Back in BKK

Ok, ok so I did a pretty lame job the last few weeks keeping this going, but between being on the go almost completely nonstop and the ridiculously slow internet connections, it was hard to find time to really sit and write anything profound, so I just didn't Ha. However, I'm back "home" now, in Bangkok, for about 2 weeks and, while I wait for Lost, season 5 Episode 1 to load on this slightly sketchy but awesome website (thank you Andrew!), I thought I'd start posting.

The training trip was amazing!! It was long, hard, emotional and really, ridiculously fun. I start my first solo trip on the 16th and I actually think I'm ready - I have a lot of prepping to do beforehand, and some office training, but I'm excited to get started.

A quick recap on a few things:

The Job:
It's going to be great, but it's not going to be easy. Between having to manage passengers' personalities and expectations and also knowing what to do and where to go in every city, town and village we visit as well as getting 15 people from point a to point b, it's a pretty stressful job at times, but also so much fun. I'm obsessed with learning more about the countries we visit and their (sometimes sordid, heart-wrenching) pasts as well as getting to know the people, too.The group on the first trip was pretty great- and we spend an awful lot of time together in sometimes very close quarters (over night trains, slow boats, teeny passenger vans) so it helps that they were all really nice folks. The ages varied more than I expected - quite a few older passengers, and some young ones, too, so it was good to have a mix. Lots and lots of Canadians. Ha.

The Rest of the Trip (Part 1):
It's hard to say so far what my favorite part of the trip was. I unfortunately discovered that I do not, in fact, have a stomach of steel as I thought, so there was a good week and a half where I was really pretty uncomfortable, to put it nicely. I love the food over here (especially in Vietnam!) but what they make up for in fried noodles and spring rolls they certainly lack in coffee (Nescafe and something resembling condensed milk) and if I never eat another fried egg it will be too soon. Also, tubing, as you read above, set me back a couple days - ha - but I managed to recover just in time for the craziness of Vietnam.

I Love-Hate Vietnam. I love the food, first and foremost. Every single thing I ate I loved. I was like a black hole. But it was such a sudden and jarring change from laid-back Laos, Hanoi especially, that I was a bit taken aback and it wasn't until we moved on to Cambodia that I realized that I might not actually hate it. Maybe it's being raised American that makes the communist presence seem that much more pronounced, but I just saw it everywhere in North Vietnam, especially, and it was a bit hard to swallow. We went to see Ho Chi Minh, who is preserved Lenin-style in a mausoleum (basically, lying in an open casket, pickled, for all to view and pay respects), and you literally had to line up by twos, march in a line behind a guard in full military garb, follow a silent processional through the mausoleum (no talking whatsoever!) so you can peek at him in the dimly lit room surrounded by guards with full-on machine guns. it was surreal. And not a little bit scary. Also, Hanoi is just completely insane. When I say a sea of motorbikes fill the streets at every hour of the day, I do mean a sea. Every single inhabitant of that city must be on their motorbikes at every single moment of the day. Crossing the street is harrowing but, as they clearly don't believe in or bother with any sort of street lights or signs, you just have to go for it. And they go around you. It is organized chaos to be sure.

The next town, Hue, was a bit of a haze, although I know I played pool with some of the guys on the trip in a backpacker bar and we stayed in a nice place with a great breakfast buffet (cereal with milk!!), but other than I that I can't remember, but Hoi An was fantastic.

We had three days in Hoi An and I spent almost the entire time on the beach. It was heaven. After go go go the whole time, it was great to be in one place for a stretch of time. Didn't do much except rent bikes and ride through town, then past rice paddies and farmers,over a bridge and to the beach every day. But it was fantastic. It's also the place to get tailor made clothes - dresses and suits hand made and tailored for a steal but, as I am living out of my backpack for 18 months, I didn't get anything made.

