himself that hops over several creeks. We hiked quickly and got back to town by early afternoon, but it was a long way, and I was exhausted and ready for naan. Kali left me to go hike another trail.

That night was Christmas Eve. Levana and Peter had somehow managed to find a Protestant church service in the next town (they're very wholesome), and Saemi and I went along. The service was in a meeting room on the eighth floor of a hotel, and the pastor ushered us right in, sat us front and center and sat down to tell us about himself. The pastor is a large, very Western Indian man who looks a bit like Colin Powell. He was raised a Hindu ('I used to put the hooks in my cheeks and everything!'), but became a Protestant minister in 2001.

'For years and years I lived in the West,' he explained. 'But never in all that time do I hear of Christianity. Only Catholicism.' (Saemi, a Catholic, bit her lips.) 'Only in 2001 do I hear of this thing, Protestantism, and I think, ah!'

After half an hour or so, the rest of the congregation poured in: all Chinese and Indian, with the Indian women all in traditional dress. Everyone was extremely friendly and welcoming. An Indian family sat at our table; the father asked Saemi where in China Korea was located. We sang hymns for about 45 minutes, standing and with a lot of chanting, clapping and raising of hands in between the hymns (the four of us, meanwhile, stood whitely, hands pinned to our sides, eyes pasted to the lyrics, lips moving minimally). After hymns, each of about five families gave a 'presentation.' These were mostly songs; the biggest hit was the pastor's model-gorgeous daughter who sang a Christian rock song, accompanying herself on the guitar.

Throughout the whole thing, everyone's kids screamed and cried and ran around, making it really difficult to focus. They were especially riled by the time the sermon finally began, which was on how nothing is impossible with Jesus. The pastor was very enthusiastic, but he went on about 30 minutes too long, especially since dinner was sitting to one side waiting to be served, and the kids had actually strapped on roller skates and were zooming around the tables. But the sermon wasn't over until the pastor had spent a good fifteen minutes reading a collection of Mother Theresa quotes, which didn't seem to relate to the sermon at all.

After that, we had dinner, followed by an interminable gift exchange (the four of us were given picture frames, which we in turn gifted to Daniel's as they wouldn't fit in our packs), and at 11:00, the party broke up. We all felt it had been a very nice Christmas Eve. On Christmas day, I did not hike. I lounged around the hostel, rousing myself for meals at various Indian restaurants. When night fell, I moved over slightly to lounge by the fire. In honor of Christmas, Saemi and I went halvsies on a bottle of (really bad) red wine.

It was a great Christmas altogether. If you ever have occassion to be in Malaysia over the holidays, I recommend heading to Cameron Highlands. Especially because, if it's anything like this year, all the lowlands will be flooded anyway.

Kuala Lumpur to Melaka and On

'Malaysia: Truly Asia' is Malaysia's current tourism slogan, but I think a better one would be 'Malaysia: A Nice Break From Asia.' With Muslims, Indians (and/or Bangladeshis) and attractive men who weigh more than me everywhere, Malaysia is quite a refreshing change of scenery. Besides which, people are so friendly here, almost as eerily friendly as Canadians. It's quite Western as well, and everyone speaks flawless English. Sadly, although Malaysia is far more modern than most SE Asian countries, its toilets are more along Chinese lines (oh, U-bend plumbing, why are you so elusive?). And room rates are higher, so I've plunged back in to the seedy, social world of dorms. Not many Americans seem to make it here. I've had a lot of these conversations:

'Where you from?'

'The States.'

'Where?'

'U.S.'

'I'm sorry?'

'America.'

'Ah, America. We don't get many Americans here.'

'No?'

'I have no problem with your country.'

