Sand and Fairies

4/5/12:

Today was one of those 1000 picture days. In true Blue fashion we started our day around 11AM (I do like my sleep) with some yummy breakfast, fruit shakes and iced coffee! We also decided to rent a scooter and go see some sights.

After breakfast we headed out to see the famous sand dunes of Mui Ne. This place is known for having some sweet red and white sand dunes looking more like a desert than tropical country. We read the dunes were pretty far but we didn't mind since having a scooter means freedom and free A/C!!!! After getting slightly lost and seeing some really pretty countryside we made it to the white sand dunes. It took almost an hour but it wasn't a bad drive at all. Once at the dunes we're greeted by the normal tourist stuff: 'rent my ____ here' or 'buy my ____ here.' We gave them a smile and moved along to the dunes and saw some people renting 4-wheelers (ATVs) for $10/20 minutes. Sold! Carolyn and I both rented one and set out for some awesome sand dune shredding! It was $20 well spent!

On the way back home we got pulled over at a random police check point. Great!!! The cop told us to get off the bike and step away from it. He then asked for my name and where I'm from. I said 'United States' about 5 times with no luck. He then pulls out a note pad and asks me to write it down which I do. After writing United States he says 'oh, United States.' Yes that's what I've been saying. But I keep my cool. He then proceeds to ask a few more questions like where's my license and registration? What do I do for a living and what's my birthday. I'm a little concerned that they're going to cart us off to some torture prison somewhere since my our country perpetrated the 'American War of Destruction.' But after a few more questions he seems like he going to let us go. He asks what I do for a living. I quickly conclude that he's gauging how money I make so he can decide how much he's going to fine / scam / rip me off. Rather than saying engineer I decide on another much poorer profession: student. He gives me a quizzical look and then says we can go. Yes!!! Outsmarted the con artists!!!

Further down the road we stop at the fairy stream which is supposed to be this wonderful little hike through dunes and other stuff. We pay 5000 dong ($0.25) to park and are led to a crappy little stream and told to start walking. The water is only ankle deep and the bottom is soft sand. The sun was on his way to bed so it's nice out and not too bright. We walk a little way and come upon this amazing gorge with huge red and white mud walls. It was beautiful! Water seemed to be coming from the wall but we couldn't figure it out until we followed a little slot canyon up the wall. Seriously the water was coming from the wall. Like its seeping out of the mud walls. Not from the top but the bottom. Craziest thing I've seen. Needless to say we took a million pics. A bit further up the mud walls opened up and we got to a small waterfall. All in all a great hike!!!!

So for dinner we drove down to a Mexican place a lady told us about the other night. On the way we realized we're not staying in the heart of Mui Ne. We'd read that the buses drop you off far away from the budget places hoping you'll stay at one of their 'partner' hotels. Well this is 100% true. It's not all that bad though cause our hotel is super nice, on the water and has a great pool. Anyway, we made it to the eatery and had some of the best food on this trip so far! Neither of us like Asian food very much so of course our amazing dinner consisted of pizza, fajitas and guacamole dip!!!! DELISH!

Tomorrow we're gonna lounge around the pool and do a little planning. Got a trip to Italy to work on!!!!

Pics:
1) Carolyn on the ATV!!!
2) Local lady in the fairy stream.
3) Ostrich. There were places that you could take a rise on an ostrich. One guy did it although he said he weighed 220 lbs! The poor bird almost buckled under his weight. I couldnt watch so I left. Awful.
4) Us in the fairy stream.
5) looking down one of the little slot canyons at the fairy stream.
6) The view from our hotel.
7) looking over the fairy steam.

Being an adult sucks

It's down to the wire, we need to make a major life decision and we have no idea which to choose. Michael applied to get his PhD and the two front runners are USF (St. Pete, FL) or SDSU (San Diego). There are so many reasons why each would be great, our hearts tell us USF but our heads tell us SDSU, being an adult sucks, 5 years ago this would have been easy. Last week we decided on USF for reasons I'll get into in a minute but then I couldn't sleep and felt like I was suffocating, it's more financially responsible to for us to stay in San Diego.

