Enter India

I last left off as we were preparing to go on the 10 day Annapurna base camp trek in Nepal. The trek was absolutely incredible, but there isn't much to write about it in a summarizing blog post. Words really can't describe what it is like to reach Annapurna Base Camp at 4100 m, standing in a bowl, surrounded 360 degrees by the tallest mountains in the world, mountains that looked as if they were so close and so attainable, but really have only been reached by few people in history. It was amazing, and it got really, really cold at night.
So that's about it for the trek. We did fire our guide 4 days in because he was a mean drunk who we figured out one hour into the trek we really didn't need. After the 9 day trek, we returned with 2 Israelis, whom we met after firing our guide, to Pokhara, which is simply, the greatest city in the world.
Pokhara is small and very touristy. Because of the Maoist government, all the bars close at 11 (except for some that consider themselves "underground" which close at 1130). Most of the restaurants are pretty much the same, and the guesthouses are nothing special. However, after returning from a long and pretty grueling trek, with my metabolism racing faster than lighting, there is nothing better than relaxing and eating in such a chill town. And that is what we did. I can't say that we did nothing all day; we woke up early every morning and went to the German bakery, then went for massive bowls of Meusli loaded with luscious fruit and yogurt, went and played several games of pool, then went to one of the many Israeli eateries to get schnitzel, went and walked around, then went to Cafe Shenkin (named after a street in Tel Aviv) for sandwiches, went and read, then went for dinner at the Pokhara Steakhouse (massive beef tenderloins in a Hindu country, pretty impressive), and finally, after a long day, went to sleep. Ahhh, Pokhara. After several days of that, and as our metabolism started to slow down to our adjustment from walking 9 miles of stairs a day to the Pokhara lifestyle, we decided to head for India. We took an 8 hour bus ride through the beautiful Nepali landscape, saying goodbye to the mountains which had been our home for the last 2 weeks, and arrived to the smell and dirt and noise and shit of the Indian border. After being slapped with a 40 dollar visa penalty because we overstayed our time in Nepal (which was all worth it), we crossed into the madness. Compared to all the countries we have traveled through, this border was virtually non existent. There was a sign above us that read "Welcome To India" which could have easily been missed, and absolutely no security. However, it would be impossible to not be able to distinguish exactly where the border was. The moment I stepped out of Nepal, it was like entering a different world. The ground was covered with unidentifiable plastic items, cow shit, and beggars rolling in shit. The sun was no longer visible, and the air was heavy with smog. The chaotic noise ripped through my unadjusted ears. Shopkeepers and street salesmen repeated "What do you want?" over and over again. Everywhere, it smelled like urine. We scrambled to find a bus to take us the additional 2 hours to Gorakhpur, where we would catch our train in the morning. We found the bus, and climbed on top to strap our backpacks on before loading. We entered a relatively small bus, with less leg room than even the Cambodian buses. It was ok, we thought, as the bus sat 32 and there were only about 30 people on the bus. We found our seats next to a Dutch couple, the only other white people on the bus. We settled in and got quasi-comfortable, hot and sticky, yet relieved and excited for the evening breeze to fly through the moving bus, expecting that we would probably be leaving in the next few minutes because the bus was almost full. However, in India, expectations rarely meet reality. We waited another half an hour, until we fitted, no exaggeration, 70 people on the bus. For the entire duration of the bus, I had either a fat old woman straddling my leg, her dress stuck on a different chair, a man's groin impressed on my ear, or another man kneeling on the ground, fighting my sized 13 feet for a place to rest. My arms didn't fit at my sides, so I had no choice but to stretch them around the shoulders of the 2 Indians on either side of me, which they probably thought was normal. I was severely uncomfortable, yet, the entire ride (except for the 6 elbows to the face I received from the ticket collector), Sam and I laughed and smiled. The only element of the bus ride which failed to surpass my expectations of madness was the smell. For a bus full of people who wipe their asses with their hands, rarely shower, eat a curry filled diet, and are just naturally smelly, it wasn't so bad.
We arrived to Gorakhpur later in the evening, which was, if possible, more mad. We went to the train station to try to buy tickets for the next morning, and could not walk through without stepping on a body or the mat or bag of a body. People were pissing on the walls outside. The lines were unorganized, signs were non descriptive, English speaking attendants were non existent, and we were the only tourists there. After much work, we got our tickets for the next morning, and retreated back to the grossest hotel we have stayed in so far during the trip. The hotel, which had an eerie resemblance to the hostel in Eli Roth's horror film and to the mental institution in The Shining, did have TV's in the room. So before going to sleep, we watched a little bit of the news, which is when we began to learn about the events occurring in Mumbai. We didn't learn much, there was no volume and all we saw were "Shootings at Hotel," so we went to sleep unalarmed. However, 3 hours later, we were wakened by aggressive , violent, and non-persisting knocks down the hall. I was tired after a full day of traveling, and fell right back to sleep. Several seconds later though, I woke again; the knocking was approaching closer and closer to our door. Finally, it arrived. Sam and I both shot up, and looked at each other. Surprisingly, I wasn't at all scared, more just wondering what I was supposed to do. We stared at the closed latch at the top of the door, when suddenly the door burst open, and a middle aged Indian man in slacks and a button down peered in at us. I waved, and he charmingly said "OK, goodnight," and moved on to the next door. What the fuck, I thought. Wondering what was up, I walked out to the hallway and saw a policeman and several other men, and I decided that whatever was going on, the guy who was just knocking on my door was probably on my side. Unable to fall back to sleep immediately (for obvious reasons) we turned on the TV, and learned about everything happening in Mumbai. Turns out, the men were just searching the hotel to make sure there were not terrorists, which makes zero sense at all because there are absolutely no tourists in Gorakhpur, and absolutely nothing worth of attacking.
So the next morning we woke up early, and took a 6 hour train ride to Varanasi. We rode sleeper class (the 2nd lowest), and met many, interesting people. Someone could probably write an entire book on "People You Meet on an Indian Train," so for the sake of time and my meusli which should be arriving soon, I'm not going to describe all the interesting characters I met.
And then there's Varanasi, which like the rest of the places we've been in India for the last 3 days, is also madness. We arrived at our Lonely Planet recommended hostel after searching through labrynthed alleys for ten minutes. We spent the day and night chilling out and playing pool, running into some different Israelis we met in Nepal who happen to have gone to high school with one of my Israeli cousins.
The next day, we descended down from the lovely rooftop bar to the burning ghats, the element which makes Varanasi one of the holiest Hindu city in the world. Sitting right on the Ghanges river, we watched as body after body was ceremoniously carried to the fire, unwrapped from the gold and colorful plastic and cloth, and placed into the raging flames. The heat was unbearable, and the smoke smelled like oil. Beggars and touts were ubiquitous, bullshitting about scams and other nonsense. At one point, a dog jumped in a dying fire and pulled out a big piece of meat, tearing it apart several feet from us. A cow walked down some stairs, causing everyone to jump out of the way in a frenzy, with one man losing his shoe in the process. The cow then let loose several gallons of urine onto the shoe, without reaction by the crowd, and several seconds later the shoe was gone. Men with only rags wrapped around their waists shoveled the ashes in the river, as other men waded in the river pulling boats. Other people bathed and drank several meters down the motionless stream. I was speechless as I watched what I perceived was a scene bursting with life. We sat there for an hour without speaking, absorbing and learning, listening and watching.
We walked around for a while, and then ascended back to the rooftop bar for good food, music, pool, and company. Later on, we went back out for sunset and a religious ceremony at one of the main ghats, and then returned back to the hotel.
We're off to Agra tonight, and tomorrow we'll be sitting in front of the Taj Mahal sipping Chai.
One quick side note: If you've at all noticed at any times a fixation on functions relating to the bathroom in previous blog posts, it's with good reason. After a month of dealing with that shit (literally), I finally went to the doctor in Pokhara and was diagnosed with ghiardia and dysentry, which I probably got from drinking bad water. I'm not sure if I'm better now, but it really hasn't impacted my life that much.
And also, I'm not sure by reading this what you may think my feelings thus far about India are, so I want to make it absolutely clear: it's really crazy, but I really like it :)

