DMZ Tour

So I took a tour today in Hue of the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ), and it was a lot harder than I was expecting it to be. I'm not a person that normally takes offence to things, but I was kind of surprised by how offended I got on the DMZ tour. I mean, maybe it was because I was taking the tour in northern Vietnam, and maybe all of the museums in southern Vietnam are different, I don't know.

So the DMZ tour involved going to a bunch of old sites where Vietnamese troops were based during the American War (we would call it the Vietnam War), and some old monuments. We went to a few museums, and a few bases, and even one of the old tunnel networks. I guess the thing that was the hardest for me to look at were the captions of pictures, and some of the pictures themselves. There was one picture that showed a bunch of Vietnamese soldiers all lined up and smiling for a picture, and underneath the caption it read "Corageous Vietnamese troops after killing some American soldiers." There was a bronze casting on a wall of a museum that showed helicopters dropping huge bombs with "USA" emblazoned on them on innocent Vietnamese villagers. A picture of a crashed US helicopter with two Americans face down in the dirt, burned beyond recognition. Pictures of Vietnamese troops standing proudly with their American POW. A picture of two women with an artillery gun with a caption that read "Vietnamese militia women loading a gun to shoot at American ships." Even the tour guides, without meaning to sound that way at all, sounded a little gleeful when they talked about how the Vietnamese outsmarted the American troops, or forced them to retreat in panic. It all made me a little sick.

I think I was the only American on that tour. I guess I just couldn't believe how Americans were portrayed on this tour. Is this how all of the world thinks of America? That we are the "bad guys?" Most of America didn't even want to be in Vietnam! I kind of wanted to go through and change all of the captions. I did get a few photos of the captions, so I could post them to my blog. I'll do that when I get home.

Am I wrong to be disgusted by what I saw? I guess in northern Vietnam, the Americans were the enemy, but do they still need to be portrayed as the enemy 40 years later? Is that necessary? Do they need to be portrayed as "weak" and "obsessive?"

Or is this just me being imperialistic and egotistical?

Sometimes you meet the most interesting people...

Good morning, Vietnam! I've been in Hoi An for about two days now, and I'm about to head out and back to Hue for the remainder of my time in Vietnam before I go back to China. Let me tell you, I've loved (almost) every minute of my trip to Hoi An so far.

First off, I met SO MANY cool people! There were Sam and Elliott from England, who I shared a room with, Ash and Dan from Australia, two Norwegian girls (Julie and I can't remember the other girl's name), an Indian (I'm going to butcher his name if I try to spell it), and two Brazilian guys (Raphael and I never caught the second guy's name). Two Canadians and an English guy later joined us. The awesome thing was, we all met on the bus on the way from Hanoi to Hoi An and when we got to Hoi An, we just kept running into each other! It was like a little mini community because it was such a small town. So even though I was travelling alone, I always had someone to hang out with. I love travelling!

So here in Hoi An I havn't done much. I went to the My Son ruins and took a tour, wandered around Hoi An old town and took some pictures, got a suit made, and went to the beach. Unfortunately, I only got to spend an hour at the beach because my bus left at 2 o'clock and my suit fitting was at 10. Now that I'm in Hue, I kind of miss everyone! And the beach was so beautiful in Hoi An, almost as beautiful as Phuket and Ko Chang.

The only bad part about the trip to Hoi An was that the first night we were there, someone broke into Ash, Dan, and Elliott's room and made off with 3.5 million dong (about 200 bucks), two cameras, a cell phone, and a few other miscellaneous items. We know it was the hotel staff because we had only left for about a half hour to go swimming, and when we came back, the boys noticed there was an extra little door into their room and all of their stuff had been rifled through. When they tried to report it to the hotel, the man tried to say that they all left their stuff on the bus and that they should leave because they weren't the type of people they wanted at the hotel. And the police were entirely unhelpful. Needless to say, we left that night and went to stay in another hotel. It's just heartbreaking to know that all of your photos were lost. Elliott had a month's worth of photos on his camera, and I know Ash probably had a similar situation. Luckily, they didn't find Dan's camera. It just makes me sick that someone would want to do that. Why would you want to ruin someone's trip, no matter what your reasons are? Ugh.

I also get really sad when I think about all of the awesome people I meet on these trips, and the fact that I'm probably never going to see them again. They are all such cool people! Hopefully I'll be able to stay in contact with a few of them through Facebook.

Strange Horns in Vietnam

Good morning, Vietnam! If you havn't heard by now, I'm in Vietnam for a few days. I havn't finished blogging about Thailand yet, but I wanted to punch this blog out before I forgot.

I've been in Hanoi, Vietnam for two days now, and there is an endless amount of funny horns on the cars here. Now, in Asia, drivers LOVE to use their vehicle horns. It's like they have a third hand that is permanently attached to their horn that presses it whenever it seems most convenient, which is ALL THE TIME. They honk if they're passing, if you're passing, if you're crossing the street in front of them, if they're coming up behind you, if you do something wrong, if you look at them funny... Yeah, you get the point.

Anyhoo, Vietnam is no exception. However, the difference is that in Vietnam, they don't just have the simple "meep meep" horn. No. I've heard anything from a train whistle, to a horn that sounds like it has the doppler effect built in, to something that sounds like tu-ku-tu-ku-tu-ku, with a decrescendo throughout. It gives me endless amusement to hear all of these new car horns. I'm pretty sure the Vietnamese people wonder who the crazy white girl is that is giggling all the way down the street. My favorite horn I've heard so far is a horn that has two tones and goes deet-deet-deet, deet-deet-deet, deet-deet-deet, deet-deet-deet. It never fails to make me giggle. Hehehehehehe...

Also, I've decided that I need to buy a sewing machine and start up a western show clothes business over here in Asia. I've been buying all kinds of Asian silks from China, Thailand, and Vietnam. I have enough now to make two showmanship outfits and four horsemanship shirts. But when am I going to use them? I won't get back until 2/3 of the way through the 2009 show season.... I just love picking out the silks, and I know that nobody in the US is going to have the beautiful patterns and colors that I picked out, not to mention the textures. I figure maybe if I start a business buying silk and making them into shirts, it's one way to earn a bunch more money while I'm here. I just don't know if I can bear to part with the silk that I've bought. Mostly because I know it will look stellar with Rodney...

In which I almost die

Bankok, Thailand 2/2

Megan and I discovered a western grocery store above Central World Shopping Mall and stopped to have a look. Needless to say, being stuck in Asia for the last five months and then suddenly being surrounded by all the comforts of home, we went a little crazy. We wound up planning dinner around what we found at the store. So dinner was turning into soup and grilled cheese, with oatmeal cookies for dessert.

We had been staying at this apartment in Bangkok which has a stove. The stove had been working perfectly well for us for boiling water, so we assumed it would be ok to do what we wanted for dinner. I went to borrow a cookie sheet from the landlord, who when he found out what we were doing, warned us that he had never used the stove and didn't know if it worked. We should have heeded his advice.

Megan cooked her minestrone soup with no problem, and since she makes her grilled cheese with a mixture of the toaster and a microwave, she had no problem. But I like to use the stove to make my grilled cheese. The stove has four burners, so I figured it would be ok to use two of them, one for my soup and one for my sandwhich. I also turned on the oven to preheat. Everything seemed to be going well. My grilled cheese was cooking beautifully, and the tomato soup was just starting to steam. I was busy off to the side preparing the cookies and I noticed that my grilled cheese was done, so I reached over to turn off the burner. Click. BOOM!!!!!!!! The stove exploded! Sending a ball of flames in every direction. Think: small mushroom cloud of flame. The force was enough to blow the top of the stove off kilter (and I mean the ENTIRE top, not just the burner), blow the knobs off the stove, blow the oven door open, and disconnect the water pipes in the sink. Megan and I just stood there in shock for a few seconds. Did that seriously just happen? I hurriedly turned off everything I could before something else happend and went and got the landlord. He really didn't know what to do except clean up the mess I had made and offer to bake the cookies in his oven. I don't think I've ever felt so bad in my entire life. I think our little stove explosion was the landlord's last straw in a series of bad events. I went to tell him about the sink (we didn't find out about the sink disconnection until we started to wash dishes and water came pouring out the cupboard), and I found him with his head in his hands at the kitchen table. I didn't have the heart to tell him. He sent his boyfriend over to bring us the cookies and we told the boyfriend, who was able to reconnect the sink and turn off the gas. There was no way we wanted the gas on while we were still in the apartment.

A little later I happened to look down at my arm. There were blackened bits of something sitting on it. When I looked a little closer, I noticed it was my arm hair! The explosion took my arm hair off! I now look like a shaved poodle. Thank goodness I wasn't wearing a long sleeved t-shirt or something because I don't think I could have taken starting on fire along with the explosion.

The lesson I learned? Don't use gas stoves. They explode when you're least expecting it.

Cabana boys are definitely all they're cracked up to be

Patong Beach, Phuket, Thailand 1/30

Yesterday Megan and I decided to head out to Patong, the busiest and most touristy beach on Phuket. All of the beaches on Phuket have three rows of deck chairs up and down the beach, covering each square inch of sand. Heaven forbid the tourists don't have any place to sit. It's 100 Bhat to rent a deck chair and a beach umbrella.

Patong was by far the most crowded beach we had been to, but we found two beach chairs right up in front and sat down. I was pretty sunburned by this time, so I wanted to stay completely in the shade. We really picked the perfect place to sit, because the people who worked our little section of beach didn't even make us get out of our chair to move our umbrella. At exactly perfect intervals, when the sun had creeped up the deck chair about a foot, the cabana boy would be there, readjusting the umbrella so we'd stay in the shade. Talk about pampering the tourists.

So today, I was really too sunburned to go outside. Megan decided to go off on a tour since she didn't want to sit around with the sunburned gimp. I decided to go back to Patong and back to the same deck chairs because I liked that they moved the umbrellas for me. We had also finally figured out the bus schedule and I didn't want to risk paying 500 Bhat for a taxi back to Phuket town. So I got to Patong and went in search of my little deck chair spot. When I got near, the Cabana boy spotted me and jogged down to offer me a deck chair right up in front. The kid, I'm not going to lie, was damn cute. He noticed that Megan wasn't with me this time and asked me where she was. I told him that she had left me to go on a tour, so I was by myself today. He flashed me a dazzling smile and said "It's Ok, I'll take care of you while your friend is gone." When I pulled out my towel to set it on the chair, the kid took it from me and spread it out perfectly so I wouldn't have to do it. We sat and chatted for a few minutes before he headed back to work. He told me next time I came to Thailand I would have to stay on Patong so I didn't have to go back to Phuket Town so early (the last bus to Phuket Town left at 5). If only...

I was sad I didn't get to see him before I left the beach. He must have been off doing something else. If only I could go back to Phuket right now... just to see the Cabana boy. Damn.

Sporadic Thailand posts, not in any particular order

I havn't been writing in my journal, but I want to get some of my experiences down, so I'll write them in journal entries as I think of them. So they aren't in chronological order like they normally are. So:

Bang Bao, Ko Chang, Thailand 2/5

Megan and I are sitting in an internet cafe in Bang Bao, a fishing village on the southern end of Ko Chang. Ko Chang is a small island in the Bay of Thailand on the eastern side. It's a lesser developed island than Phuket, which means there are less tourist traps. It's really nice. We wanted to come here for a good amount of R&R, a blessed relief after visiting Bankok, Chiang Mai, and Phuket, all really big tourist areas and really expensive.

We're staying in a little bungalow on a lagoon farther up the western coast. The lagoon empties out onto one of those beautiful beaches that you think to only see in pictures. You don't actually believe they exist. Or if they do, you don't know where. I read in one of the Lonely Planet guidebooks that though Thailand is small, it manages to snag most of the world's beautiful picturesque beaches. Our bungalow is kind of cute. It's one small bedroom with a fan and an attached, open-air bathroom. The real high point is that the porch is directly over the water of the lagoon, and you can see the cerulean blue ocean while sitting in the hammock that's strung between two of the deck posts. Megan and I have really just enjoyed sitting on the porch and reading.

Today I went out onto the beach and did a little suntanning, against my better judgement. The sunburns that I got on Phuket (I don't think I've been that badly burned since I was in Acapulco in Mexico my Jr. year of HS) have finally faded into a tan, but unfortunately have started to peel. Kind of disgusting, I know. I don't know if the tanning did any good though. I think I'm just a darker shade of pale.

I always thought I would never really like living on the ocean. All of the oceans I've been to seem dark and cold, and smell like fish. I have a really sensitive nose. But sitting on the beach here on Ko Chang makes me wish I could have a little villa overlooking this sea, with the mountainous jungle at your back. Think Swiss Family Robinson. The ocean is so beautiful, the sun is bright, the ocean is calming, and I could sit on the beach for hours with a good book and never feel like leaving. So long as there weren't 8 zillion tourists wandering around destroying my view.

We just got done eating at a little seafood restaurant out on the water in Bang Bao. Megan and I both ordered crab, but neither of us has much experience eating it. It was a rather...messy...experience. Luckily I had the bright idea to bring along wet wipes, which I was really thankful for. Unfortunately, it seems like no matter where we are on Ko Chang, the sun is always setting behind a piece of land. I think we just need to go out on the furthest island to watch the sun set. However, we watched the sun set when we were on Phuket, but it really wasn't as spectacular as I was hoping. Anyways, we watched the sun set over the mountainous island while we had our fingers buried in a small crab. Bang Bao is nestled in a small harbor, so there were no waves, creating a quiet, lazy atmosphere, and quiet music wafted across the bay to where we could hear it. There is something about this island that just seems so peaceful.

If I ever come back to Thailand, this will be the first place I go. I'm hoping that tourism doesn't take hold here for a few more years, so the national park that is protected on this island stays exactly the same.