Random Thoughts and Things We Learned During Our First Month of Travel in Southeast Asia

As hard as it is to believe, we’re a few days past the One Month Anniversary of our trip.  So far, we’ve been through Tokyo’s Narita Airport (the Star Alliance Lounge has a killer, serve yourself sake bar!!), Thailand, Laos and now we’re nearing the end of our journey in Vietnam.  In a few days we leave for 2 days in Singapore and some true R&R.  This is notable because we will soon be in Myanmar and our Habitat for Humanity build in Bago.

So far, we’ve taken 4 flights and 3 overnight trains (one in Thailand and two in Vietnam).  We’ve spent 1 overnight stay on a Junk boat (Ha Long Bay, Vietnam) and 3 overnight stays in rural villages (one in Laos and two in Vietnam).  We’ve checked in and out of 15 hotels, traveled many hundreds of kilometers on buses, experienced the kindness of many strangers, journeyed with 3 group tour leaders (who were all fantastic), drank lots of beer (and more than a little local moonshine whisky) and tasted great Street Food.

Our favorite places you ask?  Well that’s two places.  One was Vang Vieng in Laos.  A wonderful town of natural beauty.  We unfortunately had to keep moving but a few extra days would have been lovely.  Two was Hoi An in Vietnam.  A UNESCO World Heritage city on the banks of the Thu Bon River.  Loads of beautiful bridges, a perfect beach and a picturesque old town full of colorful lanterns and narrow pedestrian only streets.  We also met a cute older couple while on a bike tour of Hoi An.  Their visages are featured on every marketing brochure for Hoi An.  They’ve been married for 75 years and are adorable together.  They generously shared their time with us and showed their still vibrant feelings for each other.

Our favorite meal?  We’re preparing a longer post on Street Food in Hanoi, but Bun Cha was our favorite meal so far.  If you know Pho, then you only know the second-best soup in Vietnam.  By the way, if you pronounce Pho as Fo (or like the long “O” sound), you’re close but not quite right.  If you’re confident that Pho is correctly pronounced so that it rhymes with Duh, you’re also wrong – you’re asking for Street.  As best as we can explain in a blog post, it’s properly pronounced as Fuuuuhhhhh (with a subtle higher pitch at the end as if you’re asking a question).  All those accents in Vietnamese words are important pronunciation clues as similar looking words can have as many as 6 different meanings based on those tricky accents.  Tragically the difference between Shut up and Thank you are very subtle.

Here are some random thoughts and things we learned in our first month –

• The White Temple in Chiang Rai. On the way from Chiang Mai to the Laos border, we passed through the town of Chiang Rai – a small town with one of the more beautiful temples we’ve ever seen.  Sure, it’s modern kitsch with some anti-consumerist homages but it’s stunningly beautiful.  The temple is a replacement for an older decrepit temple but it’s being re-cast by a local artist who has spent almost US$1.5 million of his own money to buy the land, build the new temple and the associated complex.  The vision won’t be complete until 2070 but it’s hard to not be awed by the man’s devotion to art and Buddhism.