I flew into Kuala Lumpur at 10:30 p.m., with no hotel reservation and no idea where I was going. I figured it'd be fine, but hadn't reckoned on it taking well over an hour to get into the city center. By the time I got my bags, got through customs, got on a bus, and was sitting there waiting for the bus to fill up before it departed, I realized that I would be wandering the streets of KL alone with my luggage and map at 1:00 a.m. I really started to panic, but at the last minute, an ATWC-mixed-European boarded and I scooted up and asked if I could come along with them to their hostel. It was a good thing I did, because we were wandering around the deserted city until after 2 before we finally found a room that wasn't horribly expensive: showing up in the wee hours does not put you in a good bargaining position.

Kuala Lumpur has a big Chinatown and a smaller Little India. There are a great many, packed markets, where you can see Muslim girls plowing through bins of headscarves to the tune of 'Loosen Up My Buttons' from a nearby pirated CD stall. I visited a Museum of Islamic Arts (many Quaran with elaborate calligraphy), a butterfly garden (okay) and a bird park (really cool). Currently, the East coast of Malaysia is pretty much shut down for monsoon season, but the West coast is supposed to be dry. It's not. It's raining a whole lot.

After a couple days in KL, I went down to Melaka for a night. Melaka used to be a big deal port town, which was passed amongst various colonizing powers. The Portuguese left the most architecture behind. I know I compare a lot of places to Gatlinburg, but the more I travel, the more I realize a lot of places are like Gatlinburg and Melaka is yet another: there are a great many museums (one even with a Ripley's exhibit), a lot of quaint, little shops selling clothes made of linen, the ruins of an old Catholic church on a hill, and two giant, heavily air-conditioned malls, all convieniently grouped together within walking distance. The most interesting museum was the 'Museum of Enduring Beauty', which featured displays on every painful, disgusting procedure, from corsets to foot binding to cranial mutation, people have endured to render themselves attractive. I also saw a hilarious sound and light show, which took place in a giant ampitheatre, in which three tourists were sitting, and mostly involved a highly dramatic retelling of Melaka's history through bullhorn:

'Ah, MMMMelllakka, city of light.'

[sound of horse's hooves goes on for way too long, ends in a big splash]

'What has happened?!?!'

'A deermouse has kicked your dog into the river, highness.'

'It is a mmmirrrracle! I shall call this a-place...MMMelllaka. After this tree.'

Meanwhile, lights went on and off, illuminating two trees at the base of the ampitheatre.

From Melaka, I had to return to KL for the night. I've really gotten out of the habit of dorms, and it's hard to get back in. I'm no longer used to waiting for a fat, hairy, weirdly-grunting Indian man to vacate a shower before I can use it, and then shower to the sounds of a giggling British couple next door, who apparently find nasty hostel showers a romantic setting. I'm also out of the habit of ignoring a loudly snoring German backpacker, while simultaneously ignorning the Malaysian hostel employee in the bunk above me, also being kept awake by the German and expressing his frustration by rocking the bunk against the wall and screaming 'Ai-yi-YI!' repeatedly. My last night in KL, I finally got up and took a shower at 4:30; I figured as long as I was awake anyway, I may as well take advantage of having the bathroom to myself. But there was someone in there.

I've since escaped to the Cameron Highlands, which is where I will be spending Christmas. I was surprised to find there is Christmas in Southeast Asia, especially in Malaysia, which is hugely Islamic. But I guess Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or Jew, everyone wants to be in the black come New Year's.

I wish you all a merry Christmas back home. Gorge yourselves on cheese and chocolate for me!

Hoi An to Hanoi

On my last day in Hoi An, April and I ate at our cheese-and-chocolate restaurant three times in one day (same server each time, embarrassingly) and in between, we hired the tiniest, most ancient man we could find to row us up and down the river for an hour. I felt sure he would expire from the labor, but he had a grand time, starting water fights with the other boats and making us take his picture forty times.

