Getting to Rishikesh, India...the worst day ever

About halfway through my trip in India, I noticed that the spiritual experience that I thought would come to me naturally wasn't happening. I had to do something about this, but I didn't know what. I was thinking about heading north to one of the towns with a spiritual reputation, but some of those places would take a bit of time to actually get there. On my flight to New Delhi, I sat next to another American who was going to Rishikesh to practice yoga and become an instructor. Perfect. I picked his brain and found out that Rishikesh was only 4-5 hours away from New Delhi, among other things. We also talked a lot about burning man, and he told me of his experiences there the last few years. I can't wait to do that next year! Burning man 2013!

Anyway, I decided I was going to Rishikesh, but as with most things in India, booking a train ticket was a complete mess. The servers never work so you can't book anything (actually you can't anyway because they don't accept foreign credit cards) and travel agents can't book anything and...you get the picture. So after spending the day and night in New Delhi I decided to just show up at the train station for a train that was booked. They were always all booked, and the guys at the hostel said that I could just get a standing room ticket or something even if it was full. What a mess I was about to get into. I may not remember all the specifics because it's been about 2 months now at the time of this writing and it's a somewhat repressed memory hah.

So I show up at 2:30pm or so hoping to get a ticket for the 3:30pm train. The train station is bustling with Indians, not a foreigner in sight. I tried to go to a line that said "Current Reservation & Cancellation", and after fighting my way through the throngs of indians trying to cut in front of me I finally made it to the front where everyone was yelling and trying to get standing room like me I think. Everyone around me spoke only Hindi.

The lady didn't really understand English either so when I got to it she wasn't much help for me either, but she told me to go upstairs and I could do it there. So I go upstairs, and on the way I see a tourist office. I go into the nice, peaceful, empty office and talk to the lady there who speaks some English, but she pretty much tells me everything is full and says I should go to platform 1 where there's this tourist office of some sort. I don't really understand though because it seems like I'm in a tourist office. She also doesn't stress really how important it was to go to this specific tourist office.

Anyway I go upstairs and wait in another line, this time a few Indians try to help me and talk to Hindi with the people who tell me to go there, and then not there, but there, and then not there, but downstairs to where I was in the first place! I think by this point it's past 3:30pm so now I'm just trying to get any train to Rishikesh. Really though you're going to Haridwar, which is a city nearby, and then taking a taxi to Rishikesh since there's only 1 train a day directly to Rishikesh. So I go back downstairs and talk to them again after fighting through the line, and this time the lady can speak a bit more English and starts telling me all the trains later in the day that I can catch, but I can't book them with her. No, I have to go to a different train station to try to book it there. Seems like a pain. I leave again with just a note of train numbers and names of the station they leave at.

Picture of homeless people at the train station:

Now I go back to the tourist office I went to in the first place and she tells me again to go to this other tourist office, and I really have nothing left to try unless I want to go to another train station so I made the trek over there. It was quite a walk since I had to go upstairs and around and across 16 platforms to the other side where I finally started seeing signs for the foreign tourist ticket office. On my walk over there I encountered another clueless foreign tourist and I just told him to follow me. I finally arrive and I feel like I've walked into heaven. Quiet, calm, and people actually selling tickets. Seriously I'm not sure if there were any tickets being sold to anyone in the other area of the train station, it was like hell. So back in heaven, I see other foreigners who speak English and we all talk about our crazy experiences of finding this office. I think by this time it's now 4:30 or later, and it's taken me 2 hours to find this place haha. I was also somewhat stubborn in not going to it when I first heard about it, but then again I thought it was going to be the same as the messes I was in before. So I fill out a form of what I want, and wait in a small line to buy my ticket.

While in this line, I'm approached by another foreigner who turns out to be an American from Boston. He tells me he's studying there and he wants to go someplace (I don't remember where), but the train is booked for the Indian quota and they won't sell him a ticket here because he doesn't have a tourist visa, he has a student visa (so I think they have special tickets at this tourist office that they sell only to tourists even if the train is "full" with the Indian quota or something like that...I'm still not really sure how it all works). I see where this is headed, but I keep listening. He wants me to buy him the ticket using my name and passport number. Right about then it's my turn and I kind of tell him I'll think about it and go to the desk.

The guy shows me my options, and I begin to realize how this all works. First of all some of the trains I was thinking about catching are only on certain days of the week. That's was displayed on computers using a nondescript dash system with 7 dashes and the first letter of the days at the top, so it's easy to miss among the hecticness of nearby hell. So the next train is actually a night train that leaves at 10pm and gets in around 4am. Fine, I guess I'm doing the overnight. I get a second class sleeper and it's pretty cheap, I think under $10 or so.