• No alcohol can be purchased in Thailand between 2pm and 5pm – everyday. And that includes hotels, bars, grocery stores and mini-markets.  The rule aims to prevent high school aged kids from buying and consuming alcohol on their way home from school.  There are some obvious flaws or loop-holes with this rule, but the rule seems to have stuck regardless.  We’re also told that you can’t buy alcohol during the 5 national Buddhist holidays nor during elections.  I’ve heard of drinking after elections but during voting?  Yeah, good point.
• Hey! Wait a second!  Weren’t they?    The cars in Thailand are right hand drive.  That means the cars drive on the left side of the road or does it?  For most of Chiang Mai that appears true.  However, inside the walls of the old city, where we were staying, cars drive on the right side of the road.  We don’t quite get it, but it causes double takes and confirming glances before crossing busy streets.
• No Ladies Allowed. Some temples in Southeast Asia are men only or have specific sections that are forbidden for women to enter.  Some temples exclude women during menstruation but in some cases the rule seems to have been expanded to exclude women for impurity reasons.  Alrighty then.
• What gives Mr. Bezos? Amazon Prime Music works fine in Southeast Asia, but Amazon Prime Video does not work at all.  What the heck?
• How we plan to stay fit during our travels. We’ve fallen in love with a workout app called Aaptiv.  It costs $50 per year but it’s brought new inspiration and routines to our gym workouts both at home and on the road.  The concept is that the app features instructor lead workout regimens.  They have many different categories including treadmill, outdoor running, yoga, meditation and strength training to name a few.  All of them include instruction/motivation and energetic music.  Critical for us, Aaptiv also has indoor, full body strength training workouts that run from 15-60 minutes.  These don’t require any special equipment except for a bit of floor space.  So far, it’s worked well in our hotel rooms and left us a bit sore the next few days.
• If you grab for a green bag of Lays potato chips, what flavor do you expect? Sour cream and onion, right? In Southeast Asia, you get seaweed or Nori flavor. If you grab a turquoise bag of Lays one expects to get vinegar and salt. Instead one gets sour cream and onion. Orange gets one BBQ flavor, right? Ok so that’s still true.  Gotta read the labels. Yep, we got burned by the old seaweed switcheroo.

• 7-11 sandos. We were on a backpackers’ tour in Thailand and Laos. Fellow travelers were kids (ages 17-24) from all over the world, including England, Ireland, Denmark, Singapore, Brazil and The Netherlands.  The kids are living on toasted sandwiches from 7-11 (the stores are everywhere in Thailand). Standard ham and cheese toasted on white bread. Not sure what they cost but it’s required for their travel budgets. For us, food is an important part of the journey but for them socializing with global citizens is more important. That means skimping on food to max out the beer budget. Two of the younger travelers were from England.  They’d just finished high school and deferred college for a year to travel.  They had spent significant time in New Zealand and Australia before arriving in Southeast Asia.  We’ve heard that kids outside the US grow up faster and mature earlier than American kids.  If these two are any indication, that’s certainly true.  There’s no way we were ready at similar ages to travel the world unaccompanied by adults.  These two were mature, fun, smart and street wise.  We parted with them in Vientiane (the capital city of Laos) and wish them well.
• S ate a salad in Thailand and lived (so far). Despite the warnings to the contrary, we’re told that municipal water in Thailand and Laos is purified and all ice is provided by regulated sources.  It’s still a risk to drink the tap water or eat uncooked veggies but we’ve been safe so far.  How do you know your ice is safe? It will be a cylindrical shape with a hole in the middle.
• Napkins are scarce but WIFI is plentiful. Like much of the world, the Internet has become an absolute necessity.  Restaurants, hotels and even roadside rest stops have free WIFI with passwords posted in menus and on street signs.  But don’t expect a napkin if you order a meal.  You must specially request them and even then, you get a thin piece of paper no bigger than your hand. Sometimes one gets a roll of toilet paper.
• Bangkok is a big city. World class. Chiang Mai reminds us of Siem Reap, Cambodia (which we visited on a previous trip). A medium sized city. Full of beautiful temples without big buildings. Lots of cheap guest houses and restaurants. Bangkok is premium priced, Chiang Mai is moderate to cheap. For example (shout out to our friend GH in Arlington), a generic lager beer in Bangkok is US$2-3.  In Chiang Mai, you can get 3 of the very same beers for US$3.  Again, for GH, order one at a time because at 95 degrees with humidity, the beers get warm fast…about 5 minutes.  At which point, GH would only be one-third done with the first beer.  Inside joke but trust us, it’s funny.
• The Best Super Mullet Ever!! Dayyum!

