Travel to Live. Live to Travel

And we’ve basically done nothing. In Chiang Rai, we stayed in a really nice little guest house where we gorged ourselves on their delicious “Mini-American Breakfasts.” We visited a few museums, we stopped by the King’s birthday party, but we mostly just sat around and played computer games and read books. Laos (or at least the slow-boat) turned out to be much more tiring than we expected.

We then moved on to Chiang Mai where we are staying at a guest house which I can best describe as “serves the purpose.” We pondered going to Myanmar/Burma, but with the ethical and moral concerns (look it up on wikipedia if you don’t know about the tourism boycott) we decided that if we were going to go, then we needed more time to research to ensure that as little of our money is going to the ruling junta as possible. So instead, we’ve decided to fly down to Thailand’s renowned islands. I’ve never been, so I’m pretty excited. We have tickets to Phuket, but we may island hop elsewhere. We also figured, if we are gunna lie around all day, we might as well do it on a beach. Am I right, or am I right?

Cui Da beach

We have spent the past few days in Hoi An, a very quaint small city in central Vietnam. It’s definitely been the most fun we’ve had in Vietnam. For one, Hoi An is renown in Vietnam for its tailors. Apparently there are over 500 tailor shops to choose from. We tried one shop, and were unhappy and were pretty ready to leave Vietnam without getting anything made. However, while waiting for a shuttle we wandered into A Dong Silk, which we heard good reviews about but also that it was 2x the price of other tailors.

Needless to say, Hugh and I left with some awesome custom-designed jackets. It was so fun hopping around the store with the ladies and picking out all the fabric and finding the perfect lining, etc. I’m thankful we found the place on the last day or we would have left with soooo much more stuff than necessary.

Hoi An at night, it's gorgeous

We also took a trip yesterday to Cua Dai beach, which might be better known as a strip of the infamous China Beach. It was surprisingly beautiful and relaxing. Much better than Nha Trang, though I’m not sure the party people would agree with me. Even the touts on the beach were friendlier and nicer.

We are now in Hue, after a very tiring and taxing day on a bus ride full of suspense. I’m glad to be in a hotel with staff that’s genuinely kind and friendly. It’s been a bit rough lately. One thing I’ve learned on this trip is that service and staff mean much, much more than actual room quality.

We’ve been in Nha Trang, Vietnam’s premier beach area (supposedly), for a few days now. Unfortunately, it’s been raining most of the time. However, on the one sunny day we did get out to the beach I found myself pretty disappointed. To be fair, I consider myself pretty spoiled, beach wise. I’ve been lucky to have been to places like Key West, Hawaii, the Great Barrier Reef, etc. I guess what I’m saying is that it’s really not up to par with many beach areas I’ve been to–though it’s not necessarily that it lacks beauty. It just lacks, well, sanitation.

The actual beach has litter everywhere: cigarette butts everywhere, wrappers, plastic bottles. There’s a gross brown film that you can see on the water. And there’s the fact that every 2 seconds you get harassed by the same 10 people asking, “Hey, buy something?” We’re polite to everyone, but I was irritated at a man who came with a box of books all in Vietnamese. When I said I could unfortunately only speak English, he walked off muttering under his breath. No idea what was said, but I can guess it wasn’t pretty.

Which leads me to whom most of the travelers here seem to be: creepy single European men. Hugh and I had a really weird experience where an old man flat out STARED at me the entirety of breakfast. Hugh finally moved his chair between the man and me, and I saw the man sort of grin. When we finished and left for the elevator, the man followed us in and started talking to us. I saw him later on the beach sitting on a bench and staring at us (and others.) Later, a random Vietnamese woman came up to him and they started talking. Shortly after, they left. I’m not going to presume anything, so I’ll let you do that. =P

We arrived in Kenting, Taiwan’s beach heaven. Kenting Village is set in this large national park and the town is pretty cute, though at the moment absolutely packed with high schoolers on school trips. We’ve been eating nothing but Thai food, but that wasn’t our choice necessarily–every other restaurant is a Thai restaurant (that plays reggae music, naturally.) Every Asian beach town I’ve been in is little Thailand.

We arrived in Kenting without a hotel booked, the first time I’ve ever done that (I’m too anal-retentive.) We followed a group of young college guys off the bus to their hotel and then negotiated the price down 25% and landed ourselves a pretty awesome room. Definitely nicer than anything I was expecting in an overpriced resort area. However, our good mood quickly faded when we found out none of the thousands of motor-scooter places would rent to anyone without a Taiwanese driver’s license. Back at the hotel, we tried to talk to the staff about how we could get around, when one of the boy’s who followed said, “We are going there tomorrow, would you like to come?”

Turns out they had rented a van and a driver and two more people would have knocked the price down, so now I’ve done another “backpacker” thing I’ve never done–attatched myself to a random group of people. =P