This bike in Ho Chi Min doubles as a fish, turtle and other aquatic animal shop

From the beginning, I had a tough time with most interactions we had with locals in Vietnam. Granted, most of the people we met were some form of shopkeeper and as soon as money was introduced to the equation the nice relationship became mean, rude and angry. However, due to our rushed pace and lack of knowledge of the language, it made interacting with anyone but a shopkeeper difficult. As such, I left the country with a very sour taste in my mouth. A few reasons why….

Haggling is a way of life when traveling in developing nations. However, for some reason in Vietnam it gets down right mean and personal. First, shopkeepers can’t even be bothered to come and talk to you when you are clearly waiting at their shop to possibly buy something. Then, if you try to haggle they quickly get mad at you and yell. “NO! YOU GIVE ME 10,000! GOOD PRICE! YOU BUY NOW!” It’s like they get instantly enraged. My favorite example was trying to buy a bottle of water in Hue. I knew the fair price and asked for it, to which the woman yelled, “noooooo!” She would rather not make any money at all than sell me the product at the fair price.

Veggie market in Da Lat...it's amazing how every stall sells the same exact thing

Another thing that really irks me is how many times I have been shooed away by a Vietnamese shopkeeper. Sometimes it’s because they don’t agree to my price, but other’s its just because they don’t want to sell to me at all. Is it because I’m Western? Because I sure don’t look American with my massive beard…not that you can really tell someone is from America just by looking at them. I can’t count how many times I’ve had a hand shoved in my face to get rid of me. Sometimes I like to shoo them back and say, “you shoo,” before lecturing them on how rude they are. Not that it ever makes a difference.

Physical contact during altercations is also, unfortunately, common. During a monsoon rain storm in Sapa, Carrie stopped at a street stall to buy a poncho. The lady charged far too much, but it was pouring and Carrie was desperate so she paid. The thing came out of the bag broken, but when Carrie tried to exchange it for a new one the woman demanded more money…yelling, of course. Carrie refused and more yelling happened, so finally she just said “here is your poncho, just give me my money back.” The woman refused again, so Carrie just picked up the new poncho and gave her back the old one, trying again to explain how she was not paying for a broken product.

At this point, the woman grabbed Carrie by the arm and squeezed as hard as possible, digging her nails into her arm. I physically had to remove the woman’s hands from Carrie’s arm, at which point the shopkeeper began to wave her arms, stomp her feet and yell at me in Vietnamese. So, I gave it right back to her. I yelled, stamped my feet and mimicked her, which finally got her to stop and actually caused her to have no idea what to do or say for a solid five seconds. In the end, I got Carrie the poncho, but the woman was beyond furious. All over what, 20 cents? It’s just the principal…and why did she have to get so angry.

Kites for sale outside the flag tower in front of the Citadel in Hue

You want another example, you say? Well, while waiting for our Halong Bay tour bus to arrive we ran into an old friend and wanted to get on the same boat. Before even getting on the four hour bus ride to the Bay, both Carrie and I talked to three different staff members and requested that we be on the same boat as our friend. Naturally, when we arrived they acted like this was the first time they ever heard this request and immediately started yelling at Carrie for not letting them know earlier. “I’m too busy. Leave me alone. You tell me at the beginning, not now. No, you go on your boat. He go on his boat.”

The scene got ugly so fast that none of us even saw it coming. One minute everyone was happy, the next minute every staff member was screaming at each other and slapping each other. It was a very unpleasant scene. In the end we got on the same boat as our friend, but the yelling continued for more than 20 minutes, even after Carrie went around and found people to trade boats with us so that the workers didn’t have to do anything at all. Apparently, the anger continued for the next two days and the staff, who were also the boat tour guides, did nothing but yell at the people on their boat. Thank goodness we switched.