The Nepali Way

My Grandma always says that in her next life, she wants to come back as one of my cats. Well, if you remember from one of my early blog posts, I decided that in my next life I want to come back as a Mongolian warrior. But after that life, which will probably not be too long because Mongolian warriors probably don't live to old ages because they fight a lot, I want to come back a Nepali sherpa or shopkeeper.
Nepal has to be one of the greatest places on earth. The tourists are trekkers, and rather than stores selling t-shirts, they sell good North Face and Arcteryx knockoffs. But before I talk about my first few days in Nepal, I'll give you a quick recap of what i was doing in Bangkok: shitting and feeling feverish.
That's right; I thought I had traveler's diarrhea several weeks ago, and it turns out, I probably did. But I never really got rid of it, and the 2 days I spent in Bangkok before flying to Kathmandu were miserable. We wandered aimlessly around Bangkok, going to one of the largest malls in Southeast Asia, and walking up and down the infamous Khao San Road, where fake IDs are sold on the street and drivers offer to take you to "ping pong show" (not table tennis) every step of the way, the whole time feeling more and more like I wanted to die. So I decided to throw in the towel; managing to make it back to my hotel before pulling a Sam. I slept a lot and starting taking my antibiotics, and although I was dreading my 4 hour flight the next day, everything turned out to be OK.
We arrived in Kathmandu the evening of the 11th. Sam and I decided against buying a Lonely Planet just for Nepal, so we had no idea of places to go except for what we heard was the backpacker's area, Thamel. As we exited airport security, we could hear the mobs of taxi drivers outside. More hassles just like Vietnam, I thought, as Sam and I prepared to fight off the swarms and find a non threatening yet non retarded looking driver. It was then that we were spotted by an airport taxi driver, a driver who is allowed into the airport to pull clients. We usually never go with these types of drivers out of principle, as they usually mark up their prices double because they are "official." But this driver was different- he was a comedic and sales genius. He lured us in with the most incredible persuasion skills, using excellent timing and rhetoric, knowing when to ease off, and appealing to our every emotion throughout the conversation. It was truly remarkable. We asked our new friend to take us to his company's hotel, something we would never do wilingly or unwillingly, also out of principle. But we wanted our new friend to recieve the commision, as he had accompanied us in our taxi with someone else driving. The whole time he told us funny stories about his life in Nepal, his claimed visits to Bangkok, his multiple girlfriends, his former job as a sherpa, his survival of yellow fever, and his part time job as a moderately succesful actor in Kathmandu (his day was spent shooting a sitcom, playing a playboy on a motorcycle). All these things may or may not be true, however, I have no doubts about his acting skills.
And this is the story of mostly everyone we came across in Kathmandu. Energetic, enthusiastic, outgoing, and very friendly. We stumbled across a shop selling yak wool coats, bought one each, and then struck up a conversation with the owner talking about yoga. The next morning, he picked us up at our hostel at 430 AM and took us to a 3 hour yoga class. The class was nothing like the Yoga I do at home; it was with mainly older people, and was a mix of light aerobics, stretching, breathing, and meditation exercises. It was excellent none the less, and at the end, we thanked our host and said farewell to a stranger, who for no reasons other than his good heart took us in and treated us like old friends.
Which brings me to the next reason behind my extreme admiration for the Nepalese, their hosting ability. Sam has a close family friend in Seattle who has an uncle or a cousin or something who lives with his family in Kathmandu. We decided to call up the friend, who we had been told would take us around. On the phone, Dixit sounded very friendly, and told us he would pick us up at 5 PM.