So now that I have my ticket, I look at it to find no indication of my name or passport anywhere, and decide what the hell I'll help out a fellow citizen, especially since he offered to slightly compensate me for the risk and inconvenience. So I fill out another form with him telling me what to put in and I sketchily buy a ticket using his money. Whew, I have a ticket, he has a ticket, everyone's happy. Except now it's 5pm or so and my train isn't for 5 hours.

So we go downstairs back to hell and find the cloak room so I can drop off my bag, since I've been carrying it around this entire time and it's killing me. There's also a crazy line for that with everyone just cutting everyone because really there is no line. Another 30 minutes passes before I actually get my bag in there. Boston says that there's a nice rooftop restaurant nearby, so we leave hell and make it to a nice rooftop bar for some food.

Now we say our goodbyes and I explore the city a little bit more with the time I have left. This is another series of stressful experiences with tuk tuk drivers and cycle rickshaws trying to rip me off and screw at every opportunity possible, as well as getting chased at and barked at by crazy probably rabies infested dogs. Whatever, I eventually make it back to the train station for my train, catch it, meet a cool Japanese guy, sleep a little, and wake up literally at 4:02am and realize that the train is stopped at the station and I have to get off at that moment. Boom fast pack-up (not much I didn't really unpack) and escape from the train before it leaves the Haridwar station. I take my overpriced taxi ride into town, a little less than an hour away, and make it to Rishikesh by sunrise at about 5am.

To find out more about what happens once I arrive in Rishikesh, see my next blog post on My Yoga Ashram Spiritual Experience in Rishikesh, India.

Exploring and biking around Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat - the great temple complex of Cambodia built by the Khmer in the early 12th century. One thing I realized when I first looked at the map was how big this complex really was. It used to be a city of around 1 million people when London was only around 50,000. The historical temple complex is as big or bigger as the neighboring town of Siem Reap where the real hustle and bustle is today in that area. Even though they say it was a big city, the only remains of the area are the stone temples, the rest is just overgrown with forest. It's said that the stone buildings were reserved for the gods so everyone else just lived in wooden houses. That would at least make sense to the lack of any obvious evidence that there were homes here. They were probably swept away with time.

Here's the Google Map of the temple complex with my paths the two days:

I explored the temple complex for 2 days. The exciting part was the first day, when I decided to rent a bike to do some riding around the huge complex. After riding about half an hour to get there from my hostel in Siem Reap, I planned to go around the main sites of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom so I could save the best for last. To do this, I had to ride around the outside of the Angkor Thom, which is a walled in 10 square km area (the huge grey square on the map).

I saw a little path to the left of the main entrance, and decided to see where it led. Passing by a few small nice ruins

While riding down this path, I saw a few locals and even a few houses (definitely more like run down shacks though).

I even got chased down by a dog after passing by one of these houses. Dogs chasing me always scares me because I think they might bite....damn rabies. It eventually started to get a little more technical too, with fallen branches, bulging roots, and some deep sand, but nothing my 2 dollar a day single speed bike couldn't handle. Occasionally I would have to get off my bike to maneuver around something a bit more impassable or dangerous on the bike. It was great to be right next to the Angkor Thom moat where it was quiet while seeing locals and their houses. When I got to the southwest corner of the moat, I turned north and saw some other locals walking through the river...looked like it came straight from a movie.

I continued north up the edge on the small path, and started to get a little tired of weaving through the ever more difficult terrain I encountered. A few times I wasn't sure I'd be able to get through, but I made it! Here's some of the less difficult terrain.

When I finally got to the west entrance, I decided to just take the main road through so I didn't spend the rest of the day trying to weave through a path that might dead end. The entrance was nice, and since it was on the west side, there was no tourists there at all, only a few locals roaming around.

The road in was like most roads to the center of temples, just a long dirt road with forest on either side. I imagine back in the day there might've been more life and maybe some houses along these roads. When I got to the center, I didn't go to the main attraction there, Bayon, but I did stop at one of the sites where some monks give you a bracelet and bless you or something like that. I'm still wearing that bracelet now (about a month and a half later at the time of this writing).

