hyperbolic.

quick post.
practice of the brain.
long time no write.
hoi an, vietnam am in.
best city of vietnam so far.
(which still isn’t as good as either city in cambodia.)

only 5 more days left.
lots of journaling to do.
not that many photographs to chronicle, actually, though.
got a bit tired of photographing.
only taking it when it counts.
only when inspired.
no bullshit.
anyway, there’s not that much to take pictures of, anyway.
even my angkor wat album is fairly slim.
was also limited to 8gb of memory card space.
which is a lot when you’re not shooting in raw.
but i started out shooting in raw.
gonna go back to it, maybe.
seems i don’t really need the space.
yeahhhhhhhhhhhhh dawg.

ho chi minh city, vietnam, day three.

day three of ho chi minh city definitely made me wonder: why did we stay here for so long, again? not to say that the day was completely un-fun, because it wasn’t really, but it’s just kind of pointless. or at least this became apparent after we went to cambodia. ho chi minh city just doesn’t seem to have that much culture or personality, other than one of really hectic, crazy traffic.

we started off by going to eat pho at pho 24. correction: josh ate pho and i drank a bowl of broth with an egg in it. that part was good but the pho was quite different from what we eat. pho 24 had been recommended to us by the hostel people, but later on, a guy who sold us our bus tickets, named thai, said that it was not so good. shrug.

that was pretty early on, and from there, we went shopping around for bus tickets. compared prices at a buncha places, and soon it was all about the same price, but there was one place with a really hilarious dude named thai, and as soon as we met him, we were like, “alright, we’re buying here.” it was $8 to get to phnom penh and he was so fucking flaming. and his english was spectacular even though it was self-taught (mostly the case with everyone, i feel like), and he certainly worked us out of money by having us pre-buy our tickets to just about everything. bad idea? maybe. it was certainly more expensive than it would have been otherwise, but oh bloody hell well.

beyond that, we ate these really fucking amazing cream puffs at this one place… mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

and then we took the #1 bus — super easy — to go down to chinatown. chinatown was greatly lacking in chinese restaurants, which was honestly kind of a bummer for me. what can you do, though. (side note: i want some korean food. in my mouth. right now.) we just basically walked around binh tay market, which is a tourist attraction, for some reason, because all it is is a market which sells bulk products to locals. like. what do they call it? wholesale. yeah.

anyway. like i said. boring. there were temples and stuff, and we made a loose plan to meet up with edgar, but he never showed up. not much to speak of, man.

later that evening, we went to eat at this restaurant in the touristy portion… or at least, josh ate. i just hung out and drank a coconut shake, which was good and dandy. yeeeeeeeeeeah! yeah? yeah. okay.

ho chi minh city, vietnam, day two.

woke up at 7:00am and grabbed some grub from this street vendor next door… basically just noodles with steamed vegetables and fried egg. so good!! and it was 15,000 dong, which was kinda expensive and i’m pretty sure that was the foreigner rate. but whuteva.

in other news. this guesthouse is totally like, like, i said, living in my grandparents’ house or something. come back and lady is sleeping on the couch, etc. the culture is super interesting. you walk down the alleyways and everything is just OPEN — you can see into people’s living rooms, where their entire families are just doing their things, babies crying, parents eating, whuteva, whuteva, whuteva. fascinating. our luxury of having alone time is totally a luxury! weird, man. weird to think about. but even so, it reminded me of taiwan when i first got here, but taiwan doesn’t have any kind of openness like that. money difference? probably?

anyway.

went to tour shortly thereafter on a tour bus. got two pairs of these funny reflective sunglasses — raybans — huk — and unintentionally ripped the seller off. he looked sOo sad when we were leaving, but there was a lot of miscommunication about u.s. dollars versus vietnamese dong. whuteva. :/

anyway. the tour. took a forever-long drive and made one of those obligatory, “we’re going to sell you shit!” tour stops at this place where people made pottery with eggshell and mother of pearl. it was minimally cool — at least the depressing production part — but the actual store we were at for way-too-fucking-long. and i was really bored out of my miiiiiiziiiiiiiiind.

when we finally got to the cao dai temple, we had only like, a little over a half hour there. pretty much not worth the three-and-a-half-hour-or-whatever drive it took to get there. it was fine and all, and their temple was cool, and the religion was interesting — it basically combines beliefs of a whole bunch of religions and approaches religion in general from a rather intellectual standpoint, quoting philosophers and great literary geniuses along the way (at least this was my understanding, however brief) — but it isn’t all that much to look at when you visit. whatever, though.

then lunch! i just got some veggie spring rolls and made out like a bandit! got a whole buncha plates with my vegetarian meal whereas the meat-eaters got like, one. i win. there are some restaurants which all share the same like, signs, and i wonder if they are government-subsidized or something. honestly unsure.

cu chi tunnels were next, and they showed us a super propagandistic film before we started actually exploring the premises. basically, what the cu chi tunnels are is a stronghold for the vietcong in southern vietnam when the united states military was trying to take over the area. it was a series of tunnels that spanned through 200m when you count all three levels of it… the first level had weird stuff like meeting rooms and kitchens and junk, and even a honeymoon suite (which was different because instead of being a square room, it was a triangular room, which was considered “special” because they knew that triangular rooms were stronger, which leads one to wonder, “why wouldn’t they just have made every room a triangular room?” but truly, there seemed no answer. but i digress). the second level was for communication and the third level was for weaponry or something, and also connected to the underground wells (parallels with the cappadoccia caves in turkey!). there was also a section in the cu chi tunnels where you can shoot weapons like m16s and ak47s, but the bullets are something like 40,000 dong each, which is like, $2 each, and who wants to shoot automatic weapons at that price? insanities!!!! no one partook, i do not think. also went into one of the tunnels briefly, and people were like, freaking out about how it was a lot of exercise to go in them and how it was hot and stuff, and all we had gone was 20m, and 20m is literally –nothing–.

next up, more bus rides, on which i passed out hard-fucking-core. was so fragging tired.

got back and went to the night market, where we got some fat eats. the night market was nothing really like i was expecting — i’ve been spoiled by taiwan — because it was quite small. the food stalls were good, though, and we had a lovely meal in which i ate bitter melon, of all things, fried with eggs and served with this sesame oil and soy sauce sauce, and by god, i kind of loved it. i ate bitter melon and kind of loved it; go fucking figure!

beyond that, just lots of miscommunication with edgar and having a hard time getting ahold of him with no payphones around and no cell phone :[