Same Same But Different

Vietnam Pictures!

Saigon City traffic (South Vietnam). Everyone is either riding a bike or sleeping
on one! (next photo)

Bun Rieu (pronounced boon zee-o!) Ingredients: rice noodles, tomato, tofu cubes, pureed
crab meat, and a bunch of fresh herbs and greens. 

Bun thang. Ingredients: egg omelette strips, slivers of home-cured pork and chicken,
onions and herbs and prawn meat all arranged around a shitake mushroom

This little firecracker somehow managed to sell Jake and I a pack of gum.

The Reunification Palace (formerly The Presidential Palace) in Saigon. Jake was very
excited to see this site so I had him pose in front of many different backdrops.

Here he is in front of one of the tanks that busted down the wall of the Palace
courtyard at 11:30am on April the 30th 1975 (Jake is going to be impressed that I remembered that).

Jake and I hanging out with Uncle Ho (Ho Chi Minh)

Jake in front of.... an office?

Jake in front of the movie theater found within the Palace.

The Palace had a little garden where I found a friend.

Our favourite restaurant in Mui Ne (Beach town located east of Saigon) had
not only great food but great company!

The other restaurants featured some less appetizing dishes

Interesting fishing boat

We rented a double kayak assuming there would be a cover
or our legs. Whoops!

Luckily I had SPF 60 on everywhere else!

Opera house located in the French Quarter of Hanoi (North Vietnam).

I'm not exactly sure what was going on but this woman was being
photographed and I thought she was very elegant so I asked to take a
photo as well!

Jake enjoying his cappuccino.

 Mi Xao Ga - Friend noodles with chicken and vegetables.

Hitler cat!

We like this picture because it's a perfect shot at a typical Jake
and Erin dinner. 

We rented a bike in Ninh Binh (South of Ha Noi) and today marks the first
day we had rain since beginning our trip on October 4th. Yay!

Beautiful temples and scenery at a Hoa Lu

Jake doesn't find this picture funny but I think it's hilarious!

My favourite picture of the day

Goa & Mumbai pictures!

Goa started off with a bang! We met Jamie, from Scotland, shortly after arriving in South India and he had this sort of Joie de Vivre that we found extremely infectious. We ended up running into him multiple times, one of them in his biking outfit!

Breaking laws

Seeing an elephant for the first time.

One of Jake's favourite past time is haggling with the many spice vendors. 

We visited the Aguada Fort built by the Portugese in 1610

I had had enough of the fort and decided to try and let Jake know that I wanted to go to the beach.

It worked!

We discovered the cows in India aren't very fond of sharing.

Picture of the scooter "Red Devil" that we used to get around in Goa.

Jake finally getting to try a piece of the Indian dessert Bebinka, made with only 40 eggs!

Karaoke! Don't worry folks, I have it on video!

Jake risking his life by eating a thali on the train to Mumbai. I honestly haven't seen something that unappetizing in a long while.

View from our window in Mumbai.

Mumbai train station

The Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai

Asking for Belpuri, recommended by Lonely Planet (guidebook)

Ask and you shall receive my dear. (It was quite good - Jake said it was a cornucopia of flavours)

Glimpsing Vietnam

To the trained eye Vietnam is a world away from India. Yes traffic is still an 'anything-goes' affair, horns are liberally used, and the touts approach you with the same frequency, but the differences are the most interesting.

For one women are everywhere! In India men outnumbered women in public spaces perhaps 6:1. Restaurants were often like male locker rooms, the movie theater in Agra was filled almost entirely with teenage boys, and you only rarely saw women driving. They were also typically far less sociable with a couple of tourists like Erin and I.

Vietnam has been the exact opposite. Far more women work outside of their homes and often not in jobs you'd expect. Next to our guesthouse is an all-female team of contruction workers, lifting heavy loads, pouring concrete etc. for some new four-storey building. Aside from the construction workers they usually dress to the nines too. Good size heels and skirts are typical for everyday business and the type of outfit that might seem slutty or desperate back home, Erin and I agreed, the Vietnamese seem to give a aura of grace and elegance. Saigon featured our favourite Vietnamese hobby, something you would never see in India, what Erin calls "canoodling". Young Viet couples seemed nightly to flock to inner city parks and sit, one on one, and just talk. No touching, no kissing, just boys and girls innocently talking the night away. Without fail every single park bench would be occupied by a young couple, and just as many more sat together on motorbikes (everyone seems to own one) parked one after the other. It felt like a drive-in movie theater from the 1950s. Things are very family-oriented too. Businesses are often family-run with parents handling the cash register and kids waiting tables (or enticing customers in from the street). The grandparents invariably seem to occupy some corner table, caring for the littlest grandchildren or else serenely watching life go by.