I continued biking up to the north exit of Angkor Thom, and took the road over towards Preah Khan. The map I got from my hostel had a little path that looked like it went down under and around to the east entrance, and my guidebook said that the east entrance was the entrance you were supposed to enter through according to how the temple was built. I found an entrance that looked like it might be it, and rode along that path. This path was much nicer that the first one, a little bit more space with trees growing everywhere and little handmade wooden bridges over some creeks. I walked my bike over most of these bridges because they looked like serious danger for a bike.

Along that moat I also encountered some ladies gathering wood in the moat. They were all in the water collecting wood and there were a few other ladies packing the wood into bundles and putting it on their bikes.

When I made it to the south entrance of the temple, it was completely deserted. It looked like there was barely any traffic there at all, and the entrance was slightly falling apart. I stopped for a while to admire the crumbling entrance, and took a few pictures of myself on it. I tried to climb up to the area over the doorway, but I couldn't make it there in 30 seconds - the longest self timer available on my camera. Here it is caught mid stride.

So I continued around and finally made it to the east entrance, where there were long rows of stone sculptures leading to the entrance gate. Like many of the other entrances to the other temples, it looked like a bunch of guys pulling on a rope like tug-of-war. Some hawkers were there trying to sell me postcards and water and bs like that. Then some kid started playing this weird little instrument that made a wah wah sound. He was trying to sell them. Pretty cool once I figured out how to play it. It's a small stick a little longer than my hand. You put it up to your mouth and flick the end which vibrates a part of the stick. When you put the part with the vibrating wood to your mouth, your mouth acts like a sound hole on a guitar and amplifies the sound and changes it a little depending on what shapes you make. Much fun. I played it for a bit and bought 3 for a dollar after some haggling. Then I pulled out my ukulele and played a few songs for them.

By the way, did I mention it was hot? Like sweating profusely all the time hot. The weather report said it was only 86 degrees F or something like that but I think the humidity was super high. The fact that I was biking most of the time probably didn't help. This also meant I'm sweating through my shirt onto my poor wooden ukulele. Southeast Asia really put it to the test, but it survived.

So I eventually enter Preah Khan, and of course they're doing construction on the east gate like many other places around here to restore it for tourists, so I carry my bike through the walking entrance immediately beside it and bike to the center where the actual temple is. Pretty cool in there, some trees overgrowing some of the structure, and it wasn't too crowded either. After exploring for a while, I exited by the north entrance and continued heading east on the main road. I had a lot of temples that I wanted to see and the day was moving on. I stopped at the next road that actually leads down to the east entrance as well, but I wasn't sure at the time so I asked the guard there. After telling me it was Preah Khan, I told him I'd already been there. He didn't believe me when I told him I took the small path to the south of the temple haha, not until I told him about the women collected wood.

Continuing down the road to the east, I checked out a few more temples along the way. They were cool, but nothing special. Got some nice pics though along the way. I then continued a little faster, skipping a few places until I saw the only temple that day that was a little higher than the rest. I climbed up to the top and ended up meeting some other travelers and staying there until sunset. I'm not sure if it was the time of year or the smog, but for sunset you couldn't actually see the sun well before the actual sunset. Suddenly it would just disappear behind...something...maybe about 10 or 20 degrees up.

After sunset I had to bike home, but of course the sun had set so it was dusk and getting dark quick. The bike home was much longer than I expected, and about halfway through it got completely dark...but I pulled out my headlight anyway so I made it home with no problem. Then the evening came and it was time to go to Pub St! That's for another blog post.

I was actually planning to do a sunrise at Angkor Wat, but had 2 failed attempts at that. I blame it on the way too fun bar scene in Siem Reap, which kept me out late every night. Angkor Wat by day, pub st by night, that was the way to do it. The morning after my first day I actually did force myself out of bed at 5am, grabbed a tuk tuk with some other travelers and halfway through the drive realized that I had forgotten my 3 day ticket to Angkor Wat at home. When we got to the ticket check, the lines for 1 day passes were too long and I just decided to go back home and go back to sleep. By the time I got back it would be too late anyway. The second day I tried to get up I didn't even get out of bed. I had less motivation to go though, because I knew that the sunrise wasn't all it's cut out to be, especially after seeing the sunset and hearing that sunrise was the same experience.

On the morning that I just slept, I ended up going to the Angkor Wat complex later on that day. I went with another girl from my hostel, Jo from England. We hired a tuk tuk driver for the day this time and explored some of the main temple sites the way most tourists do it. The tuk tuk driver would take us to the temple and then pick us up from the same place or the other side to take us to the next one.

First to the famous temple of Angkor Wat. It was amazing, but after my crazy experience biking through the back country of the temples, nothing really compared. Here's my photo!