The monsoon rains flood a market on the streets of Sapa

Moving on, it also really bugs me how every time I try to speak Vietnamese to a shopkeeper I just get made fun of. Sure, I get it…the language is very tonal and if I don’t raise or lower my pitch the correct way I might be making a mistake, but I know they can understand. Literally, I’ve been pointed at and I can hear as they repeat what I say and laugh directly at me.

Finally, and then I will stop this complaining section, I can’t count how many times I was shoved by a local. Never do I hear excuse me…or even the Vietnamese version. Instead, even if I’m slightly in the way I get shoved. Like when I was leaving a restaurant in Hue and the waitress, who had a huge smile for us the whole night, suddenly shoved me. Used to the insanity that follows us I thought nothing of it, but when I later returned to look for a hat I forgot there she was yelling at me from the start. “Look in your bag. It’s in your bag,” she yelled. Of course, it wasn’t. In the end I never got my hat, but I did get more abuse from the waitress.

Really, I’m sure that the Vietnamese people are very nice. We met plenty of non-backpackers who were paying lots of money for their tours and food and experiences and all of them did not have a single complaint. The people we met in the street that had nothing to do with money were quite friendly and the kids were full of smiles and waves. However, for backpackers, trying to negotiate anything in Vietnam is just a nightmare. At least the country was beautiful!

Carrie and I at the Citadel in Hue

During the bus ride to Hue we met Amelia, a fellow American, who we spent much of the next few days with. We arrived in town early, but most of the afternoon was spent trying to book our open ticket out to Hanoi the next day. Everywhere we went we were told that the bus was full and we had to wait another day, but amazingly after telling one woman that we had a flight out of Hanoi and could not wait, three seats opened up.

Bus tickets in hand, the three of us next wandered over to The Citadel: an ancient city behind walls in various stages of repair. A tuk tuk driver tried to convince us that it was already closed and we should book his services for a day tour the next day, but surprise surprise, we had no problem getting in. The place itself was beautiful and massive and due to the late hour we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves to wander and take it all in.

The Dakrong Bridge that seperates North and South Vietnam

While we would rather have spent the next day exploring more, we felt it was our duty as Americans to do at least one thing related to the Vietnam War: a tour of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). For ten hours we drove around in a minibus, along with lots of other Allied tourists, going to various sites of importance from the war. However, it is much like going to a Civil War battlefield in the USA: not much to see other than a few memorials and an overgrown plot of grass. In fact, we didn’t even stop at half of the sights on the tour; the van just slowed down for long enough to snap a photo and hope it came out.

To namedrop, the tour visited The Rockpile (just a mountain that used to have a base and heliport atop it), the Dakrong Briidge that seperates the North from the South, the Khe Sanh combat base that held one of the bloodiest and most pointless battles of the war and McNamaras Wall. We also crossed the 17th Parallel (the dividing line between North and South Vietnam) many times and drove on the Hop Chi Min trail. However, the highlight was the Vinh Moc tunnels used by the North Vietnamese people to hide from bombings. The tunnels seemed to go on forever, and certain areas had mannequins in them displaying what it would have looked like for Vietnamese to live there.

Me, Carrie and Amelia in the Vihn Moc Tunnels in Vietnam

We had a guide for the Vinh Moc tunnels, but leave it to a group of four Americans and a Dutch guy to ditch the tour and wander alone. For nearly 20 minutes we followed the path of a dark tunnel with only one headlamp and a wind up flashlight to lead the way.

We could see that the walls used to hold lights, but the wiring was all torn out making the whole experience all the more eerie. More than a few times the tunnels got so narrow that we were basically crab walking to not hit our heads and even saw a few places that we would have had to wiggle our way through to pass. We avoided those routes.

I figured that the site would not have any paths for tourists to take that did not lead to an exit, but with more than 30 kilometers of tunnels to get lost in I still got a bit worried. In the end we found an exit and did not have to turn around, but we did miss the rest of the tour. Now, nearly two weeks later, I still have Vinh Moc tunnel dirt on my backpack.