We didn't really know what to expect; who he was, his age, what to wear, so we did what we have been doing every night for the last several weeks; Sam wore jeans and a button down he bought in Vietnam, and I wore one of the t-shirts I bought (it happened to be Goodmorning Vietnam night) and a pair of cooler (in temperature) pants. 5 o'clock came and Dixit entered the lobby and spotted us, greeting us with a huge Nepali smile on his face. He wore jeans and a nicer shirt, and was in his 40's. We followed him out of the hotel, and walked several blocks away from the busy traffic of Thamel to where his car was. Dixit introduced us to his wife, his driver, and two daughters, ages 14 and 12. He then proceeded to take us to the nicest hotel in all of Kathmandu for a buffet dinner. All of this would have been amazing, except for the fact that I was still suffering from the stomach ailments I described above, and have been describing for the last several blog posts. What I have learned about Nepali hosts is that while they are very generous, they virtually insist that you take them up on their offers. This was a bit troubling to me, as we arrived at an incredible buffett with over 50 dishes. This probably meant that the meal had no definite ending, which was even more troubling to me. And even more troubling than that was the fact that we were eating Indian food; not light French or Italian food, but rich, heavy, spicy, Indian food. I was screwed. I sat down, and was ordered a beer. I drank my beer, and then followed suit and approached the buffet. How do I do this without getting sick, I thought. I began the meal with light vegetables, crackers, and a light pasta dish, already consuming more than I had eaten in the last 3 days combined. I finished my food, but detected disappointment in the amount of food I had eaten relative to my size. "My daughter eats more than you!" Dixit said. I looked down at my stomach, looked at my hosts who seemed to be nodding their heads in encouragement yes, looked back down at my stomach and frowned, and then embarked on my oddysey of excessive glutony. I stuffed my plate with the thickest stews, oiliest meats, milkiest cheeses, and 18 pieces of naan, an Indian flat bread. If I was going to shit my pants, I might as well do it with a good meal, I thought. So I ate, and ate, and ate, helping after helping of undescribably delicous food. And then I ate some more. And I sat in my chair, seeming to be a ticking time bomb of shit waiting to explode. I thought about how terrible it would be if I spent 45 minutes in the bathroom while my hosts waited, or worse, if I couldn't even make it to the bathroom. The meal went on, and we talked and laughed... and the urge to go never came. And so dessert time arrived, and I ate 4 creme puffs, several pieces of flan, and lots of fruit...and it never came. And after dessert, I felt great! I was liberated from my submission to shitting that had held me captive for days! I was so relieved. I told my hosts about my past stomach problems and laughed as we walked around the beautiful hotel garden and former palace of the Nepali kingdom, now an annex to the hotel. The whole dinner, the food, meeting Dixit and his family, the hotel, was the best dining experience I have had in Asia. It was an unforgetable night.
We arrived back at the hotel just after 8, right in time for the planned skype conference call I had with my parents and brother to talk about my sister's bat mitzvah. When I arrived, however, I realized that there would be no skype call, because there was no power in Thamel. See, everyday, for a total of 6 hours a day, the Nepali government shuts down the electricity throughout the country beacuse they simply don't have enough. Which is the first of two weird things about Nepal, the second being that their clocks are 15 minutes behind the time zone where the country is located (it took me so long to figure this one out).
So, now I am in Pokhara, getting ready to go on a 10 day trek tomorrow to the Annapurna Base Camp. It should be an amazing trek, and I am really looking forward to it. So next time we speak, I'll probably be in India!