Then off to Ta Prohm, the Tomb Raider temple as people called it since some scenes from that movie were filmed there. This place was really cool because nature has taken over a lot of the temple, with trees growing all over it.

Then off to Bayon, which was the temple right in the middle of Angkor Thom. This one was famous for it's many faces that look strikingly similar to the king at the time it was built.

I also encountered some locals in costume willing to pose for me...for 1 dollar. Worth it.

As with most of the temples, there was a holy place where they gave you an incense stick and you put it in a little jar as per the ritual. This was one in Bayon.

After that we explored a few less notable ruins. One was nicknamed the jigsaw ruin, since it was taken apart for restoration before the Khmer rogue took power over Cambodia, and during the genocide all records were lost of which pieces went where, so they don't know how to put it back together again.

It was still mostly intact though and had some nice views.

After this we went to the "sunset temple" to see the sun set over Angkor Wat. At the bottom of the hill it says closes at 5:30pm, but it was around 4:45pm so we thought no problem. When we got up to the top, however, there was apparently a line because only 400 or so people were allowed on top at a time...and at 5:30pm they just cut off the line wherever it is without notice. Kind of annoying, but eh I don't want to go into it. We walked over to the corner of the hill which was the only place where you could also see Angkor Wat other than the top of the temple. Angkor Wat was pretty far away too pictures would barely pick it up with the smog/haze. We did find an elephant over there though!

And that was Angkor Wat! Quite the place.

The Mekong Delta of Vietnam

Since I went into Vietnam from Cambodia by boat, it was easy to stop for a few days and explore the river tributaries before going to Saigon. I got a 3 day 2 night tour which took me to Chau Doc, then a homestay on one of the tributaries near Can Tho, and then off to Saigon. 

We took a fast boat from the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, to the small border town of Vietnam, Chau Doc. The fast boat was nice because I got to leave at 1pm instead of 8am, and it didn't even leave until after 1pm because it was delayed. I went across the street and got some Mexican food and drank some beers. The boat guys told me they'd come and get me when they were ready. The Mexican food was surprisingly good for Vietnam, and I met another American who was working in a small town outside of the city. He was telling me how he wakes up with the locals now at 6am every morning...whew too early.

When the boat finally got moving it ended up being just me and an Australian couple. We talked for a while, but boy that fast boat was loud. I ended up putting my earphones in to muffle the noise most of the time, until later on when I went out onto the bow of the boat to relax with the cool wind in my face.

I also spent this time to sew my eyeflaps (necessary in hostel dorms) and my backpack (the water bottle holder net was coming off the elastic!). The Australian couple gave me a sewing kit and I got to it. They didn't even want it back afterwards, and it has been quite useful since then...mostly for sewing some of my travel shorts which are apparently not made very well.

This was my first border crossing by boat, so I was excited to see what would go wrong, but nothing too exciting happened. We first stopped at a sketchy dock and walked up a plank that seemed like it would fall apart at any moment. There we stamped out of Cambodia. Then we went across the border to the Vietnam building and we didn't even get off the boat! They collected our passports and just gave them to some dude at the building and then gave them back 5 minutes later, stamped and everything. Not even a look at me or my face. I kind of wanted to ask them about my visa, since I maybe wanted to come back into Vietnam later, but there was no use. My visa was single entry and expired April 22nd, which was before I was tentatively planning to return to Vietnam.

We finally arrived in Chau Doc, and the Australians went on their way and I was left stranded at the dock. This is where I thought, where the fuck does my tour go now? I'll take this time to explain how tours work in some of these countries. They buy a bunch of things along the way, and never tell you about any of it. If you ask them, they won't really give you the details, and you're always left in the dark. Back in Cambodia, they picked me up from my hostel and took me to the boat people, and the boat people seemed to know what to do when I gave them my tour ticket, but the boat drivers had no idea and just left me at the dock literally as soon as I stepped off the boat.

I looked around and didn't see anyone who looked like they were looking for someone, so I showed a few people who looked more official my tour ticket and they seemed clueless. I walked up the plank to the street and found a few of people on motobikes yelling at me "motobike? motobike?" I showed one of them my ticket and the guy seemed to know where I should go but he wanted to charge me 20,000 dong. Oh shit I'm in a new country with new currency. In Cambodia they were using the US dollar, that got me spoiled haha. I pulled out my currency conversion on my phone and discovered that was only a dollar. I looked around to see if there was anyone else there, but there was nothing, so I put the helmet on, hopped on the back of his bike, and we were off. I love motobikes, they are so much fun.

