Would you like the room with hot water or the one with a used condom?

(PICTURE: A used condom and dirty underwear. This was the good room.)

On the map we're using, there's supposedly a way to tell if there's a place to stay in a town or not. If there's a broken underline under the town name, there's at least one nha nghi (guest house). If there's a solid line then there's supposedly many. For the most part this has been true but since the map is six years old, there's generally a few extra places along the way with places to stay.

Well, Huyen and I were taking a very very back road and came to the last town on a map for probably 200km with a guest house. The problem is that it was still sort of early (4:30PM) and we hadn't driven much that day since we did a lot of sightseeing. We decided to press our luck and keep driving, thinking there must be something along the way. Wellllll, naturally there wasn't for hours. By the time we found a place to stay, we were right near the Lao border and had been driving along a mountain pass in the dark for nearly an hour and a half. There were literally bats flying around us and thousands of insects hitting our shields because they were attracted to our headlight.

When we found the nha nghi, we couldn't have felt luckier. The place had two rooms. We were told that only one had hot water so we took that one. That room was next to a large pile of garbage. Inside the room, there were THOUSANDS of bugs. I don't know if it was because of the garbage or because of the rotting wooden door frame but there were termites everywhere! We did our best to kill all the bugs but it was an uphill battle. While I was taking my shower (which was not hot!) I killed two bugs which must have been stink bugs because all of a sudden there was a noxious smell in the room. Huyen started to feel sick and between the bugs on our sheet, we decided it was best to change rooms.

The other room had no obvious bugs except for a few mosquitoes. However, this was just about 48 hours removed from the centipede incident so I moved the bed away from the wall to see if there were any killer insects there. Sure enough there was something lethal looking on the wall. Huyen grabbed a broom from the garbage room and killed the bug (yes, Huyen, not me. God my wife is awesome!).

After that bug was killed, we noticed something else lethal under the bed: a used condom and dirty underwear. Yup, that was the good room!

The girls who ran the place (and perhaps had shared in the condom use as this could easily have been a brothel) were not happy when we changed rooms at 10PM. To make it up to them we ended up voluntarily paying them an extra $1, which they were very happy about. So yes, I paid EXTRA money for this experience.

Eat Shit

Huyen and I were driving down a country road and came upon a bunch of stands selling cucumbers. I randomly pulled over at this one:


While Huyen was buying cucumbers, the woman under the umbrella came over to me and offered me a cut up cucumber. I said "Thank you" and the woman repeated, "Thank you." She then walked over to the woman with the white scarf and said in Vietnamese, "I just said thank you but I don't know what it means." The woman with the white scarf turned to her friend and said, "You said thank you? That means to eat shit!"

I thought that was pretty funny...but while typing this, I wonder if the first woman had thought I told her to eat shit because I didn't want her free cucumber (although in reality I did want it and ate it).

Everyone's knows I'm horrendous at Vietnamese. Well, it's nice to have a translator with me to be able to experience some of these little things I couldn't experience on my own.

A Reason To Wear Sandals

Right before we took off from our Mai Chau stilt house, I decided to use the bathroom one more time. While walking back from the toilet I saw this:


This centipede was very colorful and definitely caught my attention...thankfully. I called over to the son of the homeowner and he looked very concerned. He immediately got a bottle and smashed the insect. I called over Huyen, who was by the bike, and showed her what I found. Huyen told me that this insect is VERY POISONOUS and confirmed with the homeowner that if a person gets stung by it, they're most likely a goner.

Considering that the centipede was under where I had slept AND next to where I ate AND where I had walked back and forth from like twenty times, I'm just glad I wasn't barefoot!

Bear Bile

I've written in the past about the horrendous process of extracting bile from bears. I've been told -- and written about before -- that people actually have bears in cages in Hanoi and extract the bile in the city. Supposedly a pint of the bile can cost thousands of dollars because people think it's the ultimately medicine for some ailments. Anyway, Huyen and I were driving up a mountain and there was only one restaurant open. While waiting for our food, we saw this sign on the wall advertising bear bile:



I'm hoping that since the sign was partially ripped, that they don't sell bear bile anymore. I didn't see any in the shop and didn't hear any growling bears so I'm gonna think on the positive sign and assume it was just decoration to go along with the mountain theme of the location.

Happy Brithday To Me!

(PICTURE: Huyen and me in the mountains. Enlarge the picture and you'll see homes on the slopes of that mountain.)

It's my birthday today. I'm 32! Yikes!

I'm pre-writing this blog so I'm not exactly sure where I'm at at the moment. However, I'm pretty sure that I'm very happy being wherever I am. There's not many cooler things you can do on your birthday than to be on a motorbike trip in Vietnam with your amazing wife.

32 is definitely going to be an interesting age for me. There's lots of big things in store between moving to America, finding a new job, deciding on a place to live and doing my darnedest to make sure Huyen is as happy as possible every single day. I know it's not going to be an easy age, but I think it'll be one I can always look back on as a crossroads in my life.

Have a birthday beer for me tonight!

Nail Clippers Anyone?

Huyen and I were having some bike trouble the other day and stopped at a shop to get our brake tightened. The shop owner had slightly long fingernails and I asked if I could take a picture with him. Can you guess which hand is mine:



For the record, he has been growing his nails for 5-6 months.

Fog

As anyone who came on my honeymoon can attest, sometimes there's a lot of fog in Vietnam. During the honeymoon, our bus went up a narrow mountain road with a visibility of about twenty feet. Well, Huyen and I had a solid four days with significant driving in fog. It made for some tense hours especially when we thought about:
a) How high up we were
b) The occasional guard rail that was broken and had clearly been broken by a vehicle that went off the edge
c) The people who were used to the fog and were flying along the mountain as if it was no big deal.

Mom, don't worry, I drove with my headlight on and honked my horn roughly every five seconds. I've got some great video to show the fog but the internet connection isn't great here so I can only load a picture (I finally borrowed a wire and can upload some pictures!).

So, movie buffs, what film does this picture remind you of:


One hint: Tell them Large Marge sent you.