Here are some pictures of Sam and I with the actor, at dinner with Dixit and his family, with some Japanese friends we met throwing up a hi-hi, and me playing soccer with a few little Nepalese kids at a lunch bus stop today. We started out playing with the ball in our hands, but then the enormous globs of snot on their upper lips started leaking onto the ball, and it was just a huge mess, so I decided soccer would be best. At one point, the bamboo ball we were playing with (I bought it in Thailand) rolled under the van pictured, and a small boy, eager to touch the ball, chased the ball with his head down, and not seeing the parked van, slammed right into its' side. It made such a loud thump! In the US there probably would have been a lawsuit, but in Nepal, everyone just laughed, including the boy, and we kept playing. That's the Nepali way!















Looks like I can't upload the pictures (I think I'm on a dial up connection). Will try again later

''Oh Baby, Baby Blue''

I wrote this blog a couple days ago, but the internet in Cambodia is so sketchy that I couldn't publish. So right now I'm in Bangkok, we arrived late last night and are leaving for Kathmandu, Nepal tomorrow afternoon. Bangkok is one of the craziest cities I've ever been in. It's completely westernized, but more than westernized, it's completely israelized. There are massive billboards in only Hebrew, restaurants, travel agencies, stores, and hotels with only hebrew on their signs. I had heard there were a lot of Israelis in Thailand; I never imagined it would be like this. So this caps off the first 5 weeks of our trip, we're leaving SE Asia, leaving the familiar sights and culture that we've been with, and leaving the same backpackers that we've seeing at every city we stay in. I'm not sure what to expect from Nepal and India, but I am very excited for whatever the change will bring.




Those are the lyrics to the song that some drunken Cambodians were singing while chugging bowls of beer and ice in the pouring rain in the backpacker's alley in Phnom Penh last week. They stormed into the restaurant/bar/''chill zone'' which we were at and demanded that we drink. I think I've mentioned this in the last several blogs, but in case I didn't, my stomach has been moderately upset the last 2 weeks. It has caused severe discomfort at times, but also created some epicly histerical stories which will be told at home. I seem to be better now; I have targeted the several cups of coffee that I had been drinking a day to the reason I was near shitting my pants at all minutes of the day, and have since eliminated this toxin from my body. So back to the guys singing and drinking; I was faced with a decision: plea injury stomach pain and decline, or accept their offer of beer lao and friendship. To the surprise of everyone I was sitting with who had seen me doubled over in agonizing pain with intermittent trips to the bathroom all day, I chose the latter. I took the bowl to the face, and yelled and sung along in liberation. The group of 8 people I was with all began to sing along in jubilee, and we all got trashed that night. And thus, I have decided that the best cure for traveler's diarrhea is...4 vodka red bulls, several bowls of beer lao, and singing and dancing in the pouring rain with Cambodians.

Phnom Penh overall kind of sucked. We spent a day and a half there, a day of which was spent at the killing fields and the S-21 prison, or killing fields museum. If you don't know anything about the killing fields, you are similar to the overwhelming majority of the Cambodian population who knows nothing about the Khmer Rouge, a government which waged genocide killing 2 million of its own people only 30 years ago. For tourists coming to Cambodia, the genocide is a main attraction. Every tourist goes to the killing fields, and every 9 year old book seller on every corner in every big city in the country sells countless copied books on the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot. However, for Cambodians, it is a huge taboo. After the Khmer Rouge fell, soldiers who had brutally carried out the killings were integrated back into normal society, and became the next door neighbors of victims of torture and those who had lost family members under the oppresion. It's quite sad, but also understandable that this integration occured. Cambodians were living in a totally wrecked economy, and in the years after hundreds of thousands died of disease or starvation. So rather than continue living in such dire conditions, they had no choice but to forget the past, unite as one country, and try to improve their own standard of living. And it has worked, with the help of foreign aid and countless NGO operations, the country was put back on its feet. However, leaders of the Khmer Rouge, those individuals who brainwashed young soldiers and orchestrated this terrible genocide, remain uncharged for their crimes against humanity, and every year that passes is a year that justice is not delivered. In addition to this, because of all the external help that Cambodia has recieved, the government has become completely complacent and corrupt. NGO's run health care, school systems, and pretty much everything else. Someone who worked for the World Bank in Cambodia captured the government's daily productivity best; "they get to work at 9, break for lunch at 11, get back to work at 3, and leave for the day at 5." The government has even outsourced the management of the killing fields, the museums, even Angkor Wat, one of the most magical and unbelievably cool places in the world.