After zipping through the town for a few minutes we arrived at a closed establishment that was the same company that I booked the tour with. I walked up to it and knocked, but there was no one in there. The motobike driver wanted me to pay him, so I gave him a dollar and he was satisfied. I went next door to try and see if they knew when the tour office was going to open again, but the lady there didn't know english and did the usual "no, no" while shaking her hand. I did some obvious gestures but she was useless.

This is when I started to worry after looking at the sky to see dusk rolling in. I pulled out my phone and dialed the number to the tour office I found on Google Maps, but as I was doing that another lady on a motobike rolled up and asked if I was Dylan. Saved! She said she was looking for me at the dock...maybe she got there late or something. I saw the other motobike driver down the street, and she yelled something to him that didn't sound too nice. She pulled over a cycle rickshaw so I could ride that around the corner to the other tour office I was supposed to be. As I rolled away I also yelled at the motobike driver and gave him the bird. No use doing anything more. The other tour office was also a hotel, so I got a nice cozy room for the night.

After checking in I headed out to the nearby market to grab some food. I pointed out a few things at random street markets I found, and ate some weird sandwich. Everything was recognizable except the meat.

Still not sure what that was, because no one around spoke English. I also saw some dried squid at one stand. It did not look appetizing.

The next morning there was a tour, but the only thing they told me was to get up at 7am or so in time for breakfast. After I got up they said I needed to be checked out and put my bags in the pile. We went out on the river to see a few things, but nothing spectacular. A little village that gets flooded every year, so all the houses are on stilts. A fish farm. I met some nice travelers on the tour who had been traveling farther north in Vietnam as well.

After the morning tour we were led to a van, and I asked when we go back to get our stuff. No need, because apparently they had taken the pile and put it in the van. I did not know this, I feel like I would've packed a little differently if I did. Anyway, no worries I got in the van with everyone else to go to our next destination farther south in the mekong delta, Can Tho. I pulled out my uke so I could start playing a few songs for the people on the minibus, but I decided it needed some tuning. This is when I started looking for my iPhone...which was not where I put it...and not anywhere in my backpack. Long story short it was not there anymore. My only idea is that someone stole it from my backpack when it was in the pile of bags. Nothing was ruffled, but I was also using it just minutes before we left, so someone might have seen me put it back in my backpack and known where to look.

<Side note geek rant about find my iPhone>

I tried to use find my iPhone in the bus by finding someone who had internet and going to the website, but apparently it only works on computers. It doesn't even work on mobile safari on other iPhones!!! wtf apple. The only way to use it on other iOS devices is to download the find my iphone app beforehand...and the app store wasn't working then. wtf apple. I finally got it to work by using someone else's non iOS phone to do a mobile hotspot and then use my iPad on wifi with the app (since I got the app beforehand, but no one else would do that). Nothing ever came up, they probably wiped it and sold it before ever connecting to the internet.

Also, apparently iCloud only saves the last 30 days of photos, so I lost all my iPhone photos from more than 30 days ago to the beginning of my trip since I had no computer to load them onto (not many but still). I thought iCloud was taking care of me. No. It wasn't. wtf apple.

</end side note>

So I tuned my uke by ear and played some songs anyway, always fun. In the next town I said goodbye to the rest of the travelers and rode on a motobike to my homestay. I thought a homestay would be like someone's house with an extra bedroom or something where I'd try to communicate with the local Vietnamese. It was a little different than that. I showed up and it looked more like a little resort, with cabins and hammocks and everything. It was still on a little path right next to a tributary though, and it didn't look too out of place.

There was only one room actually in the house, and they ended up putting me in it. The room didn't really have a wall either, so it was essentially outside. It had a wooden decorative grate thing...hard to explain. Anyway, I thought this would be a great time to maybe use the mosquito net I brought with me that I hadn't ever used yet. I pulled it out of my backpack and just before setting it up I realized they already had one folded up on the side of the bed anyway. Cool. I put my mosquito net back into my backpack. (I have since sent my mosquito net home since I'm in China at the time of this writing and never used my mosquito net)

It was early afternoon, so I grabbed a bike they have at the homestay for free and started riding down the path. There's just one path next to a tributary and many houses and a few shops going down it. It doesn't really feel like a town, it has it's own atmosphere, nothing like anything I'd seen before. Going down the path I stopped to hang out with many locals I saw, especially the kids. They're so happy all the time and wave at you and say hello. 

