Ou est Malik?

Good Morning, Vietnam

Day 8-9, January 19-20, 2007, Hanoi.

I've spent a couple of days roaming around the streets of Hanoi with Jen.  She's in Vietnam on an organized tour, but she got here two days before the start date, which gave us some time to explore the city together.  Jen has never been to Asia before, so this is a major culture shock for her.  I really like the fact that she's totally game to go anywhere and try anything, and most importantly, to eat street food.  Quite useful for me, since there's a lot of pork dishes out here, so I rely on her to be my taster.  She claims the best bites she's had were pork that she had in my presence, I think she's just enjoying it more because she knows I can't have any.

Traffic in Hanoi is crazy.  There's a ton of motorbikes, mostly small 100-120cc Honda two seaters.  The two seats is not much of a limitation, you'll often see a scooter carrying a whole family of four or more, or anything else that they need to move around (such as refrigerators).  There are virtually no stop signs or lights anywhere, so traffic is constantly flowing, with almost never any breaks.  To cross the street, you just have to walk deliberately and slowly across, and vehicles magically part ways to let you through.  Very different than say in India, where you have to wait for a lull in traffic, and drivers speed up when they see you cross.

I've really enjoyed the food on the streets and markets here, in particular in the fruit department.  We found the most wonderful passion fruits.  They're purple on the outside, rather than the green/yellow skinned ones I'm used to, a bit tangier, and absolutely delicious.  The rambutans (a fruit that tastes much like a lychee) are starting to be in season.  I've also found green mangoes, which I've been peeling, slicing and dipping in salt and red chili powder, just like we used to do in Comoro Islands.  The only disappointing fruit so far are the mangosteens, which have not been good.  But the Hanoi climate is fairly cool, so I suspect they're trucked over here from the south.  I'm hoping to find better ones later in the trip.

The other nice discovery out here has been the coffee.  I've had iced Vietnamese coffee with sweetened condensed milk before, but I've  drinking it hot over here.  Sweetened condensed milk is one of mankind's greatest inventions, but I didn't know how well it went with coffee.  It can even turn an average cup of coffee into a delicious drink.  I can't wait to try it at home with good quality french press coffee, I'm sure it'll be amazing.  There's one coffee place in particular that Jen and I have liked a lot, but we can never stay there too long as we can't stop ourselves from ordering cup after cup.  For those of you travelling in Vietnam, it's called Cafe Xua Va Nay on Tong Dan St and is next door to the Thuy Tien Hotel.

Oh, the sights.  I guess I should mention those at some point.  There are some nice attractions in Hanoi, in particular the Temple of Litterature, a Confucian university/temple complex, the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, where Ho Chi Minh's embalmed body is on display, and the Water Puppet theatre, where puppeteers stand waist deep in water and use bamboo poles to put up a surprisingly fun show of puppets enacting ancient mythical tales as well as daily life in the country side.  Plenty to keep one occupied for two or three days in between culinary explorations.

Don Muang, we hardly knew you

Day 7, January 18, 2007, Hong Kong to Hanoi (through Bangkok).

Finally, the time has come for the South East Asia portion of my trip, which I've been looking forward to the most.  First stop Vietnam.

My friend Jen from San Francisco is travelling to Vietnam on an organized tour at the same time as me, and I wanted to meet up with her for part of the trip.  She starts her tour in Hanoi, but Cathay Pacific only flies to Saigon and Bangkok.  After checking on various connection options, I decided to fly to Bangkok and buy a cheap ticket on AirAsia over to Hanoi.  On the plane to Bangkok, I bumped into Al Riaz (a friend of mine from the Bay Area and Vancouver) who was on his way to Mumbai.  Turns out that we'll be visiting some of the same cities in Asia, but in opposite directions, so we won't see each other.  Still a nice surprise to see a familiar face on this side of the world.

Bangkok has a brand new international airport (Suvarnabhumi), which was rushed into operation mainly for political reasons.  It's had a rather difficult start, and things have actually gotten worse since, to the point where there's now talk of reopening the old airport (Don Muang).  Suvarnabhumi is huge, and its sole terminal is the second largest in the world, a shade behing Hong Kong's.  I was not too impressed by the new airport.  The architecture is nice, but it's way too hot in there, as the air conditioning isn't powerful enough to fill up the vast open spaces.

I had to go pick up my luggage, clear immigration and customs, stand in line at the Air Asia check in desk, then pay a $14 departure tax, clear immigration once more, and finally head back to the gates.  On the way there, I saw what looked like a Thai Airways lounge and decided to stop by to take a look. The door to the lounge (it turned out to be a just opened transit lounge) was a brand new, perfectly clear set of sliding glass doors, with absolutely no marking or etchings anywhere.  Unfortunately, the automatic motion detector that operates the doors did not detect me, and I never saw the door.  So I bang my head nose-first into what feels like a Star Trek force field.

My nose starts bleeding, I have a cut on the bridge, and the Thai Airways employee offers to call a doctor.  Of course, this being the new airport, the number she has for a doctor is disconnected, and she's scrambling to get a hold of someone.  In the meantime, I've managed to stop the bleeding, and find out from WebMD that I probably don't have a broken nose, and even if I do, there's not much that can be done.  I therefore decide to head to the gate to catch my flight which was about to board.

