whatsup, writing is below.....

sunrise in nha trang, a boy and his father doing tai chi
hoi an

halong bay
halong bay

excited in sombreros at the soccer game

the celebration after Qatar lost
the blasted Japanese

in halong bay

Whats happenin,

We are currently in the UNESCO-listed city of Luang Pranbang in Laos. Despite the fact that we have only been here for a day, I can't help but echo the sentiments of every single traveler we've met in SE Asia and say that this must be the greatest country in the world. But more on that later...

We made our way through the entire country of Vietnam in just 13 days and had a blast, despite feeling like we spent half that time on a bus. It really is an incredibly beautiful country, but a lot of things sort of make you forget that and force one to focus on the hectic nature of absolutely everything. First of all, despite the government's supposed dedication to communism, the vietnamese have taken to capitalism with some serious zest. I've never felt so violated/annoyed/impressed with sellers of useless shit before. It seems as if every single person is constantly in your face in an attempt to get you to buy chopsticks or ho chi minh paraphernelia or drugs or a motorbike ride to anywhere. Secondly, the traffic is unnnnreal. You could stand on a street corner in Hanoi for an entire day without being able to cross the street if you were waiting for a genuine opening. It is a true art to slowly melt your way past the speeding motorbikes, making eye contact, going slowly and dancing around the especially crazy ones. Thirdly, the people, especially in comparison to Laos or...most other countries, are not especially endearing.

We bought a hop-on hop-off bus ticket that would take us the 1700 kilometres from Saigon to Hanoi for the ridiculous price of 21 dollars. Most of these were excruciating overnight affairs, including a 19 hour journey from Hoi An to Hanoi. What made these trips especially frustrating was the lack of gray-area-arm-space-between-bus-seat etiquette shown by my Vietnamese bus seat partners. You try sleeping on a cramped overnight bus with a local taking your arm space, it's a travesty that not even a few sharp elbows to the ribs could fix.

We spent a few days relaxing in the relatively, for Vietnam, chilled-out beach town of Nha Trang. A few days on the beach were much appreciated but relatively unnewsworthy. I woke up for sunrise one morning and walked down to the beach on my way to a dive shop. On the way I found the entire population of the city swimming and doing tai chi on the beach, an incredible site, thousands of people. The diving in Nha Trang was pretty good, but nowhere near as good as in Thailand. We did 2 55 minute dives to about 16 metres only and the visibility wasn't too exceptional. However, we DID see a giant clam, no big deal. The highlight was the second dive when we did some cave diving (mom please skip to next paragraph). An unbelievable experience, swimming into walls of fish and scraping our way through little openings. Diving is addictive and I just can't seem to get enough of it. 2 guys I did my advanced licence with in Koh Tao are now living on the island and becoming instructors, that would beat law school wouldnt it?

We accidentally ended up in the old and charming city of Hoi An, home of cheap tailoring and a river. Got some shit made and it was relatively uneventful as well I suppose. Really cool little town with great architecture and...allright who am I kidding I don't care about architecture. But if you did, you would probably really like this town. It has real, imported bacon too.

Aaanyways, we headed to Hanoi aka the town Uncle Ho built with the intention of seeing an ASIAN cup soccer game. We scalped some tickets and made it to the Vietnam-Japan game as purely bangwagon-hopping honourary Japanese in red t-shirts with sombreros (which is kind of Vietnamese, i guess) and Vietnam flags. We proceeded to get wasted and be the loudest Vietnam fans at the game. We were also fortunate enough to be sitting in the section beside the Japanese cheering section and spent most of the game not watching the game but screaming at the lying, cheating tourists from that impressive island nation. Unfortunately, this backfired because Vietnam is kind of shitty at futbol and we got ruined 4-1. However, it was an absolute ball, and the atmosphere was indescribable. Furthermore, everyone was still really happy because Qatar lost and Vietnam still made it to the next round. We were really, really happy about this.

We decided to celebrate by catching a single motorcycle to drive us the 15 kilometres back to the city. The driver accepted this opportunity, despite not knowing anything about Hanoi evidently, or how to drive a motorbike. I would say that the high/lowlight of this odyssey was when we cut across two lanes of traffic while the driver held his hand up to make a left turn, except for that other thing that happened (not to mention he did this 3 times). That other thing occurred just a foot beside us soon after we left the stadium, when a young motorcyclist rear-ended a car, sending himself twirling over the car and onto the ground and his bike to a junkyard. He actually just missed landing on us, but he got up and seemed OK except for the look on his face. I was absolutely terrified myself and would have to say that this goes right in the top 5 of scared-to-death moments along with hot-air balloon crashes, charging elephants and demented african matatu drivers in the mountains of uganda.

We also made it to Halong Bay for a 3 day trip. If I could hazard a guess, I would have to say that Halong Bay is among the most overly touristed places in all of Asia. It is incredibly beautiful, with jagged green peaks everywhere, beautiful ocean, caves, etc... but it is packed with other people. Fortunately we chose to stay on Paradise Island (seriously) with its 5 beachside bungalows and other niceties. It was a little too romantic to spend with your friend Dave, but it was great all the same. We did some kayaking, played a lot of pool for beers with the employees and hung out with our German pals Johannes and Gunnar.

And yes, as I said we are now in Laos and enjoying it very much. We are going on a mountain biking/kayaking mission for a few days in the north starting tomorrow, and home in about 10 days!

FYI: Kentucky Fried Chicken is the only international fast food chain allowed in Vietnam, and only in Saigon, because Colonel Sanders has a stunning resemblance to Ho Chi Minh, no joke, look at them next to each other.

FYI: Alanis Morissette supposedly wrote "You Oughtta Know" based on her sexual experiences with Dave Coulier, who you may know better as Uncle Joey from Full House...I was floored by this as I'm sure you are.