A few kids were playing with this feathery thing with their hands and hitting it up in the air to each other. I joined in. One of the kids in the pic is holding what I found out is called a shuttlecock.

More down the road the path became more of a nature path, and I passed by a weird looking structure over the river. It was just a series of logs put together over the river, and it seemed like a bridge, but looked a little dangerous. I later discovered tourists and tour groups call this a monkey bridge, since you look like a monkey if you fall and try to grab on I think. Anyway, I discovered an authentic monkey bridge and saw a few people cross it as well.

I decided to cross myself, and on the way over some kids got into the river and started swimming in it. I couldn't resist not following suit on that hot day, so I stripped down to my boxers and slowly got in on the other side. Dirty, you say? Hell yeah it was. The bottom felt mushy and gross, so I treaded water the whole time. I grabbed onto a log the kids were using before that made me slightly more buoyant, but I didn't stay in for too long. 

After getting out I crossed the bridge again to continue my bike ride. Before I put my clothes back on, some guy was walking by me so I smiled and said hello or whatever it was in Vietnamese (I don't remember), and he did the same. My boxers were obviously wet so maybe you could see a little more outline than normal, and as he passed by he gave my dick a little grab with a smirk on his face. Crazy mekong locals. I turned around and yelled at him, but he didn't turn back and there was no point in trying anything. No sexual harassment in Vietnam.

Anyway I continued to ride around until the path became unridable, and then headed back since the sun was setting. On the way back I found more kids playing badminton this time! I joined in for a little while, but then the birdie broke. I realized it was meticulously made of wood and feathers coming out, and realized I may have helped break it a little, since with the plastic ones it doesn't really matter if you hit it on the wrong side a few times. Oops.

I made it back to the homestay just in time for a shower and dinner, which was quite delicious. Met many other travelers and we ate and drank rice wine shots and beers.

The next day we had an early morning tour through the mekong delta where we saw a floating market, a rice factory, a rice noodle factory, and a tourist trap monkey bridge. The tourist monkey bridge was much more sturdy and well built than the one I traversed, as well only being over a pond. So it really was built for the sole purpose of tourism. I'm glad I was able to see a real one. After the tour we got on another minibus and headed to Saigon! Now I was back in the big city.

The Tea Scam in China

FYI - 1 USD = 6.3 RMB (Chinese Yuan) at the time of this writing.

One night, while out in Beijing with a few guys from my hostel, we met these 2 Chinese girls who, at the end of the night, invited us out for karaoke. My friends didn't want to go, so they ended up going back and it was just me and the 2 Chinese girls. Now the fun starts.

One of the Chinese girls has an electric motorbike, which just runs off a battery. This means it's nice and quiet, but also slow. I think I had slightly forgotten that this girl was downing glasses of wine earlier in the evening, so I had no problem jumping on the back of her electric motorbike with her AND her friend. After we take off I realize this is quite scary, since the motobike goes so slow that we don't have as much momentum keeping the bike from falling over. It probably doesn't matter too much with 1 or 2 people, but you really feel it with 3. Sometimes we were driving through posts supposed to keep cars off the street, and I was worried we would swerve into them!

Anyway, I'm sandwiched between these Chinese girls looking for karaoke and I see nothing of note. The bar we were at was not on a strip or anything, and I don't see anything else around. They start telling me that they want to have tea before we go to karaoke, and I didn't really try to object, they weren't the greatest english speakers. While telling me this we actually circled a block once and then went around to circle it again…which started to make me a little suspicious. We end up stopping in front of this place, I'm not even sure what it was, but we started walking away from it down the street around the corner anyway, the girls knew where they were going. As we were walking away this guy starts yelling at me from the place that it's a scam and that he bought a 200 RMB bottle of wine that actually charged his card 5000 USD. I thanked him for the advice since I didn't really know what he was talking about, but it did get me even more suspicious.

When we round the corner and finally enter the tea place, this is when I immediately know that it's the tea scam. We sat down in the front and on a board was a bunch of chinese characters with a few numbers I assumed were prices. One said 20, reasonable, the other 30, ok…and then one said 6660 and the other 8000. I didn't know what they was but it couldn't be good. I had heard of the tea scam vaguely before, but I knew was that they take you to tea and order a bunch of things and then make you pay for it at the end, so I was ready. I told them that I'm not buying them anything and the only thing I'm buying is my own tea. They kind of acknowledged this…but not really.

