A New Sympathy for People like Billy Schrero, "This Is Life"

Hi there! Much of the last several days have been spent moving on overnight trains, overnight buses, regular buses, and walking. I started writing this post this morning, and had a considerable amount of recap of the last few days done, but after my day today, I decided that everything else was pretty irrelevant and meaningless. Some notable things from the last few days; we experienced typhoon rains in Hue and walked through knee deep water (hence the title), met some cool people, saw an old temple, and that was all great.

We arrived to Hoi An, and this is where things started to get really fun (not that I haven't been having so much fun already, the things here though are all just really fun). We arrived to Hoi An late Friday night, in the pooring rain, and decided to just stay put at the hotel we were dropped off at by the bus, even if it was pleading submission to their scam. The hotel was very nice, 5 dollars per person with elegant rooms, an elevator, but it was located a couple km from downtown Hoi An. It did have a pool though! So we swam, had the worst meal we've had so far where I was served raw chicken, and just sort of chilled out. We hadn't seen any part of Hoi An yet, and our initial reactions to the city were nothing extraordinary.

We awoke the next morning to better weather. We rented bikes from our hotel, and in our group of 4 (still with the New Yorker, an Austrian, and now one Israeli is back with us again) rode into town. At home, I am used to riding bad bikes, as I have not gotten a new one since 7th grade, and in that time span grown about 11 inches. However, I have never rode a bike like this before. I thought that having hand brakes were a sign for modernity, however, I was very wrong, as the bike was a piece of shit. Every kilometer I biked, my wheel became looser and looser, my pedals became more and more torqued, and I honestly didn't think that I would make it back to the hotel not riding a unicycle. So we laughed a lot while we biked. We got to town and ate at a place called Jean's Cafe, a small Vietnamese/French cafe which serves delicious meals at very reasonable prices. In the last 2 days, I have eaten 5 meals there. We had a chance to walk around the beautiful and small town, passing by the many tailor shops that Hoi An is known for. Everywhere we walked, me saw people we had met in Hanoi, HaLong Bay, or people that the others had met in Lao. It's such a small world when you travel.

So we spent the morning enjoying the liveliness of the town, and returned back to our hotel to check out and go to a hotel where the employees weren't all from hell. On our way back into town, we spotted two Danish girls who we had met at breakfast in Hue. The girls were very nice in conversation and we had talked about meeting up in Hoi An. Sam and I had often joked about meeting two beautiful, blonde, 18 year old girls while traveling; and we did, except that they're 19.

So after our succesful experience motorbiking in the mountains of Sapa, we thought we could handle the mid sized city of Hoi An and rented a bike for 7 dollars for 3 days. It was only the early afternoon, not that time ever matters, and we decided to spend the rest of the day at the beach with the girls and the other travelers. So we motorbiked the 15 minute ride over to the beach passing beautiful rivers, cafes, people, and hotels, with the Danish girls riding on the backs of our bikes. It was straight out of a movie- the wind, the sun, the bikes, the girls. We spent the whole day at the beach, swimming, drinking mango shakes, eating pineapple like ice cream, holding the green part as the cone, playing intense beach soccer with some friends, and just enjoying ourselves. We came back last night and had another great meal, which was followed by the short walk to a nearby bar, a backpacker's hangout. There, we drank lots of Tiger Beer, played lots of pool, and had lots of good laughs, all the while listening to really good music. After the laughs had died down, we debated moral relativism vs. moral truth with an Australian who knows more about American politics than most Americans, while drinking more Tiger Beer. The bar was great, and somehow Sam and I transitioned from the bar scene to a dreadful 30 minute walk to the other side of Hoi An, and for some weird reason ended up playing a not so playful game of hide-and-go-seek with a security guard at a friend's hotel on a balcony, in a bathroom, and under a bed for several hours. It was all really weird and really funny, and I felt like I was back in 8th grade. We returned late last night (maybe early this morning) exhausted and excited for the next day. We had another full day in Hoi An, and woke up at 8 o'clock this morning to get an early start. And today was just like yesterday, except for we had better weather, more time with the girls at the beach, and more time playing soccer. However, playing soccer today, I took a shot to the balls and was in excruciating pain for 2 minutes. I have learned that there is nothing better than a perfect day at the beach, except for a perfect night and following day. I'm now sitting in the lobby of my nice yet cheap hotel, barefoot with sand on my feet, in my boardshorts and thin shirt, eating a cake that the Austrian picked up for us on his way back from the beach. It's starting to rain the same storms again, and tonight we'll go for another great dinner and great night. The receptionist in the lobby just finished begging us in his broken English to watch the hotel and take care of anything if anyone comes in while he's out getting his dinner. We laughed, and told him we charge a low commision. He seriously wanted to know how much.

In three different and unrelated incidents today, I heard people exclaim something in the likes of "this is life." This is life, and it's so damn fun!