After that, I felt I'd worn out Hoi An, so I went on to Hue and April and I agreed to meet up again in Hanoi.Hue features the ruins of a walled Imperial City built by some emporor or other in the 19th century. I walked all around it in the freezing, pouring rain. The city is also just South of the DMZ, so I took a bus tour of that the next day (also in the freezing, pouring rain). Once upon a time in Chicago, I took a bus tour of various sights having to do with Al Capone and the mob: all the relevant sights had long since been razed and built over, so the tour was mostly looking at parking lots and hearing about what used to be there. The DMZ tour was sort of the same deal. The DMZ itself has been resettled by rice farmers and now looks like the rest of Vietnam, and all the other sights just a single monument or bridge in the middle of nowhere. It was at least a 20 minute drive in between each sight, and half the time we didn't even get out of the bus when we got there. I did find the Vinh Moc tunnels interesting: over fifty, tiny tunnels constitute an underground city where families lived for years during the bombing, emerging only for brief periods at night.

The tour bus dropped me off at a depressing restaurant in the middle of nowhere, where I sat for nearly three hours before being picked up by the overnight bus to Hanoi. Unlike the bus to Hoi An, I managed to sleep this time, and arrived in Hanoi in the still-dark early morning feeling fairly rested. April and I met up around 7 a.m., and had the worst time finding a hotel room that I've ever yet experienced in my travels. Everyone we talked to was nasty, dismissive and dishonest, and the rooms were all dingy and overpriced. We were even installed in a room, only to be tossed out an hour later, because the girl we'd dealt with quoted us a price that was $4 lower than her horrid, rude boss really wanted for the room. This experience was to set the pattern for Hanoi overall.

This city blows, frankly. I've had such a terrible time here in every respect that all I want to do is go into a giant rant about all of the many ways I've been jerked around by everyone I've had to deal with on any level, but I know that that would only bore my readers and make me sound like a real baby, so I'm going to try very hard to resist. I will only say that the people of Vietnam in general and Hanoi in particular have really just been so terrible to deal with that if I had the readership, I would love to destroy the tourism industry in this country altogether. And I know it's not just me, because all the other tourists I meet say the same; we all just get together and vent. Just to give a few examples of how awful Hanoi truly is: April and I have now been called fat by multiple shopgirls for no reason at all, and had the clothes we were looking at ripped out of our hands; April was laughed at and mocked by bank tellers who'd screwed up her traveler's checks so that she couldn't use them (Sacombank - don't go there); everybody, from moto drivers to pineapple ladies, quotes insanely high prices (equivalent to asking a tourist for $5 for a Snickers bar or something), refuses to bargain at all, and when we won't buy, swears at us and tells us if we don't like it, to go somewhere else. I. Hate. Hanoi.

On a more pleasant note, we did escape Hanoi for three days and two nights, while we took a cruise around Halong Bay. There are many such tours you can book from Hanoi; the prices may vary, but in true Asian "same-same" style, the tours are all exactly identical down to each meal served. The first day, you board a mid-sized wooden boat and head out into Halong Bay, which is quite large and dramatically studded with many karst formations. You see a floating village: houses, shops and a school all on individual floating platforms. The villagers get around by boat and everybody has a big dog to protect their fish farms from sabotage by competition. You take a ride on a little kip through a couple of lagoons, after which the boy driving stops the kip far from your boat and demands a ludicrous fee from each person (his request takes the form of his slapping your leg repeatedly and saying, 'Money! Money!'). You visit "Surprising Cave;" the surprise is that it's about the size of a football stadium. You do some swimming and kayaking off the boat, which is probably a lot more fun when it's not December.

