Hanoi-ing Orange

Man I hate that Orange. Unfortunately Korean kids love it. "Teachuh. Annoying Orangey today?" Fiiine (damn it). What was I talking about again?

Hanoi-ing Orange

Ah yes. Hanoi. Sweet Hanoi. Paris's younger sibling (albeit adopted from Vietnam). Full of elderly French tourists, motorbikes, and bún chả. Second-largest city in Vietnam. Gateway to Ha Long Bay. Capital of French Indonesia for the first 50 years of the 20th century. And then again of North Vietnam for the next 20. Bombed during the Vietnam War. And one of New York Times "Places To Go in 2010." Sweet, sweet Hanoi.


Arriving in chilly Hanoi (~50 degrees F) from Bangkok (~90 degrees F), we couldn't have possibly felt more out of place. We went from Chang tank tops, flip flops, and fedoras to attire from a Finnish funeral in February. It felt like the locals from the Hunger Games' Capitol had crashed Pleasantville. (You know what I'm talkin' about). You can imagine our shorts, sleeveless shirts, and sandals got some looks. 

As you can see, Hanoi is much more North than Bangkok, i.e. way colder

After putting some pants and a dark shirt on, we cabbed it into the city. Initial reactions were:
-everything looks dark here
-why are motorbikes literally bumping against our windows?
-why are there 4 people on that motorbike?
-does everyone have a motorbike?
-this looks very shabby
-Jules, why did we come to Hanoi again?

Boy oh boy did we misgauge our first impressions of Hanoi. It was probably the combined 8 hours of sleep the past 3 days making irrational judgments. Or the fact that were judging the outskirts of the city. Regardless, Hanoi is one of the coolest cities I've ever been to. It felt like a quaint old French town centered around a small, European lake (whatever that means) with virtually no buildings over 4 stories, more motorbikes than inhabitants (think about that one), and no chains whatsoever. No fast food restaurants, no giant Nikes, no 7-Elevens (we WERE in the Old Quarter though...). It was bizarro Korea and we were loving every minute of it (and I'm Korea's #1 fan). 


Walking around and getting a feel for things, I'd say it felt like what I imagine industrial America to be like. People wake up at the crack of dawn to start working. Women, children, old people, everyone. You want apples, you go to the lady selling produce. You want nails, you go to the nail store. You want bread, you...get the picture. Stores open early and close late. People wake to work and work to wake. That sounds like present-day America right? (and I'm America's #1 fan as well!)


Backing up. After checking into our hostel, Little Hanoi (which by the way is one of the highest rated hostels on hostelworld; was more hotel than hostel; fully-furnished private rooms w/ bathroom; came with omelette, baguette, coffee/juice breakfast every morning; coffee/juice ready every time you set foot in the door; owner speaks fluent English and set up our Ha Long Bay cruise; did I mention it cost $10 per night!!!), we tried to hit the ground running. We were dead tired from the overnight flight and still hadn't really slept much the past 4-5 nights. But that's what vacations are supposed to be right? (owe you another M&D)

I wouldn't say any one Hanoi site blew us away by any means, but after walking around the narrow streets, watching the people, eating the street food, and taking it all in, we decided Hanoi was a special place. I-would-come-back-here-for-an-extended-period-of-time special. Here are some pics from the rest of the day.

At night, the lake was all lit up because of the Lunar New Year, or Tết, as it's called in Vietnam (pronounced Tet). Feeling like we hadn't done enough touristy things, we even bought tickets for a tacky water puppet show. The audience was mainly older French couples and it definitely seemed catered towards them. Felt like China meets Disney's "It's a Small World" and goes to a Blue Man Group show (that sounds wayyyy more awesome than it actually was).

After "witnessing magic", we decided to quell our hunger by eating some phở (pronounced "fuh" as in fudge or f***) at a local bún chả (pronounced boon cha) "restaurant". I say "restaurant" because it was a lady sitting on a corner, making her specialty, bún chả, and nothing else, with a few small tables set up. She could handle a capacity of probably 10 people. No more. It was a way cooler experience than any "real" restaurant could offer us.

Our time in Hanoi was unfortunately cut short because of the 2 days Ha Long Bay required. But I hope I find myself back coming back here because, simply, Hanoi is cool.

Tacky Thai Tourism and Troublingly Tranquil Tigers

......floating market and tiger temple. Not our proudest day as "intellectual" tourists, but sometimes ya gotta do the tacky to appreciate the raw.

We had spent the previous day shopping for different travel agency quotes. What we found is that everyone does the exact same ordeal and everyone has different prices. If you said "na na na the place next to you is $20 cheaper" (not even knowing there was place next door), they would always drop down their price and give you the "special deal only for you" shpeal. After checking out a half dozen places (thanks to my fearless sidekick), we went with the cheapest option that came with Floating Market, Tiger Temple (begrudgingly), lunch, and transportation to and from the Bhiman Inn.