Which brings me to where I am now, Siem Reap, a small laid back town which is the hub for tourists traveling to Angkor Wat. Siem Reap is awesome. We have spent the last 5 days here, playing pool, watching pirated tv shows that we bought (we're currently on season 1 of the wire), walking around, and playing lots of soccer and volleyball. Every day at 430, some tuk-tuk drivers take a break from hassling tourists and doing nothing to meet at our hostel to play volleyball. For short people, they're pretty good. However, and this is something that makes me mad but would make my good friend J Keesh absolutely livid; every time they set the ball, they hit a blatantly illegal shot. Illegal shot would actually be an understatement, they actually nearly catch the ball, hold it for 3 seconds, and throw it down. It's like watching 9 year olds play "Nukem" at camp. This wouldn't be so bad except that they have so much respect for one player, a player they label as "the best in Siem Reap," and all he does is catch and throw the ball every time. I've stayed away from their volleyball games, and arrive at the court around 515, right before sun-down, for soccer. We play 5 v 5 on a hard mud/dirt court which is about the size of my basement. The game is competitively fast moving yet it has many stops; the ball goes out of bounds nearly every 5 passes. However, it is very fun, and is expanded on my repetoire of different styles of soccer I've experienced since being in SE Asia.

So everything here is great. A couple mornings ago, we watched as the world watched Barack Obama become the next President. We bought Obama Biden shirts written in Cambodian, passed out American flag pins, and sat in a bar with a bunch of Americans, and others. Some people were crying. Some Cambodians were running down the street yelling "Obamaaaaaaaa", others were simply observing the commotion. It was a really cool day, and since then, every time I say I'm American, I get a warm reception and some comment about how it's a good time to be an American. Well f that, it's always a good time to be an American!

Pictures from Dancing on the Boat

Thought this was funny...last week's pictures of "making it the big time" on the cruise, enjoy!