USF - offer is full tuition and 22k a year to be a research assistant. They have contacted Michael many times to see what they can do to get him to get him to go there. Degree is in Physical Oceanography.

Positives - Michael loves the feel of the school, big school but small dept for him on a separate campus much like it was when he got his masters. Seems more one and one.
- We already have family and friends there
- We have a transitional place to stay
- The cost of living is far less then CA

Negatives
- I'll have to find a job which means moving with no second income and I won't have insurance (I can get it through the Army if I'm in a bind). I'm in the middle of a job career crisis and am currently reevaluating what I want to be when I grow up but since we are traveling and the move would be soon after that time is a factor.
- The above assumes that for a while we won't be contributing to our future which scares us to death, your supposed to fund young and often and we do a pretty good job of that now.
- We would have to forever surrender our kitties to their awesome foster parents as the friends we are staying with are allergic and moving them via plane for 5+ hours is torture for them.

SDSU - offer is full tuition for three years, we pay for one year out of pocket. Degree is in Computation Science which is more technical than USFs degree. He'll be working with an advisor but he'd be another body sitting it a cubicle in a large room.

Positives- Michael can work half time while attending school and I can work full time therefore our lifestyle will change little. We'll keep our health insurance, contribute to our future and not exactly have to live like college students
- We love San Diego and although it's far from our families we have a great support group of friends
- We get to reunite with our fluffy friends

Negatives
- SDSU isn't accredited to give PhDs so his second year he'd have to pay out of pocket because he'd be attending Clairemont Graduate School in LA which means commuting for a year.
- Michael would have to work and go to school full time.
- Although the stability of my job is great, I hate it but the perks are so good I'm afraid I'll just stay.

Florida is a big life change and has a lot of 'what ifs'. If I get a decent paying job then I wouldn't have to make that much for it to be equal to what we'd both be making in San Diego and Michael could just concentrate on school but we'd give up the big security blanket of our current stable jobs.

San Diego is more stable but the school isn't as appealing and he'd have to work. The 'what if' here is that he can apply to a program through work that would pay him half time to attend school but it's competitive and if he got in it wouldn't be until year 2, also he'd owed work a year for every year they gave them.

Our decision has to be made in 10 days and we are completely torn.

Vietnam and I are not friends

Vietnam and I have had a rough ride thus far. It's been bad experience after after experience. It started with a pedicure. They walk around the streets handing out flyers, I find one, verify a price with the guy and am whisked away but I suddenly feel something off and should have ran at that point. The guy I talked to seemed to be arguing with a worker. The lady takes me up 5 flights of stairs to a dungeon type room with some chairs. Another woman appears and gets a bucket to rinse off my feet but doesn't rinse anything, the water jut sits there. As time goes on its apparent to me that the one working on my feet has no idea what she's doing. A painful, completely unsanitary (and yes I've already lowered my standards knowing where I was) mani/pedi ensues. I hand the lady my money and she tells me I owe her more, we go back and forth and I ask for the guy I talked to downstairs, she tells me he doesn't speak English and they work for the same person. After 5 minutes of going back and forth and getting no where I just left, I figured she had 5 flights to yell but she didn't say anything. Up until now I just would have paid it since this is a communist country and I've read a lot of stories where a dispute over $5 costs a tourist $100 because the police are corrupt and what not. By the time we leave I'm steaming. There's a massage place across from the hotel that a guest recommended to me so I go in for a foot massage and bad experience #2 occurs. It's dirty and not a foot massage, it was a one handed calf massage and this place seemed like 95% brothel 5% massage place. I leave unhappy, get to the hotel and check my shorts as its felt like she got oil on them and she did! I had a longer pair of shorts on rolled up so when I unroll them there are two huge streaks of oil. I immediately put them in the laundry, they return surprise surprise stained. I march over and tell the woman about my issue, I'm so fed up at this point but I keep cool, she shrugs and points to a spot on my leg saying that's where the massage goes up to. I brought two pairs of shorts to travel, looks like I now have one. I curse to myself for an hour about how much I hate this country.

Then this morning we load the bus to go to Mui Ne. Buying an open sleeper bus ticket is what most travelers do. You pay one price depending on the number of stops you want to make and can get on and off at will. We decided not to do it because we plan on taking the train at least once (Michael promised this one is more Harry Potter style!) so its cheaper to buy each leg. The other reason is because we read that there's no guarantee as to what kind of bus you'll get so you could be taking a 13 bus ride in a cramped crappy bus and they tend to drop you off far from the backpacker accommodations. Well that's what we're doing today but only for 5 hours. We are in a sleeper bus, we are crammed in like Asian sardines, I say Asian because there is NO way they had westerners in mind when they made these coffins. Your feet go under the sleeper in front of you but mine don't fit unless I sit straight up and then my head hits the ceiling. There is barely 12 inches between me and the next bottom row but the seats aren't aligned so that's a plus but the person on the top bunk and behind me has their foot a mere 10 inches from my head. And to top it all off while I'm writing this an ant crawled down my shirt.

*bonus the long haired backpacker next to me who looks like he hasn't showered in a week has a lovely croupy cough and an endless stream of snot. Fun fun

We arrived at Mui Ne and it has yet to impress me but our hotel has a pool on the "beach" which is nice. There's no actual beach just a place from the back of the hotel to walk right in the water. There is debris everywhere from the tropical storm they had this week and it looks like a lot of places are closed. When we arrived we were informed there wouldn't be power until the evening, no problem we figured it was from the storm but later we found out it happens once a week. The government shuts it off and sends it elsewhere (Cambodia?), we were told no one cares enough to invest in energy. Oh and Facebook is blocked!

Pics: me in my "seat"
Michaels leg room, there's no where to put your bags and since he had a middle seat he didn't get an air vent
Bug bites after Michael applied some anti itch cream, my legs are just as bad :(

Old boring crap

4/3/12:

We mixed it up a bit today and saw some old boring crap (as Carolyn calls anything which came before she was born) and some new crap. The old boring crap was the Ho Chi Minh City Museum and some other random sites. The new crap was a wonderful (translation: it had A/C) mall.

Incidentally, I'm very excited to leave Ho Chi Minh City cause I'm getting sick of typing it out! Especially on my iPhone which isn't exactly a dream to type on. I either have super fat fingers or this device hates me.

The museum was more of the same: pictures of the 'American Destruction War against Vietnam' and how Americans tortured everyone and blah blah blah. Ok let's be clear, there is nothing funny about war. But the fact that we've seen at least 7 different names for what we call the 'Vietnam War' is rather silly. Also, everyone is certainly entitled to believe whatever they want. But the clear bias seen in these museums is a little over the top. Besides that we saw some interesting artifacts which seemed more like some random lady's toothbrush or another old man's table rather than a legit historical trinket. The captions all said things like 'Mr Than Thui used this wimmy-diddle to defend the patriotic army.' The coolest part of the museum was a group of wedding studio photographers and models doing photo shoots. The wedding dresses were super pretty and one of the ladies had some serious hair!

We walked to the river after that and took some pics, dodged traffic and walked around. The mall was next up and a much needed A/C break. Not much going on except a sweet grocery store where we stocked up on basic needs like deodorant, Oreos and peanut butter :)

Later we had dinner at a 'real Vietnamese' restaurant called Pizza Hut! Yummy. Then we searched for a foot massage place for the Mrs. Capped the night with my new favorite fruit shake and watched the crowds walk by.

Tomorrow we head to the beach town of Mui Ne. Leaving here at 0745 with a 5'ish hour bus ride.

