I spent the four weeks between November 22nd and December 19th, 2008 in southeast Asia with my friend David Gerton. We travelled Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. Along the way we met up with some good friends from San Francisco, Geoff and Sean-Michaels. It was a lovely trip and here are my photos.
Something to be aware of when travelling is what kind of foods a culture eats that you might not find paletable. In travelling with my friend Dave I’ve seen a vegetarian give in and start eating meat. He tried for a while to go vegetarian but the Vietnamese just don’t eat much food without beef, chicken or shrimp. Every other day or so he keeps commenting on how he jet ate ‘a lot more meat than he is used to’.
Thankfully I’m not and have enjoyed all of the carnivorous delights 
If it isn’t clear from the brevity and the occassional odd wrong word, I am blogging from my iPhone while I travel SE Asia. The phone isn’t unlocked so I can’t drop in a SIM card and make calls but it does have wifi so I can use it for email and the web plus other helpful apps. There are the Lonely Planet audio phrase applications – a must have for Asian languages. Games for when you are stuck on transportation, WordPress for blogging and a currency exchange calculator for those transitions between countries. Plus it’s so much more secure than hotel computers.
Our room in Hanoi had its own computer. Before logging into email I installed anti-spyware and anti-virus only to find the machine infected multiple trojans and viruses. We cleaned it up but no one before us had that benefit and who knows if a keystroke logger didn’t nail someone. My iPhone, in contrast, is much more secure given It has no viruses (yet), manages its own tunnelling and isn’t a public computer. I definitely trust it or an iPod Touch much more than public computers and am glad to have access to so much wifi in the country.
Now it is time to get back to watching the countryside go by on the reunification express.
In order to not lose a day on the train we decided to fly directly to Hanoi. That means we also bypassed Hue. Sad but intentional as we wanted to spend a extra say in Hoi An. Our first impressions of Hanoi are wow, great city, so much nicer than Saigon. Nicer in terms of the vibe, the streets, the food and the weather but definitely not the taxi drivers. This is a place to be careful with taxi fares – always use a meter and even then make sure he doesn’t take the long route.
Street food rules here. Eat as much Pho as you can and be sure to wash it down with a Bia Hoi, fresh beer you find all over the the streets. Deep fried spring rolls are excellent at most stalls plus there are tons of rice dishes if you are full of noodles.
Hotels are still cheap but shop around and ask to see rooms first. Sometimes there’s a quieterbplaxe just down the street or a 4th story room with a balcony that gives you a top down view into the street action below.
The old quarter is a great place to shop and has many deals. Like Saigon you can bargain for great deals. Rip off bags were everywhere, even Crumplers! Smacking on street food tides you over between bowls of Pho.
We spent so much time just walking and looking that we didn’t see any museums but that’s ok, I get tired of them too easily. Definitely worth three day of time.
The food in Hoi An is wonderful. With a strong Hue influence we are finding it easy to eat good food either on the street, the market or in the local restaurants. Tourists are everywhere and the good restaurants are packed for all the local specialties like Cau Lao, steamed fish, Banh It and Bahn Mi sandwiches.
Walking the riverside market in the morning it’s easy to see why the food is so good, it’s incredibly fresh. As the seafood boats come it’s bought up and gone very quickly. Same goes for so much of the local produce. I would love to come back here with some friends, rent a house with a kitchen and take some cooking lessons.
If you can’t tell from my postings – all of Vietnam that I have seen so far is both wired and full of wifi. I shouldn’t be surprised given the route we are taking but still it gives me pause to think I van be online here almost as much as in San Francisco. This doesn’t lend itself to helping with the societal disconnect I always enjoy on an extended travel. Trying to see Vietnam in 10 days is a worthy trip but to see the older Vietnam that still hasn’t been thrust into the new world order I will have to come back again – buy a motorcycle or bring a mountain bike – and hit the back roads.