There was a Vietnamese-Australian family on our boat tour, and after dinner that night, some of us asked them how they'd ended up in Australia. The man had escaped there by accident when he was 13, just after the end of the war. He'd gone along with his best friend without knowing where he was going; next thing he knew, he was on a boat to Malaysia and couldn't go back. Two months later, he was a ward of the state in Australia. His mother didn't know where he'd gone, but as his father and brother were both in prison being reeducated (15 and 12 years respectively), she had enough to worry about. He saw his family again 17 years later, in 1994, when he had to return to Vietnam on a work trip. Because he'd lied about who his family was and where they lived in order to get his visa in Australia, he couldn't tell his work he planned to take a side trip to see them, so he also coulnt' warn his family he was coming. He just showed up. His wife's family had run away (from Dalat) in the middle of the night, Von Trapp style, when she was 10. They were both really frightened returning to Vietnam as recently as the '90s, but here it is 2006, and we were all chatting casually about it on a boat in the middle of Halong Bay.The tour was highly regimented. From one end of it to the other, we were herded and ordered about like kindergartners.


'Hello, hello, please,' our guide, "Rooster," would cry, round about noon. 'Lunch now. Lunch. Excuse me? Lunch now, please.'


And there he would stand until every, single last guest had proceeded to table.


'Excuse me, you will enjoy to sit on deck for 30 minutes and then we will dock at the cave. Please enjoy to sit on deck. Please enjoy to sit on deck now, this way. Thirty minute.'


No lingering at table, no napping in the cabins, all stragglers were promptly rounded up. We swam on day one and biked in Cat Ba National Park on day two, no matter that there was rain on the water day and sun on the land. There is a schedule and there is a plan, and the schedule has never changed and it will not change today, not for Ho Chi Minh himself, and sure as hell not for an American, three Canadians, two Germans and a family of Vietnamese-Australians. On day two, we relocated to a hotel on Cat Ba Island and took all our meals in the dining room there. On the first day, April and I were asked to sit with a table of strangers so that all the chairs at that table would be filled before a new table was started on. We declined and soon were joined by two of our friends, and the four of us were promptly served. A guy and his dad from our tour sat at the table adjacent to ours, and the guy started helping himself to some of our rice. A server immediately ran over and told him to stop; he and his father would be served their own food as soon as the two empty chairs across from them were occupied. No sooner, no later. Meanwhile, across the room, I saw several panicky servers make a girl get up and move across from her boyfriend (she'd tried to sit next to him) because that's where the place setting had been laid. Soon, we learned to work this system. Next day, we were all at lunch at some restuarant and had been sitting there for a good while without anyone approaching us (though they kept walking by and staring). We noticed there was an extra place setting at our table, and moved the dishes and chair to another table. Immediately, a woman made a beeline for us and asked us what we'd have to drink.


Also on the tour, we visited Monkey Island, so named because of the troops of wild monkeys living there. Tourists and locals alike love to feed the monkeys, though occasionally the monkeys will swipe sunglasses, etc. April and I went over and looked at them; we were standing some distance away, watching a family of monkeys turn cartwheels and swat adorably at each other, when suddenly one of them drew a bead on a large bottle of water April had and ran at us, hissing. Frightened, April threw her water bottle at it and it seemed to be mollified, when out of nowhere, an a giant, fat, red-faced, red-assed baboon of a monkey charged right for us, screaming and baring its fangs. It wrapped itself around April's (now rapidly retreating) calf and sunk its teeth into her ankle. At least, that's how it appeared from my vantage point as I frantically tried to keep April in between myself and the mad monkey (yeah, yeah, I'm no hero); but after she escaped, it turned out it hadn't managed to break the skin. For the rest of the day, we huddled down the beach, waiting for someone else to be attacked (no one was) while the monkeys threw the water bottle back and forth, and sat on it and stared at us. So, turns out monkeys are bad news.