The capital Hanoi was a lot of fun for us. This past Saturday we got to experience water puppet theatre, which essentially is puppets acting out stories and dancing in sync to music...but on water! It's a centuries-old Vietnamese cultural tradition that originated as a form of entertainment on wet rice-farming paddies. It reminded us of Team America World Police. That same day we had tickets to the Hanoi Symphony Orchestra and discovered our MTV-era brains are not well-trained for the concentration and attention-span classical music requires of you. As if to confirm our lack of refined tastes in between these two shows Erin and I enjoyed street-donuts sold on sticks (25 cents) and watched Twilight in our hotel room (I think it was the second one). However we did stroll through the French-quarter of Hanoi. It featured all the elegance one would expect from the French: wide boulevards and sidewalks, roundabouts centred by water fountains, beautiful architecture, bakeries with fresh baguettes and chocolate croissants in their windows and shops selling the latest European fashions. I insisted that we sit down at a French cafe - Erin humoured me. I fittingly ordered a cappucino. Erin ordered a beer. She's always making me look like a fruitcake. Next up Laos!   

Beach Bums

We finished off India in grand tourist-style by spending 4 days in Goa. This is one of India's biggest tourist destinations and is famous for its neverending beaches, Portuguese influences (the colonists ruled here for 450 years before getting kicked out, only in 1961!) and its once LIVELY trance scene. The trance parties don't occur as often anymore but you can still hear the homegrown Goan beats in everyother beach front restaurant. The people here are very laid back and loved to deal with Canadians. We found out, from our taxi driver and many other locals, that this is because Russians are by and far their most numerous visiters and apparently have less manners than some other expats. We saw firsthand on a few occasions Russians treating the locals less than respectfully: bartering in an unfriendly manner, rudely interrupting, and just being cold overall to the locals (they were pretty cool with us however). All we could do was laugh at their austerity sometimes.

The biggest challenge in Goa was doing laundry. Erin and I always find a way to string up our laundry line in our room but here the humidity gives everything, including clothes, a permanent dampness. Your skin too is almost always sticky with sweat. Fortunately beer is cheaper and easier to acquire in Goa than anywhere else in India (in many places we visited it was very taboo and had to be served and drank in a special room, or in the very back of the restaurant, and always ordered in a low-voice). After a couple beers we forgot about the humidity and warmed up to some karaoke. And how ecclectic the karaoke was! The Russians dominated with their songs from the homeland (sung with great bravado and energy, you couldn't help but smile and clap along), followed by the locals singing some real catchy tunes in Hindi, followed by Erin and I doing our best to keep English relevant, singing Lola and CCR. Only in Goa?

Only a quickie update today. We hit up Mumbai after this for a couple days - by default since we had a flight from there. Mumbai was actually very charming and manageable for a city of some 20 million, a sort-of Indian New York.We have safely arrived in Vietnam now; myself feeling nervous about learning a whole new culture, language and the relative price of things; Erin pining softly about leaving India behind - she'd grown to adore its utter insanity. Next blog will be all Vietnam, check back soon!          

  

Jaisalmer Pictures!...(better captions to be added later - i'm out of time!)

Gueru (Jake's camel) and Goday (my camel)

The only picture where I look like I know what i'm doing.

Jake taming the beast. He actually had perfect control over his camel whereas myself and the Finns had absolutely  no say in what our camels did. 

We came across a young boy stealing some baby goats.

Friends of the night...

Picnic, desert style! 

This is what I arrived to at the end of the day.

This is how I woke up!

Add caption

Jake trying his hand at the popular Indian game Carrom.

For Kathyji

We gave away a poster we stole of that RA-ONE movie we saw  in Jaipur to the kids living in our hotel.