A quick shout out to our new great friends we met on Koh Rong (Kathleen and Nicole): my favorite phrase right now is Pagi Bu!!!! Carolyn is probably going to choke me in the next few days if I don't find another favorite phrase. For all other readers, Pagi Bu (probably not spelled right) means good morning lady (or something along those lines) in Indonesian Bahasa. Anyway, we saw a bar while walking around Ho Chi Minh city that reminded us of my favorite phrase. Check out the picture of Allez Boo.

Pics:
1) Carolyn's foot massage
2) $0.50 beer!!
3) The foot massage place only uses USA products.
4) Everyone was super happy when the North 'liberated' the south ... According to the museum.
5) Apparently Spam is a hot item this year. The grocery store locks it up!
6) Allez Boo!!!!!

Good morning Vietnam

Since turning 30 I find it impossible to sleep past 0730 but I am currently married to Rip Van Winkle, Michael was not kidding in his earlier post about not doing anything with a hour starting in 0. Luckily for me the hotel provides breakfast so I knew he'd have to be up by 0900!

At breakfast we met a couple from Estonia who have been traveling for two years. They got jobs in Australia making so much money that they are finally heading home just to buy an apartment each and use the income to travel more. They gave us some tips for the city and we headed out for a walking tour.

First stop was the Ben Thanh Market to look around. I realized today that we go to the mall a lot in the States and generally come home with something but here we just do a lot of window shopping, it's easier to say no when you have to carry it for months. We did pick up some interesting flower tea, it's a dried flower that you use for up to 5 cups of tea. We picked one up for my Iraq battle and one for the Blue/Fleizachs. Michael's excited about experimenting this new find with Greg. Then we made our way over the Reunification Palace which is completely circa 1960s architecture.

Next up was the war remembrance museum for the 'American' war. It's called the American war of aggression and going through it you would think that we came in guns blazing and left without a single causality. To us it was clearly one sided but its their country and they can perceive it as they wish. It did make us appreciate the US and its ability to show both sides to most situations. 65% of Vietnamese citizens are under the age of 30 and there's currently a two child restriction on families so most of the population wasn't alive during the war.

Right after exiting the museum Michael had a fall of epic proportions and the Vietnamese got to share it with him. He has no idea what happened but all of a sudden he's yelling "it won't stop" and I hear a local yelling "whoa whoa whoa". I look over and Michael is in a complete split. He say his foot just wouldn't stop moving. Since he's a pro at recovery and people are clearly laughing he's up and walking in a flash, it's not until we're down the road a little that we access the damage and I'm bent over in laughter. Luckily he's got some heavy duty flip flops that have dual anchors because one came out and we were pretty far from our hotel. After he recovered we made our to the next stop on our tour, Notre Dame Cathedral and the post office, stopped at some travel agents to figure out how to get around. I ended the evening with an awful pedicure and an equally awful foot massage. Michael ended the evening with .50 street beers.

-M16 at the war museum, yep that's the same weapon I had in Iraq in 2011!
-almost a complete causality
-That's a happy new year ball behind us
-Cuba and Vietnam are best friends, yeah we had nothing to worry about, right?? I like how they made they made the Cuban hand dark
-Michael with his favorite SE Asia shake, I had to stop him from going twice today

Tropical Storm Pakhar

4/1/12:

So that crazy rain I wrote about in my post a few minutes ago ... Yea that's Tropical Storm Pakhar. Our first tropical storm of the year and it's in Vietnam!!! Holy cow this trip has everything.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/typhoon-pakhar-struck-vietnam-as-a-tropical-storm-at-about-0600-gmt-on-1-april/

Travel day

4/1/12:

This is gonna be a long one. I'm going to detail what a travel day looks and feels like for us. This particular day is our bus trip from Sihanoukville up to Phnom Penh, over the Cambodian-Vietnamese border and on to Ho Chi Minh City.

0630: alarm goes off. I say a silent prayer that it's a mistake and I still have 6 more hours to sleep. No luck. Carolyn begins to roll out of bed. I whisper that she'll probably have to go on without me. It seems I've come down with an affliction which has cemented my eyes shut. The western world calls this affliction 'sleepy.'

0637: Carolyn gets in the shower. I ask no one in particular why anyone would schedule a bus at 0730?

0642: I manage to fall out of bed and begin personal hygiene.

0647: slather hydrocortisone on Carolyn cause she looks like she's come down with chickenpox because of all the bug bites.

0652: finish packing my bag. Remind my beautiful bride that I love her but the jury's still out on whether I'll be able to make it another 5 minutes before falling asleep. Perhaps my affliction is actually narcasleepy?

0700: walk out of our room right on time. Not sure how we made our time hack. Walk to the hotel restaurant and sit down.

0705: the waitress asks what time we're leaving to which we respond 0730. She assures us there is enough time for breakfast. We order 2 'small breakfasts' which is just scrambled eggs, a baguette (yummy!!!) and hash browns.

0706-0729: fiddle around on the interwebs, look at our watches every 2 minutes and remark that they're cutting it close.

0730: our meal comes. Immediately move into survival mode meaning we stuff all edible morsels into the baguette and shove it all down our gullets as quickly as possible. While inhaling our breakfast I grumpily provide breakfast for a family of Mosquitos who seem to inhabit the chair I'm sitting in. Aren't I nice?

0742: our ride shows up and we quickly finish our meal, pay the bill and check out of the hotel.

0745: the driver happily sings some Cambodian song while displaying the largest smile on the planet. There is clearly something wrong with him since the sun has only been up for 2 hours and he's smiling.

0745-0800: speed around town picking more people up. Chat with the other backpackers about our various travel experiences.

0800: arrive at the 168-sorya bus terminal. 168-sorya is the bus company we're taking to ho chi Minh city today.

0802: load our bags underneath the bus and climb aboard. Carolyn is not happy with how I'm handling the bus tickets so she retakes that responsibility. She complains that we're sitting in the rear of the bus but I happily remind her that we'll be further away from the driver and hopefully out of range of the horn (which they use every 2 or 3 minutes here!!!!!). Bus is older looking with no bathroom but the A/C is kicking!!!!!!! I predict atleast 13 hours of Cambodian karaoke will grace the tv screen on the buss.

0810: depart bus station which is really just a random crappy store in downtown Sihanoukville.

0816: make a random stop at the 'real' bus station. I think we pick more people up but my powers of perception are still foggy.

0849: another random stop on the side of the road. The driver chats up one of the passengers for a couple minutes as we head off again.

0855: bus driver uses horn for the 36th time this morning.

0919: stop in random town to pick up local passengers.

SIDE NOTE: the towns we pass through all look pretty much the same. Filthy stores, trash all over the place being sifted through by cows, chickens, and dogs, smiling faces and of course the ever present fashion trend of Cambodia: women all wear pajamas! We've seen a couple bonus instances of a women wearing Angry Birds pajamas! Score.

0949: pick up and drop off some local peeps.

0956: Cambodian karaoke starts. Our driver must be a closet gangsta cause he turns up the bass to painful levels.

1045: bathroom / food stop. Incidentally, Cambodia is the only country we've been to that doesn't charge you to use the bathroom at bus stops.

1100: back on the road. The person in front of me has taken advantage of my absence and leaned his seat back. Now I get to enjoy the rest of our bus trip with filthy, dirty, oily backpacker hair inches from my face.

SIDE NOTE: why do backpackers generally refuse to wash themselves? Friggin disgusting. I'm routinely grossed out by the lack of personal hygiene displayed by backpackers here.

1126: driver really really loves that horn.