On the other hand, the preserved carcasses of dead dictators are great fun for the whole family, as I learned when April and I attended the requisite viewing of Uncle Ho's corpse. Like everything in 'Nam, this is quite the procedure: we first had to go up to a little office and have our bags checked. April carries a tote, and the woman told her she had to carry her cameras, wallet and film, but they would keep the bag itself, as it was too big and thus a threat to HCM. But the stuff they told April to keep was everything in her bag and she couldn't carry it all without some kind of tote. There was much discussion in Vietnamese, and then the woman knotted her bag up so that it looked like a smaller bag, and gave it back to her. After that, we had to wait in some room where a filmstrip played on a loop (in Vietnamese) until a big enough group had assembled, at which point we all filed through a security checkpoint, had our bags x-rayed, and were instructed to place all our cameras and cell phones in special red bags provided for the purpose. Then, we went through yet another bag check office, where we deposited the red bags. Then, we arrived at the actual mausoleum, where guards looked through all our bags yet again. At long last, we were admitted to the crypt, where we quickly filed past Ho, serene and waxy under glass, and reemerged into the sunlight to go collect all our bags from the various places where they'd been deposited. Frankly, I think Uncle Ho looked fake - the Vietnamese can't even keep beer cold.


So, I'm still in Hanoi. My flight out isn't until Sunday night, so I get to stay the longest in the place I hate the most. April flew to Japan this morning. She stayed in Hanoi just long enough to have her wallet stolen out of her bag last night - all her money and credit cards. Helpfully, everyone at the restaurant knew exactly who'd taken it; less helpfully, they didn't think it necessary to alert April at the time. The policeman we filed our report with was embarrassed that he didn't speak any English and had to keep bringing kids in to translate. He was more interested in throwing his forms around huffily and striking official postures than in interviewing anyone at the scene. All things considered, I do not think I am being hasty or unfair when I say that Vietnam in general, and Hanoi in particular, couldn't suck harder if there was a fortune at the bottom of the straw.

Dalat, Nha Trang, Hoi An

Due to a mix-up with my bus ticket (I confirmed for the bus to Dalat at 7:30 a.m., only to be told when I phoned after no bus appeared that there was no bus that day and I would instead be going tomorrow, causing me to completely lose it over the phone so that they put me on another company's 1:00 p.m. bus) I ran into April again, and we've been traveling together once more.

From the beach at Mui Ne, we headed into the mountains. Dalat is a quaint hill town, where I was cold at night for the first time since China and also had a hot water shower for the first time since China. April and I optimistically rented bikes in the morning, and cycled round the lake, and then the short distance to Crazy Guesthouse, owned by an ex-film star, whose father (as many newspaper articles, tribute posters and shrines throughout the place assert) was 'right-hand man to Ho Chi Minh.' The guesthouse is indeed crazy. This woman continually renovates it and it looks a lot like the inside of the giant sea snail in that one Dr. Doolittle movie that no one ever remembers except me: it's all twisting stairways and low ceilings and tunneled paths into wings shaped like mushrooms, and little mirrored rooms tucked into the nooks and crannies. There's a big giraffe toward the entrance, and the actual rooms all have fireplaces shaped like huge, plaster animals with red lights in the eyes. They are theme rooms: the eagle for America, the bear for Russia, the ant for Vietnam and so forth.

Despite the coolness of Dalat, it is still a hill town, so April and I wore out on the biking pretty fast and hired motobikes to take us to a village. The village we visited is called 'Chicken Village,' because of the huge, stone chicken in its center (a gift from the government [??]). The village itself is very small and mostly farms. We wandered around and nearly got attacked by some dogs in the middle of a patty, only to be rescued by a farmer and given tea by his wife and son. They had a very odd guestbook in which various, random tourists had left little notes, all along the lines of: 'Very nice family. Gave us tea. Thanks! Pim and David, UK' and so forth. After that, April bought a woven blanket in which to tote around the baby she might one day have (the women who sold it to her let her try it out with real babies - the six-month-old slid out the bottom and the women laughed and laughed), and then we were at a loss for what else to do.

'And you already had your picture made with the big chicken?' said the fabric lady. The answer being yes, we went on back to Dalat.

Next day, we proceeded to Nha Trang, which is another beach town, and I don't really have much to say about it. We lounged on the beach all day, and my legs are now covered in heat rash. The mosquitoes in Vietnam have been unlike anything I've yet experienced (they find me even through my reeking screen of 50% DEET), so between the bites, the heat rash and the sunburn, I'm scratching myself so furiously even the locals look at me like I've no manners.