A member of the Xao tribe in the hills of Sapa takes a moment to weave a present for the tourist she is spending her day getting to know

Members of the Xao tribe sewing on the streets of Sapa

Tourists go to Sapa to see women from indigenous tribes going about their daily lives in the market, on the streets and in the mountains around the town. We figured we would have to search them out…boy were we wrong! From the minute we got off the bus with our new friends Anke and Bianca, we collected a group of Hmong tribeswomen who spent the rest of the day following us around. After we checked into our hotel, they waited outside for us. When we stopped for lunch to get out of the rain they all huddled under an awning across the street and waited.

The Hmong women continued to follow us into the local market and watched us try to haggle for handicrafts and clothes. Even leaving the market in a monsoon rain strong enough to flood the entire streets and turn stairs into waterfalls could not shake these women. When Carrie got into a fight with a shopkeeper over a broken poncho, the women looked on and supported our cause. The whole time they never asked for anything; just walked with us, talked about life and gave us a little sewn bracelet.

This member of the Hmong tribe followed us around all day through monsoon rains to get us to buy something from her

Finally, after the monsoon and poncho fight, the other shoe dropped. “We have to go home now. You buy something now?” We did our best to dodge the issue, promising them that if we didn’t book a tour that we would visit their village the next day, and it seemed to work. That is, until we walked out of our hotel the next morning and some were waiting for us. We wound up getting some silly musical instrument for way too much money, though I did get the woman to pose for a photo as well.

In reality, we had planned to go with them to visit their village and to buy something, but we wound up booking an organized tour instead. A common saying in Southeast Asia is “same same but different,” and that certainly applies here. Our group was small and we had a private tour guide, but we left at the same time as a dozen other tours. Surrounding each group were a handful of Hmong tribeswomen, different from the ones who found us at the bus the day before.

The women took turns talking to us, but shortly into the trip it became quite apparent which ones had claimed each of us. While they never discussed buying anything from them and they did not spend every minute by our sides, the little hand-woven gifts of leaves, stems and flowers or the fact that they held umbrellas over people’s heads to shade them from the sun during breaks gave it all away. My girl was 18 and very quiet, but she would wait with me every time I stopped to take photos to make sure I caught up with the group. Carrie had about three different women who claimed her.

The rice field filled mountains of Sapa

Sure, the interactions were fake and based on the assumption that we were walking ATMs, just waiting to be guilted into buying their overpriced handicrafts. But it didn’t matter and for half a day we wandered trough the mountains above Sapa, taking in the breathtaking views of hill after hill covered by rice fields and rice terraces. Never in all our Southeast Asia travels have I seen anything as awesome as the views from the trek.

When we finally stopped for lunch, it was time for the tribeswomen to pounce. They did a good job of quickly laying down the guilt and telling us that we had to buy right then because there was another tribe, the Xao, waiting to walk with us for the rest of the way. Great, so we had to do this all over again?! At one point, Carrie was surrounded by more than a dozen women all showing her the same bracelet but at different prices. My girl had a wall hanging that I spent the next two hours haggling with to get a remotely fair price before finally buying it.

Carrie surrounded by more than a dozen Hmong women trying to get her to buy their bracelet

Although I absolutely loved the trek and consider it a highlight of our time in Vietnam, I do have mixed feelings about the roles the tribeswomen play. Are they better off selling off their way of life to the highest Western bidder than they were when living the simple life? Is it wrong that they spend all day being photographed, often without their knowledge, just to keep their customers happy? I’m sure that 10 years ago they still thought a photo would steal their soul…now they pose for them without blinking an eye. Either way, I do feel bad for these women who spend their entire day following around Westerners on the off chance they will spend a buck or two. I just hope they are happy.