• Many hotels are obviously non-smoking, thank goodness. In addition, they are also “non durian” – durian is a fruit about the size of a small watermelon with a thick skin that looks like a hedgehog rolled up into a defensive posture. While it’s regarded as the “King of Fruit” here in Southeast Asia durian smells so bad that hotels do not allow them to be opened and consumed in enclosed spaces.  For those of you who don’t know what durian is and/or are up for a challenge – it has an unpleasant aroma (some describe it as smelling like sewage, turpentine or rotten onions) but has a custard like texture with the flavor of almonds.  However, don’t confuse a durian for a jackfruit – which is very similar in appearance; the outer shell of the jackfruit has a more-subtle rounded point texture as opposed to the sharp points of the durian fruit.

• The public bathroom experience in Southeast Asia will be different than what you are used to at home. They will not be very clean, will almost never have toilet paper and in most cases will be a simple squat style (hole in the ground).  If this doesn’t already sound very appealing – you also get the privilege of paying for this experience.  Usually, it isn’t much more than the equivalent of $0.25 USD.  Make sure you have exact change though – otherwise they will take your money and smile and shake their head and gesture that they don’t have change (even if they do).  Some advice – always have toilet paper with you and embrace the bum gun (we will let you look this up on your own).
• In Asian culture, the lighter your skin is – the better. This is a bigger concern for women than men.  Yes, you will see a lot of Asian women walking around with umbrellas to shield their skin from sunlight.  You will also see most female motor bike drivers wearing face masks not just for the air pollution, but to block the sun.  You will also find it difficult to buy any moisturizer that doesn’t have “whitening cream” in it.  And we mean whitening cream (think Michael Jackson) and not anti-tanning sunblock.
• We’ve mastered a new sport – crossing the street in Vietnam.  Cars stop at red lights, but motor bikes don’t.  Seriously, motor bike drivers NEVER stop for you.  They simply move around you like a flock of birds avoiding an obstacle.  As a pedestrian, the general rule of thumb is you stop for cars/buses/trucks and continue walking into traffic when it’s only motor bikes.  They come from all directions and you are not even protected on a sidewalk.  To the motor bike drivers, a sidewalk is a shortcut!  Even when walking on the street parallel to traffic, one walks in the street.  Between street vendors, motor bikes parked on the sidewalk and motor bikes driving on the sidewalk, the street is the relative pedestrian safe zone.  As we write this, with two days left in Vietnam, we are proud to say we have not yet been hit (as our friend did twice during his stay in Ho Chi Minh City).  The key is to pick a tempo and direction and stick to it.  Hesitate and you confuse the driver.  Confuse the driver and the chances of being hit go up.
• You can visit the market and come out feeling like a winner. We went to Ben Thanh Market to purchase a few articles of clothing.  Incidentally, Ben Thanh market was built in the mid 19th Century by French colonialists and quickly became the center of commerce (of then Saigon and now Ho Chi Minh City).  E wanted to get a few knockoff Nike and Under Armor water wicking shirts (by the way, you cannot tell the difference between an authentic shirt or these).  S wanted to grab some pants for our build next week.  There are no marked prices on any items throughout, and you are encouraged to bargain.  E settled on three shirts with a starting suggested price of 880,000 Vietnamese Dong and managed to purchase them at a final offer of 370,000 Vietnamese Dong (just over US$15 for all three).  S found two pairs of Columbia pants with a starting price of 900,000 Vietnamese Dong and managed to purchase them at a final offer of 250,000 Vietnamese Dong (about US$11).  This was quite a successful shopping experience.  Lesson learned – you can bargain the price down even lower than the 50% off that is suggested by most travelers.  We started at less than half of the suggested price and never budged.  We even walked away several times until we got the price we wanted.  Unfortunately, we will never know if we could have negotiated an even lower price but the deals we struck seemed fair to both sides.

We know this post is a lengthy one.  It was difficult to summarize what we have shared together over the past month into one blog post.  We hope to post smaller, more digestible pieces in the future now that our group tours are over and we will be spending more time travelling on our own.

We hope you have enjoyed reading about our adventures so far.