1239: Carolyn leans over and whispers that we have a 30 minute layover at the Phnom Penh bus station. I immediately see where she's going with this. You see the bus station is a hop skip and a jump from the Lucky Supermarket which just so happen to have cool ranch Doritos!!!!!!! We formulate a plan where Carolyn scouts out a defensible position to look after our bags while I make my way over to doritos heaven. I say defensible because the tuk-tuk drivers are particularly aggressive in phnom penh. So much so that the bus companies place a mobile barrier up to help protect passengers as they get their bags.

1300: arrive at the bus station. Operation Cool Ranch begins. Carolyn maneuvers to a corner table and I make my way to the grocery store.

1320: The store is packed but I succeed and return triumphantly with our Doritos and a chocolate croissant bonus!!!!

1340: board our bus which is super nice and grab our seats. The bus has a bathroom but it's built for midgets as its about 3 feet high and maybe 1.5 feet wide. Emergency purposes only I think.

SIDE NOTE: we purchased our tickets from one of the ubiquitous travel agents in Sihanoukville. The tickets had our seat assignments. We got our follow on tickets this AM which also had seat assignments. Keep in mind that not once did anyone go near a computer. People simply called someone and viola, we have tickets and seats. Not once have we had any issues of double booking or lost booking or anything. Things just seem to work out.

1345: depart Phnom Penh for Ho Chi Minh City.

1400: bus attendant passes out water for everyone ... VIP what what!!!!

1530: take ferry across Mekong river. Double decker VIP bus on a rickety ferry over the Mekong. Exciting!!!!!!

1600 - 1648: snooze.

1730: stop at bus station for bathroom break and snacks. Carolyn finds a western toilet stashed away at the rear of the place. Carolyn 1, squat toilets 0!

1736: order vegetarian rice (i.e. rice with only vegetables). Get pork added as a bonus. Explain that I want NO meat and learn that there is no such thing here.

1738: order 2 waffles from a guy on a motorcycle. Who knew breakfast came on 2 wheels???

1750: depart bus stop.

1754: pass the first pawn shop we've seen in SE Asia. Shortly after we see a ton of casinos. I guess gambling is a universal problem.

1803: stop at Cambodian border. Get off bus.

1805: pass through Cambodian immigration, get finger printed.

1807: Carolyn persuades Cambodian driver to mail our postcards. Winning!

1820: drive to the Vietnamese border.

1823: exit bus, collect all bags and enter immigration building. Stop for quick photo :)

1829: pass through Vietnamese immigration. Bags go through x-ray machine.

1831: exit building officially in Vietnam!!!!!!

1832: begins to rain .... We're still outside.

1845: bus pulls up and we get onboard Waiting for our passports.

1850: passports are handed back.

1853: Vietnamese immigration officer comes on board and checks our passports.

1855: depart border.

2110: arrive in Ho Chi Minh City!!!! Of course it's pouring out!!!

2113: grab our bags and orient ourselves to where we are.

2114: cross street and go to ATM. Put rain covers on our bags.

2116: start walking, looking for our hotel (which we did not Pre-book).

2129: find hotel in back alley. They have 1 room left for $20/night including breakfast. Win!

2133: put our bags down in our new room approximately 15 hours after we left our last room.

2140: walk to a nearby pho place (noodle soup). Still raining by the way.

2200: finish dinner. Walk around the area.

2211: get the best fruit shake I've had in SE Asia; Carolyn gets a damn fine hot chocolate.

2217: see our first circle K!!!!! It's not seven-11 but it'll do!

2224: offered marijuana for the 2nd time in 3 minutes.

2249: in for the night. We're both pretty wet and in need of a good hot shower.

So there you have it. A travel day in SE Asia, complete with a border crossing!!!


Pics:
1) us leaving The Cambodian side of the border.
2) me with our first bowl of pho in HMCM!
3) bus station in Sihanoukville.
4) Vietnam border crossing.
5) our first bus from Sihanoukville to phnom Penh.
6) Mrs Blue after the ATM in HCMC.
7) Mrs Blue in our new hotel!
8) our bus from phnom penh to HCMC.