Tanja and her boyfriend Mike blessed me with their presence for the past two weeks, and after much manic shopping and siteseeing for the 2 days we had in HK, we took off to Ho Chi Minh last Monday. HCMC is vibrant, hectic, and overwhelming. I loved it. We learned to cross the the motorbike-infested streets pretty damn quick...Usually by just throwing Mike out into oncoming traffic and following alongside with eyes half shut hoping we wont die. We took a video crossing the street if you want proof of the madness.
This trip was a bit more lax than Cambodia and Vietnam, since I went into it with no agenda, and in some ways that was great. The only downer is that we ended up booking a three day tour of the Mekong Delta, and I don't dig tours, I quickly came to learn. I'm not a fan of the structured, 30 person boat rides and dinners with no wandering time, and definitely less a fan of the "people zoo" feeling a tour like that gives. Also, not a big on our tour guide. After a slight suspicion that he was making shit up, halfway through the tour my suspicions were validated when he started explaining the religion of islamism. BUT, bitching aside, parts of the trip were definitely worth it. We hopped into these long, narrow, rickety wooden rowboats where a women stood on the back of the boat and rowed us through the houses on stilts while her little girls crawled around and played games with Tanj and I. We also went to an island where the Cham people, an ethnic minority in Vietnam, live (they practice "islamism"). So in the middle of a small island in the Mekong Delta, we went and saw a beautiful white and blue mosque. What I was not ready for was looking off the side of the mosque and seeing a 14 year old boy's circumcision...I don't want to talk about it....so in a nutshell, long bus rides, shitty tour guide, snake wine, boat rides, circumcisions...that pretty much sums up those three days.
We were ready to kill everyone on the bus by the time the third day rolled around, and nearly cried for joy when we finally made our way back to Yellow House, our hostel in Saigon which now felt like home. 5 dollars a night, free breakfasts and internets...Beautiful.
But, now, fastforward a few days, and I'm back in Hong Kong in the YMCA lobby in TST, sans Tanja and Mike. The two made a gruntled and confused departure at 6 in the AM after a rather ridiculous night last night, which started at Lan Kwai Fong and ended with Jefferson hijacking our cabdriver with his sneaky Cantonese and taking us to the top of Victoria's Peak instead of to our hotel.
Two more days of HK...
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