Carrie is surrounded by a dozen Xao and Hmong ladies trying to get her to buy things:

Local women and the rice field mountains in the hills above Sa Pa

Monsoon rains rip through the Sa Pa market and streets

Click on the first image to enlarge and then use the on-screen navigation to go back or forward…

Carrie and I at Angkor Wat

I have been fascinated by the Angkor temples since they were used as a backdrop for the Mortal Kombat movie as well as for Angela Jolie’s Tomb Raider. When I found out that the temples were in Cambodia while researching this trip, they quickly became my most anticipated part of the entire eight months…and they did not disappoint!

Angkor Wat was the first stop on our whirlwind three day tour of the Angkor complex that consists of dozens of temple ruins scattered over more than two square miles. While it was smaller than I imagined (as I feel most famous monuments are), the place was absolutely amazing. Filled with intricate carvings and stone wall reliefs telling stories, it was the five central towers that really make the site special. We must have spent three hours wandering the Angkor Wat grounds, though my access to the very top of the center tower was denied when I refused to bribe the guard $10 to let us up.

Ta Prohm doorway - this was one of the filming locations of Tomb Raider (taken by Carrie)

After visiting Angkor Wat, we spent the rest of the day in our hired tuk tuk driving around visiting as many temples as possible before watching the sunset, along with hundreds of other people, from atop the one hilltop temple in Angkor. The next day we rented bicycles and spent nearly 12 hours biking 15+ miles through sunny and shaded paths in Angkor Thom and beyond. By far the highlight of the day was Bayon, a temple complex that has more than 200 carved stone faces.

Finally, on our third day we once again hired a tuk tuk to take us to a Banteay Srei, which is nearly 30 kilometers from the rest of the Angkor complex but, for some reason, a part of it. Though we stopped at a few other temples and the Landmine Mueseum on the way out there, Banteay Srei was well worth the effort. Featuring some of the most beautiful stone carvings I have ever seen, the detail was beyond belief and no photo I took could ever do it justice.

One of the funniest parts of a day at the Angkor complex is the frequency at which visitors are approached to buy things from local vendors. Whether walking, biking or in the back of a tuk tuk, the most frequent words heard are, “you want cold water? Pineapple? Book on Angkor? You want food? I give you very good price! Angkor tee shirt? You stop at my shop? Buy my flute? You want postcard…ten for a dollar? Ten for 75 cents? You buy now?” It’s amazing how many little stalls are set up in between all these ancient ruins and, sooner or later, we always gave in. Hey, a guy has to eat, drink and buy souvenirs right?!

Bike riding through the gates of Angkor Thom


Water, tee shirt and instrument sellers outside of Ta Phrom in Angkor

Monks chanting at the Bayon in Angkor just before sunset

And here are the highlights of all of the Angkor temples. To see them all, click on the first one and then use the on-screen navigation to go through them all. Or just click here to see them on flickr.

An assortment of local foods at a buffet in Kuala Lumpur

Malaysia seems to be more of a mix of other cultures than a country with its own. The locals are a collection of Indians, Malaysians, Indonesians and Chinese. This leads to many different religions and a very segmented population: especially in Kuala Lumpur. True, we didn’t spend too much time interacting with locals, but everyone we have talked to and the guide books all agree that the country lacks an identity all its own.

The food is reflects this mix as well, as local dishes of the server’s country are available everywhere but there is no traditional Malaysian food. Most meals consisted of some sort of noodle and meat, which made life tough for Carrie the vegetarian. The majority of the popular dishes also had some sort of weird brownish sauce on them that absolutely made me gag. I could get it down, but it wasn’t enjoyable.

Pastries like this were all over Malaysia. Bread, katsup, hot dog, peas, corn, mayo, and some sort of super sweet something

What was enjoyable was all of the pastries everywhere, as Malaysia was filled with things I have never seen before. Most of them were filled with sausage and cheese, though some interesting ones also threw in peas, corn and other varied veggies. That one was gross. Oh, and the cheese had sugar and other sweeteners in it to form a very unique taste. Seafood is also everywhere, though not being a big fan I mostly avoided it. I hate to say it, but the meal we probably had the most was cup of noodles from 7-11.I haven’t had that much Ramen since college!