They give me a menu and the thing is ridiculous. The cheapest price is 20 RMB for a glass and 50 RMB for a pot of tea. After turning a few pages I easily see prices of 500 RMB, 1100 RMB and the like. I pretty much ignore them as they try to recommend me to some of the more expensive teas, but I didn't want to leave right away, I wanted to see what else they had in store for me. I decided to get a pot of the cheapest tea.

Them: Ohhh why don't we get this one! (points to one twice as expensive)

Me: No.

Them: Well we should get two of this one. (points to the cheap one that I want)

Me: No, we'll get one.

We sit down and start chatting as the waitress brings us our tea. As soon as I get it, I give her 100 RMB and tell her I want to pay for it. Everyone goes up in arms haha.

Them: Don't pay yet!

Me: I think I'll pay now.

Them: But we want to get snacks, don't you want any snacks?

Me: No we're not getting any snacks, this is all I'm getting.

Maybe we said a few more things, but the waitress took my money and gave my change, so I was squared away and ready to bolt if things got ugly. Before she left one of the girls said something to her in Chinese…hmmm, I figured she ordered something else without asking me. I drank my tea only after they did, not knowing what else they had in store. Conversation started to get boring since I no longer cared about these scammers and took everything they said with a grain of salt.

Soon the waitress came back with a small plate of peanuts.

Me: I don't want that, take it back.

Them: But it's only 20 RMB!

Me: I don't care, I'm not buying it.

Them: Do you want any other snacks?

Me: Nope the only way those are getting on this table is if you agree to pay for it.

Them: *Whine, bitch, moan* Ok we'll pay for it.

It wasn't long after that I decided it was time to go, so I quickly said it was getting late (which really it was almost 3:30am) and bolted out of there. They didn't chase me.

Still, if I hadn't known about this scam it would've been easy for them to start ordering things and I wouldn't have thought that everything would've been all put on my bill. Beware the tea scam.

The Gibbon Experience

After doing some research on things I could do around southeast Asia, I discovered a tour in Laos where you get to zipline through the rainforest and I was immediately sold. It was much better than I expected though. After meeting up with my friend Richard from Norway and heading across the border from Thailand, we made it to the small border town of Huay Xia where the Gibbon Experience starts.

The next morning, we were driven to a village at the edge of the rainforest and then trekked farther in to another village where we were outfitted with harnesses that we could use the rest of the time. After guiding us through a few ziplines, we were allowed to explore the ziplining network to our hearts content with no supervision. It's like being at a theme park with unlimited rides! A few of them were better than others, with better views and a zipline that actually took you all the way across (on some of the ziplines you wouldn't make it all the way  across and would have to pull yourself to the platform at the other side..especially if you didn't make yourself as aerodynamic as possible).

Now the ziplining was one thing, but the other thing that was cool was that we lived in treehouses for 2 nights! Real treehouses outfitted with a sink and a bathroom and everything. The shower was a rainshower were the water would go down through the spaces between the wooden boards and just fall to the forest floor. The toilet actually had a tube that went down so it wasn't just a hole haha. One of the craziest things about living in the rainforest were all the sounds that sprang to life at night. Insects, animals, and everything was out making noise. If you tried to go to sleep, you would be surprised with a new noise every 15 minutes or so! Not to mention the scaryness of all the  bugs, spiders, and rats roaming around the treehouse during the night. We had mosquito nets, but they weren't really nets. They were just cloth, so it was hot and you couldn't see through them. Both 2 nights I was there it rained during the night as well. At about 1am both nights the storm rolled in and just poured over everything. The forest is so dark that you can't see anything unless the lightning strikes. The first night, my friend Richard and I were under the same mosquito net, and at one point Richard heard a rat was roaming about right outside the net. We started freaking out and Richard was convinced that it was "eating it's way through the net." Ahahaha hilarious. Making it through the night was quite an experience.

Now back to the ziplining. It actually involved a fair amount of trekking to get around the forest as well as using the ziplines. Of course if you went around and did the same ziplines over and over again, you had to walk up a hill or stairs sometime to get back all that potential energy. Since we had no supervision, we could also do anything we wanted. We were doing many photos and videos, and at one point we decided to have both of us go on the zipline at the same time so we could film each other. It was a great success, and I'll post vids when the internet is good enough, but definitely not in Laos hah. When we had 2 to a zipline, however, the line sagged a little more and if the trees and branches underneath were close enough we'd be scraping along. We only did it on a few lines where we knew the branches weren't that close. Also, the person behind had to hold the brake most of the time so they didn't run into the guy ahead, since the first person would bring the zipline down and the second person would be speeding up to catch up. My friend Richard also decided to do a tarzan zip where he filmed himself zipping naked...oh the crazy things we do haha.