Since our Bangkok time was limited, we couldn't NOT go out the night before right?! Well that played a huge part the following day, and not for the better. I don't know if it was the lack of sleep, the amount of soda we consumed the night before (and the ensuing dehydration), or the long, hot, stuffy van ride, but that morning was no pleasure ride. And I've driven from Wisconsin to Seattle and back more times than you need to know (I owe ya one Mom n Pops).

We got to the Floating Market first and walked around for a few hours. It was pretty cool except overrun with socks-and-sandals-toting, bucket-hatted, slow-moving, Hawaiian shirt-wearing foreigners. Or these people...

Shocker right? We knew what we were in for. And I don't want to sound pretentious because I'm sure that will be me eventually, just could have done with less of them.

Despite the pounding headache, we enjoyed ourselves at the market. Jammed on some coconut milk. Chatted up some portenyos. Took lots of pics. Overall, pretty solid morning.

And that's where things slowly headed downhill. We originally had the option to only do the Floating Market but figured we were coming all this way out here so we might as well check out some heavily-drugged tigers. How could that go wrong?!

We hopped into a different, equally-toasty van and headed for lunch with a seemingly-14-year old tour guide who spoke broken English. Lunch was awkward. Imagine a wedding with an outdoor shabby banquet hall where no one knows each other, no one wants to know each other, and everyone's generally irritated. Or in other words, an outdoor wedding. Just kidding.

After eating, we walked near the famous River Kwai bridge. Used by the Japanese during WWII to move supplies to and from Burma. It was pretty cool. Had some interesting history.

The main thing that sticks out from the River Kwai area though was our first tiger experience. And it wasn't a good one. Some yahoo was getting his picture taken with a clearly, highly-intoxicated tiger. The guy running the show says to him "don't touch his paws." So the moron immediately puts his hand on the tiger's paw (obviously) and the striped beast quickly puts its large, very intimidating jaws around the guy's arm to everyone's horror! The bossman yells at the dipshit for not listening to the rules tries prying the tiger's jaws from his arm while luring it with a bottle of "sleepy milk". Still don't know how this guy got away with 2 full arms and I still haven't really recovered from witnessing it. I kept thinking of Ian Seuser's joke: have you ever read tiger in the outhouse?............by Claude Balls. It was quite the segway into our next destination: The Tiger Temple of course!

Still quite shaken up, I wanted very little to do with the next stop on the Tour of Doom. Plus, we had heard some pretty nasty stuff about the glorified petting zoos in Thailand. The tigers are stolen from their natural habitat and drugged yadda yadda yadda. The monks who ran this temple definitely knew that people knew about tiger abuses in Thailand and really laid the propaganda on thick. FAQs about tiger treatment riddled the park. You'd like to believe they were telling the truth. Monks lie??? Not where I'm from (monks in Wisco?.....moving on). Needless to say, I didn't do so hot here. The one time I agreed to pet a BABY tiger, he flinched the second I touched him causing me to almost shard my pants. Near poo-on-cotton experience (TMI is a myth). That was the closest I came to tigers in Thailand. For an extra fee, you could get into an area where you fling around a stick with a soccer ball attached to the end and tigers would leap and swat at it. Are you friggin' kidding me?!?!?! Why the hell would you want to do this?!?!?!

You: "Hey Quinn, how'd your face get mauled? You look like Sigfried."
Me: "Oh funny you should ask, I was actually PLAYING AROUND with tigers in Thailand."
You: "Didn't see that one coming."
Me: "Me either."

Not.

On our way home to Bangkok we hit some serious traffic. Our friends B, Chris, Scho, JC, and Liv were all there waiting for us. Talk about Bangkok block...

Bang-Bangkok

Could've taken that title a few different directions. This one seemed the most appropriate.

This video is very appropriate for a few reasons: (a) first and foremost it's called Bangkok City and this is a post about Bangkok......boom, (b) every morning I go to the Dunkin' Donuts by my school (they have good coffee okay?!) they are playing this song, and (c) it's K-Pop at its finest, and I haven't done much with K-Pop on my blog thus far.

Last post about Thailand! If you're wondering to yourself, I didn't realize this fool just went to Bangkok, I should ask him how it was!, fret not (if you indeed are fretting this, I recommend seeking help.......not you, Mom, your job is to worry about me) for I actually went to Bangkok 6 months ago. Moving on.

Jules and I arrived to Bangkok before the rest of our friends, because we had to cut our time short in Koh Phi Phi in order to squeeze Ha Long Bay into the mix (which was a wise decision, blog on that coming [hopefully not 6 months] later).