The bus from Nha Trang to Hoi An was a night bus, so we sort of killed time all the next day until it left. In my ongoing quest to get comfortable with massages, I finally reached the stage where I tried one involving oil. It was okay. I realize my traveling doesn't sound all that hard-core lately.

The night bus was 12 hours of torture. I'd heard a lot of horror stories about theft on night buses in Vietnam, and just before I boarded, I ran into a girl I know who had just had her bag grabbed by someone on a motorbike, in broad daylight on a busy street, even though she had it across her chest and was holding it (which I'd believed was a foolproof method to prevent purse-snatching)m - they'd just dragged her along behind the bike until (luckily) the strap broke. I put my money down my underpants for the bus trip. I was fortunate, really, because my bus didn't have that many people on it, so I was able to fully recline my seat and the one next to me, essentially sprawling across four seats as if they were a pallet. I still didn't sleep a wink. First of all, they shut all the lights out at 8:30, but then around 11, just as I was starting to doze off from sheer boredom, they pulled into a roadside restaurant, where all the Vietnamese lingered over dinner for an hour and a half, while the Westerners, having finished their Pringles, sat around bleary-eyed and boiling on the bus. We finally got back on the road about 12:15, only to stop again at 1: they put on all the lights and about eight men boarded the bus, chattering at the tops of their lungs. After that, the lights kept going on and off for the rest of the night for no real reason, and in no time, dawn broke and rain poured down. I met April at a cafe at 6:30 (we have open tickets with two different companies and so travel separately and have to meet up at predetermined cafes, which is really great, because it allows us to escape the endless hotel tour the bus companies make you go on in every city, as they get a commission for each guest they bring to certain hotels); we slogged around in the downpour until we found a decent hotel, and then slept until 2:00 p.m.

Hoi An is very pretty, with lots of early 19th-century architecture (that's nearly all painted yellow) and pedestrian-only (in theory) streets. The main point of Hoi An is to get all dresses, coats, boots and so on custom-made super cheap by the many tailors and cobblers here. They can copy nearly any design overnight. Any woman would be in hog heaven, except me, because, while I do really enjoy new clothes, the process of aquiring them always seems needlessly taxing. When faced with five million tailoring shops, you could start price-comparing and fabric shopping and browsing and trying on and getting measured and bargaining and thinking of what you need and what you already have and what you might like next season, or you could just...not. I usually pick not. So what I'm mostly doing here is trailing listlessly around after April, like I'm her put-upon boyfriend, and waiting for when it's time to eat something again.

Eating something turns out to be grand here, however: for the first time since I left home, I have now had real chocolate (not Hershey's syrup) and real melted cheese (not Kraft slices). I know that probably sounds like a dumb thing to get excited about to anyone reading this, but it's been nearly three months - the food in China was amazing, but all across Southeast Asia, every menu is a photocopy of the menu before it, and a person (well, a Western person) can only eat so many giant platters of fried, white starch before they want a bit of a respite. But every time you order Western food in Asia (and there are tons of places serving it), you get the most elaborately awful stuff for insane prices. It's kind of unbelieveable what they manage to do to quite simple things: you might, for example, order chocolate cake and what comes out is Ovaltine sprinkled on a pancake. I have no idea why Hoi An has cornered the market in chocolate and cheese in the region, but I'm glad to be here if only for the eats.

So far, Vietnam is my least favorite of the countries I've visited. It's just like Cambodia and Laos, except it's richer, so it has less excuse, and the culture isn't as interesting here, and the people aren't as friendly, and there's nothing I really care about seeing. It's just kind of bland, which is probably entirely my fault, as I'm sticking totally to the tourist trail here. But I think the North might be more interesting, and as I have a ticket out of Hanoi on the 17th, I'm really rushing up the coast.