Anyway, the views from these ziplines were absolutely gorgeous and it's definitely an experience I won't forget.

Getting a bus to Luang Prabang in Laos

After the Gibbon Experience in Laos, my friend Richard and I wanted to get to Vang Vieng for the tubing river as fast as possible. We thought we had it all under control, with an overnight bus booked for us as soon as we got back, and then we'd take a shorter day bus to finish the trip after sight seeing for a few hours in Luang Prabang.

The fun started after we came back to the small border town of Huay Xia to get our actual bus tickets, which we were told were for a 5pm VIP sleeper bus. The lady we bought the tickets from said the 5pm was full now, but the 6pm was available. We were fine with that, so we paid the rest of the money and were told to be back at 5:15pm. We ended up going back a few minutes later to ask her something and suddenly the 6pm bus has broke down she says. She says now we can't go until tomorrow, hmmm. We demand she calls back and gets us the tickets, since we had already booked 3 days in advance and that this was bs, and supposedly she tried but she kept telling us that we must be so tired and we should stay there the night (she also ran a guesthouse). I think what really happened is that someone else paid more money than us to get on the bus and so she (or some other travel agent) took their booking instead of ours. We could see her evil plan, and after getting nowhere we got all our money back and went to the next travel agency literally 30 feet away.

We asked him about a bus to Luang Prabang and he said "No problem 6pm we have!" We negotiated a price (about 180,000 kip each) and then demanded that he call first to make sure it really wasn't full. We told him the other lady said it was broken and he said "Bullshit" with a smile on his face. After the phone call, however, he told us it was full. Now I told him bullshit, I didn't know what was going on but it seemed like everyone was lying to us. After some back and forth he started to say that he could help us. We were confused for a while until he said that if we pay 200,000 kip each he can get us on the bus. Finally we had an understanding! We agreed to pay the extra cash (about $2.50 USD each) and got on the bus no problem. It's full alright, but with us on it too. It seemed there was only 1 guy sitting in the back on the steps without a seat. On the bus now, in seats that are exactly like every other bus (aka not vip sleeper seats or whatever they tell us), but at least the a/c works!

Bag snatching, beware

Most of us have heard of bag snatching, usually in foreign countries...but I'd never heard about it firsthand or seen it myself until today. I'm in Saigon, also known as Ho Chi Minh city, and there are tons and tons of motobikes here. One thing I thought convenient about this is that you can cross the street at any time. The motobikes just weave around you and it's no problem...of course I use my judgement and don't cross the street when there's an entire heard of them, but a few of them don't matter. I didn't even think about the possibility that one of them could steal a bag off someone walking like that, but here's the story.

I left the hostel with 2 girls I met in the evening, Sarah and Maxine. At one point we had to cross the street, and  as usual there are many motobikes going everywhere, but this time there was only 1 or two passing in front of us. There was another motobike that just started moving as we cross the street, and he had his headlight off. It wasn't suspicious, since usually people forget to put it on or maybe don't care. Maxine was in front of me and crossed first, and as the motobike without the headlight came closer and drove between me and Sarah I turned while walking and yelled at him to turn his headlight on. As I turned around I heard Sarah scream behind me and saw the motobike driver grab her strap and take off with it, snapping the strap and driving away with the bag.

Now we're all freaked out, yelling and swearing. Maxine asked if he took it what was in it. Sarah responded that everything was in it. I saw the motobike zoom away and in a last ditch effort I stopped the next motobike I saw and tried to get on the back and tell me him to help catch the guy, but he hesitated since he probably didn't speak much english and people obviously aren't thrilled when random people try to jump on the back of their motobike. He finally got the point and drove off in directions I pointed, but in that 10-15 seconds the theif had made enough turns that I didn't know where he was. We got to a roundabout with 5 or 6 streets stemming off of it and I didn't see anything I recognized among the sea of motobikes...he was gone.

Unfortunately, I came back to the girls empty handed, but now I definitely don't think it's cool to walk across the streets in between the motobikes. One thing that's fortunate about this whole situation is that the purse strap actually snapped. Sarah had the strap around her entire torso, not just on her shoulder, so when he grabbed the strap it would have to snap or she could've been dragged behind the motobike until it did or he let go. Maxine told of a girl she met who had scars from when she got dragged next to a car that stole a purse like that...not cool. It sucks that we're all now suspicious of all the motobikes we see. We can only hope that the thief had some bad karma while fleeing the scene.