We took the cheap overnight bus from Phuket and got in early morning. I ended up losing my sweet Aerolineas Argentinas hat on that bus which my buddy EG bought for me and I'm still a little bitter about it. Sorry bro, 'twas a great hat.

Back to Bangkok. After checking into the quaint 3.5-star Bhiman Inn (which cost something around $15 per night per person....and had a rather inconspicuously phallic looking logo), we walked around our neighborhood. AND luckily, we ran into our friend Brian that we knew would be in the area. Wasn't the most random encounter in the world, but it could have been much more of a hassle to find him. After meting up, we figured that moment was good as any time to start hitting the Bangkok sites. And sites we saw: starting with the Grand Palace, moving onto Wat Pho (because I told you so), and finishing with Wat Arun.

After the grueling ~4 hours of seeing Thai temple after Thai temple (life's rough), getting "ripped off" by a tuk-tuk driver (only cost us $1 and we got a free ride out of it; some scandal that was...), and chowing down delicious street pad thai (~$1), we decided to call it a day by doing Dr. Fish. You know, the thing where you dip your feet into a tank with hundreds of tiny flesh-nibbling fish. Many villains have actually tried using these lil guys to kill James Bond but to......wait for it......no avail. We got the 15 minute option and I don't think we would have lasted a minute more. It was extremely tickly but actually made our feet a little smoother and less callousy in the end.

After a full day's worth of activities, we hit the infamous Khao San Road for some cheap eats, drinks, and tees. Albeit seedy and grimy, B, Jules, and I enjoyed ourselves. Even talked up an old English couple who were "very impressed by you Americans." Apparently not all Americans hold up a good reputation in Bangkok. Shocker.

Alright speeding up. Went out. B had an "emergency". Got ripped off by yet another tuk-tuk driver (this one was bit costlier). Got VERY little sleep. Woke up bright and early in order to hit up the.......wait for it......

Koh Phi Phi is...

Get it? You will later.

(Pretend I posted this like 6 months ago..........juuust....do it)
Feeling groggy from the prior night's phun, we boarded the first boat of the day and headed to Koh Phi Phi. For the curious minds out there, "koh" is Thai for "island." Hence, when researching islands to go to (or "koh" to), it's Koh this, Koh that. Koh's are a dime a dozen in Thailand. Our phavorite phlavor of Koh (and my only  koh encounter) was Phi Phi.

You know how every 5-10 years you hear about a boat in Thailand that sinks because it was overcrowded with tourists? Well that's the boat we took to Phi Phi. It wasn't as bad as I expected it being, but it was still pretty crowded.

Anyways, the entire journey from seedy Thai city to sandy Thai paradise took only a couple hours. We arrived at Viking Nature Resort in the morning and spent the rest of the day exploring our new resting place. It might be tough portraying how exuberant I was checking this place out for the 1st time because it's been about 6 months since it's happened, but our resort was complete with private bungalows, 2 private beaches, 2 old Thai masseuses whom I frequented often, Thai bros, cold beers, free appetizers, and these views...

Our resort was positioned perfectly on a mini peninsula of sorts so we had perfect views of the island Leo and the 2 Frenchies swim to in the cult classic "The Beach" and were only a 15 minute walk or so to the town on Koh Phi Phi. Most nights we would walk over and grab cheap eats and drinks.

The town itself was nothing spectacular, compared to the straight-from-postcards views all around, but it was a great place to walk around, shop for cheap shirts and oft see through swim trunks, and people watch (if you haven't heard by now, all of Thailand gets overrun with the Euro-trash-wannabes known as "Aussies" during the Australian holidays. Alright, not to knock 'em too hard, it's probably the same as Americans in Cancun....or any other Mexican beach. There are a few good ones out there (i.e. Sue and Dan), I promise. Oh and if you're reading this and you're Aussie.........your bad).

Our fave Aussies Dan and Sue

And for those keeping score, Koh Phi Phi was one of the areas hit by the tragic tsunami back in 2004. Over 230,000 people died in 14 different countries. It's difficult to fathom what that must have been like for those tourists/locals, and amazing how much has been reconstructed since that devastating tsunami.

Difficult to see in this photo, but much of the town, trees, and shore were decimated by the enormous waves

On a much more positive note, Koh Phi Phi was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen in my life. I couldn't imagine a better way to pop my Thai island........lemme rephrase. I couldn't imagine a better way to lose my.........nope. Let's try that one more time, I couldn't imagine a better place in Thailand to make my first Thai island experience. Here are some other photos from the ~4 days in Koh Hap-pi-pi-ness.

...simply put, Koh Phi Phi is pair-o-dice.