Goooodbyeee Vietnam

That was supposed to be a play on the movie ''Good Morning Vietnam" starring Robin Williams, hope you got it. We left the beautiful beach town of Nha Trang on another overnight bus for the bustling city of Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City. Saigon is a very impressive city, and I prefer it to the capital of Vietnam, Hanoi. It is westernized, there's a great backpacker's hangout with excellent restaurants and bars, and, there's so many ghetto Africans living there. Saigon seems to be overall more relaxed; this may sound selfish, but I felt as if everyone's livelihood and well-being in Hanoi depended on me and other tourists taking their motorbike rides, eating in their restaurants, or buying their stupid merchandise. Saigon was a city for itself. Vietnamese people went about in their own business, without hassling tourists at every opportunity that presented itself. For the first time in Vietnam, I saw Vietnamese people eating at an upscale restaurant; and it was lunch, and it was absolutely packed. It's the South Vietnamese yuppie community, I loved it.
While I find Saigon to be a better city than Hanoi, honestly, there's not much to do there. It's the kind of city I'd love to live in, but from a tourist's aspect, it's destinations are sub-par compared to Hanoi. Saigon does have the famous War Remnants Museum and the CooChi tunnels, both of which we visited. They were very informative and mildly disturbing, however, I sort of got sick of the whole Uncle Ho bullshit propaganda campaign. It was funny at first; at the museum's movie they showed clips of American Killer Heros, and referred to the Americans as the devils. I didn't mind that, however, throughout my whole experience in Vietnam, it has seemed like the people here have a blind acceptance for Uncle Ho Chi Minh as their hero because they are striving to find some national hero to cling on to. Uncle Ho does represent resistance to the external influence of the French and the Americans, selfless sacrifice for his country, a life long career of national service, as well as good health, however, the way the people look up to him, it's as if they're not looking at what he did as a leader or what his policies were, they're looking
at him as a savior and national symbol. He was leader for 20 years, and also did some pretty shitty stuff. I think it's dangerous when a country disregards policy for image, and it sort of disturbs me that a lot of young people are embracing Obama in this same way. Not that people don't agree with Obama's policies, it's just that a lot of people don't know his policies, they just know he represents change, whatever that means.
That might've been a little to controversial and heavy to put in a travel blog, so let me tell you about something else- soccer in Saigon. I further applied my learning that anywhere in the country, at 5 pm, people were playing soccer. I had asked around the city about a game, and everyone said that people do not play in the park. I'm not taking my chances, I thought, so I went to a nearby park at 5 to 5, and started looking for a game. And sure enough, it was there. There were a group of tourist policeman, sort of like security guards employed by the government, playing 3 v 3 on a small, narrow patch of patio in the middle of the park. Half the field was underwater, and the other half was covered in a thick mud. The guys were playing with what looked like a mini soccer ball, however, it was really several pieces of bamboo weaved together in a perfect sphere, with screws at several intersections. The guards took my hint of standing next to their game in the "put me in coach I'm ready to play stance"and quickly assigned me to a team. The game was very hard, the refraining from slipping and falling, the type of ball we used, however, the most difficult factor was by far, without sounding like an ass hole, distinguishing who was on my team. They all wore the same uniforms, and sort of looked the same, and I repeatedly would pass the ball to the wrong team ate, only to apologize by putting my arm in the air. I wondered if the guards thought I was not such a great player, of if they really knew what was going on. As the game progressed, guards started taking off their shirts or rolling up their pant legs, which made it much easier to see my teammates. My play improved drastically, I was playing in the middle, and was distributing passes and making connections that made me proud. We played for about an hour, and by the end, I was glad it was over. I was dripping in sweat, my legs were shot. One of the guards rolled up to the game with several iced green teas, and several players insisted on sharing sips with me. We stood there together, juggling the ball in a circle as the final moments of sunlight yielded to darkness, and the bright lights of the city surrounded the park in the distance. All the while, motorbikes and other commuters walking home from work cut through our game, nearly hitting several of us on several occasions. However, our game felt like our own world, and I was sad to leave that night. I returned the next day at the same time, and had an equally amazing experience, this time with a completely new group of players, mostly students. Soccer in Saigon will now be permanently impressed in my mind alongside certain games I've played throughout my career. Not because of the type of play, but like the others, of the people I played it with. I miss my soccer guys in Saigon, as well as my soccer guys back home.
We left Saigon and spent 3 days in the Mekong Delta, which is a massive river system with world famous floating villages and floating markets. It was great, however, I've had a small stomach ailment that won't cease to go away. I don't want to go into details, but it yielded great pain at times as well as hysterical stories which can now be added to my other bathroom follies. Sam, and the other's who I'm traveling with, ate a fish called escolar fish, or "white tuna", and suffered from a different ailment. You can read about that on wikipedia, what's funny is they had the EXACT same symptoms as described, read about it and you'll see why that's funny (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escolar).
Well folks, I've left Vietnam and now in Cambodia. Initial reactions to Cambodia, it's a cool place, very different from Vietnam. I'm getting ready for what will probably be the most depressing day of my trip, a visit to the Killing Fields museum as well as an actual Killing Field. Go wikipedia the Khmer Rouge.
I loved my time in Vietnam, and while I stayed longer than expected and will now not be able to go to Laos or Northern Thailand, I loved every minute I spent in the country. Sometimes things don't go the way they're expected to, and that's what makes life exciting. Still having the time of my life, hope you are to.