Next was Saigon. Compared to Hanoi, it is a much easier city. Still big and crazy and full of horn blaring motor bikes, but the streets are bigger, they have traffic signals, and the people seemed friendlier for some reason. This began the tough part of the trip, though. We went to Cu Chi Tunnels one morning and let's just say I wish I had prepared myself better. To make a long history lesson short, during the war, the Viet Cong (North Vietnamese military) infiltrated South Vietnam and dug tunnels through out this small village about 30 minutes outside of Saigon. They dressed like the local people and were nearly indistinguishable to the Americans stationed nearby. As you can imagine this led to lots of nasty,harrowing fights and basically, the Americans didn't know who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. Anyway, we went to tour the tunnels and it's not something I look forward to doing again. You have to watch a completely insane propaganda film upon entering which tells all about killing the "evil Americans" (really fun at 9am, especially being the ONLY American. Awesome.),then you walk through and see the tunnels, you can even crawl through one, and they have different exhibits showing the different weapons the VC used, the steel spiked traps, the hooks that would swing out from the trees, all with delightfully colorful murals depiciting American GIs getting gorged by said traps. Then at the end you can buy bullets and shoot an M-16 machine gun. I ate ice cream instead. I also cried a little bit because A, I'm a baby, and B, my dad was stationed not far from there, and I couldn't help thinking about how miserable he must have been and how scary of a place it really was. I was glad to get out of there and go to....The War Remnants Museum! Also a cheery place. Not at all. Maybe the most depressing place I've been. It's an amazing museum, but after that morning and then going to the museum which was so graphic (lots of pictures of napalm victims and torture chambers - even a guillotine - ugh) I basically wanted to go back to the hotel and lie in the fetal position for a while.

Instead, we went to dinner and then to Karaoke. For my LA friends with whom I have been privileged to experience K-Town Karaoke - I definitely thought of and dedicated at least one power ballad to you. Only difference (or maybe not?) between this Karaoke establishment and The Orchid in LA is that we discovered, after the fact, that this was a Karaoke bar of the "sexy" variety. Meaning, much like massage parlours here, there are two kinds. Normal and "Sexy". You don't want a sexy massage and you really don't want sexy Karaoke. We managed to keep it clean though, and the prostitutes thankfully stayed on the street outside where they belong. Ha. I sang Abba.

Ok, I'm apparently making up for not blogging by writing a book. So if you haven't fallen asleep, please stay tuned and I'll post part 2 - (Cambodia! Also a cheery place! Yay Khmer Rouge!) later today or tomorrow.

Miss you all tremendously and love reading your comments!

xoxo
Erin

Let the blogging begin....

Sabaidee!!

So I'm here and I'm finally getting around to starting this blog. It's been a whirlwind two weeks so far, and internet is brutally slow most places - it's all I can do to just check email and maybe send a few quick replies.. Anywho, better late than never, right?

I'm in Vientienne, Laos right now, and leaving for Hanoi tonight. I'm with a great group - my leader, Kalyn from Canada, Karis, another trainee, then our passengers who are also great (a couple more Canadians, an Aussie, and a guy from Scotland). We meet more people tomorrow night in Hanoi and our total group will be about 15.

So far I think my favorite place has been Cahing Mai, in Northern Thailand. It's so beautiful and slow pavced and the people are amazing. We took a really fun cooking course and then went to a temple on the top of a mountain to watch the monks chant at dusk. You can go around and have them bless you, too, which was pretty amazing.

Presently I"m recovering a bit from out stopover in Vang Vieng - it's mostly a backpacker town, pretty seedy, really, but has some awesome caves and the river is nice. It's also renound for it's tubing - now, I've done my share of tubing back home, with a tube for the beer cooler, etc., but this is like that times 100, at least. We probably only tubed for 50 yards or so, b/c every few hundred feet there is a themed bar - with plenty to drink, of course, and some sort of attraction - a huge slide, a zip line, swings, mud pools, etc. I made the mistake of daring the zip line and, well, I'm just not that graceful and I'm pretty sure I have whiplash! But it was a lot of fun and we met some fun people along the way. I've been taking it easy the last couple of days, though, and definitely taking advantage of the $5 massages. I think I've had 5 so far....

I think I'm going to really like the job. It's been overwhelming so far, but I'm starting to catch on, and I've been picking up the languages much easier than I thought. I'm getting my numbers down, which really helps when bargaining!

Ok, I'm off to check out this stupa in town, and maybe a temple or two before we catch our flight. As soon as I can upload some pictures I will, but it has been easier said than done, for sure.