I'm at the final security checkpoint when a doctor and some nurses show up.  The doctor is a young 20-something Thai woman who seems very competent.  She feels my nose briefly and tells me that it's not broken.  She offers to dress the cut on the bridge, but when I question her, she says that it's not required as the cut is quite shallow.  So I decide to keep going to the gate without any treatment, when one of the nurses tells me that I need to first pay for the doctor.  I inquire how much that would be, and she asks for 2000 baht ($56) for the 30 second consultation.  I refused to pay, and told her to go talk to the Thai Airways people, as their non-functioning door was at least partly to blame.

I go on to board my plane and ask the stewardess for some ice and a band-aid.  A few minutes later, a ground crew member comes up to me and says there's someone outside who wants to talk to me.  I go back outside the plane, and find the nurse and the Thai Airways lady on the jetway, demanding a payment from me once again.  The doctor is nowhere to be seen (she had seemed uncomfortable already when the nurse first asked me to pay).  I decide to hold my ground and ask to talk to someone in charge.  The Air Asia people start getting anxious, as they don't want the flight to get delayed.  Most of them agree with me that the nurse's demand is ridiculous, and finally someone in charge of the ground crew manages to convince her to go away, and I can finally get back on the plane.  Add me to the list of travelers who are thoroughly unimpressed by this new airport!

When I got to Hanoi, Jen had already turned in early for the night, as she was adjusting to the nine hour time difference. So I went walking around the streets of Hanoi by night looking for dinner.  After wandering around for a while, I found a tiny little street stall where an old woman was serving Pho (Vietnamese rice noodle soup).  Her particular version was made with beef (Pho Bo), and I was soon served the single most delicious bowl of Pho I've ever had for the grand sum of 10,000 VND (63 US cents):

And all of a sudden, all was right with the world again...

That one, not so much!

Day 5-6, January 16-17, 2007, Hong Kong.

The next stop was Hong Kong, which I had cut short by a day when I extended my Tokyo stay.  Good thing I did that, as I didn't end up liking Hong Kong at all.  It appeared to me that everything about this  city is geared around either making or spending money.  It had none of the charm of the large mainland Chinese cities that I'd visited in the past (Shanghai, Xian, Beijing).  But I'm glad that I went, as I got to catch up with some old friends who are now living there.

The first night, I had dinner with Dowson, who's an up and coming star at Tencent, one of the top Internet companies in China.  It had been over a year since I last saw Dowson, and we had a great time catching up at his brother in law's restaurant.  The second night, I met up with Raphael and his lovely new bride Irina.  We ended up having a drink at their three level appartment in the south of Hong Kong, with beautiful views of the shoreline.  Nice expat contract!

The accidental stop

Day 1-4, January 12-15, 2007, Tokyo.

When I first was thinking of an itinerary for this trip, Japan wasn't on it.  The original plan was to fly from San Francisco to Hong Kong, stop there for a couple of days, and then go on to South East Asia.  But I'm flying on miles, and all the flights to Hong Kong were booked for the whole month of January, so I had to go through Tokyo instead.  I decided to take advantage of the routing and spend a couple of days in Tokyo, even though I was worried about the weather (the temperature was just above freezing in Tokyo) and the costs.

Well, am I ever glad that I did it.  I absolutely loved Tokyo, despite the bitter cold.  I loved the food, the people, the culture, the sights, the subway, the fashion, the architecture, absolutely everything.  The cost of living was not nearly as bad as I expected, I felt that it was actually cheaper than Manhattan or Paris, and definitely cheaper than London or Oslo (the two most expensive cities I've been to).  I stayed in a beautiful traditional Japanese hotel (a Ryokan) in Asakusa, one of the old quarters of Tokyo.

Ivana put me in touch with her friend Renald, a fellow Canadian who has been working for the Canadian Consulate in Tokyo for the last couple of years.  Renald was a very gracious host and took me to some of his favorite sights and restaurants in town, including the Meiji shrine where I took this picture of him(check out the Japanese teenagers dressed up in Manga outfits in the background):

I had some fabulous meals in Tokyo, and found the food quite reasonably priced, especially since the menu prices always include tax and service.  The first night we went to an Izakaya in Shibuya, where my favorite dish was the tofu and yuzu gyozas.  Of course, we made sure to wash down the food with the plenty of beer and sake, as an Izakaya is just as much about drinking as it is about eating.  Saturday morning, I went to the Tsukiji wholesale fish market where I saw giant frozen tunas being carved in every possible way.  Like a good tourist, I followed that with sushi for breakfast at a nearby restaurant.  These sushi joints get so busy that the line up outside can be as long as one and a half hour.  I picked one with a mere 20 minutes wait, and was soon eating simple but delicious sushi.  During the trip, I also went to restaurants specializing in Yakitori (grilled chicken skewers, using every part of the chicken), Soba noodles and Tempura.  I ended up liking Tokyo so much that I decided to spend an extra day there, and cut my Hong Kong stay by a day.

Click on the picture below for more pictures in Tokyo: